Rick's 100 favourite movies: Part 3

This is the third of four posts about my favourite movies, taking in everything from Elia Kazan's apologia for informing to Pixar's finest film, via martial arts, pastries and Lillian Gish with a big gun.

Part 1 (100-76) is here, and part 2 (75-51) can be found here.

50. Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937)

A crackling feminist masterpiece that passes the Bechdel Test 90 times a minute, as a flawless ensemble cast trades blistering, bitchy, pitch-black wisecracks while hanging out in a theatrical boarding house for women. It's also the tearjerker to end them all, though it only seems to be me who feels that way. Full review.

49. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
Sex and death in Texas, as dissolution sweeps an ailing town and its picture house gets ready to close. Ben Johnson gives one of my favourite performances, as that old, sad voice of reason, Sam the Lion, delivering a waterside monologue that's perhaps the best three minutes of the New Hollywood.

48. The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
One of the great late silents, with Vidor interrogating the American Dream like the big leftie he was. Completely heartbreaking.

47. The Dreamlife of Angels (Erich Zonka, 1998)

Profound, poignant film about the friendship that develops – and then unravels – between two young women who meet at a factory in Lille. Ila (Élodie Bouchez) is friendly, compassionate and happy to ask for help; self-centred Maria (Natacha Régnier) throws her pride and practicality to the wind as she embarks on a self-destructive affair with an utter shit. A wise, insightful and immersive study of human relationships, and the nature of friendship, with exceptional performances from the two leads – especially the big-eyed, expressive Bouchez.

46. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
Unforgiven is Clint Eastwood's masterpiece: a towering dismantling of Western mythos, extraordinary in every way. I wrote one of my best pieces on it.

45. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
"I want... to die." *sob*

44. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

With Les 400 Coups (see the final part of the list!) and Star Wars, this was the movie that got me into movies, and inspired a Marlon Brando obsession that's never really gone away. I must have seen it 30 times. It's also fascinating – though troubling – from a historical perspective, as writer Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan's apologia for naming names to HUAC. I still know the entire taxicab scene off by heart. Try me.

43. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1962)
Melville par excellence, with Belmondo at his best and a killer twist.

42. Blessed Event (Roy Del Ruth, 1932)
Arguably the greatest comedy film of all time, with “that kid from advertising” Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) commandeering his newspaper’s society section, and turning it into the filthiest gossip column in America. Tracy is my favourite male actor and was once one of the biggest stars in the world, until the Production Code outlawed his brand of comedy and he compounded matters by allegedly urinating on the Mexican Army, with the result that he was unceremoniously fired by the biggest film studio in the world. I've reviewed the film here, and written about Tracy here.

41. Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)

Bergman does sex comedy - and the result is a deep, delicate, just about perfect movie, like the best of Lubitsch and Ophüls mixed with Partie de campagne. And while it's influenced everyone from New York-based Jewish songwriter Stephen Sondheim to New York-based Jewish filmmaker Woody Allen, the original remains by far the best. A lawyer, his young wife, his mistress, her lover, her lover's wife, the mistress's mother, the lawyer's son and a couple of horny servants flirt, argue and try to cop off with each other (except the mum), the whole group ultimately coming together for a sunlit weekend in the country. Beautifully written, acted and photographed, it's equal parts sentiment, melancholia, absurdism, witty badinage, and timeless, mind-expanding philosophy on the nature of love, lust and language, full of surprises, clever bon mots and rich characterisation. There's even a bit where someone falls in a puddle.

40. Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984)

Danny Rose: What'd you do, you divorced him, or got a separation, or what?
Tina Vitale: Nah, some guy shot him in the eyes.
Danny Rose: Really? He's blind?
Tina Vitale: Dead.
Danny Rose: Dead. Of course, 'cause the bullets go right through.

I don't think this is Woody's greatest film, but it's the one I return to most often: a sweet, funny, utterly charming tall tale - with hidden emotional heft - about a loveable Broadway talent agent (Woody Allen) trying to escort his best client's mistress (Mia Farrow) to a crucial show, and unwittingly incurring the wrath of the mafia. What seems at first glance a slight, minor movie holds untold pleasures, from Allen's script - stuffed with gems - to Gordon Willis's mesmerising monochrome cinematography, and an unforgettable, uncharacteristic performance from an unrecognisable Farrow, as the forceful, temperamental Tina Vitale, her late husband a juice man for the mob. "He made juice for the mob?" asks a baffled Allen.

39. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)

Crouching Tiger is one of the great films of last decade, often claustrophobic in scale, but epic in its treatment of human emotion, and chock-full of magic, magnificence and good old-fashioned fucking mayhem. It looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful - hell, it is beautiful - and where it's going, we don't needs roads, or even floors. Much more on it here.

38. The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Éric Rohmer, 1963)
A mesmerising, intoxicating Rohmer short that's as close to a personal manifesto as you'll ever see on screen. His enduring preoccupation was where eroticism touches romance, and his view of both was heady, wise, ironic. After the false start that was the director's abysmal debut feature, the tedious, neorealist Signe du Lion, this story of a law student (Barbet Schroeder) flirting with a counter girl at a Parisian bakery (Claudine Soubrier) as he waits for his true love (Michèle Girardon) to walk past is extraordinarily affecting, honest and insightful: grubbily conspiratorial as we're asked to see everything from his jaundiced viewpoint (it's a 'moral tale' in so much as it's about personal morality), a little eerie as it ponders fate and chance, and gloriously sensual when they duck into an alleyway to talk and he starts stroking her neck. The first of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, and – at 23 minutes – the best film I've seen this year.

37. Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)

An astonishing movie that I only heard of for the first time in May; it sounded amazing, so I got a ticket to a BFI screening. It's the Orpheus myth transplanted to the Rio Carnival, with womanising guitarist Breno Mello falling in love with pure, troubled Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn). They dance, have sex, and save one another, but his feisty ex-girlfriend and Eurydice's psychotic, death-faced stalker hint at the unlikeliness of a happy ending. It's a feast for the eyes and ears, with impossibly vibrant Eastman Color cinematography showcasing Rio and its carnival (those yellows!), invigorating dance and intoxicating bossa nova music, while the story moves effortlessly from utterly joyous to blackly terrifying and then abstractly spiritual. Perhaps it runs out of steam towards the very end, but for the most part it captures Rio with a startling immediacy: its characters pulsating with passion, natural charm and an unapologetic, everyday eroticism. The story - adapted from a Brazilian play - struck me as one of those high-concept ideas that might extract a certain truth from its material by dropping it into Rio. In actuality, it's difficult to believe when watching Black Orpheus that it would or could make sense anywhere else, such is the film's complete conviction, and the virtuosic skill that Camus displays in meshing these diverse elements together, while capturing the penury, charm and beauty of the setting, and inspiring a host of pitch perfect performances. It's extraordinary.

36. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
One of the high watermarks of silent cinema: a stunningly atmospheric drama ignited by a tour-de-force performance from the incomparable Lillian Gish, who plays a tormented, tortured waif driven to madness as she’s buffeted by a desert wind and by unfettered male sexual aggression. More here.

35. Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
My favourite performance of all time, courtesy of the incomparable Emily Watson. I also find von Trier the most interesting director working today.

34. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)

Debra Granik's feminist masterwork is the key film of the decade so far: an unorthodox, spine-tingling thriller, a humanist fable, and a staggering study of a good person under almost intolerable pressure. In her breakout role, Jennifer Lawrence is Ree Dolly, a strong, selfless, smart-mouthed 17-year-old living with her vacant mother and two young siblings in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. Once it ran with bootleg moonshine, now this here's Meth Country, and if her crystal-cooking father doesn't turn up for his court hearing, they're going to lose the house, the woods and the whole family unit. So Ree sets out in search of him, facing threats, silence and regular beatings from pinch-faced people who share a lot of the same blood that runs in her veins, and down her face. Full review here.

33. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
From the astute, literate voiceover and classic freeze-frame that launches the story, via stinging one-liners, sublime reaction faces and a litany of unimprovable set-pieces, to one of the most memorable, satisfying (and scary) endings in the history of movies, All About Eve is a landmark of Hollywood’s Golden Age: an unassailable classic with the kind of dialogue that a moviegoer dreams about. More here.

32. The Snowman (Dianne Jackson and Jimmy T. Murakami, 1982)
What Christmas Eves were invented for (as well as venerating the baby Jesus), and the first film I ever loved.

31. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)
The twist. That twist. This mercurial masterpiece of ‘90s cinema has now been reduced to just one thing. Not that its twist isn’t magnificent, but it’s certainly not the film’s raison d’etre, or its reason to be celebrated. It doesn’t explain why the film continues to enrapture, enthral and grow in emotional resonance as the years pass and the viewings rack up. And, unlike most twists, it doesn’t come at the end, but at the halfway point, meaning that if you’ve avoided seeing the film because you think you know how it ends – you really don’t. Full review.

30. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)

My favourite musical, starring my favourite musical star, Fred Astaire. The immortal 'Cheek to Cheek' is unquestionably the highlight, but this slice of ineffable, irrepressible escapism is stuffed with great jokes, timeless Irving Berlin songs and irreproachable dancing.

29. Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
Garbo Laughs! And Ernst Lubitsch reminds everyone once again that he's the best director of romantic comedies in the history of movies.

28. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
One of the great films, a beguiling, bewitching, sometimes bewildering collision of Gothic horror and fairytale, a haunting, hypnotic vision of pure evil, of goodness, of redemption, of innocence lost and perhaps regained, of greed and guilt, loss, delusion, sexual obsession and puritanical perversion. It has some weak acting, wild lurches in tone and even a little Schufftan silliness, and yet also many of the most striking, magical sequences of its era, climaxing with a half-hour confrontation between good and evil that is amongst the most indelibly artistic and impossibly moving passages of pure cinema ever put onto celluloid. And just when you think it can’t get any better, silent screen icon Lillian Gish turns up, armed with the only truly worthy role of her sound career. Full write-up here.

27. Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, 1942)

Incredible short from propagandist (and anarchist, and surrealist) Humphrey Jennings, one of my favourite filmmakers. Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and Diary for Timothy are his most well-known films, and this one contains my favourite shot in his ouevre (it's the bloke exhaling smoke through his nose while watching Flanagan and Allen), though most of his work from 1939 onwards is great, especially Spare Time and The Silent Village.

26. Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009)
This is the review I wrote for the paper when it came out: "PIXAR'S latest - and greatest - is a very special piece of work, a deliriously enjoyable yarn that packs a considerable emotional wallop. It begins, gloriously, with a scrupulously detailed faux '30s newsreel, as a Lindbergh-esque aviator − Charles Muntz − returns triumphant from exploring the Venezuelan wilds only to fall from grace amidst accusations of fakery. Watching, transfixed, is Carl Fredricksen, a bespectacled, toothy wannabe adventurer. Returning home from the theatre, he stumbles across a fellow Muntz afficionado, the talkative Ellie, and a friendship blossoms. Through an exquisite, intensely moving wordless montage ('Married Life'), we see Carl and Ellie's life together, as they fall in love, marry and grow old, their dream of exploring South America dashed time and again - the savings jar smashed and raided to cover house repairs and hospital bills. Ending with Ellie's passing, this four minute sequence is a bold, breathtakingly brilliant bit of moviemaking that evokes It's a Wonderful Life and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with that exalted predecessor. Having lost his wife, and set to relinquish his home and independence, retired balloon salesman Carl (voiced by Edward Asner) does the only thing he can, affixing 20,000 balloons to his house in a bid to fly it to Paradise Falls - the lost world of Muntz's famous mission. Accidentally along for the ride is Russell, a young Wilderness Explorer who's desperate to secure his "assisting the elderly" badge and has been hunting for a snipe under the porch. From then on in, all bets are off, as the film's boundless imagination and anarchic sensibility conjure up a world of neurotic talking dogs, androgynous, chocolate-gobbling birds and paranoid adventurers, whilst never forgetting that we care what happens to its damaged, appealing central duo. Hysterically funny and emotionally resonant, Up hums with invention from first frame to last and, in having the guts to tackle big subjects with honesty, subtlety and intelligence, emerges as one of the finest films of recent years."

***



Thanks for reading.

Coach Carter, Vince Papale, and people just walking around - Reviews #73

Three American sports films and a movie about the British pastime of empire-building:



For a good hour, Coach Carter (Thomas Carter, 2005) appears to be following a well-worn path, as high school basketball coach Samuel L. Jackson whips a discipline-free collection of inner-city individuals into a slick, unbeaten unit. Then it emerges that the players have reneged on a deal to attend class and secure C+ grades, and the authoritarian taskmaster locks them out of the gym, suspending all practices and matches until they up their game off the court. It's heartening to see a film so confident of its message: that the US treats young African-Americans abominably, almost willing them to fail, that sports stars are put on a pedestal in a way that damages society and that academic excellence is undervalued in comparison. (Intriguingly, the '40s baseball comedy It Happens Every Spring also addresses the two latter observations, in rather lighter fashion.)

