An Education: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Dir: Martin Scorsese

Why Is This On The Syllabus?
There are any number of reasons I've been meaning to see Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for years. Take your pick from the fact that it's an early diversion for Martin Scorsese, quite different from most of the rest of his work, and made in an incredibly fertile period (in between Mean Streets and Taxi Driver). It also has an outstanding cast; an Oscar winning Ellen Burstyn, an Oscar nominated Diane Ladd, Harvey Kietel, Kris Kristofferson and an 11 year old Jodie Foster.


What Did I Learn?
That even in the seventies Martin Scorsese was not infallible.

I've been fortunate with the An Education project so far; I've seen several very good films and one great one, but the winning streak had to break at some point, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore did it. Alice (Burstyn) is in her mid-thirties and living what seems to be a pretty unhappy life as a housewife, rather than fulfilling her ambition of being a singer, with her husband and their 11 year old son Tommy (Alfred Lutter). Her husband dies in an accident at work, and Alice and Tommy go on the road, aiming to end up in her home town of Monterey, but making stops along the way where Alice takes jobs singing or waitressing and ends up meeting suitors like Kietel and Kristofferson.

The basic problem was simple for me: I just didn't find Alice very interesting. She's a very unprepossessing character, very average, and while there's something to be said for dramatising the everyday lives of very normal people, there was little that hooked me in here. This isn't to say that Burstyn is bad, because she's not, in fact she's impressive, but Alice is just dull. She's got none of the spunk of Diane Ladd's Flo; a fellow waitress in a diner on one of the stops on Alice and Tommy's stop start roadtrip, and much of the time she feels a bit like a crying prop, moved from pillar to post, from man to man, but seldom moving the drama forward herself, and apparently (given the film's ending) not learning a damn thing on the way.

Another problem is that Alice is almost always accompanied by Tommy, who I understand is supposed to be annoying... but... JESUS. Not since Bob in The House By the Cemetery (yeah, I mentioned Lucio Fulci in an article about 70's Scorsese) have I wanted so desperately to be able to punch a small child in the mouth. He's a constant, whining, pain in the arse, really, the noise couldn't be more irritating if Alice took a police siren everywhere she went. Again, it's not that Alfred Lutter plays the role badly, it's just that the character is so exquisitely punchable.



The other performances largely follow a similar pattern; good actors in roles that are either one note (Keitel, Ladd) or so brief you hardly notice them (Foster, who is flat out fantastic for about ten minutes, Lane Bradbury, who does three minutes as Keitel's wronged wife). Diane Ladd is great, and gives the film a much needed shot of energy, her character also, eventually, lifts Alice's character somewhat, leading to one the film's best scenes where the two of them sit outside and talk about men. In the few scenes where Alice is having fun the film does spark to life a bit, another great scene comes when she's telling Kristofferson's David about how she learnt to kiss. Unfortunately these moments are few and far between.

Martin Scorsese is clearly out of his comfort zone, and he makes some very odd choices here. The film opens in 4:3 ratio, with an incredibly obviously stagebound tribute to The Wizard of Oz, establishing Alice's love of music. It's utterly against the tone of the the rest of the film. Scorsese has a fluid camera style for this film, but to me it felt extraneous, and never stopped the movie from feeling like a stage play. Again, it's not a case of a job being done badly, but the elements never seemed to fit together for me.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore isn't a bad film, it's just a dull one. I never warmed to Alice, or really to any of the other characters, and that meant that the film never had the emotional weight and pull it was clearly striving for. A major disappointment.

An Education: The Searchers

SPOILERS ahead

Dir: John Ford

Why is this on the syllabus?
I like to think, when it comes to cinema, that I've got a very solid knowledge base. I may not have seen everything, but I've at least seen some of everything. However, over the past two decades I have avoided one major genre; the Western. It just never really appealed to me (less so after doing the Old West in GCSE history, which was astoundingly dull compared to the history of medicine). I've seen, and love, a lot of films that modernise some the ideas of the genre (Badlands and No Country For Old Men, for instance), but the appeal of the classic Western has eluded me.

The thing is, the Western is one of the most important genres in cinema, and I can't really pretend to be a fully rounded film fan or critic without having seen a good few of them, nor indeed a good few films starring John Wayne and/or directed by John Ford, who are both, it's fair to say, somewhat important figures in cinema history. To me it seemed that their most renowned and best loved collaboration had to be my jumping off point for the genre.


