Excerpt: The New York Times Book of Movies by Rizzoli International Publications

BOOK OF

MOVIES THE ESSENTIAL

1,000 FILMS TO SEE Selected by A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis • Edited by Wallace Schroeder

CONTENTS

vii ix xxiii xxvi

1–1146

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Preface by Wallace Shroeder List of Movies Introduction by A.O. Scott Key to Critics

| THE BEST 1,000 MOVIES EVER MADE

1147

| A PPENDIX I: “THE 1O BEST” 1931–2002

APPENDIX III: FOREIGN FILMS BY COUNTRY OF ORIGIN 1171 1171 1171 1171 1171 1171 1171

APPENDIX II: FILMS BY CATEGORY

1172

1158 1158 1158 1160 1161 1162 1169 1169 1169 1170

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Action/ Adventure Animated Comedy Crime/Mystery/Suspense Documentary Drama Horror Musicals Science Fiction Western

1172 1172 1173 1173 1173 1173 1173 1173 1173 1174 1174 1174 1174

LIST OF MOVIES

The year following the title of the movie is the year of its review unless otherwise indicated.

A | | | | | | |

1 2 4 5 6 8 9

10 | 11 | 12 |

13 |

14 17 18 20 21

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22 23 24 25 26

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28 29 30 31 33 34 35 37 38 39

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À Nous, la Liberté, 1932 About Schmidt, 2002 Absence of Malice, 1981 Adam’s Rib, 1949 Adaptation, 2002 The Adjuster, 1991 T he Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938 Affliction, 1998 The African Queen, 1952 L ’Age d’Or, 1930, reviewed 1964 A guirre, the Wrath of God, 1972, reviewed 1977 A.I., 2001 Airplane!, 1980 Aladdin, 1992 Alexander Nevsky, 1939 A lice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore 1975 Alice’s Restaurant, 1969 Aliens, 1986 All About Eve, 1950 All About My Mother, 1999 A ll Quiet on the Western Front, 1930 All That Heaven Allows, 1956 All the King’s Men, 1949 All the President’s Men, 1976 Amadeus, 1984 Amarcord, 1974 Amélie, 2001 America, America, 1963 The American Friend, 1977 American Graffiti, 1973 An American in Paris, 1951

40 | T he Americanization of Emily,

41 42 43 44 45 46

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47 48 50 50 52 54 55 56

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56 57 58 60 61 62

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1964 American Movie, 1999 Amores Perros, 2000 Anastasia, 1956 Anatomy of a Murder, 1959 The Angry Silence, 1960 A nna and the King of Siam, 1946 Anna Christie, 1930 Annie Hall, 1977 The Apartment, 1960 Apocalypse Now, 1979 Apollo 13, 1995 The Apostle, 1997 L’Argent, 1983 A shes and Diamonds, 1958, reviewed 1961 The Asphalt Jungle, 1950 L’Atalante, 1934, reviewed 1947 Atlantic City, 1981 Au Revoir Les Enfants, 1988 L’Avventura 1961 The Awful Truth, 1937

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 72

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Babette’s Feast, 1987 Baby Doll, 1956 Back to the Future, 1985 The Bad and the Beautiful, 1953 Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955 Badlands, 1973 The Baker’s Wife, 1940 Ball of Fire, 1942 T he Ballad of Cable Hogue, 1970

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 81

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82 83 84 84 87 88 89 91

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92 93 94 95 96 97

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99 100 101 102 103

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104 105 106 108 109 110 110 112 113 114 115 116 117

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Bambi, 1942 The Band Wagon, 1953 Bang the Drum Slowly, 1973 The Bank Dick, 1940 Barfly, 1987 Barry Lyndon, 1975 Barton Fink, 1991 T he Battle of Algiers, 1965, reviewed 1967 Le Beau Mariage, 1982 Beautiful People, 2000 Beauty and the Beast, 1947 Beauty and the Beast, 1991 Bed and Board, 1971 Beetlejuice, 1988 Before Night Falls, 2000 B efore the Rain, 1994, reviewed 1995 Being John Malkovich, 1999 Being There, 1979 Belle de Jour, 1968 Ben-Hur, 1959 Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1983 T he Best Years of Our Lives, 1946 Beverly Hills Cop, 1984 The Bicycle Thief, 1949 The Big Chill, 1983 The Big Clock, 1948 T he Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1960 The Big Heat, 1953 Big Night, 1996 The Big Red One, 1980 The Big Sky, 1952 The Big Sleep, 1946 Billy Liar, 1963 Biloxi Blues, 1988 The Birds, 1963 Birdy, 1984 Black Narcissus, 1947 Black Orpheus, 1959 Black Robe, 1991 Blazing Saddles, 1974

