Great Films

This list is published in response to the American Film Institute’s 2007 list of 100 Greatest Films.

I do not include 100 titles on this list simply because I cannot say that there have been 100 truly great films ever made, from the US let alone the entire world. I set no limit, maximum or minimum, to the number of titles I would select. I also realize that if I were asked to write this same list two months from now, there are probably certain titles I would decide to leave off it, and others that I would add. This is partly due to the fact that there are, of course, many films I have never seen, and it is very likely that among those is at least one film I would feel compelled to add to the list. This list is not set in stone, as I mentioned, and merely reflects my choices at the time I wrote the list.

My guidelines in selecting the titles:
-To me, a great film is one that shatters my expectations and notions of what cinema can be. I might enjoy a film very much, but that alone does not make it great. This list consists of films that challenged and moved me, both emotionally and intellectually, and have a certain re-watchability value. Some titles are included even if I don’t rank them among films that I particularly enjoy watching, but because I recognize their importance.
-I’ve also decided not to be influenced by “technical firsts”, films like The Squaw Man or The Jazz Singer, both of which are historical items (and quite entertaining, at that), but neither of which are truly great in and of themselves.
-There are no “comedian” comedies (comedies that focus on the comedian) on this list. This is not because I do not enjoy these films very much, only that I feel they have to be evaluated differently as they are much more performance-oriented. For instance, Duck Soup is one of the most brilliantly crafted and funny comedies of all time, yet it is not great filmmaking in the ideas and techniques it employs. Even such masters as Chaplin and Keaton are not represented on this list, only because I feel that those types of films need to be evaluated very differently. That said, there are still very few comedy films on this list, mainly because comedy is so hard to do right and the roster of comedy films reflects that.
-I decided upfront not to feel the need to “represent” any highly regarded directors if I felt they never made a film that truly belongs on this list. Thus, no Hitchcock, Scorsese, Kazan, Ray, Sirk, etc. I decided not to include films that have more of a cult following, such as most of the Howard Hawks films, and “re-discovered classics” like Vertigo.
-Finally, I chose no films newer than 20 years old, because (and this is especially true as cinema enters its second century), I believe a film really must stand a certain test of time before it can be fully considered great.

I will list the films followed by a short explanation of why I chose each one. Keep in mind these will have to be superficially brief.

Oh yes, and if I come across as having nothing but praise for all of these titles, keep in mind that is because I consider all of these films indisputably great.
With that out of the way, here’s the list (in alphabetical order):


The Adventures of Robin Hood (USA, 1938, dir. William Keighley and Michael Curtiz)

This one comes dangerously close to the “pure entertainment” description. It is that, but also so much more. Perhaps the apotheosis of Hollywood studio-era filmmaking, it features an excellent cast and one of the most brilliantly executed color designs in any film. The imagery has a vivid quality to it missing from most subsequent Technicolor films.

Alexander Nevsky (USSR, 1938, dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

Eisenstein’s imagery beautifully and skillfully integrated with Prokofiev’s scores places this firmly at the top of historical films. The Battle on the Ice sequence is a marvel of choreography and editing.

All that Jazz (USA, 1979, dir. Bob Fosse)
An autobiographical look into the mind (and body) of a Broadway director becomes a perfect metaphor for cinema and life in general. The technical achievements of the film are consistently excellent, and Fosse challenges the viewer to get inside the main character in startlingly literal ways.

Andrei Rublev (USSR, 1969, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)

Few films equal the scope of this epic, and certainly none surpass it. It is a tribute to the ability of the Soviet cinema that it could produce films that dwarf Hollywood physically, and in this case, intellectually. Tarkovsky’s masterpiece.

The Apu Trilogy (India, 1955-1960, dir. Satyajit Ray)

Ray’s beautiful trilogy of a young boy coming of age remains the finest achievement of the vast output of Indian cinema. I include all three films in the trilogy as a single entry here only because they really have to be seen together to convey the entire scope of what Ray accomplished.

L’Atalante (France, 1934, dir. Jean Vigo)

Vigo’s only feature film remains one of the finest explorations of the notion of love and romance ever presented. The opening sequence of the wedding congregation making their way down to the boat is one of the most ethereal and poetically lyrical scenes I can recall.

L’avventura (Italy, 1960, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)

One of the sheer most important works in the history of the medium. Antonioni’s visual style became extremely influential throughout the world, and this film solidifies his place as one of the major filmmakers of Modern cinema, along with Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.

Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925, dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

Frequently bashed by those who want to feel superior to its breathtaking innovation, this film remains a cornerstone in the development of the grammar of film, with it’s montage editing most brilliantly displayed in the justly-famous “Odessa Steps” sequence.

La Belle et la Bete (France, 1946, dir. Jean Cocteau)

Possibly the finest fantasy story ever filmed, Cocteau’s visual feast is also a look into love and human relationships done with a visual style unmatched in the genre. Looking at the film, it’s hard to imagine that it was made in post-war France, or that Cocteau was in poor health during the shoot.

The Bicycle Thief (Italy, 1948, dir. Vittorio DeSica)

Few films retain their power as long after their initial release as this film does. Just as gritty, uncompromising, inspiring and moving as the day it was released, DeSica’s touching story of a father trying to regain his stolen bicycle so that he can work and provide for his family in post-war Italy is still considered by many to be the very best film ever made, and I wouldn’t disagree.

The Birth of a Nation (USA, 1915, dir. D.W. Griffith)

Perhaps the first truly great film in the medium, it’s hard to think of any work of art, in film or any other medium, that still inspires such debate and controversy at the mere mention of its title. Griffith took the traditions of Victorian theatre and fused them with the social themes so common in early film along with the scale of the Italian epics he had seen, and created what is still arguably the single most important film ever made.

The Blue Angel (Germany, 1930, dir. Josef von Sternberg)

Sternberg is one of the most overtly stylistic directors you’re ever likely to see, and this film is the pinnacle of that style. Showcasing his star Marlene Dietrich, this was made the same year they both came to Hollywood where they turned out a series of beautifully stylized romantic dramas. This film, made in Germany, is the best of the group.

A bout de soufflé (France, 1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)

One of the most grabbing and gripping films you’re ever likely to see. It blew traditional filmmaking technique out of the water, introducing (and perfecting) jump cuts, time transitions, and mobile cinematography. Excellent lead performances give the film its center, and the entire film showcases excellent use of location in Paris.

Brief Encounter (Britain, 1945, dir. David Lean)

Lean’s masterful film about love in dour, post-war Britain remains one of the screen’s finest romances. Celia Johnson is the wife, bored with routine, who strikes up an exciting romance with a doctor, but ends up realizing her true love is still her husband. Lean’s focus on introspective looks inside the psychology of the characters would later show up in his epic films.

Casablanca (USA, 1942, dir. Michael Curtiz)

Roger Ebert has called this film “the movie”. Anyone who has seen it would probably agree that it is a great example of the type of film from the Hollywood studio system that just cannot be made anymore. It is one of the most adult, mature films about romance that Hollywood ever made.

Cavalcade (USA, 1933, dir. Frank Lloyd)

Unjustly criticized by many viewers for its supposedly stagy filmmaking technique, Lloyd’s film, adapted from a Noel Coward play, explores the effects of society on an upper class British family during the first several decades of the 20th century, and touchingly contrasts their experiences with those of an lower-class family from the same period. It is one of the few American films that truly encompasses an epic scope beyond the film’s frame. Few films relate their characters to the world and society around them as skillfully as this film does.

