SOME LIKE IT HOT
YEAR = 1959
GENRE= Comedy
LENGTH= 122m
MPAA= PG
DIR. =Billy Wilder
STAR = Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis
ACADEMY AWARDS= Costume Design
Nominations= Director, Actor (Lemmon), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography (B & W), Art Direction
AFI RANK = 14
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 10

A Comedy that has it all, and lacks absolutely nothing. "Nobody's perfect" may be an inherent truism, but "Some Like it Hot" is a definite somebody in the universe of cinema, thus it IS perfect in every sense. Swing, sex and slapstick, (three words that immediately come to mind when trying to describe it) , are a mix so delicious, so fruitful in its possibilities that one cannot imagine a film which can live up to them, and yet this one does. Marilyn, her trademark, displeasingly infantile voice aside, is a bombshell of thermonuclear dimensions, whose powers of titillation will not expire so long as there are hormones and/or Viagra. The sexual content, for socio-historical reasons cannot be as explicit as we've come to expect, but there's still plenty of it, from Monroe's see-through outfit to the double entendre worthy of the Farelli Brothers ("What do I do if it's an emergency ? - Pull the emergency break!" ), including overtly gay themes that have a cult following of their own. The Lemmon/Curtis duo operates with gleeful, unrestrained vitality that can only be likened to Chaplin in his heyday. Though not strictly a Musical, the combustive energy of this movie is so stimulating it almost makes you get up and dance.

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Hitchcock's most famous and best deserved example of choice mass entertainment without any fear/thought provoking side effects. Cary Grant, always the paragon of propriety, is gentlemanly to the bone as an unwitting subject for a political murder frame. A statewide chase ensures, featuring a climactic fight atop the nation's prominent landmark, all in good spirit. While Grant's train-set love affair is not one of the director's most memorable (see "Notorious" instead), the visual puns make up for its lack of raw sensuality. Jessie Landis, playing Grant's mother, is an obvious miscast, since she was the same age as her on-screen son at the time of the filming, and no sufficient makeup was applied to hide that fact.

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A film as wooden and stiff as its slave-filled galleys, it centers on a wealthy Romanized Jewish family, who through series of misfortunes, become some of the world's first Christian converts. Only a few barely related sequences, (a naval battle and the fabled chariot race), can prevent the viewer from dozing off. The clumsily inserted snippets from the life of Jesus do much to vulgarize the story and date it tremendously. Charlton Heston occasionally shows off   his dramatic range by bulging the veins on his neck and ranting about one injustice or another (see "Planet of the Apes" for more). All others can't seem to muster any such emotion. One "Ben Hur" made in the 20's could have been sufficient treatment of the novel, but Bible epics were the money some thirty years later, so Hollywood had all the reasons to replicate the other's profits.

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As mesmerizing as it is long and difficult to comprehend, "Vertigo" is one of cinema's strangest tales of romantic obsession, the kind that certainly would not be made nowadays, since the subject is increasingly demonized in the American culture. Surprisingly enough, it works, in large part through the director's mastery over the medium. Some speculate that it was a highly personal project for him, a casting out of his own internal struggles. Such theories' validity is questionable, but anyone watching will notice the movie's much lesser degree of calculating, joyful logic that almost all other Hitchcock's works are saturated with. Incredibly true to its title, by virtue of an eerie score and some dizzying cinematography, the movie induces the sense of romantic vertigo in the audience. A fantastic opening credits sequence which resembles digital animation, suggests a visionary quality that refused to be confined to its time period.

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BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
YEAR = 1957
GENRE= Drama , Epic, War
LENGTH= 165m
MPAA= PG
DIR. =David Lean
STAR = William Holden Alec Guinness
ACADEMY AWARDS= Picture, Director, Actor (Guinness), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Original Score
Nominations= Supporting Actor (Sessue Hayakawa)
AFI RANK = 13
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 9

