A Guide to Knowing My Saints

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

In the meandering conversations I tend to have with those in my immediate circle, I was shocked to learn the extent to which many people have let their movie education fall. These are smart people. These are canny people. But the spots in their filmic education left me crestfallen. Fallen are the state of my crests.

In most cases, it's no one's fault. Social circumstances (including the stigma that surrounds old movies, the unavailability of many of them, and culture's tendency to look in one direction--ahead) leave many would-be cinephiles unsure of where to begin. Now granted, I'd never hold my own education up as a gauge. That would be unfair and also ridiculous, because not only do I have a roughly 12 year headstart, but film culture has ingrained itself onto my radar, not unlike the ears of a well-trained, underfed Doberman tuned to his master’s backyard. It's more than a little sad, honestly.

That said, taking a page from Pajiba, I'm compiled a short list of starter films, sorted by genre. If there's one great thing about old movies, it's that one wonderful picture will usually lead you to many more.

The Western: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
I don't like Westerns as a rule, but if I'd stuck to that tenet, I never would have seen this film. Two birds with one stone? You must be talking about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film that never fails to make my top three. It's both a buddy comedy and history lesson, a incidental picture of the Wild West and a sad portrait of two men living on the outskirts of society. That's what I love about this film, beyond the cracking dialogue, great locations, and genuine affection between the leads. You come to love these characters so much, and believe in their schemes, that by the film's end you'll come to realize that if they'd maybe been on a different path, there's no reason that these two smart, canny men couldn't have made a real go of it. But then, that's probably where half the appeal of the story comes from in the first place.

This film also introduced me to the love of my life, Paul Newman. Sorry, Boyfriend of Jill. It's true. Funny, wise-cracking, and more than a little obtuse, his mouthy Butch is the perfect and delicious counterpoint to Redford's stoic, sick-talented Sundance.

Like this? Try these: The Magnificent Seven, Cool Hand Luke, The Searchers, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch

The Social Issue Film: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Blast it, Hollywood. Look at you, bein’ all adorably concerned. The funny thing about this category is that the earlier you go, the most likely you’ll get a title card helpfully outlining the dire place the film’s problem takes up in society. Teenage delinquents, amoral gangsters, chain gangs—Hollywood has definitely gone through its fretful phases, clucking like a mother hen and scurrying to add Important Social Commentary. And if the Social Issue Film had a patron saint, you'd better believe it would be Jimmy Stewart who, with 1939's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, took on a corrupt government system and fought with his last ounce of strength. If you can get through the last moments of Stewart's filibuster stand without getting a little weepy, you're made of stronger stuff than I.

Like this? Try these: Meet John Doe, In the Heat of the Night, The Public Enemy, The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause

The Billy Wilder Film: The Apartment (1960)
Billy Wilder is a longtime hero of mine. He’s like the Nabokov of film: excelling linguistically in an adopted tongue. He does what most of us couldn’t even fathom—he moved from his native Poland to Hollywood and had to learn the language, something you’d never guess from the crackling dialogue he puts onscreen. He was always ashamed of his thick accent, but it never mattered—he went on to become THE name in screenwriting, in a profession where the whole point is that people forget you’re the one putting words in people’s mouths. And The Apartment is my favorite--driven by dialogue and character, it’s unflinching in its portrait of the New Man—and New Woman—of the 1960s. It tells of C.C. Baxter, a cog in an insurance company that rents out his apartment to higher-ups to conduct their affairs, hoping to make good and get promoted. Heartbreaking but unsentimental, with Jack Lemmon in the best role of an impressive career, it’s a very human story of funny, lovable characters who are still too screwed up to get anywhere.

Like this? Try these: Some Like It Hot, Ace in the Hole, Ninotchka, The Lost Weekend, Double Indemnity, The Seven Year Itch

The Screwball Film: The Awful Truth (1937)
The story in screwballs is rarely the focus—it’s incidental, and is really only preset to gather together all the wacky misfits so that the fun can begin. My favourite of these is The Awful Truth, starring the always marvelous Irene Dunne and screwball staple Cary Grant. The story? Well, officially, it's the tale of a well-to-do couple who divorce on little more than vague suspicions (on both sides) of infidelity. The unofficial one? It's the tale of an endless battle of the sexes, with man and wife delivering snappy one-liners, timing their pratfalls, and sabotaging the other's happiness before they end up back where they belong.

Like this? Try these: His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night, My Favorite Wife, The Philadelphia Story, The Thin Man

The Inside Scoop Film: All About Eve (1950)
I always loved films that had that backstage, insider feel. Whether it's for stage or for film, stories that take place around the fringes of a production have that shiny glint of the unknowable gossip. After all, who better to make a picture about the hopeless plight of ac-TORS than their handlers? And All About Eve is no disappointment on this front—giving you the catty backstabbing, fraught narcissism and endless ladder-climbing that goes hand in hand with the (noble? Ignoble? Inexplicable?) profession of acting. What I love most about All About Eve—and any of the movies in this category—is that they give you characters who have been in the business for so long that stage (or the screen) has lost its glitter, and it’s just another job to them. Margo Channing (Bette Davis), shining star of Broadway, meets gushing fan Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) backstage at one of her shows. Flattered by the girl's relentless adoration, and facing the insecurity of a middle age lived onstage, Margo hires Eve as her personal assistant. From then, it's only a matter of time before the once docile Eve secretly reveals an ambition to be a star that overshadows even her idol. Bottom line: there's no people like theater people, and THANK GOD for that.

Like this? Try these: Singin' in the Rain, A Star is Born, Sunset Blvd., 42nd Street, The Player

The Boy's Club Film: Taxi Driver (1976)
Looking back on the boy's club of the 1970s, with the conscious shift to the younger, hipper director New Hollywood, I find it a time-period of endless fascination. With the glint of the blockbuster sdummer movie still on the far horizon, the late 1960s and early 1970s was an amazing orgy of creative control and experimentation, as directors, writers and producers called the shots for the first time in Hollywood history. The result is cinema at its finest--more films worthy of classic status in a year than the entirety of the 2000s. Taxi Driver, the story of alienated Vietnam vet turned cabbie Travis Bickle, played famously by Robert DeNiro. Nowadays, the starstruck adulation from a generation of teenage boys has tarnished the cultural significance that Taxi Driver still holds. Taxi Driver, along with American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, and The Walker, made up the “Night Worker” series, films that profile and near-mythologize the unusual social space occupied by those who are earning their living as the world sleeps. It is an exploration of loneliness, obviously, but it is moreso a love/hate song to the New York of the 1970s that was wiped clean by the Disneyfication of the city in the 1990s – New York is a gritty, filthy character in its own right. I always like to see it as Martin Scorsese's desperation to save the city he loves in the same breath that he realizes it's already a lost cause.

Like this? Try these: Chinatown, Raging Bull, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation

The Most Perfect Movie Ever Made Film: Tootsie (1982)
Just watch it. Seriously. There’s a reason they still teach this one in screenwriting class, and it ain't because Dustin Hoffman makes a scarily prescient woman. Well, okay, it's partly that.

Like this? Try: Watching it again. No, seriously. I'll wait.