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TOP TEN MOVIES TO TAKE TO A DESERT ISLAND

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Index



5. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

bridge-on-the-river-kwai

Directed by David Lean. Written by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. Produced by Sam Spiegel. Columbia Pictures. 161 minutes.

Starring Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa, William Holden, Jack Hawkins, James Donald.

Alec Guinness is enthralling as Colonel Nicholson, a captured British army officer locking horns with POW camp commander Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) while both obsess over building a railroad bridge in the Burmese jungle during World War Two. Director David Lean's lush, sweeping style epitomizes the epic motion picture—capped by the spellbinding climax—without missing the personal conflict at the story's core. Even under Saito's ruthless command, Nicholson is indomitable, displaying the will of a man driven to an undertaking that remains fascinating to behold. Guinness is so compelling that he overshadows the rest of the cast, but Hayakawa manages subtlety and emotional complexity in what could easily have been a stereotypical role.

Meanwhile, American prisoner Shears (William Holden) escapes, but only to find himself coerced into accompanying British commando Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) on a mission back into Burma to destroy the bridge, leading to the thrilling climax that remains unforgettable. True, if you think about Nicholson's motivations long enough, you'll realize how improbable they are. But Guinness's riveting performance—he is completely invested in the role of Nicholson, imbuing it with such an overriding sense of purpose that he nearly obscures the logical inconsistencies—combines with Lean's utterly compelling filmcraft to make The Bridge on the River Kwai truly larger than life, an epic film that rewards viewing time and again.

4. Chinatown (1973)

Chinatown poster1

Directed by Roman Polanski. Written by Robert Towne. Produced by Robert Evans. Paramount Pictures. 131 minutes.

Starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston.

So many elements blend to make Chinatown one of the greatest crime dramas ever, not the least being screenwriter Robert Towne's famously Byzantine tale of lust, murder, incest, and water rights in Depression-era Los Angeles. Then there is Jack Nicholson's tremendous performance as Jake Gittes, the savvy, sophisticated private eye who finds himself plunged into bizarre events beyond his ken, initiated by powerful patriarch Noah Cross (an effectively crafty, creepy John Huston) and featuring alluring, mysterious beauty Evelyn Mulwray, portrayed by Faye Dunaway, who matches Nicholson point for point in scenes of raw passion and sordid fascination. There is even Gittes's bandaged nose, sliced open by a low-level thug, a bold departure from the seemingly flawless hero.

That thug is played by director Roman Polanski, who is the real mastermind behind Chinatown, his sense of timing, pacing, and shot framing combining to keep the story sufficiently veiled yet still comprehensible while coaxing performances from his cast that make the story vibrate with vivid, often contradictory complexities of human emotion. Polanski is certainly conversant in the subtle intricacies of film noir—Chinatown is redolent with homage, not the least being its time period—but informed by the schools of subsequent filmmaking, he writes a whole new chapter on it, one that has been equally influential. I watch Chinatown again and again not to figure out the story but to marvel at how cleverly and seamlessly it is brought into brilliant focus by Polanski and his actors.

3. Citizen Kane (1942)

Citizen Kane

Directed and produced by Orson Welles. Written by Herman Mankeiwicz and Orson Welles. RKO Radio Pictures. 119 minutes.

Starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Everett Sloane, Dorothy Comingore.

So much has been made about how influential Citizen Kane has been—and it certainly is a textbook, maybe the textbook, on how to make an enduring film—that it's easy to miss what a great story it is: an epic tale of American hubris wrought large and of yearning for lost innocence ("Rosebud"). Infamously modeled on real-life media magnate William Randolph Hearst, Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) arose from Western obscurity to Eastern respectability as a crusading newspaper publisher who ultimately courts notoriety as his personal and professional ambitions threaten to engulf him in controversy and scandal. Welles's celebrated portrayal rockets from brash, youthful exuberance to arrogance and regret and finally to poignant, almost pathetic tragedy.