The first of Lean's most refined character studies ("Lawrence of Arabia" being the other one), about a British W.W.II officer (Guinness) imprisoned with his troops in a Japanese deterrent camp, facing dilemmas of military honor and survival, as well as his inner stubborn pride combined with tactful ingenuity. Through his life-risking efforts, the camp is gradually transformed into a near-utopian collective where humanity prevails, but not for long. Those arrogant yanks in the persona of William Holden bring about "utter madness". A sophisticated glimpse into mankind's destructive urges and vice versa, "The Bridge on the River Quai" manages to convey a stirring anti-war message without the need of huge battle scenes or sappy farewells. The only slightly problematic aspect of the movie is its American storyline which comes across as considerably less developed and more stereotypical. Holden's character is far from multi-dimensional, and his pompous jungle sojourn along with some voiceless local women (added for no reason other than to be present in an otherwise all-male picture) does not speak of good taste. The climactic finale, however, blows all of these small imperfections to smithereens.

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SEARCHERS
YEAR = 1956
GENRE= Western
LENGTH= 119m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =John Ford
STAR = John Wayne, Natalie Wood, Jeffrey Hunter
AFI RANK = 96
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= PERHAPS
GRADE = 7.5

Though Wayne might have been a role model back in the day, his roughness seems more and more like pointless machismo. Unlike the urban hardies, embodied by Bogart, Waynes' tough-cookie masculinity isn't weary and self-preservationist, it's just reactionary, misanthropic brutality. His background is completely shaded in mystery, and its human qualities seldom show through. "The Searchers" presents an unequivocally old-fashioned celebration of the Cowboy, a proud anti-hero, whom, in the end, we don't care much about. Later "revisionist Westerns", starting from the mid-sixties, began to invert John Ford's formula, producing far more interesting results. While the title character remains entirely unappealing, the movie contains a certain amount of complexity , and its treatment of the Indians is not as unilateral as many of its predecessors'. Splendid vistas and large-scale, sweeping shots, as in all the director's films, tap into Western landscape's omnipotent, revelatory majesty.

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GIANT
YEAR = 1956
GENRE= Epic, Drama
LENGTH= 202m
MPAA= G
DIR. =George Stevens
STAR = James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson
ACADEMY AWARDS= Director
Nominations= Picture, Actor (Dean), Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge), Adapted Screenplay, Editing, Original Score, Art Direction, Costume Design
AFI RANK = 82
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= NO
GRADE = 5.5

James Dean is unelegantly wasted in his last film, a   herald of the fast-forward button. He even gets to age and have a mustache and gray hair (not believable for a moment). Just a bore, with Taylor (who also becomes inconveniently old) at the height of nonacting. Some promising ideas, such as one of the first condemnations of Latino-directed racism, are muddled in the overall absence of cohesion or any form of editing.

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REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE
YEAR = 1955
GENRE= Drama, Teen
LENGTH= 111m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Nicholas Ray
STAR = James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo
Academy Award Nominations= Supporting Actor (Mineo), Supporting Actress (Wood), Writing
AFI RANK = 59
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 9

The movie that made Dean a star and by which he is still represented. "Rebel" is  also important in its unapologetic addressing of the problems of adolescence, one of the first of its kind. Even though all the rebellious teenagers here can be placed in the "bad seed" anti-role model category, the trio in the story's center are all etched out as unique individuals who are filled to the brim with burning frustration and emotional distress. They have real problems, and as with real teens, their problems are not easily identifiable. Dean gets especially violent in his desire to be heard and understood, and wreaks more self-destructive havoc than any film could handle, if it wasn't directed by Nicholas Ray, an expert in handling disaffected, easily destructible youth ("They Live By Night"). This time around, he's able to show their misplaced energy and their near-suicidal despair even better, importing the best elements of Noir so that his work would result in anything but a typical exploitation flick.

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REAR WINDOW
YEAR = 1954
GENRE= Thriller, Crime, Suspense
LENGTH= 112m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Alfred Hitchcock
STAR =James Stewart, Grace Kelly
Academy Award Nominations= Director, Writing, Cinematography, Sound
AFI RANK = 42
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= PERHAPS
GRADE = 8

Just the chiller one would expect from the undisputed master of audience manipulation (at least before Spielberg came along). Stewart, as a wheelchair bound photographer, assisted by a much younger Kelly, becomes a voyeur out of sheer boredom setting off a chain of events only one director could envision with such effortless, infallible logistics. A unique film in any age, "Rear Window" features a handicapped character who is neither put on a pedestal nor humiliated, but deals with his calamity with resourcefulness and an undefeated spirit. The movie, while not an absolute masterpiece, is a definitive example of Hitchcock's crowdpleasing skill.

