AFI #7: Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on May 15, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: David Lean

Cast: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, I. S. Johar, John Dimech, Zia Mohyeddin, José Ferrer.

"Shit, it's the cops."

I'm only seven films into my journey through the American Film Institute's top 100 films and the common thread I'm noticing in the best films is complex characters. Most main protagonists have been painted in shades of grey, not black and white, and are all the more fascinating for their flaws.

(The only exceptions so fair in the countdown have been the all-singin', all-dancin' protagonists of Singin' In The Rain, which has lots of other great things going on, and Raging Bull's Jake LaMotta (controversial, I know), who is just plain dumb, violent, misogynistic, and lacks any real nuance, and thus (in my book) is boring and uninteresting (tell me why I'm wrong in the comments).)

Which brings us to T.E. Lawrence, as portrayed by Peter O'Toole with a career-making and career-defining performance. Lawrence is one of cinema's most fascinatingly complex characters, and Lawrence Of Arabia is an enigmatic portrait of an historical figure who was reportedly as mysterious in real life as he is portrayed here.

After witnessing his ho-hum death, we learn about him first through off-hand comments from mourners at his funeral, and then through his own strangeness as we see him work a lowly position with the British army in Cairo, circa WWI. He talks in riddles, calls people by their full names, and puts out a match with his bare fingers, revealing the trick to be "not minding that it hurts".

If you're hoping Lawrence will make more sense as the story progresses, then I have bad news; he only gets more puzzling as the film progresses. Why is he doing the things he's doing? Is it purely ego, or does he genuinely think he's doing good?

These questions are the driving force of the film. Lawrence is both warrior and philosopher, cruel and kind, violent and meditative, egomaniacal and humble, mere mortal and wannabe messiah. The contradictions are captivating, as is his slow downward spiral toward the nastier sides of his duelling traits. As Empire's Kim Newman wrote, Lawrence seesaws "between inspired romantic rebel and traumatised psychopath; a magnificent Kane-like enigma at the heart of a film that never takes the easy way out by 'explaining' the hero's contradictory character".

As Lawrence creeps toward godhood, saviour and messiah, he is often framed as a small figure against a vast expanse of sand and sky. The desert is as much a character in the film as Lawrence, and it's one he battles and tries to tame. He wars with the elements, and with every victory, he is seen as a miracle worker, and increasingly starts to believe his own bullshit.

"They can only kill me with a golden bullet," he says at one point, and it's intended as a joke, but you sense he secretly believes it. It's one of the many magical moments in O'Toole performance, which is never short of riveting. His comfort in the desert, his ill-at-ease demeanour when he returns to "civilisation", his increasing bravado, his bloodlust - O'Toole and his piercing blue eyes are in sterling form. In Allan Hunter's Book of Movie Classic's, he marvels how the inexperienced O'Toole's "performance of riveting intensity holds the film together".

Other great star here is director David Lean, who captures the desert unlike any other director before or since. Shot on Super Panavision, he paints glorious widescreen vistas, using long, slow wide shots taken from a huge distance away to emphasise the scale of the place and the insignificance of the people in it.

Lawrence Of Arabia is ballsy, bravura film making on a scale rarely seen at the time. The battle of Aqaba is the astonishing centrepiece, but there are numerous times where you have to marvel at the insane logistics behind what you're seeing on the screen. Steven Spielberg, who called the film " a miracle" and helped restore it for its 2000 DVD release, estimated the film would cost $285 million to make in 2000 - inflation puts that figure above $435 million in 2020.

For all its cast-of-thousands staging and crazy battles, it's also artful and shows Lean's genius. Watching Omar Sharif materialise out of the heat haze, or see a lit match cut to a sunrise are examples of an artist at work. 

On top of this we have Maurice Jarre's dune-inducing strings, Robert Bolt's literary script, Omar Sharif playing a brilliant second fiddle to O'Toole, Anthony Quinn's wonderful brashness, Alec Guinness bringing dignity to some unfortunate brownface, the always welcome Claude Rains, and a story that encompasses both the arrogance of colonialism and the best and worst of individuals.

Despite winning seven Oscars at the time, Lawrence Of Arabia's greatest triumph came in 1989 when Lean restored it to its original length and inadvertently restored his career in the process. After the failures of Lean's later films, Lawrence rode out of the desert once more to save the day, elevating its director and this sandswept epic to its rightful place among the great epics of cinema.

