'Persona' & 'Smiles Of A Summer Night' & 'Cries And Whispers'

By my count, eight of Ingmar Bergman's 63 films made the 1,001 list and, by my count, I've watched all eight now.

Persona, Smiles of a Summer Night and Cries and Whispers are three very different films made in three different decades. It's proof of Bergman's longevity, creativity and overall greatness.

Smiles of a Summer Night is thought to be Bergman's breakthrough, Persona is often considered his "masterpiece" and Cries and Whispers was the only Bergman film to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award and only one of two times Bergman was nominated for Best Director.

It's my first post of 2011. Thought I'd start out with a bang.

'Rain Man'

You know Rain Man is a 1980s film due to certain inclusions of ideal 1980s filmmaking.

There's the nostalgic use of a 30-year-old song ("At Last" by Etta James as Charlie teaches Raymond to dance). There's the scene where Charlie tests Raymond's ability to count cards. As Raymond impresses, they dash off in the 1950s Buick to Las Vegas as the playing cards on the car's rear end fly off in the dust. So 1980s!

There's the ridiculous suits. Tom Cruise. Sunglasses. The hot sports cars. Barf.

Did anyone else feel that Valeria Golino was going to the sexpot actress in Hollywood for years? After I saw her in Hot Shots, I thought I'd found my future wife. Then she disappeared and does Italian films now.

As I watched Dustin Hoffman (who is really, really good in this film) and Tom Cruise stand side by side, I wondered how they found someone taller than Cruise or how they made Cruise four inches taller than Hoffman. Then I remembered that Hoffman's like 5-5.

'West Side Story'

As 2010 floats away making room for 2011, I opine about one of the greatest accomplishments in American art. That being West Side Story.

I'm prejudiced. I like West Side Story. My mother for years has gotten season passes to Fair Park's Dallas Summer Musicals. As a teenager, she took me to see West Side Story. At the time, I had little interest in anything other than girls and rock and roll.

Still, I'd read Romeo and Juliet my freshman year of high school and I was pretty high and might. I was disappointed that West Side Story was just a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet. Or, moreso, I was disappointed that they didn't even try to hide it.

I brushed off West Side Story for this reason. Looking back, that's silly. West Side Story is better because it takes Romeo and Juliet's basic structure and adds a series of wrinkles including the use of jazz, the setting of 1950s New York City, a mecca of art, culture, growth and a seedy subculture fed by the beats and jazz generation.

It's also post-war America. These rough-and-tumble kids remember Pearl Harbor and the years between 1941 and 1945 when their friends, neighbors and family members were shedding their blood. This was a time for America to mature. As it aged, the middle class grew, the upper class got crustier and both left the lower class.

That's where we find the Sharks and Jets. One, grandsons of immigrants, who all worked blue-collar jobs seeing their position in life, as a lower rung, being challenged by the new wave of immigrants from Latin America. It was not only about jobs or housing. But a certain pride of being the backbone of this country. A certain pride in being the doormat of the higher classes.

In actuality, these two groups had bigger gripes on the rich. It wasn't the Puerto Ricans driving wages down or forcing these people to live in tenements. And the Puerto Ricans probably didn't know who to fight other than the person in front of them throwing punches.

This is one of the top 10 most significant works that America has put out. Should they unfreeze my head in 2120 and ask me what Americans got right, I would point to West Side Story first.

'The Shining'

No other film that I've reviewed here has had so many talking points as much as The Shining.

First, it's one of the few films in the 1,001 list that were trashed when they first came out and only after time where they reconsidered and labeled really good. Even Stephen King, the author of the book, didn't like the original complaining about Stanley Kubrick's "thinking" instead of "feeling." Which is kind of bullshit. If you want some shitty director doing a page-by-page reproduction of the book, then fine. Hire one.

But if you want someone that will give the story a different direction and perspective, then you get Kubrick to do it.

And, frankly, I think King goofs up a lot of great stories himself. Who says that the book is always better just because it came first? Man-eating topiaries? Seriously?

Anyway, fine detail that I missed in the film that was in the book was that Jack Torrance was kind of possessed by the demon(s) of the Overlook Hotel and in a brief moment of clarity brought along by Danny, Jack allows Wendy, his son and Dick to escape.

That detail is altered by another change of character from the book to the film. That is Jack's temperment. In the book, he's a good guy with an occassional bad temper, who desperately loves his son. What we don't know in the film is that Jack was fired from the teaching job because he beat the snot out of a kid. Thus he needs the hotel job.

It's that love for his son and eventually beat the hotel as he allows the boiler to overheat, another plot mechanism missing from the film.

Frankly, there's a lot missing, but nothing that takes away from the film. On their own, each holds up really well.

Then there's the different discussion points about the film. The difference between the two Gradys. Jack's history with the hotel and him being included in the picture.

Then there's Kubrick's issues. His apparent obsession with the Holocaust and the symbolism of the Native Americans. There's tons of other social issues that you can argue about regarding The Shining.

Or you can take it as simply the best horror film ever.

'The Lost Weekend'

B-O-R-I-N-G.

Alcoholism is boring and films about alcoholism are super boring.

Although, I've read that the book has the guy drinking because it's rumored he had a homosexual affair in college. A plot point taken out of the film. Would've helped. A little.

Can not believe this won four Oscars, including Best Picture.

'She's Gotta Have It' & 'Gertrud'

You might not think there's a lot of common ground with Spike Lee and Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Granted, Gertrud was released in 1964 and is Danish. She's Gotta Have It is Lee's first full-length. It was released in 1986 and is irretrieveably black and set in Brooklyn.

However, the stories are remarkably similiar.

She's Gotta Have It features Nola Darling as a 20-something liberated single artist. She lives in a kickass studio apartment in Brooklyn. She also has three lovers that bring three different scenes. There's the smart and kind Jamie, the hunky and stuck-up Greer and the aloof, poor and goofy Mars.

When forced to choose between the three, she makes a choice (Jamie) only to learn that she can't settle down with just one man. She needs variety.

Whereas Gertrud's Gertrud is married and within 10 minutes of the film's start, she asks her lawyer husband for a divorce in order to run away with her young, pianist lover.

Unfortunately, he's not that into her and a past lover comes into the picture wanting to stir up their old flame.

I hate both of these females. But I probably hate Gertrud the most. She sits there most of the movie looking all forlorn and lonely with that 1,000-yard stare as if life has dealt her some raw circumstances that no one should ever have to live with. She also says shit like this:

"No, one never remembers everything, but the creed went: 'I believe in the pleasure of the flesh and the irreparable loneliness of the soul.'"

Over and over with his bullshit. She winds up alone. As it should be with a idiot like her.

Actually, both Gertrud and Nola end up alone. Nola probably a bit more upbeat and Gertrud still starring off into space. However, both had three potential lovers and all three failed. So, good for them.

'Now, Voyager'

The absolute irony of Bette Davis starring as the homely, awkward and meek Charlotte Vale is delicious.

Davis campaigned to get the role. She got so involved that she was picking her own wardrobe.

She has a say and opinions into the director and male co-stars.

Charlotte Vale would never do anything of these things. She'd barely make it in front of the camera.

Instead, she was played by one of the most forthright actresses in film history: Bette Davis.

The film co-starred Claude Rains and Paul Henreid. The pair would finish filming Now, Voyager June 3, 1942. The next day, they would start filming Casablanca together.