What I want to talk about is why, I think, this book is even better than its "prequel." There are a number of reasons and they are presented here as I find them flipping through the book a few minutes after having completed it. And they're kind of personal.
I don't agree, of course, with every one of his choices. I haven't seen it since 1985 but I suspect I'd be hard-pressed to put The Color Purple on any of my lists of great films. But then I seem to be a little more agnostic about Spielberg than Ebert is.
I love Raiders of The Lost Ark too, but Ebert can't convince me it was an early examination of Spielberg's feelings about the Nazis. And led eventually to Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan.
Then, also of course, there are the choices I agree with completely--Leaving Las Vegas.
And I like the book for giving me information I didn't have before and I'm glad to have now, like that the picture Beat The Devil contains a line where a woman warns her husband about the "seedy gang of charlatans" they've thrown in with:
"We have to be careful of them, they're desperate characters. Not one of them looked at my legs."
And I like his nomination of My Dinner with Andre as a movie that is "entirely devoid of cliches." But I'd still stand up for New Waterford Girl, a movie I've mentioned a couple of times here recently. One of the things that's made it a great film for me are the times when, the first time you're watching it, something happens that makes you think you know what's going to happen next. But you don't, and what does happen is so teriffic it makes you think you'll love the film forever.
But possibly what makes this great movies book more essential for me than the first is that it includes a movie I've long suspected was great, but feared might be seen as too...I don't know, "common" or something: John Hughes' Planes, Trains and Automobiles
. In his review here, Ebert makes the point that:"Some movies are obviously great. Others gradually thrust their greatness
upon us."
And I think he's right. PTA is, for me, a beautifully played and written, and unexpectedly poignant movie that has stood the test of time. And a comedy that might actually earn the much-hopefuly-overused adjective "Capraesque." It's funny as hell, but I don't think I've ever been able to watch the last scenes of the movie without crying, just a little bit.
I'm also pleased that he included a film by Eric Rohmer, even though I don't think I've seen the particular one he chose. Because it reminds me that a few years ago, I went through a brief passion for Rohmer. When I worked at a video store, I took home a number of his films in sequence. Ebert reminds me why.
I think the movie I remember best from my "Rohmer Review" was Full Moon In Paris, but it almost doesn't matter. They tend to run together, being generally stories about intelligent, educated and/or professional young women, twisting sometimes painfully in or out of love.What I remember about the "Rohmer period" of my viewing life is not the plots, it's the admiring way he shoots, and treats, those women. As Ebert says:
He admires physical beauty but never makes it the point; he chooses acrtesses who are smart and bright-eyed, and focuses on their personalities rather than their exteriors....What pervades Rohmer's work is a faith in love--or, if not love, then in the right people finding each other for the right reasons. There is sadness in his work but not gloom...his films succeed not because large truths are discovered but because small truths will do.
Yes. Exactly that, and no more. And stick those "stakes," that one-or-two people have been telling me I need to "raise" in my work about beautiful, smart women who find each other for the right reasons...where the sun does not shine.
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