AndyM108

When making my lists-- and this is something I often encountered when I reached the 19990s and 2000s-- is that sometimes there is a really great stand-out performance by an actor or actress, but the film itself is mediocre. So that has to be an honorable mention and cannot really make it into the top ten for that year, unless it was a weak year. That's a good point, though I tend to notice it more in films from the 30's, which often featured some of my all-time favorite actors (Stanwyck, Davis, Cagney, Bogart, etc.) in some pretty generic fare. IMO movies back then were far more dependent on the screen personae of the stars (and of course the character actors) than they are in recent decades.* I can gladly sit through a potboiler like Bullets or Ballots, because the actors are so familiar it's like they're part of my family. But if a movie with such a thin plot were to appear today, with actors nowhere near as familiar, I doubt if it'd ever make it into my Netflix queue. I haven't gotten around to making a list of my all-time top 50 or 100 (much too hard to do with too many great films to choose among), but if and when I do, I strongly suspect that relatively few American films prior to 1950 would make it near the top, unless they featured performances that were so compelling and universal (So Big; Stella Dallas), or featured a star whose unique talent has never been matched and probably never will (Jean Harlow). The irony is that while *as a group* I enjoy movies from the 20's through the 40's more than the ones that came later, my all-time favorites mostly come from the latter group. I hope that doesn't sound too stupid. *I should add that since I never watch the superhero action or fantasy genres, or any movies whose selling point is the cinematography, I may be overgeneralizing here. I pretty much limit myself to dramas that at least have a fair amount of basis in reality.

I know you like MY FAIR LADY a lot, but I consider Audrey very miscast in it. Though she tries admirably, I think she is in over her head and does much better in other cinematic fare. TB, I married my wife in great part because she reminded me so much of Audrey Hepburn in more ways than I could even begin to enumerate. But since my wife was only 5 years old when that glorious film was released, I'm afraid that left only Audrey for the Eliza part. I hope you can understand this. HIGH AND LOW was broadcast by TCM maybe three years ago as part of a month-long tribute featuring Kirosawa films. That was the first time I had seen it, and I loved it. The only frustrating thing I've encountered in compiling these lists - - - and I'm sure you and others might feel the same way when you list your own choices - - - is that so many of the films I've cited are still largely unknown to casual movie buffs, and / or to those who purposely exclude all foreign or subtitled films from their schedules. That Kurosawa retrospective back in March of 2010, which coincided with Jean Harlow as SOTM, remains the highlight month of my TCM viewing experience. I'd seen High and Low and The Bad Sleep Well and (of course) The Seven Samurai in theaters before, but films like Red Beard, Stray Dog, Drunken Angel and a slew of others were personal "premieres" for me. It's hard for me even to imagine that someone could watch these movies and not be overwhelmed by the experience in the same way that they might be with Hollywood classics like On The Waterfront or It's a Wonderful Life or The Killers. Thank God that TCM understands this, and keeps *all* definitions of "classic" film open and on their table.

*Top 12 for the 1960's as a whole.* If you concentrate on the best 40 or 50 films it was a hell of a decade: 1. *Kapo (1960)* - An extraordinary tale of a young woman who will do anything to survive in a concentration camp, with not a drop of sentimentality or impossibly happy endings. Susan Strasberg is almost forgotten today, but you'll never see a better performance in so intense a movie. 2. *The Bad Sleep Well (1960)* - The best movie about corporate corruption ever made, again with no phony happy ending. Another incredible performance by Toshiro Mifune. 3. *Red Beard (1965)* - Another Mifune tour de force, this time as an aging rural doctor who teaches life lessons to a young and arrogant intern. 4. *Mississippi Mermaid (1969)* - Nothing is ever what it seems in this film, and Catherine Deneuve can seem to be anything in this never lagging tale of deceit and passion. 5. *Elmer Gantry (1960)* - Easily the best Hollywood drama of the decade, with Burt Lancaster in the role of a charlatan circuit riding preacher that he said he was born to play. 6. *The Battle of Algiers (1966)* - Gillo Pontecorvo's neo-documentary that "contains not ONE FOOT of documentary film", is a re-creation of the crucial battle in the Algerian war of independence, a battle that the French won on paper but lost in the long run. With sterling performances by Jean Martin as Col. "Matthieu", Brahim Haggiag as Ali La Pointe, and Mohamed Ben Kassen as the little boy Omar. 7. *Bay of Angels (1964)* - One of Jeanne Moreau's most intense roles (and that's saying an armful), as a compulsive Riviera gambler who acquires a young groupie to accompany her in her whirlwind of exhilaration and despair. 8. *My Fair Lady (1964)* - Audrey Hepburn's greatest and most irresistible role, as the Cockney waif Eliza Doolittle to Rex Harrison's would-be Svengali, Professor Henry Higgins. Comes with the most memorable collection of songs of any film ever, saturated with either wit or romance or both. 9. *The Producers (1968)* - The great American comedy of the decade, with nothing else remotely close. With Zero Mostel as the most lovable con man in history and a plot that is nothing short of genius. 10. *High and Low (1963)* - The third Kurosawa / Mifune entry on this list, and barely below the others, it combines a moral dilemma with corporate intrigue and a riveting detective story. 11. *A Raisin in the Sun (1961)* - The first major studio production with an all-black cast and a wholly straight dramatic story. With an all-star cast featuring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil and Diana Sands. 12. *Scream of Fear (1961)* - Another extraordinary performance by the vastly underrated Susan Strasberg as a wheelchair ridden woman whose father has mysteriously disappeared, in a movie that features one unforeseen plot twist after another, culminating in an unforgettable ending. Best of the rest, in alphabetical order: Band of Outsiders; The Bride Wore Black; Darling; A Fever in the Blood; Hostile Witness; Murder, Inc.; Night of the Living Dead; Nothing But a Man; One Potato, Two Potato; Underworld, USA; Wait Until Dark Best actor: Toshiro Mifune (The Bad Sleep Well; Red Beard); Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry) Best actress: Susan Strasberg (Kapo); Catherine Deneuve (Mississippi Mermaid) But in truth all of these films featured great acting performances.