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ON THE WATERFRONT
YEAR = 1954
GENRE= Drama, Crime
LENGTH= 108m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Elia Kazan
STAR =Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint
ACADEMY AWARDS= Picture, Director, Actor (Brando), Supporting Actress (Saint), Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction
Nominations= Supporting Actors (Lee J Cobb, Carl Malden, Rod Steiger), Original Score
AFI RANK = 8
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 9.5

In retrospect, Elia Kazan's reconciliation project, in which he apologizes for the infamous anti-communist, Judas-like testimony, by basically stating he's not really sorry. His real redemption is an enduring classic full of gutsy acting and streetwise dramatics representing the very apex of the era's realism. The screenplay avoids any potential awkwardness, with which the majority of its contemporaries stray around key issues. Everything is addressed head on, with inflammatory chagrin, and now-legendary soliloquies by Brando, in his arguably the meatiest and most passionate role as a would-be boxing champ, who faces the dilemma of exposing corrupt, villainous union bosses, with some of whom he has direct blood ties. Parallels to the director's own moral struggle are apparent, but circumstantial background doesn't matter at all: the peerless film was primarily made to stand on its own.

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SHANE
YEAR = 1953
GENRE= Western
LENGTH= 118m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =George Stevens
STAR = Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur
ACADEMY AWARDS= Cinematography (Color)
Nomiantions= Picture, Director, Supporting Actors (Jack Palance, Brandon De Wilde), Screenplay
AFI RANK = 69
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT=YES
GRADE = 9

An antithesis to John Wayne's unchecked bravado, this lonesome cowboy (Ladd) emerges as the most noble and mythical of any Western heroes, protecting a homesteader family whose young son he befriends. A slightly predictable, archetypal scenario and some blatant symbolism do little damage to a lingering epic, a young moviegoer's rightful introduction to the Western, and to mature cinema in general. "Shane" is a rare example of a film that has an equal appeal to all age groups, and yet does not exploit its child star for a tasteless, insincere, sentimental robbery of the viewers' untrained senses (the opposite of what most of the Foreign Oscar contenders are constantly doing in the 90's).

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FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
YEAR = 1953
GENRE= Drama, Romance, War
LENGTH= 118m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Fred Zinneman
STAR = Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed
ACADEMY AWARDS= Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Sinatra), Supporting Actress (Reed), Screenplay, Cinematography (B & W), Editing, Sound
Nominations= Actors (Clift, Lancaster), Actress (Kerr), Original Score, Coustume Design
AFI RANK = 52
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 8.5

Whenever this venture into the military's imperfections hidden within the hearts of its officers and soldiers concentrates on the interaction between the men, it never misses a beat. All of the characterizations are a pleasure to behold in their richness and humanism - the fully drawn portraits of Lancaster, Clift and Sinatra as enlisted army members with private miseries to contend with, whose fates intertwine in the last peace days of 1941, speak for themselves. Their relationships with the opposite sex, by contrast, are far less believable: i.e. either overly restrained or overly convoluted. The famed Kerr-Lancaster embrace amid the oncoming ocean surf was once of enormous significance, yet the scene as a whole does more harm than good, for its naive romance turned into a ridiculous guessing game of suggestions is inconsistent with the harsh realism of the film's male dominated segments. Reed, whose occupation as a prostitute is conveniently airbrushed for proper compliance with the day's standards fares no better. Still, when it comes to the soldiers' drunken bonding or their legitimate apprehension of advancing crisis, "From Here to Eternity" takes the audience to an eminent level of cinematic experience.

