5 Great Movies You Probably Haven't Seen #1

BUS STOP (1956)

Anybody who writes about the movies, whether it be for employment or as a hobby, will tell you that one of the best things about it is telling people about a movie they’re sure to like and might not have discovered otherwise. You wouldn’t think that a great Marilyn Monroe movie would manage to go relatively unnoticed, considering the enormous size of the star and her influence on American pop culture. Somehow, though, Joshua Logan’s delightful little comedy Bus Stop never gets mentioned alongside Monroe’s other indispensable pictures (Namely Some Like It Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch). This is certainly unfortunate, since the film contains what is arguably Monroe’s greatest performance.

To understand how great the film is, one has to accept the fact that Monroe was not a great actress. Now, I would be the last person to say anything against the incredible power that only she could bring to the screen in those other great films, but if you’ve seen Monroe’s other movies and then watch this one, there is a striking difference in style and how she seems to be approaching her lines. In most of her movies, she sounded as though reciting lines from memory was a genuine strain, yet in Bus Stop she delivers them flawlessly, and with a Southern accent to boot!

This success can be attributed to Logan, who wisely decided against the usual Monroe direction: do the scene again and again and again until she gets it right. Instead, the decision was made to feed Monroe her lines on set, so that she could forego the effort of trying to remember them and would finally have the opportunity to act them. The system worked and gave the star a chance to shine in a way that we would never see again. The magic of Monroe’s other performances was the vulnerability she possessed, while in Bus Stop, her freedom allowed for a stronger, more confident personality. Her song in the picture, for there was always a song in Marilyn Monroe movies, was “That Old Black Magic,” and Logan had her sing it live instead of lip-synching. This strips the number of all pretense and, though nobody would say it is sung well, it feels truly sincere and became one of the highlights of the actress’ career.

Bus Stop was a moderate success in its day, though it escaped true timelessness because the play it was based on, with its naïve cowboy falling obsessively for the naïve showgirl, was silly and trite then, and even moreso now. Co-star Don Murray received an Oscar nomination for his debut performance and he is enjoyably energetic, but the movie will always be Monroe’s. It would have been unbearably schmaltzy if she hadn’t given it that emotional edge. Instead of hamming her character up, she gave it an underlying pity that keeps the movie grounded even when it’s at its most ridiculous. Elsewhere, we have a tendency to laugh at Marilyn Monroe. Here, you almost feel bad for her.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962)

Perhaps it’s my natural tendency towards viciousness, or maybe my adoration for cinematic spontaneity, but The Exterminating Angel is one of my absolute favorite movies. It was made by the amazing Spanish surrealist Luis Bunuel at a time of great political unrest for his country (and the movie could easily be interpreted as a jab at these politics) and with his usual flair for disturbing dark comedy. If Bunuel’s collaboration with Salvador Dali on Un Chien Andalou two decades earlier put his name on the movie map, it was The Exterminating Angel that solidified his work as a must-see attraction on the road trip of great films.

The plot was unprecedented and is still famous in the art film world. Really, plot is a loose word; it gives the idea of story, events, characters. This film is more concerned with situation than story and with reactions rather than characters. The situation is that a slew of socialites have been invited to dinner following an opera, and soon find that they cannot leave the sitting room. There is nothing keeping them there. They are simply incapable of walking through the open doorway. As hours turn into days, sustenance dwindles and tempers rise, we are invited by Bunuel not to pity these poor souls, but to laugh at them in all their absurd disillusionment.

This is not one of those movies you can simply describe to your friends. Actually witnessing it is key. The events surrounding the people’s entrapment are highly entertaining on their own, but the set-up is wondrously coy. Bunuel teases us with his godlike ability to manipulate his actors to do and say anything that amuses him. Note that the guests arrive at the house twice, each time identical, and some characters are puzzled to find that they are making the same speech multiple times and none of the others notice. First-time viewers may understandably be puzzled by these eccentricities, but by the time the bear and sheep show up, it should be easily understood that normal expectations of what a film can offer must be checked at the door.

