#36: The Bridge on the River Kwai

I'm not entirely sure what qualifies David Lean's 1957 Best Picture winner The Bridge on the River Kwai as an American film, given that its director, its star, its story and the bulk of its financing all came from the United Kingdom. It's even based on a French novel. William Holden is American, but as far as the rest are concerned, there's not much Yankee to be found. In fact, the film places eleventh on a parallel list by the British Film Institute! Its place on a list of great American films is a mystery to me, but the former adjective describes it well enough to qualify it onto any list of great war films.

Company: just me again. I have a hard time finding anyone who will watch a three-hour war movie with me on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon. One of the many quirks about this blog.

Cuisine: fried egg on wheat toast with sliced cherry tomatoes and my mother's bean salsa recipe that I've now perfected. You're welcome. Oh, and plenty of coffee.

The film recounts a largely fictional story based in a factual and horrifying context: the construction of the Burma Railway during World War II. After the Japanese had captured Singapore and had military strongholds in much of southeastern Asia, they built a long railway from Bangkok to Rangoon in order to support and send supplies to the large Japanese army stationed in Burma. As a result, British POWs are marched into an internment camp somewhere in western Thailand, led both in step and in annoying whistle-song by Colonel Nicholson (Oscar winner Alec Guinness), and told that they will be enslaved and forced to build the titular bridge, essentially to aid the enemy. Oh, and there's basically no chance of escape. Major bummer.

"You speak to me of code? What code?!"

All these orders come from General Saito (a fantastic performance by Oscar nominee Sessue Hayakawa), a merciless tyrant with more pride in his work (if that's possible) than the British commander, Nicholson. Two very stubborn men face off: Nicholson hands Saito a copy of the Geneva Convention, which clearly states that all POWs with the exception of officers (hem hem) can be made to do physical labor. Saito throws it to the ground in disgust and snaps Nicholson's stick-thing. Oh snap. Nicholson picks up the papers calmly and stands again at attention, never letting his temper get the best of him. A better man than I, he is.

(Saito also says at one point "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," which is also quoted repeatedly by the character in The Shining played by Jack Nicholson, whose last name is shared by Alec Guinness's character in this movie. Connection, to and from!)

But knowing that he and the hundreds in his command have little chance of escape, he has little choice but to hold his ground. As a patriotic and noble Englishman, he has two alternatives: build the bridge and help the enemy, or stand firm and refuse to participate. The latter will bring almost certain death, as is evidenced by two forms of torture, pictured above (standing at attention all F-ing day) and below (being locked in "the oven" without food or water in the scorching sun). His refusal to work and adherence to the Geneva accord locks his generals in ovens, too, while the rest of the men slave away at the bridge, working as slowly as they dare and sabotaging whatever they can.

Although Saito stands firm ("You will not speak to me of rules," he shouts."This is war! This is not a game of cricket!"), he knows that he needs the army's help: if he and those he commands don't finish the bridge by a certain date (here, May 12), he will have to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide. Impass.

When Saito makes up a reason to finally relent (the anniversary of the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905), the real work starts, and the British generals are put back in charge. Nicholson's pride wins out over his patriotism, as he convinces the rest of his soldiers to honestly build a quality bridge, this time with better materials and in a more solid river foundation upstream from where the Japanese commanders chose to break ground.

Meanwhile, one U.S. soldier named Shears (William Holden) manages to escape through the dense jungle, happen upon some compassionate villagers, and send himself on a river voyage, where he contracts some disease or another from drinking river water and is finally found and rescued by allied forces who airlift him to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). While he's relaxing on the beach with beautiful women and awaiting his return to America, he's informed that he has no choice but to return to Thailand with allied British patrolmen whose mission is to the destroy the bridge. Oops. Back to it.

It's not going real well.

Now we have parallel plots: Nicholson and Saito, coming to a common understanding, unite to complete the bridge, and Shears and his comrades parachute back into Thailand in order to blow it up. The rest of the film documents the inevitable end to which these simultaneous stories come.

Holden turns in a thrilling performance, especially in his "big scene" in which his commanding officer asks to be left behind after an injury:

Shears: "You make me sick with your heroics! There's a stench of death about you. You carry it in your pack like the plague. Explosives and L-pills - they go well together, don't they? And with you it's just one thing or the other: destroy a bridge or destroy yourself. This is just a game, this war! You and Colonel Nicholson, you're two of a kind, crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman... how to die by the rules - when the only important thing is how to live like a human being."

