clint eastwood | Richard Nilsen

Like most critics, I’ve written my share of Top Ten lists over the years. Most of them, whether about music or movies or books, tend to be made from what I consider the best, deepest, or most meaningful entries — classics. Consensus choices made by informed critics who have read, seen and heard enough of their subjects to make their lists meaningful. The best on these lists can perhaps make you a better person, but not necessarily happier.

So, there can be another list, not of the highest and best, but of those things we simply enjoy, for whatever reason. After all, what we simply enjoy isn’t always the most profound or most brilliantly written, acted, or edited. And sometimes we have to admit there are things we just like. And we will watch them over and over again.

Yes, I know the idea of watching a movie over and over doesn’t make sense to some people. I have discussed this with someone who wondered, “I’ve seen it and know how it ends, so why would I watch it again?” As if the point of a film were its plot.

And there are films that function only on a story level, and perhaps once you’ve learned the plot twist, or uncovered the killer, there is no further reason to return to the movie. I have movies like that: I enjoyed them well enough the first go-through, but have no overriding desire to take that ride a second time.

But there are movies I want to see over and over, the way you like hearing a favorite tune. You don’t say, “I’ve heard that song, so why would I listen to it again?” It’s a tune. It’s fun to hear again. And don’t call me Shirley.

A list of such films will be personal. I don’t expect everyone to jump on the bandwagon. Such a list is almost a Rorschach test, explaining the personality of its maker. Make your own list and see it as a mirror.

And so, here’s my list of top favorite movies that never stop satisfying. Some are movies I watch over and over and just enjoy every time; and others I don’t have to watch all the way through, but just love particular scenes and if I am channel surfing and come across them on Turner Classics, even if I catch them in the middle, I will watch through to the end, just to catch some of those scenes. Some of these are genuine classics, but others just tickle a certain place in my brain. They are fun.

Number One on my list is a perfect example. No one would claim it has great acting or brilliant dialog. In fact, it is embarrassing on both counts. But it hits a sweet spot in the mythological nerve button in my psyche. I have seen the 1933 King Kong over a hundred times.

Admittedly, this includes all the times I watched it as a 5-year-old from behind the couch to hide from the scary parts, when it was being shown a dozen times a week on WOR-TV’s “Million Dollar Movie” on New York television. I chalked up a boatload of views in the years before I even went to high school.

Even now, 70 years later, I will still tune in when it shows up on the TV listings. Its appeal is the same as those wonderful Gustav Doré wood engravings of dark forests and the light that shines through.

So, King Kong is first on my list. Second couldn’t be further from the spirit of the Big Monkey picture: The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman.

I first watched it, like Kong, as a boy when it was just a cool movie about Medieval knights. It was on TV, and since it was released in 1957, I had to be at least 9 years old before I saw it. Probably a few years after that. I next saw it as part of my college movie series, along with a raft of other art films. That’s when it hit home.

The movie gets shown a lot, both on TV and in various film series, and so I have had the chance now to see it probably 30 times or so. It is pretty much the defining title of the “art film.” I became a foreign film junkie in college and most of my favorite films are either in French or Swedish, with Italian clocking in third.

No. 3 on my list is French, and it is the film that I have both seen many times over the years and has changed drastically over multiple seeings. I first saw Children of Paradise in that college film series, and at that age, it was the yearning idealism of Baptiste Deburau that spoke most directly to me. I was Baptiste. Yes, I know that’s embarrassing now, but then, his earnestness seemed the very nugget of truth. And my heart went pitter-pat for Garance: “Love is simple,” she said. And so it seemed to one of my tender years. We are all idiots at that age.

Later, I came to identify with the actor Frédérick Lemaître, accommodating and joyfully cynical. Of course, that, too, was just a costume to try on. The same, later on, with the antisocial Lacenaire.

As I sped through the years, seeing the film differently each time, I finally came rather to see the characters as comprising a whole, and I identified with their shared humanness, each suffering and causing suffering in turn and trying to make a way through life.

