From Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934) to William Wyler's How to Steal a Million (1966)
These 30 classic films bring to this generation a rich fabric of philosophical , psychological, aesthetic , and historic threads of cultural memory and meaning. Each film supplies puzzle pieces of love and life for today's young adults to put together for themselves. These mid - 20th century film stories can supply greatly needed moral energy and imagination in this postmodern era.
These films were made in an era when making movies was a deeply collaborative artistic enterprise. The success of every A list film made in the Hollywood studios depended on the cooperation and continuity of directors, performers, script writers, set decorators, and studio managers all working together. This meant putting the end goal of making a movie of quality above self-interest or personal feuds and animosities. As a visual form of storytelling, unlike novels, the characters we see in all of these films appear to us as human beings just like us. It is no mystery that so many of the performers of this era remain today among the most beloved persons in our collective cultural memories.
Each of these films gives us an account of men and women finding each other, falling in love, and in many stories entering into a lasting marriage commitment. What are the elements of classic movie storytelling that link all of these films together? Here are three aesthetic qualities of storytelling found in these 30 films.
1.Classic realism trumps sentimental romanticism
These films depict an account of human nature that is compelling and true to life. Unlikely and farfetched stories have a charm of believability that enchants us. This classical account of human nature will almost always be credible for a widely diverse audience. This requirement, that the characters are seen as whole persons and not superficial or limited in their humanity, is an essential one for a love story that endures over decades of time and cultural change. With its high standards of direction, dialogue and performance in place, the story can stand the skepticism of any viewer infected with postmodern aesthetic tastes and sensibilities.
2.The appeal is to the classical sensibilities of viewers as whole persons
Our culture does not encourage us to view reality as whole persons, but we have the potential to develop integrated qualities of positive emotions, moral imagination, reason and sociability with others. This classical concept of human beings as whole persons is what is modeled to us in these golden era films, often with high doses of charm and personality.
3. The power of transport - we are participants in the story and not just observers being entertained.
How is this power of transport experienced with each film? Sometimes it is in the charm of the story itself, as with The Shop Around the Corner. Others bring us right into a time and place of great importance in our shared history: The era of the depression in the 1930s with It Happened One Night or America about to enter World War II in The Major and the Minor.
TRANSPORT BY STORY, SETTING, AND CHARACTER
Key elements in classic movies that idealize lasting love in Dark Passage
Eddie Muller, host of Noir Alley at Turner Classic Movies, explained in an interview how postwar movies filmed in his native San Francisco fired his imagination when he was growing up there. Eddie recalls how a film noir movie set in San Francisco drew him because it "takes place in a part of San Francisco that no longer existed...." Muller describes how fascinated he was with the idea of "things that are so important in one era and then seemed to have vanished, and reclaiming those things." Many of us, both young and old, long for the ideal of committed and lasting love that has also almost vanished in our culture. These 30 films, each individually and as a package deal, are a classic cinema reclamation project for this generation.
The 1940s was the decade of the best movies of all time and San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities of all time. With Dark Passage, we can enjoy seeing how San Francisco looked in 1947 and along the way we absorb some lessons in love and life from Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the third film they made together. Agnes Moorhead, playing the role of a jealous woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, practically steals the film away from the two leads.
Dark Passage and all the other films taken together have given generations of moviegoers a classical account of our human condition. In this classical account we are not isolated autonomous selves; we are social beings with the capacity to know transcendent beauty, goodness and truth. We can reason, know reality, and make moral choices.
In these movies people are getting out of really tight spots, not as hapless victims, but as men and women overcoming life and death challenges. Bogie does this in Dark Passage by even having to have plastic surgery to escape being arrested for a murder he did not commit!
CLASSIC MOVIES HELP TO OVERCOME THREE UNTRUTHS ABOUT OUR HUMAN CONDITION
In The Coddling of the American Mind, Gregg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt explain three negative untruths that this generation is being told in our toxic culture:
The untruth that they are victims who have no control over their lives
The untruth that thinking with our feelings is how to assess reality
The untruth that the world is divided into warring factions of "us vs. them"
It might be hard for this rising generation of young people, known as Gen Z and born into the age of the internet, to understand how movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck could be so popular over many decades of time. Barbara started her career in the early 1930's and when she made No Man of Her Own in 1947, had already been a movie star for more than a decade. Although she never received an Oscar for one of her many great performances, Barbara Stanwyck is recognized for her incredible versatility. In this film we see the untruth refuted that people are only in two boxes: victims or oppressors. Barbara's character is pregnant and her baby 's father is a vile and malicious blackmailer. Yet the film's narrative is driven by the moral choices Barbara's character makes and her resilience in dealing with horrendous situations.
Loss and Gain with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in Now Voyager
The untruth of Emotional Reasoning as explained in The Coddling of the American Mind is the idea that our emotions and feelings are always reliable guides in any matter of choice. In Now Voyager we witness a woman using her reason, conscience and moral emotions to overcome crippling life challenges. The story takes place on the cultural landscape of early 20th century life among the privileged upper class of Boston. Like many films made in the 1940s, the audience is reminded once again that it is not wealth and success that counts, but how each of us lives out "the good life" with what we are given and the inevitable moral choices we must make. Every choice Bette makes is cool, collected, and committed to reason. Classic movie fans know the great final scene when Bette Davis and Paul Henreid have a cigarette to seal their commitment to one another.