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SINGIN' IN THE RAIN
YEAR = 1952
GENRE= Musical
LENGTH= 103m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Gene Kelly, Stanley Donnen
STAR = Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Rynolds, Jean Hagen
Academy Award Nominations =Supporting Actress (Hagen), Music
AFI RANK = 10
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 10

A furiously paced showbiz extravaganza with stupendous musical numbers that keep topping each other as the show goes on. Light and satirical in tone (with the exception of a spellbindingly glamorous "Broadway Ballet" dance sequence), "Singin' in the Rain" is justly considered the quintessential Musical: it might not have the urgency of "West Side Story", but surely the vigor, plus it's not as long due to superb editing and tightly constructed scenes. While the plot, comically retelling Hollywood's transition from silents to talkies and the repercussions the sound revolution had on the industry, is often absurdist and the songs do not always arise directly out of the given situation, such jolly spontaneity cannot be considered a flaw. Three actor friends (Kelly, O'Connor and Reynolds), as they try to adapt to the new overnightly sprung order, put on a display of inventive, beautiful moves that seamlessly combine humor with virtuoso grace.

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HIGH NOON
YEAR = 1952
GENRE= Western
LENGTH= 85m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Fred Zinneman
STAR = Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Kathy Jurado
ACADEMY AWARDS= Actor (Cooper), Editing, Original Score, Song
Nominations= Picture, Director, Screenplay
AFI RANK = 33
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 8.5

Serious yet unsophisticated, and above all, suspenseful narrative of a formerly respectable sheriff (Cooper) who suddenly finds himself at odds with an entire town as an increasingly personal matter between him and his old enemies nears a resolution likely to end in death. Filmed virtually in real time, "High Noon" concentrates only on a few crucial hours in the life of a leader whose community has disowned him in fear of the consequences. Only a loyal wife (Kelly) can offer any concrete support. No wonder Bill Clinton has mentioned this movie as his all time favorite on the AFI special presentation. But all political similarities aside, Zinneman's film, even if rather simplistic, stays a compelling masterpiece of high style : the last ten minutes are a tour-de-force of creative camerawork.

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A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
YEAR = 1951
GENRE= Drama
LENGTH= 125m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Elia Kazan
STAR = Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Kim Hunter
ACADEMY AWARDS= Actress (Leigh), Supporting Actor (Malden), Supporting Actress (Hunter), Art Direction
Nominations= Picture, Director, Actor (Brando), Screenplay,Cinematography, Costume Design, Original Score, Sound
AFI RANK = 45
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= PERHAPS
GRADE = 7

A so-called "adult" drama of the time when motion pictures were becoming more uncomfortably frank than in the first twenty years of the Hays Code's existence. Frank as such movies may have been once, all the potentially shocking material was conveyed through implications comprehensible only to grownups with keen senses. This forced subtlety weighs down on the films' overall impact, making it seem mild, confusing, and heavily dependent on some unseen rulebook. In classic Film Noir, the hints were amplified and the tear-jerking turned down, thus making Noir, and not conventional melodrama, the most durable genre of the pre R-rated decades. "Streetcar" has the same basic flaw: while all the performances are excellent (Leigh has the most flare since her glory days as Scarlett and Brando's wet t-shirt rage broke him through as a talent to be reckoned with), the way its subject matter is handled is not direct enough, and the director's contention with hidden forces of censorship are in full evidence.

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A PLACE IN THE SUN
YEAR = 1951
GENRE= Drama, Romance
LENGTH= 120m
MPAA= PG
DIR. = George Stevens
STAR =Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters
ACADEMY AWARDS= Director, Screenplay, Cimenatography (B & W), Editing, Original Score, Costume Design
Nominations= Picture, Actor (Clift), Actress (Winters)
AFI RANK = 92
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT=NO
GRADE = 6

Badly dated and totally unintrusive into the souls and minds of its star crossed lovers. "Blue boy" Clift falls in love with his high society cousin (bathing suit sporting Taylor, as the daughter of his boss), while impregnating a lowly co-worker. The romance between two leads does have some spark, but on the whole, the level of melodrama is pushed to the limit and credibility follows the same path. Cheesy, generic scenes abound, and when the plight of our hero's perpetually sour-faced ex-girlfriend (Shelly Winters) is revealed after initial beating around the bush, the movie turns into a subversive propaganda for birth control. Where was Trojan Man, when the two saps needed him the most, anyway?