Besides the bizarre circumstances surrounding the film, it chiefly amuses with its dialogue, which is often equally profound and ridiculous, and is delivered dryly and unsuspectingly by the talented Spanish character actors (Random example: a doctor among the group confidentially tells another guest that one of the women, who has cancer, will be completely bald in three months. Later, when an elderly man passes out from exhaustion, the doctor repeats his prognosis. He will be completely bald in three months.). The Exterminating Angel holds up far better with repeat viewings than most movies that are merely odd ever could. It’s hard to put my finger on just exactly what power it holds, but I know it will be impossible to ever forget it.

PRIMAL FEAR (1996)

Richard Gere is a great actor. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a movie in which I felt his performance was untrue to the character or to the viewer. It could possibly be that he has simply been in all the right movies, but as unfaltering a career as he seems to have had (I can’t pretend that I’ve seen all of his performances), I think he can still easily be classified as one of the great modern movie actors. He may have never been better than he was in Primal Fear, which came at a point approximately halfway through his career, in-between being in the front of popular memory due to such hits as Pretty Woman and being all but forgotten as he his today, despite a continuing quality in his work (see Arbitrage).

The character is a lawyer, confident and charismatic, who offers his services pro bono to a young man charged of brutally murdering a priest. This lawyer truly believes the boy is innocent and personally pulls out all the usual stops to ensure the necessary verdict. The trouble is that his ex (Laura Linney) is the prosecutor, and she’s just as hard-headed about the boy’s guilt as he is about the other view. You can basically see where the movie goes from here. Most of its runtime is the trial itself, which stays fairly one-sided for most of its duration before abruptly spinning around to a more positive outcome. Again, you can probably imagine how these scenes play out. If you are familiar with the work of Gere and Linney, you can’t help but imagine them engaged in their verbal warfare. The casting is perfect and that, along with the competent writing and direction, makes the film engaging, even though there’s only so many ways a courtroom drama of any caliber can be played out.

What makes this courtroom drama particularly memorable is in the performance of Edward Norton as the aforementioned young man, who alternates between bouts of timidity and a raging temper. Norton, as great as the other leads are, completely steals the show in this, the performance that officially made him a star. 1996 was a great year for the guy, a year in which he also co-starred in the Milos Forman drama The People vs. Larry Flynt and in Woody Allen’s entertaining musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You. That one year’s resume shows how versatile an actor Norton was, which his current work maintains. However, it was his role in Primal Fear that elevated his status from nobody to celebrity in no time flat.

Watching it now, Norton’s performance is still chilling and it was a blessing to the movie that a lesser actor was not given the chance to ruin it. As the character is written, it’s a tricky balancing act that Norton effortlessly accomplishes. It is unfortunate, then, that the movie had to end with such a silly revelation concerning the character, rather than letting it be, as good as it was. Such was the effect of the post-Usual Suspects movie world. An ending just wasn’t an ending without a twist.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005)

I have heard Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale called a comedy, and it does have moments that incite laughter, but actually calling it a comedy limits expectations of just how many emotions the film holds. If it comes across as mean-spirited, I guess it has accomplished its purpose. How can a movie that has a genuine interest in showing all four sides of a ruthless divorce in a family made up of selfish and spiteful individuals still manage to make us laugh and, more importantly, cause us to care about the people who are leaping so willingly into devastation? The fact that this movie does just that remains an astounding achievement.

The parents are Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney. They divorce because he catches her in an affair. They will have joint custody of the children, Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline. They each get them three days a week and alternating Thursdays. One son hates his mother, quotes his father’s empty criticisms of life and art like a malfunctioning robot, and enters the Pink Floyd song “Hey You” into a school competition that he wins because he claimed it was an original. The other, younger son clings to his mother to an unhealthy extent and sees through his father’s shallow way of thinking. The older son and the father both fall for the same 20-year-old (Anna Paquin). The younger son drinks beer when nobody’s looking and does depraved things in the school library. The older son refuses to read “A Tale of Two Cities,” because his father says it’s “minor Dickens.” The younger son matter-of-factly tells his mother she’s ugly. And on and on it goes.

