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2006 |
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THE ALL-TIME JERRYS*
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Forget those pesky Oscars;
It's time for 'The Jerrys'
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of TheColumnists.com |
Any Oscar nominee, to be seriously considered by me, must be measured against my top 10 movies of all time--a stringent standard, to be sure, and grossly unfair, but we set the bar high here at the Nachman Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
And posterity’s Jerry winners are: “Sunset Boulevard,” “Strangers on a Train,” “Citizen Kane,” “Double Indemnity,” “All About Eve,” “Lolita,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Paths of Glory,” “A Place in the Sun” and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” You may have noticed that only one of the films on my list--"All About Eve"--ever won the Best Picture Academy Award.
Sorry about no “Casablanca,” “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” because, to be frank, I’m a little tired of them, undeniably great as they are. They might make my honorable mention list, but I tried to come up with less than obvious choices. One I truly hated to leave out, so put it in the 11th spot, is “Member of the Wedding.”
My most glaringly obvious choice is “Citizen Kane,” and maybe “Sunset Boulevard.” “Kane,” obvious or no, is simply unavoidable, so to leave it out would just be perversely contrary. It’s the only epic on the list, but it has the feel of a smaller movie.
The list lacks a comedy, although “All About Eve” probably counts, though it’s far more witty than comic. It has a serious theme--artistic corruption. If I included a comedy, it might be something by Preston Sturges--“The Palm Beach Story,” say, my favorite Sturges. Or maybe a Woody Allen comedy, “Annie Hall” probably, or “Hannah and Her Sisters” or “Manhattan,” but, satisfying as both comedies are, they tend to be a series of great scenes, which should be enough but in the end isn’t quite. Comedies are much harder to sustain then dramatic films, and usually lack an emotional payoff (“Manhattan” comes closest), one reason they’re often overlooked for Best Picture.
I badly wanted to include an Astaire-Rogers classic and feel guilty for leaving them out, but the plots of all their films are so skimpy and frothy that they lost out, in the end, to “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” which is sentimental but has an authentic story line. It’s nowhere near as beautiful to look at as the Astaire-Rogers movies, but Cagney never fails to grab me--his dancing, his acting, his energy and pure dynamism, his Cagney-ness.
Maybe the central criterion to make my all-time Jerrys list is that the films contain no fat--no gratuitous scene, line or performance that doesn’t contribute to the whole. Movies like “Lolita,” “Paths of Glory,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Strangers on a Train,” “Double Indemnity” and “ A Place in the Sun” are, to me, perfect, flawless works of art. I defy you to find a weak moment in any of them, a scene that doesn’t hold your attention totally. They’re tight as can be, from first frame to final fadeout.
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is perhaps a notch less perfect than the other dramas, but to me it’s the most heart-wrenching film in the list (even before “Paths of Glory”), and I choke up every time. James Dunn and Peggy Ann Garner are perfectly cast as the weak, troubled but loving father and dutiful, confused but loving young daughter, the apple of his eye, as is grim Dorothy McGuire and jolly Ann Southern as gritty but unfulfilled sisters. If there is a more tender, bittersweet movie, I’ve not yet seen it.
You may notice that all of the movies in my pantheon are back and white, and I don’t think it’s by accident. This year’s choices includes one black and white films, “Good Night and Good Luck,” the film about Edward R. Murrow’s TV battle with Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, the last great black and white decade. Because the film's in black and white, it has an added semi-documentary credibility--black and white does that. It’s a major reason I gravitate to older movies in video stores: Black and white seems to force directors to be honest, taut, and unpretentious.
Any movie shot in black and white has an
instant advantage. It forces you to pay attention, signifies
a serious theme and possesses an undeniably compelling period
flavor. Not all great movies are in black and white, of course,
but many good movies would be enhanced if they were. “Raging
Bull” and “Manhattan” are examples of movies made
doubly interesting by their black and white tones. “Midnight
Cowboy” and many other good movies might have been even
better shot in black and white.
My definition of a great movie is any film that, whenever I come
across it on television and plan to only watch a few scenes,
invariably see it through to the very end, no matter how many
times I’ve seen it before. Even a good "B" movie
seems much more watchable, more inherently eye-catching to me,
in black and white.
Most of the classic noir films are in black and white--four on my roster of all-timers could be considered super-films noir (“Sunset Boulevard,” “Strangers on a Train,” “Double Indemnity,” “A Place in the Sun”) because black and white is stark, dramatic, gritty and grainy, and it gives the director and cinematographer a vast palette of darks and lights in which to set scenes. Noir movies, by definition, are normally set at night, and the play of shadows and gorgeous grays create a vivid aura beyond the limits of mere color.
For me, color is dull and monotonal; black and white is vibrant and crackles with life. Life is in color, thus on screen it looks and feels ordinary--glitzed up in a way. Screen color looks brighter and more distracting than in real life, or so it seems, whereas black and white, paradoxically, makes everything feel much more real, more urgent. We’re said to dream in black and white, and since movies are dreams writ large they demand black and white.
If I say it myself, this is a pretty representative list of great American films - a worthy cross section of landmark directors--Hitchcock (“Strangers”), Wilder (“Sunset,” “Indemnity”), Kubrick (“Paths,” “Lolita”), Kazan (“Tree”), Stevens (“Sun”), Welles (“Kane”), Cukor (“Eve”) and Curtiz (“Yankee”)--and superior screen actors: Joseph Cotton, Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Kirk Douglas, Claude Rains, James Dunn, Dorothy McGuire, Celeste Holm, Barbara Stanwyck, Orson Welles, Bette Davis, George Sanders, James Cagney.
To quibble with myself, I feel guilty about leaving out Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn, but it’s not a birthday party where everyone gets a goody. If it were, I would include Grant’s performance in “Holiday” or “His Girl Friday,” Stewart’s in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Fonda’s in “The Grapes of Wrath,” Crawford’s in “Mildred Pierce” and Hepburn’s in “Alice Adams.”
The list is maybe too heavily weighted toward movies from the `40s and `50s - when I was at my most impressionable moviegoing age, and undoubtedly it needs a nominee from the `30s, `70s and `80s to make it more comprehensive. The `20s are too far away to measure with any confidence today and the `90s (and `00s) haven’t given us anything to even approach movies of these earlier golden (silver?) eras.
Most of the movies are adaptations from great books, belying the conventional wisdom that great books rarely make great movies - in the right, gifted, sensitive hands, they do. The only original screenplays are “Sunset Boulevard,” “Citizen Kane,” “All About Eve” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” although “Eve” was based on a magazine short story. “All About Eve” and “Citizen Kane” even have books written about them.
If I had to remove one of the films, I guess it would be “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and replace it with “Member of the Wedding,” “Raging Bull” or “Sophie’s Choice,” but there needs to be a musical--on my list anyway, although “Sophie’s Choice” or “Raging Bull” would give the list a broader contemporary range, which it sort of needs.
But I’ll stick with this list of superb choices, however weighted, flawed and personal, and welcome any arguments or neglected nominees. We can meet for lunch on Monday at the Brown Derby. I’ll be at the bar in a fedora and double-breasted suit, nursing a Scotch and smoking an Old Gold. See you there, sweetheart.
©2006 by Gerald Nachman. The "Oscar" logo and the phrase "Academy Awards" are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. This column first posted Feb. 27, 2006.
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