TCM’s Essentials Vol 2: Another 52 Must See Movies

“I love how the two leading ladies are so brilliantly juxtaposed. You have the dark jezebel, the city woman who [wears] very provocative clothing…, and then you have this beautiful, delicate porcelain doll in Janet Gaynor…. This is the perfect gateway into [silent movies].”
- Drew Barrymore

“If anybody wants to see what a silent film is like, they really should watch this one. Because it’s a great beginning to see how powerful a film can be without words…. You never quite know where it’s going. It does keep you kind of in suspense.”
- Robert Osbourne

“This film is now considered one of Buster Keaton’s masterpieces, but in 1928 it was the latest Keaton film [to do] very poorly at the box office – which was especially hard on him because at that time, Buster was financing his films with his own money…. After this he signed a contract with MGM, [where] he basically got lost in the factory mentality of the studio system…and soon realized he made the worst mistake of his life. He never again enjoyed genuine creative freedom…. But this film was made when he was very much at peak form…. When you see [the house stunt], you’ll understand why even the cameraman said he had to look the other way.”
- Robert Osbourne

“It seems surprising, but to me, this movie is really about relationships…and the struggle of love. It’s so earnest…. Tod Browning really should have had a bigger career after this.”
- Drew Barrymore

“It’s not really a horror film. It’s about life just being lived at a different level with a different kind of people…. It’s such a bizarre film for MGM. They were all for glamor, and to be able to create a movie with this atmosphere I think is kind of amazing.”
- Robert Osbourne

“I thought it approached the Depression in a really innovative way…. And the women really reminded me of modern, working women. A lot of the film is about them just passionately wanting a job.”
- Drew Barrymore

“The Busby Berkeley numbers in this movie are so wild…and it makes a stinging statement at the end: a song about the forgotten man and how many guys that fought in the First World War are now standing in breadlines. It’s not something they’re looking back on, it’s what was going on at that moment. But they do it in such a merry way, and you’ve got this wonderful cast – all kinds of young, bright talents as well as some great old-timers.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Of all my grandfather’s movies, Twentieth Century might be my favorite…. I always love films [that] poke fun at actors. In this film, my grandfather says things like, ‘I never thought I’d stoop so low as to become an actor.’ Actors are very eccentric, to say it in the nicest way.”
- Drew Barrymore

“This is the movie in which Carole Lombard emerged as a really first-rate comedienne…. I also find it very poignant that this is the last important film John Barrymore ever starred in…. I think this is his best performance on film. He is so funny in it.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Even the misunderstandings [in the plot] give rise to beautiful songs…. The music so buoyantly conveys the feeling, even when they’re mad at each other. The music is connecting them.”
- Molly Haskell

“I think one area that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers don’t get credit for is the great acting they did in their songs. They’re giving great performances. Just watch their faces. They’re conveying exactly what we need to know, never overdoing it. They make it look so easy that we don’t see all the work they did.”
- Robert Osbourne

“What really makes this an essential film to me is the story. There’s nothing more dramatic than to be one among many inside a system where you know it’s breaking down, and you know it’s wrong, and you have to violate a code you’ve sworn to…. To [show] this kind of bravery against authority is a tremendous sacrifice, and it makes for a very dramatic film.”
- Alec Baldwin

“It’s done in a sweeping way by MGM with all the power they had behind them. And it holds up so well all these years later…. Those technicians and art directors and set directors created [a] world that seems so real. They’re geniuses who never get the credit they deserve.”
- Robert Osbourne

“I thought it was very much ahead of its time to take on the subject of growing old, and one of the characters’ reluctance to grow old…. It’s so wonderful and beautifully rendered. William Wyler was an extraordinary director.”
- Carrie Fisher

“A wonderful movie. Mary Astor is heaven…. The story is set in many lavish places in Europe and in the Midwest, [but] they didn’t go on location anywhere…. [It’s] a testament to the set designers, art directors, and all those people who turned a soundstage into Europe.”
- Robert Osbourne