118 119 120 121 122

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123 |

124 125 128 129 130 131 132 134 135 136 137 138 138 140 141 142 143

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144 145 146 146 148 149 150 151 151 152

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153 | 155 |

Bloody Sunday, 2002 Blow-Up, 1966 Blue Collar, 1978 Blue Velvet, 1986 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969 B ob le Flambeur, 1955, reviewed 1981 Body Heat, 1981 Bonnie and Clyde, 1967 Born on the Fourth of July, 1989 Born Yesterday, 1950 Le Boucher, 1970 Bound for Glory, 1976 Boys Don’t Cry, 1999 Boyz N the Hood, 1991 Brazil, 1985 Bread, Love and Dreams, 1954 Breaker Morant, 1980 The Breakfast Club, 1985 Breaking Away, 1979 Breaking the Waves, 1996 Breathless, 1961 The Bride Wore Black, 1968 T he Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957 Brief Encounter, 1946 A Brief History of Time, 1992 Bringing Up Baby, 1938 Broadcast News, 1987 Brother’s Keeper, 1992 The Buddy Holly Story, 1978 Bull Durham, 1988 Bullitt, 1968 Bus Stop, 1956 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969 The Butcher Boy, 1998 Bye Bye Brasil, 1980

157 | Cabaret, 1972 158 | The Caine Mutiny, 1954

the dazed man is on the ground, Louis, who has disrobed down to his underwear, rides away on the bicycle. And then comes one of the few bits at which the spectators laughed. It is where Louis is greeted by a throng as the winner of the cycling race. Putting to practice some of the ideas of prison, Louis, in course of time, becomes a wonderfully wealthy phonograph manufacturer. His appearance is greatly changed by his prosperity. Eventually Emile is freed from prison, and without knowing that his former cellmate is managing director of the factory he succeeds in getting employment in the works. One day Emile is told that he must appear before the managing director, and to his astonishment he sees Louis, who is at first reluctant to admit his identity. These ex-convicts have a high old time in the factory. In one episode a painting of Louis is used for fractious doings. The prison pals look at the painting and then they throw cakes from a buffet table at it, and they roar with laughter when Louis hurls a stone gin bottle through the center of the canvas. Louis’s labor-saving devices in the factory are beheld in many of the scenes, and in one of the latter interludes he caps all his other ideas by an invention whereby the phonograph parts are assembled automatically after going through a little tunnel. As for the romantic side of the story, Emile, a dreamy sort of fellow most of the time, falls in love with a girl worker named Jeanne, but she is not interested in him. When Louis hears about this he insists on the match between the two, giving Jeanne’s old uncle a check for her dowry. But nothing comes of this forced alliance. The police ultimately learn that Louis is an escaped convict and he decides to flee with his pal. Louis stocks a bag with banknotes; but during a high wind the bag is blown off a table and opens, and soon the

air is filled with 1,000-franc notes and also with the top hats of factory officials who are holding an open-air meeting. In the final fade-out Louis and Emile have discovered liberty away from prison and work—they are happy tramps, glad to get a few sous with which to buy bread. Henri Marchand gives a commendable performance as Emile, and Raymond Cordy is capital as the more vigorous Louis. Rolla France is pleasing as Jeanne, and Paul Olivier is excellent as the girl’s uncle. —M.H., May 18, 1932

Adam’s Rib Directed by George Cukor: written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin: cinematographer. George Folsey: edited by George Boemler: music by Miklos Rozsa: art designers. Cedric Gibbons and William Ferrari: produced by Lawrence Weingarten: released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: Black and white. Running time: 101 minutes. With: Spencer Tracy (Adam Bonner). Katharine Hepburn (Amanda Bonner). Judy Holliday (Doris Attinger). Tom Ewell (Warren Attinger). David Wayne (Kip Lurie). Jean Hagen (Beryl Caighn) and Hope Emerson (Olympia La Pere).

t has been seven years since Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn played Woman of the Year, in which they got great good fun and wisdom out of a husband-wife rivalry. People still think of it fondly—including their studio, M-G-M, which obviously thought of it so fondly that it decided to try again. And that it has done, with equal humor and what should surely be comparable success, in Adam’s Rib, a bang-up frolic, which came to the Capitol yesterday.

