ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 21, 1996 TAG: 9612230129
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO
For want of a better arrangement, the order below is a personal chronology and not necessarily my favorite movies ranked from first to last.
1. "The Wizard of Oz," directed by Victor Fleming, 1939. Sometime in the early 1950s, in an Atlanta theater with a vast wide screen, I visited Oz for the first time. This was years before the film was broadcast on TV; it was years before we had a TV. Actually, this may have been the first movie my parents took me to. It's certainly the first one I remember.
Margaret Hamilton's entrance as the Wicked Witch of the West - all green skin and rage, talon-fingers and that cackling laugh - was the most frightening thing I'd ever seen, and later when she said, "Here, Scarecrow! Want to play ball?" and threw that fireball, I was absolutely terrified and delighted. From that moment, I was hooked on movies for life.
2. "One Froggy Evening," directed by Chuck Jones, 1955. Some years later, I saw Chuck Jones' brilliant cartoon about a nameless man who discovers a singing frog that refuses to perform before others and eventually ruins him. Even at that young age (no more than 8), I realized that it was teaching me a fundamental truth about the unfairness of life - how you can work hard and do all the right things and even be lucky, but you can still be blindsided by fate. It's a lesson I've often been forced to relearn.
3. "King Kong," directed by Merian C. Cooper, 1933. In the late '50s, I saw "King Kong" at a Saturday matinee and began to understand how tragedy works and how emotionally powerful special effects can be.
4. "Some Like It Hot," directed by Billy Wilder, 1959. At 11, I was old enough to appreciate about half of the sexual interplay in this gangster comedy. Much of the cross-dressing stuff went right over my head, but I immediately understood Marilyn Monroe in that sequined dress, and I laughed at the closing punch line - "Nobody's perfect" - still the best finish ever.
5. "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1964. Later in the '60s, Stanley Kubrick's nuclear nightmare reinforced my nascent understanding of the world as a mad comedy, and images from it still show up in my dreams.
6. "Casablanca," directed by Michael Curtiz, 1942.
7. "Citizen Kane," directed by Orson Welles, 1941.
I managed, somehow, to see "Casablanca" and "Citizen Kane" at about the same time in the mid-'60s, and though they're polar opposites in plot, style, intention and execution, I still think of them together. In one, Humprey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains are archetypally simple characters who transcend the blatant patriotic manipulations of the plot. In the other, Welles uses all the tricks of the screen trade to reveal the complexity of one fascinating individual.
8. "Medium Cool," directed by Haskell Wexler, 1969. Wexler's tale of the relationship between a camerman and an Appalachian woman set against the real confusion of 1968 taught me how films can lie and tell the truth simultaneously, further blurring the lines that divide art, reality and politics.
9. "The Wild Bunch," directed by Sam Peckinpah, 1969. Peckinpah's character study of outlaws who have outlived their time is a masterpiece of violence that somehow summed up those wonderful, exhausting years. Though it paved the way for the deluge of screen carnage we've seen since, no other film has re-created its cold emotional poetry.
10. "Raiders of the Lost Ark," directed by Steven Spielberg, 1981. Finally, at an unauthorized midnight preview at the Capri Theater in Blacksburg, I rediscovered the sheer fun of movies with one of the all-time great adventures. Forget film theory and technical tricks. When that big rock came rolling down the tunnel toward Indy, it was Margaret Hamilton and the fireball all over again.
Got a question or comment about home video or film? Contact Mike Mayo at P.O. Box 2491; Roanoke, VA 24010, or by email at 75331.2603@compuserve.com.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 linesby CNB