“The first of three movies that Cary Grant and Irene Dunne made together. Few people have ever worked so well, and with such superior results, as Cary and Irene. It’s witty, infectious, and hilarious – all about a subject that isn’t. There’s nothing funny about divorce, but this may be the one exception…. It may be the best screwball comedy of them all.”
- Robert Osbourne

“‘Welcome to Sherwood Forest!’ – it’s one of those fantastic, iconic moments in film. I love the scene where Robin Hood comes into the castle all alone. He has a bow and some arrows. He’s asked to dinner, there are at least a hundred people there; they’re going to trap him…and [he must] make it out.”
- Carrie Fisher

“This has to be one of my favorite movies of all time. It never gets tiresome. It’s the definitive romantic adventures with a swashbuckling hero and beautiful maiden, in cartoon Technicolor, with colors that just snap at you…. There’s not a wasted moment…. I don’t know who would not enjoy this film.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Stagecoach turned the whole western genre on its ear – not only in the way Ford used the beautiful vistas of Monument Valley to tell the story, but also in how he for the first time presents multidimensional characters in a western…. The characters are allowed to be both good and bad, and many shades of gray. This is the film that also made John Wayne a star – finally.”
- Robert Osbourne

“I like this movie is women writing about women…. And it’s not women jus talking to women about their own lives. So much if about how their husbands are affecting [them]. The fact that you don’t see these husbands is amazing – you don’t get distracted from the women’s journeys.”
- Drew Barrymore

“It’s fun seeing Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford, who were famous rivals at MGM, standing up as rivals in this movie…. It’s so cleverly done because every scene in the movie [is set where] men logically would not be: a women’s spa, a living room where the ladies are playing cards, the powder room of a nightclub.”
- Robert Osbourne

“One thing that killed me about it is, you take an amazingly beautiful woman like Paulette Goddard, and you put a little smudge of dirt on her face, and then you wash her face and she looks in the mirror and says, ‘I’m cute.’ Cute! No, Shirley Temple is cute – you’re a world-class beauty!”
- Carrie Fisher

“Chaplin was a true auteur because he didn’t have anyone looking over his shoulder. He could take as long as he wanted to make a movie…. Not only were [audiences] seeing this story about making fun of Adolf Hitler, but they were also hearing Chaplin talk for the first time. It’s hard to explain now how important that was for this star who was so popular everywhere as a silent comedian.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Jimmy Stewart is so natural, so convincing, so ‘un-actory,’ that all of us who direct would be ecstatic to get this kind of performance today out of any [of] the great actors we have…. How subtle and graceful it is!”
- Sydney Pollack

“You would never imagine that this is John Huston’s first film…because it’s directed with such a sure hand. He has complete authority from first shot to last.”
- Brad Bird

“I love using The Maltese Falcon as a counter to people who bemoan every Hollywood remake because this is the third version of The Maltese Falcon…. John Huston saw Sydney Greenstreet in a play in Los Angeles; he’d never been in a movie before [but] is such a sophisticated actor…. [He] and Lorre are connected, and they made fun of that themselves.”
- Ben Mankiewicz

“One of my favorite scenes is when Barbara Stanwyck builds the little book mound so she can kiss him. And [then] he has to go put a washcloth on his neck! She’s just so beautiful in this. And Dana Andrews is beautiful. But no one is as handsome as Gary Cooper.”
- Carrie Fisher

“The chemistry between Stanwyck and Cooper is magical…. She’s wonderful in this as a comedienne. The same year, 1941, they also made a Capra movie called Meet John Doe that was so serious…. It shows their range.”
- Robert Osbourne

“This is not just what movies are about, it’s what life is about. If I had to make a religion based off of a film, this would be it…. Sullivan’s Travels is everything that a movie should be.”
- Drew Barrymore

“It wasn’t a raging hit when it came out, but over the years this film thankfully has been rediscovered…. I love those great faces of the guys laughing as they’re watching the cartoon. Casting directors know what they’re doing to round up those kind of faces…. It’s a great comedy but also with a great deal of substance to it.”
- Robert Osbourne

“When he dances, there’s something that comes out of him that’s just joyful, and infectious…. He tap-dances down that staircase without ever looking down: that you cannot look at and not grin.”
- Sally Field