The script is flawed - there's the odd poor line, an uninteresting subplot about a student who may be about to become a father that repeatedly brings the film to a juddering halt, and a tendency to reel off stats to cement its thesis - and there's something a little calculating about the way the music swells every time Jackson starts grandstanding. Which happens rather a lot. But this is still an extremely persuasive blend of inspirational true-life story, sports picture and social polemic. Jackson is extremely good in the central role, better than I've ever seen him, the plotting is extremely involving, the game sequences are very well choreographed (though the structural problem familiar from Rocky of each side dominating in turn persists) and the whole thing is surprisingly moving - even when its methods of manipulation are pretty transparent.

Every basketball film suffers from not being Hoop Dreams (well, except one), a human drama of singular power in which every frame is real, but this is an unexpectedly impressive and heartfelt film in which the laudable strengths - intriguing subject matter, a powerful central turn and a sense of conviction scarce in contemporary cinema - overpower its more grounded, trivial shortcomings. (3)

***



A League of Their Own (Penny Marshall, 1992) is a cracking piece of escapism that pays tribute to the female baseball players of the WWII period, who filled stadiums when the male superstars went off to fight. The central squabble between sisters Geena Davis and Tori Petty is of questionable value, the character development is sometimes lacking (or else duplicitous in the case of Megan Cavanagh) and Davis is transparently the worst baseball player of all time, but for all that it's just a tremendously entertaining film: fast-moving, stuffed with ace montages, faux-newsreels and enjoyable sequences, and boasting several excellent performances. Petty is fine in her role as the overlooked younger sibling and there are eye-catching supporting bits from David Strathairn - who played crooked pitcher Eddie Cicotte in John Sayles' Eight Men Out - as the league's publicity man and Jon Lovitz as a sleazy, tactless talent scout. But the best performance unquestionably comes from Tom Hanks. I was a Hanks agnostic, but this has won me round. He delivers a superb, tragi-comic turn as an ex-baseball pro turned "fall-down drunk" who finds a new lease of life doing, well, what still appears to be just about the bare minimum of coaching. Whether bickering with his benefactor, scratching his balls in the dugout or advising a young autograph hunter to "avoid the clap", Hanks treads the gossamer-thin line between perfection and caricature, while keeping the pathos in check. It's a shame, then, that Marshall somewhat botches the job with a pointless, painfully mawkish framing device set in the present day, which is completely at odds with the rest of the film. Seeing as several scenes and subplots had to be excised due to time constraints, this obtrusive monument to saccharin seems particularly misguided. The rest of it, though: lovely. (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Invincible (Ericson Core, 2006) - Philadelphia, 1975. Unemployment is soaring, the factory workers are on strike and NFL side The Eagles are in meltdown. Enter Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg), an out-of-work substitute teacher, part-time barman and American Football fanatic, who pitches up at an open trial held by new coach Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear) and proceeds to run 40m in 4.5 seconds. He can't really make the team, can he? Well if he can't, we won't have much of a story. This is a textbook Disney drama, in the best sense of the phrase (and there are many other senses of the phrase): simple, sentimental and sanitised (I doubt very much that Papale's best pal shouted: "You're a freakin' Eagle!" upon him making the cut, and you will never see a sympathetic Disney character endorse a union), but hugely uplifting and extremely well-crafted.

Wahlberg, who no-one but the most fervent Funky Bunchers would have tipped to make it as a serious, important actor, is thoroughly excellent, as he always is these days, and Kinnear is perfect as the twinkly-eyed coach who's got a special feeling about his down-to-earth discovery. The film also excels in the on-field sequences, putting the viewer in the centre of the action to such a degree that I genuinely got a few pre-match butterflies. These critical encounters are effectively contrasted with a handful of late-night headlight-lit character-building amateur games.

Love interest Elizabeth Banks is completely unconvincing - she's too modern by at least 31 years - and the comic interludes seem ill-judged, but the central story is fantastic and it's superbly told, right down to the real-life footage at the close. (3.5)

There's an interesting comparison (well, I think it's interesting) between these three films in terms of how they see their sports stars. In Coach Carter, Jackson laments that society allows them to be unaccountable and arrogant. In Invincible, they can be a symbol of hope and inspiration, a famous touchdown by Steve Van Buren getting Papale's father - a fan - through 20 years of hard work and hardship. A League of Their Own argues that sport is important - if it's what you hold most dear - but that raising a family is equally heroic. I think Invincible will speak particularly strongly to anyone who was obsessed with sport as a child. The realisation that I wouldn't become a professional footballer was probably an important formative disappointment or something, but I'm not sure I've ever really got over it.

