Speeding Through Spotlights: From 'Boyhood' to the Hall of Fame, Some Things Worth Noting

Rather than devoting a full blog post to any or all of the following topics, I thought I would cover them in a collective piece. 

Hence, these are not meant as abridged reviews or profiles, but simply an opportunity to provide some illumination on worthy subjects of recent exploration or thought. 

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Boyhood (movie) - directed by Richard Linklater

If prompted to consider the best contemporary movie directors, I likely would not readily think of Richard Linklater among names like the Coen Brothers, David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Steven Soderbergh, Ang Lee, Alexander Payne and others.

But I certainly should.

Though he has never been Oscar-nominated for Best Director, since coming to attention with 1991's Slacker the Austin-based Linklater has made a whole bunch of movies I've really enjoyed, including Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, Bernie, Me & Orson Welles and School of Rock.

And with Boyhood, he has likely made his best film yet; certainly his most novel, if not in subject matter then in the creation process. Filmed with the same actors over a period stretching from 2002 to 2013, Linklater has brilliantly documented--though this is a narrative film--the maturation of a boy named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his sister Samantha (Linklater's daughter Lorelei), their mother (Patricia Arquette) and father (Ethan Hawke).

The way Boyhood works as a cohesive film is fairly astonishing--credit must also be given to editor Sandra Adair--and while I may have been expecting greater crisis and consequence at various stages of Mason's development, Linklater shrewdly avoids overt twists and easy coming-of-age melodrama.

That he parallels--in screen time and seeming importance--theoretically major life moments with more mundane ones makes Boyhood feel more real than most Hollywood films, as it imparts that much of what forms us isn't always so obvious.

Playing Mason from about age 6 to 18, Coltrane is terrific, as is the entire cast. I think I may have liked Boyhood slightly less than the Polish masterpiece Ida, but it is an amazing accomplishment, clearly worth investing 2 hours & 45 minutes and by far the best new American narrative film I've seen this year.

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Chicago's Hall of Fame Duo
Frank Thomas and Greg Maddux

This Sunday, two of the very best baseball players to spend considerable portions of their careers in Chicago uniforms will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Frank Thomas--who spent 16 seasons with the White Sox, is the best hitter the team ever had and, in his prime, perhaps the best hitter I've ever seen--was a first-ballot selection, as was 355-game winner Greg Maddux, who began his career with the Cubs, won his first Cy Young Award here, returned late in his career (after going to Atlanta in 1993) and, at his best, may be the best pitcher I ever saw.

It's also rather notable that, playing through an era riddled by the use of steroids and other PEDs, the Big Hurt and the Mad Dog are presumed to have always played clean.

Certainly, it's too bad the Cubs foolishly let Maddux get away in his prime--he would win 3 more consecutive Cy Young's with the Braves--and at times Thomas mitigated his greatness with grating petulance, but this is a weekend to celebrate their legendary careers.

Chicago, and baseball fans everywhere, should be proud.

Also being inducted on Sunday are Maddux' fellow Braves' ace Tom Glavine, their manager Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, who managed the Yankees to four World Championships and Tony La Russa, who successfully managed the White Sox, A's and Cardinals.

It's a pretty classy group, and though I'm not a huge fan of La Russa's, not only does he add to the Chicago contingent, he was the manager of the first winning team I ever rooted for (the 1983 White Sox).

A tip of my caps to all, but especially Thomas and Maddux.

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Bring on the Blues at Glenview Public Library - featuring Donna Herula and Dave Ricks
Tuesday, July 22, 2014

I like the the unlikely, or perhaps more accurately, the unsuspected.

Having seen Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials there previously, I already knew of the Glenview Public Library as a venue that occasional presents live blues performances indoors, however atypically.

But if you had asked me to "pick out the blues singer" among everyone within the library Tuesday night, I likely would not have guessed it was Donna Herula.

And even after hearing an hour's worth of deep and early blues, covering the likes of Muddy Waters, Robert Nighthawk, Bessie Smith, Son House and others, with Herula singing and playing impressive guitar (including much slide guitar, on classic instruments dating back to 1935) accompanied at times by a harmonica player I believe is named Dave Ricks, I couldn't help think many co-workers at her daytime job--I was told she has one--were likely oblivious to this petite white woman being a such a terrific and decorated blues player (and clearly, a devoted historian).

Herula's performance was even more impressive considering that the program was originally scheduled to have her play on Wednesday in tandem with her husband, Tony Nardiello, but a mix-up in the library's promotion meant he was unavailable on Tuesday. We were told that Herula did a lot of shuffling just to show up for an auditorium mostly filled by seniors--who sang along quite enthusiastically--and even brought along Ricks.

I'm glad she made it, and that I--with my friend Ken in tow--did too.

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Gee's Bend - a play by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder
Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre, Evanston, IL - Thru July 27

Last month I wrote about seeing my first play presented by the Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre--Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years--despite the Evanston company now celebrating its 35th year.

I have now seen my second, Gee's Bend, which sheds light on a rather geographically-isolated Alabama community of the same name, in which descendents of slaves have become noted for their beautiful quilt making.

Far more than an explication on textiles, the 80-minute drama is a story about humanity, perseverance, grit and dignity revolving around four women (two are played by the same actress) and the husband of one of them.

Cat Davidson, Elana Elyce, Nicholia Q. Aguirre and Sean Blake all give strong performances under the direction of Tim Rhoze, and the set design includes a number of lovely quilts. The brief run of Gee's Bend ends this weekend with shows Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Tickets can be found here.

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Eataly - 43 E. Ohio, Chicago - Prime Rib Sandwich from Roticceria

This Italian food emporium created by chef Mario Batali opened its Chicago location with much fanfare late last fall.

I hadn't been compelled to Eataly's cacophony of restaurants, food stands and markets until my friend Paolo recently posted a photo of a Prime Rib Sandwich he had gotten from Roticceria (rotisserie) counter.

It looked terrific, and having stopped en route to a Millennium Park concerts, I can affirm that it is.

While I loved the sandwich, and subsequently a brioche with Nutella, the IKEAesque Eataly isn't somewhere I'm likely to frequent, even notwithstanding the not-so-convenient location and not-insubstantial cost (though $11.80 for the generous sandwich was actually rather reasonable).