“George M. Cohan was not keen to have a movie made about his life because there was so much he really didn’t want exposed. But they catered to him to get this because it was the spirit of him that they were really trying to capture, which they did…. James Cagney was truly one of the legends among actors of that era, and I think this is his best performance.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Cat People is a great example of necessity being the mother of invention…. It does create a strange spell over you, [such as] those shots of Simone Simon during the therapy session, where there’s just a pan of light on her face.”
- Alec Baldwin

“It was made for peanuts and yet it has great power. Practically the whole movie is in shadow…. That adds to the mood of the film, but it also is very economical because then you don’t have to decorate the whole set.”
- Robert Osbourne

“We’re so familiar with the Vincent Price of horror films, and it was interesting to see him [in] a completely different light…. But he still remains a little creepy.”
- Drew Barrymore

“It’s one of those great movie accidents…. You can have so many things go wrong, and so many other visions for it, [but] then it’s put together and becomes this perfect movie…. [It’s] in my top ten favorite movies of all time. I fell madly in love with Gene Tierney when I saw it.”
- Robert Osbourne

“This is probably the most compelling I’ve ever seen Joan Crawford in a film…. Ann Blyth was a very interesting actress to me because she was so doll-like. She had a very ethereal, almost otherworldly kind of facial mask. You don’t know what is going to happen to her or come out of her. And she’s just this monster – your worst night as a kid.”
- Alec Baldwin

“I love Mildred Pierce. Besides it being a big comeback for Joan Crawford, I think it’s about as definitive a Warner Bros. film as you could have. It’s got a gritty side – the kind of movie that only Warners made this well…. Joan Crawford has no mannerisms in this movie. She’s very real, very honest…I think this is Joan at a perfect period.”
- Robert Osbourne

“This is the women’s film for people who don’t like women’s films, a genre…about middle-class women who had very few options. They had narrow lives, little dreams, little hope for anything different…and the [genre] gave expression to that suffering that had gone unrecognized, and which in its way was the prelude to the women’s movement.”
- Molly Haskell

“This was one of the first British films that really made an impact in the American market. People in ordinary movie theaters in small towns went to see Brief Encounter. It’s kind of a bedtime story for the older tots – an adult love story which is very romantic and really beautiful…. A small, very tender, very touching movie.”
- Robert Osbourne

“This, to me, is the apex of great film acting…. There are transitions [by] Rains that are just incredible, [and] I’ve never believed a woman loved a man more than I believed Ingrid Bergman loved Cary Grant…. Hitchcock was great at sexual double entendre. I mean, when she says to him ‘I have a chicken in the refrigerator’ and she’s kissing him, you’re just reading Cary Grant’s mind: ‘we’re not having chicken for dinner, honey.’”
- Alec Baldwin

“This film both produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, [and of all his] films, this is my favorite. It grabs you from the minute it starts and doesn’t let go…. One of the great shots of all time is where the camera starts ay up high and goes down [to] the little key in Ingrid Bergman’s hand at the bottom of the stairs.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Rex Harrison’s performance is just wonderful. They don’t ever touch, but you feel how much he loves her. It’s one of the most romantic movies ever.”
- Sally Field

“I’m a great, great Gene Tierney fan; she can do no wrong. She had played a successful businesswoman in Laura and [was] strong in Leave Her Heaven, and here she was, the number one dramatic star at Twentieth Century-Fox, cast against type as a very gentle, very kind [and] compassionate woman…. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir I think is really underrated.”
- Robert Osbourne

“This is the movie that gave us the line about ‘stinking badges,’ delivered by the Mexican bandit played by Alfonso Bedoya…. While the dialogue itself [is] wonderful, great screenplays provide much, much more than words. And in this movie, you have shifting circumstances, scenes that constantly test the strength of human virtues. Virtues that can so easily give way to our cruelest impulses…. It’s an indisputable essential that should be, and will be, a treasure for as long as we watch movies.”
- Sydney Pollack

“We’ve seen caper films before, but sometimes more care goes into the set design and the casting and so forth…. Sam Jaffe had kind of a twinkle to him from his earliest years doing Gunga Din (1939), and he dials into the very strange tone of this film…. One of [his] greatest performances.”
- Alec Baldwin

