The DVD Report #8

The American Film Institute (AFI) has revamped its decade old list of the greatest American films. Called 100 Years…100 Films, the original list was used as a selling tool by DVD marketers to bring public awareness to films that might otherwise have been overlooked. The marketing strategy has come full circle. Just as the original list helped spark interest in DVD rental and sales, the new list reflects the influence of DVDs on the film scholars, critics and Hollywood insiders who voted in the new AFI poll.

Interestingly, the top five films on the list (Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Casablanca, Raging Bull and Singin’ in the Rain) all had deluxe edition DVD packages issued within the past few years, while the film that dropped the most, The African Queen, has yet to find DVD distribution within the U.S..

The original subpar DVD release of All Quiet on the Western Front is likely to blame for that great film’s dropping off of the list altogether. Although Universal reissued it in a superior transfer early this year, it was probably too little too late for those who had already dismissed it as being too musty. They need to take another look. The film’s anti-war message has never been so needed.

The futuristic Blade Runner, which was also recently given a spiffed up release, fared much better. It made the list pending the promise of an even more spectacular DVD Special Edition after the 25-year-old film is reissued theatrically later this year.

The Buster Keaton film, The General, which at number 18 is the highest debuting film on the list, was little seen and long forgotten by the general public before its DVD release within the past decade. Available along with Keaton’s other masterwork, Steamboat Bill, Jr. , as part of Image’s Buster Keaton Double Feature, The General is both a full-fledged comedy and authentic period epic. Taking place during the Civil War, the title refers to a locomotive, not a military commander.

Keaton’s rival for greatest silent film comedian, Charlie Chaplin, continues to be represented by three films on the list: City Lights, Modern Times and The Gold Rush. City Lights, which has long been my favorite Chaplin film, leaped 65 places from number 76 to number 11. While others prefer the little tramp’s last appearance in 1936’s Modern Times,I always preferred him in this 1931 gem that is as much a tragedy as it is a comedy.

Silent cinema reached its apex with F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise in 1927 and the AFI has finally recognized it, replacing the maudlin first talkie, The Jazz Singer, with this beautifully filmed love story.

Long recognized for its cinematic innovations, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation is also racist propaganda and it too has been replaced on the list with Griffith’s more tolerable Intolerance, filmed a year later with more sumptuous sets.

Race relations in general have gotten a much needed overhaul on the new list with the explosive Do the Right Thing replacing the phony foibles of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner while the unfairly neglected In the Heat of the Night should find new fans now that it has made the list.

The AFI still loves musicals, though not the same musicals. While Singin’ in the Rain, The Wizard of Oz, West Side Story, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Sound of Music remain on the list, My Fair Lady, An American in Paris and Fantasia have been replaced with Cabaret, Nashville, A Night at the Opera and Swing Time.

While I have a soft spot in my heart for My Fair Lady, I always thought An American in Paris over-rated and I could never warm to Fantasia. On the other hand, their replacement films grow richer with time.

While not my favorite Hitchcock, I personally prefer The 39 Steps, Notorious and Rear Window, my hat is off to the AFI voters for placing Vertigo in the top ten. This has been my favorite film of its year, 1958, ever since I saw it at the impressionable age of 14. That it is finally receiving this kind of recognition, placing just ahead of the long revered The Wizard of Oz, leaves me overjoyed just thinking about the legions that will now discover it for themselves.

I am even more excited about the leap of John Ford’s The Searchers from number 96 on the old list to number 12 on the new one. Obviously influenced by the exquisitely packaged DVD released a year ago, the voters have taken to their hearts my favorite film of 1956. Released at a time when practically ever other show on television was a western, the film was pretty much taken for granted in its initial release. Despite the public’s seeming indifference, this has long been an influence on film-makers. George Lucas all but lifted a key scene for Star Wars and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is nothing if not a colder, urbanized version of the main thrust of the film.

While one of Ford’s masterpieces has gotten its due, others have not been so lucky. 1939’s Stagecoach is off the list, 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath has dropped two notches though it is still the highest ranked film of its year, and 1941’s How Green Was My Valley is still among the missing.

I am among the few who think that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did the right thing by giving the 1941 best picture Oscar to How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane but legions of cineastes are so incensed over the hallowed Citizen Kane‘s loss to this day that How Green Was My Valley never gets a fair shake on lists of this type.

Faring much better is Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’ 1942 comedy that has become a perennial of Turner Classics Movies (TCM), the pre-eminent TV showcase for old films. Released on DVD as part of Universal’s The Preston Sturges Collection along with The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story and Hail the Conquering Hero, this paean to laughter as a cure for society’s ills is one of those films that just keeps getting better with every viewing. It has finally made the AFI’s list.

