City Lights (USA, 1931, Charlie Chaplin)

Unwilling to bend to the winds of change, which saw the introduction of the spoken word in movies three years earlier, Chaplin's is a silent film. However, he does use music and sound effects cleverly throughout, even employing them pointedly to satirize "the talkies." Other familiar targets are the hypocrisy, prissiness, and arrogance of wealthy "polite society" and cruelty to society's less fortunate, lovable outcasts like The Little Tramp himself.

Chaplin's physical comedy is, of course, riotously funny. He dances along the highwire between hilarity and disaster with aplomb. All the while, Chaplin's Little Tramp maintains his dignity and sense of fair play. City Lights's parallel plot lines, the first a love story between the Tramp and a blind flower girl and the second with a suicidal millionaire, unfold efficiently and dovetail beautifully to an unforgettable ending. The narrative involving The Little Tramp and the suicidal millionaire presages themes developed more fully in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life whil the pathos-ridden love story with the blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) plays on universal themes, such as the intoxicating blindness of love and the rejuvenating power of selflessness.

A graceful, athletic artist of pantomime, Chaplin's Little Tramp moves effortlessly between figures of destitution and wealth, aiding and abetting all around him. City Lights is a paean to our best impulses, a plea for humanitarianism and justice. This is one of those rare creatures, the work of a master craftsman in full control of his craft.

City Lights is widely considered to be Charles Chaplin's finest film, no small accomplishment considering his long string of great films. The film is a Chaplin tour-de-force, as he has his hand in almost every aspect of its production. He co-wrote, produced, directed, scored and edited the film.

Elmer Gantry (USA, Richard Brooks)

This once scandalous adaptation of the trenchant Sinclair Lewis novel may now seem a little dated, but it still has much to recommend it. It pulls few punches in its story of the hypocrisy, materialism, and opportunism at the heart of the evangelical world of Bible-thumping barnstorming revival troupes, an industry that professes to be about spiritual salvation.
 

In the title role, Burt Lancaster moves like a powerful steam engine through the rustic countryside: there's no stopping this man. The duplicitous and drunken Gantry (a character based on Billy Sunday, pro athlete turned evangelical preacher)  is charismatic and enigmatically complex, even if Lancaster is occasionally too much a bull in a china shop to convey his character's subtler motivations. Still, there's no denying his magnetism, and Lancaster delivers his hellfire-and-damnation sermons with characteristic enthusiasm, which clearly helped Lancaster earn his first and only Academy Award.
 

Jean Simmons offers a more quietly sophisticated portrayal as Sister Sharon Falconer, but it is Shirley Jones, in the flashier role of Gantry's ex-flame and prostitute Lulu, who garnered the Best Supporting Actress nod from the Academy. Some questionable character development in the film's latter stages is overcome by writer/director Richard Brooks's barbed and darkly satirical Oscar-winning script, which also keeps the film from getting bogged down in obvious moralizing, as we are encouraged to love, loathe, and forgive the characters.

 
While he may have softened some of the novel's more controversial elements in order to squeeze the film past the censor, Brooks's sharp editing and quick pacing are also an important asset in this dialogue-driven 2 1/2-hour film.

Local Hero (Scotland, Bill Forsyth)

This warm-hearted fish-out-of-water tale highlights the cultural differences (and underlying similarities) between a big city American capitalist and small town Scottish villagers. Bill Forsyth directs the film with wry understatement and has gentle affection for all of his characters.

Paul Riegert plays Mac, an oil company executive sent to the quaint seaside Scottish village to encourage the townsfolk to sell out to the corporate interests. Just as Mac falls in love with the country and its people, the villagers are equally seduced by his promises of instant, immense wealth. However, there is one eccentric holdout, played by Fulton Mackay, who is determined to stick around and protect his beloved beach.

