A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

There are countless versions of this play done to death every summer, it is the perennial Shakespeare in the Park favourite (such as the Priory Players' 2013 version - left). There have been a few cinema versions too, most recently a stylish and enjoyably relaxed 1999 version with Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer. This particular forgotten classic however comprehensively belies the notion that Shakespeare is only for British actors.

Being a Hollywood film, its cast is therefore mostly American, although with only one or two expatriate Brits thrown in to that endearing, now long lost community once known as the Hollywood Cricket Club.

The team behind the camera, significantly, is also richly European and talented, primarily that of its chief coordinator Max Reinhardt, who brought his grand semi-musical interpretation of Shakespeare's play to the silver screen with the assistance of Warner Brothers. And a silver screen it is too, shimmering with light and magic thanks to Hal Mohr's cinematography, in the spirit of the story. Another significant name attached to the project was composer/arranger Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who began a long association with Warners.

The remaining cast were from the cream of Warners' contract players. Ensemble character stars like Frank McHugh, Hugh Herbert, Dewey Robinson and Joe E. Brown were regular comedic faces in those days, and they add to the flavour of the film in their scenes as the mechanicals - and at their centre of course, is the one and only James Cagney.

The sight of Cagney's head being transformed into a donkey's is one of those rare cinema moments that just has to be seen, worth the admission alone, for the sheer novelty of seeing this legendary movie gangster being transformed into something rather different. Cagney invests the role of Bottom with all the passion and enthusiasm that he brought to all his cinema and theatre work, and is a suitable reminder that he was more than just a tough guy.

The transformation of Bottom is a highlight for me, particularly in any film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, as the play usually cheats the audience of seeing the transformation by having it take place offstage. Bottom's antagonist, in this case, is the mischievous Puck, played with a delightful childish chuckle and
revelatory energy, by Mickey Rooney (on loan from MGM). As summoned by the imposing Victor Jory as Oberon, Puck also works his mischievous magical influence on the young lovers of the piece (for Shakespeare comedies wouldn't be Shakespeare comedies without them!), Ross Alexander, Jean Muir, crooner Dick Powell, and taking her bow on the silver screen, pretty young Olivia De Havilland, who emerges as Hermia with all the eager enthusiasm and talent of a young actress fresh out of drama school. The cinema was a medium she was to later adapt and soon grow to love.

In short, all those involved in A Midsummer Night's Dream hurl themselves into it with great gusto, as well as the knowledge that they were involved in something unique and quite special. Sometimes Shakespeare is taken for granted as being good just because it's Shakespeare. This Hollywood (but never Hollywoodised) classic demonstrates just how enjoyable the play can be. For me, it's the definitive film version.

Goldfinger (1964)

The Bond Brand

For me, the Bond films are an acquired taste. Very formulaic, and rigidly so until Casino Royale in 2006. With their variations, the Bond formula generally seems to run as follows:

1. The opening shot (literally) through a gunsight

2. The pre-credits sequence

3. The titles and theme song

4. The mission set-up (with M and Q)

5. Meeting the villain and Bond Girl No. 1

6. Meeting Bond Girl No. 2

7. The finale

All these elements found their ideal mixture in Goldfinger in 1964, the defining film of the series which also had one of Bond's most formidable adversaries, with Sean Connery at his most assured in the central role from first scene to last.

He may not be the exact Bond as written in the books, but as with so many good actors' interpretation of a role, Connery is the image that has stayed in the minds of cinemagoers, and which all subsequent Bond actors in the role have since had to emulate.

It probably helped Sean that he had actors the stature of Honor Blackman to deal with, fresh from The Avengers, as Pussy Galore - probably the most outrageously named character in the movies.

And then there is Goldfinger himself - brilliantly played by Gert Frobe in a role which set up his international film career - and his equally sadistic Oddjob, memorably played by Japanese American wrestler Tokiyushi "Harold" Sakata, with a nice line in sly grins and a lethal bowler hat.
Goldfinger is not a supervillain per se, but one who is sadistic enough to leave Bond to die in a famous laser execution scene - nothing at all to do with the Ian Fleming novel, but one of a number of the film's beautiful conceits.

