29. Vertigo

Still from Vertigo. Kim Novak kisses Jimmy Stewart as he looks toward the camera, lost in thought.
Men will literally force their new girlfriend to get a makeover to match their dead ex instead of getting therapy.

When I first saw Vertigo, it was after knowing Jimmy Stewart almost completely as a comedic actor, but always as a moral, upstanding figure. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It’s a Wonderful Life. Harvey. The Philadelphia Story. You Can’t Take it With You.

The only thing those performances have in common with this one is that James Stewart never looks like he quite understands what kissing looks like.

I know that sounds like a joke, but I’m very serious. He looks like a cross between a nervous lifeguard attempting CPR and Mr. Peepers. But it kind of works in this role?

It’s this strange scenario where the protagonist doesn’t seem to know what kind of story he’s in. He thinks this is a melodrama or romance, but the further he goes, the deeper he gets pulled into a noir.

It’s a neatly twisty plot. Stewart’s Scottie is a detective hired by an acquaintance to track his wife after she starts exhibiting odd behavior. There’s just one catch: The woman he’s told to track is already dead, and the person he’s following is an impersonator. Scottie falls in love with the impersonation, but then she needs to fake her death in order to cover up the actual woman’s murder.

The idea of a man being tricked into falling in love with a woman so he can form an alibi for a murder is one thing, but for him to meet the same woman again and attempt to get her to return to the performance by forcing a makeover on her is sociopathic. Like Norma Desmond, this is someone clinging to an obsession with the past and an inability to see the potential for moving on.

I took a course in undergrad about Color in Cinema and used this film as the basis of an obsessive paper on the use of color as a tool for narrative. Drawing on the writings of Natalie Kalmus from Technicolor and repeated viewings of the film, I mapped out the ways that different colors were traded between characters and played with in costuming and set design.

The professor for the class asked me to present it to the rest of the class, which was my first taste of giving a film lecture. I had a clip list and everything, and wound up giving something like a 25+ minute lecture on Vertigo.

I don’t think I would’ve even considered spending any time teaching if it hadn’t been for that experience. I felt so comfortable up there directing the class and moderating questions, even though I still had a lot of learning to do.

It was satisfying to feel that sense of approval and attention, but I think it was a time when I got the most joy out of the actual work of putting the paper together. Combing through the film again and again, trying to reverse engineer the decisions for why this color of lighting or this pattern on a dress could mean something. It gave me a real appreciation for the subtleties of craft that go into every frame of a film.

28. The 400 Blows

Antoine Doinel glares at the teacher from his school desk.

This is one of the films that got me into French cinema from this time. The deep focus on Antoine Doinel and piecing together a picture of a life made more difficult by every authority in his life finding ways to fail him. There is no sufficient figure in his life to model himself on, or to provide him any kind of direction for his energy and passion.

I think two about the sequence where he steals a typewriter from his stepfather’s office, tries and fails to sell it, and then gets caught when giving up and attempting to return the typewriter. Is it ironic that he only gets in trouble after finally deciding to do the right thing, or is it a fulfillment of the axiom that it’s not the crime that gets you in trouble, but the cover up?

This also fits into a specific subgenre I enjoy, which I like to call “It sucks to be a schoolboy in postwar Europe.”

Also: Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine. What a performance. Honest, heartfelt, and heartbreaking.

27. Sunset Blvd.

William Holden and Gloria Swanson watch a film in a private screening room, lit by the projector's beam.

I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

–Norma Desmond, Sunset Blvd.

The flip side to Singin’ in the Rain. Instead of some plucky silent film stars finding a way to whether the storm of talking picture disruption, here we see what happens to a performer who didn’t make the transition.

Honestly, what a great double feature those two would make.

Whereas Singin’ is a sweaty, try hard musical, Blvd. is an ominous noir that starts with the narrator informing us that he’s the corpse face down in the pool that we’re looking at. Thinking about them side-by-side presents industry shifts as a zero sum game where the only way for some to ascend is climbing over the still-warm corpses of others.

But it’s also worth considering the way that Norma Desmond resists change, both in her art and her conception of herself. She still wants to be a silent ingenue, still wants the same car, the same friends, the same lifestyle.

She clings to an ideal of the past, and refuses to accept that there’s anything worthwhile about the present or future unless it feels like a carbon copy.

26. The Seventh Seal

Death and Antonius Block sit on the rocks by the ocean, a chess board between them.

It’s a game of wits against Death himself. And it’s surprisingly funny. That’s the part that always surprises me.

Maybe it has to be, given the heightened premise of a knight returned from the crusades playing a lengthy game of chess against Death himself during the Black Plague. As serious and dire as the stakes are throughout the film, if there isn’t humor, then the entire concept of the story would seem silly on its own.

There was a line I got via some trickle-down teaching about writing dramatic stories: You need to find places to add some humor, or your audience will find the wrong places and add it themselves.

25. The Searchers

Final shot of The Searchers. A darkened doorway frames John Wayne, walking back out into Monument Valley.

Maybe the greatest final shot of any Western. Up there with the great final shots of any film.

This is not one my grandfather ever showed me. I should’ve asked why when I had the chance. He had a lot of John Wayne films, but maybe he didn’t like this one. Or maybe he just didn’t think I would like it. It’s not for me to know.

Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is an unambiguous racist. His whole goal in the film is to kill his niece who was taken by Native Americans in a raid. He doesn’t see her as worth saving, being tarnished by association. He’s especially focused on the idea that white women who have (willing or unwilling) sex with Comanches are impure and no longer considered white in his eyes.

He’s a real shitbag. And lest we forget about the man behind the character:

“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them… Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

-John Wayne, Playboy Interview (May 1971)

While it might not be a massive antiracist triumph of a film, I don’t think it’s subtle about one point in particular that refutes Edwards’ racism. In the end, Ethan cannot stay in the domestic space. He’s not welcome there, and returns to wandering.

His skills were useful in reuniting a family, but that’s all he was good for. His violence and hatred serve as a barrier blocking him from finding a place to call home.

It’s not exactly a Hate Has No Home Here sign in the front yard. But there is a story here about a soldier so fueled by hate that he doesn’t know what to do without a war to fight.