AFI #6: Gone With The Wind (1939)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on May 15, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Victor Fleming.

Cast: Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Hattie McDaniel, Harry Davenport, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Rutherford, Oscar Polk, Butterfly McQueen, Everett Brown, Alicia Rhett, Rand Brooks, Carroll Nye, Laura Hope Crews, Cammie King Conlon.

Never smoke in bed.

Gone With The Wind is the cinematic personification of America. It's the biggest of big - it's over-the-top, bombastic and often melodramatic. And if you scratch the surface, it's deeply problematic, full of troublesome history, and all the heroes/heroines are horribly flawed.

Leaving aside the awkward analogy, Gone With The Wind is also fascinating, surprisingly funny, entertaining, and impressive. It's soooooo long but it's engrossing across its various chapters. Yes, some of its film making techniques have aged as poorly as its politics, but in the context of the time it was made and what it was trying to represent, it's a towering achievement.

It's hard to recommend this film to people. "Hey kids, wanna watch a four-hour-long romantic melodrama, told from the sympathetic perspective of the racist slave owners who lost the Civil War?"

But Gone With The Wind is good stuff. The love quadrangle of Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, Melanie Hamilton and Ashley Wilkes, set against the backdrop of their world literally burning to the ground, is riveting stuff.

When I first watched this some 20-ish years ago as a 17-year-old, it didn't impress me - Scarlett O'Hara was like nails down a chalkboard. But rewatching this two decades later, it's hard to look away from her. She's pathetic and pouty, but she's also independent and fiery. She's a childish sociopath, but also a strong-willed individual who regularly gives zero fucks about what's expected of her by society. She's manipulative and money-hungry, but also unrelenting and driven. She's delusional and self-destructive, but also has the capacity to do incredible things, including dragging her family out of the ashes of a post-Civil War Deep South. That Vivien Leigh can bring all these components into one character is a triumph.

Equally as engrossing is Rhett Butler, who is like a more self-aware version of Scarlett. He's as deeply flawed, but he understands, accepts and even embraces his flaws. He sees himself and Scarlett as kindred spirits that deserve each other and belong together. He's also the first in a long-line of louche anti-heroes that continues to this day - without Clark Gable's smirking selfishness, there would be no Han Solo, to name but one obvious descendant.

Watching Rhett and Scarlett circle each other, then seemingly connect, then fall apart is fascinating, hilarious, but ultimately devastating. All the while, the angelic Melanie hovers nearby, as her husband Ashley flits in and out of the picture. Despite being less interesting, Melanie and Ashley still intrigue. Ashley is easily the most boring character in the film but also the most potent symbol. He represents the Old South, but also inspires some of Scarlett's pettiest attributes - she wants him not out of love but a mix of spite, nostalgia and self-delusion.

These compelling characters are all the more compelling for their context. You'd struggle to get a film made these days with a sympathetic view of the South in the Civil War, but it's a world that's engrossing, even for all its historical whitewashing. The burning of Atlanta and the famous shot showing the town square filled with wounded soldiers are stunning moments, amid some truly huge scenes in the classic "cast of thousands" style.

"Frankly my dear, that is a gun in my pocket."

Yes, bits haven't aged well (and, yes, that's an understatment). Its portrayal of black people is problematic, but Hattie McDaniel's Oscar-winning performance as Mammy is one for the ages, as is her clapback to African Americans who dubbed her an Uncle Tom - "I'd rather make seven hundred dollars a week playing a maid than seven dollars being one". And just as there are perhaps equal arguments about whether or not her performance and its accompanying Academy Award advanced or set back the cause of black actors, it's undeniable that her final monologue to Melanie has they ascend the stairs of Scarlett and Rhett's sombre home is heartbreaking and artfully delivered.

Some of its mattes, rear projections and additional dialogue recording have aged about as well as its obvious affection for the South and glossing over of slavery. Its regular melodrama - in particular Scarlett's "God as my witness" speech just prior to intermission, and Ashley and Melanie's reunion - also feel as dated as its politics and its brushing-off of Rhett's misogyny, domestic violence, and marital rape. Many pages have been devoted to this latter elements, and for good reason, and I'm not here to excuse them, merely to examine them as part of the rich tapestry of the story and the complexities of its protagonists.

Gone With The Wind remains a snapshot of Hollywood at perhaps its most successfully ambitious - it is the first peak of Hollywood's Golden Age. It's sprawling storytelling, and it boasts some of the richest characters in the classic cinema handbook, with no small thanks owed to Margaret Mitchell's source material.

