#15 Star Wars (1977)

People who didn’t know me back in the day have no idea how deep my “Star Wars” obsession ran. Action figures, posters, dioramas that I commissioned from people with better woodworking skills than me, a life-size Princess Leia in the gold bikini… I was a grade-A dork when it came to “Star Wars.” Which of course makes this blog incredibly difficult to write for two reasons:

1) It is hard to analyze it in any way that I see as fresh or unique

2) When you get right down to it, it’s not a very good movie

But, I will do what I can for the sake of art.

First off, we can’t discuss “Star Wars” without acknowledging that there is an incredibly deep and convoluted world that George Lucas created in his quest to be thorough with these films. 99% of that content never makes it into a “Star Wars” film. Because of this I cannot simply excuse or explain away certain shortcomings this movie has by saying “they explain it better in the book.” A good film adaptation should ALWAYS assume you haven’t read the source materials; especially when said source materials aren’t novels or even comic books but rather a bunch of technical manuals and graphic novels that came out years later.

A lavishly arranged orchestral arrangement (which will be crucial to the film’s entire feel) opens the movie, followed by scrolling text explaining the backstory for the audience. It is done in a descending font that looks almost 3D and seems to disappear into space as the words progress. This is a very interesting and apropos effect given the intergalactic setting of this film, however it is evident that this is just the first of many tactics this film employs simply for what the guys on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” would have referred to as “wow factor.” I’m not saying this to be jaded and critical, I’m saying it because everything that is explained in the 3 paragraphs of introduction are discussed at various points later in the movie. You could literally lift this introduction out altogether and not be any more or less confused than you are watching it in its true form. In fact, the introduction probably confused more people than it ever helped understand it given the fact that it inexplicably introduces the movie as “Episode IV” despite no pre-existing installments.

In many ways, “Star Wars” is simply a relocated spaghetti western. The first scenes featuring main characters like Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones) hearken back to the days of hat color defining a person’s moral standing. Leia is clad in pure white robes, while Vader of course has the menacing black helmet and body armor. Even characters introduced later will adhere to this simplistic yet effective tool. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) wears white and the other bad guys in the evil Imperial Empire rely on emotional association to establish their position. Stormtroopers wear white uniforms with helmets that have thin eye holes not unlike KKK robes and Governor Tarkin (Peter Cushing) rocks an ensemble that clearly, CLEARLY looks like a Nazi dress uniform. We aren’t supposed to know for sure if Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is a good guy or a bad guy, so he wears black AND white. Clever.

I think that covers most of the major visual allegory, so I can comfortably move onto the plot. The Rebels are a well-funded group of militants who are attempting to overthrow the Empire, who are evil seemingly only for the purpose of being evil. Princess Leia, one of the highest leaders in the rebellion, has managed to get ahold of a full blueprint of the Death Star, a space station the Empire is hoping to use to intimidate any non-conformist planets into submission. Before having her starship boarded and being arrested for treason she is able to hide the blueprints in a robot R2-D2, who boards an escape pod with his mechanical life-partner C-3P0 and winds up on the desert planet Tatooine.

“Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought onboard.” (Princess Leia, “Star Wars”)

Thankfully it is apparently a remarkably small world because even though they wind up in the possession of Luke Skywalker, he happens to know Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), the guy Leia sent them to unrealistically hoping they would just find their way to him- so they do! As many flaws as I can find with this picture and particularly these Tatooine scenes, I also think the most artistically brilliant shot in the entire movie occurs here. There is no dialogue but Luke stares at the setting dual suns and encapsulates his whole character with his silent frustration. The symphony again kicks in and plays a short swell of music that compliments the scene perfectly. The two suns remind us that the film is set in outer space but the emptiness and wishing for something more Mark Hamill expresses immediately makes it relatable again.

Obi-Wan plants a seed (not in a creepy Noah Cross/Evelyn Cross in “Chinatown” kind of way) in Luke’s mind that he could help the ancient religion of Jedi make a comeback. There are only a few left after Darth Vader “helped hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights,” making Luke an obvious choice to revive the cause since his father was one of the most powerful Jedis ever as well as one of the ones Vader murdered ;) Luke knows he can’t go because his uncle not only looked down on Jedi-ism but needs him as slave labor on the family farm… what they are farming on a barren desert planet would have been nice to explain but whatevs. Storyline conveniently however, Luke’s uncle and aunt are killed, freeing him up to take off with this mysterious old hermit to join the rebellion.