But don’t let the basic resemblance lead you to suppose that you’re going to see the same picture. And see it you certainly should. For not only have Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin prepared a novel script for this new husband-wife fandango, but Metro has lined up a cast of brand-new supporting players which deserves a private triumph of its own. Headed by Judy Holliday, the girl who arrived sensationally as a Broadway stage performer in the Kanin farce Born Yesterday, and ably abetted by Tom Ewell, also from Broadway, this cast deserves as much credit as the wonderful Tracy-Hepburn team. With George Cukor deftly directing, one couldn’t ask for more. However, our first thanks this morning should go to the authors of the script, for they are the chief ones responsible for the pleasures of Adam’s Rib. It is their delightful improvising on a nimble and fragile little tale of a violent courtroom rivalry between a lawyer-husband and his lawyer-wife that makes this current picture bounce and spin with thorough glee. Taking a happy couple who are well settled in their careers and presumably wholly acquainted with each other’s eccentricities, Miss Gordon and Mr. Kanin, who also are husband and wife, mix up their charming people by a far-fetched but clever device. They make the husband the prosecutor of a woman who has shot her spouse and they make the wife defense counsel for this miserably unhappy dame. And then they introduce a question of female equality between the two and let them fight it out roundly in the courtroom and in their home. To be sure, the plot is a frail one and the argument is not profound. As a matter of fact, it gets quite fuzzy and vagrant as the picture goes along. And that is the one plain weakness of the whole thing: it is but a spoof, and the authors are forced to wild

devices and shallow nonsense to wind it up. But en route they contrive some grand theatrics, which are all in the motion picture’s range, to make for lively entertainment and passing comment on the home’s felicities. As we say, Mr. Tracy and Miss Hepburn are the stellar performers in this show and their perfect compatibility in comic capers is delightful to see. A line thrown away, a lifted eyebrow, a smile, or a sharp, resounding slap on a tender part of the anatomy is as natural as breathing to them. Plainly, they took great pleasure in playing this rambunctious spoof. And Miss Holliday as the woman who slightly punctures her spouse for a bit of deliberate “cheating” and thus has to stand court trial is a simply hilarious representation of a dumb but stubborn dame. Her perfect New Yorkisms, her blank looks, her pitiful woes are as killingly funny—and as touching— as anything we’ve had in farce this year. Mr. Ewell as her husband is likewise deliciously droll, making of this loutish fellow a fullbodied character. David Wayne as a neighborly lounge-lizard is a glib but slightly too pat type, and Clarence Kolb makes some wonderful faces as a bewildered and unhappy judge. Of Adam’s Rib we might say, in short, that it isn’t solid food but it certainly is meaty and juicy and comically nourishing. —B.C., December 26, 1949

Adaptation Directed by Spike Jonze: written by Charlie Kauf- man and Donald Kaufman. based on the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean: director of photography. Lance Acord: edited by Eric Zumbrunnen: music by Carter Burwell: production designer. KK Barrett: produced by Edward Saxon. Vincent Lan-day and Jonathan

graduate seminar in philosophy conducted by a slightly mad professor, and then edited down into an extralong episode of MTV’s “Real World.” After it’s over, you will want to keep arguing about it, if only in the relative safety of your own brain. The last part—what McKee’s acolytes might call the “third act”—stages a formal death match between Donald’s approach to storytelling and Charlie’s, and sends Orlean and Laroche on to adventures undreamed of in the pages of The New Yorker (though they are, by Hollywood standards, perfectly predictable). Some may find the ending rushed, inconclusive or cynical. I thought its lack of easy resolution was proof of the film’s haphazard, devil-may-care integrity, and its bow to conventional sentiment a mark of sincerity. At one point in The Orchid Thief, Ms. Orlean asks a park ranger named Tony why he thinks people find orchids so seductive. His answer matches both the nonchalance and the insight of this remarkable, impossible film: “Oh, mystery, beauty, unknowability, I suppose. Besides, I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody’s always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.” Charlie Kaufman could hardly have said it better, though perhaps his brother Donald might have. —A.O.S., December 6, 2002