In Fleming's novel there was an unsuccessful attempt to raid Fort Knox - but this was the 1960s, the era of John F. Kennedy, the civil rights movement, and the emerging space age, when all things were possible, and in director Guy Hamilton's eyes, the idea of a break-in not working would be understandably anti-climactic to the cinema audience. There are various ludicrous twists such as the nerve gas sprinkled over the fortress only having a limited effect, but the film carries you along with enough suspense to make it look as if Goldfinger is really going to succeed in his elaborate scheme. For me, it's easily the most enjoyable of the series.

Thereafter, the Bond films went on an artistically downward (but financially upward) spiral of increasingly fantastic plots, gimmicky gadgets, and self-parody, but those that succeeded King Connery have their various interesting slants on the character. Connery's unfortunate successor was George Lazenby, who by his own admission couldn't act, and worse still had the challenge of emotional scenes that neither Bond or Connery had ever ventured into. Nevertheless, On Her Majesty's Secret Service remains one of the most underrated of the series.

 For many, Roger Moore became the Bond they most associated with, certainly the longest serving, from 1973 through to 1985. His laid back style fitted into the tuxedo easily, from his grounding on The Saint and other suave film and TV shows. So what if the sight of a car becoming a submarine was a bit daft - Moore was enjoying himself, and so were the audience.

The unluckiest of the Bonds was probably Timothy Dalton, who only had two refreshingly action-packed stabs at the character in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, before contractual difficulties, the transition of the Broccoli legacy from one generation to the next, and the dismantling of the Iron Curtain, meant that Bond laid low for a while. When he returned, it was in the shape of suave Pierce Brosnan , who like Roger Moore had done his groundwork on TV in the likes of Remington Steele. Up until Goldeneye in 1995, he was - next to Cary Grant - the Best Bond That Never Was.



When Brosnan cited Goldfinger as being his main artistic inspiration for becoming an actor, things had come full circle. Now Daniel Craig has, for better or worse (and mostly better), taken on the role deep into the 21st century and the post-Cold War years. The plots are becoming more baffling, the gadgets are gradually escalating once again, and in this Size Zero supermodel age there's always plenty of opportunity for more Bond girls (Barbara Bach, Grace Jones, Carey Lowell, Michelle Yeoh and Halle Berry among the most notable), so the formula is looking good after 50 years of repackaging.

Goldfinger was the peak of Bond's cinematic accomplishments, but there's still life in the old dog yet.

Cry Freedom (1987)

It strikes me with a tolling bell that it's a quarter of a century since I first began active regular cinemagoing - it began with The Mission to some degree, but my own conscious choice to go the cinema and see a film that interested me was Cry Freedom - a good choice. Another strong memory is that of the slightly quaint ritual (for a film of more than two and a half hour's length) of a now strange word appearing in the middle of Richard Attenborough's political drama at the Odeon Colchester Screen 2.

This was also the era - it seems astonishing to think now - when South Africa was still firmly entrenched in the grip of legal racial segregation. Astonishing now to think that such a thing could have existed, astonishing then to think that Apartheid could have been dismantled at all, by anything other than violent means. That it didn't was thanks to the likes of Nelson Mandela (freed at last in 1990 after 27 years imprisonment), the sustained pressure by those corporations and nations (who did not include Great Britain) that imposed sanctions on South Africa's wealthy economy, and also the slightly underrated F.W. de Clerk - South Africa's Gorbachev to some extent - who climbed down from his predecessors' extreme enforcement of Apartheid. And not least of all, from campaigners like Sir Richard Attenborough.

Attenborough of course, had made Gandhi, which featured a brief early sequence where the Mahatma begins his great crusade for freedom by fighting for rights for Indian immigrants. This "sequel" of sorts to Gandhi covered many of the same themes, transferring Gandhi's values into the rather more complex but charismatic figure of Steve Biko, played with dignity and style by Denzel Washington, a star in the making.

John Briley's screenplay also gave a winning portrayal of the human and heroic side of Steve Biko.

Biko's story is told from the perspective of Daily Dispatch editor Donald Woods, played by another emerging American star, Kevin Kline. There were those who criticised this notion of the Black Consciousness movement seen through the eyes of a white liberal perspective, although if anyone takes the trouble to watch the film this is a stance which Biko quickly mocks.

Nonetheless, mindful of the audience reaction (particularly in America) and the lack of focus on Biko's story, the makers chose late in post-production to reedit the film that began sequentially from Biko's struggle to Donald Woods', so that some of Biko's thoughts and experiences could be told in flashback by Woods during his escape from exile.

