100 Movies You Should See!

[Barbara Branden]

You people are all hopeless Philistines. Nobody has mentioned Wuthering Heights. Or Brief Encounter. Shame!

Barbara

[Victor Pross]

Steve, Ed is quite right that Ninotchka was one of Rand's favorite movies. The combination of her favorite actress, one of her favorite directors, and an anti-communist message outweighed any uneasiness she nmay have felt over the portrayal of Soviet Russia. I don't believe she wrote about Ninotchka, but she often mentioned it. I first saw it because of her recommendation, and it is indeed a total delight.

She didn't say this, but I suspect that part of her affection for the movie came from the fact that Ninotchka was seduced by the glamor and gayety of the America of that period, so different from the unremitting solemnity of Russia, just as the young Ayn had been.

Barbara

Barbara,

If you have a copy of 'The Art of Fiction' Miss Rand speaks of her appreciation for Ninotchka. She calls it a "great Greta Garbo picture." (pg 168).

-Victor

[Chris Grieb]

The saddest thing about Ninotchka is it is Garbo's next to her last picture. I think it is one of Melvyn Douglas's better movies.

[Barbara Branden]

Barbara,

If you have a copy of 'The Art of Fiction' Miss Rand speaks of her appreciation for Ninotchka. She calls it a "great Greta Garbo picture." (pg 168).

-Victor

I'd forgotten that, Victor. Thanks for reminding me.

Barbara

[Chris Grieb]

There are many good things about Ninotchka but I can't forget is Garbo's entrance. Another is her scene where she has brought the hat. If you haven't seen it do!

[Reidy]

In the Q&A book Rand expresses mixed fellings about Ninotchka, praising it artistically but finding its treatment of communism inappropriate.

This conversation has brought up my two favorite names in movies, Garbo and Lubitsch, and I recommend that movie-lovers follow up on both. The all-time Garbo is Queen Christina, in which she portrays the greatest character I've ever seen on the screen (though, at the same time, I'll go along with the consensus that Camille was her best performance). The final shot of QC is justly legendary, but the most beautiful footage she ever shot is the last few minutes of Mata Hari, an otherwise idiotic movie.

Along with Ninotchka, my fave Lubitsch is Trouble in Paradise. It doesn't have Garbo or the political satire, but it may be a better piece of moviemaking all around. Among the musicals (the screen musical was pretty much his invention) the best is Monte Carlo. This audience will love the Beyond the Blue Horizon sequence.

An interesting sidelight is that both these people show up as characters in Rand - Gonda in Ideal and Ludlow in Atlas Shrugged in one case, the comically tyrannical director in Her Second Career in the other.

Edited April 5, 2007 by Reidy

[John Dailey]

~ As a side-commentary view on Rand and Garbo, I suspect that Rand may also have seen some kind of 'soul-sister' in Garbo.

~ They both seemed to end their lives according to Garbo's wish: "I vant to be...alone."

LLAP

J:D

Edited April 5, 2007 by John Dailey

[Robert Jones]

In the Q&A book Rand expresses mixed fellings about Ninotchka, praising it artistically but finding its treatment of communism inappropriate.

This conversation has brought up my two favorite names in movies, Garbo and Lubitsch, and I recommend that movie-lovers follow up on both. The all-time Garbo is Queen Christina, in which she portrays the greatest character I've ever seen on the screen (though, at the same time, I'll go along with the consensus that Camille was her best performance). The final shot of QC is justly legendary, but the most beautiful footage she ever shot is the last few minutes of Mata Hari, an otherwise idiotic movie.

Along with Ninotchka, my fave Lubitsch is Trouble in Paradise. It doesn't have Garbo or the political satire, but it may be a better piece of moviemaking all around. Among the musicals (the screen musical was pretty much his invention) the best is Monte Carlo. This audience will love the Beyond the Blue Horizon sequence.

An interesting sidelight is that both these people show up as characters in Rand - Gonda in Ideal and Ludlow in Atlas Shrugged in one case, the comically tyrannical director in Her Second Career in the other.

Don't forget Lubitsch's "To Be Or Not to Be": Jack Benny and Carole Lombard are perfect in this one, and I just wish Lombard could have been with us a long while longer. She was beautiful AND a great comedienne.