There was a small standing-but-no-seating section near the 2nd floor rotisserie station, which had a few available side dishes (I opted for roasted potatoes) but no beverages. I wound up finding a table near a first floor coffee bar, then had to walk across the entire store to find an overpriced Italian cola (no Coke or Pepsi products were to be found anywhere). After finishing my sandwich, I wandered to the nearby Nutella stand only to have my half-full beverage cleared away. Though I was given another one, my entire dining experience--and the establishment itself--felt more pretentious than may natural preference.

But if anyone ever wants to bring me another Prime Rib Sandwich...

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Curt's Cafe - 2922 Central St., Evanston

Much more attuned to my sensibilities is this charming breakfast and lunch cafe amidst Central Street's western shopping strip.

Though the menu isn't vast, it's appealing. I had a wonderful breakfast menu concoction called The Berry Patch, which was a warm tortilla filled with strawberries, Nutella and toasted almonds. And a White Chocolate Apricot Scone. Yum!

But even better than the food at Curt's Cafe is the mission: "To equip at-risk youth (15 to 22 years old) with job and life skills through training, career coaching and mentoring."

It is a 501(c)3 non-profit that hires young people in hopes of helping them move forward from difficult pasts, rather similar to the aims of Youth Build Lake County, for whom I developed marketing messages and strategies through the Taproot Foundation last year.

I don't know how long Curt's Cafe has been where it is, but am glad I discovered it and look forward to going back. The interior is spacious and welcoming, with appealing art and photos lining the walls. Open Mon.-Fri. 7:30a-5:00p, Saturday 8:00a-4:00p, with food service until 3:00.

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Baby Boom or Bust!
Display at the South Shore Arts Gallery, Munster, IN

Last Sunday, I attended a world premiere production of The Beverly Hillbillies: The Musical--which I reviewed here--at Theatre at the Center in Munster.

This was pleasurable in itself, but my mom and I made a point of arriving early at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts because we've long-known the Munster venue to have appealing displays within its South Shore Arts Gallery. We also like the adjoining Gift Shop, which does some of the best and most unique product procurement I've come across, and thus is always fun to peruse.

We didn't buy anything, this time, but enjoyed the Baby Boom or Bust! display curated by John Cain. Featuring "Memorabilia from an Atomic Childhood," it had fun collectibles such as one might expect: Beatles, Howdy Doody, Flintstones, Casper the Friendly Ghost, etc., even a Beverly Hillbillies lunch box.

But along with some paint-by-numbers artwork, the walls were adorned by original oil paintings from Champaign-based artist Brian Sullivan that were vibrant and engaging through their mash-ups of iconic imagery celebrating the same era as the Baby Boomer memorabilia.

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Jose Abreu and Anthony Rizzo - The Two Most Powerful Men in Chicago

2014 will not go down as a great season for either the Cubs or White Sox, but history may reveal it to be a key turning point, in part because of the arrival of Jose Abreu and Anthony Rizzo--literally and figuratively, respectively.

The two slugging first-basemen are currently leading their leagues in home runs; 29 for the Cuban Abreu, who at age 27 is having a monster rookie season for the White Sox after being a star in his native country, and 25 for the 24-year-old Rizzo, who hit 23 all last season but has even more impressively improved his batting average and OPS.

It's possible that both stars may be the only (or one of few) position players remaining on their teams the next time either plays a postseason game.

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Final Say - a cover band seen in Lake Bluff, July 6
playing today in Lincolnwood at 5:30

A few Sundays ago, in search of a well-reviewed restaurant on Yelp that turned out to be more of a store, I wound up in downtown Lake Bluff.

I found somewhere else to eat, and--about to leave--noticed people setting up chairs on a patch of grass containing a gazebo.

Picking up on a free Sunday Night concert at part of the town's Bluffinia Concert Series--their answer to Ravinia--I pulled my sling chair out of my trunk and stuck around to hear a band called Final Say.

I found them to be rather enjoyable, with excellent male and female lead vocalists covering a nice array of new and old, rock, pop, R&B and more.

In looking up Final Say just now on Facebook, I noticed that they will be performing today at 5:30 at Lincolnwood Fest in Proesel Park. I'm likely to go, especially as they will be preceding the always-enjoyable Tributosaurus doing the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

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Grosse Point Lighthouse, Trail, Park and Beach - Evanston, IL

The lighthouse where Central Street hits Sheridan Road in Evanston (shown atop this post) has been familiar to me my whole life, but only yesterday did I take a thorough walk around it, noticing a wildflower nature trail leading to the beach behind it, in addition to a small sculpture display in front of the Evanston Art Center, with which I was already aware. 

The beach has a daily admission of $8.00, which wouldn't be bad on the right day, but I contented myself with doing some reading on a bench overlooking the lake in an adjoining park.

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Opera in Focus Puppet Opera
Rolling Meadows, IL

Last year I went to a puppet opera presented in a Rolling Meadows park district building by an entity known as Opera in Focus. On multiple levels, I found it to be phenomenal.

Tomorrow afternoon, with my mom and sister, I will be going again. 

The program will include artfully costumed, wooden rod-puppets performing to recordings of songs from Tosca and other operas, as well as The Wizard of Oz, West Side Story and The Sound of Music.

I expect it to be wonderful and recommend it  highly. For more details and tickets, click here.

The Beautiful Oeuvre of Catherine Deneuve

"Her beauty, then and now, is like a blow to the eyes."
-- Roger Ebert,
   writing about Catherine Deneuve in 2004

Talk about being slow on the uptake, late to the party and lost somewhere in Siberia.

But making up for it in a big way.

Until this past March, despite having heard her referenced as "the most beautiful woman in the world" likely dating back to 1983--around the time The Hunger was released--I had never watched a Catherine Deneuve movie.

Now, just 3 months later, I have seen 25.

I won't deny that, after watching The Umbrellas of Cherbourg--a delightful French musical from 1964 directed by Jacques Demy, which was Deneuve's first starring role--I realized why so many have been captivated by her beauty.

And I wanted to see more of it.

Certainly, extremely attractive women and men have adorned movie screens since they've existed, and we all have our favorites.