Citizen Kane (USA, 1941, dir. Orson Welles)

Famous for being cited as “the greatest film ever made” more times than any other, Welles’ character study of a man who was many different things to many different people is still the single greatest example of what can be achieved with Hollywood’s wealth and resources when given the chance. The fact that is constantly cited as the greatest film ever made is ironic, because it is perhaps the only time a director had truly full creative control under the studio system, and Hollywood, despite all their effort, has never made a film equal to it.

The Conformist (Italy, 1970, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)

One of the most beautifully photographed films, Bertolucci’s masterpiece is a complex historical work with an incredible evocation of time and place.

The Crowd (USA, 1928, dir. King Vidor)

The theme of the struggle between the individual and society is turned into a staggering visual metaphor in this film about a young man who comes to New York City with big dreams, and find his individuality sacrificed along the way through his commitments to his career, marriage and family. A magnificent performance by James Murray (who spent the rest of his career, both before and after this film, in bit parts and extra roles) carries the film, along with an excellent use of location photography. In a very prolific career, this is Vidor’s masterpiece.

Detour (USA, 1945, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer)

Ulmer’s film noir classic about a nightclub pianist’s attempts to travel across the country to be reunited with his fiancée is the bare essence of cinema. Reportedly shot in six days on a shoestring budget, Ulmer squeezed every last resource to create this stark and gritty film and succeeds in creating a film that contains both a sense of genuine panic and psychological confusion.

Double Indemnity (USA, 1944, dir. Billy Wilder)

Crime was never as stylish or sexy as in Wilder’s masterpiece of love and murder. The definitive film noir, it is an excellent example of Wilder’s screenwriting at its stylish best.

8 ½ (Italy, 1963, dir. Federico Fellini)

Few filmmakers conjure up such imagery as Fellini, and this is introspective look into the mind of a filmmaker struggling with himself, with his ideas, and those around him while trying to get his film made still fascinates and is filled with the carnival-like imagery Fellini is known for.

Les Enfants du Paradis (France, 1945, dir. Marcel Carné)

Made in Paris during the last days of Nazi occupation, Carne’s masterpiece of ill-fated love is a beautiful and lyrical film, belying the circumstances it was produced under. The performances are uniformly excellent, especially Jean-Louis Barrault in one of the most hauntingly beautiful performances in any film.

The 400 Blows (France, 1959, dir. Francois Truffaut)

While not as overtly groundbreaking as Godard’s Breathless, Truffaut’s wonderful film about a disenchanted youth is a partly autobiographical story and is often cited as the first of the French New Wave pictures. The use of locations is especially innovative, making Paris into a character in the story.

Gertrud (Denmark, 1964, dir. Carl Dreyer)

Dreyer’s final film is an interesting character drama of Gertrud and her relationships with the men in her life. Starkly photographed, the film is a masterwork of dialogue and conversation. In a career filled with several great films, this is his best.

The Godfather (USA, 1972, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

The early 1970s is often cited as a second “golden age” for American filmmaking. Studio resources were put to the use of serving the talents of a number of new directors. This film is an example of what Hollywood’s resources can achieve. I am in the minority in that I consider the first film in the Godfather trilogy to be the best, rather than Part II. The first part is a more focused film and features a great ensemble cast, wonderfully rich cinematography, and an excellent use of locations.

Grand Illusion (France, 1937, dir. Jean Renoir)
One of the few war films I consider truly great, Renoir’s look at the relationship between POW camp prisoners and the mutual respect between the commanding officers is filled with old-world military decorum, especially ironic since it was made in the last years before World War II erupted.

Greed (USA, 1924, dir. Erich von Stroheim)

In one of the most tumultuous careers of any filmmaker, von Stroheim produced a remarkable number of excellent films, the best of which is this story of how greed destroys three friends in World War I-era San Francisco. Stroheim’s attention to detail is very much worth the effort, as the film has an incredibly realistic feel throughout. This is a perfect example of the kind of artistic quality that Hollywood was capable of during the silent era and never fully regained. Despite being edited down to about a quarter of the length of the director’s cut, the version that was released to theatre remains a solid masterpiece.

The Hill (USA, 1965, dir. Sidney Lumet)

One of the few truly great American films of the 1960s, this story, set in a British army prisoner camp, explores the tension and psychological torture experienced by a group of soldiers (played by an excellent ensemble cast led by Sean Connery in his finest role). Surprisingly bleak and relentlessly brutal in its portrayal of military routine.

I Was Born, But… (Japan, 1932, dir. Yasujiro Ozu)

Yasujiro Ozu’s finest work is usually cited to be his later films, such as Floating Weeds and Tokyo Story, but I contend that his masterpiece is this delightful and revealing 1932 family comedy-drama about two boys who join a gang after the family re-locates to a new neighborhood for their father’s job. This film says more about family dynamics than so many others, and is contains delightful qualities, skillful technique, and wonderful humor.

The Informer (USA, 1935, dir. John Ford)

Perhaps no other director has had as varied a body of work as John Ford, and its equally likely that few other directors have been the subject of such intense critical study. The reputation for much of his work seems to come and go with the changing of critical winds, from the genre-defining Westerns (Stagecoach, The Searchers) to the historical/social films such as The Grapes of Wrath and Young Mr. Lincoln, and of course the popular favorite The Quiet Man. I believe, though, that after the critical dusts settle, The Informer, a story about a destitute former IRA member who turns in his best friend to the British police for money, will remain his one undisputed masterpiece. A triumph of style and acting (recalling German Expressionism), this film is one of the few American films that really addresses the ugliness and desperation of human behavior without needing to make it’s characters “appealing”.

Intolerance (USA, 1916, dir. D.W. Griffith)

A follow-up to The Birth of a Nation, this film seeks to expound on a more universal theme on an even grander scale. Structurally, it has never been equaled. It was ahead of its time in 1916 and probably is still ahead of its time today.

Le Jour se Léve (France, 1939, dir. Marcel Carné)

This film about a murder is also one of the strangely beautiful ever filmed. The plot is intriguing-after killing a man, the murder hides out in a Paris flat and recalls the events leading up to the event. In a career of memorable films, this is the best of Carné’s earlier works.

The Last Laugh (Germany, 1924, dir. F.W. Murnau)

Human failure has rarely been more poignantly portrayed on film than in this German Expressionist masterpiece. Jannings delivers a magnificent performance as an aging doorman at a ritzy Berlin hotel whose pride and life’s work rests on his decorative uniform that he marches down the street in to work each morning. After being demoted to washroom attendant following an accident involving dropping an expensive trunk, the old man sinks farther and farther into despair and humiliation, until he is given his due in the humorous and ironic prologue. Masterfully shot and edited, with highly stylized production design, this film works on many levels, partly as a human tragedy and partly as satire.

Lawrence of Arabia (Britain, 1962, dir. David Lean)

Few films demand the epic presentation as this British masterpiece about the enigmatic T.H. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole, in a career defining performance). Lean’s skill as filmmaker is evident in every frame, from the beautifully composed sequences in the desert that play largely without dialogue, to the intense action scenes, and the introspective moments of character psychology.

M (Germany, 1931, dir. Fritz Lang)

Lang’s first talkie is a masterful work containing all of the themes involving mob mentality and justice that he would explore in his later, Hollywood films. Lang presents us with a pathetic, pitiable character, a child murder (played by Peter Lorre), who becomes the target of an intense manhunt by both the police and the underworld criminals. Lang’s use of expressionistic lighting, stark cinematography, and taut editing make this film an intense psychological thriller.

