TEN FILMS THAT CHANGED CINEMA AND THE CULTURE OF AMERICA

It is ironic that the science and art of making movies all began as a small curiosity to determine “if horses have all four legs off the ground at the same time when they are trotting.” In 1872, the millionaire, Leland Stanford, began buying race horses and he became so intrigued by this question that he hired Edward Mubridge, a still photographer, to find the answer by taking a series of pictures of one of his horses in motion. And so the beginning of motion picture technology was born although the first images were crude because of the film speed needed to capture the trotting horse who indeed did have all four legs off the ground at the same time.

It wasn’t until 1877 that Mubridge improved his camera by adding shutters and more sensitive film that he was able to obtain stunning images that moved and he even invented a projector that showed his pictures and thus was cinema born. Others including Thomas Edison began to add and invent new techniques and the first movie to actually tell a story was a short ten minute Western called The Great Train Robbery in 1903. The film also employed a dramatic sequence where a bandit fires his gun directly at the camera and the audience, an event which must have been an astonishing revelation for the spectators of that time. You can watch it on YouTube and imagine that it is 1903.

And so, in advance of the 84th Academy Awards Presentation next week, I submit my list of the ten films that went on to change the movies and, at the same time, the culture of America.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

This film was the first great epic ever produced in Hollywood and it established its director, D.W. Griffith, as the master story teller for all others who were to follow. It is a silent film filled with new camera techniques and new groundbreaking ideas as to how to use film to tell a story.

It tells the story of The Civil War (including the assassination of Abraham Lincoln) and the Reconstruction era that followed and it is extremely racist to the point of being responsible for the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, the film is based on a book called The Clansman. But it is clear that, despite its unfortunate treatment and interpretation of racism in America, future film makers will always hold a great debt to the innovative and profound style of its director.

The Jazz Singer (1927)

This is the first feature length film that employed scenes with actors talking with synchronized dialogue. It is essentially a silent film except for these few talking scenes and for the scenes where its star, Al Jolson, performs several songs. Movie audiences were enthralled with the singing of Jolson, who was already the biggest star on Broadway, but they were also mesmerized by his dialogue much of which was spontaneously improvised by him.

It’s a story about the son of a Rabbi who does not want to continue with the family tradition but who would rather bring his musical talent to the stage. The story itself was based on Jolson’s actual life when it was written as a play by Samson Raphaelson. While earlier short subjects had some sound and dialogue, it was this movie and the appearance of its electrifying superstar (before that word had even been coined) that ended silent pictures and began the era of the Talkies.

I have seen this film several times and am quite taken with it because I know that I am watching history in the making. While it would probably be difficult for younger audiences to sit through the silent parts of the film, it remains that it is revolutionary. And watching the great entertainer on the stage singing Mammy on bended knee is exciting for anyone interested in show business.

King Kong (1933)

Merian C. Cooper was an enthusiastic explorer and adventurer who loved to film wild animals in their habitat and so he set out to make a movie about such an event. He wanted to create Kong as realistically as possible and refused to animate the title character as a cartoon. He employed Willis O’Brien, a special effects artist who had created dinosaurs in an earlier silent film called The Lost World (1925), to create King Kong using small models and stop motion photography.

The theme of the movie is that as omnipotent as Kong was, he was overcome by the beauty possessed by the woman that is sacrificed to him on Skull Island. In the end, in other words, it is “beauty that kills the beast” and not man. This film was so revolutionary in its special effects, that it became an absolute sensation for the public. It was reissued every year to the theaters for many years so that moviegoers could revel in it. When I was very young, my friends and I would see it each time it was released and we, along with everyone else, couldn’t get enough of it. When Kong is killed atop the Empire State Building, it was assumed that the filmmakers were taking advantage of that building’s great success. In point of fact, the building, built during The Great Depression, was virtually empty and became populated with occupants after this film was released.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

The love story of Scarlet O’Hara played by Vivian Leigh in what is probably the greatest female performance of all time. She is in virtually every scene of this first true magnificent motion picture epic made in technicolor. It was also the longest movie ever made up to that time clocking in at 3 hours 44 minutes. The search for the actress to play the lead from Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel took a long time to play out until the British actress Leigh arrived on the scene. This film had been a special project of independent producer David O. Selznick for some time and it is a game changing blockbuster in every sense of the word.