Some of mine include Paulette Goddard, Gene Tierney, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Connelly, Anne Hathaway, Kate Beckinsale and Aishwarya Rai, a Bollywood icon the esteemed Mr. Ebert described as "not only the first but also the second most beautiful woman in the world" in 2004.

Well, with due admiration to all of the above and many others, to this beholder no woman has ever been more attractively beguiling on-screen than Catherine Deneuve.

At her most elegant, she had a face that could have been sculpted by Canova.

But part of what made taking an addictively deep dive into her mostly French filmography--IMDB, All Movie--is that Deneuve, now 70, has never stopped being a movie star, or an icon, even as the exquisiteness of her appearance has aged and softened.

As the TCM bio of Catherine Deneuve says more eloquently than I could:

"By the late 1990s, she was well past the age when most American actresses would be virtually forced into retirement. Fortunately, for Deneuve, the French were more forgiving of women over 30 and she continued working at her usual productive pace. Still beautiful, yet no longer defined by her beauty, Deneuve was finally free to take on roles other than of the fantasy woman."

The 25 movies I watched were from 19 different years, with at least two from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s. So while my exploration was undeniably prompted by Deneuve's breathtaking beauty--most overt in her earlier films--I truly enjoyed most of the movies I saw from the 21st century, when Catherine was clearly less constricted by the acclamation of her appearance, and consequently more human in the characters she's played.

I didn't catch On My Way in its brief American release earlier this year, so will have to wait until it hits DVD in a few months. She seems to be the primary, above-the-title star in that one, but as with the latest film of hers I watched--2011's Beloved, in which she stars with her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni--Deneuve now more frequently appears within ensemble casts and gets less screen-time.

This is rather normal--even the great Meryl Streep plays the lead a lot less than she used to, and other than Helen Mirren and Judi Dench, I can't think of many actresses over 60 who regularly appear on film--but somewhat confuses my guide below, which is meant to recommend Catherine Deneuve movies more than simply movies with Catherine Deneuve in them.

According to IMDB, Deneuve has 119 credits as an actress, almost all in film excepting a Nip/Tuck episode in 2006. Though she has starred in a few English-speaking films, the vast majority have been in her native French.

So there are still a number of pictures I can still try to explore, but I think I've exhausted most of the ones that AllMovie.com rates most highly and/or that the Skokie Public Library owns, Netflix streams or Amazon rents for instant viewing.

While I would say less than a third of the 25 "Cinéma de Deneuve" selections are truly first-rate films, almost all were eminently watchable.

In large part, this is because her beauty is just that alluring--especially in her early films but even in the later ones, I noticed a palpable "Michael Jordan on-the-bench effect" that saw me become acutely less engaged whenever Catherine was offscreen--but she has always been a fine actress who has worked with stellar directors and co-stars.

In addition to substantively adding to my intake of French cinema, my gorging on the work of Deneuve also nicely expanded my cinematic vocabulary.

Although I had seen some of their work before, I became more familiar with directors like Luis Buñuel (Belle du Jour, Tristana), Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Donkey Skin), François Truffaut (Mississippi Mermaid, The Last Metro), Roman Polanski (Repulsion), Robert Aldrich (Hustle), André Téchiné (My Favorite Season, Les Voleurs (a.k.a. Thieves), The Girl on the Train), François Ozon (8 Women, Potiche) and Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark).

Through Catherine Deneuve, I am now cognizant (or more so) of legendary French actors like Yves Montand, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Michael Piccoli, Gerard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil and Philippe Noiret, the latter only previously familiar to me as an older man in the Italian classics Cinema Paradiso and Il Postino. And while Aldrich's 1975 L.A. film noir pic, Hustle, isn't outstanding, viewing it did provide me with a different perspective on Burt Reynolds.

But just sticking to Deneuve herself, my eyes were opened--and not just fixated.

By bouncing around her filmography without any prior familiarity, not only was I able to appreciate her longevity--there aren't many still active Hollywood or world cinema actors or actresses who have been movie stars for 50 years running; only Robert Duvall (often a supporting actor), Clint Eastwood (now primarily directing) and the Swedish Max von Sydow readily come to mind)--but I enjoyed noticing how her appearance and persona changed over the years.

Two cornerstone films were Truffaut's The Last Metro from 1980, which takes place in Nazi-occupied Paris, and 1992's Indochine, an epic directed by Régis Wargnier that enlightened me about French Indochina before the Vietnam War. Both these roles are considerably meatier than most of her earlier ones, and while still supernaturally gorgeous, there is a steeliness to her character and a stateliness in her elegance that marked her maturation as an actress, and a woman.

Although, thanks largely to the Chicago Film Discussion Meetup group in which I participate, I had previously feasted en masse on the films of a certain star, genre or director, never before had I done so to this extent nor so entirely uninitiated.

It's been a fun and fruitful investigation, well beyond merely looking--over and over--at a pretty face. And darn nice figure too, although typically embodying demure elegance, Deneuve was not nearly the erotic sexpot that may have once been promoted to draw art house audiences; she appears nude--very briefly--in just 3 of the 25 films I watched.

She is also a considerably better actress--and always was--than the porcelain dolls she was most famously made to portray. With more range than one might imagine, she consistently brought wit, wisdom and integrity to her roles. Even with subpar scripts that objectified her, she never appeared to be phoning it in; beyond just her looks, she is always a pleasure to watch. 

While I don't think I need to feel sheepish about appreciating--so long as not lewdly--the appearance of anyone, let alone an iconic actress, blessed with rarefied physical attractiveness (and the dedication obviously required to maintain it), observing the oeuvre of Catherine Deneuve has also enlightened me a bit on flip side of such beauty.

After her initial success in the buoyant-yet-poignant Umbrellas of Cherbourg, in which she shines like the mid-day sun, Deneuve was soon cast by Polanski in Repulsion (1965) and Buñuel in both Belle du Jour (1967) and Tristana (1970).

All three films are now considered classics or close to it, as well as among her most famous work, but in repeatedly embodying cold, remote, troubled and/or virginal young women, Deneuve became known as "the ice maiden." (reference article)

Each of these movies is cinematically stellar and isn't devoid of narrative rationale, but I can't help feel that they--and Polanski in particular--played, and preyed, upon Deneuve as a object of sexual desire to an overly voyeuristic, even misogynistic extent.