I realize I am describing the movie like it’s a mere montage of dysfunctional family antics or like it’s a bizarre coming-of-age movie, which it is to some degree on both counts. And yet it is so much more than just a series of random events that leads to a sudden conclusion, as it has been described by some confused viewers. Anyone who has struggled through the war of their parents separating or had sibling rivalries or who went through their confusing teenage years without sensible instruction can relate to The Squid and the Whale. If the only emotion that a viewing of it can achieve is disgust, you had an uncommonly happy childhood.

Watching The Squid and the Whale is like living its moments. You feel for the young man who has fond memories of watching The Adventures of Robin Hood with his mother when he was younger and you question the motives of the increasingly creepy father. Bill Murray was originally to star before Jeff Daniels signed on, which would have given the character too much sympathy. Daniels is more appropriately humorless in his delivery, which perfectly offsets the abundantly emotional performance by Laura Linney. Most impressive is the very young Jesse Eisenberg in his first real role as a promising actor that would eventually lead to his turn in The Social Network that got him so much attention. This movie proves that he is not a one-note actor as many claim and it was the surprising maturity of his performance, the wisdom in the casting of the adults and the great, deeply personal screenplay from Baumbach that makes the movie such a highlight of the modern independent film movement.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935)

Charles Dickens is quite possibly my favorite author and A Tale of Two Cities is one of the most entertaining of his novels, at least out of those that I’ve read (I do not at all consider it a “minor” work.). So I find it strange that it hasn’t been adapted to film as often as other Dickens works. The story was practically made for the movies. It has everything: adventure, mystery, romance, sentiment, humor. Everything. The 1935 film directed by Jack Conway and meant to be a follow-up success to MGM’s hit adaptation of David Copperfield is one of the greatest Dickens movies, even though it’s so rarely seen.

Made during the heyday of the studio era of Hollywood, where a tried and true system churned out dozens of great movies a year, A Tale of Two Cities features a dream cast of character actors, including Elizabeth Allen, Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Blanche Yurka, Henry Wathall and Billy Bevan. These are largely unrecognizable names, but they bring to life all those timeless Dickens characters as accurately as anyone could hope for in such an adaptation. Rathbone as the socially superior Marquis St. Evermonde, Yurka as the sinister Madame DeFarge, Bevan as the “resurrection artist” Jerry Cruncher and Oliver as the snooty Miss Pross all make an impression in a film made up of nothing but valuable supporting performances. It is worth mentioning that the woman who plays the bit part of “La Vengeance” was Lucille La Verne, the woman who was so good at being stereotyped as a cackling old hag that Walt Disney sought her out to be the voice of the evil queen in Snow White after seeing this film.

The real star of the show here is Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton, certainly the most important character in the novel, but whose role is extended to a more star-worthy length here, which actually provides the story with a slight improvement. Rather than having Carton make a couple brief appearances to solidify his personality and then have him suddenly reappear again at the climax, he is written into larger scenes, given weighty dialogue and more even dimensions than just being portrayed as a drunk. This extension of the character and the way Colman plays it makes his final sacrifice less sudden and more satisfying. Even before those powerful closing scenes, Colman does incredible work. Watch, for example, the scene in which he half-drunkenly talks to himself in the mirror (a moment in which he is, ironically, reflecting upon his own faults) and it is easy to see why he was one of the biggest stars in a movie age that was accustomed to actors more theatrical than the sincere and convincing Colman.

If for no other reason, and the reasons are countless, A Tale of Two Cities persists as a great classic because it is so greatly entertaining. Film versions of literature have a tendency to become dull and tiresome in the wrong hands, but MGM’s stock cast, crew and resources proved endlessly capable. In their hands, history became fun and cinematic magic was created.