Top 50 Countdown – #46

-46- The Man with a Movie Camera Year: 1929 Director: Dziga Vertov _____________________________________________________________ Technically speaking, The Man with a Movie Camera, which chronicles a dawn to dusk day-in-the-life of Moscow circa 1929, is a documentary. But Vertov takes the basic raw material of a straightforward “city symphonies” travelogue documentary and through a variety of cinematographic […]

Top 50 Countdown – #47

-47- His Girl Friday Year: 1940 Director: Howard Hawks _____________________________________________________________ His Girl Friday makes one major change to the play (The Front Page) on which it’s based: Hildy Johnson, the ace reporter who quits the newspaper business to the chagrin of Morning Post managing editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant), is turned into a woman (Rosalind […]

Top 50 Countdown – #48

-48- Smiles of a Summer Night Year: 1955 Director: Ingmar Bergman _____________________________________________________________ Man to his wife: “I can tolerate my wife’s infidelity, but if anyone touches my mistress, I become a tiger.” Same man to his mistress: “I can tolerate someone dallying with my mistress, but if anyone touches my wife, I become a tiger.” […]

Top 50 Countdown – #49

  -49- The Skeleton Dance Year: 1929 Director: Walt Disney _____________________________________________________________                              Featuring a quartet of bony hoofers showing off their terpsichorean talents during a midnight graveyard soiree, The Skeleton Dance is five minutes of lively animated hilarity which holds up beautifully after 80 years thanks to Ub Iwerks’s imaginative […]