***



Burn! (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1969) is a hopeless, fascinating jumble, as English naval officer Marlon Brando instigates a slaves' revolt in a Portuguese colony, then returns 10 years later to quash the same rebel army. That superlative subject matter becomes an almost wilfully scatty melange. You get a wooden exchange, half of it dubbed, in the style of these international '60s epics, in some pokey set. Then a spellbinding image: perhaps a rebel twisting in the smoke of a forest fire. Then lots of footage of people walking... incessantly, intolerably walking... hundreds of them, just walking, for minutes at a time. Then a devastating solliloquy from Brando - doing his best George Sanders voice - on the subject of morality, civilisation or personal honour. Then more people walking, more dubbing, more walking. Burn! also features one of the most peculiar scores Ennio Morricone has ever submitted. If you can imagine the sound of an elephant sitting on Morricone as he tries to play a synthesiser, it's pretty much like that. Including the yelling. There's at least half an hour of footage missing from this English-language cut; whether the extra bits would make it seem less or more disjointed and long-winded remains to be seen. But it is worth catching for those passages of brilliance: its sporadically impressive imagery, the clear, then-timely overtones of Vietnam (Walker even goes to Indo-China between the film's two halves) and Brando's often amazing characterisation. There's just a lot of tedium amidst such timelessness. (2.5)

DVD note: The DVD I got from LoveFilm, produced by Cornerstone Media, was absolutely atrocious: fuzzy and drained of colour, panned-and-scanned, and with poor sound. The triple threat.

Toot toot. That's the sound of my own trumpet.

Yours truly (right) posing with Marlon Brando as the O2 Media Awards nominations were revealed. I just happened to have that Oscar with me.

I'm delighted to report that I've been nominated in a pair of categories at next month's O2 Media Awards for Yorkshire and the Humber. I'm up for Digital Journalist of the Year and Young Reporter of the Year (Weeklies). Readers who were with us back when we were called Films on Friday and appeared at www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk might like to know that those weekly movie columns formed part of my portfolio for the digital award. I gave this blog a mention too.

The results will be revealed in a swanky event at The Loft in Leeds on Thursday, July 22.

Next up on this here blog is a round-up of the last 30-odd movies, shorts and teleplays I saw, featuring French noir and a man putting another man in the bin.

The Godfather, and Caggers on fire - Reviews #18

Five reviews in this latest update. For newcomers: movie ratings go from one star (Spice World) to four (The Searchers). Thanks for reading - comments are very welcome below.



Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958) - Romantic comedies with kids attached rarely get it spot on. As a rule, they're too fraught, a tad preachy and with a dearth of genuine laughs. Though there's One Fine Day and Listen, Darling, products of the genre tend to turn out more like Please Don't Eat the Daisies. But despite boasting fraughtness, preachiness and only a smattering of giggles, Houseboat succeeds on the strength of its sheer charm. Cary Grant is an estranged father-of-three who returns from Government business abroad after his ex-wife's death and finds his children don't want to know him. Enter fiery Sophia Loren, a prospective governess who can't cook and can't sew, but might just be able to bring the family back together - so long as she doesn't fall for her charges' father. It's flabby and sentimental, but that meandering and manipulation is part of its charm, and though there are obvious story flaws - like Martha Hyer (the other woman) turning into a scumbag for no reason other than dramatic convenience - the leads are effortlessly likeable, the setting is pleasant and there's a showboating supporting part from Harry Guardino as a handyman with two roving eyes. John Litel, who played Carson Drew in Warner's Nancy Drew series, appears briefly. Loren sings Bing! Bang! Bong! a hatful of times. (3)

***



One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961) is a lightning-paced Cold War comedy from writer-director Billy Wilder. In Ninotchka he flirted with the more palatable aspects of communism, whilst embracing capitalist Paris. Here he's had it with the Bolshies entirely, siding with Coca Cola's man in west Berlin (James Cagney) as the executive tour-de-force schemes relentlessly to land a top job in London, despite the fact the boss's daughter left in his care is now up the duff by a shouty communist (Horst Buchholz). Playing like an update of those glorious pre-Code Lee Tracy vehicles - most obviously Clear All Wires! - it's an uproarious, often startlingly inventive comedy, with rat-a-tat dialogue that shoots down subservient civilians, commie interrogators and ex-Nazis in a shower of well-chosen words. In addition, Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond throw in a frenzied variation on the Lady for a Day makeover challenge, a bunch of great movie in-jokes (there's a classic referencing Cagney's starmaking turn in The Public Enemy) and quite a bit of finely-honed smut, pitched between the wink-wink approach of classic Hollywood and the uncomfortable fleshiness of Avanti! The script is matched by the performances. No-one, with the possible exception of Tracy, could have brought such manic zeal to the central megalomaniac as Cagney. He expended so much energy here he needed a liedown for 20 years. This was his last film until 1981's Ragtime, his final screen appearance. Arlene Francis is perfect as Cagney's wife - shorn of her lust for life - while Pamela Tiffin (that's her name, don't tell Sid James) is suitably annoying as the boss's daughter and Sig Ruman has a funny voice-only cameo, if you're wondering why his unmistakable Germanic tones are emerging from an unrecognisable fizzog. (4)

