Splendor in the Grass

Elia Kazan, 1961 (8.6*)
Ranked #1003 on our 2011 update of the Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net, all polls.

Not considered one of Kazan’s best, certainly not when compared to On the Waterfront (1951) or A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) bw, or even up against A Face in the Crowd (1957), or his first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), this film of a 50’s high school romance still stands up well today, and seems to speak to a universal audience from any era. This list of films shows what a great director Kazan was, if you can get past the HUAC hearings and just judge his art on its own merit.

Warren Beatty made his film debut as a popular, wealthy, and handsome high school senior, Bud, of course also a star athlete – the quintessential American dream in a man, and for his film debut, gives a sensitive and believable performance. He was the younger brother of actress Shirley MacLaine, and before this was best known as the boyfriend of Tuesday Weld on The Life and Loves of Dobie Gillis on tv, playing a popular, wealthy, and handsome high schooler in that romantic comedy.

Natalie Wood plays his less wealthy girlfriend, Deenie, from the wrong side of the tracks to Bud's bigoted, narrow-minded, capitalist father, honestly portrayed by Pat Hingle in his most memorable role - he was so good you wanted to hit him with a baseball bat. I don’t think it was Beatty’s debut that surprised people, it was the full-bodied performance by Natalie Wood, in what for me is a career-making performance that proved she was more than just another pretty face, and she was undoubtably that.

In this story, amid the pangs of youthful desire, Bud is first having his advances denied by Deenie, who, of course, has marriage in mind and doesn’t want to be a ‘bad girl’. Then we see Bud’s slutty older sister who gets drunk, then literally has men lining up for a chance with her. We begin to get the idea that this is a more complex film romance than most. Later, when Deenie finally wants to go the distance because she fears she may lose Bud, he backs off, no doubt psychologically damaged by his dysfunctional family. As a result, Deenie has your standard teenage nervous breakdown.

This movie grew on me over time, and though not Kazan’s best, it’s still better than 95% of the movie romances, thanks to the power of William Inge’s original play and Kazan’s great touch with actors. His films produced more Oscar® winning performances is history than anyone except William Wyler – Wyler leads 13 to 8, so even Kazan is a distant second to the great Wyler.

I find this film to always be honestly touching, and it speaks to those who did grow up on the wrong side of the tracks (for me, right next to both the railroad tracks and an old cotton mill). Like many Kazan films, it says a lot about class bigotry and alienation within our society, which is especially tough for teenagers to deal with because they’re just gaining the experiences that progress them into adulthood, and don’t have the wisdom or patience to withstand the prejudices of adults that are often taught to their children as well.

Read more...

One, Two, Three

Billy Wilder, 1961, bw (8.6*)
One of Wilder's funniest films, a spoof of both capitalism and cold war politics. This is also the last film of James Cagney, and it's a fine one to bow out with - I can't think of any other comedy of his that is this funny from beginning to end, never marred by a message or anything serious (such as Wilder's The Apartment, or Cagney's other late comedy gem in Mister Roberts).

Cagney plays the Coca-Cola man in Berlin, and he's chomping at the bit to open up the "commie market" behind the Iron Curtain, and sell Coke to another 200 million people. At about this time, he gets the air-headed daughter of the Coke CEO, Pamela Tiffin as Scarlett, dumped into his care until her dad's arrival, along with her leftist slogan spouting boyfriend from East Berlin, Horst Bucholtz, who is dim enough to not really understand what he's talking about.

Cagney's dilemna is the impending arrival of the CEO (Howard St. John) - he's got to somehow either get rid of Bucholtz or convert him to capitalism quickly, so this puts a countdown timer on the film's plot. There are other plot twists I won't reveal here.

Cagney is quick and sharp in this, with perfect comic timing. There's plenty of rapid-fire dialogue to help, similar to the Howard Hawks gem His Girl Friday. The pace may seem a little exhausting, but it works in comic farce like this one. Wilder also gets to poke fun at both sides in this one, making them all look like caricatures of idealogical propaganda, as Cagney thinks getting communists to drink Coca-Cola will turn them into capitalists.

Wilder shot this film in Berlin (at one point using the Brandenberg Gate), and complete it just one year before the wall was built.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

Read more...