To wit, this comes from TCM's capsule on Repulsion:

"Polanski also had specific ideas about the kind of costuming he wanted, specifically as a way of sexualizing this otherwise meek and repressed-looking character. Though he'd originally wanted Deneuve to be completely nude under the nightgown she wears in the film, he settled on putting her in a body stocking. He did persuade her, however, to pose nude for Playboy as a way of promoting the film. Deneuve bitterly regretted doing so. "It was a terrible mistake," she has said. "I'd never do anything like it again.""

This information, and Repulsion itself--though ostensibly a rather divergent horror movie featuring a female protagonist--makes me not so shocked by Polanski's later troubles (in 1977 he was arrested for raping a 13-year-old girl, after which he left the U.S. and has never returned).

I don't think Ms. Deneuve needs me to defend her virtue, but it's not hard to imagine something demeaning about a recurrence of roles--mostly early ones--in which Deneuve plays either a wife or girlfriend who engages in sextracurricular escapades (Belle du Jour, La Vie de Chateau, The April Fools, Manon 70, The Last Metro, Beloved) or a prostitute or otherwise unscrupulous hussy (Hustle, Mississippi Mermaid, La Sauvage).   

(Stated simply as fact, in real-life Deneuve had children by two high-profile romantic partners, French director Roger Vadim and Italian actor Marcelo Mastroianni, to whom she was never married; she was also wed to British photographer David Bailey (the inspiration for Blow-Up) for 7 years.)

Even in the best of her recent starring roles, in the delightful Potiche (2010), she plays a long-subordinated trophy wife who only exerts her intelligence, business savvy and backbone when her husband is forced to abdicate  leadership of the company her father had founded.

Even aside from the characters she's been employed to portray, there are lessons to be learned from Catherine Deneuve about the burdens of beauty that many of us--at least of the male and/or non-goddess persuasion--may scoff at or never consider.

Alternate English title of Le Sauvage

Sure, it may not seem so terrible to be called--or to call someone--"The Most Beautiful Woman in the World," or even a compliment not quite so exalted, but imagine the pressure of trying to live up to or rationalize such praise.

Not only does such acclamation bring considerable lechery, evaluation, comparison and dissenting opinion, but God forbid one gets a zit, puts on a couple pounds or--as Deneuve has, completely still in the public eye, at least in France--matures with age.

Consider this paragraph in a Newsweek cover story from 1968, when Deneuve was just 24, already a huge star in France but raising her American profile considerably with her first Hollywood movie, The April Fools (co-starring Jack Lemmon): 

"Perhaps because she feels her reputation rests on her beauty, Deneuve is particularly insecure and unsure of her looks. "I read in a magazine that I was the most beautiful girl in the world, but I did not put the magazine down and believe it." In moments of doubt she will say: I have very skinny thighs and a very skinny face, but I am not that thin. Or she will lament: "There are so many pretty girls around, I really worry about this. I think 'How long can it last? It can't go on.' In public, she will shift seats in a dimly lit restaurant to conceal a small blemish on her skin."

By the time of this 1973 interview with People magazine, when she was 30, Deneuve had seemingly become a bit more accepting of the adulation, but not all that comfortable with the seeming advantages that accompanied an appearance such as hers. In her words: 

"All the doors automatically open for a beautiful woman. I know it's very fashionable for good-looking ladies to say how hard it is to be beautiful, but that's not true, there are times when it depresses and bothers me to see just how easy things are made for a beautiful woman. I am much more conscious of it now that I'm 30 than I was when I was younger. When I'm in a rush, or when I have a problem, people react differently for me. As I say, the doors open, there seem to be no limits—it's unbelievable. It's really the great injustice in the life of a woman, all this because nature has been kinder to one than to another."

Knowing next-to-nothing but Catherine Deneuve's name until 90 days ago, I have no awareness of her public persona, how she's lived her life or any gossip that may have surrounded her over the years.

But given the number of screen beauties who have suffered or succumbed, perhaps in part due to the pressures that accompanied the demands of glamor and/or the repercussions of faded glory--Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, Gene Tierney, Rita Hayworth, Jayne Mansfield, Veronica Lake, Jean Seberg, Natalie Wood and Elizabeth Taylor come to mind, though not all are fully congruent--it is especially impressive that Deneuve is still working steadily as she has for over 50 years, and seemingly has aged gracefully both on-screen and off.

Wikipedia does not make for an in depth biography, but along with her extensive filmography, the citing of Deneuve's charitable and political involvement is what's most notable.

The most tragic event in Deneuve's life of which I'm aware--the 1967 death of her sister, Françoise Dorléac, in a single-car accident shortly after the two starred (along with Gene Kelly) in Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort--served to add poignancy in watching the otherwise average Après Lui from 2007, in which Deneuve plays a mother trying to come to grips with the death of her son in a car accident.

While watching, at times, five Catherine Deneuve movies over a weekend, could be an oh so arduous task, not only was devouring a good portion of her beautiful oeuvre eye-opening and pleasurable, it was rather informative and fascinating in myriad ways.

And "the most iconic European actress walking this planet" doesn't seem to be stepping away from the camera anytime soon. Just since I started writing this article two days ago, it was announced that Deneuve has signed on to star in an as-yet-untitled new film, on the heels of appearing at the Cannes Film Festival with the premiere of another André Téchiné film, In the Name of My Daughter. 

So it seems I have much to look forward to, and--with your recommendations quite welcome--more at which to look backward.

But based on what I've seen of a really fine body of work--pun intended but true in both entendres--I am happy to provide you with:

SethSaith's Guide to the Films of Catherine Deneuve

(Please note: Below I will use movie titles and years of release to match Catherine Deneuve's filmography on AllMovie.com, typically utilizing or also noting English titles, but not exclusively. Her IMDB filmography is another helpful point of reference. Both sites, and Wikipedia, have good movie summaries, so I won't provide much description here.

The movie ratings are mine and based on a @@@@@ scale, similar to AllMovie. I am rating each film based on its overall quality, not its merit as a showcase for Deneuve. Because I factor both aspects into these recommendations, the films are not necessary ranked by rating.)