Citizen Kane (1941)

Voted by most critics as the best film ever made, it has remained Number One on The American Film Institute’s 100 list since the beginning. Orson Welles wrote, directed, produced and starred in this, his first film in Hollywood, after having built a successful career in radio in the late 1930s. His ensemble group of actors, The Mercury Players, had put on the radio version of The War of the Worlds so convincingly that the listening audience actually thought the earth was being invaded by Mars and panic spread across the nation.

So Hollywood beckoned and gave him the freedom to make a film and do whatever he wanted without interference from the studio. He chose to write a story based on William Randolph Hearst, the rich tycoon and owner of many newspapers in the country. When it was finished, the studio was offered money not to release it but they refused. Welles, however, had made a powerful enemy that would haunt him forever.

The film is full of innovative techniques that had never been done before. This is especially evident in the way it was photographed and in the way it was told to the audience such as repeating the same story but from different points of views of each character. Scenes were shot from the floor level to add intensity and power to the story. The opening scene is a continuous uncut shot that seems to go on forever lending a sense of infinity to the film. Welles would later say that he did these things, breaking all the rules, even though he had been told that they couldn’t be done. He also had hired an experienced team of workers that would help him frame his ideas.

By the time I saw the re-release of the film in the 1960s, all these techniques were taken for granted, not to be realized by me until I became much older and more interested in history. I do remember however being struck with the great story telling and acting of Orson Welles and his fellow performers. Welles eventually took refuge in Europe for much of the balance of his career trying to escape the personal attacks he had suffered by making this masterpiece.

Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

The first big budget film that gave middle class teenagers a voice by depicting them as misunderstood kids instead of juvenile delinquents. Up to then, they were described as a menace to the community but this film shows them to be extremely vulnerable due to the peer pressure exerted by our society. The film gave subsequent rise to teenagers becoming a class unto themselves both socially and economically in the 1950s as they became a major force in the purchase of music that hastened the onset of Rock & Roll which was just beginning.

Hollywood also realized the great emerging market for the teenage box office as many films followed including Blackboard Jungle (1955) which featured the first soundtrack with a Rock & Roll song, “Rock Around The Clock,” by Bill Haley and The Comets.

James Dean became the ultimate iconic teenager because he was killed in a car accident one month prior to the release of the picture. This was his second film, with his first, East of Eden, having made him a star. His third and last film was Giant starring with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. He will be compared to Marlon Brando forever as they were similar in their method style but Brando was heavier in his acting while Dean was much lighter in the way he approached his characters. It was said that he had the dramatic intensity of Brando mixed with the vulnerability of fellow method actor Montgomery Clift.

I was a freshman in college when the news of his death swept across the campus with the force of a flu epidemic and everyone was asking who this young dynamic actor was and how tragic that he was dead at age 22. Warner Brothers had originally thought that his death would cut into the box office for the film but instead it magnified it and Dean was transformed from movie star to movie legend who was never to grow old.

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock broke a lot of rules when he brought this film to the screen. He shows more sexuality and violence than had ever been shown before. He kills off his star actress at the end of the first act, an event unheard of or unthinkable before. He promoted the film as having to be seen from the beginning so that no one would be admitted after it began rolling and his famous shower scene would become one of iconic status in the public awareness.

The film is based on a book by Robert Bloch which had been inspired by a real life event. It’s about a woman who uncharacteristically decides to rob some money from her boss but then comes to her senses and intends to return it. Before she can, she is murdered at a small run down motel and her body and car are buried in a pond behind the structure. The audience thinks that the mother of the manager of the hotel did the deed until the ending when it is revealed that the son and the mother are one and the same.