The introduction of roguish space smuggler Han Solo is one of the film’s finest moments. Obi-Wan and Luke venture to Mos Eisley Spaceport where they search the bars looking for a pilot to take them to the Rebel base. The menagerie of strange creatures and beings they encounter there are really some of the only indicators of the vastness of the George Lucas universe. In a short musical montage a variety of beings both cute and creepy are flashed across the screen. I am not going to name every Snaggletooth, Mufftak and Ponda Baba introduced in this scene to appease Star Wars geeks, and besides most of those characters weren’t properly named until years down the road anyway, so their backstories are pretty irrelevant as it relates to this film, so please forward any complaints about my failure to properly recognize Garindan’s important contribution to the near apprehension of the good guys directly to the round file cabinet I keep under my desk. The other thing that makes this scene so great is the back-and-forth between Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness. The other young members of the cast are WAY out of their league in a movie with veteran stage actors like Guinness and Cushing, so to see one of the younger actors in the film exchange dialogue with one of the pros is a bright spot.

Luke begins to learn the ways of the Jedi, Obi-Wan is killed by Darth Vader- making Luke the last living hope for the Jedi, Luke and Han both rescue Leia and in the process develop a thing for her and Luke blows up the Death Star. Really it is all very simplistic and borrows heavily from many other previously existing genres; particularly westerns as I mentioned before given the well defined “good/evil” concept, the sheer number of shootouts and the mentality that the loners and anti-heroes are the ones who are going to save us all when the expected heroes fail. You don’t have to look very closely to see to see the rip-offs of previous works in “Star Wars.” The scene where Luke returns home to his slaughtered family is directly lifted from “The Searchers,” C-3PO looks suspiciously like Maria from “Metropolis” and there are even heavy allusions to numerous religions scattered all over the movie.

However, what “Star Wars” lacks in originality, it kind of makes up for in special effects pioneering. Contrary to popular belief this wasn’t the movie where all sci-fi stopped looking like “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” As much as I hate it “2001: A Space Odyssey” featured equally impressive space scenes and in terms of scope of the spacecrafts “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is equal to or greater than this film. What “Star Wars” did change though was detail. The intricacies of the surface of the Death Star, the underside of the Star Destroyer that chases Princess Leia and even the beams from the weapons are really what separate this movie from similar genre films.

And of course, the merchandising frenzy it was able to subsequently create. There is nothing wrong with saying that these films qualified for this list for reasons other than quality of content. “The Jazz Singer” was not a bad film, but there is no way it makes this list were it not for being the first talkie. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was nowhere near as good as “The Secret of NIMH” but it was the first feature-length animated film, so yeah, it belongs here. “Star Wars” came along at the right time and became a cultural phenomenon that very few books, movies or songs could ever dream of. But you’re dreaming if you think this movie is so highly regarded because it’s good.

#16. All about Eve (1950)

News flash- actors are terrible people!

They are catty, narcissistic and self-serving. Of course, this is not something that would come as a surprise to most people, but “All about Eve” not only builds an entire movie around this concept, but insults our intelligence by relying completely on the assumption that we don’t already know this. With its deliberate “fly on the wall” approach which makes sure much of the interaction takes place in dressing rooms and backstage areas, this film seems to fancy itself as some kind of expose piece of investigative reporting. Now, before we get started there is a real chance I hate this movie so much because I feel like it walked away with a lot of the Oscars that “Sunset Boulevard” deserved, but to be fair I didn’t even know they competed against each other til after I watched “All about Eve.” Just putting all my cards on the table now.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do narration; generally I think it is a cop-out altogether but if it is necessary to keep the movie under 3 hours, it should at least be done creatively. “Double Indemnity” gets this right with the tape-recorded confession; I’m loathe to admit it but even “Dances with Wolves” may do it right with the journal entries. With “All about Eve” however, the film just starts off with plain lecture hall narrative that tells us everything in black and white so that there is no room for misinterpretation, or for that matter, on-screen character progression. The narration is done by the character Addison DeWitt, (George Sanders) who is a theater critic who immediately establishes that he has no endearing qualities by talking down to the viewer, implying that everyone who doesn’t know theater is essentially an uncultured buffoon. Even more frustrating is the fact that now we know the person speaking is a writer and he STILL can’t be bothered to be narrating in an interesting context.