It also features the great kiss-off of all time, and a last line up there with Casablanca's. No wonder so many people give a damn.

AFI #5: Singin' In The Rain (1952)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on May 1, 2020, and ABC Radio Bendigo on June 15, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as updated in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(G) ★★★★★

Director: Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen.

Cast: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell, Douglas Fowley, Cyd Charisse, Rita Moreno.

"Mister won't you please help my pony?/He's over there behind the tree..."

Is Singin' In The Rain the greatest musical of all time? The AFI would have us believe so, but I would place another film higher (spoiler alert: it's The Wizard Of Oz), if only because Gene Kelly's magnum opus has one song too many (more on this later).

Singin' In The Rain is almost perfect. Aside from featuring a handful of the greatest song-and-dance routines in Hollywood history, it's also a clever satire of the film industry, as well as being a jovial comedy and a charming love letter to cinema's ungainly transition from silent to sound.

Right from start, the film gently prods at Tinsel Town with a knowing nudge and a cheeky wink. A red-carpet premiere and post-screening party show off the weirdos, fake marriages, gold-diggers, brown-nosers, ridiculous excess, fickle fans and false facade of publicity. Don Lockwood (Kelly) offers a heartfelt tale of privilege to a reporter on the red carpet, but it's hilariously contradicted by a montage detailing the actual hard road he and Cosmo Brown (O'Connor) travelled to reach their respective rungs on the Hollywood ladder. Nothing in this town is as it seems - just like the movies they make here. But hey, that's entertainment.

Hollywood loves films about Hollywood, which has no doubt helped maintain Singin' In The Rain's reputation. It offers a peek behind the curtains, regaling us with in-jokes and early silver screen stereotypes - crazy directors, hard-luck stuntmen, egomaniac divas, and clueless producers. Hilariously, one of Lockwood's run-of-the-mill silent swashbucklers features almost-out-of-shot stage hands grabbing at a stunt performer and very obvious 'safety dirt' placed for a safe landing.

But it all comes from the heart. Singin' In The Rain's key plot-driving moment is the release of the original talkie, The Jazz Singer, and as a result there is a nostalgic warmth to the film, which was made a quarter of a century after The Jazz Singer. Singin' In The Rain salutes the first talkie's innovation, and also shares an affection for the vaudevillian song-and-dance routines that predate "moving pictures", as well as the many movie musicals that went before it.

Aftter all, Singin' In The Rain, if it were released today, would probably be labelled a jukebox musical. Only two of its songs were written for the film - the rest were well known numbers from films released between 1929 and 1939. Among these songs are highlights we now associate with Singin' In The Rain, and not the films that originally launched them, which means Singin' In The Rain is Natalie Imbruglia's Torn, and all those previous musicals are the original version of Torn that no one knows.

(I can guarantee this is the only review of Singin' In The Rain that references Natalie Imbruglia's Torn.)

But we need to talk about Gene Kelly. This is the peak of his career, coming a year after he received an honorary Oscar (for An American In Paris). He would go on to be a Golden Globe-nominated director, and give well-received turns in dramatic films, but as the thing he is best known as - a song and dance man - this is his Everest.

Alongside co-director Donen, he gives every routine its own feel, its own cinematic style. The manic pratfall energy of Make 'Em Laugh, the dance-around-the-house charm of Good Morning, and the title number's effortless joy are the moments that help define Singin' In The Rain as a benchmark in movie musicals and Kelly's career.

The showstopper - in both the positive and negative potential of the word - is the climactic Broadway Melody set-piece. This is the aforementioned "one song too many". It's a 14-minute-long vanity piece for Kelly that would otherwise be okay if wasn't dropped right at the start of the final act. The story grinds to a halt as Kelly does his thing, apropos of nothing much.

But this is part of the reason Singin' In The Rain is so well regarded - it's as much about Kelly doing his thing as it is anything else, so critics and film students are happy to let him throw the plot aside and indulge his every song-and-dance fantasy in what amounts to an out-of-nowhere dream sequence. It's nicely staged, beautifully filmed, and impressive in its attempts to push the movie musical into the realm of high art, so despite it being wholly unnecessary and even detrimental to the storytelling, it gets a pass. It also sets up a great meta-gag, which helps. 