The Five Best to Behold First

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) - @@@@@
Belle du Jour (1967) - @@@@@
The Last Metro (1980) - @@@@1/2
Indochine (1992) - @@@@1/2
Potiche (2010) - @@@@1/2

Further Your Exploration and Appreciation

The April Fools (1969) - @@@1/2
Hustle (1975) - @@@1/2
(The above two films aren't fantastic, but quite worthwhile for how Deneuve acclimates to Hollywood movies.)
Tristana (1970) - @@@@1/2
Repulsion (1965) - @@@@1/2
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) - @@@1/2
La Vie de Chateau (A Matter of Resistance) (1965) - @@@@

Mainly Because She's Simply Stunning

Le Sauvage (1975) - @@@1/2
Manon 70 (1968) - @@@ 
Mississippi Mermaid (1969) - @@@1/2 (She bares her breasts in this one, prompting a driver to slam into a tree)
La Chamade (Heartbeat) (1968) - @@@
Donkey Skin (1970) - @@@

Pretty Good Films but She Isn't the Lead Actress

Dancer in the Dark (2000) - @@@@
The Girl on the RER (The Girl on the Train) (2003) - @@@1/2
8 Women (2002) - @@@1/2
A Talking Picture (2003) - @@@1/2

Decent Enough for the Deeply Devoted

My Favorite Season (1993) - @@@1/2
Les Voleurs (Thieves) (1996) - @@@
Après Lui (2007) - @@@
Beloved (2010) - @@1/2

With Apologies to David Bowie, Deneuve's Sex Scene with Susan Sarandon is the Only Real Attraction

The Hunger (1983) - @@

The Socio-Cinematic 70s: When the Movies Had Something to Say

On the last Sunday of each month--or occasionally the one before, in case of conflicting holidays and Philadelphia Eagles games (whose fans take over the same bar)--the Chicago Film Discussion Meetup Group gathers to discuss a given monthly topic. 

Over the past 4-5 years, I have gotten to as many of these Lunch Meetups as I could--there are also meetups at film screenings--and have enjoyed discussing and learning about certain directors (Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, etc.), Genres such as War Movies, Comedies and Documentaries and the cinema of Italy, France and Japan, among other countries.

Although we have previously discussed "Films of the 80s," it is rare for the conversation to focus on a certain decade.

But at my suggestion, "The Seventies" will be the topic of the next Film Discussion Lunch on Sunday, March 30. (All are welcome but Meetup.com & group registration and an RSVP are preferred.)

Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend.

Although what I hear at the meetups is always more substantive than what I share--and knowing the 30th wouldn't be conducive I haven't been devouring films of the 70s of late--I have given the topic some thought and thus am writing this post.

I feel somewhat sheepish to share my favorite film of the 1970s, but feel compelled, as I would asked to do so at the meetup by means of introduction to other attendees.

Without arguing that it is the best film of the 70s, nor even of 1976--the year it won the Best Picture Oscar--my favorite movie made and released between 1970 and 1979 is:

(Fanfare please...)

Rocky.

Yes, I know most critics and serious film fans--at least of the male persuasion--would likely cite The Godfather or The Godfather Part II, or Taxi Driver or Apocalypse Now or Clockwork Orange or even Star Wars.

But perhaps due to it being one of the first movies I acutely recall seeing, with its tale of a plucky down-and-out boxer being dear to my 7-year-old heart and its Rocky-like melodrama lacking the syrup that would increasingly coat its sequels and imitators, I just like Sylvester Stallone's underdog opus more than any other movie of its decade.

Even if it isn't a prime example of what I most like about "Movies of the 1970s" on a macro level. 

As with any Film Discussion Lunch topic, group moderator Brad Strauss has compiled a "Suggested Viewing" list of noteworthy films from the Seventies. (Though beneficial, it is not imperative that you watch any or all of these before attending; you are more than welcome to regale with your love of The Bad News Bears.)

Included with Rocky, The Godfather, Star Wars and Apocalypse Now on Brad's list are such films as M*A*S*H, Patton, Blazing Saddles, Taxi Driver, Saturday Night Fever and Three Days of the Condor.

Obviously, Brad couldn't readily name every great, important or influential movie of the decade in the space allotted (though he likely could otherwise). But a few that I would add are Catch-22, A Clockwork Orange, Serpico, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, All the President's Men, Network, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter and Kramer vs. Kramer.

Now, look back at the 20 movies cited in the last two paragraphs. What commonalities exist between most or all of them?

While this is obviously subjective, most if not all would be considered high-quality movies. Seven won the Best Picture Oscar and nearly all were nominated.

Most revolve around an iconoclastic and/or anti-establishment (or anti-authoritarian) character (or two).

Several overtly, surreptitiously or metaphorically question and even battle governmental entities or "the establishment."

Many address substantive topics: war, corruption, crime, greed, mental instability, divorce, etc.

And, perhaps most surprisingly, all 20 movies were among the box office leaders of their given years. Most ranked among the top 10, with Network the lowest at #21 in 1976.

For comparison's sake, take a look at the Top Grossing Movies of 2013. Even with nine Best Picture Academy Award Nominees (instead of five, formerly), only two--Gravity at #6 and American Hustle at #17--wound up among the 25 top U.S. box office draws.

Without seeing all of these, I imagine the numerous superhero or similar films--Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, etc.--have a slight anti-authoritarian or underdog bent, but I doubt many would argue that any of 2013's top-grossing movies offer congruent thematic heft when compared to the aforementioned films from the 70s.

Now certainly, the decade of the 1970s in general, and any given year in particular, had its share of "popcorn movies" that may have been entertaining--and even among the top box office hits--but didn't offer much social consciousness or historical resonance.

Still, I would argue that films like Love Story, The Longest Yard, Smokey and the Bandit, Every Which Way But Loose, Halloween, Animal House, The Goodbye Girl, Silver Streak, Slap Shot, Grease, Heaven Can Wait and the aforementioned Bad News Bears have a certain amount of anti-authoritarian verve and/or artistic merit not all that present in mainstream movies today.

And other films that can be cited among the decade's biggest and best--Airport, The French Connection, Dirty Harry, The Poseidon Adventure, Cabaret, Young Frankenstein, American Graffiti, The Sting, The Conversation, Chinatown, Jaws, Nashville, Shampoo, Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 10, Alien, Manhattan--offer not only impressive qualitative depth, but substantial social commentary especially if one looks beneath the surface (i.e. at the subtext).