Il Posto

Ermanno Olmi, 1961, Italy, bw (8.4*)
This is one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. A kid goes into post-war Milan to get a job at a major company, and we follow him from home to the interview, which also involves some simple tests. While there he meets an attractive girl also on a job search. The two flirt through with minor chit-chat, but they don't know if they'll see each other again if either is not hired.

The only drama in the film comes from them getting hired or not. This is Italian neo-realism at its most realistic. Director Olmi not only makes this work, thanks to all amateur actors, but with a great director's touch actually keeps us riveted on the mundane as if life itself was about to break out. This is on many all-time top 1000 film polls.

Read more...

A Raisin in the Sun

Daniel Petrie, 1961 (8.6*)
Winner of the Gary Cooper Award at Cannes

One of the first major plays to deal with the frustrations and economic plight of lower-class black families in urban America, from author Lorraine Hansberry, makes an emotional tour de force film for a terrific cast, led by Sidney Poitier as the sole-surviving adult male of the family, Walter Lee Younger. He shares a small two-bedroom tenement apartment in Chicago with his wife, his son, who is forced to sleep on the couch, and his mother and sister, who share the other bedroom.

Even though he has a steady job as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family, the other adults are forced to engage in part-time work in stereotypical jobs, such as kitchen, maid and laundry work. His sister, a part-time student, has dreams of becoming a doctor, while Sidney has dreams of making it big in some emerging business opportunity, as a friend did in dry cleaning.

Most of the film takes place in the small apartment, so we feel both the claustrophobia and despair of their situation. The mother immigrated there from the deep south when a teen, in order to escape racism and to find some opportunity for advancement out of poverty, which until her husband's death has been an elusive and unattainable dream.

The play and film begin as a glimmer of hope is on its way in the form of a life insurance check for ten thousand following the death of his father, who also lived in the apartment for most of his adult life as well. His mother, played by Claudia McNeil in a Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated performance as the new head of the family, hasn't decided yet what to do with all the money, while the rest of the family dreams what it could mean to each of them. Along the way we get to see a very young Lou Gossett, Jr., and Ivan Dixon in small parts as romantic interests of the sister.

It may seem a little stagy, but it's obvious that director Petrie wanted to keep the feel and intimacy of the play. At times it seems a bit overemotional perhaps, with some acting bordering on histrionics; nevertheless, the entire cast turns in excellent, heart-rending performances, led by Poitier and Ruby Dee as his wife. This is a tough pill to swallow, but if you've grown up poor or within a minority, it feels right on target and gives honest expression to the plight of the economically deprived in this over-abundant yet unequal nation. Given the current economic climate, it truly seems that some things never change.

Quote: "God seems to have only given black people dreams, but also their children in order to provide hope for those dreams."

Note: This was the first Broadway play written by a black woman and directed by a black man.

Read more...

Viridiana

Luis Bunuel, 1961, Spain, bw (7.9*)
For those who would like a more normal, non-surrealist intro to the surrealist friend of Dali, Spanish director Luis Bunuel (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), this is a good early film with a nearly straightforward story. A nun named Virigiana, played by Silvia Pinal, gets word that her uncle, played by Bunuel favorite Fernando Rey, is ill and aging, which isn't entirely true. She doesn’t really want to leave the convent just before her consecration but the Mother Superior orders her to go.

There at her uncle’s estate, she realizes the wealth he has and that she can do some good with it after all. She visits the town and invites several of the local homeless beggars to come live at the estate as long as they respect everyone and don’t fight and follow simple rules. The ensuing events test her faith as well as faith in mankind. Rather than an apparently wandering film like Discreet Charm, this story has a cohesive progression to an end, which should delight those who haven’t found Bunuel understandable to this point. He admits in interviews that he rarely has a story in mind, and just largely improvises when the cameras roll. In this film, he apparently had more of a script and perhaps it shows as this is his most critically acclaimed film.

Read more...