Rather than exploiting the cliché of an evil American oil company battling plucky Scottish townfolk, writer/director Forsyth pursues a quirkier and more intriguing theme of the seduction of the Old World by the New, an idea that has animated such dissimilar works as Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Forsyth's use of "magical realism" is compellingly understated and restrained. This Scotsman's deadpan, self-deprecating satire of his countrymen is more indebted to Alexander Pope than to the more savage Jonathan Swift. The whimsical characters may be oddballs, but they are not gullible hicks: they want the Americans to show them the money. Forsyth's gags rarely occur at the expense of people's dignity, instead highlighting our basic human frailty.

Chris Menges gives us many panoramic shots of the surprisingly beautiful Scottish landscape, while Mark Knopfler's plaintive soundtrack perfectly accents the proceedings. The performances of Burt Lancaster as the eccentric and ambitious oil tycoon is a constant delight, while Peter Riegert's Mac is appropriately (and alternately) flustered and smitten.

Little Women (USA, 1933, George Cukor)



One of Hollywood's original "chick flicks" by one of Hollywood's original chick flick directors (George Cukor), this faithful adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's sentimental Civil War-era novel focuses almost exclusively on the ambitions, desires, and emotions of the titular four sisters.

 
The New England lasses at the centre of this tale are played with verve and pluck by Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennet, Frances Dee and Jean Parker. The expensive and attractive production literally embodies that most manipulative of cinematic clichés, "I laughed, I cried." Little Women's first half, focused on the sisters' effervescent and fun-loving youth, gradually gives way to a melancholy, downbeat second half, in which we witness confusion, disappointment, and death.
 

Little Women's willingness to concentrate almost exclusively on these four sisters, who vary from confident to reticent, was an important step forward in the cinematic treatment of women. How the "little women" hold up as they undergo their trials and tribulations is also essential, as they survive and thrive without (and occasionally despite) men, who appear only in supporting roles, a tidy inversion of Hollywood tradition. Little Women's star-making performance was that of Katherine Hepburn, whose tomboyish spunk is wonderfully endearing in the role of Jo, the embryonic writer. However, the supporting work of Joan Bennett, Jean Parker, and Frances Dee is also key to the film's enduring appeal. Nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for George Cukor, Little Women won best adapted screenplay for Victor Heerman and Sarah Y. Mason

Charles McGregor (Charlie) Jardine (1932-2010)

Thanks to everyone for coming. I look around and see so many good people. Old friends. Even older family. Dad would have been knocked out to see all of you here, and I feel safe in suggesting that Charlie would offer to take you all out for a beer on him, if he were here.


I am a school teacher, and like most teachers, I am a terrible student. It has taken me a lifetime to figure out that Charlie had a lot to impart to me. I am here because I want to tell you what my father taught me.

Dad and I didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things growing up. Like most kids, I was sure that there was nothing that I could learn from him. What could this giant of a man, with his Popeye forearms and his truck driving, backhoe operating, chainsaw wielding ways, teach the pasty, sullen, bookish me? What could this red necked, blue collar, country music and western movie-loving man show me of the world?

A funny thing happened. I grew up, and my tastes began to shift, and I came to realize that many of those things I thought separated us would in fact bring us together. It turns out that Johnny Cash and Buck Owens are pretty damned good, and that a LOT of those movies by John Ford that starred Dad's favourite actor John Wayne are something approaching Real Art. Who knew?

I begin to see Charlie in a new light. Maybe he knew a thing or two after all.

But more importantly, I came to see that my father taught me some pretty big lessons about life, most of the time without uttering a single word. Which is so Charlie, if you think about it.


My enduring memory of Dad is of him rising before the sun every morning so he could put in an honest day's work. Quietly. Without complaint. And then he would come home in the evenings, spent from a day of exhausting work, and take the family swimming or tobogganing. Quietly. Without complaint. On weekends, he would haul us around on long family drives into the hills that led to even longer family hikes through the local woods. He knew the names of everything, all the flora and fauna, and he would try to teach us, not out of pride or ego, but simply because he wanted us to know. I held back. I didn't want to admit that he had something to teach me. I was too cool for his schooling.