I feel like this sentiment comes out of nowhere a little -- we're nearly two hours into the film and suddenly the moral comes out? Perhaps it's been there the whole time and we the audience have been too horrified by the injustice to see the simpler universal theme that's buried under everything else. Is it a critique of the nearly insane sense of pride felt by these top officials, a pride that trumps all else, including patriotism, and the sense of right and wrong?

Once the bridge is complete, Nicholson has a quieter epiphany, staring down the river Kwai.

Nicholson: "There are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Hardly made any difference at all, really..."

It's a gorgeous monologue in a heartbreaking performance by Guinness. Has it all been for nothing? Not just the bridge -- but the war? His own sense of duty and honor for England? And of course, the best moment of the film...

"What have I done?"

I love Guinness's flat line reading here -- so horrified that it's almost not even a question, but a sentence, a statement of the horror that he's just realized. And the ending, of course, is "madness! Madness!!"

It's interesting to examine the war films placed on this list -- by my count, dozens (even if you don't include atypical war films like The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which is a fantasy film but still has plenty of war in it) -- and what they say about America's relationship to conflict. I found several parallels between this film and The African Queen -- not just that our heroes are British, but also the pride and patriotism that directly inspires destruction and vengeance. What does Kwai's inclusion on this list (especially when it's not specifically American in any way outside of Mr. Holden) say about our love of war?

I love when a film inspires me to forge on. And no more war, for at least the next few. Woody Allen's not really interested in that, he's got his eye on one miss Annie Hall, up next.

#37: The Best Years of Our Lives

I started this list with a William Wyler film (Ben-Hur) and I might need to see some more of his work (notably Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Miniver and Funny Girl) after watching his only other film that made this list: the Best Picture winner from 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives. Holy cow, I did not expect to be so moved and thrilled by it, mostly because I had very few pre-conceived notions. I knew it won best picture, and that it was almost three hours long. And maybe it was about WWII vets. But that's it. Just goes to show: movies can always surprise you. And sometimes it's better not to know anything going in. The payoff is so much greater.

Company: alone, although of course now I wish I had made this an event.

Cuisine: obscene amounts of coffee. This was a gloomy Monday and yet somehow I was on fire all day focus-wise. Hmm.

Wyler opens on what would have been present-day America: U.S. soldiers arriving back on their homeland after World War II. Three servicemen (Oscar winners Fredric March and Harold Russell, plus Oscar snub Dana Andrews) meet while hitching a ride back to their hometown, the fictional Midwestern hamlet of Boone City, Ohio. Homer (Russell) is the first to get home, and although his family has been warned, it still comes as quite the shock to see that he has lost both arms at the wrist in an accident. His beloved Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), who lives next door, rushes out and hesitates, like they all have, but embraces him just the same. Somehow the emotion of this reunion had me misting up -- and we were 15 minutes in!

Al Stephenson (March) is the second to arrive home, to his wife Milly (Myrna Loy) and two children, now grown (Michael Hall and the luminous Teresa Wright). There's such overwhelming joy in these reunions we see, but there's something in them that threatens to tip the scale: excitement almost to the point of trepidation and fear of returning, that somehow this domestic life these servicemen knew is now more foreign to them that the battlefield. Hugo Friedhofer's glorious score undersells the schmaltz of these reunions, hinting that this is the happiest these men in uniform will be for a while.

Al finds his wife somewhat distant and his children strangers. "It's terrible to be old, isn't it?" quips his wife, who tries to make light of his absence but ends up separating her husband even further from his family. I guess I expected these servicemen to feel far away because of PTSD, but for them, the true obstacles lie in getting back to everyday life.

The third soldier, Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), comes home unable at first to find his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo), whom he met and married days before he was deployed. He comes home to find he doesn't know her (not that he ever did), and that she's moved out on her own, waiting impatiently for him to come home. If that wasn't enough, his old job as a soda jerk is no longer available, meaning he has to start over from scratch. One bitchy salesman whispers "Nobody's job is safe with all these servicemen crowding in," making it clear that some people aren't so thrilled that the boys are back in town.

The film follows these three men and their struggles to fall back in love with their families, their wives, their girlfriends, and their country, one that owes them so much and at first can't deliver "the best years of their lives," as it were.