The Magnificent Ambersons (USA, 1942, dir. Orson Welles)

This film proves beyond all else what Welles still had left in him after Citizen Kane. A wonderfully rich period piece, the film is equal to Kane both in its ideas, characters and technique, and this after the studio butchered Welles’ cut and inserted new scenes directed by other people, which suggests that Welles’ original cut might have even surpassed Kane. Even as it stands, the film remains one of the truly great American studio era works.

Napoleon (France, 1927, dir. Abel Gance)

Rarely does an epic manage to contain both breathtaking scale and a fascinating, strong character at its center. Gance’s massive four-hour epic of the early military career of Napoleon Bonaparte remains one of the biggest films ever made, with an excellent historical sense and masterful technological innovation (it is hard to think of another film, in fact, that contains this level of innovation).

A Nous la Liberte (France, 1931, dir. Rene Clair)

A whimsical musical comedy on its surface, Clair’s indictment of class and politics is one of the few satires that is sufficiently savage to make its point, while never losing any of its humor. The story of two former prison cellmates (one an oppressed factory worker, the other a wealthy manager) are reunited and their different career paths collide with hilarious results. The sequences comparing a factory job with a prison sentence are particularly timely.

Los Olvidados (Mexico, 1950, dir. Luis Bunuel)

Best known for his surreal works, and his satire, Bunuel’s best film is in fact a relentlessly ugly, brutal and cruel look at slum youth in Mexico City. One of the most uncompromising, harsh and frankly depressing films ever made, it is also one of the most brilliant, and is the standout in Bunuel’s long and distinguished career.

Open City (Italy, 1945, dir. Roberto Rossellini)

One of the best Italian NeoRealist pictures, Rossellini’s look into the resistance movement against the Nazis in WWII Rome is one of the most brutally realistic and raw. It stands in contrast to DeSica’s hopeful, sentimental The Bicycle Thief.

Persona (Sweden, 1966, dir. Ingmar Bergman)

By the time he directed this film, Bergman was already recognized as one of the world’s finest filmmakers. In this, his most psychologically complex work, he examines, with great detail, two women alone in a resort home by the waterfront. It is incredibly revealing and uses brilliant technique in its portrayal of psychology. The opening credit sequence is one of the most inventive pieces of cinema in its own right.

Play Time (France, 1967, dir. Jacques Tati)

Tati’s best film (in a body of great work) is a wonderfully inventive satire and physical comedy about his alter ego, Mr. Hulot, attempting to keep an appointment in a large office building. Tati satirizes the industrializing of Paris, a theme he explored in earlier work, and takes it to outrageous heights with the impressive city set-constructed for the film-of glass and steel skyscrapers. It is one of the most memorable “cinema cities” in film history (along with Metropolis and Blade Runner). What Tati accomplished with this film was in creating a personal comedy which plays on an epic scale worthy of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It must be seen in 70mm to catch all the gags.

Ran (Japan, 1985, dir. Akira Kurosawa)

This film was the last to be added to my list, because until very recently, I had not seen it. I can confidently place it on this list for a variety of reasons that struck me immediately upon first viewing. Kurosawa essentially adapts “King Lear” into an epic scale set in Japan, and particularly uses color to masterful perfection.

Rashomon (Japan, 1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa)

Kurosawa creates a brilliant tale of four witnesses giving their testimony at the murder trial for a slain samurai. Kurosawa plays with the notion of the unreliable narrator and has each character present the facts from their own point of view, creating a psychologically complex work that put Kurosawa on the cinematic map.

Rules of the Game (France, 1939, dir. Jean Renoir)

Renoir’s greatest work is this deceptively simple romantic comedy that is a deeply savage satire of French class structure-so savage, in fact, that it created an uproar and was heavily censored (thankfully, it has recently been restored). Released on the eve of World War II, the film is a relentlessly satirical look into the lives of its petty rich characters and their interactions and psychology.

The Saga of Gosta Berling (Sweden, 1924, dir. Mauritz Stiller)

Sweden’s greatest epic, and the best film from it’s golden age of 1913-1924 is this beautiful, sweeping adaptation of Selma Lagerloff’s novel about a priest who begins to reject God and loses his congregation, resulting in scandal. He becomes involved with women from two different prominent families leading him into further trouble. There are very few epics that are so vast in their psychological scope as this tale of sin and redemption, which also introduced Greta Garbo to the screen.

The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman)

One of the most intellectually complex films ever made, Bergman’s story of a knight who challenges Death to a chess game with his life hanging in the balance is a deep exploration of Bergman’s favorite existential themes and philosophies. The film benefits from atmospheric setting and cinematography (by Gunnar Fischer), and an excellent performance by Max von Sydow. This is the film that really solidified Bergman’s reputation.

Shane (USA, 1953, dir. George Stevens)

This film has a mixed reputation. In fact, I’m certain that half the people reading this list will cringe when they see this title listed. I maintain, however, that this is a psychologically complex film about heroism and responsibility that fully deserves to be included on such a list. Stevens presents several hauntingly grim sequences, such as the gunman shooting an unarmed settler in a muddy street. This is the only “Western” on my list, and the only one, in my opinion, that addresses these themes in such perfect detail. The cinematography (by Loyal Griggs) captures the Wyoming scenery in all its glory.

Singin’ in the Rain (USA, 1952, dir. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen)

The finest film musical, this wonderfully funny and touching story is also an introspective look at the Hollywood film business during one of its most tumultuous periods-the introduction of sound film technology. While I agree that this film comes dangerously close to being a “very good entertainment” rather than a truly great film, I would argue that it belongs in this category due to the skill with which Kelly and Donen capture the performances and music within the highly stylized Technicolor universe. It is a triumph of Hollywood screenwriting, choreography and music fused into an artistically groundbreaking masterpiece. This contains one of the most fascinating uses of color I have ever seen-an interesting variation on the usual lush, deep colors of the Hollywood musical film, presenting the viewer with a stark contrast between the costumes and settings in virtually every scene.

Some Like it Hot (USA, 1959, dir. Billy Wilder)

Possibly Hollywood’s funniest comedy, underlined with strangely dark humor and cynical dialogue. The screenplay is a perfect comic concoction courtesy of Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond about two jazz musicians who go on the run after witnessing a gangland massacre, by disguising themselves as women and playing in an all-girl band. The comic complications ensue when they find themselves at a Florida resort where the same gangsters who are out to get them are staying. A masterful farce comedy with brilliance and wit to elevate it beyond the merely entertaining level. The somewhat dark, black and white cinematography works very well with the comedy.

The Sorrow and the Pity (France, 1971, dir. Marcel Ophuls)

The only documentary on my list, Ophuls’ extremely detailed exploration of human psychology remains one of the most powerful works in the medium. Taking a refreshingly objective approach, Ophuls gets to the root of the French Resistance to the Nazi Occupation during World War II, forcing viewers to confront their own notions of heroism and to consider how they would respond in such circumstances.

Sunrise (USA, 1927, dir. F.W. Murnau)

A German Expressionist film made in Hollywood, Murnau’s tragically beautiful love story is a joyous look at the renewed love between a husband and wife following his brutal attempt to murder her. One of the most highly stylized films ever produced in Hollywood-a rare glimpse of what can be achieved when an artist is given full reign to use Hollywood’s resources to their greatest potential, and featuring a haunting original score.

