CINEMANIA:

Sabrina (USA, 1954, Billy Wilder)

Billy Wilder's Sabrina has an explicit fairy-tale quality (it begins with the words "once upon a time") that betrays its Cinderella roots. Based on Samuel Taylor's stage play, the movie suffers occasionally from feelings of staginess and windiness. It is, at times, obviously formulaic and predictable, but, alas, such is the nature of most romantic comedies. Which is to say, Sabrina, much like its characters, follows conventions rather than challenges them.

Audrey Hepburn's naïf-like vulnerability and angelic beauty make her the perfect fit for the part; her natural elegance, playfulness, and intelligence have the audience cheerfully manipulated into applauding her elevation from rags to riches.

Used Cars (USA, 1980, Robet Zemeckis)

Director/writer Robert Zemeckis works with much of the same team that contributed to Steven Spielberg's bloated bomb 1941, as well as Zemeckis' own charming and wacky directorial debut I Wanna Hold Your Hand to produce Used Cars, a low-brow comedy boasting easy targets (used car salesmen) and irresistibly attractive cruelty.

The Good Earth (USA, 1937, Victor Fleming)

An epic tale of love, duty, greed, and revolution, MGM's The Good Earth was an artistic and commercial success. The film's story is a stage adaptation of the successful Donald and Owen Davis production. The struggles of the empoverished farmers whose lives are constantly challenged by personal weaknesses, social pressure and natural disasters is epic in scope, though intimate in effect.

Frankenstein (USA, 1931, James Whale)

James Whale's Frankenstein is a film that works in important ways that Todd Browning's Dracula, released earlier the same year, does not. While the two films were responsible for ushering in the Horror Era at Universal Studios,  the poignancy of Frankenstein's heartbreaking tragedy and it's consistency of tone help to separate it from its only intermittently engaging predecessor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.