The great legacy of the film, I think, is due partially to the fact that each of these three stories is given equal weight, even as their stories give, take from, and weave in and out of one another. Fred begins, by chance, to fall for Al's daughter Peggy as he grows further and further from his new bride Marie. Al has a new outlook on his job as a small loans officer, looking with a fresh eye at the intentions of entrepreneurs. Homer, while adjusting well to life with his new hooks, discovers the crucial things he can't do alone, e.g. putting his harness back on in the mornings, or opening a door in the night without the harness. Each man is changed greatly by war, and the film chronicles their journeys to acceptance of what's changed while (and because) they were away.

Take Fred, whose wife insists he put his Army digs back on to go out on the town. "Now you look wonderful," she exclaims. "You look like yourself. Now we're right back where we started!" Of course, she'd never seen him in civilian clothes, and all through their marriage she'd only known an image of him in uniform. He begins to drift away from her but still feels obligated to stay with her given her sacrifice while she was away. When she and Peggy meet in the powder room while the friends are out one night, Wyler frames them in the above shot as if to say there are two Peggys are work here: the supportive friend and the secretly-in-love-with-your-husband self-proclaimed homewrecker. Love that shot. And the one below.

Has a man ever looked so alone and out of place in his own home? It was around this point that I started to see this film as a good twin to Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, which examines recently-returned vets of the Vietnam conflict. In that film (30 years after this one), Michael, Stan and Nick deal more with their own political and moral demons about the nature of war than Al, Fred and Homer, but both films follow each of their three heroes (or anti-heroes, as the case may be) through their own version of post-traumatic stress. It'd be an interesting comparison to examine more.

Of course, The Deer Hunter is mainly a nightmare to the sweet dream of The Best Years of Our Lives, which nearly made me cry -- twice! The second time was the lovely scene pictured above, in which Wilma confesses wordlessly her love for Homer. What could have been a syrupy, sentimental schmooze-fest is tender and intimate under Wyler's steady and visionary hand, a lovely ode to courage and patience. (Also: love the detail of Wilma's portrait on the nightstand, a constant presence even when Wilma herself is not in the room.)

Each story ends happily, but the papers warn of a "new war" coming. It was 1946 and I can't imagine the writers could have anticipated the Korean War a few years in the future, but perhaps we're meant to take away that even the largest-scale conflict of the 20th century could not heal all wounds, that inevitably aftershocks occur. But at least for now, there's a little peace, a deep breath before the plunge. In the last moments one character mentions that life will be a struggle, that it could be years before they can get ahead... so perhaps the titular years are yet to come.

Wow. I just loved this so much. I did not anticipate that at all! My faith in this list is renewed. Or maybe my passion for it is reignited. I'd been nervous that with spring approaching I'd lose interest, but hopefully now I'll have renewed energy to power through the last third of the list.

Up next: one that I've (shamefully) Netflixed and returned without watching. Whatever, you guys have done that too. From 1957, another war film: The Bridge on the River Kwai.

#38: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

John Huston's 1948 adventure The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is not, thankfully, a Western, as I expected. Yes, it takes place in a time and region adjacent to the Old West (south of the border in 1925), but the story, while chronicling revenge, paranoia and personal destruction, doesn't lump this into that dreaded category. I'm hard on Westerns, but they've given me little but grief! So this turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

Company: Stephanie, moderately interested sister and appreciator of soup

Cuisine: homemade potato soup (hearty! winter! veggies!) and coffee

The basic story goes that Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart, lacking the suave he normally exudes and trading it instead for sneers and scruff), down on his luck in Tampico, Mexico and asking strangers for money or lunch, stumbles upon Curtin (Tim Holt, much the same) and they hatch a scheme to head south in search of gold. Luckily (or unluckily?) for them, they happen to meet Howard (Oscar winner Walter Huston, father to the director!), an old prospector who predicts trouble for them but agrees to accompany them.

Hey, old man -- this is an AB conversation, so why don't you C your wa-- wait, you know about gold??

Danger lies around every corner for our trio -- bandits, huge lizards, thirst, delirium, frustration -- but with Howard's help they finally find... a dusting of gold!!?? Yes, as it turns out, this part of the terrain is not too lousy with gold, and prospecting takes time and patience, the latter of which is particularly lacking in Dobbs.