The film was a sensation breaking new territory as it did and it is generally considered Hitchcock’s best. And I remember the feel of the resulting hysteria in the country at the time so I’m sure that business must have fallen off at small motels all over the world after this picture was released.

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather may be the most perfect film ever made and it is listed as Number Two on The American Film Institute’s (AFI) 100 greatest films of all time after Citizen Kane. There is not a single scene in this three hour masterpiece that doesn’t belong there. It takes a great director to transfer a blockbuster novel to the screen and make it an engrossing visual experience that the audience can enjoy during those three hours. And that tribute goes to writer/director Francis Ford Coppola who had the vision and tenacity to film the movie as an epic period story of a crime family in the forties instead of a cops and robbers run of the mill gangster contemporary picture which was what Paramount studios had envisioned.

In fact, Coppola was on the verge of being fired several times while making this film as the book was becoming a bigger and bigger best seller so he had to work fast. He had only been hired because he was the only Italian director on the lot at the time. He had writing credits on previous films and had recently won the academy award for writing the screen play for Patton but this was his first directorial assignment.

His suspenseful pacing of the movie is astonishing as he keeps moving the story foreword refusing to allow viewers enough time to even leave their seat to buy some popcorn or maybe to visit the rest room. And most importantly, everything makes sense in the end as the director ties up all the loose ends and brings the story to its spectacular climactic close.

This movie has everything. It has love of family, romance, betrayal, treachery, revenge, murder, loyalty and honor. This film is one that all other crime films (and non crime films) will forever be compared to and measured by and it is the number one essential film that must be seen by anyone who enjoys excellence on the movie screen. I for one went to see it several times on its original release just so that I could focus on other aspects of the film that I had not seen previously. And, periodically, I play the DVD with the director’s comments turned on so that I can listen to Coppola while he shares his thinking and expertise with me. And while he is in my living room, I always put an extra glass of red wine on the coffee table for him as we watch his masterpiece together.

Jaws (1975)

What came to be known as the first of the so-called summer blockbusters was so popular that waiting in long lines at a stand alone theater was the norm. I saw it at a local theater where the usher would come out and mark the line after which people would have to leave because the show would have been sold out by the time they got to the box office. We had just made it and had to sit in the third row when we normally prefer sitting toward the back.

Whenever I am asked to describe the most horrific scene that I have ever watched in a film (I don’t watch slasher movies), I choose the one here in the beginning when the young girl is being swept about in the ocean and then finally dragged under to her death by a monster that is unseen. In fact, the director, Steven Spielberg keeps the monster from being seen well into the picture which adds exponentially to the riveting suspense.

In the old days, movies would start slowly, generating suspense as the story unfolds and then proceed toward a climactic ending. Jaws was one of the first to explode before your eyes right at the beginning and then create a roller coaster ride of unrivaled intensity.

Star Wars (1977)

This film is an action adventure fantasy that takes place in its own fictional galaxy. While not a personal favorite of mine, I cannot deny the impact this film has had on millions of moviegoers while becoming a franchise phenomenon. It is a blockbuster spawning many sequels and it ushered in other films that copied it. It is also credited in bringing to the screen the new surround sound system that actually placed the viewer inside the movie.

The process of 3D films was meant to do that in the 1950s but failed. It is now making a new comeback today but in my opinion, it is the surround sound audio and not the 3D video that really opens up the third dimension allowing the audience to feel that they are right there witnessing the action inside the movie while it is happening. So I’m not sure about the future role of 3D in the movies unless you’re in a theme park or unless it is absolutely integral to the story, but then again, many said that talking pictures would never last. To take that thought a step further, the first films in the nickelodeons were simple shots of people sneezing or laughing and few back then would ever have thought that cinema would ever become an art form until, that is, it began to tell a story.

From the Aisle Seat at the Movies