Replacing George Stevens’ 1956 Giant as an example of the changing Texas of the 1950s, Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 masterpiece, The Last Picture Show with its cavalcade of great performances, also makes the list as do one socially relevant drama for each decade from the 1950s through the 1980s: 12 Angry Men, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, All the President’s Men and Sophie’s Choice.

Despite much fanfare about opening up the list to newer films,only four films producedsince the previous cut-off, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, The Sixth Sense and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, make the list.

Stephen Spielberg’s 1998 Oscar winner, Saving Private Ryan, replaces Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1970 Oscar winner, Patton,as the only World War II epic on the list. Interestingly, the first film in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the one voted in, while it was the last one, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that won the Oscar.

Titanic, the box office juggernaut and record Oscar winner that it was, was an expected addition and so was The Sixth Sense, which has had at least two elaborate DVD presentations since it took the box-office by storm in 1999.

Others new to the list are Spartacus, which was given an elaborate Criterion DVD treatment early on and The Shawshank Redemption,which developed a cult following on DVD.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, Warner Bros., eschewing their usual good taste, have unleashed twelve new-to-DVD cult “classics”. Beware, these are no classics, but most are worth seeing at least once.

The first and still the best of the women’s prison films, 1950’s Caged!, directed by John Cromwell (Since You Went Away, Anna and the King of Siam) has long since been eclipsed by much more harrowing prison fare, much of it on TV. Even the family friendly Murder, She Wrote did an episode set in a women’s prison that was edgier twenty years ago. Still, the performances remain watchable, not just Oscar-nominated Eleanor Parker (Detective Story, Home from the Hill) and Hope Emerson (Adam’s Rib, TV’s Peter Gunn), but Agnes Moorehead, Betty Garde, Lee Patrick and Jan Sterling as well.

A critical and commercial flop in its day, 1955’s The Land of the Pharaohs almost ended the career of Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, Red River) but seen today the film holds up a lot better than such other biblical and historical epics of the mid-fifties as The Silver Chalice, The Egyptian and Diane. Joan Collins has her best pre-Dynasty role as the treacherous wife of Pharaoh Jack Hawkins.

1955’s The Prodigal, directed by Richard Thorpe (Ivanhoe, Jailhouse Rock), though, isn’t any better today than it was then. Lana Turner (Peyton Place, Imitation of Life) seems to be sleepwalking throughout.

Turner is also represented in the collection by 1969’s The Big Cube, a film that should have ended her career, but oddly didn’t. Only 48 at the time, Turner nevertheless required soft focus lenses for her close-ups as an actress being driven mad by LSD cubes slipped to her by her stepdaughter and would-be stepson-in-law. As the stepdaughter, Karin Mossberg, a long forgotten ingénue with a voice like Zsa Zsa Gabor (though she is supposed to be the daughter of Irishman Dan O’Herlihy) makes Turner look like God’s gift to acting by comparison. As the would-be stepson-in-law, George Chakiris is so bad he should have been required to return the Oscar he won for West Side Story.

Joan Crawford’s last film, 1970’s Trog, is not as bad as its reputation. Sure, the story is sappy and the monster not very convincing, but Crawford delivers her lines as if she were appearing in a prestige film. Rumor has it that she required a pint of vodka to get through each scene but you can’t tell it from her performance. She looks sober as a judge throughout. She also seems to be having a lot more fun than she had in her previous effort, the truly awful Berserk!.

Ever wonder what became of the characters Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain played in 1945’s State Fair? Imagine them as the terrorized couple they play in 1967’s Hot Rods to Hell, foolish enough to buy a motel sight unseen in the California desert six years after
Psycho. Nobody personified moral indignation better than Andrews (Laura, The Best Years of Our Lives) and when he’s had enough, watch out! His curtain speech is one of his best.

Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, The Giant Behemoth, Queen of Outer Space and Colossus of Rhodesare as silly as their titles indicate, and Skyjacked is too earnest for its own good, but Zero Hour! is a hoot.

Dumped on the second half of a double-bill with Bombers B-52 in the winter doldrums between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1957, the earnest Zero Hour! would have been long forgotten were it not for Airplane! which spoofs it mercilessly. Seen after Airplane! it’s impossible to watch it without fits of laughter. Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell and Sterling Hayden star.

In two weeks, more kitsch comes our way with the release of Fox’s The Joan Collins Collection featuring The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.

Peter J. Patrick (June 26, 2007)