Howard, the only experienced prospector in the bunch, stays positive and chipper while the others begin to show signs of greed and duress, and seems bemused by their bickering. He also has this habit of dancing wildly just when things get serious. Give the movie some levity and you get an Oscar!

The outside world threatens to capsize their plans when an intruder (Bruce Bennett) follows them up the mountainside one day and demands inclusion in the scheme, threatening to expose them to the town and alert the locals to their presence and stash. He knows the men can just kill him, but warns that his execution will start a hierarchy of distrust among the prospectors. The logic is messed up but nonetheless, we start to see the men, especially Dobbs, weigh their gold against their own skewed moral conscience. Gold messes you up, you guys. Bandits invade and famously "don't need no stinking badges" (who knew?), disposing of the intruder. But the seed of distrust among the men has been planted with or without that threat to their gold.

Humphrey, you got a little crazy on your face.

When Howard is called away to help some nearby villagers (?), it's Dobbs v. Curtin at the campsite. Greed, paranoia and gold-blindness take over -- and without spoiling too much of the ending, let's just say that in its own way, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre has a lot to say about materialism in our culture.

Have we learned anything from the moral of this film? Or is longing for riches something inherent in us in a capitalist society? Shouldn't we be able to make something out of nothing, to make riches appear out of nowhere and claim ownership over them? Reading the Wikipedia entry about this film, I found that P.T. Anderson watched this film to prepare for filming There Will Be Blood, another prospector film (this time oil replaces gold) about a man whose greed destroys him. Maybe it's timeless, the insatiable need for wealth. Is that an American trait, or a human trait? Are we presumptuous to assume that striving to obtain riches beyond our need is a specifically American hunger? I think maybe.

Well, laugh it off, chumpies. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. Not a lot to say in the way of film critique here -- it's ably (and Oscar-winningly) directed and acted, but the moral truth of it is what sticks with me. In light of this weekend's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I'm seeing that all the gold in the world, metal or otherwise, can be taken away in the blink of an eye. Let that be a lesson to you all! /preach

Next up: another in a series of films I know little about. Isn't that what I was excited for in this list? The Best Years of Our Lives. We'll see if it is. Spring is approaching and I've gotta get moving on this blog, because heaven knows this summer will be spent almost entirely outside.

#39: Dr. Strangelove

Stanley Kubrick's satirical masterpiece Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, loosely based on Peter George's novel Red Alert, as been called "the best satirical film ever made" by Roger Ebert. Whether or not you agree, you can't argue that the film alternates between quietly and raucously hilarious. You wouldn't know it from my roommate's reaction, or mine for that matter, on a murky Sunday evening, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Company: Kecia, roommate and enthusiast for comedy who did doze a little, but she can be forgiven because of this:

Cuisine: beef tips sauteed in pesto, onions, zucchini and cherry tomatoes in whole grain pasta topped with Feta. Wow. Delicious. Has NOTHING to do with a nuclear scare except that I was scared I would cry from how good it was.

Fear of the Soviets is at an all-time high, and for reasons that remain unclear except for a Communist plot to contaminate "everyone's precious bodily fluids," a paranoid army general, Jack D. Ripper (a fantastic Sterling Hayden) initiates a plan that will set in motion a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Captain Lionel Mandrake (Oscar nominee Peter Sellers, in one of his three roles) issues the attack on Ripper's orders, but, later realizing it was not issued as retaliation, vows to recall the planes. Ripper refuses to give him the information necessary to stop the attack and locks the two of them in his office. Peace is our profession, indeed.

The men on the bomber jets on the outer borders of Russia respond at first with disbelief that they've been called into action, since most of their daily existence involves chewing gum and reading Playboy. Once "Plan R" is activated, Major "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) dons a cowboy hat in preparation for "nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Russkies," which 50+ years after the film's release hearkens contemporary recollection of our last president's cowboy persona and similarly folksy catchphrases. Kubrick portrays these men of the Air Force as rogues, biding their time until the inevitable attack is launched and ready to rough up' dem Russians at a moment's notice.

"War is too important to be left to politicians."

The film imagines an America (not, in Kubrick's view, too far from the true one) in which the military actually outranks the chief executive officer, where high ranking officials in the armed forces are paranoid, arrogant and trigger-happy. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson's expansion of the Vietnam War was keeping America on perpetual edge, with the Cold War ever near, and in a politically volatile time, this film may not have seemed so far from the truth.

