41. Night of the Living Dead

Still from Night of the Living Dead. A panicked Barbara looks at Ben, who stares out toward the camera, half his face in shadow.

Watching this film for the first time with my dad was a big moment. At first, I didn’t appreciate how unique this horror film was for featuring a black man as the lead. I wasn’t thinking about the social commentary being made by the way he takes control of the survival plan and the narrative itself. But then comes the film’s shocking ending and it was time for father and son to talk about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

This is a film made with the slimmest of shoestring budgets. And yet, this movie is the genesis point of so much of the zombie horror subgenre.

It has a lot to do with Duane Jones. His Ben survives a horde of zombies only to be slain in the final reel. As he emerges from the house he hid in through the night, a random deputized man with a rifle fires, ending his story.

In a contained space, for one night, a black man held tenuous power and influence, and took on the heroic role as all the white people around him crumbled from fear, prejudice, and ego. But none of that mattered when trying to carry his heroic self back out into the wider world, where agents of the law can’t (or can’t be bothered to) tell the difference between a black man and a supernatural threat.

Even if it may not have been Romero’s intent to include this subtext in the film, he ran with the idea in future films. It’s a trope of zombie films that the audience should understand that There’s An Allegory Going On.

40. Band of Outsiders

Odile, Franz, and Arthur dance The Madison in a cafe. Odile wears a fedora.

Author’s Note: This one stalled me out. Maybe it will be clear why from how I talk about the movie, or maybe it’s some unrelated anxiety or brain fog. Trying to write a post about this movie just shut me down, and I feel like that’s part of the story here, too (whatever this story is shaping up to be).

I don’t think this film actually cost me a slot in AFI’s grad program, but it’s a moment from my interview for the school that I remember. The two interviewers asked about my favorite movies, and I mentioned this one. I brought up the scene where they all agree to sit in silence for a minute, and then all the audio for the film cuts out.

One of the interviewers asked me if I’d ever actually timed the “minute of silence.” I said no. He told me it was only 36 seconds.

Am I saying that this trivia knowledge failure knocked me out of contention for the school? No. Did I worry that I appeared incurious and like I was putting on a performance of what I thought they wanted? Yeah. Which was heightened by the fact that the interview was in NYC and I had about 32 hours in the city to drink some coffee, see a few friends, get pizza, and go to a barcade. I was exhausted, anxious, and not sure how to put myself forward as someone worthy of paying an extraordinary chunk of money in tuition for a second film degree.

But then I think about my other answers. I talked about Adaptation and Charlie Kaufman. I talked about experimental film from my time working at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. I think I could have made myself seem like someone who liked disruption and novelty, and maybe that wasn’t what they were looking for in a student.

I think about the way that I would display my DVD collection in undergrad, so people who came over to where I lived would get that slice of what I was into. And I think about the way that this blog—not just this series—is a collection of things I like that also might suggest something about me.

I didn’t go to AFI, but I still went to grad school. Life moved on. But this is a reminder about a tension between the different things I love, and the different standards I set for myself. I’ve tried to put myself into lots of different boxes as a film lover, a writer, and so on. But that was a choice. Those were ideas that I chose to believe at a given time.

Is the joke better for understanding all of it, or can you understand just enough to laugh? Do I need to know all the nuances of the “minute of silence” to truly appreciate it? Do I need to be able to condense myself down to an effective log line? Does the puzzle need completion?

39. The Producers

Gene Wilder holds his comfort object, a blue blankie, while talking to a stunned Zero Mostel.

I always enjoy a narrative setup where a charlatan seduces a generally upstanding person (often wealthy, but not necessarily) into pursuing a big score. See also, GLOW, The Greatest Showman, and Ed Wood.

The whole notion of intentionally creating a flop in order to defraud the show’s investors is clever, and the path toward their goal seems assured. From the moment they decide to produce Springtime for Hitler, a musical tribute to Nazi Germany, it seems like nothing could possibly go right.

