Top 10 American Movies of All Time

[DARTH BOWSER]

Source: http://americandreams.msn.com/article.a ... cle=Movies

Screen classics: A critic's take on the top 10 American movies
By JOHN HARTL
Special to MSN
American movies now dominate the international market in a way they haven't since the days of silent films, which (aside from title cards) didn't have to go through the bother of translation to another language.

But our movies have always been influential, demonstrating to Russian filmmakers the possibilities of creative editing and even affecting the way French critics and directors looked at the world. More recently, action films and blockbusters have been more commercially successful overseas than in this country. We're everywhere, to the distress of some countries that sense there's no way to compete.

No matter how foreigners may fear this cultural dominance, everyone seems to have a favorite moment or song or performance from an American movie. Perhaps it's Donald O'Connor knocking himself out in "Singin' in the Rain," or Chaplin eating his shoe in "The Gold Rush," or Angela Lansbury embodying Machiavellian fanaticism in "The Manchurian Candidate."

Some movies even worship other movies. In "Play It Again Sam," Woody Allen obsesses over Bergman and Bogart in "Casablanca." On the bumpy road to the White House in "Primary Colors," only Alan Ladd's "Shane" provides a glimpse of a true hero. In the new British comedy-drama, "Love Actually," a widower and his son drown their sorrows by watching Kate and Leo in "Titanic."

Here's a roundup of 10 classics that seem (to me) essential:

"Intolerance" (1916). D.W. Griffith's costly and insanely ambitious epic, often called the only "film fugue," wasn't as popular as his first blockbluster, "The Birth of a Nation," but it's had a more lasting impact. The director uses four stories from different periods of history to illustrate religious or social intolerance through the ages. The ancient-Babylon section is the most famous and spectacular episode, but the 20th Century American story is the most moving. In the never-topped finale, all four stories are brilliantly edited into what appears to become one sweeping chase sequence.

"Sunrise" (1927). When he came to Hollywood near the end of the silent era, the groundbreaking German director F.W. Murnau ("Nosferatu") was given the run of 20th Century Fox. He responded by creating a visual tour-de-force (and the first Oscar winner for best cinematography) from a simple story of adultery, attempted murder and redemption. The elaborately staged scenes in which a rural couple are overwhelmed by their visit to the big city are among the most lyrical in all cinema.

"The Wizard of Oz" (1939). Thanks to dozens of network television showings, more people have seen this MGM musical than any other film in history, and for good reason. Everything clicks here: the songs, the casting, the sepia-toned tornado scenes in Kansas, the dazzling switch to the Technicolored land of Oz, and of course the story of a charlatan exposed by four humbler people in search of things they've always had.

"Gone With the Wind" (1939). The Civil War sometimes seems less important than the romantic troubles of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler — so perfectly embodied by Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable — but what a fascinating backdrop it provides for nearly four hours. While many talented people worked on the picture, including three directors, "G.W.T.W." is perhaps Hollywood's best argument for a producer's control. David O. Selznick's touch is visible in every richly detailed frame.

"Citizen Kane" (1941). Orson Welles' barely disguised treatment of the life of newspaperman William Randolph Hearst is a tragedy about a man who almost literally gains the whole world and loses his soul. Welles tells the story with such wit and bravado that the movie's serious intentions don't really announce themselves until it's half over. This is, almost despite its ambitions, a very funny movie, filled with withering, still-potent commentary on the state of American journalism. (Welles' followup film, "The Magnificent Ambersons," is nearly its equal.)

"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946). Frank Capra's post-war masterpiece, starring James Stewart as a harried family man who tries to commit suicide on Christmas Eve, introduced a dark side of Stewart's personality that Hitchcock would later explore in "Vertigo" and "Rear Window." Despite its happy ending, it's the edgiest tale Capra ever told. Most of the film's final third is a nightmarish episode in which Stewart's home town is transformed into the greed-driven Pottersville. It stands as a film-noir-ish warning of the potential corruption of the country.

"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). David Lean's deeply personal epic, which deals in part with the birth of Iraq, has never seemed so timely, though it's always been timeless. Focusing on a foreigner's love affair with the desert, Lean presents this infatuation in a way that allows the audience to share it. In one lengthy sequence, Freddie Young's camera deliberately dwells on the image of a mirage, recording the heat waves and distortions that separate a camel from its rider. The result is a sense of mystery that no special effects can touch.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (196 8) . Perhaps the most experimental multi-million-dollar production ever released by a major studio (MGM), Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's science-fiction epic imagines the evolution of mankind from desperate ape to corporate-speak space traveler to ecstatic Star Child. Like "Lawrence of Arabia," it takes its time to establish the nature of the environment which defines its characters — who are (almost) no match for a diabolical computer with murder on its mind.

"The Godfather, Parts I and II" (1972-74). For too many years now, Francis Ford Coppola seems to have been content to create mere entertainments. Not since the 1970s, when he made "Apocalypse Now," "The Conversation" and the first two "Godfather" movies, has he directed anything exceptional. But "The Godfather" raised the bar as high as "Citizen Kane" did three decades before. Movies have not been the same since Coppola found, in the family bonds and betrayals of the Mafia, his great metaphor for 20th Century America.

"The Thin Red Line" (199 8) . Terrence Malick's expansive adaptation of the James Jones novel is a surprisingly spiritual war drama. The Eden-like quality of a Pacific island (so reminiscent of the "magic hour" beauty of the images in Malick's "Days of Heaven") becomes as much of a presence as the two armies that battle over it. This contemplative stream-of-consciousness epic plays like the "Red Badge of Courage" of World War II. It presents war as a circumstance to be transcended, even in death.

[Cap'n Boo from Timbuktu]

I have a hard time caring about what movie critics have to say.