I recorded Arsene Lupin but have yet to watch it, and I never even heard of Councillor at Law until you mentioned it. I liked Svengali, though not as much as I thought I was going to, and I haven't seen The Mad Genius, although it sounds promising. I loved Grand Hotel but not too keen on 20th Century. I realize I'm in the minority on that one. What I really should watch besides the ones you mentioned are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Those are the 1922 and 1920 silent versions of the much repeated classics, and in the former film we also get to see a very early William Powell. Too many movies, too few hours in the day.

I imagine that a lot of people had the same reaction that you did to that poison gambit in The Mouthpiece, but as you say, it sure added to the drama! I haven't seen enough of John Barrymore's non-sleazeball roles to form much of an overall impression of him, but I've yet to see any movie of his* that I'd prefer to any of a dozen of William's. *Well, maybe Dinner at Eight, but that's much more for Harlow and Beery's matrimonial warfare than for JB's rather pedestrian performance.

My interest in the Super Bowl varies according to my rooting interest in the outcome and in the quality of the teams. And since that first Giants-Patriots SB, it's been high. Last year the Ravens pulled off a great four game run, and this year we've got one of the top QB's of all time facing one of the NFL's greatest defenses in recent memory. I wish the game began at 1:00 or 4:00 rather than at 6:30, but hey, this is what Moneyball (the real kind) is all about. At least the Super Bowl doesn't end after midnight the way so many World Series games do. And I'll bet you one thing: A lot of those West Coast SB parties this year will be focused on the game, at least the ones up North.

If Fidel Castro made the cut in his tryout for the New York Yankees, things in Cuba would have been different. Since I agree with the thrust of your post, I hate to nitpick on this one little point, but in this case the urban legend has been that Castro failed in a tryout with the *Washington Senators,* who had a near monopoly in the Cuban ballplayer market back then. The Yankees never showed any interest in Cuban players until many decades later. And even there, the key words are "urban legend", since Castro never attended any Major League tryout camp, nor was he ever scouted by any Major League team. That's been debunked almost as many times as the one about the woman with the beehive hairdo whose skull was fatally infested by maggots when she failed to wash her hair.

(...btw...my early line for Super Bowl XLVII is the Broncos by 4 1/2...because a 2nd year QB doesn't have the "right" to win it all...and probably won't) That second year QB isn't going to be facing his own #1-ranked defense, but Peyton Manning will. The Seahawks would be a steal getting 4 1/2 points, though from what I've seen it's more like 2 1/2.

The Landmark theater chain in Washington and Bethesda (MD) now runs $11.50, with $8.50 on Monday through Thursday before 6 PM, and $8.50 at all times for seniors and children. The Uptown Theater in DC is the last surviving "movie palace" in the area that still shows first run films, and it charges $11.50 for evening shows and $9.75 for matinees. Children are always $8.75. When I went to the Uptown for Saturday matinees back during the 50's, tickets were 35 cents* for two features and several cartoons, and they didn't clear the seats between shows. You could stay there all day if you were up to it. *=$3.08 in today's dollars

I recorded and then watched *State's Attorney.* Not a bad little effort, maybe about a 7 on a 10 scale. What was interesting was the way that Barrymore went from a mob mouthpiece to his State's Attorney role, only then to discover that he'd feel cleaner going back to defending criminals rather than trying to put them away. There was a similar change of heart by Warren William in *The Mouthpiece,* only in reverse order, as William went from a guilt-ridden DA to a mob lawyer, but then winds up turning against the mob and gets gunned down for his betrayal. Overall it's a far superior movie to *State's Attorney,* but then William is a far more convincing actor in roles like this than Barrymore ever was.

