Top 10 Movies of All Time Review

13.   REAR WINDOW  1954   Alfred Hitchcock

Rear Window can be enjoyed as a slightly dark, slow building thriller featuring one of Jimmy Stewarts most interesting performances as a bored, wheel chair bound adventurer and travel/writer/photographer who has gotten addicted to spying on his his neighbors.   He sees something disturbing in one apartment and wonders if some foul play, perhaps even a murder has taken place. His fiance' the very beautiful and sexy Grace Kelly gets drawn into his new adventure and . . .   It's Alfred Hitchcock at his very best  (This one slightly bests Vertigo for me).. 

The other way to look at Rear Window is as one of the most fascinating and revealing stories about the nature of voyeurism in our culture, which today explodes into the realm of reality television and cult of celebrity. Stewart is essentially a somewhat helpless hero who views the world around him.  Hitchcock had his production designer build a technical marvel of a set that  was framed by Stewarts apartment window to the same dimensions of a movie screen.  The theme once again is the fear and joy of sex.   Some of the supporting characters have fascinating stories to tell.  It contains several little movies within the larger movie and it slow builds to an exciting, believable and satisfying climax.

12. Passion of Joan of Arc  1928  Directed by Carl Dreyer

One of the most uncoventional movies ever made-and yes it's a very old, silent movie in which director Dreyer uses stark close-ups and breaks the rules of crossing camera sight lines so that we understand the fear and unbalance the 19 year old Joan of Arc felt when dozens of men, church leaders, politicians and British soldiers relentlessly interrogated trying to get her to sign a confession.

Director Dreyer painstakingly over the course of a long six months shoot, extracted the performance he needed to have from his leading lady Falconetti. He didn't let her or other actors use music to help inspire them as they performed (an accepted practice used by most film directors of the time). Dreyer didn't want the actors in this film to be performing' or acting'. He wanted something more pure and more natural. He forced Falconetti to shear her hair for the film. He made his actors shave the tops of their heads, because that was the style of the 1430's, even though most of the actors would be wearing skull caps and the audience would never know if the tops of their heads were shaven or not. Often he would excuse all but a few technicians and himself from the set to work with Falconetti , so she would give him the perfect expression he was looking for. Together they would watch dailies, so she would completely understand what he wanted from her. Dreyer was a perfectionist and wanted realism.

It was written, directed and edited by Carl Dreyer (though some of the original ideas in the screenplay Dreyer once contemplated filming remain). It was photographed by Rudolph Mate with art direction by Hermann Warm.

The film was thought to be lost for several years until 1981 when a print was found in a closet of a Norwegian mental institution. Criterion and film preservationist restored this masterpiece and put on DVD in 1999.  See it.

My much longer original review can be found here: PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC REVIEW

 11.  The Third Man  1949   Directed by Carol Reed

Brilliant, stylish, suspenseful adaptation of Graham Greene's novel about the mysterious Harry Lime in Post World War 2 Vienna.   If you don't know anything about the movie, then just rent it and trust me and many others that this is a great film worth watching, savoring and watching again.

 Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles are every bit as good as they were in Citizen Kane.  Welles is not on screen all that much but is perhaps better as an Actor here than in any other film he ever appeared in.    The directing by Carol Reed and script by Graham Greene are superb.

 This film invented the sub-genre of the post-war thriller and few have come close to being this good.  The on location photography with it's angular design and surrealistic imagery, shot in tones of grey like a semi-documentary is as perfect as you have seen in any black and white movie.

It's a stunning masterpiece with an exciting narrative and several memorable scenes.  And there's also that famous zither theme music too !!!  

It wa beautifully restored a few years ago.  And now there's a new Criterion 2 disc DVD with some great brand new extras !!!

10. GODFATHER PART 2 1974 Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

It didn't seem possible that anything could possibly top the original Godfather-- particularly Brando's acting tour de force.

Coppola took a decent popular novel and turned into a gangster opera masterpiece.  Somehow he was able to do it even better the second time around !!! 

A wider story retracing the history of the Corleone family and the continuation of the story brought out some of the most impressive performances from an impressive cast that includes Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton, John Cazalle, and Robert Duvall who are eclipsed by a stunning performance from Al Pacino.

Powerful, memorable, a stunning brilliant film.

WOW.

and to think Francis didn't want to make the movie and did it only after he got the okay to make another masterpiece; The Conversation !!!

9. TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT     1944    Directed by Howard Hawks  

 Often called Hawks' version of Casablanca ( it isn't) this  is a better film, though not quite as beloved. Tougher, sexier, wonderfully paced, memorable performances from all.  We forgive Casablanca for being repetitious and it's extremely meandering plot.  Here you won't find these flaws in this loose adaptation of  an Ernest Hemmingway novel (perhaps the worst novel he ever wrote).   The romance isn't as sentimental and sweet, but actually quite sexy and hot as Bogart and Bacall do their magic.   Bacall's  You know how to whistle don't you?  Is beyond provocative.   Hawks direction as usual is superb.  Yeah I think it's THAT good and deserves to be considered one of the top 10. 

8.    The Wizard of Oz  1939  Directed by Victor Fleming and others

The timeless fantasy classic. One can bring all kinds of things to the film, or nothing at all and still have a great time. The movie that almost didn't star Judy Garland, and could have seen Shirley Temple as Dorothy and W.C. Fields as the Wizard and Buddy (Beverly Hillbillies) Ebsen as the Tin Man had nothing but problem after problem in pre-production and then things got crazy while it was being filmed and they almost cut out the sequence where Dorothy (Judy) sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Victor Fleming gets directorial credit but at least three directors worked on the film.  

Somehow despite the turmoil, the movie is magic and it came together and struck a chord with so many people to be regarded as one of the most beloved films of all time.     If you look a little more closely you'll see there's dark fantasies within this story of a Kansas City farm girl who for the love of a dog named Toto gets caught in a Tornado and swept into the land of OZ to battle a horrible witch and flying monkeys and trees that throw apples at people, and poppy fields that put you to sleep and cowardly wizards who scare people and get them to risk their lives in order to try get their hearts desire.  The lion wants courage, the tin man a heart and the scarecrow a brain.  Dorothy just wants to go back home to Kansas.  But can she ever really go home when she's seen too much?  Oh I know we'll just say this emotional and sexual awakening is just a dream and pretend it didn't quite really happen......

Ah the magic of movies...And this was in both black and white and gloriously decadent Technicolor.   WOW.

#7. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb   1964
Directed by Stanley Kubrick,

  Kubrick's scathingly satiric comedy could once be viewed as a wild very funny farce.  Unfortunately there is a little less to laugh at these days as what we once considered  crazy far-fetched behavior  isn't quite as unbelievable as we once though.

  There's the multiple performances of  Peter Sellers who plays three very distinct roles here.   There's the dialogue by  Terry Southern, Peter George and Kubrick which is clever and very funny as it pokes fun at the red scare, nuclear proliferation, deterrence philosophies, American jingoism, and Pentagon hawks that are so close to the bone they are brutal.   I haven't started with George C. Scott, he's simply superb.. and Sterling Hayden  and of course  Slim Pickens' moment of fame that you never forget when you see this.  

The arms race is not quite a thing of the past, but some of the situations date the movie a bit.. other parts make the movie seem less like an improbably satirical farce and more like a docudrama. 

 Some of the things we used to laugh at  are now chilling  and I suppose that's another reason for it being here as  # 7  on my  Best movies of all time list.

NEXT TIME    MY TOP 6....STAY TUNED.  THANKS FOR READING, COMMENTING, GOOD POINTING.  ENJOY.

Click Here for Part 2--The Top 6