To my husband, Jimmy, movies work like a balm to his soul. He may be in a dark, miserable mood, but turning on a favorite movie will completely shift his view of the world. He reacts to a beloved movie in a passionate, visceral way.
The films on this list are not necessarily Jimmy's picks for the best movies ever made (though some of them certainly qualify). They are the movies that he most loves and connects with on a deep, personal level. These are the movies that, though he's seen them each a hundred times, if he's channel surfing and happens upon them, he can’t turn them off, and he ends up sitting and watching the whole thing. They are all extremely personal for him, and served as seminal moments in his life.
I tried to make this a top 10 list, but he had such a hard time wheedling the list down, that I let him go with 11, or 12 if you count the Godfathers separately. And the quotes are pure Jimmy. Here they are in alphabetical order...
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948 - Directed by Charles Barton, Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr.)
A favorite of Jimmy's since childhood. Part comedy, part classic horror movie, Jimmy says this movie still always manages to make him laugh and scare him to death. For him, it's serves as a movie version of comfort food. Sweetly, the thing that Jimmy says has always touched him most about this movie is Abbott and Costello's friendship, that "amongst all the monsters, they always tried to help and take care of each other." When he was a kid, the part when Abbott goes back to save Costello always made him cry - "they were best friends even in the face of death".
Casablanca (1942 - Directed by Michael Curtiz, Starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman)
Aside from simply being great film, Jimmy loves that it's hopelessly romantic. Romantic with a capital R. Not just the romantic love story, but also Victor Laszlo's heroic conviction to his cause, and Bogie's sacrifice for the greater good. This movie also happens to be Pop's favorite movie of all time.
The Godfather, Parts 1 & 2 (1972, 1974 - Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro)
Both movies sweep you up and into the world of the Corleones. Coppola created a combination of sounds, smells and images that bombard you every moment. The thing that gets Jimmy is the beautiful paradox at the core of the films, that the story is really about a family like any family, they eat together and laugh together, but they're murderous gangsters, which sets them apart from the rest of the world. The tragedy of Michael Corleone was that his life could have gone another way, but it didn’t. His father meant to do well, he tried to do everything for Michael, but in the end, he made him someone just like himself. Vito Corleone wasn’t a vicious man, and yet he was a murderer. We knew what he was doing was wrong, and yet here was a gentle man who loved and cared for his family. The beauty about Brando was that he had so much pathos about him, and that made the viewer confused. Brando brought that to it. "Any other actor wouldn’t have brought that to it, but that cat? Come on."
GoodFellas (1990, Directed by Martin Scorcese, Starring Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci)
Jimmy's first reaction when thinking about this movie was a deep exhalation. "Edgy. GoodFellas is edgy, it’s sharp, scary, sexy." It has a similar family element like The Godfather, they all stuck together and took care of each other. But in GoodFellas,"these people weren’t family, they behaved like a family because of their business, because of money. And when you realize that at the end of the movie, when they all start to rat on each other, as an audience member it destroyed me. Because you thought that their life was just grand. But they were vicious, vicious people." Unlike the poetic Don Corleone, these people had no pathos, they were cold-blooded killers and didn’t pretend otherwise. And yet, "Scorcese did it again. He made such a great film, that you can’t stop watching it."
In the Heat of the Night (1967 - Directed by Norman Jewison, Starring Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger)
"Explosive. Great acting. Great story." Poitier and Steiger's performances are "an acting lesson", they were both at the peak of their talents.
La Dolce Vita - (1960, Directed by Federico Fellini, Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg)
A brilliant Fantasy. "Marcello Mastroianni is poetry in motion." The dream sequence is "one of the most brilliant and frightening scenes I’ve ever seen on film". Watching Fellini’s film "was like going to Coney Island."
Last Tango in Paris (1972 - Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, Starring Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider)
"Tragic. Romantically tragic. Sexually tragic. Psychologically tragic." And yet, there was a beauty underneath the whole film. "The score really lit up the beauty, and heightened the emotional life of the characters." Beautiful and sad and raw. A journey into the human conditions. It's always fascinated me that when Jimmy was 16, Pop and Mommy took Jimmy and his friend Scott to see this movie, which was, at the time, notoriously rated X. After the first scene, when Brando and Schneider meet and have sex, Pop leaned over to Jimmy and told him "You and Scott. Other side of the theater." Apparently, Pop didn't mind him watching the movie, just not watching the movie while sitting with his mother!