Kelly is only one part of a triple threat of triple threats that ensure the film isn't merely humming in the drizzle. Donald O'Connor's Make 'Em Dance routine is a masterpiece and his classic vaudeville gags are classics for a reason (sample: "Cosmo, call me a cab"... "Ok, you're a cab"). Debbie Reynolds, who was half Kelly's age when she played his lover, does a fantastic job in Good Morning despite not being a trained dancer (Fred Astaire helped her prepare), but she also brings piles of charm and verve to the film.

But the secret weapon of Singin' In The Rain is Jean Hagen. Her Oscar-nominated turn is great comedy acting from an under-rated actor. The broad nasal Noo Yawk accent is not her real voice and never wavers, and her comic timing is impeccable. She even manages to make Lina Lamont pitiable, despite her being the villain of the piece. We never truly despise Lina, probably because she's too unwittingly hilarious and daffy.

You could cynically suggest that Hollywood loves Hollywood, which is possibly part of why Singin' In The Rain has endured. But realistically it represents a highwater mark in the dance-driven musical. It nostalgically champions the music and movies that came before it, but also dares to push the art form to new heights. Its three best songs (all of which appear on this AFI list) are three of the best song-and-dance sequences ever committed to film, but more than that, it's a sharp satire and wonderfully warm and funny comedy. No other film can brag of being all these things, making Singin' In The Rain a real one-of-a-kind experience.

AFI #4: Raging Bull (1980)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on May 1, 2020 and ABC Radio Central Victoria on August 24, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as updated in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(M) ★★★½

Director: Martin Scorsese.

Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty, Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, Frank Vincent, Lori Anne Flax, Johnny Barnes.

Some truly amazing films aren't enjoyable to watch. I know Requiem For A Dream is incredible, but I have no plans to watch it again. And I'm not sure I could ever sit through Grave Of The Fireflies  again, despite it being truly remarkable.

Raging Bull is not enjoyable to watch. It's about a horrible person; a violent, misogynistic bastard with no redeemable qualities. Jake LaMotta is a real piece of shit, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about Raging Bull is that the real life LaMotta was a consultant on the film. Either he has no self-awareness or an incredible amount of self-awareness - I can't tell which.

LaMotta was a boxer - a pretty good one too, it seems. He had a head like brick and would never go down in a fight. Raging Bull tracks his career from hard-to-beat hopeful to champion to washed-up entertainer.

Within the first 15 minutes of the film, we understand that La Motta is insane and detestable. By the end, nothing has changed. We've watched a real shit bloke continue to be a shit bloke, and look where he ends up? Still a shit bloke, and with nothing to show for it.

Maybe that's the point. Some critics argue that part of Raging Bull's triumph is that we actually end up caring for this piece of shit by film's end (it's right at the end of the article). I say that's a pile of raging bullshit. At no point do I care about Jake LaMotta, and maybe that's why I struggle to rate this as one of the best films of all time. But maybe that is indeed the point.

So here goes, I'm going to say some controversial things. Raging Bull is beautifully filmed, magnificently edited, and features a remarkable performance from one of the greatest actors of all time. But I don't think it should be #4 on the AFI list. For mine, it's not even Scorsese's best film. Give me Taxi Driver or The King Of Comedy or The Wolf Of Wall Street or Goodfellas or The Irishman or even Hugo (don't tell anyone, but I fucking love Hugo).

The lack of empathy is its undoing for me. This unsympathetic character doesn't illuminate anything for me. What is the film trying to say? I don't know what to take away from it. LaMotta doesn't learn anything, and it doesn't feel like the film is saying anything beyond it's surface level of "violent man bad" or "don't be a cunt". As everyone in his life slowly leaves LaMotta, I wanted to cheer. Am I the arsehole? Or did Raging Bull miss its mark in the sympathy department? Or is that the point? Is the fact that LaMotta is a shit bloke the be-all-and-end-all of the film? If so, that's not enough in my book.

The difficult part of reviewing classic films that are put up on pedestals is that if you disagree with their perceived greatness, it feels like you're missing something. One of my favourite film reviewers, The Incredible Suit, ranked Raging Bull as the greatest Scorsese film of all time. So what am I missing?

The great Roger Ebert said "Raging Bull is the most painful and heartrending portrait of jealousy in the cinema... it's the best film I've seen about the low self-esteem, sexual inadequacy and fear that lead some men to abuse women". I can't argue with that, but what is it really saying about all these aspects? Is that it?