Next, a movie that never changes, but delivers the goods every time: My Man Godfrey, with William Powell and Carole Lombard. Of all the great screwball comedies from the 1930s, it is the most perfect. Perfect plot; perfect casting; perfect dialog; perfect direction.

I do not know how many times I’ve watched Godfrey, but it never wears out its welcome. Of all the films on this list, Godfrey most approximates the comparison with the favorite tune where you perk up on hearing it and it just brightens your day.

Rounding out No. 5 is Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which I first saw in the common butchered 141-minute trim that first made the rounds of the U.S. Of course, the original 207-minute version has been restored and only a barbarian would choose the mutilated version.

I have watched Seven Samurai too many times to count, and it was Takashi Shimura, as the samurai leader, rather than Toshiro Mifune who grabbed my attention. Shimura was Kurosawa’s mainstay actor, appearing in more of his movies than anyone else (and also in Godzilla). Mifune could sometimes be a bit buffoonish in his roles. Shimura had a much greater range.

In 1978, when I was living in Seattle and unemployed, I went to a bar one night with my friend, Alice. Turns out, they were setting up a projector to show a 16mm print of Seven Samurai. We decided to watch at least the beginning of the film — Alice had never seen it, and we knew it would be more than three hours of movie — so we didn’t expect to stay. But neither of us could turn away and we watched till the end. There are no slack parts.

Those are my top 5, but there are more. How can I have seen these movies so many times? Well, first there were VHS tapes and then DVDs. I have them all now on disc. (King Kong was initially a problem, unavailable on disc, apparently over a rights issue, but I managed a bootleg tape recorded off a TV showing. Now, I have the Warner box set, also with Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young.)

Then, there is Turner Classic Movies, the one great treasure of cable TV, which shows most of these movies periodically. Often when channel-surfing, I will come upon one of my faves and pick it up mid-stream and watch till the end.

There are films on this list that I often come across this way, and don’t feel the need to watch beginning-to-end, but have such delightful scenes in them, that when I catch them, I watch for those moments.

Pulp Fiction, for instance. A great film overall, but scene-by-scene even better. I can watch for certain set-pieces without feeling I need to do the whole thing.

Same with My Cousin Vinny. The courtroom scenes are a great tune, but I don’t need the set-up. Just give me some Marisa Tomei attitude, some Joe Pesci and the best role that Fred Gwynne ever had.

If we count those as Nos. 6 and 7 on this list, that takes us to:

The Baker’s Wife, a film I saw years ago and then it disappeared. No DVD, no TCM. I scoured Amazon for a Region 2 disc, and eventually found a miserable, low-rez copy, the kind with subtitles whited out by the background. Eventually, years later, a restored version became available. This 1938 Marcel Pagnol comedy stars Raimu as a provincial French baker whose young wife has run off with a younger man. The baker is so dejected, he stops baking and the village tries everything to get the wife back so they can have their bread. It’s a great film.

No. 9 would then be Metropolis. Several of these movies were among those I first saw as a boy, and so I have watched them repeatedly over six or seven decades. Many years ago, the local New York NET channel (pre-PBS) had a film series that included Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, albeit in a shortened 90-minute cut, but it hypnotized me. I later saw a version on TV with an electronic score that seemed utterly surreal matched with the images.

I have sought out ever-more complete versions of the film, now clocking in at two-and-a-half hours, with a few stills edited in to account for missing footage. It is still mesmerizing. (I have written about it extensively; link here).

And bringing up the rear of this Top Ten list would be Key Largo, a picture made the same year I was born. It is certainly not the best Bogey-Bacall film, but one I first watched as a boy, before I know who Bogart was, or anything about his mythic persona. For some reason it clicked in my memory, and I found it seemed to show up on TV over and over, without my asking.

