[10] William Dieterle’s adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benet’s The Devil and Daniel Webster is a winning combination of rustic Americana and dark fantasy. A cautionary tale of greed and power, the narrative centers around the character of Jabez Stone (James Craig), a down-on-his-luck farmer who is barely able to support his family in 1840s New Hampshire. When the nefarious Mr. Scratch (Walter Houston) appears during …
[10] John Ford directs John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of a destitute Oklahoma family who pile everything they own into a jalopy and head for California in hope of finding work and a new home. The Grapes of Wrath puts an exclamation point on stories about the Great Depression and the down-trodden. The film features a stellar cast, gorgeous photography by Gregg Toland, and enough …
[10] The day before her second wedding, a priggish socialite (Katharine Hepburn) entangles with her ex-husband (Cary Grant) and a tabloid journalist (Jimmy Stewart), causing an identity crisis that threatens to derail the ceremony. Does she really want to marry a man who sees her as an infallible goddess? Or does she want someone who will let her put her hair down and love her …
[10] Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film and only one to win a Best Picture Oscar is Rebecca, starring Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Judith Anderson. Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, the film follows a nervous woman (Fontaine) who catches the eye of a wealthy widower (Olivier). After they marry, she is taken to his ancestral mansion, Manderley, where the icy cold head …
[9] Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell headline this quintessential screwball comedy from director Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, Ball of Fire). His Girl Friday is based on a stage play and a previous film adaptation (The Front Page) about a newspaper editor (Grant) who’ll stop at nothing to keep his ex-wife and ace reporter (Russell) from quitting the newspaper business… and their marriage. The pressure …
[10] Those ruby slippers have lost no luster in the 80-plus years since the original release of The Wizard of Oz, a film that pretty much defines ‘timeless classic’. In the L. Frank Baum story, a spoiled farm girl named Dorothy (Judy Garland) is whisked away in a tornado to the magical land of Oz, where a good witch (Billie Burke) sends her down the …
[10] Directed by George Stevens and inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Gunga Din is the story of three indomitable British soldiers who find themselves at the center of a battle against the bloodthirsty Thuggee cult. Captured and enslaved with an aspiring water boy (the title character), the men endanger their lives to thwart an ambush of the British army coming to rescue them. Gunga Din …
[9] John Ford’s masterpiece is still a thoroughly entertaining ride. A handful of disparate personalities, including John Wayne as the notorious Ringo Kid, take their chances traveling through Apache territory. Along the way, friends and enemies are made, a baby is born, a seemingly doomed romance blooms, and not everyone makes it to their destination alive.
[10] Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant give marvelous slapstick performances in Howard Hawks’ farcical masterpiece, Bringing Up Baby. This is my favorite screwball comedy of them all. The mismatched characters are forced into couple-hood through their shared adventures trying to recapture Hepburn’s lost pet leopard. Matters are complicated when another leopard escapes from the local zoo and the two animals get mixed up. By the …
[9] On a train ride through Europe, a young woman (Margaret Lockwood) discovers a fellow passenger (Dame May Whitty) has gone missing. No one remembers seeing the old woman, not even the people who shared a cabin with them. A rogue musicologist (Michael Redgrave) is sympathetic to Lockwood’s dilemma, and together they uncover a conspiracy behind the woman’s disappearance. But will they be able to …
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