What did I learn?
That there's much, much more to John Wayne than the endless 'Say Pilgrim...' parodies suggest. Though a massive star in his day, Wayne has never really been regarded as much of an actor, and seems to be viewed more as a walking persona. Obviously I need to see more of his films to really come down on a side of that argument, but on the face of it his work in The Searchers feels like a good rebuttal to those charges; embodying many of the film's darker and more morally complex themes.

That's another thing that surprised me about this film; I'd always envisioned the classic Western, perhaps incorrectly, as a genre where the morals were simple; good guys and bad guys easily defined and the tone one of a slightly wistful romanticism about simple times past. That's not this film, and it's all the better for it.

The story sees Wayne's Ethan Edwards return, years late, from fighting for the Confederacy. He goes to stay with his brother's family, but is quickly called away to investigate suspected cattle rustling by local Indians. It soon becomes clear that the cattle were a cover for a murder raid by the Comanche, and Ethan returns to find most of his Brother's family dead, and the two daughters missing. Ethan and his adoptive nephew (Jeffrey Hunter) set out to find the women and kill their kidnappers, embarking on a search that will take five long years.

In any other film this dedication would be pure, making Ethan the unambiguous hero of the picture and Jeffrey Hunter's Martin little more than a sidekick, but, happily, The Searchers is much more complex than that. Frank S. Nugent's dark screenplay (from a novel by Alan LeMay) paints Ethan as an unrepentant racist. He repeatedly tells Martin that they aren't family, not because Martin is adopted but because he's an eighth Cherokee, but that's really just the start. Ethan isn't on a rescue mission, he's out to kill, and not just the Comanche who killed his family. When they finally find Debbie, the niece who survived (played at 15 by an 18 year old Natalie Wood), Ethan and Martin discover that she has lived with and become part of the tribe, rather than been their prisoner and the idea that has bubbled under the entire film and been the reason that Martin has stuck so close by Ethan comes to the surface. As we've heard Ethan say earlier, prisoners who have lived within the tribe for so long aren't white any more, and he plans to kill Debbie along with the rest of the tribe, rather than take her home.



I wonder how this played in 1956, what it was like both to have Ethan be this way and to have movie refuse to treat him as a hero because of it, back in pre civil rights era America. I can't say, but certainly now it's a shockingly dark choice and the movie gains much complexity from the way it treats Ethan. Much of this comes from the relationship between Ethan and Martin, which remains suspicious throughout, and injects a great deal of tension into the film. In a mid-movie sequence Ethan appears to leave Martin alone and without a horse as he sleeps, and then draw a rifle on him. On this occasion, it happens, Ethan defends Martin (though he's also using him as bait), but there's never any doubt that if the younger man ceased to be useful, Ethan would have no compunction about killing him, or that, as much as he wants to rescue his adopted Sister, Martin is there largely to try to keep Ethan on a leash.

There are lighter things happening, namely the sub-plot about Martin and the girl (Vera Miles) who wants to marry him but is disappointed by his long absence hunting for Debbie. Miles is excellent and pretty affecting, but frankly this storyline just ends up taking away from the quest narrative and the dynamic between Ethan and Martin, especially in the long wedding sequence towards the end of the film, which stops the film's momentum at a critical point. A better handled lighter note is a misunderstanding that leads to Martin getting an Indian wife. Ethan's amused reaction to this gives us a glimpse of a lighter side of Wayne (though he never lets the continuity of character slip, Ethan's amusement is mean and racist) and it also powers the main narrative, and leads to a resonant moment later in the film.

Throughout the film both Wayne and Hunter are excellent; their terse and distrustful relationship rings true and powers the film and each plays the complexities of his character with credibility and conviction. The rest of the cast are a little overshadowed - though there are no real weak links performance wise - but Vera Miles is appealing as a woman surprisingly modern for 1868 and Natalie Wood makes an impression in her handful of scenes.

John Ford is a director whose work I hadn't previously seen, except in clips in documentaries, this won't be the last of his films I watch. Ford's direction makes this dark tale an incredible and accessible spectacle. He revels in the outstanding vistas that his settings (Monument Valley being the most recognisable) allow him, with many beautiful wide shots that communicate just how vast the task facing Ethan and Martin really is just in finding Debbie in the first place. However, Ford also finds beautiful and resonant shots in smaller and more personal moments. The justly famous bookends of characters framed in doorways spring to mind, each reflecting Ethan's place (or lack of it) in this more settled world. It's not just the still moments that Ford shoots beautifully though; this is a film full of action, and those sequences are beautifully realised. In fact, a lot of today's action filmmakers could learn something here; the gunfights are exciting and have real impact, but the cutting is still measured and the geography of the action sequences is clear. I can't stress how much more enjoyable action is when it's intelligible (Bay, are you listening?)

