Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[GUT]

G'Day GUT,

Which film is that?

Jeff

A little one called Mayerling.

[Mayerling]

One of his films should mean a lot to Jeff.

G'Day GUT,

Which film is that?

Jeff

[GUT]

One of his films should mean a lot to Jeff.

[GUT]

Normally I would be suggesting some new listing of films, but I noted that once more a prominent performer has gone over the bar. We lost Sir Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee in the last few weeks (as well as the comedian, and occasional actor Jack Carter), and now we have lost Omar Shariff, certainly the first major international film star whose Middle Eastern origins transcended the huge Islamic movie circuit and fully entered that of the West and Far East as a first class star. From his first big film, David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" there was no doubt that a true talent was present there in Shariff.

I am making a list, after all, but of his best known films:

Lawrence of Arabia
Dr. Zhivago
Funny Girl
The Night of the Generals
The Yellow Rolls Royce
Juggernaut
Funny Lady
Gulliver's Travels (television mini-series film)
Anastasia (television mini-series film - as Tsar Nicholas II)

If you wish to add to it please do so.

You may also wish to do a definitive list for Sir Christopher Lee's work.

Jeff

And now Omar Sharif

[Robert]

Bit of trivia : I'm sure the slightly mad tune that was played when Peter O'Toole looked at Van Gogh's self-portrait in "Night of the Generals," was the same piece of music played in the film "The Sound Barrier" at the point when the pilot looks out of the window at the night sky.

[Mayerling]

Normally I would be suggesting some new listing of films, but I noted that once more a prominent performer has gone over the bar. We lost Sir Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee in the last few weeks (as well as the comedian, and occasional actor Jack Carter), and now we have lost Omar Shariff, certainly the first major international film star whose Middle Eastern origins transcended the huge Islamic movie circuit and fully entered that of the West and Far East as a first class star. From his first big film, David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" there was no doubt that a true talent was present there in Shariff.

I am making a list, after all, but of his best known films:

Lawrence of Arabia
Dr. Zhivago
Funny Girl
The Night of the Generals
The Yellow Rolls Royce
Juggernaut
Funny Lady
Gulliver's Travels (television mini-series film)
Anastasia (television mini-series film - as Tsar Nicholas II)

If you wish to add to it please do so.

You may also wish to do a definitive list for Sir Christopher Lee's work.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

I liked the Lew Ayres version. There was one moment in it that always floored me (in fact it was cut when I first saw the film on television in the 1960s). The Germans are charging across a field into barbed wire, and they are hit by machine guns and cannon, and suddenly when some smoke clears a pair of hands are still visable attached to the barbed wire (the body is not visable - just the hands!). No wonder they cut it originally.

That is one antiwar film that never loses it's affect.

If you can try to see a 1936 honey of a film with Fredric March, Warner Baxter, and Lionel Barrymore, "The Road to Glory" about the effects of the bitter, long, and stupidly wasteful war on Baxter (the commander of a French division) assisted by March and (eventually) saddled by his old father (Barrymore) a veteran of the battle of Sedan (Franco-Prussian war defeat of 1870).

Jeff

[GUT]

The original version of All Quiet On The Western Front

Sliding Doors

All quiet was a goody.

[GUT]

Summer of 42
The Producers
Start The Revolution Without Me

It's a bit kitsch but I like the early Christopher Reeve weepy:

Somewhere In Time

Which one.

[Bridewell]

The original version of All Quiet On The Western Front

Sliding Doors

[Bridewell]

Summer of 42
The Producers
Start The Revolution Without Me

It's a bit kitsch but I like the early Christopher Reeve weepy:

Somewhere In Time

[Bridewell]

Was scary

It gets more scary with every viewing too.

[Pcdunn]

Hi, Jeff,

thanks for the info, I think I've seen that one! Very good.

[Mayerling]

"Waterloo" was a movie my class got to see as a type of reward for winning some academic contest or other. We were all bussed down to Hollywood and saw it at the famous Chinese Theater in the 1970s, which only added to the reward. The film was pretty good, very much an old-style spectacular with battles and extras on horses and so forth. Possibly the best matinee I've ever been to in my life!

Didn't Armand Assante also play Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps in a television film or miniseries?

Hi Pat,

Actually there was a pretty good two part television film in the 1980s with Assante as Napoleon, and Anthony Perkins was in it as Talleyrand.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Not trying to be a jerk.... but you have to add to the Napoleon list Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure... I love how that film was made.. and then shelved for a few years by the studio.. then they decided to try and release it as a " teen summer film" which it did become, but from what I understand.. it was supposed to be a more adult geared comedy...making fun of the youth.. but showing what would happen if all there historical figures were put in modern times... and it really works on that level.. marketed a different way ( which worked for them) but I think it's original target audience missed it... and the original target audience would have gotten all the subtle jokes that I fell most younger audiences missed....

And thanks for bringing this thread back to life!!! and it's true purpose is realized yet again by you putting "Austerlitz" on your list... I'm not at all familiar with this film,...now I feel I should track it down... but I must ask... is it worth it? you didn't say how you felt about the films on your list

Thanks again

Steadmund Brand

Hi Steadmund,

Glad to revitalize this thread.

I have never seen "Bob and Ted's Excellent Adventure", but it would not be the only film that was geared to one audience and then shown to another one. One of the best films of the 1950s, "Twelve Angry Men" did only moderately well (if at all) at the box office. Later it was realized it should have been shown not to the general public but at so-called "Art" Movie Houses, as it is an ensemble acting masterpiece and a thoughtful film - but slightly static as most of the action is in the jury room.

I haven't seen "Austerlitz" (the films have to be made available to be seen). Welles made many films in France and Europe in the 1950s through the
1970s that were for purposes of funding his own projects, or waiting for worthwhile movies (like his stint as "Cardinal Wolsey" in "A Man For All Seasons", or as "General Dreedle" in "Catch 22"). He wasn't alone doing basically hackwork or worse for paychecks. Henry Fonda, Yul Brynner, and even Kirk Douglas did the same as did others. Many of these films are like "Austerlitz" or "Lafayette" (one of two films in which Welles played Ben Franklin) - historical films of somewhat questionable accuracy. A really bad one would be "John Paul Jones" with Robert Stack, Charles Coburn (as Franklin), MacDonald Carey (as Patrick Henry - supposedly having a love rivalry with Jones that Henry wins), and Bette Davis playing Catherine the Great of Russia (Jones served as a Rear Admiral under Catherine's government in a naval campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the 1780s).

Actors in other countries played in such movies as well, like Robert Morley and Terry-Thomas. When asked once about being in some horror flick (not "Theatre of Blood" which was a good film), Morley smiled and said, "For the money, my dear boy!"

There was a film about Napoleon called "Napoleon" made in the 1950s that had an all-star cast mostly of French or France centered performers. Eric von Stroheim portrayed Beethoven in it. Welles was in this too as General Hudson Lowe, the commander at St. Helena who despised the defeated Napoleon.

Jeff