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AMERICAN IN PARIS
YEAR = 1951
GENRE= Musical
LENGTH= 113m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Vincente Minelli
STAR = Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron
ACADEMY AWARDS= Picture, Screemplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Music
Nominations= Director, Editing
AFI RANK =68
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= NO
GRADE = 6.5

Lavish decorations, imaginative choreography and marvelous costumes try to elevate an otherwise shallow and uninteresting story, but never quite succeed. Gene Kelly, wandering about the fake Paris studio sets, meets, looses and finds a girl of his dreams (indeed, a finely authentic Frenchwoman). Aside from an unprecedented seventeen-minute fantasy sequence/dance number, which includes the coming alive of major Impressionist paintings, the movie doesn't have much to offer, and its haphazardly inserted ending only makes matters worse.

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THE AFRICAN QUEEN
YEAR = 1951
GENRE= Adventure, Romance
LENGTH= 103m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =John Huston
STAR =Humphrey Bogart, Catherine Hepburn
ACADEMY AWARDS= Actor (Bogart)
Nominations= Director, Actress (Hepburn), Screenplay
AFI RANK = 17
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= PERHAPS
GRADE = 7.5

Not always consistent in "high adventure", as "African Queen" is so often billed. Bogie and Kate are an unlikely pair who inexplicably fall in love in the depths of the German occupied, W.W.I African jungle. Hepburn's unnecessarily lengthy exposition shows her to be a staunch religious fanatic, and Humphrey's alcoholic, dirt-cheap captain are quite a hellmade match. How a bond may arise between the two while struggling through impossible hardships literally in the same boat is understandable, but a passionate affair that makes them reform their ways is much less plausible and seems forced. No matter, once the action kicks in, the couple's relentless drive to outwit the enemy and conquer the elements will cast aside all reasonable doubts the audience may have about their relationship.

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SUNSET BOULEVARD
YEAR = 1950
GENRE= Drama, Romance, Film Noir
LENGTH= 100m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Billy Wilder
STAR =Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Strocheim, Nancy Olson
ACADEMY AWARDS= Original Screenplay, Art Direction, Original Score
Nominations= Picture, Director, Actor (Holden), Actress (Swanson), Supporting Actor (von Strocheim), Supporting Actress (Olson), Cinematography (B&W), Editing
AFI RANK =12
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 9.5

A bizarre, frightening romance between a hard-boiled screenwriter (Holden's starmaking turn) short on cash, and a rich, older woman (Swanson, a now unknown silent movie legend residing in a semi-neglected mansion) who has long gone insane. In order to complete his bonafide hit, he uses the forgotten ex-siren who was once the toast of Hollywood (as was the case with the actress herself), for financial reasons, inadvertently becoming trapped in her net of obsession and madness. An unconventional, deeply affecting and spooky tale, recounted by a dead man (in a stunning giveaway opener), deserves the highest praise for its originality and a penetrating look into Los Angeles' film community. A far more ordinary subplot involving Holden's affair with a promising female colleague did not age as well, but it only creates minor ripples in the movie's supremely seedy pool of twisted emotions

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ALL ABOUT EVE
YEAR = 1950
GENRE= Drama
LENGTH= 139m
MPAA= NR
DIR. =Joseph L. Mankiewicz
STAR = Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Marylin Monroe
ACADEMY AWARDS= Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Sanders), Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Sound
Nomiations= Actresses (Davis, Baxter), SupportingActresses (Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter), Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction, Original Score
AFI RANK =16
WORTHY OF PLACEMENT= YES
GRADE = 8.5

For all of its fiercely competitive performances and a razor sharp script with one quotable slice of wit after another, "All About Eve" does not, in the end, equal the sum of its splendid parts. Dropping into a dressing room combat zone, the rivalry between a narcissistic , established theatre star (Davis), and a ravenous, self-made newcomer Eve (Baxter) is chronicled up to a certain point, but not where a clear ending could be placed. Several marvelous extended scenes, especially a "bumpy ride" of an elitist thespian party, and Eve's coming to terms with her no-nonsense mentor: an influential, tough-as-nails critic (Sanders), but an eagerly anticipated climactic confrontation between the two actresses that would surpass all of their previous skirmishes never comes about. And it's a pity, since Davis, already in her mid-forties, stirs up a hurricane of an act, exuding torrential downpours of catty arrogance and wounded sensuality.

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