***



Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, 2003) is an episodic entry from Pixar, inexplicably hailed by many as the studio's best. In a moving prologue, we see the wife and unborn spawn of clownfish Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) eaten by a predator. He aside, the sole survivor is an offspring with a weak fin: Nemo (Alexander Gould). The attack - and birth - has a profound attack on the formerly carefree Marlin, who becomes absurdly, embarassingly protective of his son. When the youngster is captured by a diver, his father must embark on a revelatory quest, braving shark attacks and jungles of jellyfish in a bid for reunion. The film is exciting, moving and stunningly animated, but has too many incidental characters who aren't sufficiently well-drawn, and a habit of hitting you over the head with its message. "You can’t never let anything happen to [Nemo] - then nothing would ever happen to him," says periodically annoying comic relief Dory (Ellen DeGeneres). That would be pithy had we not already got the point. It's still a good film. (3)

***



"I believe in America..."
*MAJOR SPOILERS*
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) would appear to be the best film I've seen so far in 2010. I hadn't watched it for a good five years, incidentally, during which time it seems to have got even better. Marlon Brando is Vito Corleone, the mafia don whose empire starts to crumble when he opts out of a move into narcotics, only for war-hero son Michael (Al Pacino) to enter the fold, jettisoning his father's dream that he'd become a senator. It's grand and sweeping, and yet intensely personal: a wonderfully-acted fusion of family saga and human tragedy whose key players inhabit a vivid world of fierce ethics and bloody violence. Coppola and co-scripter Mario Puzo (who wrote the source novel) have plenty to say about family, honour and the American Dream - and the classic scenes are just legion. Some have argued that Brando's Oscar-winning performance is really a supporting role, but, despite a lack of screen time, he dominates the entire film and provides many of its finest moments. There's the moment he learns of Sonny's death, then calls in an emotional favour ("Look how they massacred my boy"), and a simply staggering two-handed sequence in which he maps out past and future to his successor. "I thought that... when it was your time that - that you would be the one to hold the strings," he says. "This wasn't enough time, Michael, it wasn't enough time..." The old-fashioned storytelling, complete with impeccable production design, is augmented by Coppola's use of '70s innovations, like overlapping dialogue and informal out-of-focus close-ups, as well as Nino Rota's unforgettable score. The staggering ensemble includes not only Brando and Pacino (who is simply brilliant), but also James Caan as the last word in likeable hotheads, Robert Duvall playing pragmatic family lawyer Tom Hagen and veteran Richard Conte, superb in his key supporting role as Don Barzini. It's a magnificent movie. (4) Parts II and III to follow as soon as I can free up the time.

***



James Cagney described Torrid Zone (William Keighley, 1940) as "Hildy Johnson goes bananas" - that is, The Front Page on a fruit plantation, though in its portrayal of tough men and women slugging it out in unbearable heat, it also recalls Only Angels Have Wings. The story sees manager Pat O'Brien conniving to keep sparky, moustachioed underling Cagney in the tropics, while the want-away heel relaxes from the toils of his job by romancing two morally dubious women and chasing a revolutionary around the hills. For the most part it's fantastic entertainment, with exceptional badinage between Cagney and card cheat Ann Sheridan and a plot that offers endless twists and turns; though on first viewing there were a couple of dry spots. I'm going to revisit this again very soon to get the rapid-fire gags I missed, so I'll see how it measures up second time around. George Tobias is fun as the bandit Rosario; Joseph Calleia, George Reeves (who takes a supporting role) and Alan Hale were among those who auditioned for the part. This was the last of eight Cagney-O'Brien pairings at Warner (including, of course, Angels With Dirty Faces) - both later appeared in Ragtime, though they didn't share the screen. (3.5)