[Greybird]

All these recommendations of movies that I already dote on! This much pleasant agreement is positively un-Objectivist-ish, I tells ya {rueful anti-sectarian smile}

~ "One, Two, Three," one of the best farces — in the strict sense, of hilarious and frenetic action coming to a comic point — ever made. I just caught the last hour of it again the other day on a Showtime channel, and was splitting my sides. "Is old Russian proverb: Go West, young man."

(Just to be accurate, it was filmed in part in West Berlin during the days before the Wall went up in 1961. Which barrier has finally fallen, and I want to see Berlin again without it.)

~ "To Be or Not to Be," perfect comedy poised on a knife-edge against falling into tragedy. (And almost into melodrama. But it was 1943, after all.) Benny and Lombard were perfect dual foils, overcooked ham and eggs Benedict. "What he did to Shakespeare, we are doing now to Poland."

(And, by the way, not only that we lost Carole Lombard after this, but that it happened when she was flying to sell war bonds ... it almost disgusts me beyond measure, decades later.)

(Second aside: Mel Brooks, whom I adore, did a remake of this that isn't worth wasting your time on. He fell both into outright comedy and into alluding to Holocaust tragedy, and he didn't get the damn point.)

~ "Brief Encounter," also well up there, yes, Barbara. If I couldn't have been Trevor Howard, I'd have liked to have been Noël Coward. I haven't seen that one in decades, I've got to watch out for it on TCM.

(But not "Wuthering Heights," I'm afraid. Too much aloofness and pain from Olivier for my taste.)

[Chris Grieb]

Steve; On Brief Encounter it has been recently shown on TCM. NBI sold a record of Noel Coward and Margaret Leighton doing a two person version of the play which was my first introduction to the play. Like some other things I lost that. One, Two, Three was Cagney's next to the last movie. He retired after he made it.

[John Dailey]

~ Yes ONE, TWO, THREE was a classic, and maybe Cagney and Capra at their tops. The whole idea of a capitalistic mentality seducing a very propagandized 'innocent' Soviet communist, and being representative of just how 'capitalism' would actually overthrow 'communism' (Soviet of the time)...hilarious, though Pollyanish.

~ I understand that Cagney had a prob with a few 'long' non-stop talking scenes, but, he did them par excellence!

LLAP

J:D

Edited April 8, 2007 by John Dailey

[Victor Pross]

I recently rented the teen explotiation Don't Knock the Rock. This is a 1956 rock and roll film starring Alan Dale as a rock star who returns to his hometown to rest up only to find that rock and roll has been banned there by disapproving adults!*(1.1) Oh, my god, what a conflict! :shocked: Worry not! With the help of disc jockey Alan Freed they set out to prove that the music isn't as bad as adults think.*(1.2) ("Hey, didn't our folks use to dance to the Fox trot?") :hmm:

Oh, why do I get a charge from these movies?? Still, I love the music that the movie offers up. There is a blazing rock blast from Little Richard on Long Tall Sally. (“Well, long tall Sally--she’s built sweet--she has everyhing that Uncle John needs! Whhhhooo-oooooh yeah baby!”)

NOTE FROM ADMINISTRATOR:

* Copied from Don't Knock the Rock on Wikipedia. The original passages read as follows:

(1.1)

Don't Knock the Rock

was a 1956 rock and roll film starring Alan Dale as a rock star who returns to his hometown to rest up for the summer only to find that rock and roll has been banned there by disapproving adults.

(1.2)

With the help of disc jockey Alan Freed and film headliners Bill Haley and His Comets, they set out to prove that the music isn't as bad as adults think.

The original material is in the public domain, but the text was used as if it were original writing. Within the present context of a large quantity of plagiarisms, mention was deemed merited.

Edited August 12, 2007 by Michael Stuart Kelly

[John Dailey]

~ For those into 'alienated teens' combined with futuristic dystopic-beginnings, '68's WILD IN THE STREETS (with an up-and-coming 'name'-for-his-time, Christopher Jones), like '79's THE WARRIORS, are both a no-miss. Either one, you'll be on the edge of your seat to the end.

~ And, the former is a 'real'-type (not to be confused with 'based on') horror-story (but, you won't notice that 'till the last scene)...sans gore. Indeed, it may have been prescient for our contemporary news.

LLAP

J:D

Edited April 8, 2007 by John Dailey

[Chris Grieb]

I liked The Warriors but I have not seen it recently. I noticed the date it came out (1979). I think The Warriors reflects that period the gangs of NYC could completely take over the city. I think Americans thought everything was going to hell and that maybe the gangs had taken over NYC.