Even now, I’ll watch it. It massages a familiar place in my brain. And it isn’t the stars who I watch for: Claire Trevor’s drunk moll is the best thing in the movie. She deserved the Oscar she won for a movie that normally would not even be mentioned by the Academy.

That rounds out the Top Ten, but in all honesty, I have to admit they really should not be ranked at all. Rather they are in a very large pool of films that I watch repeatedly. I can’t tell how many times I’ve watched The Big Sleep, or any of many parts of it (I have practically memorized the opening scene with General Sternwood). Or Casablanca. Or even To Have and Have Not. Or any of the William Powell films, including any of the Thin Man series. Or Roland Young’s Topper. Most any Buster Keaton film, short or feature.

Or, to spread the love, I have watched uncounted times: Airplane!; Blazing Saddles; This Is Spinal Tap; O Brother, Where Art Thou? — that mostly for the tunes.

Really, the list gets ridiculous. Any Almodovar, any Bergman, any Renoir. Any screwball comedy, any black-and-white Fred Astaire (he aged well, his later movies haven’t). I have a soft spot for any of the non-spaghetti Westerns of Clint Eastwood. Who’d a thunk it? Josey Wales, Hang ’Em High, High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider. Oddly, I still haven’t seen Unforgiven. I’ll get around to it, eventually, but first, TCM is showing Godfrey again.

Recently on Turner Classics, I caught the 1968 Clint Eastwood film, Hang ’Em High. And in the opening scene where a posse of miscreants attempt to lynch Clint, there were a passel of familiar character actors, including Ed Begley, Bruce Dern, Alan Hale Jr., Ned Romero and Bert Freed. And the oldest of them — the only one to hesitate about hanging a man — was a face that burned familiar and at first, I couldn’t place. Then it hit me, this grizzled old rancher was Bob Steele. The movie suddenly interested me more and I stayed to watch it through.

When I was a wee bairn, in the early 1950s, TV was rife with old Westerns. Television was new and stations were starving for content. Libraries of old movies were packaged and sent to local outlets and afternoon programming included piles of old Westerns, mainly from the Golden Age of the 1930s. As a five-year old, maybe seven, I clearly had my favorite cowboy stars. Hoot Gibson, Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, Buck Jones. And Bob Steele. All of them stars before the advent of Gene Autry or Roy Rogers.

They each had their shtick. Hoot Gibson tended not to carry a gun; McCoy brought a historic sense of the real West. Maynard was a trick rider. And Steele was the king of the fistfight.

I must have watched hundreds of these Westerns. Later, when half-hour Western series took over the evening, I watched Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. But it was the movies that really spoke to me.

It wasn’t just that they were cowboy movies — although that was their primary attraction (I had a cowboy hat, a cap pistol, and when I was four years old, an imaginary horse I rode around the living room, which I named Whitey.) It was also my introduction to movies. I am not going to claim any great sophistication in my appreciation. I wasn’t particularly paying attention to the editing or lighting, but I did notice the music and I did notice, even at that tender age, that there were scenes that must have been shot silent, with no dialog and with Foley sound added later, like the coconut clop of horse hooves. The sound and visuals didn’t quite match up, making it clear they were done separately. And I was aware of the various wipes and dissolves. They loved their wipes. In that sense, I had some early appreciation that these were artifacts, creations of a filmmaker.

As an adult, when I occasionally watch an old Western, I am kind of embarrassed that I loved them so much as a boy. On the whole, they were clunky, cheaply made, and ridiculously repetitive. The same plots over and over, this time with Tex Ritter, that time with Bob Livingston, another with Johnny Mack Brown. Every banker and lawyer wore a string bow tie — that’s how we knew who the villain was.

And every one of them had a gang of brutes led by Harry Woods, Charlie King or Roy Barcroft. The string bow ties tried to cut off water to the ranchers, or tried to cheat them out of their land, or schemed to steal the deeds to the gold mine. And they all seemed to end with a mass shootout in the distinctive rock formations of the Alabama Hills of California.