Sunset Blvd. (USA, 1950, dir. Billy Wilder)

Wilder delivers a scathing indictment of contemporary Hollywood by examining its past through the character of Norma Desmond, a has-been star with delusional dreams of a comeback. Jet-black satire mixes with elements of film noir style to create a frightening world of living corpses. Wilder also brilliantly contrasts the “old” Hollywood with “new” by presenting the figures of the silent period as passionate and colorful, while the late 1940s Hollywood types are presented as cold, businesslike and completely uncreative.

The Third Man (Britain, 1949, dir. Carol Reed)

One of the most highly stylized thrillers ever made, this story of betrayal and crime in post-war Vienna remains a true landmark of British cinema. Carol Reed’s direction heightens the suspense during the excellent chase sequence, enhanced with extremely high contrast cinematography.

Throne of Blood (Japan, 1957, dir. Akira Kurosawa)

Kurosawa’s adaptation of “Macbeth” using the formal and stylistic traditions of Noh Theatre, set in feudal Japan, is an excellent example of a masterful transforming of a work across cultures. Toshiro Mifune delivers an excellent lead performance. There is also an excellent sense of atmosphere creating an air of horror.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (USA, 1948, dir. John Huston)

The best film to come out of post-war Hollywood, Huston’s adventure film tells of three prospectors torn apart by greed and lust for gold remains a landmark, influenced by Italian NeoRealism and earlier works like von Stroheim’s Greed. The decision to film largely on location in Mexico contributes much authenticity to the story. The three leads are particularly well cast.

Trouble in Paradise (USA, 1932, dir. Ernst Lubitsch)

A delightful romantic comedy caper about a pair of jewel thieves who hatch a scheme to gain the confidence of a big business owner in order to rob her while employed as her secretary and assistant, respectively. Gilbert Adair called this perhaps the most perfectly spoken film in the entire medium, and I would agree. The film is played like a musical without music, a wonderfully mobile camera that moves in and out of rooms with the characters, and a charming underscore that runs through most of the film.

2001: A Space Odyssey (USA, 1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
Kubrick’s masterpiece is an epic exploration of human’s potential, conflicts with technology, and the future of exploration beyond the world as we know it. Kubrick’s film is a true epic, both in scale and its ideas, and pushes the boundaries of cinema far beyond their limits. The imagery and effects are far ahead of their time. It must be seen on a large screen for full effect.

Videodrome (Canada, 1983, dir. David Cronenberg)

Exciting and prophetic science fiction story about a public access station manager who programs a pirated signal of a show called “Videodrome”, consisting of bondage and torture videos, which turns out to be far more than he bargained for as he leads the revolution for the “new flesh”. Fascinating themes and terrific imagery run throughout the film. Watching it today, it’s hard to believe the film is more than twenty years old, as it all seems more and more relevant in the era of 24 hour television and online video.

White Heat (USA, 1949, dir. Raoul Walsh)

James Cagney delivered the performance of his career in this unrelenting crime drama about a gangster with a strong fixation on his mother who sinks farther and farther into isolation and psychotic outbursts against his own wife and companions. Far from being a routine gangster film, Walsh delivers an excellent psychological study of a psychotic criminal and looks at larger social issues through the character of Cody Jarrett.

Wild Strawberries (Sweden, 1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman)

Bergman’s touching portrait of an aging college professor returning to receive an honorary award is an interesting character study of an isolated individual in his final years. Few films contain the kind of lyrical passages as the flashback sequences in this film. Pioneering Swedish director Victor Sjöstrom delivers a haunting performance as the professor.

Wings of Desire (Germany, 1987, dir. Wim Wenders)

The most recent film on this list, and just barely falling into the twenty year limit, this is truly one of the most hauntingly beautiful ever filmed. The incredibly rich black and white cinematography by Henri Alekan perfectly serves the story of two angels, wandering the streets of Berlin providing comfort to those in need. One of them, Damiel, longs after a beautiful trapeze artist and desires to be human so he can experience love. An interesting performance by Peter Falk as himself, an ex-angel, adds a fascinating commentary on the story. The entire film is an incredibly serene, beautiful portrait of what it is to be human.