Manhattan (1979 - Directed by Woody Allen, Starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway)
"When Annie Hall came out, it was ground-breaking in that nobody had ever seen a movie like that, and nobody expected Woody Allen to make a film like that . Then, with Manhattan, he took it to another level. It has a class to it, a maturity." He matured as a director and in the subject matter. Manhattan hit a deep spot in me about how we can take loved ones for granted in relationships and not realize what you might have. "The intellectuals on the Upper East Side with all their problems fascinated me." It was extremely funny, and very sad. "Mariel Hemingway was a gem. I met her right before they did the pizza scene but I didn’t know who she was. My cousin Aurelio was an actor in the scene, he played the pizza parlor guy and I went to visit him the day they shot it at John’s Pizza in the Village. I hung out there all day. And I’m sitting on the ground, talking to this girl and I thought 'Oh what a cool chick.' and then all of a sudden one of the grips came over and said 'Mariel, we’re back on the set now.' And she left. We rapped for about 20 minutes.'"
Raging Bull (1980 - Directed by Martin Scorcese, Starring Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci)
Scorcese brilliantly captured the violence of these people. Not just in Jake LaMotta and his brother, but in the whole culture. "Just really scary and upsetting , but it was beautiful violence. The violence itself wasn’t beautiful, of course, but the artistry of the film made it beautiful. The photography was exquisite. As was the editing and the acting. You can only watch Raging Bull maybe once or twice a year tops because it’s too disturbing."
Swept Away (By an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August) (1974 - Directed by Lina Wertmuller, Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato
Life-changing. It was a "special era" in Jimmy's life. In the summer of 1975, HBO was just coming onto the scene, and Swept Away was one of the first movies they showed. "It blew everybody’s minds and I turned everybody on to it that summer – Swept Away summer was a golden summer. A lot of romance in the air. Like we were just waiting for it, and it was perfect timing." The film was voted the most controversial film of the seventies. People were talking about it around the dinner table. From Manhattan all the way to the suburbs of Long Island, where Jimmy was. "I fell in love with Giancarlo and Mariangela Melato. Everybody had a crush on her after this movie. You wanted to fuck her and slap her at the same time. It was sexy watching this movie. It was hot."
[Jimmy wants me to make it clear that he is NO WAY condoning the horrible Madonna remake of this film. "It was disgusting. She ruined a masterpiece. A fart must have got into her brain. I can’t even discuss it, it’s so horrible what she did!"]
The Third Man (1949 - Directed by Carol Reed, Starring Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles)
Sinister. Filled with "intrigue and style." Anton Karas' zither music was "darkly romantic and fit the movie like a glove – genius."
Okay, I expect you all to go immediately to Netflix and line up the ones you haven't seen in your queue!
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Please do the polite thing and visit all of this week's spins on the topic "The Movies"...
Peg in Square Peg in a Round Hole
Kendra in Life in the Slow Lane
Vandy J in The Testosterone Three and Me
Jen in Sprite's Keeper - OPENING FRIDAY!!
Michele Renee in Must Be a Full Moon - OPENING FRIDAY!!
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Next week on The Spin Cycle...
Phobias
We all have them. If we're willing to admit it. Mommy has MANY of them.
What are you afraid of? Snakes? Heights? Needles? Airplanes? Enclosed spaces? Fluffy kittens?
Lucy Van Pelt said it far better than I ever could...
Please examine yourself deeply and spin up your fears!
The doctor is "real in".
Share your spin!
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Et voila! Linked!
I have not heard of a couple of these. So cool how you interviewed Jimmy for this. The scene in the theater with his dad telling him to scoot was the best!
Mine is up:
http://itmustbeafullmoon.blogspot.com/2012/02/going-to-movies-in-1970s.html
Posted by: Michele R. | 02/24/2012 at 06:00 AM
I have only seen some of the Godfather movies and Casablanca. I really like some of Bogart's movies, he did some awesome stuff.
Posted by: VandyJ | 02/24/2012 at 07:07 AM
I would watch movies with Jimmy ANY day of the week - he has wonderful taste!! (What does he think of Cinema Paradiso? I cannot watch that film without bawling my eyes out.)
Posted by: Jan | 02/24/2012 at 07:43 AM
The whole time I was reading this I was wondering if the ones I hadn't seen would be on Netflix...I love Netflix!
A few years ago I bought the whole Godfather series and every once in a while we will hole up one weekend and watch them all.
Posted by: SuziCate | 02/24/2012 at 10:24 AM
I missed some of these. What a great list! They better than green eggs and ham too.
Posted by: JDaniel4's Mom | 02/24/2012 at 12:10 PM
I think I may be the only person in the world who was not affected by "Casablanca". I found myself dozing off during it and can barely remember the scenes. John liked it more than I did and I am supposed to be the movie nerd in the family!
Posted by: Sprite's Keeper | 02/24/2012 at 01:44 PM
Okay, I was wrong, I HAVE seen a Scorcese moving. Goodfellas...although it's been many years, and I remember little (typical for me and films I've only seen once). The only other one on the list I've seen is Casablanca. I guess I have some catching up to do!
Posted by: Aimee | 02/25/2012 at 12:46 PM