Until the audience decides it’s a parody/satire, and that it’s intended to be hilariously bad. It’s a perfect comedic setup and payoff. It also has some phenomenal comedic performances from Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel.

I know there’s criticism about comedies that “you couldn’t make today” (and I’m not going to address that broader discussion here)… but there’s one part of this film that I don’t believe would work today. It feels like producing Springtime for Hitler would become a “culture war” flashpoint with people attacking and defending their idea of the show starting well before it debuts. In the film, the author of the show is furious about what they’ve done to his earnest ode to Hitler. In a modern version, it’s not hard to imagine a wave of “go woke and go broke” mockery along with a wider range of dangerous threats by neo-nazi groups.

That’s not to say that the original isn’t still effective and funny. It’s a time capsule of the cultural climate and a sense of where the boundaries were for comedy at that time.

38. Contempt

Shot from Contempt. Paul and Camille look at each other as Camille prepares to get in the red convertible of Jeremy Prokosch.

From the opening credits of this film, it’s clear you’re in for something different. Instead of seeing text, the credits are narrated to the audience as we watch a cinemascope camera perform a tracking shot. This film will continue to play with our expectations, and it doesn’t waste any time announcing it.

When I was in undergrad, a friend was taking a class on Godard and needed to write a paper comparing a Godard film to a similar US/Hollywood studio film. I remember suggesting comparing this film to Indecent Proposal. There’s some similar tensions, like in the way that a wealthy man inserts himself into a marriage. But there’s no explicit deal being made here. Camille suspects that Paul is allowing American film producer Jeremy Prokosch to spend time with her as a quid pro quo for hiring him to work on the script for a film. That suspicion grows into contempt, ending the marriage.

There’s also a satire of international movie production, with an American producer hiring Fritz Lang and a French writer to adapt The Odyssey. Multiple scenes feature people speaking in different languages with Prokosch’s assistant, Francesca, offering commentary in how she translates between them. The scenes we do see of the work in progress are experimental and off-kilter, suggesting another kind of problem of translation: adapting an over 2,000-year-old work of prose into a film.

But for all its stylistic strangeness and layers of meta-textual commentary, the heart of the film is an extended sequence in Paul and Camille’s apartment where the two argue while moving between rooms. You can see a diagram of the apartment layout and the paths of the characters in this article. It is raw, bitter, and you can’t look away.

That’s one of the things that sticks with me about this film. It’s constantly pointing out the artificiality of making a movie, reminding you you’re watching a movie, and still managing to get you caught up in whether or not these two fictional characters will resolve their conflict, or if their marriage is over.

It’s like a magician teaching you how a trick is done, but still holding on to just enough surprises and mystery to let you hold on to your sense of wonder.

I know this is a trick, but it’s an impressive trick, and it’s performed by someone confident in their abilities.

37. The Sound of Music

Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer stare into each other's eyes in a gazebo during "Something Good."
I know that the bisexual gaze reached its apotheosis in the 1999 cinematic classic The Mummy, but how do you solve a problem like making THIS a throuple?

This is the kind of movie that just didn’t click when I was younger. It was too long, the songs seemed silly, and it didn’t seem to have a lot going on.

I was so wrong.

It’s a story about finding your convictions at a time when so many are just going with the flow (see also: Casablanca and The Rules of the Game). It’s a story where people give up on accepted paths for their life and take a dangerous chance on something that brings them joy.

And it provides great online shorthand for the proper response to Nazi bullshit:

Captain Von Trapp rips a Nazi flag in half, because Nazis should fuck right off.
Nazi Punks Fuck Off (Von Trapp Club Remix)

When I see parodies of the love story, I feel like I’m laughing with the movie instead of at it. It really is one of those well done instances where you understand why these two characters fall in love (and the relationship’s believability isn’t just riding on the fact that they cast two actors who can definitely get it).