I think I'm several viewings away from getting everything I'm going to get out of The Searchers, as moments and shots are still lingering with me from last night. Ultimately, isn't that what defines a great movie; the knowledge that the next time you watch it you'll not only take away something more, but you might even take away something different?

Educate Yourself
If you buy The Searchers from one of these links you'll get the film and help out 24FPS at no extra cost. Awesome!

An Education: Nashville

Dir: Robert Altman

Why is it on the syllabus?
Because Robert Altman is one of the cornerstones, one of the major forces in American cinema, and one of the people who brought a daring independent sensibility to major studio films. He also pioneered a way of working, with a roving camera, naturalistic performances and multi-tracked dialogue that not only allowed him to brilliantly marshal huge casts, but also continues to influence filmmakers to this day. Nashville is continually mentioned as one of his most uncompromising and best films.


What did I learn?
That you CAN fit ten hours worth of material into a 159 minute film. I've found Altman hit (Short Cuts, Three Women) and miss (Popeye, Dr T and the Women, Cookie's Fortune), but when he's on song, it really is a joy. Nashville may be the best I've seen from his extensive filmography, it is an astonishing technical achievement, but more importantly it's riveting throughout, engaging us in an incredible patchwork of moments; snapshots from the lives of 24 different people.

There are many things to love about Nashville, but perhaps the thing that makes it truly great is the simple fact that I would quite happily watch a film about all 24 of its major characters. I'd love to spend two hours with Shelley Duvall's LA Joan, whose outgoing exterior seems to mask a real sadness and loneliness. It would be fascinating to spend an extended time exploring the home life of Delbert (Ned Beatty), Linnea (Lily Tomlin) and their two deaf kids; to see the story behind and before Mr Green's (Keenan Wynn) trips to see his beloved wife in the hospital; to find out more about the relationship between Wade (Robert DoQui) and terrible country singer Sueleen (Gwen Welles); to discover the origins of the rivalry between Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) and Connie White (Karen Black) and so, so much more. There's so much here I almost wish Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury had turned it into a TV series.

The structure of the film is intriguing. It begins in tiny, mosaic like pieces, with Altman capturing multitudes of characters, each engaged in their own little moments in a single place, be it an airport as Barbara Jean touches down, the traffic snarl created by a major car accident or people milling around at the hospital, for the first 45 minutes or so the film barely sits still, and develops an on the fly feel as it freewheels along, dipping into people's lives, sometimes only for a sentence or two at a time. As little as you actually see and hear of each story, these snatched moments of time feel real and intimate, and that's why Nashville ends up being so affecting, and often very funny.

As the characters become more established the film begins to pick a few to turn a sharper focus on, while never losing sight of anyone. Chunks of story become longer, and characters begin to cross over in bigger and more meaningful ways. Country stars, aspiring singers, fans, housewives and politicians all cross paths and purposes, leading to some ambitiously staged scenes that inform several stories at once. One good example is in a club where Keith Carradine, as a member of a pop-country trio who has been avoiding his bandmates all week (despite also carrying on an affair with the female singer (Cristina Raines)) who is married to his other bandmate (Alan Nicholls), performs a song from the solo album he's working on, and at least four women in the audience (Duvall, Raines, Tomlin and a BBC journalist played by Geraldine Chaplin) think he wrote it for them. This scene plays out almost as a large scale version of the record booth scene in Before Sunrise, with each woman receiving the song silently, but with clearly different emotions, only one of them aware of any of the others. It's a complex piece of drama, playing out five stories subtly over the length of one three minute pop song.




Of course, complexity, both at a narrative and a technical level, is Nashville's stock in trade. The editing is extraordinary. Picture editing is one thing, a clearly massive job brilliantly done by Dennis Hill and Sidney Levin, but the sound editing and mixing is the film's make or break masterpiece. So much of Nashville hinges on snatches of conversation, on what we hear front and centre, on what we barely hear. Music maybe the film's main preoccupation, but the soundtrack is much more textured and complex than that; even during the numbers we'll often hear other characters, whether offscreen or in the background. This is the major component of the brilliantly textured world Altman has built here, and sound editor William A Sawyer deserves as much praise as anybody for this film.

