Friday, February 22, 2013

Oscar Night: Dreams, History, Perceptions!

I love film.  I learned all about America and the English language watching movies and TV. The movies provided me a lens into the American psyche.  Women were suppose to be strong, witty, ascerbic, smart, and defiant as was Betty Davis in All About Eve, Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, and Katherine Hepburn in Adam's Rib. My perception of who and what an American woman was shaped by these and other like actresses. Not a good thing when late in the day I discovered America would rather you not behave like Davis, Dietrich, Hepburn, and Lombard. Gulp!

As a movie buff I tend to gravitate to movies of the 1930's through mid fifties.  I know we have had extremely powerful films since then but there is nothing like watching a movie such as The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and hearing witty dialog and risque goings-on allowing me to "see" the Hayes Office action in my head.  Few movies can compete with the macabre wit of Arsenic and Old Lace or the sex without sex films such as It Happened One Night and The Philadelphia Story. Imagine the shock of thinking you witnessed Rhett ravaging Scarlett after carrying her up that flight of stairs.  No pictures needed and the rush is just as tingling as the 'real thing.'

Well, here we are Oscar weekend.  Since 1963, I have never, ever missed an Oscar night.  As long and yes, sometimes boring as it can be, by golly I am going to make it to the Best Picture of the year!  The last few years I have relished the Red Carpet extravaganza, not having to wait for my Photoplay, Rona Barrett, People magazine, Star, or Joan Rivers' review, to see the Oscar's do's and don'ts; truly the most important part of the evening.  Here is where you can really see the true Hollywood person.  Class is class is class.  But then again there is Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton who dress like old women and thrift shop respectively and are still classy broads.  As much as the red headed, botoxed chick from Australia gets on my nerves the girl has class about her clothes.  Anne Hathaway, the Chastain gal, J.Lo, and Michelle Williams always look tres chic. And then I always say, heaven help Julianne Moore, what a disaster!

It doesn't really matter to me who wins, all the films this year were a feast for the heart, mind, eyes and ears. There will be no predictions save one, Daniel Day Lewis will win for Lincoln. And now for the purpose of this post...I encourage all of you to watch our grand American movies of yesterday.  Many of you have never seen Gone With the Wind, Ben Hur, Born Yesterday (not the remake, ugh!), Captains Courageous, The Quiet Man, or any of the films already mentioned; hell, the following movie series such as Ma and Pa Kettle,  Francis the Talking Mule, Abbott and Costello, or The Bowery Boys are also must sees.  You really can get a bit of history about the times as well as vernacular and even more important, that our grandparents and great grandparents were just like us. You might also discover that the glamour of yester year no longer exists. Granted these actors were protected and created by the studios to reinforce the dream factory that was Hollywood.

I also encourage you to explore foreign films.  Some of my favorite films include La Dolce Vita, Life is Beautiful, Amelie, Cinema Paradisio, Jean Floret, Central Station, Volver, Raise the Red Lantern, The Bicycle Thief, La Strada, Eat, Drink, Man Woman, Monsoon Wedding, and Ran! a film by Akira Kurasawa. Japanese Director, Akira Kurosawa has influenced many directors and writers of American cinema.  Kurosawa's films influenced American action films. Seven Samurai inspired The Magnificent Seven. Rashomon became The Outrage. Hidden Fortress provided the basic story line for Star Wars by George Lucas. Yojimbo influenced Shane and High Noon. The spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars is a nearly shot-for shot remake of Yojimbo and the nameless drifter played by Clint Eastwood owes his career to the samurai played by Toshiro Mifune. Go to http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=722&catid=18 for more info on Kurosawa.

Below I include movies I recommend you start your journey with.  All you need is popcorn, M&Ms and a good strong Coke!  See you at the movies.


So happy I did not have to type these out. Cut and pasting is a grand thing!  Stick to the STAR movies and then go back to see the great movies of the 30's and 40's.  Some of my favorites aren't even starred (Jezebel, Dark Victory, King's row, To Be or Not to Be, Arsenic and Old Lace, All the King's Men, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Lion in Winter the Lion in Winter, The Hustler and Splendor in the Grass and Miracle at Morgan's Creek is missing!). What movies would you add for the 2000's?