This is embarrassing, but the only way I can make a credible list for 1967 through 1969 is to consolidate the years. There just aren't enough movies I liked in any of those three years to make a top 10 out of any of them. Many of the more celebrated films from those years seem way overrated, but then it's also true I just haven't seen that many. *1967 - 1969 Combined* 1. Mississippi Mermaid (1969) 2. Army of Shadows (1969) 3. A Colt Is My Passport (1967) 4. The Bride Wore Black (1969) 5. The Producers (1968) 6. Night of the Living Dead (1968) 7. Z (1969) 8. Hard Contract (1969) 9. The Incident (1967) 10. Belle de Jour (1968) Best of the rest: Wait Until Dark (1967); They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969); The Swimmer (1968); Stolen Kisses (1968); Point Blank (1967); Midnight Cowboy (1969) Underrated: Hard Contract (1969) Overrated: Bonnie & Clyde (1967); The Graduate (1967); Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967); Easy Rider (1969) Best actor: Joe Shishido (A Colt Is My Passport); Zero Mostel (The Producers) Best actress: Jeanne Moreau (Mississippi Mermaid); Catherine Deneuve (Belle de Jour); Lee Remick (Hard Contract) Best supporting actor: Gene Wilder (The Producers) Best supporting actress: Lilli Palmer (Hard Contract)

Pretty much all the Hollywood movies from that era that were staged in European settings have the same charming quality of wildly mismatched accents and ethnic groups. But it's like the old song says, "If Lubitsch doesn't have the accents he fancies, he fancies the accents he has." Or something like that.

But in a similar vien, I did wonder recently what movies may have become over the years if the HAYES CODE never came to be? The main impact would have been that there would have been a *LOT* more variety. The more refined screwball comedies would still have made their mark, because (a) they were good; ( there was an audience for them; and © there were precedents in the pre-code era (Trouble in Paradise; Bombshell; etc.) that they could have drawn upon. Contrary to popular myth, not all pre-Code movies were all that raunchy. The absence of a code wouldn't have stopped anyone from making more "family" oriented films. All it would have meant would have been that such films wouldn't have enjoyed a state-enforced monopoly on screen entertainment. In fact, there isn't a single movie genre in the "Code" era that didn't exist before mid-1934, and couldn't have continued to thrive in the absence of the Code. But in *addition* to those movies, we would also have had more movies that didn't pull punches for arbitrary reasons. The Code took away those movies without giving us anything in return that wouldn't have been there anyway.

3. What kind of film would Bette Davis & James Dean have made? A much darker version of *Harold and Maude.*

You have both posted (Fred more than once) that these are "no code" movies, and I know what you mean and agree. But actually, to be accurate, CHAINED FOR LIFE did get an MPAA Approval number. It's right there in the credits: number 15669. You could have knocked me over with a feather. But when I think about it, I can certainly see why it got an approval, since the only "shocking" thing about that movie was the presence of the Siamese twins themselves, along with the crude plot and production values, but the overarching message was the question of "What is justice?" Hardly anything objectionable about that.

That's almost impossible to say, given that virtually all of the worthwhile postwar movies reflected the experiences of the war in one way or another. There are too many unknown variables to be able to do anything but make a wild series of guesses based on purely speculative knowledge. Just to take one random point, does "no WWII" mean no *American* participation, or does it mean Hitler and Tojo leaving the rest of Europe and Asia alone in peace? Don't forget that World War II didn't exactly begin at Pearl Harbor, contrary to what many American movies seem to suggest. Sorry to throw cold water on what's an interesting thought exercise, but maybe I'm just running a little low on imagination tonight.

Andy, these are what I call NO CODE films, since the film makers did not have to agree to the terms of the Code, because they were independent productions and showed in small independent theaters that were not connected to the big studios. Big cities usually had one or more of these kinds of theaters. The content of the films was controlled only by local city and state laws, but no federal laws and no movie Code. In some cases, and in some states and cities, any nude scenes had to be removed, but in other cities they did not, as long as they weren't too long or too many of them. Many smaller towns would not allow these films at all, while some towns could show them outside of town, in county areas, such as at drive in theaters. In the case of *Child Bride,* from what I understand there were several different versions that were used in states and cities with different ordinances. Some had the nude swimming scenes and some didn't. That lines up with what you're saying. I remember that in Washington, *And God Created Woman* was shown in one of "those" theaters down on 14th and H Sts, just a few blocks north of the Big Three Loew's theaters that were showing regular first run movies.