Crucially, this structure also leaves one of the major set pieces for the end: the infamous Soweto massacre in 1976. The impact of the massacre leaves an imprint on the mind. That, and the film's closing message, where the many hundreds of other victims besides Biko are listed, together with the "official" causes of death - a powerful indictment of a regime that at the time seemed immovable and invincible.

It is a fitting tribute to the film that Nelson Mandela himself thanked Attenborough years later, for awakening the world to the cruelty of Apartheid and bringing about its eventual downfall.

It Happened Here (1964)

Dilys Powell mentions in her review of It Happened Here how the British can be rather complacent about the winning of the World War II, when they did not suffer the trauma of occupation (with the minor exception of the Channel Islands.)

Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo however, brought these elements sharply into perspective, drawing on the experience of the French just across the Channel, and transposed it into a chillingly believable occupied Britain of 1940. It was also in Brownlow's small way - as someone who wasn't personally involved in the war - his own WWII film as a tribute to those who gave their lives to fight fascism, by demonstrating what would have happened if they hadn't.

On a threadbare budget, Brownlow's initial concept was brilliantly and economically filmed with the support of fellow film student Andrew Mollo who worked on the authenticity of the uniforms and the general militaristic look of the film, the two young film makers using whatever out of the way run-down - and still bombed-out - locations they could find in the 1950s, with the remainder of the budget covered by Woodfall films in 1964, who provided the means for the minor dramatic framework of a nurse (Pauline Murray) resettled into London after her local village is attacked by partisans.

My own curiosity in the film was aroused by the presence in the (mostly non-professional) cast of Sebastian Shaw - the original Anakin Skywalker himself, from the original Return of the Jedi. (Not only Shaw, but also a future cinematographer for The Empire Strikes Back, Peter Suschitzky, also got his first break on It Happened Here.) Murray's experiences with her old friends when contrasted with her harsh new fascist masters, underline the difficulties that face those who actually were occupied during WWII, that the rest of us all too easily brush under the carpet.

Nurse Murray watches her friends about to be arrested outside Belsize Square

The ending to the film, where our erstwhile nurse is tending to the wounded (of either side), was probably the best the makers could manage given the budget, but still makes a telling anti-war message. Wars don't just end like that  - hostilities may cease, but for the ordinary person it is a severe period of recovery and recuperation, as the wounds dig deep and take their time to heal. It should also be noted that the effects of Britain's sacrifice in World War II were still being felt for years afterwards - rationing remember, was not removed until nearly 10 years after the war.

There have been many versions of an alternative Nazi future (including most recently, a bizarre Nazi-style future dictatorship in the blockbuster V for Vendetta), but It Happened Here is by far the best, most chillingly authentic depiction, without dwelling upon obvious imagery such as Hitler at 10 Downing Street or swastikas over Buckingham Palace. No, what is at work here is a much more persuasive, downbeat documentary-type view felt very much by those at the ground level, which adds to its chillingness as a depiction of day-to-day ordinary life in extraordinary - and thankfully hypothetical -  circumstances.

Tom & Jerry: The Cat Concerto (1947) and others

As much as Laurel and Hardy were inseparable, immortal cinema icons, so too were Tom and Jerry.

To the average viewer this pair might be associated more with TV than film (even though TV has often had its censorship problems with its perceived racist stereotyping and cartoon "violence"), but the cinema was where they started, and therefore very much where they deserve to be in this collection.

Essentially the David and Goliath scenario taken to highly comedic lengths, Warner Brothers had Tweetie Pie and Sylvester (who was originally named "Thomas"), but the top studio of the time, MGM, had the best of the bunch. Their first cartoon short, Puss Gets the Boot, ironically named the cat as "Jasper" - whether the moniker "Tom and Jerry" had anything to do with the nickname for the British and the German armies is speculative, but the duo certainly hit it off as the best of enemies, and the item that brought them the most acclaim, deservedly, was The Cat Concerto.

An all-musical piece (using for the most part, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C Sharp Minor, skilfully played by musical director Scott Bradley) in the style of Disney's Silly Symphonies, Hanna and Barbera go one better by staging it with all the pompous formality of the concert hall. By a coincidence there was also a Bugs Bunny cartoon made simultaneously (which led to lawsuits and counter-suits between the two studios), Rhapsody Rabbit, which doesn't really cut the mustard as well as this masterpiece.