Having said all that, its artistry is amazing. The editing by Thelma Schoonmaker is outstanding, and the way she and Scorsese edit the fight sequences and brisk mid-film montage is genius and unlike anything I've seen before. Michael Chapman's cinematography, in crisp black and white, is gorgeous. The staging of the fights is brutal, and Chapman captures it in all its visceral, blood-spurting glory,

It's obvious Scorsese has no love for the sport (neither do I to be honest). Somewhat like LaMotta, Scorsese sees it as punching and not falling down, unlike other boxing films with more passion for its finer qualities, like say Rocky or Ali or The Fighter. As a result, LaMotta rarely comes off as a sportsman - we see him training once and all he does is try to beat the shit out of his brother. Raging Bull offers no insight into what boxing means to those who adore the sport, and indeed makes no real comment about it. This makes it hard to see how or why it's often held up as the pinnacle of boxing movies.

But the one aspect of the film that is truly outstanding is De Niro. An argument could be made that Raging Bull deserves its place at #4 purely on De Niro's back alone. He perfectly captures the insanity, the paranoia, the toxic masculinity, and the insecurities of LaMotta. De Niro himself is invisible and in his place is a man who is as dumb as a box of hammers and who complains he gets no respect from anyone, yet never offers any respect to anyone. A lot is made of De Niro's physical transformation, which is stunning (and disturbing), but really it's the cherry on the top of the performance.

Less is said about Pesci, who is outstanding in the film, and even less (unfortunately) is said about Moriarty, who is out-of-this-world as LaMotta's wife Vikki, earning an Oscar nomination in her film debut.

While Raging Bull is not enjoyable, that doesn't mean it's bad, and by no means is it a bad film. It's a meditation on violence and the fragility that births it, and as such it's incredibly effective, although this meditation is limited and limiting. Some critics highlight the influence Scorsese's Catholic guilt has on the story, and the nature of sin, but I don't see that in the film. It's a contextual reading that, while potentially important, doesn't ring true in the film, which has very little in the way of religion.

Raging Bull is wonderfully made and features one of the all-time greatest performances, but I feel like I'm missing the point, or that there isn't a grand point to be made outside the bleedingly obvious - that being a violent jealous piece of shit gets you nowhere.

Or is that the point?

(If you love Raging Bull, tell me what I'm missing in the comments. Be kind, and I'll be willing to listen.)

AFI #3: Casablanca (1942)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on April 17, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as updated in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Michael Curtiz.

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson, S. Z. Sakall, Leonid Kinskey, Madeliene Lebeau, Curt Bois, Joy Page, John Qualen.

"Play it, Sam. Play Wynona's Big Brown Beaver."

Casablanca is a war movie unlike any other, partly because it's also a romance, a drama, a comedy, and a film noir. Oh, and it's set almost entirely in a bar, which is novel for a war movie, but it also helps make the film as cool as hell, breezing through its often heavy material like James Bond dusting the dirt off his suit sleeve after a close call. How can one film do so much, and be so effortlessly suave while doing it?

The answer to this question (and much of Casablanca's greatness) is in the script. Unlike, say, such classic "auteur" films like Citizen Kane or 2001: A Space Odyssey, where so much of the esteem is connected to what the director was doing and their over-arching vision, Casablanca's brilliance is largely there on the paper.

It's central idea is overly simple on the surface - use a bar as a microcosm for the diaspora and desperation created by WWII. But the depth of the characters and the razor-sharp hard-boiled dialogue give it an edge that defies any potential simplicity. The people who drink at Rick's Café Américain are neither heroes nor villains - they do bad things to survive and good things against their better judgement. Some of them wrestle with the devils and angels on their shoulders, some of them just do what they do. The only truly good character is Victor Laszlo (Henreid), the resistance leader the plot revolves around, and the only truly bad character is Major Heinrich Strasser (Veidt), a typically punchable Nazi. It's no surprise these are the two least interesting characters in the film. Everyone else sits in the grey zone of morality that lies between them, and are all the more enthralling for it.

These internal struggles give the plot its push-and-pull dynamic, its will-they-won't-they mystery that drives the film. Who will Ilsa choose? What will Rick do? Whose orders will Renault follow? These questions keep you guessing right up to its perfect finale.