Told in episodic flashbacks, Citizen Kane features outstanding performances by Joseph Cotten as Kane's best friend Jed Leland, Everett Sloane as loyal Kane functionary Mr. Bernstein, and Dorothy Comingore as Kane's second wife Susan Alexander, who began first as his mistress and thus helps to propel the conceit that is Kane's downfall. Poor William Alland, whose face is never shown, portrays the reporter whose trek to discover the real Kane is the involving narrative device Welles and co-writer Herman Mankeiwicz use to convey the scope and grandeur of this sweeping story, with Gregg Toland's innovative photography earning him a spot on director Welles's title card—an auspicious honor for any crew member. In the end, though, Welles commands the center of Citizen Kane, which made him the patron saint of indie filmmakers, while his masterwork not only taught filmmakers how to make a film, it taught audiences how to watch one. Which is why I continue to watch it.

2. Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca

Directed by Michael Curtiz. Written by Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein, and Howard Koch. Produced by Hal B. Wallis. Warner Bros. 102 minutes.

Starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Paul Henried, Conrad Veidt.

The most remarkable aspect of this timeless classic is how essentially ordinary it is. Casablanca was just another Warner Bros. production-line melodrama—"a good hack job," to quote critic Pauline Kael—but all the elements of the Warners' approach somehow fused into cinematic immortality: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henried form a love triangle that reaches its apex against the backdrop of the Second World War while an array of colorful supporting players swirl around them in that Mecca for refugees fleeing the Nazis, Casablanca. Much of that comes courtesy of the celebrated script by Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein, and Howard Koch, which has yielded countless memorable quotes over the decades, and the swelling score by Max Steiner, which incorporates Herman Hupfeld's signature "As Time Goes By." And if director Michael Curtiz is relegated to the background, at least he had the good sense to get out of the way and let the narrative gather its momentum.

The centerpiece to Casablanca is of course the romantic relationship between Rick Blaine (Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Bergman) during their affair in Paris just before its fall to Germany, even as Ilsa is secretly married to Victor Laszlo (Henreid), captured by the Nazis and presumed dead. Considering that Bergman and Bogart had a cool on-set relationship, it is a tribute to their acting abilities that they remain so convincing. And Casablanca swells with memorable performances by Dooley Wilson, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, S.K. Sakall, Leonid Kinskey, Madeleine LeBeau, and Joy Page. Did I forget someone? Sacre bleu! How about Claude Rains as wily Captain Renault? After all, Rains merely winds up stealing every scene he's in. As time goes by, Casablanca becomes a beautiful friendship.

1. M*A*S*H (1970)

M-A-S-H

Directed by Robert Altman. Written by Ring Lardner, Jr. Produced by Ingo Preminger. 20th Century Fox. 116 minutes.

Starring Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Sally Kellerman, Tom Skerritt, Robert Duvall.

M*A*S*H the television series compares to M*A*S*H the movie as cooking sherry compares to Jack Daniels. Oh, sure, the first couple of seasons tried to mimic the movie's anarchic spirit, and it almost worked at times before Wayne Rogers left and the series under Alan Alda eventually drowned in a syrupy sea of liberal sanctimony. (And I'm a fairly sanctimonious liberal myself.)

Even though both movie and television series, based on the novel by Richard Hooker, are set during the Korean conflict, director Robert Altman, ostensibly with screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr., clearly makes the subtext for the film version the Vietnam conflict. Released at the height of the conflict, M*A*S*H features a colorful clan of countercultural rebels—all respected members of the medical profession, mind you—trying to subvert a rigid establishment, the American military, simply to keep from losing their sanity amidst the finely orchestrated madness known as war. And by staging the film in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH), with numerous scenes of vivid, graphic surgical operations, Altman and company make a tremendous antiwar statement without showing one scene of combat—and without a single antiwar speech.

Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland are unforgettable as Trapper John and Hawkeye, respectively, the brilliant surgeons who with fellow traveler Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt) nevertheless lead the parade of hijinks, often against self-righteous Major Burns (an underrated Robert Duvall) and officious Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan (a smoldering Sally Kellerman), in a series of hilarious yet pointed episodes: How Hot Lips got her nickname; how the camp determined that Hot Lips was—or was not—a natural blonde; and how the camp dentist the Painless Pole (John Schuck) came to commit a fake suicide to prove his manhood. Altman defined his trademarks with M*A*S*H including the ensemble cast, overlapping dialog, and episodic structure while delivering an outrageously irreverent satire that remains a landmark American film. It's such a hokey cliché to say that a movie changed my life, but that is exactly what M*A*S*H did. "That is all."

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Last modified on Thursday, 22 March 2018 01:55

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