L’Avventura Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni: written (in Italian. with English subtitles) by Mr. Antonioni. Elio Bartolini and Tonino Guerra. based on a story by Mr.

Antonioni: cinematographer. Aldo Scav-arda: edited by Eraldo Da Roma: music by Gio-vanni Fusco: art designer. Piero Poletto: produced by Cino Del Duca: released by Janus Films. Black and white. Running time: 145 minutes. With: Monica Vitti (Claudia). Gabriele Ferzetti (Sandro). Lea Massari (Anna). Dominique Blanchar (Giulia). James Addams (Corrado). Renzo Ricci (Anna’s Father). Esmerelda Ruspoli (Patrizia) and Lelio Luttazi (Raimondo).

atching L’Avventura (The Adventure), which came to the Beekman yesterday, is like trying to follow a showing of a picture at which several reels have got lost. Just when it seems to be beginning to make a dramatic point or to develop a line of continuity that will crystallize into some sense, it will jump into a random situation that appears as if it might be due perhaps three reels later and never explain what has been omitted. At least, that’s how it strikes us. What Michelangelo Antonioni, who wrote and directed it, is trying to get across in this highly touted Italian mystery drama (which is what we take it to be) is a secret he seems to be determined to conceal from the audience. Indeed he stated frankly to a reporter from this paper last week that he expects the customers to search for their own meanings. “I want the audience to work,” he said. That would be all right, if the director would help us a bit along the way, if he would fill in a few of the big potholes in this two-hour-and-twenty-five-minute film. But he doesn’t. Like a breathless storyteller who has a long and detailed story to tell and is so eager to get on to the big doings that he forgets to mention several important things, Signor Antonioni deals only with what seems

Colorplate (page 15): Cool Hand Luke, 1967. Colorplate (opposite): Saving Private Ryan, 1998.

to interest him. He omits such little details as whatever happens to some key characters and why others turn up in certain places and do what they do. For instance, it might be helpful if he would have the kindness to explain what gives on a curious, barren island, where his drama presumably begins. To this lava rock off the coast of Sicily he brings a peculiarly viperous group of jaded and selfish worldings in a conspicuously crowded little yacht. While they are wandering across its waste space, he has one of the party disappear—a sad young woman who has been having a bit of a dido with one of the handsome bachelors in the group. What has happened to this poor young woman? Has she committed suicide? Has her lover stuffed her in a cozy crevice? Signor Antonioni never explains. He just keeps us there on that ugly island for what seems an interminable length of time while the party and police hunt for the body. Then he suddenly jumps the scene to Sicily, where the lover and another young woman in the party somehow meet on strangely disagreeable terms. Has that prelude on the island been symbolic? Are the two, now isolated, meant to be the forlorn and exhausted relics of a social catastrophe? Maybe so, maybe not, but in a short time they are on anything but disagreeable terms. They are suddenly enthusiastic lovers, embracing frequently. However, their affair does not run smoothly. They have doubts, anxieties, violent spats. One time they drive together into an empty city and look at the cold austere facade of a concrete church. (“These build-