The thing is, pretty much everybody deserves praise. Of the actors only Geraldine Chaplin disappoints (her journalist is the flightiest of creatures, and I don't believe the BBC would broadcast her airy fairy shit in a month of Sundays), but even she has wonderful moments, as when,listening to the businessman son of country star Haven Hamilton sing the only song he's ever written, she jumps up in excitement when she spots Elliot Gould. The rest of the performances are exemplary, from Shelley Duvall (at this stage Altman's muse) as the girl who is so desperate not to just be Martha, to Gwen Welles' funny and moving turn as the self-deluding Sueleen and from Henry Gibson's Haven Hamilton; a man as fake as his terrible wig, to Keith Carradine's nakedly, proudly bastardly Tom, who phones another girlfriend before Lily Tomlin's Linnea has even left his hotel room. Singling people out seems almost unfair though, because right down to the smallest roles, like Scott Glenn's recent 'Nam vet, the performances are exemplary.

Many of the actors also have to sing, and most of those also had a hand in writing their material. Here it's a bit more of a mixed bag, most of the songs are great; I'd never heard them before, but they felt and sounded like established country hits, but some of the singers aren't so good, even when they're supposed to be. Henry Gibson (who you'll recognise, by the way, from Magnolia) and Karen Black both suffer vocally in comparison to some of the other singers in the film, notably Ronee Blakley and Raines, Carradine and Nicholls as the trio. However, Altman and his camera, and the audiences in the film, are so swept in the music and the particular atmosphere of Nashville that you can't help but get carried along.

Nashville is 159 minutes long, but I could quite easily have sat through another two hours, so rich are the world and the characters and so dazzling is the way that Altman juggles them all and finds the right tone with every scene. This is a brilliant and beguiling film.

Educate yourself: Unfortunately Nashville has never been released on UK DVD, and is deleted in the US. BLU RAY PLEASE!!

Next Lesson: The Searchers

An Education: The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three ['74]

Dir: Joseph Sargent



Why is this on the syllabus?
I saw Tony Scott's remake of this movie when it opened in cinemas a couple of years ago, and gave it what was probably, on reflection, a slightly over generous review (essentially saying that it was fine, but totally unremarkable). This first version of the story is a film I've had it in the back of my mind that I need to see for many many years, thanks largely to Quentin Tarantino, who credits Pelham with inspiring the colour coded character names for Reservoir Dogs.

I've also got a particular fondness for crime films, and while this may not be considered in the first rank of the genre's classics, it is an influential and well regarded film that I haven't seen, from a period when Hollywood was turning out great crime movies seemingly on a constant loop.

What did I learn?
Well, let's call it revision, and say that the topic we covered today is why remakes are almost always inferior. Tony Scott's LOOK AT MEEE, I'M MAKING A FUCKING MOVIE style isn't really suited to this story. For the most part it's a claustrophobic tale of four men - Mr Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr Green (Martin Balsam), Mr Grey (Hector Elizondo) and Mr Brown - who hijack a New York Subway train and 17 of its passengers, and demand that the city pay them a million dollars within an hour, or they will begin killing one hostage a minute. That's when it's best, on the train and in the headquarters of the Transit Police, as Walter Matthau locks horns with Shaw over the radio.

While Scott sought to liven things up with snazzy angles, manipulated colours and a thumping cutting rhythm, director Joseph Sargent, a veteran even at this point, keeps the focus squarely on his stellar cast, favouring a sedate camera style and reasonably lengthy shots which heighten both the tension and the sense of a mano a mano struggle between Blue and Matthau's Zachary Garber. Robert Shaw is great as Mr Blue, his absolute resolve and total calmness are chilling (and betray a possible influence on an iconic villain to follow; Hans Gruber). I also like that the film doesn't really dig into his backstory (outside of a couple of broad hints and the fact that he's British), as a criminal without a motive, in this case aside from the money itself, is always scarier. The other villains also do good work; Balsam is effective as the conflicted Green and Elizondo unrecognisable as the dangerous Grey. Matthau, too, is as good as ever; always America's rumpled, working class, everyman, he comes across as just a simple guy doing his job well in circumstances that are a little unusual, but there's no grandstanding, no big hero moment, even when he figures out something important it's just another part of just another day.

I appreciated this low key style, it makes the events seem more real, and when you've got a constrained thriller like this it's important that we as an audience buy into the situation, and when we're on the train, or sitting at Garber's desk, the whole thing feels very credible.