Casablanca is based on a then-unproduced play called Everybody Comes To Rick's, written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Some credit must go to Warner Bros employees Stephen Karnot and Irene Diamond for discovering and championing an unknown script from an unperformed play. From there, twins Julius and Philip Epstein (who would later write the classic black comedy Arsenic & Old Lace) started a screenplay before Howard Koch took over, only for the Epsteins to return for the finishing touches while the film was already in production.

Others contributed to the screenplay too, including producers Hal Wallis and Casey Robinson, and this kind of "too many cooks" approach can either lead to a shambolic mess or the type of screenplay where only the best lines make the final cut. Casablanca is definitely the latter. There are iconic lines all over the place, with Bogart's Rick getting the lion's share, and the dialogue is imbued with that great mix of melodrama and poetry favoured by hardboiled detectives and noir novelists.

Take for example these absolute pearls, that no one would say in real life, but holy shit they're magical:

“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine…”
“What is your nationality?” “…I’m a drunkard.”
“I like to think you killed a man. It’s the romantic in me…”

All gold, and all contribute to the film's noir undertones.

When these lines are delivered by the likes of Humphrey Bogart (in probably his best performance), Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet, you can't lose, and that's the other weapon Casablanca has in its holster - its cast. Everyone rises to the occasion, sinking their teeth into the lines, relishing the opportunity to create such rich characters.

Lorre, despite being dispatched early, is his usual superb self as the "cut-rate parasite" Ugarte, while Greenstreet is great as the jolly amoral rival club owner Ferrari. Both men would be typecast in these kind of roles, but for good reason - they're so good in them.

Bogart and Bergman are outstanding of course, and plenty of words have been written about their chemistry and charms, but the secret stars of the show are Dooley Wilson as Sam the piano player and Rains as corrupt cop Renault.

Wilson is the quiet moral heart in the certain of Rick's Americain Cafe; he's the stoic goodness in the middle of the bar that Rick is seemingly tethered to. His only flaws are his inaction, and his unfailing commitment to Rick. (Also it bears mentioning that the moment Sam first recognise Ilsa in the bar is gold - the look on Wilson's face is perfection.)

But Rains' comic timing as Renault is something special. He's a truly despicable character who blackmails female refugees into exchanging sex for transit papers, yet Rains makes the bastard likeable and hilarious. He's a prime example of the good/evil mix that runs through every soul that lands in Casablanca, making them so fascinating.

Director Michael Curtiz's role in all this is often downplayed - critic Andrew Sarris famously offered the film the backhanded praise of being "the most decisive exception to the auteur theory". But Curtiz puts his camera in the right places, cruising around Rick's Cafe like a member of the nightly crowd. He overcooks the soft focus on Bergman and some of the rear projection is hokey, even for the time, but in the grand scheme of things Curtiz does nothing wrong. He's like a good bass player - he never stands out but he holds it all together.

Released in a time of turmoil, Casablanca is a genius blend of the macro and the micro. It's unapologetically geopolitical yet its also a small story of a broken heart. It's about what war does to people but it's also about a good old-fashioned love triangle. And through it all, the film has a noir-ish edge and a layer of cool that few films of that time had, and that many films have tried to emulate.

AFI #2: The Godfather (1972)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on April 3, 2020 and ABC Radio Central Victoria on July 27, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(MA15+) ★★★★★

Director: Francis Ford Coppola.

Cast: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Al Lettieri, Diane Keaton, Abe Vigoda, Talia Shire, Gianni Russo, John Cazale, Rudy Bond, Al Martino, Morgana King, Lenny Montana, Johnny Martino, Salvatore Corsitto.

"I don't know how to break this to you Al, but I'm not wearing any pants."

There's one thing The Godfather does better than any other film - it makes you happily watch the ultimate corruption of a decent human being, and makes you cheer him along on his downward journey.

It's different to other "bad guy"-focused films. This is not the society-crushes-spirit of Joker, where we pity Arthur Fleck and what the world has turned him into. Nor is it the over-the-top satires of the villain-centric American Psycho or A Clockwork Orange, or the good-guy-does-bad-things-for-good-reasons story of Taxi Driver. The Godfather's "hero" Michael Corleone chooses to do the things he does. He never has to do them, and as much as he is fuelled by revenge, that revenge is fuelled by his own willingness for said revenge, and by his willingness to accept the blood that flows through his veins. At the start of the film, he makes it clear he has rejected his family's lifestyle - by the end he epitomises it.

The Godfather leaves you confused and dirty, yet fulfilled and satisfied, kind of like having great sex with someone you definitely shouldn't sleep with.