Purple Noon

Rene Clement, 1961, France (7.4*)
This French film was the first cinematic version of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Mr. Ripley. The blue-eyed matinee-idol Alain Delon plays Tom Ripley, who is in Europe with a childhood friend, played by Maurice Ronet. Ripley is there at the hire of his friend’s father to convince him to quit his bohemian ways in the Mediterranean and come home. Since Ripley has no money of his own, he’s living off of his friend, hence his dilemna. There are some plot twists that I won’t spoil, but I think I prefer the remake with Matt Damon, which is a more menacing and diabolical version. This version is sunnier and shot like a romantic comedy, I’m sure to add to the disarming and shocking nature of the crime, but I sometimes feel like I'm on vacation. Fans of the book should watch both films, perhaps the remake first, then the earlier version.

Read more...

The Absent-Minded Professor

Robert Stevenson, 1961, bw (7.3*)
One of the better live-action Disney films, with very good special effects for the time, this is actually a science fiction story disguised as a fantasy. Fred McMurray, a forgetful Professor Brainard, invents a gravity repellent rubber substance, which he calls “flubber” for flying rubber. He first bounces around on his shoes, jumping about 20 feet high, then realized it can power his car and he gets the old Model T flying - here’s your lasting image of the film and the dvd cover. Finally he applies it practically to the basketball team; suddenly the government takes notice. Fun for kids and adults as everyone wants to fly.

Read more...

Whistle Down the Wind

Bryan Forbes, 1961, bw (8.5*)
This beautiful story shot in black and white is actually from a novel by star Hayley Mills' mother, Mary Hayley Bell. Injured convict Alan Bates hides out in a farmer’s barn; when his kids discover him, he gasps “Jesus Christ” just before passing out, so the kids assume he’s Jesus, after all, he’s in a stable when they find him. They hide and take care of him, and so the story takes on the perfect holiday message of innocence, non-judgment, and caring. A rare film that should be known better and seen more often.

Read more...

101 Dalmatians

Wolfgang Reitherman, 1961 (8.2*)
Animated Disney doesn't get any better than this. Dalmatians have a litter of 15 puppies, and if that isn't enough of a problem, the evil Cruella De Vil, the voice of Yvonne DiCarlo and probably the best name for any film villainess, wants to make a fur coat out of a hundred-and-one Dalmatian puppies. Man, that's evil personified! Of course we have heroes, narrow escapes, nail-biting, but it is Disney, so you feel confident that they won't skin 101 puppies! Forget the live action remake, this version is the one to see again and again.

Read more...

The Hustler

Dir: Robert Rossen, 1961, bw (8.2*)

Best Picture (BAA)

This gritty black and white classic follows the rise of pool shark "Fast" Eddie Felson, in one of Paul Newman’s best roles. His nemesis is Minnesota Fats, expertly portrayed by Jackie Gleason, who made all his own pool shots, and deserved at least an Oscar nomination. World champ Willie Moscone was there to do the real tricky stuff when all you see are hands. Piper Laurie is also excellent as Felson’s romance, as is George C. Scott as his manager. Has to be the best pool film ever, garnering 9 Oscar® nominations. The Color of Money was a later sequel, winning Newman his only acting Oscar®, but was barely connected to this classic in either style or realism, opting for easy commercial appeal. 2 Oscars®

Read more...

West Side Story

Dir: Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, 1961 (8.6*)

Best Picture (AA, GG)

AFI Top 100

West Side Story shows a tremendous improvement in widescreen dvd, you can finally see all the dancers just like in the theaters! The general premise sounds scary: retell Romeo and Juliet in a modern urban setting with dancing New York street gangs, in this case the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks, whom I'll have to admit were much sharper dressers. George Chakiris leads the latter, in an Oscar-winning, charm oozing role; he was also the best dancer, as was his girlfriend Rita Moreno, also an Oscar winner. Not faring as well were lead Natalie Woods, and once again we have to hear Marnie Nixon's voice doing the singing, who also sang for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady; nor male lead Richard Beymer but the rest of the film overcomes their overacting, the soapy parts keep this from being a perfect 10. The highlights are the unique jazz classical score by Leonard Bernstein, and the modern dance choreography of Jerome Robbins, let go midway during production for going way over budget (but it shows!), who shared director's credit and also the Oscar for directing with Robert Wise (Sound of Music), who does the more boring, lame exposition stuff. 10 Oscars

Read more...