ings are madness,” the girl says.) They are lonely amid gay people. One night the man stays away with another girl. The woman finds them together the next morning. They have a dismal reunion in the cheerless dawn. Perhaps Signor Antonioni is saying something valuable in this. We would very much hate to think he isn’t, for he has put a lot of craft into his film. His photography is exquisite—sharp and immensely picturesque. Much of it is shot on location, in the cities and countryside of Sicily, and there is a great deal of beauty and excitement in the pure composition of movement against architectural forms. Signor Antonioni also has great skill in conceiving and conveying provocative isolated images. A shot of the woman walking from her first assignation past a lineup of ogling, leering men, or one of her running distractedly down an endlessly long hall to seek aid, flash vivid concepts of feeling. And the actors are all provocative types and interesting performers of the odd things they have to do. Gabriele Ferzetti as the lover has a taut, tireless energy, and Monica Vitti, as his second mistress, is weirdly coquettish and intense. Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar, and James Addams make odd sybarites— until they are dropped like hot potatoes. Several others fit into that class. A wry musical score and soundtrack and English subtitles that seem inadequate contribute to the mystification of this picture, which won prizes in Europe. ‘Tis strange. Or maybe Signor Antonioni isn’t out to prove anything—just to give us a weird adventure. Well, it gives us that. —B.C., April 15, 1961

Babette’s Feast Directed by Gabriel Axel: written (in Danish and French. with English subtitles) by Mr. Axel. based on the short story by Isak Dinesen: cinematographer. Henning Kristiansen: edited by Finn Henriksen: music by Per Norgard and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: produced by Just Betzer and Bo Christensen: released by Orion Classics. Running time: 102 minutes. With: Stéphane Audran (Babette). Birgitte Federspiel (Older Martine). Bodil Kjer (Older Filippa). Vibeke Hastrup (Younger Martine). Hanne Stensgard (Younger Filippa), Jarl Kulle (Older Lorenz Lowenhielm). Gudmar Wivesson (Younger Lorenz Lowenhielm). JeanPhilippe Lafont (Achille Papin) and Bibi Andersson (Lady from the Court).

aking a longish tale, Babette’s Feast, from Isak Dinesen’s last collection, Anecdotes of Destiny (1958), Gabriel Axel has made a very handsome, very literary movie that does justice to the precision of the Dinesen prose, to the particularity of her concerns and to the ironies that so amused her.

What with the English subtitles that translate the Danish dialogue and soundtrack narration, one spends almost as much time reading Babette’s Feast as watching it. Subtitles, under most circumstances, are simply a necessary intrusion. In this case, however, they have the effect of subtly amplifying the distinctive voice of the storyteller, who can make great leaps forward and backward in time without destroying the commanding unity of the tale. Dinesen is just offscreen throughout. Babette’s Feast is set in the second half of the nineteenth century on Denmark’s remote Jutland coast, in a small fishing village whose most notable inhabitants are a fervent Protestant pastor and his two beautiful, pious daughters. Martine and Filippa. Mindful of their responsibilities to their father and his reformist mission, each daughter turns down a beloved suitor. Martine’s is a young officer, Filippa’s a famous French opera star who has been vacationing on the Jutland coast. After their father’s death the two young women slip into unmarried middle age, carrying on the pastor’s work with saintly dedication. One night in the middle of a terrible storm, Babette (Stephane Audran) turns up at their door, battered by weather and circumstances, and carrying a letter of introduction from Filippa’s opera singer, now old and retired. Having lost both her husband and son in the Paris Commune, Babette, he explains, needs political sanctuary. He begs the sisters to take her in. The sisters, who are nearly penniless, accept Babette’s offer to act as their unpaid housekeeper. In time, Babette becomes an indispensable though ever enigmatic member of the household. Her Roman Catholicism is politely ignored. She brings order and efficiency to the sisters’ lives as defenders of their father’s aging flock, which, over the years,

has become split by old grievances and jealousies. Babette cooks, cleans, washes, and sews, always remaining aloof and proud, at a distance from her benefactors. All of this is by way of being the prelude to the film’s extended, funny, and moving final sequence, a spectacular feast, the preparation and execution of which reveal Babette’s secret and the nature of her sustaining glory. It’s not telling too much to report that this glory is Art-in Babette’s case, a very special God-given talent. Babette’s Feast is an affirmation of Art as the force by which, in the words of the old pastor (who never quite realized what he was saying) “righteousness and bliss,” otherwise known as the spirit and the flesh, shall be reconciled. Mr. Axel, a filmmaker new to me who has worked as much in France as in Denmark, treats the Dinesen text with self-effacing but informed modesty. The understated courage of the characters, the barren beauty of the landscape and, finally, the unexpected appearance of salvation are all effortlessly defined in images and language that reflect the writer’s style—swift, clean, witty, and elegant. Miss Audran dominates the movie in the same way that Babette takes charge of the sisters’ household and the village. The actress is still one of the great natural resources of European films. The beautiful Birgitte Federspiel, remembered from Carl Dreyer’s classic, Ordet, appears as the older Martine and Bodil Kjer as the older Filippa. Jean-Philippe Lafont plays the expansive opera singer and Bibi Andersson is seen in a cameo role as a patron of the arts. Every member of the cast is excellent. A note of caution: do not see Babette’s Feast on an empty stomach. Before the film ends, the feast itself, which includes, among

