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A couple of columns back, inspired by pandemic-induced hibernation, I put together a list of movies I would take into the bunker or to a deserted island.
A piece by Gina Barreca in The Hartford Courant got me thinking along such lines and provided certain guidelines: These were movies that we could least do without, not necessarily the most important or “best,” just personal favorites that you would be willing to watch over and over again for lack of much else to do, with only one film from a particular franchise permitted (so only one “Star Wars,” “Lord of the Rings,” or “Godfather”).
My dozen were “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”; “Rear Window”; “A Hard Day’s Night”; “Casablanca”; “Goldfinger”; “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”; “2001”; “Local Hero”; “The Godfather”; “Apocalypse Now”; “Animal House”; “and Citizen Kane.”
Because people seem to like such lists, and are likely in search of recommendations under the circumstances, the column provoked a larger than usual response. Some of my correspondents tossed out excellent lists of their own and suggested a second list.
So here are eight more “bunker” movies, to bring it to an even 20.
• “The Man Who Would Be King.” Peachy (Michael Caine) and Danny (Sean Connery) are charming rogues who reflect the pluck and civilizational confidence that built the British Empire, actually conquering one of their own in “Kafiristan” before Danny’s delusions of grandeur cause their fall (literally).
They don’t make movies like this anymore. For that matter, you probably could have said the same thing when John Huston made it (1975).
• “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” With a soundtrack that converted lots of people to bluegrass and folk, this Great Depression take on Homer will always be my favorite Coen brothers movie (with the possible exception of The Big Lebowski). Because of the characters — Governor “Pappy” O’Daniel, con-man “Big Dan” Teague, and dumb-as-a-rock Delmar.
But especially George Clooney’s Everett “I’m a Dapper Dan Man” McGill, who is endowed with “the capacity for abstract thought” and has “the gift of gab.”
“Gopher, Everett?”
• “North by Northwest.” Because you have to have a film with the greatest actor of them all in it, Cary Grant, at his most beleaguered and suave and charming. Every man would want to wear that gray suit, but they wouldn’t wear it nearly as well as he does.
I’ve had the famous shot from the crop-duster scene on the wall of the den for years.
• “Some Like it Hot.” Jazz musicians, Chicago in the winter, a gig at the University of Illinois (!!) for which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon have to borrow a car, and then the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in the garage, with perhaps the funniest and most excruciating scene of failed seduction in the history of cinema, when “Daphne” (Lemmon) weasels his way into the upper bunk of the sleeper car with “Sugar” (Marilyn Monroe).
• “The Exorcist” is the scariest film ever made, not just because of the spinning head and levitating bed, but because of its surprisingly profound depiction of the struggle between good and ultimate evil, best captured in the lines spoken by Father Merrin (the late Max von Sydow), that the devil’s goal “is to make us despair, to reject our own humanity … to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent … “
A recent trip to Georgetown was not complete without a pilgrimage to the “Exorcist Steps.”
• “The Graduate.” The ultimate coming-of-age movie, because all of us at that time in our lives were at least a little bit like Benjamin Braddock, even if we didn’t have a Mrs. Robinson or got a tip about plastics.
The opening scene has “The Sound of Silence,” but it is the final one on the back of the bus that lingers, where the elation fades from the faces of Benjamin and Elaine as they realize it’s not going to be that easy.
• “The Blues Brothers.” Chicago landmarks, cameos with Ray Charles, James Brown and Aretha Franklin, and a great blues band on a “mission from God” (I remember actually seeing them in concert).
Who would want to spend the rest of their lives without Jake and Ellwood or “I hate Illinois Nazis”? Or dry white toast and four fried chickens either.
• “The Night of the Hunter.” There is no film quite like this — a dreamlike children’s fairy tale punctured by a religious fanatic serial killer. We forget that Robert Mitchum was really good at playing creeps (see also Cape Fear), and they don’t get much creepier than his Reverend Powell, with “hate” tattooed on the knuckles of one hand and “love” on the other.
Like Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, with its own eerie widow-killer (Joseph Cotten’s “Uncle Charlie”), terror comes from the incongruous mix of murder, religion, and children’s lives in small towns.
“What’s it to be, Lord? Another widow? How many has it been? Six? Twelve?”
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Correction: As a number of people more competent at math than me noticed, last week’s column on the pandemic inadvertently mislabeled the numerator and denominator when discussing possible fatality rates. I apologize for any confusion this might have caused.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 04/13/2020
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