What fits in so perfectly with Tom & Jerry's style is the complete absence of dialogue between the characters, allowing the music almost totally to choreograph the gags, and all within the enclosed setting of the piano and its players. The plot is quintessential T&J: the cat has fun playing around with his prey, until the mouse strikes back. Various comic mayhem ensues, until the final battle, with the little guy (unlike in real life) usually coming out on top.

It's possibly fair to say that Morecambe and Wise found their comedic inspiration for their classic TV spot with Andre Previn from The Cat Concerto. I can also understand how future classical musicians would have first become aware of classical music through this cartoon.

It was the second Tom & Jerry cartoon to receive an Oscar (after Yankee Doodle Mouse), and was to be followed by Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl, which arguably topped The Cat Concerto by hilariously staging Johann Strauss's overture to Die Fledermaus - in it's entirety, without the interruption of "modern" music that briefly slips in to TCC. A third Oscar winner for Hanna and Barbera (and their supervising producer Fred Quimby) was Johann Mouse (1952), yet another classical music entry, completing a memorable classical trilogy, of sorts.

Of the others, Quiet Please! is a personal favourite, featuring that other great adversary of Tom's (and Jerry's secret weapon!), Spike the dog, forever plagued by the cat's chasing around, and usually grumpy enough to take it out on poor old Tom once pushed too far. The Little Orphan is a delightful little item celebrating Thanksgiving, with a scene-stealing feisty little mouse named "Tufty" (in later incarnations) who despite his size has the appetite of a hippo, and gets into plenty of trouble for it.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. MOUSE. Tom's attempts to turn demonic and savage have unfortunate side effects!

Finally there is the seasonal delight Night Before Christmas, in which Jerry is chucked out into the snow, but a remorseful Tom lets him back in to warm up in front of the fire. The resulting final gag with a mousetrap is a sheer joy.

Olympischespiele (1938)

Or Olympia as it would prefer itself to be known to English-speaking nations. In many ways a pivotal film of history but also the model by which sports films have been made since, and also by which many Olympic ceremonies have since been performed, including the 2012 London Olympics.

 

History (and prudence) prevents Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will from being given any greater celebration from me than it deserves in this 100 list, but her epic 2-part film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics is another matter - much more than just a record of a sporting event, and while it reveals its political influence throughout (Adolf Hitler is an occasional supporting player watching from the VIP box), the approach is subtler. As a film it treats sport as drama, and is all the more exciting for it.



It's easy to see why Riefenstahl was so revered by Hitler and the others. Her name had been made on the filming of various Teutonic legends such as The Blue Light, fantasies which embodied the ideals that the Nazis loved to espouse. Her interest was less in the Aryan supremacy over other nations per se, but moreover the beauty of the human body; endless close-up and slow motion shots (staged as well as filmed at the event) focus not on the achievements of the athletes, but on the grace and balletic quality of their muscles.

And in one particular supreme athlete, Riefenstahl was particularly besotted with the grace and beauty of the great Jesse Owens. Not surprisingly, her major opponent both artistically and politically in this respect, was Dr. Josef Goebbels, who had his own ideas about how to make films.

Successive polls over the decades have usually accorded Muhammad Ali with the title of greatest sportsman of the century, but Owens' achievement for me is so much more significant. His winning of four gold medals in Berlin was a phenomenal achievement, even by today's standards in a "normal" Olympics. It is thanks also to Leni Riefenstahl, that his story can be retold and remembered.

I visited the Olympic stadium in 1999, still remarkably intact from Albert Speer's fine original design. Although certain elements such as the Olympic bell were removed (barely) of swastikas and the names of certain prominent Nazis were removed from the Olympic Hall of Fame (below), the area is the one conspicuous remnant of the Nazi regime, partly because it was from the one time when the Nazis chose (for prudence's sake) to be more international and egalitarian in their attitudes.

There's no getting away from the fact that the Olympics have been - particularly since Berlin in 1936 - a PR circus for the nation hosting the event, and their rulers. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were very much a part of Reagan's America; the preceding Olympics in Moscow (boycotted by the US because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) and then again in China in 2008, were a celebration of Communism, and like it or not, the 2012 London Olympics will be celebrating the Conservative Coalition (though instigated by Tony Blair and the Conservative Lord Coe.) In the "Nazi Olympics" of 1936, the hosts - like all others - put aside their political differences to celebrate (hypocritically perhaps) the Olympic ideal. But only for the two weeks.