Classical Hollywood: Establishing a Grammar

There is a simple fact that is becoming more and more obvious every year: the movies are getting old. Such beloved classics as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane are all fast approaching 70 years since their initial release. Needless to say, the period in which these films were produced, known as the “classic” era of Hollywood cinema, is also quickly becoming synonymous with a time and place that is long gone and existed far in the past.
But what is perhaps most surprising of all is how fresh these films still feel after nearly 70 years. Looking at them today, the past feels closer to the present than ever before. In fact, despite the usual carping about today’s young people “not being interested in anything in black and white”, I would argue that these films are now more popular than they have been in quite some time. If anything, it’s the baby boomer generation whose appreciation of these classical Hollywood films has faltered in the last ten years or so. And here’s something else for that crowd to ponder-MTV is now about as “old” to the current generation of young people as the Hollywood cinema of the ‘40s and ‘50s was to the 1970s. Now, thanks to new venues for these films, such as DVD and Turner Classic Movies, they’re actually more accessible than ever.
So, why is so little written about them? Where are the serious critical appreciations of structure and plot in The Kennel Murder Case? What about the use of multiple time-frame storytelling in Cavalcade? The use of color in The Adventures of Robin Hood, whose visual palette stands alongside the Technicolor films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger as perhaps the prime example of color cinematography? The exploration of current social events in 42nd Street and Hell’s Highway and countless other films of the early 1930s?
The lack of good dialogue about the films of the Hollywood studio era stem from three major points: the blanket tendency to evaluate all films from this period (roughly 1929-1946) in terms of genre; the notion that there were no distinctive or important directors working during this period (in a critical approach preoccupied with the idea of auteurism, this is indeed problematic); and, perhaps most significantly, the influence of decades of film criticism on the perception, reputation and evaluation of these films.
Before addressing each of these points individually, it is probably a good idea to develop some working definitions and to begin with a quick once-over of the Hollywood studio years, commonly called Hollywood’s “classic” or “golden” age. When referring to this period, it most commonly refers to the years between 1929 and 1946. It is important to understand the reasons behind these years cited as the bookends of the studio years. 1929 saw the final transition to sound film from the silent film, thus bringing an end not only artistically and technologically to the silent era, but also from a financial and business model. Film studios were beginning to resemble less and less the small, cottage industry of the early silent period, and were instead beginning to resemble corporate factories-assembly line style methods of production applied to moviemaking. The first studio to really establish this pattern was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, controlled by Loew’s Limited in New York City, with its motion picture studio located in Culver City under the supervision of Louis B. Mayer and Irving G. Thalberg. Mayer and Thalberg would establish the business model that came to dominate Hollywood during the “studio years”. 1946, the first year of the post-war era, and just two years before the landmark “Paramount Decision” (a Supreme Court ruling which broke up the studios’ control over distribution), was also the year that the US box office peaked just prior to the introduction of television, and for these reasons can be seen as a reasonable date to cite as the end of the “studio era”.
The “studios”, incidentally, to which I am referring are the “Big Seven”: MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Columbia. (United Artists was strictly a distribution studio for independent producers, such as David O. Selznick and Samuel Goldwyn). MGM was decidedly at the top of this pyramid, with its famous ad line “More stars than there are in the heavens”, and its seemingly endless financial success. Perhaps because of its mammoth status, MGM was the studio least likely to take artistic chances. Their product was generally “safe”, a highly stylized, glamorous product that served as a showcase for their many contract stars, and often directed by filmmakers who were not known for any particular or distinct “style.” Warner Bros. was an equally massive studio, which had been founded in the early 1920s by Sam, Harry, Albert and Jack Warner, and whose major claim to fame was having produced The Jazz Singer in 1927, the film that introduced synchronized speech and songs to the cinema. What had once been a relatively small outfit now became one of the most powerful studios in the industry, and could be counted on to deliver “programmers” and films that were not afraid to make a social statement. Warner Bros. also revived the musical film in 1933 after a brief moratorium in the industry against producing musicals since late 1930 due to over-saturation. Warners’ biggest contribution during this period was to the gangster film, a unique series of films dealing with very gritty subject matter and social problems, and always offering a “solution” in the end to ease censorship worries. Paramount was arguably the grandest of all the studios. While MGM offered a certain homespun quality to many of their films, Paramount was pure glitz and glamour, often taking place in exotic, erotic worlds, with highly diffused, soft-focus cinematography lovingly caressing the star and the set. Paramount was, more than any other, an iconoclast’s studio, home to directors such as DeMille, Sternberg, and Lubitsch, as well as stars such as Mae West, W.C. Fields and The Marx Bros., all of whom had very distinctive approaches to their films. Paramount faced financial trouble during the mid-30s but was artistically second to none. These were really the top tier studios. RKO had been founded by Joseph P. Kennedy through a merger in the late 1920s, and specialized in popular films. Their yearly output was not as great as the “big three”, but it maintained a certain level of quality, and despite the wartime joke about not being a profitable studio (“In case of an air raid, go over to RKO. They haven’t had a hit in years”), RKO maintained a surprising level of artistic quality given their smaller budgets, producing films such as King Kong, Alice Adams, Top Hat, Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. 20th Century-Fox has a somewhat broken history, as it began under William Fox as Fox Film, and a merger with 20th Century Productions in 1935 resulted in its current name. Fox Film had been a major player in the silent era, producing such films as The Iron Horse, What Price Glory? and Sunrise, for which Fox brought home an Academy Award for “Most Artistic Production” at the first Academy Awards. Fox maintained its popularity in the 30s by virtue of its stars (most notably Will Rogers, and later, Shirley Temple), but also with the occasional prestige picture (Cavalcade walked away with a Best Picture Oscar in 1933). 20th Century-Fox’s reputation today has been colored by the fact that so few of their films are available for viewing, mainly owing to poor archival conditions. Universal in the 1930s was a very different studio from the towering corporation it is today. Universal belongs in the third tier of the major studios (along with Columbia) as being borderline-Poverty Row. Universal was constantly plagued by financial problems. They had flourished briefly in the late 1920s when president Carl Laemmle imported German talent to give their pictures a heightened level of artistry. By the early 30s, though, Universal had mastered the horror film, so much so that despite their being a smaller studio, they pretty much held the market on quality horror films. Financially, Universal had little else to offer that was consistently popular. They produced the occasional prestige film (All Quiet on the Western Front earned a Best Picture award at the November 1930 Oscars, and Show Boat was considered an above-average product). Universal turned to programmer-quality films in the late 30s in an attempt to produce big hits on a modest budget, and really struck pay-dirt in 1940 when they signed Abbott and Costello. Finally, Columbia Pictures, ruled under the iron fist of Harry Cohn, holds a mixed reputation among film historians. They were pretty much kept afloat by the Three Stooges shorts, and by the unusually high quality films of major directors such as Howard Hawks, George Cukor and Leo McCarey, who all made important contributions to the studio. What really elevated Columbia to the level of the big league, however, were the films of Frank Capra, who produced consistently and massively popular films and whose name became recognized as a kind of brand-name for a quality product. Without Capra, it’s unclear how Columbia’s status would have been affected.
It was in this environment of studios, moguls and stars that Hollywood flourished. Despite the record-high levels of productivity (nearly 800 films a year), and the record-high box office (1946 was the peak year), this period of film history has been unfairly generalized in the broadest of terms, downplaying its significance, and over-emphasizing the “factory assembly line” style of production. This can be attributed to sheer laziness, as it is easier to offer blanket generalizations of the entire period rather than sit down and study the films on an individual basis. Indeed, the vast output of Hollywood during these years can seem overwhelming, which is why it is all the more important to avoid generalizations and blanket statements.
To debunk these myths, we first need to examine where the myths began and how they developed, and finally, look at the evidence that stands to exemplify why these myths are nothing more than just that.
