The Manchurian Candidate

John Frankenheimer, 1962, bw (8.6*)
#81, Top Ranked 1000 Films, 2011 Update, all polls.

This is the film that set the standard for cold-war thrillers, and also put director John Frankenheimer on the map. The film features a thankfully subdued Frank Sinatra in a dramatic role as a Korean War veteran, who returns to America a changed man. He suspects that a hero from his unit, played by Laurence Harvey, may have been brainwashed by the North Koreans. The problem of course is that the entire story could be in his own imagination, he has no evidence.

As the story unfolds, we find out in short flashbacks a little more of what happened in Korea, while the plot moves toward timed conclusion using the countdown technique, which works well here. One of those 'we have three days to save the free world kind of things', because of a plot already in motion which could have world-shaping implications.

Frankenheimer expertly plays into the hands of the paranoid right-wingers who, led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 50’s, began to suspect a red commie hiding inside every industry and business in the U.S. He creates a nighmarish vision of their worst paranoia, that the communists are able to alter the minds of heroic American citizens and then unleash them on an unsuspecting American public – kind of like what Wall St. has done in the new milennium with even greater success than our enemies imagined.

Frankenheimer was a master at a low-key type of thriller that maintained great tension and apprehension throughout, and events seemed to be moving unhampered toward some bone-chilling conclusion. For me, he went on to make even better thrillers after this one. The Train (1964) bw, with Burt Lancaster, was about a Frenchman trying to stop the Nazis from carting off valuable art treasures back to Germany in a trainload of stolen French culture pilfered from the best museums.

Even better was Seven Days in May (1964) bw, in which Lancaster plays a right-wing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who is upset with a left-wing President, expertly played by Fredric March in his last performance, who he feels is weakening the U.S. politically, so he plots a military overthrow of the government, while an officer on his staff, Kirk Douglas, slowly suspects the Chairman. This is eerily similar to the arguments made by the CIA against John Kennedy, who had decimated the branch with massive cutbacks in manpower - Langley was said to resemble a 'ghost town' during his administration.

More recently, Frankenheimer directed the excellent heist film Ronin (1998), featuring Robert De Niro and Jean Reno leading a team to recover a stolen briefcase for a suspected IRA terrorist, Natascha McElhone. This barely noticed film runs rings around the big budget, non-stop car chase films, with an intelligent script that allows for some development of complex characters.

Stick with the original (#81 on the all-time top 1000), the remake with Denzel Washington is ranked 2098th by comparison.

Whoa, is this James Bond or some Korean war vet?

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Enemy at the Gates

Jean-Jacques Annaud, 2001 (7.8*)
U.S.-UK-Germany-Ireland
Memorial Day War-athon #3
Enemy at the Gates is a World War II story about the battle of Stalingrad. In the biggest battle of the war, German troops got bogged down in their Russian invasion at this city, and along with Russians, it's estimated that over 2 million troops died in a little over a year, as the war became a long stalemate, while winter tooks it's toll on the Germans (the Russian soldiers were prepared, and wore mink).

The battle became a city battle, block by block, and eventually became nothing more than a war of snipers. Those foolish enough to show their head got a bullet through the helmet. Each side calls on better and better snipers until they are down to the best teachers from each side, two legendary snipers, one German, one Russian. This is based on a true story, in fact, Russian Sergeant Vassili Zaitsev was a real person whose sniper rifle is still an exhibit in a Russian museum.

An excellent cast sells what would have been just another war film. Jude Law and Joseph Fiennes star as rival snipers, Ed Harris is a scary, high-ranking Nazi, and Rachel Weisz is a Red Army sergeant, Tania (a real historical war hero of Russia). Some Russians online say it's historically inaccurate in order to be a more sellable film, that's it's no longer historic information. If you can put that aside, it's a riveting war film, just nothing too deep.

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Seven Beauties

Lina Wertmüller, Italy, 1975 (9.0*)

This would have to be considered the masterpiece of famed Italian director Lina Wertmüller (a former ass't director to Fellini), who wrote and directed this wartime story of a small-time Italian named Pasqualino with 'seven beauties' as sisters (hence the title, also perhaps a slight reference to Fellini from his former assistant), wonderfully played by Giancarlo Giannini in a performance of a lifetime. We see his character before the war, his strutting pomposity and self-importance (he is only large in his own imagination), his attention to every detail of personal appearance. Then reality strikes along with WW2, he ends up in a POW camp for killing a man who pimped out one of his sisters.