But before this becomes misconstrued--though not inaccurately--as yet another article about me loving the past, artistically speaking, a whole lot more than the present, indulge me another favor:

Look at the U.S. top grossing films of any year from the 1980s. (You can do so easily here; for the 1970s you'll have to search "19__ in Film" on Wikipedia.)

Though there are a few successful comedies with a mild anti-establishment strain--often thanks to the late, great Harold Ramis--year-after-year, you'll see almost no movies in the Top 20 that offer acute or even subtextually substantive social commentary about contemporary times.

Even most of the high-brow, decorated and/or "socially important" movies of the 80s--Chariots of Fire, Reds, Gandhi, Amadeus, The Right Stuff, Out of Africa, The Color Purple, Mississippi Burning--were historical in nature, with even Vietnam films like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket set about 20 years prior to their release.

In other words, even just by 1980 when The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, 9-to-5, Private Benjamin and The Shining were about as iconoclastic as popular American cinema got, the type of creative and/or rebellious verve that begat Network, The Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver, etc., etc., was largely erased from Hollywood, or at least not embraced by mass audiences.

(For those wondering, Martin Scorsese's brilliant Raging Bull was #27 in 1980 box office and Goodfellas #26 in 1990; his Taxi Driver was #17 in 1976.)

Before I broach on why socially commentative cinema flourished in the 1970s, let me note that I am not suggesting that it had not existed prior (even keeping this to domestic filmmaking), or that it has completely disappeared since. 

Just in the last few days, I've watched Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941) and have noted an anti-establishment strain--or at least, anti-bullshit, which seems to go hand-in-hand--far ballsier than you're apt to find in today's cineplexes.

Similarly "populist" directors like Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times, The Great Dictator) and Billy Wilder (The Lost Weekend, Ace in the Hole, Stalag 17, The Apartment) weren't afraid to use their art to decry societal ills, highlight hypocrisy and/or focus on weighty subjects.

Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) took on the most powerful man in journalism--William Randolph Hearst--and Stanley Kubrick (Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove) pointed out the evils of military meglomania amidst the Cold War.

While the truth that Do the Right Thing ranked #43 in 1989 box office, The Insider #69 in 1999, The Hurt Locker #116 in 2009 and The Social Network #32 in 2010 actually supports the notion that even when movies about modern, often troubling, realities are made and widely distributed, they aren't all that popular, I know that even if their films go straight-to-Netflix, there are still directors willing to say something with their work. (Look to the oeuvres of Ramin Bahrani and the Dardenne Brothers, who both provoke deep thought with films of deceptive intimacy.)

But this does suggest that the answer as to why socially conscious films have largely evaporated from the American zeitgeist is, same as the answer to nearly all questions...

Money.

And this is not incorrect. The almighty dollar goes a long way to explaining why so many gritty films sprang up in the Seventies, and why they largely evaporated.

But perhaps not entirely.

(Note: The following is largely supposition supported by brief internet research; it is not stated as fact or even scholarly intelligence.)

Around 1966, Hollywood was in a doldrums. Though I can't find Yearly Box Office totals dating back that far, the two highest grossing movies in the U.S. in 1966 (per Wikipedia) were two I had never heard of until looking it up.

The Bible: In the Beginning and Hawaii each grossed under $35 million in 1966. By comparison, two films--The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago--had tallied well over $100 million each in 1965,

With the Baby Boomers coming of age, suburban cineplexes starting to spring up and a distinct youth culture mushrooming in the wake of the Beatles, movie audiences were starting to skew forever younger.

Given its disastrous results of 1966, the movie "business" recognized the need to reach younger audiences. Not incidentally, foreign films with fresher styles and subject matter were beginning to gain popularity in America, notably among increasingly disaffected youth.

I don't know if the production of Mike Nichols' The Graduate--a film about a college graduate facing uncertainty--was a direct result of this or if its 1967-topping $105 million gross merely propelled what was to come, but the age of New Hollywood was ushered in.

Check out the Wikipedia entry on New Hollywood for a more in-depth introduction, but essentially young directors with new ideas were not only given the opportunity to make movies, but largely allowed creative control to make films the way they wanted.

Dubbed the Film School Generation as many of the directors who would make their mark--including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg George Lucas and many more--were recent graduates of NYU, USC, UCLA and other collegiate film programs, these young filmmakers were well-versed in the movies that had come out of France, Italy, Japan and Sweden.

Concurrent with the rise of sentiment, and outright protest, against the Vietnam War--and consequentially, the U.S. government--New Hollywood adapted the celebration of the anti-hero (as seen in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless), realistic takes on modern life, often with a critical eye and non-narrative arc (Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Antonioni's early 60s trilogy), questions of morality (Kurosawa's Rashomon and High and Low, much by Ingmar Bergman) and contemplations on the effects of war (Japan's The Burmese Harp, Russia's Ballad of a Soldier), among other themes, tones and techniques of world cinema. 

Initially, it seems, New Hollywood created films that celebrated the outlaw (Bonnie and Clyde--which actually predated The Graduate by a few months--and Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid); Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns were both examples and influences. 

With Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider in 1969, outcasts and misfits became commonplace in American cinemas, and with much more subversion than Stalag 17 or Paths of Glory had done, 1970's M*A*S*H and Catch-22 dared to ridicule the inanity of war while the United States was in the midst of an unpopular one. 

From there, you had films that focused on gangsters, whether the corporate-type in Coppola's Godfather films or more street-level such as in Scorsese's Mean Streets. (And due to advances that made film cameras more portable, it became easier to capture realistic "street-level" happenings on location rather than within a Hollywood soundstage.)

Though set in slightly earlier times, The Last Picture Show and American Graffiti referenced the confusion faced by kids leaving the high school cocoon, while films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Taxi Driver graduated disillusionment into adulthood.

Observations of disaffected blue collar youth would continue through the decade with films such as Saturday Night Fever and Breaking Away, while "blaxploitation" movies like Shaft, Super Fly and Foxy Brown brought hip African-American protagonists to the fore for the first time, often in stark contrast to bumbling whites in positions of power.