other things, fresh terrapin soup, quail in volau-vents, blinis, caviar, and baba au rhum, may drive you out to the nearest three-star restaurant. It could be a dangerously expensive evening. —V.C., October 1, 1987

Back to the Future Directed by Robert Zemeckis: written by Mr. Zemeckis and Bob Gale: cinematographer. Dean Cundey: edited by Arthur Schmidt and Harry Keramidas: music by Alan Silvestri: art designer. Todd Hollowell: produced by Mr. Gale and Neil Canton: released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 116 minutes. With: Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly), Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Emmett Brown). Lea Thompson (Lorraine Baines). Crispin Glover (George McFly). Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen), Claudia Wells (Jennifer Parker). Marc McClure (Dave McFly) and Wendie Jo Sperber (Linda McFly).

he people in Robert Zemeckis’s films have the great fun of living out their craziest daydreams. And the crazier the better: Mr. Zemeckis, together with his screenwriting partner Bob Gale, has progressed from teenage kamikazes willing to risk anything to meet the Beatles (I Wanna Hold Your Hand) to salesmen ready to peddle any form of figurative snake oil (Used Cars) to a timid pulp novelist who travels to the tropics (Romancing the Stone, with a screenplay by Diane Thomas) and becomes her own most adventuresome heroine. Mr. Zemeckis has now gone himself one better with Back to the Future, about a boy who wonders what his parents were like in their salad days and is miraculously given the chance to find out. What child wouldn’t

love the chance to tell the two lovestruck teenagers who will someday become his mother and father: “Hey, if you guys ever have kids and one of them, when he’s eight years old, accidentally sets fire to the living room rug—go easy on him, willya?” Back to the Future, which opens today at Loew’s State and other theaters, takes this sweet, ingenious premise and really runs with it. In less resourceful hands, the idea might quickly have worn thin; it might have taken an uncomfortable turn, since the story’s young hero must face the transformation of his plump, stern, middle-aged mother into a flirtatious young beauty. But Mr. Zemeckis is able both to keep the story moving and to keep it from going too far. He handles Back to the Future with the kind of inventiveness that indicates he will be spinning funny, whimsical tall tales for a long time to come. The hero of the film is named Marty McFly, though his mother insists, when he ventures back in time thirty years, on calling him Calvin Klein. The film’s observation that, in those days, a name sewn onto the back of one’s pants was probably one’s own is only one of the shrewd, rueful contrasts it draws between 1955 and the present day. Once Marty (played winningly by Michael J. Fox) steps into the specially equipped DeLorean owned by a mad scientist friend of his and floors the accelerator, he finds himself in a much simpler world. The neighborhood where he will someday live hasn’t even been built. The local soda jerk thinks anyone who orders a Pepsi Free (“If you want a Pepsi you gotta pay for id”) is being a wise guy. The town’s movie theater is playing a Ronald Reagan film, and when Marty announces that Mr. Reagan will be President some day, he is met with a stare of disbelief and a sarcastic remark about Vice President Jerry Lewis.

While keeping the film well stocked with similar witticisms and giving the production the muted, well-groomed look of 1950’s advertising and television, Mr. Zemeckis keeps the film firmly anchored in McFly family history. Dad (Crispin Glover) is a nerd, while Mother (Lea Thompson) is a demure beauty; it should be noted that Mr. Glover and Miss Thompson are funny and credible both as parents and as teenagers. But there is a danger that they will never meet, particularly since Marty’s arrival has permanently altered their history. This, and Marty’s decade-hopping rapport with the mad scientist (Christopher Lloyd) whose DeLorean he borrowed, keeps Back to the Future very busy indeed. Even so, it still manages to end with a surprise. One of the most appealing things about Back to the Future is its way of putting nostalgia gently in perspective. Like Marty, Mr. Zemeckis takes a bemused but unsentimental view of times gone by. And he seems no less fascinated by the future, which is understandable. His own looks very bright. —J.M., July 3, 1985