Giannini is perfect, especially his body language and the range of facial expressions he uses. He makes us laugh during even the most squeamish of scenes, as when he's seducing the giant prison kapo wonderfully underplayed by Shirley Stoller [photo below]. Somehow he manages to be both comic and tragic at the same time, something Roberto Benigni failed to do but was rewarded anyway (with two Oscars®) for Life Is Beautiful, in a performance I saw as so flippant that it robbed the film of its intended poignancy. (I saw this as an homage to Chaplin, just not as well achieved by Benigni)

This film never loses its tragic edge, the humor merely underscores the bleak circumstances for all its characters. Irony and subtlety are used perfectly to describe the fragile and tragic human condition, as individuals must decide how far they must descend in order to survive. This fact alone probably means that European audiences will appreciate it more than American ones, as we've never been totally occupied by enemy armies.

Shirley Stoller as the POW camp commandant

This film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Director (John Avildsen won for Rocky, one of the worst choices of all time, it should have been Sidney Lumet for Network), Best Foreign Language Film (the forgettable Black and White In Color won), Best Screenplay (directly for the screen, Paddy Chayefsky deservedly won for Network), all three for Wertmüller [photo below], who became the first woman nominated for a best director award; and also Best Actor for Giancarlo Giannini. She was also nominated by the Directors Guild of America, losing to Lumet for Network, and another foreign film nomination at the Golden Globes, losing to the inferior Bergman film Face to Face.


Note: none of the directors who lost to first-time director Avildsen that night (Bergman for Face to Face, Lumet for Network, Pakula for All the President's Men, and Wertmuller) ever won an Oscar®.


[As #701 in our recommended film count, we decided to stick with the 'seven' title theme. We've now done The Seven Year Itch, The Seventh Seal, Seven Samurai, and Seven Beauties.]

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Gorky Park

Michael Apted, 1983 (8.1*)
A homicidal puzzle turns into a Cold War mystery in this entertaining spy thriller. William Hurt plays a Russian detective, who is baffled by three bodies discovered in Moscow's public Gorky Park, which have had their faces removed to prevent identification.

In the course of his investigation he discovers that the upper levels of government are stonewalling his efforts - it seems that he may have uncovered an uncomfortable conspiracy. He crosses paths with mysterious American businessman Lee Marvin, who has a few skeletons in his closet, even if he's not responsible for these murders. Joanna Pacula provides the proper eye candy and romantic interest, while Brian Dennehy provides his particular brand of homicidal bravado (he was a real assassin in Vietnam, often killing targets with a knife).

Maybe not a bona fide classic, but still a better mystery than most that are filmed nowdays, and one with some unique and unforgettable images, especially toward the film's climax. If you enjoy all these new forensic investigative police drama, here's one that takes place in Russia, and in a large-budget film with a couple of previous Oscar® winners in Hurt and Marvin.

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Seven Days in May

John Frankenheimer, 1964, bw (9.2*)
[Posted on Burt Lancaster's birthday, who would have been 97 today]

One of director Frankenheimer's best is also one of the most interesting and rewarding from the long career of impeccable actor Burt Lancaster, Oscar® winner for Elmer Gantry. Here he plays an ultra-patriotic military hero, General Scott, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, a likely future Presidential candidate, and a vocal critic of President Fredric March (who has two well-deserved Oscars® for actor, acting in his last film) and his support of a nuclear disarmament treaty with the USSR.

Leading a surge of anti-presidential sentiment are a phalanx of right-wingers, who use television to stir up the public against the treaty (some things never change). Kirk Douglas plays a staffer of General Scott's who thinks he uncovers some coded messages and a subversive plot within the military. With a countdown style plot, the viewer is in 'edge of the seat' status throughout the entire film. An aging but still classy Ava Gardner adds some romantic interest, which seems a bit superfluous to this plot.

Faithfully adapted from the best-selling novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II (with a screenplay from Rod Serling), Frankenheimer has made one of the best political thrillers of all time, in classic black and white, with almost documentary style cinematography from Ellsworth Fredericks. Frankenheimer said that the scene with Fredric March confronting Burt Lancaster in the White House was the most rewarding he ever shot (after March requested many extra rehearsals) - with three Oscars® between the two actors, it's a rare classic mano a mano between two of the best in front of the camera. A very spooky scenario for those who think "it can't happen here".

Lancaster was Frankenheimer's favorite actor, of whom he said "just watching him walk across the room was art in itself". In Frankenheimer's WW2 classic The Train, Burt did all his own stunts, once leaping on a moving train, and often limping badly from an injury that occurred during the shooting.