It isn't hard to see how Vietnam and a distrust of authority--exacerbated by Watergate and Nixon's resignation--was woven into the fabric of most substantive 70s, to varying degrees of acuity.

Rocky celebrated the underdog battling patriotic puffery, Star Wars chronicled rebellious renegades facing off against an evil demigod, Animal House trashed the staid--and judgmental--status quo.

More directly, movies like Three Days of the Condor and The Conversation pointed out that real-life spies weren't all valiant playboys like James Bond, All The President's Men turned Watergate's web into a Shakespearean parable on the abuse of power, and The Deer Hunter and Coming Home brutally showed how devastating Vietnam was, to individuals and communities. 

Empowered by the movies of the Film School Generation, a veteran director like Sidney Lumet--who had shown his embrace of weighty topics with 12 Angry Men and The Pawnbroker--repeatedly took aim at the power structure in America with 70s' classics like Serpico (about a whistle-blowing cop), Dog Day Afternoon (which turned a bank robber trying to pay for his lover's sex change operation into a moral crusader and public hero) and Network, whose pushed-out anchorman Howard Beale was "mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore!" as seen in the clip atop this post. 

Supported also by such strident sitcoms as M*A*S*H and All in the Family, it seems clear that the 70s were a time when Hollywood was trying to say something. 

So why did it shut up?

As with anything, a variety of factors seem to converge, but certainly money is a big one. 

Jaws and Star Wars were such huge blockbusters that they clued Hollywood into how much money could be made targeting big-budget movies primarily towards teenagers.

And as Brad points out, "a series of high profile flops in the early 80s caused producers to wrest Hollywood’s center of gravity back to themselves and away from those pesky auteur directors. The most notorious being Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, but also Robert Altman’s Popeye and Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart."

With Godfather Part II but even more so Rocky II and The Empire Strikes Back, sequels became a way to safeguard big-budget investments by assuring built-in audiences.

Though some of this evolved over time, the studios soon came to realize even more millions could be captured through the emerging home video market, ancillary revenues from action figures and Happy Meal toys, etc., and international moviegoers.

Movies with flashy special effects, little dialogue and brand-name characters were not only easier to sell to American teenagers, but to non-English speaking audiences and burger chains eager for promotional tie-ins.

Thus, blockbusters and especially franchises--sequelized series based on superheroes or other known characters--propagated across the cineplexes in the 1980s and ever since.

Still, as the Vietnam War faded into the rearview mirror for those not directly devastated, I wonder if the events such as Iranian hostage crisis, the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics due to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the election of populist actor Ronald Reagan as President and the attempt made on his life (by a guy smitten with Taxi Driver) put the kibbosh on movies that challenged the American political power structure.

What I'm not sure about is whether America stopped wanting such strident movies or Hollywood simply stopped making them.

My movie buff friend Dave--also a member of the Meetup group--is undoubtedly right when he suggests that the movies made in the 70s were a reflection of the tenor of the country, and for whatever number of reasons the tenor changed with the rise of Reaganomics.

With similar acuity, David Mamet argued in his brilliant 1988 play Speed-the-Plow that Hollywood--always a moneymaking machine--cannot be much blamed for giving the people what they want.

Even--or especially--as the cost of a movie ticket has soared, Americans (at least the dominant ticket buying young) have repeatedly voted for superheroes, quasi-superheroes and re-booted superheroes rather than intelligent thought-provoking movies with great acting.

In the Seventies, American movies were populated by many outstanding actors and actresses, or at least ones with the charisma to ensnare the public.

These included Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Walter Matthau, Warren Beatty, Richard Dreyfuss, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Jane Clayburgh, Diane Keaton, Ali MacGraw, Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine and others, most in the prime of their careers and under 45 years of age.

Nowadays, I doubt most could name even five actors or actresses of similar stature under the age of 45.

Sure, Christian Bale is a great actor, I like Ryan Gosling quite a bit and Jennifer Lawrence has shown both talent and a bit of box office punch, but in general, movie stars are much less important than the franchises themselves.

Heck, how many different actors have played Superman,  Spiderman and the Hulk in just the last 12 years, let alone Batman over the past 25?

All the more reason to miss Philip Seymour Hoffman. At least he had the kind of presence that once stamped "the movies" with a steely-eyed sense of intelligence.

For while I really have meant this piece as a celebration of the socio-cinematic Seventies rather than just another denigration of modern Hollywood, what chagrins me is that the world really could use a voice like Howard Beale's (as embodied by Peter Finch).

With the amount of war, terrorism, corruption, Wall Street malfeasance, unemployment, injustice, environmental devastation and all else that has taken place during this millennium, where are the movies that examine the issues, condemn the culprits and explore the consequences?

And don't tell me to search for them on Netflix or check-out documentaries from the library.

As I have blathered on about, many highly popular mainstream American movies of the 1970s had something to say.

But now "the movies" have almost completely been muted.

As, by now, should I. 

Hopefully, I'd have left a few minutes for someone else at the Meetup to talk.

Witness for the Ace in the Apartment on Sunset Boulevard: Exploring the Socially-Conscious Cinematic Legacy of Billy Wilder

According to AllMovie.com--which I'm not purporting to be the gospel when it comes to movie ratings, but a pretty fair barometer--15 films directed by Billy Wilder merit 4 or more stars on a 5-star scale (11 of these movies are given 4-1/2 or 5 stars).

Of these 15 films, I have now seen 13, all newly or most recently within the past few years, several within the past few weeks or months.

The only two of these lauded works that I have not yet seen are 1948's A Foreign Affair--only recently released on DVD and not yet within my library system--and 1970's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. (1961's One, Two, Three has also been personally recommended.)

I will give a rundown of the Billy Wilder-directed movies I have seen, and while this will be far from a scholarly treatise, I will try to enunciate why I believe that in terms of entertainment, quality, breadth and socially commentative substance, Wilder's filmography ranks among cinema's all-time best.

And this won't even encompass a number of movies Wilder wrote but didn't direct.

While I respect some movie buff friends who aren't nearly as high on Wilder's oeuvre, or perhaps specific films, in my purview Billy Wilder certainly qualifies as one of the greatest movie directors of all-time.