Once the Olympic fortnight had finished, and by the time the film was released in 1938, the party was over. Within a year the world would be at war again, and that same host nation that welcomed all those countries was planning to overrun them.

But the film still manages to transcend politics,  and that is mainly due to the photographic skills of Leni Riefenstahl, and the heroics of Jesse Owens.

The Olympic stadium in Berlin, 1999

Psycho (1960)

In trepidation of my first viewing on TV of Psycho, I hid in the kitchen for the key moment of the shower scene. Cowardy custard.

Audiences of 1960 were not so fortunate.

In all his six decades of filmmaking, and for what in most of that time has generally been considered his masterwork portfolio of cinematic craft, Alfred Hitchcock is best remembered for this shocker - one of his cheaper efforts - but how rightly so. Psycho is probably not nowadays the most terrifying film ever made - time and the outside world have hardened people's resolve so much - but it still has the most terrifying music score.

From the time of the credits to the time of the shower scene, that score by Bernard Herrmann is always brimming away in the background, making you aware, particularly during the long car journey, that something is going to happen at the end of this...

It must have been bizarre to be asked to come and see a film which could only be watched from the beginning or not at all - this in the days when roving film shows allowed paying audiences to enter the cinema whenever they liked, hence the expression "this is where we came in". Added to that, there is the added tease of a plot involving stolen money from a Texas office, rashly entrusted into the hands of feisty Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who could use that $40,000 very nicely thank you, for her potential nuptials with illicit boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin).


Guilt-ridden along the long drive out of Arizona however, an almost judgmental shower (ah, the metaphor is appropriate) falls down and she takes refuge at an out-of-the-way hostel called The Bates Motel. After a little friendly talk with the young and slightly repressed owner's son Norman, Marion decides to take back the $40,000, and then have a shower...

For whatever reason - perhaps because it was deemed too shocking even for Hitchcock - the responsibility for directing the shower scene has sometimes been credited to Saul Bass. It brings into question who actually is the maker of a film? Bass's storyboards (together with his nifty title sequences that were his stock-in-trade) were used by Hitch as the blueprint for all the murder scenes, and Hitch, grateful for Bass's visual input, invited Bass onto the set (right) and gave him the generous credit "Pictorial Consultant" that started the whole controversy over 'directing' the shower scene.

As great as the shock of a vicious murder taking place before our very (perceived) eyes, is the still unparallelled shock in movie history of a story losing its central character, as well as the sub-plot that goes with her too (although the credits drop the hint with the "and Janet Leigh" at the beginning).

From that moment on, you feel anything could happen. Once the situation is set up, and the rules of storytelling defiantly broken, the Master draws you in.

A particular fine example of his craft is the long staircase tracking shot, following the mysterious Norman as he chats with Mother and drags her down to the basement, Hitch teasing the audience but knowing that they, like he, don't want to get too close to this strange family. It is the quintessential suspense of the slightly open door.

Far more shocking for me, on reflection, than the stabbing of Marion is the horrific death of the intrepid investigator Arbogast (Martin Balsam), thus breaking another rule of story telling: you don't kill off your detective before he's finished detecting! Balsam is the figure of integrity,  the one who's going to sort things out for us. It was also a death that, unlike Marion's, I wasn't expecting. Once he's gone, you don't really envy anyone who tries to go into that house.

How could Hitch have known what it would lead to? A whole spate of slasher shockers in the decades to come, including three deteriorating sequels, and most curious of all, a 1999 Gus Van Sant remake using exactly the same script, a curious case of cinematic plagiarism (or as Van Sant put, his "cover version" of a classic), whose lack of success proved that you cannot make a film any better than that already made by a master filmmaker.

One figure at the end, however, leaves audiences in no doubt that this is far from a laughing matter: that final creepy shot of Anthony Perkins is still difficult to watch without severe trepidation - even more than the shower scene - when that last sinister face reveals itself at the end of the film.

I experienced (there's no better word for it) Psycho in the cinema for the first time at long last, at the Prince Charles Cinema on a Halloween horror themed weekend (time had sanitized the horror down from X certificate to 15), of which the greatest impression felt was the sound: significantly higher on the soundtrack than usual, with Herrmann's score screeching out. Come the time of the shower scene, I was less afraid of being scared than of being deafened. At least then I was able to get some idea of what original audiences of the time went through.