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!"

As the implementation of Plan R is made known to the Pentagon, the Cabinet convenes in the War Room with President Merkin Muffley (Sellers again) to plot a course of action, but General Buck Turgidson (a brilliantly sharp George C. Scott) has bad news: Ripper has taken advantage of the contingency plan for Soviet attack on Washington D.C. by deploying Plan R without provocation, and unfortunately there's no recall available to them. The strike will happen. Muffley scoffs that no such plan should ever have been considered, but Turgidson reminds him that he supported its original implementation. Blurg.

Well, what now!? Turgidson defends the plan, saying that it's "unfair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up" (nuclear holocaust would be quite a slip-up, wouldn't it?) and urges the president to launch a full-scale attack to obliterate the Soviet air force. Now that a provocation is inevitable, you might as well go all out. Muffley gives information to the Soviet ambassador (Peter Bull) which he could use to shoot down the offending planes, but the Soviets alert the ambassador to the presence of a Doomsday Device that will detonate at the first signs of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Whoopsie.

At this point, President Muffley in desperation calls on Dr. Strangelove (Sellers once more!), a weapons expert and former Nazi official whose right hand remains a Nazi and occasionally salutes the Führer, to help them out of this mess. But Strangelove offers little in the way of help and explains the philosophy behind the Doomsday Device while the planes fly inevitably towards their targets overseas. The planes are finally recalled with the help of Mandrake and some spare change from a Coke machine -- all except one, whose radio was damaged by an anti-aircraft missile.

(I have to mention that I'm a huge Peter Sellers fan, but know him almost exclusively from the Pink Panther series, as my dad had us grow up on those movies and quoted Inspector Clouseau often. One for my pops.)

"We'll keep our fingers crossed."

Soon most if not all hope is lost, and we the audience are exasperated at the futile attempts to recall the final plane and the mismanagement of this "slip-up" that could destroy the planet. But with little choice, the men of the War Room stare at the Big Board and hope and pray.

Major Kong rides the bomb down to earth in an iconic image, but the Doomsday Device doesn't detonate right away. A contingency plan for repopulating Earth is considered by Strangelove and the War Room, but it's too late: the final moments of the film depict nuclear holocaust to the haunting tune of Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again."

It's dreary subject matter turned farcical, but what do you expect, babies? This is Stanley Kubrick, fresh off Lolita and beginning to shift from the naturalism of his earlier films to the surrealism of his later work (his next film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is yet to come on this list).

I realize that a large amount of this entry has been recounting the complex plot, which normally I hate doing, but for this film, the screenplay is everything. There's little in the way of action; the film's effectiveness is almost entirely thanks to its snappy dialogue and biting satire. You can't really fully experience that by reading my dopey blog, so just go rent it and see for yourself.

You know, maybe my next project after this AFI goal will be retrospectives of different directors -- I'd love to work my way through the rest of Kubrick's filmography... maybe even starting at the beginning and working my way to Eyes Wide Shut. Could be interesting!

Next up: three films I know little about, the first of which was a trivia answer the other week at my local watering hole that I miraculously guessed correctly without any knowledge of the film. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

#40: The Sound of Music

"The hills are alive with the sound of music..."

Mountains, mountains, nature, mountains, quaint towns, trees, mountains, OMG A NUN. This is how we begin... at the very beginning. (C'mon. You can't hardly talk about Robert Wise's 1965 mega-hit musical The Sound of Music without starting with that.) The film begins quietly, almost reverently, flying over the Austrian countryside and asking the audience to consider the natural beauty of the motherland. Isn't it nice? Well, we'll get to that.


Company: Alex, excellent movie-watching companion who has amazingly never done a stage production of The Sound of Music

Cuisine: Alex supplied many treats: Tostitos with southwestern dip (yum), strawberries, cheese & crackers and off-brand Oreos ... and we ordered Domino's for good measure. And drank Diet Coke. This is a long movie and we needed to replenish.

She has confidence in confidence alone.