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The Tunnel

Roland Suso Richter, 2001, Germany (8.3*)
Based on a true story from the 50’s of East German swimmer Harry Melchior who defected to West Germany then enlisted the aid of an odd assortment of diggers to see if they could dig a 145-meter tunnel to the east to help their relatives also escape to the west. This is a riveting film, if lengthy (nearly 3 hrs), that manages to maintain its tension throughout, and is a better escape film than the obviously Hollywooden Great Escape, and without any big stars as well. Mixing dark color with some grainy black & white sections, director Ricther manages to maintain a near documentary feel in a story that should have been told decades ago. Reminiscent of the Leon Uris novel Mila 18, about trapped Jews tunneling out of the Warsaw ghetto.

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From Russia With Love

Terence Young, 1963 (8.3*)The second James Bond film is the best of the Sean Connery ones, with a more realistic plot, and with Robert Shaw as the best assassin of all, also classy Italian Daniela Bianchi as the only "Bond girl" in the whole film. Veteran European actress Lotte Lenya also sparkles as Russian assassin Colonel Rosa Klebb (who made the ET list of top 20 Bond women!), who deals her injustice with a poisoned blade in her shoe!

We get introduced to organizations of initials, in this case S.P.E.C.T.R.E., a group of criminals outside the KGB even, beyond anyone’s control, but we only see the hands and cat of its leader, Blofeld, later parodied by Mike Myers as Dr. Evil in Austin Powers, who also parodied Klebb.

The plot involves SPECTRE orchestrating the British Secret Service into stealing a decoding machine from Instanbul with the hopes of getting it and Bond themselves in a two-in-one operation. This movie rolls from Instanbul and across Europe in a terrific road film on a train, then a boat, perhaps Ian Fleming’s homage to Hitchcock. Many say this is the best 007 film.

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Dr. Strangelove

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dir: Stanley Kubrick, 1964, bw (10*)

Best Picture (BAA)

AFI Top 100

A perfect black comedy, even in black and white like a documentary, a satire of the cold war and nuclear paranoia.

The story begins when renegade Gen. Jack D. Ripper, Sterling Hayden in his best role, decides to attack the Soviet Union ("they're messing with our precious bodily fluids") with his nuclear bomber group. Peter Sellers (robbed of an Oscar for this!) has a field day playing three parts: Mandrake, the nervous British assistant to Ripper, the baffled President of the U.S. inside the war room, as well as the title character, a Nazi scientist confined to a wheel chair who's an expert on the "doomsday" weapon, and who can't control his hand, which both gives the Nazi salute and attempts to strangle himself!

In fact, Kubrick also wanted Sellers to play the bomber pilot that Slim Pickens made famous, and that character wouldn't be the same without the Texas persona; Sellers said "I can't play everybody". George C. Scott is hilarious as a gung-ho general in the war room, a character seemingly based on Gen. George Patton ("we can catch the Russkies with their pants down!") . A classic in every sense, probably Kubrick's tightest film, beginning to end, terrific pace.

Quote: Gentlemen, there's no fighting in here - this is the war room! (Sellers as President)

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The Russians are Coming

The Russians are Coming

(yes, the title has it twice)

Dir: Norman Jewison, 1966 (8.5*)

Best Picture (GG)

Hilarious spoof of the cold war and patriotism, as a Russian submarine gets too close to New England and runs aground. Second-in-command Alan Arkin (Best actor nominee) in a starmaking role, is sent ashore to get a tugboat to pull the sub out and hopefully avoid an international incident. He first runs down the street yelling "Emergency! Emergency! everyone to get from streets!" - Yep, no one will know the Russians are here. Police chief Brian Keith tries to keep the town cool, but war vet Paul Ford creates a vigilante army immediately to repel what he convinces folks is a "real invasion" - homeland security at its finest. This also stars Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Eve Marie Saint and a battalion of others. In an era when "big crazy casts running amock" populated many comedies, this was probably the best one. Nominated for 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, won none.

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The Lives of Others

Florian H. von Donnersmarck, 2007, Germany (9.2*)

Best Foreign Film (AA, BAA)

One of only five films to win both the U.S. and British academy award for foreign language film.

This terrific German film on domestic espionage recalls Coppola's The Conversation. It's a tense, superbly filmed study of the state police of East Germany (the Stasi) using electronic surveillance on a popular writer, who may or may not be guilty of publishing subversive material, which is cause for disappearance.

For me, it was engrossing throughout, and maintains a high level of tension because you know this could be a life or death situation for all those being spied upon by the police. Everyone who comes into contact with the writer unknowingly puts themselves in danger as well.

Won both the U.S. and British academy award for Best Foreign Language Film, was nominated for Best Picture in Britain, and is deserving of all it's awards.

Rated 8.5 at IMDB, ranked #56 there, and that's all-time, all films in the world. Rated 89 at Metacritics; both are extremely high ratings. Winner of 64 awards out of 86 nominations, an extremely high ratio.

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