The idea that all Hollywood studio films fit neatly into genre categories probably results from a basic misunderstanding of the term “genre”. While it is true that many Hollywood films can be seen as musicals, or westerns, or horror films, it is also true that, upon closer examination, very few of these films can be send to be “pure” in a generic sense. Let’s be as objective as possible. Take San Francisco, a blockbuster released by MGM in 1936. This film is a perfect example of how films were geared and manipulated to appeal to the widest possible audience. On the one level, it is a romance film. The romantic plot between Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald certainly provides this element. It also serves as a musical, with several songs performed on-camera by Jeanette MacDonald, including the memorable title tune. The film also contains element of the religious genre, as evidenced by the character played by Spencer Tracy, who tries to reform Gable’s Barbary Coast saloon kingpin. There is an element of comedy as well, provided by Ted Healy (of the original Three Stooges). This is not merely a few moments of comic relief, but a very definite, clear subplot to provide comedy for those in the audience who want to laugh. And finally, and most significantly, it serves as a disaster epic, with its fantastic sequence depicting the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (a real tour-de-force of editing and visual effects, achieved by Slavko Vorkapich). Based on this description, the film sounds as though it would be a chaotic mess, unable to make up its mind about what it wants to be. Yet, the film is also very straightforward, and makes no bones about introducing these different generic elements within the context of its framework. It is, in fact, fairly typical of the approach that the studios took in appealing to a mass audience. It is really the niche films, such as the Universal horror films, that are the exception. Let’s take a film from another studio. RKO’s Gunga Din is part costume picture, part historical epic, part adventure/action film, part romance, and part comedy. Directed by George Stevens, the film was a wild success, due in no small part, presumably, to its ability to affect many people at once. Fans of period pieces could enjoy the elaborate costume and production design. Fans of the historical epic could marvel at its massive scale and depiction of events of the Boer War. Fans of the adventure film could thrill along with the improvisatory fight sequences (inspired, no less, by the comedy fracases of Laurel and Hardy, on which Stevens had served as cameraman). Those who liked romantic stories could appreciate the subplot with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and the girl he leaves behind when he goes off to battle. Finally, comedy fans could enjoy the constant ribbing between the three army buddies (Victor McLaglen, Fairbanks and Cary Grant).
It could be argued that neither of these films seem to fit particularly into one genre on their surface. In that case, let’s take a very specific example: 42nd Street, produced by Warner Bros. in 1933. On its surface, the film is a musical, plain and simple. But it’s more than just a showcase of songs. The film contains comedy (in the character of Ned Sparks), romance, social drama (the “Forgotten Man” number, most prominently), and of course, music. If taken at face value, this argument could be dismissed with “but that describes all musicals”. Precisely. It is the very consistency with which Hollywood applied these elements to the studio product that has made it so seamless.
Let’s take another approach. Look at Cecil B. DeMille’s The Plainsman, made just two years before John Ford’s genre-defining Western Stagecoach. In DeMille’s film, the Western setting is more or less a backdrop for a war story and a romance between Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. DeMille’s film is a perfect example of classical Hollywood genre blending. Ford’s film, on the other hand, is more deeply “about” the West. Ultimately, there are two kinds of Westerns: those in which the American West serves primarily as a setting (and this include “period” films such as The Plainsman and “contemporary” films such as Martin Ritt’s Hud), and films that are truly, deeply about the West as a mythology, not only as a place but as a mindset and way of life. The Westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks fit into this pattern. Significantly, most of these Westerns were produced after the end of the “studio system”. Stagecoach really defined the Western as a form of mythology, in the cinema at least, and this has as much to do with timing as anything else, as the earliest Westerns were made at a time when the “West” as it has become known was still very much a contemporary thing. The Westerns that defined the genre for the next generation of critics and filmmakers tended to come after the war years, possibly as a sort of soul-searching for American identity, but also due to the independence afforded the directors of these films when freed from the studio system’s need to provide films that “appealed to everyone”. My Darling Clementine, Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, Fort Apache, The Searchers, Rio Bravo and more were all post-war films. Significantly, three of the most successful Westerns from this period explored the use of the West as a backdrop for other themes and ideas: William A. Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident was as much an indictment of lynch mobs as it was a Western; Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon was an urban crime drama set in a Western town; and most importantly, George Stevens’ Shane was a character study of human relationships and the conflict over the environment that happened to take place in the Old West. These three films found greater critical acclaim in their own time than the films of Ford and Hawks, but revisionist critics of the 1960s and 70s, looking at the distinct individual style of the filmmakers, found those same films by Ford and Hawks to be far more rewarding, as they contained such a distinctive, “pure” vision of their respective directors.
If the Western can be seen as one of the most malleable of movie genres, it would also be important to point out perhaps the most representative “genre” of the studio and post-studio era, film noir. Noir is a genre so broad that it is often defined by distinctive stylistic traits. Without debating each approach, noir can at least be said to include a wide variety of “subgenres”: crime drama (Double Indemnity), mystery (The Big Sleep), romance (Mildred Pierce), musical (Christmas Holiday), Western (Rancho Notorious), police instructional (The Naked City), even comedy (Always Leave them Laughing). Despite the fact that it emerged in the post-war years, noir can be seen as the ultimate “Hollywood” genre, in that it could incorporate elements of so many genres while maintaining a distinct style.
If genre can be established as an inherently false means of categorizing Hollywood films from the studio era, then another major fallacy can also be cited in the frequent claim that Hollywood directors from this period had no distinct style of their own. Indeed, even those who may at first not appear to have the style can be understood as a byproduct of economic realities of the studio system and the need for constant programmers. This notion of the 30s and 40s being a sort of wasteland for good directors can be proven false immediately by citing filmmakers such as Josef von Sternberg, Cecil B. DeMille, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra, Preston Sturges, Orson Welles, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, Charles Chaplin, Fritz Lang, and others. There are certain filmmakers, Ford and Hawks among them, who found it easier to make films that reflected their style and vision due to issues of financing after the war. This is not to say that their style was not fully developed and in full view during the period between 1929 to 1946, but that they achieved even greater autonomy due to the changing business models. Ford directed The Informer in 1935 to great critical acclaim, hailed as perhaps the greatest talking film made up to that point. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not referring to an auteurist model for categorizing “pantheon” directors in the same way films were blindly and just as erroneously lumped into categories of “genre”. But to dismiss directors of this period as mere hacks and hirelings is extremely shortsighted and blatantly ignoring the facts. There are two ways of looking at the most influential directors of this period-those whose careers developed during the silent period during the great time of autonomy for directors, and those who emerged in the 1930s after the coming of sound.
Josef von Sternberg is best remembered as the director of a series of highly stylized, glamorous romantic dramas starring Marlene Dietrich. After directing The Blue Angel in Germany in 1930, Sternberg and Dietrich teamed up in Hollywood for Morocco, an exotic, erotic romance set against the North African desert. Sternberg worked for Paramount, who allowed him the creative control to create as personal a series of dramas as anyone. Paramount also allowed another silent film holdover, and arguably the most famous filmmaker of all time-Cecil B. DeMille-to thrive. DeMille, without exaggeration, practically ran Hollywood. Interestingly, his career was slightly on the downturn in the late 1920s, and after a series of flops at MGM, found renewed success at Paramount with his historical epic, Sign of the Cross, in 1932.
Without digressing into mini-biographies of individual directors, let’s instead take the three major categories of directors in the studio era. The first group, and perhaps the most autonomous, were the imported foreign talent, such as Fritz Lang, Rene Clair, Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, etc. Executives knew the power of the director in foreign markets, especially Germany, and were much more willing to give them the freedom similar to what they had enjoyed at home in terms of picking their projects, developing them, and seeing them through post-production. One major hurdle was that of censorship. As gritty as, say, Fritz Lang’s Fury is by 1936 Hollywood standards, it’s nowhere near as intense as his earlier M, made in Germany in 1931 and dealing with a lynch mob reaction to a child murderer. Lang was forced to comply with censorship, as were many of the foreign talents who were not accustomed to the highly stringent standards of the Breen office. What is interesting, however, is that Fury was produced and distributed by MGM, the most conservative of all Hollywood’s studios, and the least likely to take artistic chances. While it is certainly true that MGM was extremely conservative when it came to taking chances, it should be pointed out, nonetheless, that they did indeed produce a number of films during the studio era that could rightfully be called some of Hollywood’s most audacious. In 1929, MGM produced King Vidor’s Hallelujah, an all-black musical shot on location in the South-one of the first talking films to be filmed on such an extensive location shoot, in fact. This was really the vision of producer Irving Thalberg that allowed this to happen. Thalberg again took a major chance when he allowed Tod Browning to direct Freaks in 1932, an extremely audacious and controversial project dealing with the deformed sideshow performers in a circus. Foreign talent was respected by the studio heads, and imported with the sole purpose of bringing a heightened sense of artistry to American film. Alfred Hitchcock, a British filmmaker schooled in the traditions of German Expressionism, was well-known both in Britain and abroad before being invited to Hollywood by David O. Selznick in 1939. He clashed with Selznick initially but quickly became one of the most autonomous of Hollywood directors.