We all know the story, don't we? Whether you cherish the film as a family tradition or just remember watching it on TV a lot as a kid as I do (which accounts for some shots/scenes being entirely new to me), you surely know that opening shot of Maria's bliss-induced pleasure spin on a mountain. To start, the film's main weapon is the iconic, classic and career-making star turn by Julie Andrews as Maria, a postulate who's maybe not quite cut out to be a nun since she has little to no self-control where nature sprints or singing are concerned. "I can't stop singing anywhere I am," says Maria. Luckily for her, this is a musical. The title number, sung before the credits roll, reminded me of what a pure, simple and yet masterful singing voice the Dame has/had. They don't make them like this anymore, folks. She's also an excellent lip-syncer, a skill that is seriously lost on most performers today.

It is "the last Golden Days of the Thirties" in Salzburg, and through some misguided holy wisdom, the Mother Abbess (Oscar nominee Peggy Wood, who didn't even do her own singing!) punishes Maria's lollygagging by sending her to preside as governess over the seven children of Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer, also didn't do his own singing). The kids are jerks at first, but they grow, as we have all along, to love Maria. Even after she makes them all matching rompers out of shaggedy old curtains.

When the children warm to her, the movie finds focus. They gallop across Salzburg and the surrounding countryside, giggling and carrying picnic baskets. The oldest (Charmian Carr) harbors a crush on a handsome telegram boy, but otherwise puberty is nowhere to be found among any of the Von Trapps. This, along with their intense boredom and newfound freedom, is what leads Maria to teach them all to sing, which they pick up amazingly quickly.

Now I've done two productions of this show, at ages 10 and 12 (no, I was never one of the Von Trapps, thank you, why don't you give me a paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?!), and I guess I had never thought about the overall effectiveness of this show musically. It seems, though, that nearly every number is simply "nice" and never really reaches "greatness." Other Rodgers and Hammerstein classics (Carousel, South Pacific, maybe even Oklahoma, etc.) contain truly masterful songwriting (I think mostly of Carousel here, but I'm biased), but this musical doesn't have songs that come close. The title number, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and "Do Re Mi" have little in the way of action or drive to them, and thus the film would feel like it slowed to a halt during the numbers if it weren't for Andrews and her all-bets-are-off central performance.

I'd argue that maybe "Edelweiss", sung in the above shot by the father to his children in a lovely moment, is the classiest number, although it serves in the show as just a pretty song (of course with nationalistic and melancholy undertones). "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" is sweet but saccharine, and "The Lonely Goatherd" is just a silly song without real purpose or place in the story's structure.

Now, am I just a humbug here? The stage musical, originally starring Mary Martin in 1959, was written in a time when the musical theater form had indeed moved past just pretty numbers and had progressed to include songs that advanced the storytelling, as is evidenced in many other R&H collaborations. But this musical just feels slight by comparison. The film adaptations of those other musicals, however, were never nearly as successful as this one was, which still stands as one of the biggest box-office films of all time. Why?

Well, look at what it has going for it: a legendary performance in Julie Andrews. A sweet (if not too sweet) true story. Gorgeous landscapes. Hummable songs. And, if I can be crass about it, a harmless story until about the last quarter when a universal enemy steps in. The wedding chimes have barely stopped ringing for Maria and the Captain and the Vasoline is still on the camera lens left over from "I Must Have Done Something Good" when the Nazis come knocking and threaten to ruin this perfect little family.

The above shot is one of my favorites in the film, as a dark parallel to the one before it, with the Von Trapps in dark shadow. Singing, playclothes and goat puppets can only distract this family from the Anschluss for so long before the Captain is summoned to Germany to take an office in the Third Reich's navy, and the third act commences. This last act is almost an entirely different film in tone, as the Von Trapps plan their escape and sing their last "So Long, Farewell" (during which Alex always gets a little weepy). With the help of some crafty sinning nuns, they make their way over the hills into neutral Switzerland. Everything ends happily... like it should in a musical!

Modern musical theatre, especially in the last twenty years or so, has come to a lot of parody, satire and self-reference, acknowledging that it's insane for people in a story to start singing out of nowhere accompanied by an invisible orchestra. But The Sound of Music represents a time when America was still enamored with the romance and beauty of the art form, before we all started rolling our eyes at it. But how incredible would it be to see a new musical filmed like this one? I don't know that it can be done, but maybe. Lift your eyes to the hills from whence commeth your help and maybe it'll happen.