The film invites you into bad places you've never been and makes it all seem okay. This complicitness with the dark side starts with its portentous opening shot. It's a three-minute-long tracking shot of a shadowy, serious figure in a dimly lit room, pleading for a special kind of justice unavailable outside this nondescript location. It is beautifully filmed, intricately lit, and features a stirring monologue by Salvatore Corsitto (who appeared in just one other movie outside of The Godfather).

As Corsitto intones his horrifying tale, we are immediately drawn into a secret world with its warped views of respect, honour and family. The craft of Coppola's three-hour opus about an Italian-American crime syndicate is perfect, but it's the way it lets us into a hitherto-unseen world of deals and deaths that keeps us spellbound.

In the almost 50 years since its release, The Godfather has become the gold standard in mob movies; so much so, some mobsters used it as "how to" guide while others claimed it was like looking in a mirror. Regardless, The Godfather's reputation for greatness in part comes not from its veracity of the mafia lifestyle, but from a perceived authenticity. Most of us have no idea what mob life in the '40s and '50s was like, but The Godfather makes it seem like it was exactly like The Godfather says it was. And this stems from the perfection in its production design, and the truth that rings through the characters and their stories.

(Sidenote: there are children everywhere in The Godfather, but not in prominent roles. They're just there, like they are in real life. This goes a long way towards subtly and subconsciously selling the realism of the movie.)

Stanley Kubrick once said The Godfather "was possibly the greatest movie ever made and certainly the best cast". On that last note, he's spot on. Remarkably, Pacino, Caan and Duvall were all nominated for best supporting actor at the 1972 Oscars. Perhaps even more remarkably, they lost out to Joel Grey, who won for his incandescent turn as the MC in Bob Fosse's Cabaret.

(Fosse also edged out Coppola for best director, and Cabaret won eight out of its 10 nominations. But The Godfather managed to win best film and best screenplay, as well as best actor for Brando, who famously refused the award, sending indigenous American rights activist Sacheen Littlefeather in his place.)

Awards aside, its two key performances are lightning in a bottle. It reveals relative newcomer Pacino as an incredible talent (in only his third film) and captures Brando's last truly great turn (even though he had nearly three decades of film-making ahead of him). Individually they're stunning; together they elevate the film to somewhere special. Capturing Pacino on the ascent and final peak from Brando is the kind of unforeseeable magic that helps make a movie a classic.

Much like Scorsese's recent epic The Irishman, Coppola's The Godfather is riveting and perfectly paced across its 180 minutes. It never feels overlong or rushed, and it's regularly punctuated by shocking moments that floor you. It's tempo is old-school, but its first half an hour or so introduces so much - the threat of violence, the large cast, the themes of family and respect, and the wealth and reach of the Godfather's enterprise, all via a grand wedding. Within this time frame we also get two iconic moments - the horrific use of a horse's head, and the first of many variations on the signature line "I'll make him an offer he can’t refuse".

These now-oft-parodied elements have helped sustain the film's legacy, along with the likes of "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes", the gunning-down of Tommy, Brando's voice and bulldog jowls, and Nino Rota's score. Even the title card's font is memorable. All these things are iconic for a reason - they stand out, while still serving their purpose in the end product.

"Godfather... where is the bathroom?"

Another sustaining factor of the film's legacy over the past 50 years is its symbolism. Oranges signify impending doom, Michael's facial wounds make him look like his father, a baptism juxtaposed with assassinations - these are elements that have drawn people back again and again, seeking greater depth.

But, as with so many American films, The Godfather also has profound things to say about America; in this case as viewed through the prism of Italian-Americans and, more broadly, criminals who would do anything to achieve the so-called American Dream. The film's opening line is "I believe in America" but later, we view a murder that takes place with the Statue of Liberty off in the distance, its back turned on the events. Smarter people than I have written about this theme in great depth, including Lena-Marie Lannutti, Tom Breihan from AV Club, Sterling Farrance, and dozens of academics (seriously, just Google "The Godfather and The American Dream").

This is the kind of deep film reading that turns many people off, but it helps preserve the film's legacy, and elevate it to high art. And The Godfather is high art, but it's that rarest of beasts - a film that is both exalted by critics and was a box-office smash (it was the highest-grossing film in US cinemas in 1972).

There's not many other films that can boast that double of critical and popular acclaim, but The Godfather is indeed the kind of the film that seemingly does it all on its way to merging art and entertainment.