“It’s a great caper film…that has you on the edge of your seat. Sterling Hayden started out as such a glamour boy in movies…. He rebelled against that [and] finally got discovered as an actor, not for the way he looked but just for what he delivered.”
- Robert Osbourne

“The fractured narrative – where you’re seeing a story line from different points of view, perhaps [from] an unreliable narrator, jumping back in time – could have been applied to any topic, something silly, [but it’s applied] to a question of justice and truth…. What is truth? What’s true for you may not be true for me. Rashomon takes that experience [and] addresses it cinematically in a way that hadn’t been done…. The technique is in every film and TV show now. It’s just part of the way we consume story.”
- Ava DuVernay

“A classic of world cinema – so successful, so important, that now it’s part of the vernacular. [It’s] the movie that made the world take notice not just of Kurosawa but that Japanese films were worthy of being seen, considered, and discussed.”
- Ben Mankiewicz

“Their scenes together, their dance scenes, the close-ups – sometimes you almost want to look away, they’re so powerful. You feel like a real voyeur, like you’ve gone over the line.”
- Molly Haskell

“Shelley Winters is wonderful in this movie and this really elevated her to star status. It changed the whole course of her career…. And people should watch for Elizabeth Taylor doing a faint, I think it’s the best faint ever done on film. She walks into a room and literally collapses. She doesn’t cushion herself; she just falls, like a bag of potatoes or something. It’s amazing.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Gene Kelly’s athleticism made these movies so great…. For my money, Vincente Minnelli is one of the top twenty-five directors of all time.”
- Alec Baldwin

“Gene Kelly had down-to-earth appeal, but he could dance like gangbusters…. I also love the fact – and want people to particularly notice when they see this movie – that very rarely when he does [the film] cut away. He loved to have a camera on him full-body, [for] long stretches of time within a number, so you really saw he was doing the work.”
- Robert Osbourne

“One of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever seen…. This film was the passion project of John Ford’s life, and you can feel it in every frame…. The authenticity just leaps off the screen.”
- William Friedkin

“John Wayne isn’t what I always think of when I think of an actor, but he’s everything I think of when I think of a star…. Maureen O’Hara owns this role; it could only have been played by her.”
- Alec Baldwin

“High Noon competed for the Best Picture prize but lost to Cecil B. DeMille’s circus epic The Greatest Show on Earth, which surprised many people – although at the time, there were some marks against High Noon. [Screenwriter] Carl Foreman was implicated in the Communist withc hunts going on in Hollywood. [Producer] Stanley Kramer was a maverick, and the film industry didn’t cotton to mavericks back then as it does now. Further, westerns had never been taken seriously by Oscar. But time has proven the worth of this great film.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Ralph Meeker is very subtle. The character’s brutal, but he himself is subtle, so there’s an interesting tension there. [The film] has freshness and humor and, of course, it’s very prophetic, and the freshness comes, I think, because all these actors were unfamiliar then and are still unfamiliar. Cloris Leachman is the only one who went on to fame. It’s such a memorable role – it just hands over the whole film. She says, ‘if anything happens to me, remember me.’ And we do.”
- Molly Haskell

“This movie was so violent at the time. I think that’s why it didn’t catch on more. I don’t think people were quite ready for that in 1955…. And [it] has the wildest credits I ever saw – they’re all backwards. Right off the bat it [prepares you for] an unsettled, turn-the-world-upside-down story.”
- Robert Osbourne

“It’s a great thriller. It just kind of seeps into your bones…. It’s terrifying and heartbreaking and you’re on the edge of your seat the whole time…. Lillian Gish has this herd of children that she takes care of in the movie and each one is allowed a great personality.”
- Rose McGowan

“I love it because of Robert Mitchum. This, to me, is his definitive performance. He never got much attention from it because the film itself was not successful, but he is brilliant in it…. He makes it look so easy that you think he’s not doing a lot of acting, [but] people don’t realize the work that goes into something like that.”
- Robert Osbourne