These programmer Westerns went through a clear evolution. Later in life, I began to look at them more closely and saw that change over time. Beginning with the silents, there was Broncho Billy — really Maxwell Aronson, born to an immigrant Jewish family, who became the first cowboy star. He made hundreds of films, mostly one-reelers, all before 1920 and included titles such as Broncho Billy and the Indian Maid (1912), and Broncho Billy and the Land Grabber (1915). There was no attempt at realism. They were pure fantasy.

That changed with William S. Hart, a one-time Shakespearean actor who took his duty to the West seriously in a series of popular melodramas. In almost every one, Hart was a tough hombre redeemed by the love of a good woman. Some of the films stand up, and I’ve watched Hell’s Hinges (1916) only recently and astounded at some of the visuals. Or Tumbleweeds (1925), with the great Oklahoma Land Rush sequence that is still a benchmark in such things.

The other side of the movie Western world was Tom Mix, the fancy-dress cowboy, with crescent-pocket shirts, embroidered boots and Tony, the Wonder Horse. His 1925 Riders of the Purple Sage is one of his less show-bizzy films, based on the Zane Grey novel. I’ve seen it several times.

The two strands of Western continued through the genre’s history. Even recently, you can sense the ghost of Tom Mix in something like Will Smith’s Wild Wild West (1999) and the stern rectitude of Hart in Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992). (Or both together in the Coen Brothers anthology film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, with the Mix clone Buster Scruggs in the opening episode, and the heartbreaking Hart-like realism of the penultimate episode, “The Gal Who Got Rattled.”)

The early sound era was, for me, the high water mark for the Western. By the 1940s, the B-Western had worn itself out and by the 1950s, with godawful series like Whip Wilson, they were just embarrassing.

There were, I posit, three types of Western actor. There were those who could actually act (the rarest of the breeds); those who had genuine screen presence even if they were no Oliviers; and finally, the wanna-bes who just went through the motions as if carved from balsa wood.

In the first group were William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), Harry Carey, Johnny Mack Brown and Bill Elliott. They all had both acting chops and screen magic. In his earliest films John Wayne had all the magic needed, but only later did it ever occur to anyone that he might actually be able to act. When John Ford saw him in Red River, from 1948 (the year I was born), he was impressed and famously said, “I didn’t know the big son of a bitch could act!” He could, although he didn’t always need to.

Others, such as Tex Ritter or Gene Autry had the gleam on the screen, but no one would accuse them of being able to recite dialog and sound like an actual human being at the same time. And at the bottom of the list comes Sunset Carson, possibly the worst actor ever to mount a horse.

There were tons of these guys that I used to love, before I ever developed the critical faculty to judge their thespian talents. Among my favorite Saturday afternoon movies were the Three Mesquiteers films, with shifting casts that included, at different times, John Wayne, Crash Corrigan, Bob Steele, Max Terhune, Bob Livingston, and even, briefly, Duncan Rinaldo. Buster Crabbe left behind Flash Gordon and made a series of pretty good Westerns. But when the name Bob Steele came up in the opening credits, that was the best. Remember, I’m talking about being seven years old here.

Steele had a long career. His first film, as a juvenile, was in 1920. His cowboy heyday came in the ’30s, but he kept working in Hollywood even after hanging up his spurs. Famously as Canino in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946). He kept working until 1974, appearing in such films as Rio Bravo, The Longest Day, and even a comic role as Trooper Duffy in F Troop (1965-67).

And so, I’m watching Hang ’Em High and I recognize, hidden in the crowd, that face, now leathery and wrinkled, with a stubbly beard, a flash of 60 years condensed. How could I have recognized it so unconsciously? It’s not as though I had thought of Bob Steele more recently than decades ago. But it tickled something in my memory and I twitched. “That’s Bob Steele.”

In 1968, Steele was more than 10 years younger than I am now, and yet, he looked so old. What does that make me?

—Richard Nilsen

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