This is all to say: I enjoy the film because it's nice. I don't think it's life-changing (besides maybe Julie) but it certainly strikes a major C chord with everyone who sees it, mostly because of how it's inoffensive enough to appeal to everyone. That's America for ya, baby.

Next up: talk about great central performances. Now we've got Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers and Peter Sellers.

Cine-Smackdown: #41-#50

Am I really 60 movies into this? Only 40 movies away from the end? This goal is taking longer than I expected and I suppose I shouldn't be amazed that I'm still invested in this, but I am a little. Not every movie amazes me, but there's enough promise each time to get re-excited. Onto the smackdown!

41. King Kong
42. Bonnie and Clyde
43. Midnight Cowboy
44. The Philadelphia Story
45. Shane
46. It Happened One Night
47. A Streetcar Named Desire
48. Rear Window
49. Intolerance
50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I had not seen King Kong, Midnight Cowboy, Shane, It Happened One Night or Intolerance previous to the blog. Halfsies.

Of these ten, which would I move further up the list?
If saying A Streetcar Named Desire tops these ten means I have a soft spot for actors, then so be it. But truly, that movie is a quartet for the ages, and has there ever been an ensemble of more emotional grandeur and transcendence than Brando, Leigh, Hunter and Malden? There's a couple of films that tie for second, but today I'd say Streetcar edges them all.

Of these ten, which would I get rid of?
Hands down: Shane. There are enough other westerns on this list to recommend, even if I didn't love them, and Shane just doesn't stand out for me in any way, shape or form.

Who in these movies do I want as my best friend?
This is a no-brainer: Samwise Gamgee (LOTR). Drop everything and accompany me on a months-long journey across Middle Earth? Save me countless times from ringwraiths, Gollum and my own trenchant for ring-power? Forgive me for being a huge douche? Literally carry me the last couple of steps? Checkity check check. I want to name my son Samwise.

Who in these movies do I want to have my back in a bar fight?
Aragorn (LOTR), Stanley Kowalski (Streetcar) and the titular gorilla (Kong) would form an unstoppable triumverate, wouldn't they? It probably also wouldn't hurt to have Stella (Rear Window) around in a pinch.

Who in these movies is your worst frienemy?
This group of ten is lousy with them! Where to start? Gollum (LOTR) would trade my hide for a lump of mythic metal. That girl who sends the Dear One's husband to his death in Intolerance would do the same to me if I let her get too close, and same with the guy who tries to bribe Peter Warne on the bus in It Happened One Night. Ratso (Midnight Cowboy), both Bonnie and Clyde, and Carl Denham (Kong) are all of such one-track minds that they'd probably get me involved in their nefarious doings (hustling, ineptly robbing banks, and filming blockbusters at the expense of stars' well-being, respectively) only to drop me but quick.

Who do I take home to Mom?
Samwise! That Rosie girl can move to the back. Mike Connor (The Philadelphia Story) would also probably charm her Mom Jeans off.

You're going on a date with these movies. Who do you agree to meet for coffee but never call again?
Midnight Cowboy. You just wanted my money! ... although what I really mean is metaphorically, what movie do I like but not enough to watch again...? That's probably Intolerance. So. long.

Who do you agree to meet for coffee, and then say you'll call but never do?
The Philadelphia Story. You're sweet but I'm just not that interested. I know others like you that are far more fun.

Who do you agree to meet for coffee, and then not show up?
Shane. Although I'm not convinced I would even agree to meet for coffee. I haven't disliked a film on this list so much since The Wild Bunch.

Who do you meet for a first date, ends up staying the night and makes you breakfast in the morning?
Mitch (Streetcar) would, although he might feel like he needs to be extra sweet and hurry things along so we can get married. But all the same, the omelette tastes good.

Who do you meet for a first date, ends up staying the night and then leaves in the morning without saying goodbye ... and steals your favorite sweater?
Who on this list doesn't? Certainly the whole Barrow Gang (Bonnie and Clyde) and Blanche DuBois (Streetcar) would take anything that wasn't nailed down. Harsh.

What other questions would you have asked about these movies? I'd love more ideas! Leave your thoughts, reactions, passionate defenses and harsh critiques in the comments!

#41: King Kong

And the prophet said: "And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead."

An old Arabian proverb foretelling some ambiguous form of monster doom, and then: titles as big as the beast! I had only seen Peter Jackson's remake of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 adventure flick King Kong so it was great fun to come back to the source material on a cloudy winter day.