The Untruth of Us vs. Them refuted by 3 films from Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Examining the human condition in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, A Letter to 3 Wives, and All About Eve
Young adults today are living in a society plagued by the untruth that political, cultural and religious differences place us in warring camps marked "us" and "them." Almost any film in our canon would do for pushing back against this polarization of our social relations with each other today, but Joe Mankiewicz has a special peacemaking role with his amazing understanding of human nature. In his movies, characters struggle to give the upper hand to the better angels of their nature. The theme in each film about men and women being in love is straightforward: don't let a focus on material or worldly things cause you to lose sight of what is truly worthwhile in love and life. Joe Mankiewicz uses the settings of his stories to bring certain truths home: the loneliness of the beach where Mrs. Muir falls in love with the ghost of a sea captain; the small town in upstate New York where three wives must ponder which of them has lost her husband to another woman; and the world of the New York theater where a famous actress must come to grips with the deepest longings of her heart.
REGAINING PERSPECTIVE ON HISTORIC TIME AND CULTURAL SPACE
It Happened One Night, Only Angels Have Wings, The More the Merrier, and Love With the Proper Stranger
Once again, the vital connection between the film's setting and the characters comes alive in three stories of men and women finding each other in challenging circumstances. Of the three films, Frank Capra's It Happened One Night has received the most recognition, winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress in 1934. Only Angels Have Wings (1939) takes place on a mythical Caribbean island with amazing flight scenes from director Howard Hawks. The romantic leads are the legendary Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. The More the Merrier, George Stevens' wartime comedy takes us to Washington DC in the middle of World War II. This film gave the audiences of the day a respite from the daily losses and sorrows of the war. Love With the Proper Stranger (1963) depicts a man and a woman falling in love in New York City on the cusp of the sexual revolution.
These four films films give us the sense of a mid- 20th century cultural and historic flow. This quality of storytelling we call the power of transport makes it possible for today's young people to glimpse another time and place where social, cultural and moral norms were operational.
RECLAIMING THE JOY OF HUMOR AND CHARM IN ROMANTIC COMEDY
Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop around the Corner and Cluny Brown
One of the sad outcomes of the sexual revolution that no one could have foreseen was the loss of our culturally shared sense of humor. The romantic comedy was arguably one of the most popular genres in the golden era, and one of the most respected directors in this genre was Ernst Lubitsch. Two films that show his talent, both made in the early 1940s, are The Shop Around the Corner (1940) with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan and Cluny Brown (1946) with Jennifer Jones and Charles Boyer.
FINDING LOVE IN WARTIME
Random Harvest, The Major and the Minor, I'll be Seeing You, Love Letters, The Clock, and The Sky's the Limit
Even though there is so much uncertainty during wartime, these movies are a testimony to human longing for love and permanence.
LOVE STORIES WITH VIRTUE ETHICS AT THE CENTER
Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, and Hold Back the Dawn
It is the wonderful Jane Austen who gives us the template for men and women in love in the mode of Aristotle's Nichomichean Ethics. In this mode of storytelling, virtue ethics plays a central role. Heroes and heroines have a moral standard they must live up to as they follow the course of true love. This sensibility is seen in all three of these films, Pride and Prejudice (1940), Rebecca (1940), and Hold Back the Dawn (1941).
CHERISHED LOVE STORIES FROM BRITISH FILMMAKERS
Brief Encounter, Hobson's Choice, and I Know Where I'm Going
The film collaboration of Noel Coward and David Lean produced one of the most acclaimed films of the 1940s, Brief Encounter (1945). David Lean also gives us the charming story of Hobson's Choice (1954) with Charles Laughton, John Mills, and Brenda Debanzie. Powell and Pressburger are the celebrated filmmakers that made The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of life and Death and The Red Shoes. With I Know Where I'm Going (1945), we see the ideal of national unity in wartime.
LOVE STORIES FROM THE 1950s
An Affair to Remember, The Quiet Man, Roman Holiday, and Marty
Four great directors portray the ideal of lasting love. John Ford, Leo McCarey, and William Wyler were all veterans of Hollywood filmmaking from its earliest days. Each one of these men had received Oscars for the Best Picture of the Year and Best Director for their work: Ford for How Green Was My Valley; McCarey for Going My Way, and Wyler for The Best Years of Our Lives. Delbert Mann came to Hollywood from New York in television's golden age where Marty was first presented. Marty received awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. Paddy Chayefsky, the screenwriter of Marty, was the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for writing both adapted and original screenplays, Marty included. Again we can see the vital role of setting in these four love stories, ranging from the emerald landscapes of Ireland to the urban charm of the Bronx.
William Wyler's How To Steal a Million (1966) and the Elusive Quality of Charm
What is the essence of charm? It seems like it is an instantaneous intuition where we perceive that which delights and elevates us- present to us in a single moment. Like many of the other couples in these classic films, Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole charm us through their personalities. We are seeing them in their roles, but we are also seeing them for who they are.
Frank Capra's Masterpiece and the Business of Life
Frank Capra, in It's A Wonderful Life, has given us one of the most charming courtship scenes in film history. Capra knew intuitively that a great love scene can be the very best when it truly depicts life and not just a romantic interlude.
Sam Wainwright is on the phone and George finds himself embracing Mary even as he protests that he doesn't want any "ground floors".
See you at the movies!
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