DeWitt goes on to explain that we are watching an awards ceremony honoring Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), the youngest recipient of the award in question. All the main characters are introduced in this drawn-out but somehow still glossed-over manner; Lloyd and Karen Richards (Hugh Marlowe and Celeste Holm) a playwright and his wife, producer Max Fabian (Gregory Ratoff) and a veteran stage actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis). The first inkling we get that there is some conflict in this film between Eve and the other characters is the fact that none of these characters look particularly enthused, or even interested, in the praise-laden speech the award presenter is heaping on Eve.

Once the dreadfully condescending and monotone narration is over and Eve is presented with the award, it seems like the present-time plot may commence. Unfortunately that’s not how this movie works. Instead, like the world’s most boring relay race, the narration duties are simply handed off to Karen. At least this time it advances the story. Karen flashes back several months to her first meeting with Eve; who is essentially a theater groupie who obsessively attends a play Margo is starring in night in and night out. Out of the goodness of her heart Karen brings Eve into the theater to meet Margo, who is her best friend. The scene that sets up the meeting between Eve and her idol Margo firmly establishes the majority of the characters who are “insiders” by the overwhelming approval they show when Margo launches into a tirade about how creepy and pathetic her fans are.

Margo and Lloyd feign compassion by listening to Eve’s backstory, where she explains that she is the poor only child of a farmer, former secretary and war-widow who has since devoted her time to following Margo across the country. Despite the general hateability of all the main characters, their backstage banter is amusing and probably among the best acted in the film. One of the most richly developed characters is also introduced at this point. Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), Margo’s boyfriend who is also a director who is working in Hollywood as well as legitimate theater, but appears to be disillusioned by both. He and Eve have an incredible exchange where she very passively charms Bill the same way she does Margo, by pumping his ego.

Eve’s flattery earns her a place in Margo’s inner-circle where the only one who seems to distrust Eve and see past her naivety is Margo’s sarcastic, jaded maidservant Birdie (Thelma Ritter). Almost immediately I noticed the similarity between Birdie and Stella, the wisecracking home-health-care nurse in “Rear Window” who, as it turns out was also played by Ritter several years later. Much like Stella, Birdie provides a great deal of comedic cynicism and helps establish the “wisdom from an unlikely source” cliché that we still see today in characters like Idella in “Driving Miss Daisy” or Oscar in “Baby Mama.”

Somewhere between when Bill is introduced and Margo allows Eve to move in with her, Margo assumes the role of narrator; complicating things even further. I don’t think I would have minded this directorial tool nearly as much if it were done in a manner where everyone’s narratives are slightly different until there is one climactic point in the film where they all converge and fall into sync; but alas I think the only reason for the constantly switching narration is that even the director Joseph Mankiewicz realized there was just too much voice-over in this movie so changing the voice every now and then might help alleviate the boredom; it doesn’t.

Eve’s devotion begins to border on creepy, first when Margo catches her trying on one of her stage costumes and later when she arranges a midnight call to Hollywood so Margo can wish Bill a happy birthday right on time, even though Margo doesn’t even know it IS his birthday. Some insightful foreshadowing comes from Birdie who explains to Margo that Eve is not only strangely devoted to Margo, but almost acts as though she is trying to actually BE Margo. Once Margo makes this realization, she has such a hard time convincing everyone around her that it actually causes tension with them. Eve has essentially duped Margo’s entire inner-circle into trusting her, so much so that they all interpret Margo’s suspicion as envy of Eve’s youth and beauty.

“Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.” (Margo Channing, “All about Eve”)

At this point there is supposed to be a dynamic role-reversal, with Margo and Eve trading off the positions of Pro/Antagonist; as it is now evident that Eve has begun to methodically sabotage Margo’s personal life by turning her friends on her, as well as her professional life when she manages to earn a spot as Margo’s understudy. Even though we see Eve’s conniving side, Margo has simply not done enough to make us like her for this transition to occur. Her shabby treatment of Birdie, her vain obsession with age and looks and her borderline insane distrust of Bill all just make me hate her even more than before and realize that her career deserves to be destroyed.

Of course I don’t need to tell you how it all plays out. Eve gets what she wants, causes Margo to miss a performance, fills in, steals the show and wins the adoration of the theater-going public while alienating herself from Margo and everyone in her entourage. Furthermore, DeWitt manages to deconstruct Eve’s entire backstory- she is not a widow, she made up the story about following Margo across the country and she was sleeping with her boss at her last job until he paid her to leave town. In the pre-google days it would have been interesting to explain how he learned all these things about her, however I have to believe that it was just assumed that by this point everyone watching would just be asleep anyway. The film ends with a young wannabe actress sneaking into Eve’s apartment, claiming to adore her and imposing herself into Eve’s life- implying that everything has and will again come full circle, and that Eve is just the next Margo. So even if somehow that bitch Margo has managed to win you over, you can take comfort in knowing Eve will have a similar comeuppance.

There is some sharp dialogue in this film, as well as a few purposely unexplained plot devices that leave many things open for interpretation (Birdie having once been an actress herself, DeWitt seemingly using his influence to nail cheap bimbo actresses etc). Unfortunately, the quest for realism is hindered by the fact that the conversations are too realistic- that is to say they are written like normal banter… with nothing taken out for flow purposes. And this film is entirely dialogue driven- hardly any of the scenes take place outdoors or places where there would be secondary characters or even extras. Just the same people over and over again; and with the exception of Bill and Karen they are all pretty unlikeable.

Thankfully for this film’s legacy, it was set in the Broadway theater community rather than in Hollywood for two huge reasons: 1) it justifies the dramatic overacting by all the primaries but especially Bette Davis and 2) it didn’t anger the Hollywood community the way the far, FAR superior “Sunset Boulevard” did, as a result, it was a much easier pill to swallow as an Oscar movie in 1950 as being a “behind the scenes, unglamorous underbelly expose” picture. If you want to watch a movie that explores the ‘what goes on behind the façade” motif- practically ANY movie would be more entertaining; “A Star is Born,” “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” shit even the dreadful “Hollywoodland” was better than this injustice.

#17. The African Queen (1951)

I’ve lived an interesting life;

I rode in a helicopter piloted by a serial killer, spent the day with a significant figure in American history and even made national news and became an ACLU poster-child following a manufactured porn scandal. On a significantly less interesting note, a few years ago I rescued an abandoned kitten, spoiled her and raised her as my own and every time she falls asleep in my lap I realize that taking her in is the best thing I have ever done. Not the most exciting or funniest, not the thing people will remember most about me someday, but the best. The movie “The African Queen” has both Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart branching out of their cinematic comfort zones and, while it may not be what people remember them for, it is in my estimation the best thing either one of them has ever done. In other words, “The African Queen” is their homeless cat.

While there are traces of Humphrey Bogart’s rubber-stamp character in the role of Charlie (the gruff loner with somewhat self-destructive tendencies) most traces of nobility and bravery are washed away in a sea of gin. In fact, there is a compelling study within the film on the negative effects of alcoholism, whereas in most previous films, drinking is simply glamorized and expected of men. Rather than an anti-hero, Bogart is more like a loser who happens to be capable of a good deed, which is very compelling. On the other hand, Katharine Hepburn makes a huge leap from the sassy socialite character she plays in movies like “Bringing up Baby” and “The Philadelphia Story” to play Rose, a frigid old maid/missionary.

