Alphabet Meme

The Rules

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.

2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don't know of any films with those titles.

3. ... In other words, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release. Use your better judgement to apply the above rule to any series/films not mentioned.

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number's word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under "T."

5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type "alphabet meme" into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.

6. If you're selected, you have to then select 5 more people.

OK, I had a list almost done, then I put my computer to sleep, and when it woke up it had restarted. Of course I saved all my hard work I decided I wasn't that into it anyway, so no big deal. But then Self-Styled Siren tagged me, so I had to do it again because she's awesome.

A couple rule changes/modifications/local variations: first, although I might not aspire to be King of Google, I am king of this blog, so I'm using either the English or the original language title of films depending on where I want them to fit. Honestly, I'm typing this before I do my list, so it might not even come into play. Second, just because I'm perverse and want to make things hard on myself, I can't use the first film I think of for a given letter. (Editor's note: I came to regret this around the letter H.) Third, with one exception, I'm not using any films made after 1990 because older films trip more readily off my tongue. Fourth, I found most of these my scanning my top ten lists for each year, because that was easier than the alternative, which was to never finish this post. So, without further blather:

After Death (1915) Affecting early Russian melodrama of guilt.
Brighton Rock (1947) Richard Attenborogh is the scariest thug in southern England.
Craig's Wife (1936) Brilliant multilayered study of gender politics, and Ros Russell in top form.
Duminica la ora 6 (1965) (aka Sunday at Six) A Romanian film about love and paranoia during the fledgling socialist revolution, and the only place on this list where I feel a little guilty for being deliberately obscure.
Elevator to the Gallows (1958) Jeanne Moreau in the rain, Miles Davis, and the perfect crime spoiled.
Die Freudlose Gasse (1925) (aka The Joyless Street) Dark, full of despair, censored to ribbons, and Garbo's big break.
Gabriel Over the White House (1933) Bizarre, scary fantasy from the depths of the Depression.
Hardware (1990) If you think it's just a ripoff of The Terminator, well, you're only half right.
I'm All Right Jack (1959) Brilliant British satire of labor-management relations.
Judge Priest (1934) Utterly objectionably racist, but one of the best portraits of small-town life.
Koroshi no rakuin (1967) (aka Branded to Kill) Seijun Suzuki's manic, incoherent satire of honor among assassins.
The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928) One of the earliest and best films about dehumanization at the hands of the film industry.
Man's Castle (1933) Simply sublime. Plus, one of two or three films where I like Loretta Young.
The Narrow Margin (1952) The best film that takes place on a train.
One Way Passage (1932) One of the most romantic films of all time. I need a hankie.
Perfumed Nightmare (1977) Still the only Filipino film I've ever seen, a hilarious satire on the worship of the West
Queen Christina (1933) Because you can't ever have too much Garbo in a list. Plus, that hotel room scene with Gilbert.
Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979) The greatest standup act ever.
Stroszek (1977) Herzog's tragicomic, loveable mess treads a delicate balance between satire and adoration.
Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) The gruesomely funny mother of the slasher genre.
Union Pacific (1939) Cecil B. DeMille's epic of the Transcontinental Railroad.
Voyna i mir (1968) (aka War and Peace) Seven-hour Soviet epic is like nothing else in the history of film.
The Wages of Fear (1953) The most straightforward suspsense film ever.
X2: X-Men United (2003) There really aren't many films that start with the letter X.
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) My favorite actor in his best performance. (I just now came to both of those conclusions.)
Zabriskie Point (1970) Antonioni's best film, if only because I generally don't like Antonioni.

I'm not tagging anyone because this was hard and I'm tired. If you haven't been tagged, consider yourself tagged.

Oscar Profiles: Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond

Best Actor Nominee, 1930 (paired with The Love Parade)
Lost to George Arliss in Disraeli

I'd argue that Maurice Chevalier didn't have much in the way of acting talent: he had charm and a certain lasciviousness, a knowing leer and a good singing voice. However good he was in the string of Ernst Lubitsch-directed and -inspired musicals he made in the early 1930s was a direct result of how well the films tapped his limited talents. This lower-tier semi-musical, more a standard fish out of water comedy than a musical or a romance, doesn't play to any of his strengths, and thus his Best Actor nod is one of the big head-scratchers of early 1930s acting nominations (a period filled with head-scratchers). Chevalier needed a bit of disreputability in his scripts, and the only thing this one can muster is some half-hearted references to homosexuality. Everything here works against Chevalier's grain, and so he seems a tad lost, with little of the charm that he sometimes passed off as talent. Of course the film was paired with the far superior The Love Parade, as nominations often were in the first few years of Oscar, so it's a bit more understandable to see his name among the luminaries of the category. But just a little bit. Performance rating: 2 goats

Oscar Profiles: Charles Coburn in The Devil and Miss Jones

Best Supporting Actor nomination, 1941
Lost to Donald Crisp in How Green Was My Valley

Although I'm still choking a little on some massive category fraud—Charles Coburn is the lead in this film, not a supporting player by any measure—and although it might be that this is just another case of Coburn being rewarded for doing the exact same thing over and over—three Oscar nominations for playing essentially the same gruff curmudgeon—I loved this film, and I loved Charles Coburn in it. He gives one of his three best performances (the others coming in The Lady Eve and Heaven Can Wait) as John P. Merrick, a reclusive plutocrat who decides to ferret out the union organizers in one of his department stores by posing as a shoe clerk and infiltrating their ranks. Of course he starts out as a bumbler, demonstrating how his wealth has insulated him from having to learn any useful skills, and of course he initially distrusts and then grows fond of the rabble-rousers, among them Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings, and a surprisingly attractive Spring Byington. It's hard to nail down exactly what makes him so good here, but I think Sam Wood's sprightly direction is the reason; maybe Coburn dependably brings the same raw materials to a role—that patrician voice coupled with the vaguely ridiculous carriage and face, that impeccable comic timing, and that grandfatherly warmth bubbling beneath the surface—but only sometimes does the right director allow or convince him to put his talents to such good use. He shows off a knack for physical comedy in a hilarious shoe-fitting battle with a recalcitrant tween, hefty doses of his patented gloweringly funny anger in any number of scenes, and a touching softness, especially in his scenes with Byington. Yes, it's the same Charles Coburn schtick that we've grown so used to, but the success of this movie depended on the perfect deployment of that schtick. Performance rating: 4 goats