The Great Movies II

450 Pages·2006·7.56 MB·English

by  Roger Ebert

OTHER BOOKS BY ROGER EBERT
An Illini Century
A Kiss Is Still a Kiss
Roger Ebert’s Movie Home Companion (1986-1993)
A Perfect London Walk (with Daniel Curley)
Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook
Behind the Phantom’s Mask: A Serial
Roger Ebert’s Video Companion (1994-1998)
Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary
Roger Ebert’s Book of Film: A Norton Anthology
Questions for the Movie Answer Man
Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook (1999-)
Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie Glossary
I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie
The Great Movies
DVD COMMENTARY ROGER TRACKS
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Dark City
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Floating Weeds

F
or Chaz
My love for you is immeasurable
My respect for you immense
You’re ageless, timeless, lace, and fineness
You’re beauty and elegance
Contents
Introduction by Roger Ebert
The Fight for Preservation by Mary Corliss
12 Angry Men
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Alien
Amadeus
Amarcord
Annie Hall
Au Hasard, Balthazar
The Bank Dick
Beat the Devil
Being There
The Big Heat
The Birth of a Nation
The Blue Kite
Bob le Flambeur
Breathless
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Buster Keaton
Children of Paradise
A Christmas Story
The Color Purple
The Conversation
Cries and Whispers
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Don’t Look Now
The Earrings of Madame de
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Firemen’s Ball
Five Easy Pieces
Goldfinger
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Goodfellas
The Gospel According to Matthew
The Grapes of Wrath
Grave of the Fireflies
Great Expectations
House of Games
The Hustler
In Cold Blood
Jaws
Jules and Jim
Kieslowskis Three Colors Trilogy
Kind Hearts and Coronets
King Kong
The Last Laugh
Laura
Leaving Las Vegas
Le Boucher
The Leopard
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
The Manchurian Candidate
The Man Who Laughs
Mean Streets
Mon Oncle
Moonstruck
The Music Room
My Dinner with Andre
My Neighbor Totoro
Nights of Cabiria
One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest
Orpheus
Paris, Texas
Patton
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The Producers
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raise the Red Lantern
Ran
Rashomon
Rear Window
Rififi
The Right Stuff
Romeo and Juliet
The Rules of the Game
Saturday Night Fever
Say Anything
Scarface
The Searchers
Shane
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Solaris
Strangers on a Train
Stroszek
A Sunday in the Country
Sunrise
A Tale of Winter
The Thin Man
This Is Spinal Tap
Tokyo Story
Touchez Pas au Grisbi
Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Ugetsu
Umberto D
Unforgiven
Victim
Walkabout
West Side Story
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Essays Appearing in the Great Movies (2002)
About the Author
I
NTRODUCTION
T
his is the second Great Movies book, but the titles in it are not the second team. I do not believe in
rankings and lists and refuse all invitations to reveal my “ten all-time favorite musicals,” etc., on the
grounds that such lists are meaningless and might well change between Tuesday and Thursday. I make only
two exceptions to this policy: I compile an annual list of the year’s best films, because it is graven in stone
that movie critics must do so, and I participate every ten years in the Sight & Sound poll of the world’s
directors and critics.
As I made clear in the introduction to the first Great Movies book, it was not a list of “the” 100 greatest
movies but simply a collection of 100 great movies—unranked, selected because of my love for them and
for their artistry, historical role, influence, and so on. I wrote the essays in no particular order, inspired
sometimes by the availability of a newly restored print or DVD.
To be sure, the first book includes such obviously first-team titles as Citizen Kane, Singin in the Rain,
The General, Ikiru, Vertigo, the Apu trilogy, Persona, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Battleship Potemkin, Raging
Bull, and La Dolce Vita. But because I was not writing in any order, this second volume contains titles of
fully equal stature, including The Rules of the Game, Children of Paradise, The Leopard, Au Hasard,
Balthazar, The Birth of a Nation, Sunrise, Ugetsu, Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy, Tokyo Story, The
Searchers, and Rashomon. In the case of the first two titles, I delayed a Great Movie review until new
DVDs were available and felt with both The Rules of the Game and Children of Paradise that the prints had
been so wonderfully restored that I was essentially seeing the movies for the first time.
I have cited before the British critic Derek Malcolm’s definition of a great movie: any movie he could
not bear the thought of never seeing again. During the course of a year I review about 250 films and see
perhaps 200 more and could very easily bear the thought of not seeing many of them again, or even for the
first time. What a pleasure it is to step aside from the production line and look closely and with love at films
that vindicate the art form.
The DVD has been of incalculable value to those who love films, producing prints of such quality that
the film can breathe before our eyes instead of merely surviving there. The supplementary material on some
of them is so useful and detailed that today’s audiences can know more about a title than, in some cases,
their directors knew when they were made. Of all directors, Martin Scorsese has been the leader in
assembling commentary tracks and supplementary materials, not only for his own films but for others he
loves; consider his contribution to the DVDs of the films of Michael Powell, notably in this book The Life
and Death of Colonel Blimp. To listen to Powell and Scorsese as they watch the film together is a rare
privilege.
I have seen these movies in various times and places and ways, many of them three or four times, some
a dozen or twenty-five times. I’ve been through sixteen of them a shot at a time, in sessions I conduct
annually at the universities of Colorado, Virginia, and Hawaii and at film festivals. The Colorado