Pre-20's:

 The Birth Of A Nation (1915)
Intolerance (1916)
Broken Blossoms (1919)

The 1920's:

 The Kid (1921)
 Greed (1924)
Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
The Big Parade (1925)
The Freshman (1925)
The Gold Rush (1925)
The General (1927)
The Jazz Singer (1927)
Metropolis (1927)
Sunrise (1927)
The Crowd (1928)
The Wind (1928)

The 1930's:

 All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
Little Caesar (1930)
City Lights (1931)
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Freaks (1932)
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)
Scarface: The Shame of the Nation (1932)
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Dinner at Eight (1933)
Duck Soup (1933)
Footlight Parade (1933)
42nd Street (1933)
King Kong (1933)
Queen Christina (1933)
She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Sons of the Desert (1933)
It Happened One Night (1934)
It's a Gift (1934) (tie)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
The Thin Man (1934)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
A Night At The Opera (1935)
The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935)
Top Hat (1935)
Camille (1936)
Dodsworth (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Modern Times (1936)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
Swing Time (1936)
The Awful Truth (1937)
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Way Out West (1937)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Jezebel (1938)
Pygmalion (1938)
Dark Victory (1939)
Gone With The Wind (1939)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Ninotchka (1939)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Stagecoach (1939)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Wuthering Heights (1939)

The 1940's:

 The Bank Dick (1940)
Fantasia (1940)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
The Great Dictator (1940)
His Girl Friday (1940)
The Letter (1940)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Pinocchio (1940)
Rebecca (1940)
Citizen Kane (1941)
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
The Lady Eve (1941)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Bambi (1942)
Casablanca (1942)
Cat People (1942)
Kings Row (1942)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Now, Voyager (1942)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Gaslight (1944)
Henry V (1944) (tie)
Laura (1944)
Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
To Have and Have Not (1944)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Brief Encounter (1946)
It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
The Killers (1946)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Notorious (1946)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Stairway To Heaven (1946), aka A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Out Of The Past (1947)
Key Largo (1948)
The Lady From Shanghai (1948)
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)
Red River (1948)
The Red Shoes (1948)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Adam's Rib (1949)
All the King's Men (1949)
The Heiress (1949)
The Third Man (1949)
White Heat (1949)
The 1960's:

The Apartment (1960)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Psycho (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
The Hustler (1961)
Splendor in the Grass (1961)
West Side Story (1961)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)
The Birds (1963)
Dr. Strangelove or: (1964)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
My Fair Lady (1964)
Repulsion (1965)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Blow-Up (1966)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
A Man For All Seasons (1966)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Graduate (1967)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
The Producers (1968)
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Easy Rider (1969)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
The Wild Bunch (1969)

The 1970's:

Five Easy Pieces (1970)
M*A*S*H (1970)
Patton (1970)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The French Connection (1971)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Cabaret (1972)
Deliverance (1972)
The Godfather (1972)
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
American Graffiti (1973)
Badlands (1973)
Don't Look Now (1973)
Enter the Dragon (1973)
The Exorcist (1973)
Mean Streets (1973)
Sleeper (1973)
Chinatown (1974)
The Conversation (1974)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Jaws (1975)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Nashville (1975)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Network (1976)
Rocky (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Annie Hall (1977)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Star Wars (1977) (tie)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Halloween (1978)
Alien (1979)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Being There (1979)
Manhattan (1979)

The 1980's:

 Airplane! (1980)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Raging Bull (1980)
The Shining (1980)
Atlantic City (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Blade Runner (1982)
E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
Poltergeist (1982)
The Road Warrior (1982)
Tootsie (1982)
The King of Comedy (1983)
Amadeus (1984)
The Terminator (1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Brazil (1985)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Platoon (1986)
A Room With a View (1986)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
The Last Emperor (1987)
Bull Durham (1988)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Field of Dreams (1989)
Glory (1989)
Henry V (1989) (tie)
When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

The 1990's:

 GoodFellas (1990)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
JFK (1991)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
The Crying Game (1992)
Unforgiven (1992)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The Piano (1993)
Schindler's List (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Babe (1995)
Toy Story (1995)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Fargo (1996)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Titanic (1997)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
American Beauty (1999)
The Matrix (1999)
Toy Story 2 (1999)

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