The Bad and the Beautiful Directed by Vincente Minnelli: written by Charles Schnee. based on a story by George Bradshaw: cinematographer. Robert Surtees: edited by Conrad A. Nervig: music by David Raksin: art designers. Cedric Gibbons and Edward Carfagno: produced by John Houseman: released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Black and white. Running time: 116 minutes. With: Lana Turner (Georgia). Kirk Douglas (Jonathan). Walter Pidgeon (Harry Pebbel). Dick Powell (James Lee). Barry Sullivan (Fred). Gloria Grahame (Rosemary). Gilbert Roland (“Gaucho”). Leo G. Carroll (Henry Whitfield) and Vanessa Brown (Kay).

he widely circulated notion that there are monsters in Hollywood, aside and apart entirely from the grim and ghoulish get of Frankenstein, is given unqualified endorsement, with no reservations and no holds barred, in Metro’s The Bad and the Beautiful, which came to the Music Hall yesterday. For the hero of this relentless saga is a Hollywood producer who is a heel, a West Coast, Noel Cowardish scoundrel, a perfect Kirk Douglas—type bum. And the fine job of drawing him and quartering him that is done in the course of two hours by a top staff of Metro dissectors is enough to make the blood run sour and cold. First, they slit him down the middle and show, in considerable detail, how he blandly double-crosses a director who has helped him through his early struggling years. Then they lop off another portion and show, in even greater detail, how he drags and romances a sad young actress to glittering triumph and then gives her the air. Finally, with what’s left, they show us how he baits a young author to Hollywood, then throws the guy’s wife to a wolfish actor just so he’ll be free to work on a script. Through all of this gory demonstration of the miserable innards of a man, the doctors are also displaying the innards of Hollywood. They move from producers’ offices to studio sets and screening-rooms, from cheap boarding houses to Beverly Hills mansions, from well-laden bars to beds, pretty well indicating—or suggesting—what goes on therein. They talk about “shooting on location,” “going over the budget,” “sneak previews,” and “audience response,” and they make a few jabs at movie critics, European directors, Pulitzer Prizes and such—all of them incidental nettles that get under the average Hollywood person’s skin. But, somehow, for all this probing and all this intimate looking around amid the realistic paraphernalia and artificial clutter of

Hollywood, there does not emerge a clear picture of exactly how movies are made. It is a crowded and colorful picture, but it is choppy, episodic, and vague. And what is much more annoying, for all the carving and digging that are done in the producer’s insides, it is still not discovered what makes this vicious fellow run. To be sure, Charles Schnee’s script makes some effort to explain him as the cynical son of a pioneer movie producer who has died broke and hated in Hollywood. And Kirk Douglas plays the fellow with all that arrogance in the eyes and jaw that suggest a ruthless disposition covering up for a hurt and bitter soul. But this doesn’t justify his meanness or his broad inconsistencies. The fellow is a picturesque composite of Hollywood rumor—a prototype of many legends. But that’s all he is. He’s a cliché. The same might be said of Lana Turner as the incredible girl who is raised from a drunken extra to staggering stardom by the willpower of this man. Frankly, she is no more convincing as the drunken extra than she is as the star. She is an actress playing an actress, and neither one is real. A howling act in a wildly racing auto—pure bunk—is the top of her speed. As a veteran producer, Walter Pidgeon does give some notion, withal, of the squirming and agonizing that goes on in Hollywood. Barry Sullivan as the gypped director, Dick Powell as the misused novelist, Gilbert Roland as a lame-brained Latin actor, and Paul Stewart as a loyal publicist also perform with proper motions under Vincente Minnelli’s crafty hand, and Leo G. Carroll is delicious in a bit as a British director. John Houseman’s skill as a producer is also evident in the slickness of this film. But certainly he and all the others who worked on it know much more about the subject of Hollywood egos and championship chumps than is revealed. —B.C., January 16, 1953