“One of the great films of world cinema…. Creates a sense of time and place where you think – even though you’ve never been there – that is exactly what it was like…. No way in 1955 would we get from an American movie the willingness to show full-bodied grief. [It’s] evidence of what an entire other culture of films can bring us.”
- Ben Mankiewicz

“I genuflect before the effort to undertake something so massive and so controversial at the time with no safety net, no idea whether or not it would work, or…even be seen. There’s a bravery,…a brashness to it, and yet it’s so gentle, so respectful, so humble in the things that it shows us…. It has such a strong sense of place. I feel like I’m there. There are scenes where I can smell the food, I can feel the air, the heat, all of it. It’s a beautiful achievement.”
- Ava DuVernay

“I think this is the ultimate in teenage film. Nicholas Ray captures the essence of what it’s like to be a teenager…. It completely holds up; it’s an incredibly sexy ride…. It taps into something real and tumultuous with family.”
- Drew Barrymore

“It’s an essential film because of James Dean being in it. He only made three feature-length films, and it explains what James Dean was all about…. Also you get this great chance to see Dennis Hopper as a kid, Corey Allen, Natalie Wood when she was a teenager, Sal Mineo – all these beginning actors…. Jim Backus was known as a comedian, and to see him playing this weak, destroyed father was kind of amazing.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Andy Griffith’s singing voice is raw, and it’s got a dangerous sexuality that works with his character…. There’s something about Lee Remick in this movie – kind of like a sexpot that shot out of the cannon. She’s very seductive, like Lolita, but knowing her power and using it to get out of her situation…. This film is just a sock to the gut.”
- Rose McGowan

“It’s so powerful, [and] a great example of how deceiving television can be…. This is about a man who literally seduces the country through television. He’s not what he seems to be at all, and it is chilling because you realize how many times we’ve probably been, and are being, seduced by people who are not worth our time.”
- Robert Osbourne

“The abuse that Tony Curtis endures – and that he deserves – is pretty amazing to see. There’s a great scene [where] instead of getting punched, as you think he would be, he gets slapped around, and I think that says so much about his level on the totem pole and J. J. Hunsecker’s kind of strength: ‘I don’t even have to waste a punch, I can just slap.’”
- Rose McGowan

“At [this] point, people really only knew Lancaster as a hero, so to have him play this despicable, dangerous man was very unusual…. Tony Curtis had always been just a pretty boy. Nobody really took him seriously as an actor, [but] he’s just superb in this film…. I do love getting to see New York in 1957 – what it was like then, the different face of the city compared to now.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Guinness is so extraordinary in the part. Sessue Hayakawa is a great foil…. After he retired, Hayakawa became a Zen Buddhist who also taught acting.”
- Carrie Fisher

“Even though it’s a long film, and you have to stick with it, it’s never boring. It grabs you right in the beginning…it’s very rugged…and the ending is dynamic.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Some movies thrillers hinge on the notion that seeing isn’t necessarily believing, and there was one director who told that kind of story best: Alfred Hitchcock. He never told such a tale with more panache and suspense than in Vertigo…. San Francisco, that beautiful city by the bay, really deserves costar billing. The location shooting adds so much to the mood and visual impact.”
- Robert Osbourne

“The laughs come fast and often. The reaction to Doris and Rock as a romantic new team was so strong, plans were immediately put into motion to find another script for them…. For Rock, Pillow Talk was the start of a whole new career. Up to this point he’d always played the handsome, dramatic, leading man, but from here on, comedy became his forte. And although this is a romantic comedy and in no way a musical, Doris Day does sing three songs – certainly a nice bonus.”
- Robert Osbourne

“I love this film because I can watch it when I’m feeling lonely or blue, and I can watch it when I’m feeling happy and want to laugh…. Jack Lemmon will break your heart any day of the week.”
- Rose McGowan

“Of all the films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture, I think it’s one of the hardest to classify. It’s not really a comedy. It’s not really a drama. It’s so many different kinds of movies…. I think Billy Wilder’s one of the few who can walk that tightrope between cynicism and charm.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Hitchcock uses so many different angles and shadows when he shoots Anthony Perkins. It’s slightly askew, showing a twisted mind, [a] switch that’s flipped in the wrong position.”
- Rose McGowan