Well, you can see that while all three of these films were made during the time of the Breen Code, none of them actually had a rating. This meant that they were all pretty much restricted to the underground circuit, outside the mainstream movie theaters. And while there's no question that Child Bride is of questionable taste, there's also no question that the main plot depicted did reflect a fair amount of reality at that time, at least in certain parts of the country. Fans of Jerry Lee Lewis will nod their heads in recognition of this point, and *that* marriage took place nearly 20 years after the Shirley Mills movie.

For *1966* I've barely seen 15 movies, but I did like 10 of them, even if only the two at the top of the list were really outstanding. 1. Tokyo Drifter 2. Hunger 3. The Group 4. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 5. The Fortune Cookie 6. A Man and a Woman 7. Au Hasard, Balthazar 8. La Collectioneuse 9. The Sand Pebbles 10. Mr. Buddwing The Battle of Algiers would have been #1, except that since it was technically released at the end of 1965, I'd put it on that year's list. Underrated: The Sand Pebbles Overrated: Harper Have to see: Blow-Up; The Professionals; Closely Watched Trains Best actor: Tetsuya Watari (Tokyo Drifter); Per Oscarsson (Hunger) Best actress: Liz Taylor (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

When was the last time The Pawnbroker played on TCM? I've been watching the schedule like a hawk since late 2009 and I've never seen it once.

Did anyone happen to catch this trio of absolutely amazing TCM Underground movies that played last Friday night? I just got around to watching them yesterday. *The Wild and Wicked* is about an innocent small town girl who takes a bus to Hollywood to visit her "fashion model" sister, in hopes of following in her footsteps. What she doesn't know is that her sister isn't really a fashion model, but a hooker! It's like an Ed Wood special. *Chained For Life* is about a Siamese twin who redeems her jilted sister's honor by killing her finance while he's performing on stage! The moral dilemma is then posed of how do you punish the murderer when by doing so you sentence her innocent sister to the same punishment? And *Child Bride,* with the 12 year old Shirley Mills in the title role, is one of those exploitation movies with an actual underlying moral point. The girl's father is slipping around on her mother, who hears about it and then starts a fight, but quickly gets knocked unconscious. The father then passes out drunk while the girl falls asleep, only to discover when she wakes up that her father has been killed. The murderer, who was lurking in the shadows when all this was happening, is actually the father's former moonshine partner, but he tells the mother and the girl that he "saw" the mother kill her husband, and that if the mother doesn't consent to letting the (12 year old) girl marry him (he's in his late 30's or older), he's going to turn her in to the law! Nice guy! Well, the "cavalry" in the form of a law outlawing child brides saves the day at the last moment, but meanwhile we see the cause of the sizable box office grosses on the blue movie circuit - - - a 10 minute scene of the girl swimming in the river in her birthday suit, like a little 12 year old version of Marlene Dietrich in the opening scene of *Blonde Venus.* When you combine it with the total backwardness of the social setting (somewhere in the Kentucky woods), it makes for an unforgettable 63 minutes, to say the least!

I don't get Encore, but I do get Netflix, and *Mirage* is now at the top of my queue.

Hey, if everyone agreed with my likes and dislikes, what would be the fun in that? This way I'm learning how different people interpret "greatness" in movies. In a way we're like the blind Indians who are trying to define an "elephant" when they're touching completely different parts of his body. As many hundreds or thousands of movies that many of us here have seen, we all know we're still barely scratching the surface. Which is why we keep coming back for more! Slightly related note: I've always thought as a rule of thumb that you could tell a fair amount about a person* by their taste in movies. Of course the snag is that this really only works if everyone's been exposed to the same films, but OTOH what you choose to seek out is also a sign of preference. *Just to be clear, I don't mean you can tell anything "good" or "bad" about a person by their taste in movies. Some of my best friends are even Republicans, so you know I'm not a judgmental person.

I think I know who you're talking about, but I never can remember the name of that costume design maven who talked about nothing but *Lucille Ball* right after she screened *Out of the Past!* She was a real piece of work.

After reading the description of *Mirage,* I'm sure I would like it, but alas, I haven't yet seen it. My problem as you get out of the 50's is that I haven't seen enough movies after that, at least compared to the number I've seen from the 30's and 40's. When I get to the 60's it's only some of the foreign movies that enable me even to fill out a top 10 list at all. Of course if I went for westerns, musicals and James Bond movies, I'm sure I'd find more to choose among, but the more I get exposed to films from more eras, the more I think that the true "Golden Age" of movies was from about 1946 to 1955, along with a special mention for 1932 to mid-1934. It's not that there aren't many great movies outside of those years, all the way up to the present, it's just that the "average" films outside the pre-code and noir eras weren't nearly as much in line with my taste in subject matter. And needless to say, I make no pretensions of objectivity about any of this. As I've said before, I'm from the school of film criticism whose credo is "I know what I like".