The second tier of filmmakers of this period were those who had established a reputation in the silent era, when the director still wielded full control over a production. Ironically, it was Irving Thalberg who single handedly decided that the producer should have full control of a production (despite entrusting many very distinctive directors with unorthodox projects). Sternberg, DeMille, Vidor, Ford, Hawks, Walsh, and Lubitsch (who had made foreign films but was well established in American cinema prior to the coming of sound) all worked in this pattern. They enjoyed great freedom in selecting projects and developing them, which allowed those with a distinctive style to be able to imbue their work with that style in selected projects. Ford, for instance, directed a great deal of studio programmers in his career, but also had room to make an intensely personal film like The Informer in 1935 for RKO. Howard Hawks is a unique case, in that he seemed to be completely ignored by the public and critical circles, although his films themselves were quite popular and he was certainly respected within the studio system itself. Hawks probably did more, along with Hitchcock, to establish the idea of auteurism, due to the recurring themes addressed in his films, and the fact that, within the industry, he (again, like Hitchcock) commanded enough power not to get saddled directing generic programmers. These are the socioeconomic/political realities the auteurists refuse to acknowledge. Maybe Michael Curtiz would have liked to have directed a few more Casablancas or Kennel Murder Cases in his career, but the studio didn’t always grant that kind of autonomy.
The third tier of American filmmakers during this period are directors who only really emerged during the sound era. This does not necessarily mean that these directors never worked in silent film, only that their reputations were only fully established after the coming of sound and the establishment of the studio system. Frank Capra is possibly the best example of this. He began his career in silents, but it was in the early 30s that his reputation began to develop to the point where his name became a household word synonymous with uniquely American storytelling.
Finally, in establishing a grammar to better discuss the Hollywood studio era films, it is necessary to look at how generations of criticism have shaped perceptions of the period. Before we do that, however, it’s perhaps a good idea to give a quick once-over of film criticism’s attitudes toward Hollywood from the beginning. During the 1920s, criticism carried with it a strong leftist, Soviet bent that decried the commercialism of Hollywood, and (like all criticism) valued its own product above all else. The theoretical works produced as a result of all this theory and criticism come across as increasingly pedantic to modern audiences not accustomed to the approach those filmmakers took. Increasingly, critical camps became divided. On the one hand you had the Soviet critics who tended to dismiss Hollywood cinema as frivolous. But on quite another hand, you had critics such as James Agee and Bosley Crowther, who tended to like middlebrow American films with liberal and humanist themes, such as The Best Years of Our Lives. Most reviewers tended to be mouthpieces of the studio, so the hyped-up stuff like Gone with the Wind received overwhelming critical praise, which of course was more of a band-wagon response than the result of any critical thinking.
Perhaps no better indicator of the perceived value of Hollywood studio filmmaking can be seen than in the British Sight and Sound polls, conducted every ten years since 1952. In 1952, at the very tail end of the remnants of the studio system, the global critical thinking was that the only good films to come out of Hollywood were certain silent films, such as Greed, or films by independent, maverick directors, separate from the studio system, such as documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, whose Louisiana Story made the list. Signficantly, the only talking films to make the list, other than Louisiana Story, were all foreign-perceived as having greater artistic value compared to anything Hollywood could produce.
Auteurist critics began the tradition of appreciating what Hollywood had to offer. Following World War II, film societies in Paris began to receive backlogs of prints of Hollywood films from the past decade, and many film enthusiasts, such as Francois Truffaut, gathered to watch these films voraciously, sometimes seeing as many as seven per day. Andre Bazin, the French film theorist, and Henri Langlois, curator of the Cinematheque Francais, were both instrumental in leading this critical re-evaluation that changed the perception of Hollywood filmmaking forever. The problem that arose with the auteurist approach is that conclusions were drawn from false theories. For instance, these critics knew nothing, or at least, very little, of the way Hollywood studios worked, or the fact that the on-screen credits did not necessarily reflect the true involvement of certain individuals. For instance, Victor Fleming is the sole credited director on both The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, but shared directing responsibilities on both films with a half-dozen uncredited directors, including such prominent figures as George Cukor, Norman Taurog and King Vidor. If one took it at face value that Fleming was indeed the sole director of both films, it would result in a very skewed perception. Such quirks of the studio system are the evidence that disproves the auteur theory. To be fair, the initial auteurism approach, the “Auteur Policy” as stated by Francois Truffaut, was a natural and perhaps inevitable result of having to digest so many films at once. Rather than dwell on the bastardization of the “auteur theory”, as it came to be known in America after being introduced by Andrew Sarris in 1962, it is perhaps more important to establish new grammar to discuss these directors and their films with the new wealth of information and access to production records that are now available.
The other danger of the auteur theory (and Sarris was certainly guilty of this) is that it leads to fanboy adulation and idol worship of directors based on nothing more than enjoyment of their work. While this is fine in and of itself, it’s certainly no way to approach serious film criticism. Let’s look for a moment at Sarris’ ridiculous dismissal of Curtiz’ Casablanca as a “happy accident”, merely because Curtiz wasn’t in his personal “pantheon” (as he called it) of auteur (read: “great”) directors. What Sarris failed to realize was that Curtiz, far from being an amateur playing around with whatever ideas struck him at the time, was an experienced craftsman who was just as professional, detailed and skilled as John Ford, Howard Hawks, or any other director who could make a film on the same level as Casablanca. Sarris’ fear of admitting the possibility that a director could make only a few great films in his career is painfully obvious. Indeed, I would argue that all the concepts that really emerged around this time, from “pantheon directors” to “best films” lists, were a result of the changing cinema scene and a need to try to establish some sort of hierarchies and put the last 40 years of cinema into some kind of perspective. Ironically, Sarris, among other critics, found it increasingly difficult as more and more critics and film enthusiasts sprung up to challenge them and state their own preferences. Thus, Sarris finally, somewhat reluctantly, admitted new directors into his pantheon (such as Billy Wilder), due to the fact the he could not continue to ignore them based strictly on personal preference alone anymore.
The rise of this criticism alongside such Modernist filmmakers as Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard coincided with a rising interest in dividing between “old” and “new” filmmaking. Godard, for example, shattered traditional techniques with his Breathless in 1960. Fellini’s films resembled nothing so much as circuses-cinemadromes, if you will-in which the strange, bizarre, surreal acts of life were played out through his lens. Bergman introduced existentialist angst to the cinema and made it popular. When compared with directors from studio era Hollywood, Bergman, Fellini and the like appear wildly more inventive. But it is important to see their influence. Stylistically, Fellini’s films share a great deal in common with Cecil B. DeMille’s. Yet, while DeMille is dismissed as old fashioned, Fellini is hailed as the height of surrealism. This is the sort of prejudice that must be done away with in order to better appreciate the work done during the studio era. Significantly, the work of such Modernist directors as Godard and such Postmodernist directors as Tarantino resembles nothing so much as an interesting pastiche of American film noir styles as discussed earlier. If one were to compare, say, Gun Crazy with Breathless, the stylistic similarities become all the more apparent. Yet, Joseph H. Lewis is nowhere near as highly regarded as Godard. The same prejudice remains, and prevents clear critical thinking to be done.
You may notice I have not addressed the criticism of Pauline Kael in this section yet. That is because, quite simply, I do not think that her criticism falls into the same types of traps as I am discussing here. Her writing, based purely on personal reaction on a film-by-film basis, is a far more honest evaluation than manipulating and altering facts to prove a “theory”. Therefore, I feel that her writing (which I consider to be brilliant criticism) offers a much more worthwhile approach, as I believe that filmgoing is ultimately all about subjective responses, and that theories that try to create a pre-determined response (“it’s a Hitchcock film, so it must automatically be a great film) do the work of directors a disservice.
Where does classic Hollywood fit into all this? As criticism changed, even as it championed Hawks, Hitchcock, Ford, Walsh and Welles, it tended to increasingly ignore filmmakers whose work did not fall into the more easily categorized patterns as the “pantheon directors”. The idea that because Casablanca was not directed by a “pantheon director” it cannot be a great film is sheer lunacy, completely disregarding the compelling story and great performances directed by a very skilled craftsman.
To establish the new grammar of discussing these films, the old ideas must be thoroughly rejected. The notions of pre-determined responses based on 40 year old outmoded critical ideas has to be abandoned and replaced with a more open-minded and knowledgeable approach. Perhaps when that day comes, we will be confident enough to discuss Michael Curtiz and The Kennel Murder Case in the same breath as Alfred Hitchcock and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Film Noir, The Detective Film, and "The Big Sleep"