“This so changed the direction of [Perkins’s] career. He was identified with horror films and he kept doing sequels. I always felt badly about that because he was too good an actor to just be categorized as a horror film actor…. This is also a movie that had to be in black and white because that kind of graininess and look helped add to the coldness and fright of the film.”
- Robert Osbourne

“I think it’s the most moving, the most lyrical, of all Peckinpah westerns. Somehow he’s able to face women and death [here]. He’s pushing it away in some way in his later films, but he’s grasping it here. It’s unusual in focusing on two old guys. And it’s very funny. Joel McCrea had a very strong sense of who he was and what he could play, and that kind of integrity comes through in his characterizations.”
- Molly Haskell

“Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott both made a definite decision to only do westerns after a certain point. I think it was 1947 when Randolph Scott decided he would never do a non-western again, and never did…. It was a great way to go out for both of them.”
- Robert Osbourne

“I don’t have a conversation about the ten or fifteen best movies without The Battle of Algiers…. I know they didn’t use documentary or newsreel footage, and yet every time I see certain scenes, I think, ‘that’s obviously newsreel footage,’ and you cannot convince me otherwise – even though I know they’re not lying.”
- Ben Mankiewicz

“[Pontecorvo] is able to conjure a sense of time and place, but also energy, the revolutionary spirit. The filmmaking is so visceral…. Grand themes [are] rendered with real intimacy and brashness, and also a humility in the filmmaking in the choice of the faces show in the midst of war.”
- Ava DuVernay

“The Producers is a comedy landmark. It has a take on humanity that could only come from Mel Brooks. Of all his movies, I think it is the single most pure expression of Mel’s humor. He is never afraid to go where no comic genius has gone before.”
- Rob Reiner

“Kubrick gets to feelings in a way that’s not highbrow or brainy even though he’s dealing with really big stuff. It’s science fiction, but it’s really about our place in the universe and our future as a race. Stanley found a way to handle the material with a direct, emotional style…. His control, the way he grabs your attention and makes you think, is something not many filmmakers can do. Somehow he could see things nobody else could see. 2001 became almost a dividing line between the way movies were and the way they would be.”
- Sydney Pollack

“A wonderful movie. It very much looks like the 1930s re-created on film. The costumes by Edith Head are great…. What’s amazing is that Newman and Redford made only two films together, but that pair of movies has forever linked the actors as if they were a prolific team, such as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby or Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.”
- Robert Osbourne

“What’s interesting about Louise’s work is how she keeps her own rhythm, which is very hard to do when the rest of the room – and Jack especially – is so kinetic. She never allows herself to step outside of her rhythm and join his rhythm. It makes it very, very eerie.”
- Sally Field

“This is one of those few movies that, I think, works on every level…. Jack Nicholson allows the other actors to have their moments and trusts his own talent [not to] get lost or overshadowed. The richness of those supporting performances not only add to the movie, they add to his performance.”
- Robert Osbourne

“Barbara Kopple literally took her own life into her hands when she went down there…. She was there for the strike, but nobody should think that she just came and started shooting. She took forever to get those people to trust her.”
- Ben Mankiewicz

“It’s verité to the max, some of the things that she captures, some of the access that she gets – it’s jaw-dropping [but] also intimate. You can tell that she really connected with her subjects in a way that was personal…. I really don’t know how she did it. She was in her twenties, it’s her first feature – it can only be explained by the word ‘genius.’”
- Ava DuVernay

“This is a perfect movie…. It has incredibly rich characters. Peter Finch and William Holden are so good together out of the gate, when they come stumbling out drunk…. It has a gladiator nature [in that] the most raw, sick, entertaining, and taboo will happen in this pulpit of a television set to get ratings – and that we as a society will also follow.”
- Drew Barrymore

“It has such a message and depth and texture to it, and yet it’s very entertaining. It’s like a forecast that came true. And that’s what is so terrifying about it, but what also makes the writing so brilliant. Paddy Chayefsky was an incredible genius…. Faye Dunaway is supreme; she never had a better part.”
- Robert Osbourne