Patterns 1956 - Superb drama about a power struggle within a large company

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IMDB Rating: 7,9

Director: Fielder Cook
Main Cast: Van Heflin, Everett Sloane, Ed Begley, Beatrice Straight, Elizabeth Wilson

"Rod Serling's incisive 'gray flannel suit' TV drama created such a sensation when Kraft Television Theatre first aired it live on January 11, 1955 that, in an unprecedented move, it was repeated four weeks later, on February 9, again live. The film version of the television play that garnered writer Rod Serling his initial acclaim, it's a forceful drama of office politics with a somewhat ambiguous ending. Although Serling's portrait of Machiavellian behavior in corporate suites can hardly have the impact it did in the '50s, when the uglier aspects of capitalism rarely made an appearance in popular media, his insights into the painful dynamics of a common dilemma remain compelling. Perhaps more about the anxieties of ambition and success than the inevitability of waning power, the film evinces Serling's particular brand of liberalism, as the rising young executive (Van Heflin) agonizes about the fate of the older man (Ed Begley) he must displace. The coldly efficient CEO, (Everett Sloane) a composite of Serling's wartime commanding officer and CBS president William Paley among others, has verbally hammered Begley so relentlessly in an effort to force his retirement, that the dazed and battered man conjures the punch-drunk fighter of Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). Despite the all-consuming nature of a job that's damaged his family life, he's still unable to let go. When Heflin challenges Sloane's repellent inhumanity, the magnate makes an apologia for capitalist ruthlessness worthy of Milton Friedman. Whether or not the equivocal and somewhat surprising ending can be interpreted as a victory or defeat for Heflin is very much in the eye of the beholder. Sloane gives the best performance of his career as the driven CEO and Heflin and Begley are also superb. Boris Kaufman, the legendary cinematographer of films such as Zero de Conduite and On the Waterfront makes the dark, tunnel-like office corridors look like something from Kafka." - www.allmovie.com

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On the waterfront 1954 - "I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody"

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: Elia Kazan
Main Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint

"Arguably the best movie ever released by Columbia Pictures and among the finest movies ever made in America, On the Waterfront's reputation has only grown across the decades since its release. Based on a series of articles about corruption on the New York/New Jersey docks, with a story and screenplay by Budd Schulberg (who also wrote a novel, Waterfront, to tell the story without the compromises necessary for the screenplay), the movie - directed by Elia Kazan - retains the feel of truth from the first frame to the last, down to the smallest nuances of the supporting players.
The acting in On the Waterfront has the aura of truth, and the decision to shoot on location in northern New Jersey gave the film the immediacy and realism of a documentary. Into that mix goes Leonard Bernstein's music (his only film score), which anticipates elements of West Side Story and, in its editing and mixing into the audio track, imparts a very subtle operatic quality to the otherwise hyper-realistic film. Just check out the interaction of the visuals and the music in the scene depicting the fight at the morning shape-up, especially the build up to the horn flourish at the moment when Terry's friend points out that he's fighting with Joey Doyle's sister. The film is an extraordinary mix of elements both coarse and refined - harsh realism and art at its most quietly elegant - in a coherent and compelling whole that still holds up more than a half century later.
Featuring Brando's famous 'I coulda been a contendah' speech, On the Waterfront has often been seen as an allegory of 'naming names' against suspected Communists during the anti-Communist investigations of the 1950s. Director Elia Kazan famously informed on suspected Communists before a government committee - unlike many of his colleagues, some of whom went to prison for refusing to 'name names' and many more of whom were blacklisted from working in the film industry for many years to come - and Budd Schulberg's screenplay has often been read as an elaborate defense of the informer's position.
On the Waterfront won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Editing." - www.allmovie.com

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All the king's men 1949 - A powerful political movie about corruption

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IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Robert Rossen
Main Cast: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, John Derek, Mercedes McCambridge

"Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men is a roman à clef inspired by the career of Louisiana governor Huey Long. As a powerful indictment of modern politics, All the King's Men represents a landmark in the maturation of United States cinema. It is dominated by the dynamic performance of Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, a thinly disguised version of real-life populist demagogue Huey Long. In an era that was still churning out feel-good political dramas like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, audiences were shocked by the confrontational realism of a film that said not only that the American political system was corrupt but also that, absent the intervention of violence, it would remain corrupt. It has many cinematic descendants, most notably the similarly named All the President's Men about a real-life corrupt politician, and the observable fact of history that at least in this case, that the checks and balances did work to remove the corrupt official in ways that they did not for Huey Long.
Broderick Crawford won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Willie Stark and so did Mercedes McCambridge for the role of the campaign manager." - www.allmovie.com

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Citizen Kane 1941 - Considered as the finest American film ever made

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IMDB rating: 8,4

Director: Orson Welles
Main Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane

"Orson Welles's film debut reconceived Hollywood conventions of story-telling and visual structure, suggesting the essential mystery of a person's inner self and inspiring countless filmmakers with its technical accomplishments. Already famous for his work in radio and theater, 24-year-old Welles was given complete creative freedom when RKO Pictures signed him in 1939. Co-authored with Herman J. Mankiewicz, the Kane screenplay dispensed with linear biographical narrative in favor of flashbacks recounting Kane's life from several points of view, ostensibly to solve the puzzle of Kane's deathbed utterance. Collaborating with cinematographer Gregg Toland, Welles used specially constructed sets to compose the film through a number of long takes in deep focus and high-contrast black-and-white, creating meaning through the juxtaposition of multiple actions and characters in a single take rather than through numerous edits. While the imagery and the carefully choreographed soundtrack provide clues to Kane's nature as he ages from innocent boy to corrupt magnate, he ultimately remains an enigmatic figment of memory. Kane's real-life model, however, was no mystery; newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst tried to suppress what he considered an unflattering portrait of himself. While RKO rejected an offer to reimburse their costs in exchange for burning the negatives, Citizen Kane's release was hindered by Hearst's campaign against it. Though non-Hearst papers recognized it as a vanguard work, and it was nominated for nine Oscars (four for Welles himself), Kane was not a popular hit. Despite the film's artistic approbation and subsequent wide-ranging influence, from 1940s film noir to the French New Wave to American film school grads, Welles never again had creative control in Hollywood." - www.allmovie.com

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Mr. Smith goes to Washington 1939 - One of the greatest American films about American ideals

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IMDB rating: 8,3

Director: Frank Capra
Main Cast: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Beulah Bondi

"Frank Capra's classic comedy-drama established James Stewart as a lead actor in one of his finest (and most archetypal) roles. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was the director's final film for Columbia Pictures, the studio where he'd made his name in the 1930s with an enviable array of comedies and topical dramas. It also marked a turning point in Capra's vision of the world, from nervous optimism to a darker, more pessimistic tone. Beginning with American Madness in 1932, such Capra films as Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and You Can't Take It With You had trumpeted their belief in the decency of the common man. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, however, the decent common man is surrounded by the most venal, petty, and thuggish group of yahoos ever to pass as decent society in a Capra movie. Everyone in the film - except for Jefferson Smith and his tiny cadre of believers - is either in the pay of the political machine run by Edward Arnold's James Taylor or complicit in Taylor's corruption through their silence, and they all sit by as innocent people, including children, are brutalized and intimidated, rights are violated, and the government is brought to a halt. The film's story of innocence and righteousness triumphant over corruption frames a chilling picture of an ineffectual and venal government fronting for gangsters. Coming at a time when the American public was growing weary (and wary) of the New Deal, then in its seventh year, it may have caught the public's mood just right. The world was indeed becoming a darker place - as the movie acknowledges by the presence of representatives of various European dictatorships in the Senate gallery as Smith's struggle on the Senate floor continues. The movie was so potent in its time that it cemented the image of James Stewart, then a good working dramatic actor who'd portrayed a range of roles, into the quintessential good-natured hero, the archetypal common man. That image made him a star, but also straightjacketed him to some degree. Stewart did some of his most interesting work in later years when he escaped from that image, as in Winchester '73, The Far Country, Rope, and Vertigo." - www.allmovie.com

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The power and the glory 1933 - A precursor to Citizen Kane and a wonderful performance by Spencer Tracy

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IMDB rating: 7,0

Director: William K. Howard
Main Cast: Spencer Tracy, Colleen Moore, Ralph Morgan, Helen Vinson

"Frequently cited as the precursor to Citizen Kane, Power and the Glory is the first major Hollywood film to extensively utilize narrated flashbacks to tell its story. Though the 'narrative' technique used to relate the plotline of Power and the Glory is interesting, though the film itself is a bit too cut-and-dried (suicide seems to be a logical solution rather than a last desperate move) and far too short (76 minutes) to do justice to its central character.
Long considered one of the great lost classics of Hollywood's Golden Age, The Power And The Glory has recently resurfaced, marking a coup for lovers of cinema history, and the film itself still proves to be a landmark. First of all, it is the first screenplay produced by the great writer (and future director) Preston Sturges, modeled on the family of his then-wife. Sturges has crafted a powerful drama about the life of the wealthy in America. Second, it is a remarkable foreshadowing of Citizen Kane, itself still eight years in the future. The film tells the tale of a man's life after his death, portraying his rise from a humble railworker to a railroad magnate and how he deals with those around him during his ascent. This element is also very prevalent, indeed it's the centerpiece, of Kane. Third, this is the film that put Spencer Tracy on the map of Hollywood stardom, propelling him to the legendary status that he enjoys even to this day. He plays the character of Tom Garner with utter believability, including the character's faults. This is unusual, particularly for 1933, and the credit for that can fall to Sturges. Colleen Moore plays Sally Garner and the only word to describe her performance, without danger of overstatement, is magnificent. She gives Tracy a sure-handed run for his money. The film also features Ralph Morgan, better known for his portrayal of villains in B-movies, who here produces another excellent role for his large canon." - www.allmovie.com

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