As I grew older, and we grew more alike, I came to deeply regret my adolescent arrogance. I wish I had listened more closely. So much I could have learned.

That said, there is one lesson that I managed to learn from him. Luckily, it was the most important of all. And it is this: There is tremendous value in quiety and without complaint rising each morning and putting in a full day's work. In fulfilling your responsibilities and obligations to those you love. In fact, there are few things in life more important and more honourable.

So I guess it is appropriate that we are all here today, gathered to honour my father, who honoured us with a lifetime of honest labour. It may have taken a lifetime for me to learn this lesson, but I learn it I did. Charlie Jardine, you were an honourable man.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (USA, 1941, Victor Fleming)

Despite the widespread success of horror films in the 1930s, MGM rarely made them, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde could explain why. The film is a partially successful attempt to intellectualize the genre, removing the story's overtly terrifying elements in favor of a psychological portrait of the protagonists. However, conventions of the time did not allow director Victor Fleming, fresh off his huge successes Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, to examine the powerful sexual undertones of Stevenson's tale, robbing the film of much of its potential insight. The misogyny and sexual violence of Jekyll's crimes appear to arise out of a void, rather than as an integral part of the character's psyche. Furthermore, the film just loses its way after a strong opening act, falling back on predictable dramatic conventions that drain the film of its narrative energy and underlying horror.

However, the performances of Spencer Tracy in the title role(s) and the radiant Ingrid Bergman as the object of his desire elevate the film above standard horror fare. Tracy was determined to portray his character as a sad and disturbed individual in order to add shadings and sympathy to the villainous figure. Though Lana Turner is little more than ornament as Hyde's fiancée, Tracy's masterful, nuanced performance is well-balanced by Bergman's spirited and sensual turn as Ivy, the oddly-accented Cockney barmaid (a prostitute in the non-bowdlerized version). Sadly, Bergman's feisty character must, as is the rule is such fare, become a hapless victim, making her character's story arc nearly incomprehensible. Nonetheless, the actors are riveting in their scenes together, with constant, palpable tension and electricity between them. Fleming's direction is artful and tasteful, and Joseph Ruttenberg's cinematography effectively captures the moody, fog-filled sets of Victorian England.

Shane (USA, 1953, George Stevens)

Despite being burdened with grand pretensions, George Steven's Shane stands securely as one of the most intelligent westerns of its era. The story, underscored by potent historical conflicts between cattle ranchers and homesteaders in 19th century Wyoming, and broad philosophical issues contrasting the rugged individualist of American lore with the value of belonging to a community, is mythic in scope. Alan Ladd ably portrays Shane, a man shrouded in mystery enters the lives of a small frontier community, and through his rugged integrity shows the citizenry how to deal with apparently indominable forces of unjust authority.
 

The massive, imposing and ragged landscape of Wyoming's Grand Tetons, captured capably by Oscar winner Loyal Griggs, provides an appropriately awe-inspiring backdrop to the action. Stevens rarely passes up a chance to offer up attention-seeking directorial flourishes (long takes capped by extended fades), but in the end his faithfulness to the characters and their stories preserves the movie's greatness. Jack Palance, whose sneering charisma is palpable, is the embodiment of evil as the ranchers' hired assassin. Ladd, who is enigmatic and mysterious as the neo-pacifist ex-gunslinger titular character, is quietly imposing (despite his lack of physical stature) in the role. As a man with a dark past, Shane willingly martyrs himself in order to atone for past sins and to save his newly adopted family. Therefore, it is appropriate that his son-by-proxy Joey provides the predominant point-of-view, since it is his coming-of-age that reflects the maturation of the American west.

 
Some of the film's more subversive critics have pointed to the psychosexual nature of the exchanges between Joey and Shane as evidence of the film's subconscious perversity. Regardless, the cinematography of Loyal Griggs wraps in the film in more conventional epic grandeur, while the film's refusal to offer a pat happy ending gives Shane a sheen of modernity as well.