Company: Stephanie, sister and lover of epic filmventures

Cuisine: bacon and tomato mac and cheese (my go-to delicious albeit unhealthy lunch, which somehow seemed right for a pulpy actionfest like this one) and Diet Coke

Let me preface this whole thing by saying that in my research, I found that "jungle films" had been around and gaining popularity for twenty years, and it was only 1933! The world was fascinated with the unknown, and new scientific discoveries were being made every day, so this film must have seemed very of its time.

Down-on-his-luck movie director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is having trouble with his latest film, which he claims will change the movie industry thanks to a secret he's got (bum-BUM!!!), and his producers tell him that with the right leading lady, his film will gross twice as much. Give the audience what they want, they say, and what they want is a beautiful girl in distress. On his search, he stumbles across Ann Darrow (a luminous Fay Wray), a poor girl without a lick of acting experience trying to steal fruit from a storefront and nearly fainting from hunger. Damsel in distress, party of one.

She agrees to be in his new film, which will require her to sail with him to an island only he knows about. If she was any smarter or have anything else to do, she'd probably say no... but she says yes, and we set sail.

Denham enlists a crew and sets sail, only revealing their exact destination once they've all been at sea for several days. Their island getaway isn't exactly inviting: a tribe of angry-looking natives live on a fraction of the island, guarded by a humongous, centuries-old wall from ... well, whatever spirits/monsters/demons lie on the other side. No one's 100% sure what's over there, but Denham has some idea. The "whites knowing everything and assuming natives wouldn't know anything" thing is a little weird and archaic, but the story needs it to progress. The natives need to sacrifice a woman and it might as well be Ann. She's the best screamer.

Q: Why build that huge door if you never want the hugeness over there to cross sides? A: pageantry.

Denham's cool confidence doesn't save Ann from being kidnapped (boatnapped?) and shut in with the monster... and right on cue, he shows up, probably thinking "What's all that noise?"

Now by 2011 standards, these effects are laughable, but take note folks: this was 1933. This kind of green-screen is standard issue nowadays, and we've since explored stop motion in many genres, but at the time this was revolutionary. And even when it looks super hokey, it still looks pretty good. Poor Fay Wray, having to scream and react to NOTHING pretty much the entire film.

Gorilla v. Dino!

There's not many films on this list that are here specifically because they are entertaining. Yes, the technical elements on display here are extraordinary, and yes, there's a message, but at its heart King Kong is a action movie: damsels, beasts, thrills, chills, spills. So many action-thrillers and monster movies of today owe so much to this era of filmmaking that maybe Kong is a placeholder on the list for the American Popular Movie, for the Drive-In Movie. I'd argue it's the most "populist" film on the list, here for few other reasons that it's just fun. I mean, come on. A humongous gorilla and a T-Rex duke it out. It also works because it's not clogged with subplots: gorilla steals girl, guys save girl, girl gets stolen again, etc.

One part of the film that hasn't stood the test of time is of course what it is at its core, which is what some feel is an allegory for male dominance over women. The film was actually banned in Nazi Germany because its subtextual threat to Aryan womanhood. Damn Nazis, they'd find anything a subtextual threat. But seriously, modern lit-crit could probably find a brillion things wrong with the story, find it sexist or racist or what-have-you, but of course, it was all meant to be in good fun in 1933 ... right?

When the giant beast is brought back to America (never mind how something larger than their ship was moved overseas, the film conveniently skips that bit) he's put on display, bringing to mind some larger issue we're all too drunk with excitement to care much about. We know there's only 20 minutes left of this movie and we've got to get from this...

... to this!

In the tragic end, "it was beauty killed the beast." But I'm not real clear on just what that had to do with anything. Don't blame the beast's natural attraction to Ann Darrow for its death. If anything, blame your airplanes for blowing it off the Empire State. Blame the crew of the boat for hoisting it magically onto a boat smaller than it was. You can even blame Ann herself for ... seducing him? But don't blame King Kong. He was framed, you guys. That ending sort of threw me. And of course, we're meant to side with him at the end because of that tender moment where he puts Ann down and knows this is his end.

A thrilling adventure, to be sure, and one whose remake I might need to revisit!

A smackdown is in order (#41-#50!) and then: the hills are alive.