The simple white-fonted opening credits appear and dissolve against a moving scene of a jungle as if the camera is looking up while moving downstream. Once the narrative begins the camera arrives at a stereotypical Africa village, complete with bamboo huts with straw roofs. However, there is also a similarly built but conspicuously out of place traditional-looking Christian church which is filled from front-to-back with primitive looking tribesfolk. Despite their enthusiastic participation in one of the hymns led by Rose’s pastor brother, the natives seem out of place and as if they are not fully understanding of their surroundings. Conversely, the arrival of Charlie on his dilapidated little supply delivery boat, The African Queen, is crude and obvious- with a loud steam whistle blowing over the hymn.

There is an interesting and subtle contrast going on here between Charlie and Rose; she is dressed formally and is generally performing a respectable action whereas Charlie is drunk and carelessly litters in the pristine, untouched jungle. This early comparison is crucial to the development of the dynamic between Charlie and Rose, which will become the focal point of the film. In spite of their obvious differences there are some incredibly understated similarities between the two. For instance, in their own ways they are both encroaching on the native African’s way of life- Charlie by treating them like slaves and Rose by essentially changing their way of life from making them sing hymns and even leave their spears outside the chapel like some kind of coat-check.

The invasion of German soldiers near the outset of World War 1 all but destroys the village and all the natives, as well as Rose’s brother, whose health deteriorates rapidly after the invasion, ultimately killing him. Without her brother and completely dependent on Charlie to get her out of Africa, Rose joins him on the boat and almost immediately voices a plan to essentially suicide bomb a German warship by using The African Queen as a torpedo. Though Charlie is skeptical and not at all enthused about being a hero, he does entertain the idea by acknowledging that the explosives on board the ship would be capable of executing the job.

“I ain't worried, Miss. Gave myself up for dead back where we started” (Charlie Allnut, “The African Queen”)

A nasty cliché in cinema has since been born of the middle part of the movie, the whole “opposites attract” premise. Arguments about bathing situations and sleeping arrangements are reminiscent of the far inferior “It Happened One Night” but innovative in how the characters are forced together by circumstance and far more realistic in the progression of feelings. Also, “Pirates of the Caribbean” could learn a thing or two about the proper way to illustrate a true alcoholic’s reaction to having a woman dispose of his booze. The detoxification and character transition Charlie experiences after Rose forces him to stop drinking does not come quickly or too sharply to make it absurd.

These extended scenes of just Rose and Charlie benefit from the on-location filming far more than you would think. With so much natural background scrolling by as the dialogue unfolds, a green-screen or “Mighty Joe Young” like scenery would have made it laughable and probably unwatchable. Instead, the lively and fresh jungle scenery and occasional shot of real wildlife not only break up the potential monotony of a film with such few characters, but they also make every little obstacle (equipment failure, impassable conditions etc) seem like a far more realistic threat and enhance the intensity of the movie.

At one point the boat is stuck in a densely overgrown patch of vegetation and leech-infested water. Charlie establishes his heroism inadvertently when he tows the broken down ship with his own body through the weeds. As the camera pulls away and upward we see that the obstruction only goes for a short distance, with the river that is their goal being just within reach. The fact that Charlie does not know this implies that he would have towed the ship on his own strength for miles if necessary.

While prepping the conversion of the boat into a torpedo a massive storm erupts, turning the ship over and throwing Rose and Charlie overboard. Charlie is captured and sentenced to death for his attempted attack on the Germans, all the while not knowing if Rose died in the wreck. When she is brought aboard the warship after having also been found by German troops her and Charlie are sentenced to hang together. As a last request they ask to be married- which ends up accidentally buying them time for The African Queen to resurface and drift towards the ship- blowing it up in accordance with the original plan. The most endearing part of this ending is actually the fact that Charlie and Rose DON’T blow up the ship the way they planned. Not everyone has to be a hero, people who are generally losers don’t suddenly pull off major heroics no matter how good their intentions are and the true happy ending is not the destruction of the ship but the fact that these two people have found each other.

It is not easy to pull off a movie that is mostly dialogue driven between two people. It is even less attractive when the two characters are played by actors who are really stretching beyond their comfort zones. Not only do Hepburn and Bogart pull it off, but they completely reinvent themselves in the process. John Huston also deserves a great deal of credit for having the foresight to move this movie off Hollywood backlots and into the African jungle. The authenticity and the scenery could NOT have been pulled off any other way.