Unfortunately the film gets broader when it opens up beyond those two arenas, and that doesn't completely work for it. Scenes with Lee Wallace as an ill and unpopular mayor and Tony Roberts as his deputy feel like they are teleported in from a different film (an unfunny and overly blunt satire, for the record) and a lot of the other police and transit department characters also feel too broad (though Jerry Stiller is funny in a small role, and in a way that works when it plays off Matthau). Visually it's not the most stylish piece, but Sargent held my attention with his tight grip on the script, and his visuals serve to help communicate the story rather than dazzle us with visual flash.

The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three may not quite ascend to the first rank of seventies crime classics, but it's an engaging heist movie that is intelligently scripted and effectively puts you in the shoes of the characters thanks to strong acting and direction. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Educate yourself
If you buy The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three though these links you'll be getting the movie and helping out 24FPS at no extra cost. Awesome!


Next Lesson: Nashville

An Education: A Canterbury Tale

An Education is a new series for 24FPS. Across the course of 2012 I'm going to be filling some holes in the list of accepted 'classics' that I realise I should have seen, but for one reason or another I have thus far not got around to. I'll be watching and reviewing 104 films across the course of the year (and another 52 horror films in a sister feature for www.horrormovies.ca) I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope you'll join me in what I hope is going to be something of a voyage of cinematic discovery.

If you've any thoughts on the articles, or the films I'm going to be watching (full list HERE) then please share them in the comments, via email to sam@24fps.org.uk or tweet me @24FPSUK

First up...

A CANTERBURY TALE
Dir: Michael Powell

Why is this on the syllabus?
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's films are some of the most significant in British cinema, and I've seen some (though not enough) of their later, more iconic, work, and loved it. The Red Shoes is among my favourite films of all time. I chose A Canterbury Tale because it's a slightly unexpected pick from their filmography as compared to the likes of Colonel Blimp or I Know Where I'm Going, and I'd been meaning to watch it for some time now.


What did I learn?
That I don't unconditionally love Powell and Pressburger. Now, put the torches down, stop the screams of 'burn the witch', A Canterbury Tale is a very, very good film, and I enjoyed watching it, but I really can't pretend that it had me at the same level, either of spectacle or emotion, as A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus or The Red Shoes. This may, admittedly, be partly my fault. One of the problems of spending 21 years watching movies on a more or less non-stop loop is that it leaves little time for reading, and I've never got around to reading any of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which screenwriter Pressburger is apparently echoing here, I imagine that if you've got a working knowledge of Chaucer the whole film will play much better, and likely feel more meaningful than it did for me.

The story here is slightly strange. Getting off the train in a village outside Canterbury, Alison, a young Land Girl, (Sheila Sim) meets two soldiers; Peter, an Englishman (Dennis Price) and Bob, an American (John Sweet, a non-professional who was a Sergeant in the US Army, and never acted in another film), as they walk to find somewhere to stay Alison is attacked by 'The Glue Man', who has been regularly pouring glue over the hair of girls who are going around with soldiers. Over the weekend the three stay in the village, and Alison decides that they should discover who the Glue Man is, before heading on to Canterbury on Monday.

The film's mystery storyline doesn't work terribly well, not that it's poorly told, but it's so lightweight (and the solution so stark staring obvious from the off), that it just isn't all that engaging, but I suspect that that's not really the point, and certainly Powell and Pressburger seem more interested in village life, the way people pull together in a time of war and the relationships between Alison, Peter, Bob, and Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman), who seems to be something equivalent to head of the village council. This is where the film excels, as Pressburger's script draws each of them with some depth and complexity, and makes each relationship feel a little bit different. Particularly well written and played is the relationship between Bob and Alison, who bond over lost love in one of the film's standout scenes.

All of the performances are strong. Portman's role could quite easily have invited a hammy performance, but while he's appropriately stuck up at times (one scene takes place as he's giving a lecture to the assembled soldiers on the history of the local area), he also evolves as a character, being drawn in by the three main characters after being dismissive of them to begin with. It's left up to us to decide how much of this change of attitude is a ploy. Sheila Sim makes for an appealing lead, and a surprisingly modern one for 1944, as she takes the lead in investigating the Glue Man, drawing the men in after the fact. As Peter and Bob Price and Sweet both do solid work, with Sweet giving a relaxed and natural performance.