The Baker’s Wife Directed by Marcel Pagnol: written (in French. with English subtitles) by Mr. Pagnol. based on the novel Jean Le Bleu by Jean Giono: cinematographers. Georges Benoit. R. Lendruz and N. Daries: edited by Suzanne de Troeye: music by Vincent Scotto: produced by Robert Hakim and Raymond Hakim. Black and white. Running time: 130 minutes. With: Raimu (Aimable. the Baker). Ginette Leclerc (Aurelie. the Baker’s Wife). Charles Moulin (Dominique. the Shepherd). Robert Vattier (The Priest). Robert Bassac (The Schoolteacher) and Fernand Charpin (The Marquis).

n top of Harvest, which reverently told how the seed was sowed and the grain reaped, the French now have added an impious chapter about the flour, its baking, and The Baker’s Wife. A perfectly scandalous story it is, too; the kind of story Frenchmen were born to tell—the French being, as our old schoolbooks used to explain, “a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines.” Certainly no other breed could have told it so cutely, with such disarming good humor, with such tolerance and wit. It opened at the World Theatre last night and we commend it to you for many reasons, not the least being its proof that the French have not lost the gift of laughter and the ability to communicate it to others. It seems that the new baker had a wife who ran off with the marquis’s shepherd on the marquis’s best horse. Now this was a calamity. The marquis thought highly of his horse, the baker thought still more Colorplate (page 21): Casablanca, 1942. Colorplate (opposite): Superman, 1978.

highly of his wife, the village thought still, still more highly of the baker’s bread which he, poor man, had not the heart to bake, so grieved he was. He went to the church for consolation and the stern young priest was preaching a highly moralistic, but unsympathetic, sermon about every wife’s need for a Good Shepherd. He went to the tavern and he grew gloriously drunk and he mourned man’s inhumanity to man. “I invited this fellow into my house for a cookie,” he says, “and he took all I had.” With a mean side glance at the curate, he compliments the Pope for his diplomacy in speaking only Latin—”the Italians couldn’t understand him.” Well, finally, they bring his wife back, and the marquis gets his horse, and the baker bakes again, with five extra loaves for the poor. The wife? Oh, she’s forgiven. We’ve said this is a French picture. Marcel Pagnol, the director who filmed Harvest, has adapted, written, and directed this one too, and with much the same appreciation of his material. His village vignettes are superb and completely revelatory, telling us all we need know about the village and its life, telling it so deftly we scarcely are conscious of his having bothered to describe it. And that is important, for it is the human background, more than the architectural, that must highlight his comedy of the community problem created by the scandalous—and terribly inconvenient—defection of the baker’s wife. After all, even a righteous curate must have bread, and even a profligate marquis and a heretical schoolteacher; in the face of a common emergency they must set aside their normal enmity and combine against the foe: pantheists for once. BBut the bulwark of the comedy, of course, is the baker himself, the great god Pan who goes by the name of Raimu. An Olympian clown Raimu, with an equatorial waistline, a buttony mustache, a foolscap of knitted

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THE “10 BEST” 1931–2019 Times critics usually named 10 best films at the end of the year, but occasionally there were more or fewer than 10 if the critics so deemed. From 1991 through 1994, moreover the “10 Best” designation was dropped in favor of more boad-based year-end roundups It should also be noted that not every best 10 choice is included in the books’ 1,000 reviews. Some have been displaced by other titles that from a current critical vantage point seem more important.

1931

1933

Arrowsmith Bad Girl La Chienne (The Bitch) City Lights A Connecticut Yankee Frankenstein The Guardsman Private Lives Skippy The Smiling slieutenant Tabu

Berkeley Square Cavalcade Dinner at Eight His Double Life The Invisible Man Little Women Morgenrot The Private Life of Henry VIII Reunion in Vienna State Fair

1934

1932 A Bill of Divorcement Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde The Doomed Battalion Grand Hotel Maedchen in Uniform The Mouthpiece One Hour with You Der Raub der Mona Lisa Reserved for Ladies Trouble in Paradise

The Battle Catherine the Great The First World War The House of Rothschild It Happened One Night The Lost Patrol Man of Aran One Night of Love Our Daily Bread The Thin Man