Traditionally, there are two ways to define noir. Those who define it as a genre typically cite THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) as the first film made in the noir style, and feel that as a genre, it is ever changing and expanding. Thus, the genre can include not only such later works from such Modernist filmmakers as Jean-Luc Godard (A BOUT DE SOUFFLE [1960]) and Roman Polanski (CHINATOWN [1974]), and Postmodernist films such as L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997), but also retroactively include earlier films as Fritz Lang's M (1931) and FURY (1936) as noir as well. The genre theorists would also approach 1940s detective and police film as a part of noir. Examples from this subset would include Jules Dassin's THE NAKED CITY (1948), John Huston's THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), and of course, Howard Hawks' THE BIG SLEEP (1946).

I do not approach film noir from this angle for a number of reasons. I feel that it ignores certain thematic elements, especially in regard to the qualities of the protagonist, which are unique to noir. I, instead, view film noir from the stylistic (or traditionalist) standpoint. This is the approach that was put forth in the Cahiers du Cinema article that first used the term film noir to refer to a series of crime dramas coming out of Hollywood in the years following World War II. Traditionally, this approach views Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) as the “first” film noir picture, and cites 1958 as the last year for film noir (with the release of Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL being the last film noir production).

To be fair, the film noir style as defined by traditionalists does share certain similarities with the 1940s detective and mystery film. Certainly the visual style is similar. In fact, I would argue that by the time THE BIG SLEEP was produced in 1946, the detective film and film noir styles and already become so inextricably linked that the two are virtually indistinguishable. It is only when we look under the surface that the differences become apparent.

The element of noir that is most significantly unique is the protagonist. The noir protagonist is, by nature, weak. Fred MacMurray in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Edward G. Robinson in SCARLET STREET, Tom Neal in DETOUR and others are all essentially losers, so weak they cannot even do the right thing when they know they are being led down a path of destruction. Bogart’s Marlowe in THE BIG SLEEP is too strong a character to be a true noir protagonist. Aside from being a successful professional (a distinctly Hawksian theme), he is seen taking control of his situations even as he gets further and further involved in the bizarre maze of criminals and gangsters. He appears as the same sort of maverick lawman as his Sam Spade character in THE MALTESE FALCON. We see him removing evidence from the crime scene, covering up for Carmen Sternwood after he discovers her with a smoking gun next to a corpse, and using any means necessary to get his suspects to talk. Finally, he becomes involved in an ultimately successful coupling with Vivian Sternwood (Lauren Bacall). (Of course, it helps in these cases to have an understanding of the realities of film production, as the romantic angle between Bogart and Bacall was built up after the success of their teaming in Hawks’ TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, which was released in the interim between the shooting and post-production of THE BIG SLEEP.) Despite Vivian’s secrecy and her ambiguous relationship with Marlowe throughout much of the film, she is ultimately on his “side”, and helps him in the end rather than dragging his career and life into turmoil. Compare this with Joan Bennett’s character in SCARLET STREET, who uses and abuses Chris Cross (Robinson) until he is a broken and dejected individual, then laughs in his face when he suggests that he is in love with her. Or consider Phyllis Dietrichson’s relationship with Walter Neff in DOUBLE INDEMNITY; everything is fine until trouble rears its head. And most significantly, take Vera’s relationship with Al Roberts in DETOUR, in which she ruins his chances of a healthy relationship with his girlfriend and turns him, inadvertently, into a murderer to satisfy her own greed. There is no such direct relationship with the femme fatale in THE BIG SLEEP.

From a story standpoint, THE BIG SLEEP is a mystery. By definition of the traditionalist/stylistic approach, noir does not contain a mystery. Even confirmed mystery authors, Raymond Chandler among them, shed the mystery angle when he co-wrote the screenplay for DOUBLE INDEMNITY with Billy Wilder. James M. Cain claimed that the new style of crime drama (he was describing noir before the term had been coined) appearing in the early 1940s held no elements of mystery. The viewer knows upfront “whodunit”. They are, in fact, involved in the planning stages of the crime, such as the intricate details of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, or the more haphazard, frantic scheming of DETOUR. THE BIG SLEEP is somewhat unique among mystery stories (and films) in that it does not present a clear series of “clues” that enable the viewer to work alongside the detective protagonist in solving the crime. This is precisely the element that detracts from THE NAKED CITY’s status as a film noir as well. That film is more a police procedural in the style of DRAGNET rather than the “criminal’s point of view” found in noir. The mystery of THE BIG SLEEP lies in the intricacy of the details and clues as they unfold.

It is interesting, though, to compare THE BIG SLEEP with another Raymond Chandler/Philip Marlowe adaptation of 1946-Dick Powell’s film THE LADY IN THE LAKE. This film, which is a more clear mystery, uniquely tells the entire film from the point of view of Marlowe. Thus, actors in the frame ostensibly looking toward “Marlowe” are actually looking in to the camera. We walk in and out of rooms with Marlowe, and see every single detail from his point of view. This technique is ultimately unsuccessful because, paradoxically, it fails to allow us to identify with the protagonist whom we never “see”. Bogart’s screen presence, on the other hand, allows us to identify with him and holds the interest of the viewer through even the most dense and obtuse sections of the story.

I would question whether or not Howard Hawks’ focus on professionalism prevented him from directing a true “film noir”. I certainly do not mean to suggest that Hawks wasn’t craftsman enough to tackle the style, but would question whether or not the inherent weakness of character found in film noir was simply in such direct opposition to the grain of Hawks’ cinematic philosophy that he was unable to immerse himself completely in the noir style. Indeed, it is one type of film he never made (at least from a stylistic/traditionalist standpoint, of course), despite his having tackled such a wide variety of styles, genre and subject matter. Hawks’ personal interest with professionalism as a trait and lifestyle was the hallmark of the “auteur” principle as initially set forth by Francois Truffaut. It is certainly a dominant character trait in Hawks’ films (and I want to be perfectly clear, I am most certainly not endorsing the auteur theory as an approach to viewing or analyzing films. It is the worst kind of fanboy adulation that resulted in Andrew Sarris championing a mediocre film by a great director, such as Hawks’ HATARI!, while dismissing a truly great film like CASABLANCA as “a happy accident”, simply because it wasn’t directed by a filmmaker in his personal pantheon.)

Humphrey Bogart had the good fortune to appear in three of the greatest American films during the 1940s. THE BIG SLEEP is a good film, though not, I would argue, a great one. In purely cinematic terms, it lacks the kind of dramatic thrust and style that marks THE MALTEST FALCON. The relationship between the male and female leads lacks the kind of profound, almost tragic greatness that makes CASABLANCA the greatest romance of all time. And finally, it lacks the dynamic between the characters and the psychological depth of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. When compared with these three other films, the flaws that keep THE BIG SLEEP from achieving its full greatness become all the more apparent.

Challenging the status of THE BIG SLEEP and other 1940s detective pictures as film noir is perhaps an overdue reevaluation, not even just of noir specifically, but of so-called Hollywood genre pictures in general. As there is more and more study of film noir, both as a genre and as a style, there is a tendency to blanket a large number of films under the film noir heading without considering the realities of the production, and the cultural state in which these works were produced. If film historians, and academia in particular, want to categorize works based on the criteria as set forth in any variety of approaches, there needs to be a thorough understanding of both industrial and cultural realities to prevent false conclusions from being reached. Unfortunately, as film studies become more and more geared toward recent films, and recent American films in particular, this is less likely to happen, as the line between fact and opinion become increasingly blurred to the point where any sort of critical objectivity becomes impossible.