A Canterbury Tale is interesting in a lot of ways. At times it feel like it is pining for a dying (and now dead) way of life (look at the scenes with the wheelwright, a job that has likely completely died out now). It's also something of a tourist film, showing us glimpses of the quaint folk who live in the English countryside, and the way a GI reacts to them, but perhaps first and foremost it is propaganda, with the accent heavily on co-operation and friendship between British and American forces and civilians during the war effort. This seems especially hammered home in a storyline involving local village boys first playing at being armies and then helping to uncover the Glue Man.

Erwin Hillier's black and white cinematography is beautiful and crisp, he uses shadow beautifully, especially in the handful of night time scenes, and the vistas looking over the hills to Canterbury are expansive and stunning (a view I'm very familiar with, having ridden the bus into Canterbury most days for five years). between them, Powell and Hillier have created a striking looking film, even though, for my money, Powell's best work is in colour.

Ultimately, though I liked the characters, and was appropriately charmed by the film's ending, A Canterbury Tale seems a bit muddled, and a bit lightwieght compared to what I've previously seen from Powell and Pressburger, but it's still an engaging and enjoyable work, and one I suspect I'll grow to like more on rewatches. Now, where's the Chaucer?


Educate Yourself
If you buy A Canterbury Tale though these links you'll be getting the movie and helping out 24FPS at no extra cost. Awesome!



Next Lesson: The Taking of Pelham 123 ['74]

An Education: Part 1

As I mentioned on the first post in my series on the Alien films, next year 24FPS will be playing host to a new series called An Education.

As a film fan for some 21 years, and a critic of varying degrees of semi-professionalism for the last 12 of those years, I've seen a lot of movies - more, I imagine, than most people will ever see - and yet there are still a lot of acknowledged classics that I have never got around to. In my defence, I've spent a lot of the time I haven't been watching these films watching many, many more obscure titles and expanding my film education in all sorts of weird directions, but there are cornerstones missing from my film education, and I've often heard gasps when I say I haven't seen... any of the films on this list.

So, next year, I'm going to watch 104 films - two a week - that I feel are part of the canon of generally acknowledged 'classics' and review them and comment on whether I think they deserve their classic status. The only rule I've imposed is that the films should have been made before 1990. You'll also notice that there aren't any horror films on this list, which is because I'll be doing a 52 film feature; A Horror Education, addressing the genre canon, over at horrormovies.ca

So. Here's the list, in alphabetical order, and before anyone says anything, trash classics count. Your thoughts on the titles would be welcomed.

8 1/2
The 400 Blows
1900

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
All Quiet on the Western Front ['30]
Arsenic and Old Lace
Au Revoir Les Enfants
The Awful Truth

Babette's Feast
Bande a Part
Battle of Algiers
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Blue Angel
Das Boot
Brazil
Brighton Rock ['47]
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Camille
A Canterbury Tale
Cape Fear ['62]
Cinema Paradiso
Claire's Knee
The Conformist
The Conversation
Le Corbeau
A Cottage on Dartmoor
Cries and Whispers

Les Enfants Du Paradis
Elevator to the Gallows

The French Connection
From Here to Eternity

The General ['26]
Godzilla ['54]
The Gold Rush
Gone With the Wind
Grave of the Fireflies
Greed

Harold and Maude
Heaven's Gate
High Noon

Inherit the Wind
Intolerance
The Italian Job ['69]

The Jazz Singer ['27]
La Jetee
Judex
Jules et Jim

Kes
Killer of Sheep
Kiss of Death ['47]
Knife in the Water

The Last Temptation of Christ
Lawrence of Arabia
The Leopard
Little Caesar

M. Hulot's Holiday
Man With a Movie Camera
Marathon Man
Marketa Lazarova
Mash
Le Mepris
My Neighbour Totoro

Nashville
The Night Porter
Notorious

Out of the Past

Paris, Texas
Performance
The Postman Always Rings Twice ['46]
The Public Enemy

Rashomon
Rebel Without a Cause
La Regle de Jeu
Rififi

The Searchers
The Seven Year Itch
The Seventh Seal
Shaft
Shane
She Done Him Wrong
Silent Running
Singin' in the Rain
Solaris ['72]
Sophie's Choice
Sous le Soleil de Satan
Spartacus
The Sweet Smell of Success

The Taking of Pelham 123 ['74]
Tampopo
Tarzan and His Mate
The Third Man
The Tingler
Tokyo Story
Top Hat
Touch of Evil
A Touch of Zen
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Triumph of the Will

Way Down East
The Wild Bunch
Wild River
The Wind
Wings of Desire

Z