Spartacus (USA, 1960, Stanley Kubrick)

A remarkably expensive production for the time ($12m) that took 167 days to film, Spartacus has been lauded as the "thinking man's" epic because it lacks a happy ending and places as much emphasis on oration as action. The titular character, played with an intensity and energy that characterized many of Kirk Douglas's performances, is a rebellious slave, originally purchased in order to train as a gladiator so he can become sport for plebes and proles alike. When his beloved is sold, Spartacus leads a slave revolt that became a part of history. The political drama is rounded out by the struggle between the more extreme Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and a more moderate Gracchus (Charles Laughton).

The slave revolt storyline, penned in part by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, is clearly meant to parallel contemporary American political reality. One reading of the film sees the decadent Romans as grotesquely shaped versions of the Hollywood movie moguls who gleefully leeching the talent, who themselves come in the form of the noble gladiators in the film.  The optimistic liberal message is delivered with a heavy handed via speech spouting slaves, and led director Stanley Kubrick, who was not a big fan of the final product, to complain that the film "had everything but a good story." Kubrick was brought aboard after Kirk Douglas and the film's original director Anthony Mann clashed very early in the production.

Although Douglas gives a strident and muscular performance, it is the supporting cast, led by Academy Award winner Peter Ustinov and Laurence Olivier who steal the picture. While it suffers from some of the flaws of epics of this era-such as an overly sanitized portrait of life at the time, and anachronistic visions of fashion and lifestyle-Spartacus also boasts some stirring action and intelligent dialogue. The final scenes of crucified rebel slaves lining the roads to Rome are unforgettably powerful. Propelled by Alex North's triumphant score and filmed in glorious "Super Technirama" 70mm, the wide screen format serves the stirring and spectacular action sequences, some of which used up to 8500 extras, very well. Oscars went to Ustinov, for best supporting actor, art direction, costume design and cinematography.

Anatomy of a Murder (USA, 1959, Otto Preminger)

Like the court proceedings at its core, Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder moves at a deliberate pace, unwinding its 161 minutes in long, fluid takes. Jimmy Stewart, shedding some aspects of his trademark as shawks earnestness in order to play a wily lawyer Paul Biegler, takes on the case of Lt. Manion (Ben Gazzara), a jealous and unsympathetic brute who has killed the owner of a neighborhood tavern after his beautiful but erratic wife (Lee Remick) claims to have been raped.

The film's subject matter (rape and the insanity defense) was controversial in the 1950s, as was Preminger's approach, which was bluntly direct. The film maintains a cool objectivity as it explores both the psychosexual issues of the central characters and the complex legal issues confronted by lawyer Biegler and his client Manion. It raises prickly and complex questions about legal ethics, while challenging the audience to decide for itself the tricky issues of justice and truth. Presiding calmly over the heated and controversial case is Joseph N. Welch, who in real life was the defense attorney in the Army-McCarthy hearings.

Sam Leavitt's black-and-white cinematography contrasts with the various shades of gray in the moral dilemmas of the characters. Justice appears to be an afterthought in this case in which procedure and self-interest, rather than a pursuit of the truth, control the process. There are no clear-cut good guys and bad guys, and the film's resolution has a willfully ironic edge. An excellent soundtrack by Duke Ellington and superior casting invigorate what could have become a series of methodical courtroom scenes. James Stewart brings a natural integrity to his flawed character, while George C. Scott's gravelly voice and rumpled energy enliven his cinematic debut. Standouts also include Lee Remick, playing somewhat against type as the flirtatious "victim," and Ben Gazzara, who eases effortlessly into his cynical role. In an ingenious piece of casting, noted Boston lawyer Joseph N. Welch, famed for his evisceration of Joseph McCarthy ("Have you no shame, senator?"), is cast as the judge. Anatomy of a Murder was an envelope-pusher in its day, forcing open some of the tightly locked censorial shutters in prudish 1950s Hollywood.