AFI #1: Citizen Kane (1941)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on April 3, 2020 and ABC Central Victoria on June 7, 2021.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, William Alland, George Coulouris, Fortunio Bonanova, Paul Stewart.

"Presenting... me!"

Citizen Kane is the ultimate American film for highlighting the difference between students of cinema and the majority of the general movie-going public.

The film industry players who voted for the American Film Institute lists of 1998 and 2007, as well as the decennial Sight & Sound lists between 1962 and 2002 deemed Citizen Kane the best film ever.

But public-voted lists have been less generous over the years - for example, the IMDb's top 250 has it at #95, while Empire Magazine's most recent reader's vote put the film at #46. This is partly because so much of Citizen Kane's esteem is wrapped up in its film-making wizardry, as opposed to its sheer entertainment value.

As the BBC's Nick Barber wrote "Citizen Kane is an encyclopedia of techniques: a 114-minute film school which provides lesson after lesson in deep focus and rear projection, extreme close-ups and overlapping dialogue".

James Monaco, writing in his 1977 text book How To Read A Film called Citizen Kane "a singular phenomenon" that "Welles never again matched".

"(It's) possibly the most important American movie ever made," Monaco wrote. "Welles - with the aplomb of a master - shapes his narrative in sublimely cinematic terms. It was as if the stranger to Hollywood, child of New York theatre and radio, had viewed objectively all the various strands of film technique of thirties Hollywood and woven them all together."

Your average punter doesn't give two shits about Citizen Kane's use of deep focus, adventurous cross fades, debonair dolly moves, focus-pulling edits, overlapping dialogue, and roaming camera. Most people couldn't care less about the fact Welles was bringing together every trick in the pre-'40s film-making book and applying them to one grand tale of one grandly flawed man.

It's this marriage of cutting edge techniques that earned Kane its perch atop the film tree, but there is so much more to admire, appreciate and, yes, enjoy about this cinematic edifice. Its storytelling is second-to-none, plus it's regularly funny (particularly in the first half), and continually entertaining. The script (pieced together by Welles from versions written by himself and co-credited screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz) tells the story of wealthy newspaper tycoon and presidential-wannabe Charles Foster Kane in a fashion as fascinating as the film-making techniques.

(How great is this trailer by the way? They should make modern trailers like this.)

Opening with a wordless, gothic horror montage of Kane's decaying mansion that culminates with his snowglobe-shattering death, the film then dives into a newsreel epitaph that helps build the myth of Kane before we even meet Kane. But a smoking room filled with reporters could care less about this potted obituary - they want to know why Kane's final dying word was "Rosebud". What does it mean?

From there, we revisit the life and times of Kane via one reporter's interviews with those who knew him best. The journalist's ambitions are singular - what/who is "Rosebud"? - but this steady stream of flashbacks show us the real Kane. It's a neat trick, and although the film was not the first to use extensive flashbacks, it was yet another fledgling technique used to dazzling effect in Welles' overflowing opus. As Slate's Nigel Andrews wrote of Citizen Kane's technical wizardry, "Kane got there first nearly every time (and) when it didn’t, its brilliance destroyed the memory of predecessors".

Welles' and Mankiewicz's script, along with Gregg Toland's cinematography, are rightly lauded, as is Welles' ballsy, freshman auteurship of it all - his incredible camera dive through a neon sign and then through a skylight (via some editing trickery) is outstanding and worthy of attention on its own.

But oft-forgotten in all this is Welles' performance, which is towering. Alongside the also-great Cotten and Welles' talented suite of Mercury Theatre players, Welles makes Kane a human - a deeply flawed, egocentric and eventually megalomaniacal human, but a human no less. He does all this with some of the best hair and make-up work of the time. Indeed, I've seen worse hair and make-up in contemporary films.

"Rosebud" itself is one of the great symbols in cinema, despite being dismissed by some (Welles himself included) as shallow pop-philosophy. But with that single word (and a single item revealed in an all-time-great twist), Citizen Kane drives home its surprisingly anti-capitalist message - that money can't buy love or happiness. That all the worldly possessions can't fill certain holes in one's soul. That money isn't everything. And that, ultimately, maybe the American dream of having it all isn't all it's cracked up to be.

This may be a film for the buffs, but it has more heart and soul than a lot of people give it credit. It's a tale of a fall from grace, told with good humour and a keen eye, that also happens to be one of the best examples of film-making techniques you can find.