I won't necessarily champion him above other filmmaking immortals such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino and others, but I do suggest that for anyone who wishes to explore old, arguably classic movies, there is likely no better crash course than to delve into the best of Billy Wilder's directorial output, as I have.

This isn't merely because of the quality of his films, though I'd agree with AllMovie.com that many are absolutely terrific.

It's because of the breadth of the genres he traversed, and the often daring approach he took to subject matter and societal commentary, something I find sorely lacking in most of today's mainstream Hollywood movies.

I've yet to dig into the Wilder biography I recently got (On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder), but I can't help but presume that much of his cinematic verve derived from the circumstances that brought him to Hollywood.

According to Wikipedia, Wilder grew up in Austria and later moved to Berlin, where he eventually began working as a screenwriter. Wilder, who was Jewish, left Germany for Paris in the early 1930's and came to Hollywood in 1933. His mother and stepfather would die in concentration camps, while a grandmother perished within a Jewish ghetto.

Although I have not seen it, it appears that his greatest screenwriting-only success came with 1939's Ninotchka, a comedy starring Greta Garbo directed by Ernst Lubitsch. 

On all of the other movies I will cite as having seen and enjoyed, Billy Wilder served as director and co-screenwriter, and in some cases, a producer as well.

1942's The Major and the Minor was technically Wilder's second directorial effort--after Mauvaise Graine, which he didn't write and shot in France in 1934--but his first major Hollywood movie behind the camera after a series of screenwriting efforts. He was championed as director by the film's star Ginger Rogers, who shared the same agent and recently had won an Academy Award for Kitty Foyle.

Co-written with Charles Brackett--who would also collaborate with Wilder on The Lost Weekend, A Foreign Affair and Sunset Boulevard--and also starring Ray Milland, The Major and the Minor is a frothy comedy-romance on which Wilder cut his directing teeth.

The storyline is a tad unsettling as Rogers plays a New York beauty who decides to return to her Iowa hometown, and in order to afford the train fare, poses as a girl under the age of 12. She meets Milland on the train, hides in his sleeping car (with his consent), accompanies him to the military academy at which he teaches, meets his fiance and is courted by a bunch of young cadets, with seemingly no one suspecting anything despite Rogers being over 30 in real life.

AllMovie.com rates the film 4 stars, but while it has its moments, I consider it 'minor' among Wilder's major works. It isn't terrible, but there's likely no need to make a point of seeing it.

The same cannot be said for 1944's Double Indemnity, one of the best examples of film noir ever made. I won't describe much of the plot, since each twist is part of the fun, but Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck get entangled in a unique insurance scheme, which raises the suspicions of the great Edward G. Robinson.

Again, while surely some may disagree, what makes Wilder career so remarkable is that in addition to making one of the preeminent film noir classics, you can also argue that he made one of the best comedies (Some Like It Hot) and courtroom dramas (Witness for the Prosecution), as well as one of the best films about alcoholism (The Lost Weekend), Hollywood (Sunset Boulevard), journalism/media hype (Ace in the Hole), prisoners of war (Stalag 17) and two of the best about adultery (The Seven Year Itch and The Apartment).

The range and versatility to make vastly different films while retaining quality is not only what makes his canon a great starting point in exploring old movies, but what makes Billy Wilder somewhat analogous to The Beatles, Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright and Stephen Sondheim as an artist whose talent transcended style/genre and whose brilliance is, in part, defined by the ability to transmogrify so impressively.

It also seems to me that Wilder's films were a bit ahead of their time in terms of their tone and themes. I should also note that, especially compared to many old black & white films, every Wilder movie I watched was acutely and smoothly entertaining. Many may have a hardened edge to them, but they are all easily digestible.

1945's The Lost Weekend deservedly won four Oscars (Best Picture, director, adapted screenplay and actor) as Ray Milland is outstanding as an unrepentant alcoholic, despite the valiant efforts of his wife (Jane Wyman) and brother (Phillip Terry).

Its look at the tenuous hold of reformation is particularly gripping, and still entirely relevant.

1950's Sunset Boulevard was nominated for 11 Oscars but won just 3--in writing, music and art direction. Yet the story of washed-up Hollywood starlet Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her live-in scribe/obsession Joe Gillis (William Holden) is likely regarded as Wilder's greatest critical success. In both of the American Film Institute's (AFI) lists of the 100 best American movies, Sunset Boulevard--which can be considered a film noir classic as well as one of the best movies ever made about movies--ranked among the top 16.

I had scant awareness of 1951's Ace in the Hole until I saw it a few months ago, but was amazed at how prescient--and still acute--it is in depicting how a media frenzy can fuel, well a media (and perhaps secondarily, public) frenzy.

Kirk Douglas is terrific as a disgraced New York reporter who winds up having to beg for a job at an Albuquerque newspaper. His coverage of a man trapped in a collapsed cave brings tourists out in hordes, and with it plenty of questions about journalistic ethics and humanistic morality.

Perhaps due to its cynicism, Ace in the Hole was a critical and commercial flop upon its release, but I give it @@@@@, which is even a half-star more than its AllMovie rating.

1953's Stalag 17 is just as good. A precursor to Hogan's Heroes and conceivably M*A*S*H, the film deals with American airmen holed up in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp (a.k.a. stalag). William Holden won the Best Actor Oscar for his role, but a strong ensemble cast makes the film--part comedy, part war movie, part suspense thriller--truly outstanding.

Coming after Sunset, Ace and Stalag, the romantic comedies (or some combination thereof) Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Love in the Afternoon (1957) and Some Like It Hot (1959) are all lighter fare, but each has its charms including Audrey Hepburn (in Sabrina and Love in the Afternoon) and Marilyn Monroe in the other two.

With its love triangle between Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, Sabrina makes great use of all three of its stars, and while Audrey's pairing with Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon isn't nearly as delectable, she's fun to watch, as is Maurice Chevalier as her father, a private detective investigating inveterate playboy Cooper, with whom the virginal Hepburn becomes quite smitten.

Including perhaps the most famous 'posterized' frame of film in movie history, The Seven Year Itch features Monroe at her most fetching, as she coyly titillates the clueless Tom Ewell while his wife is away. 

Though not nearly as strident in its exploration of adultery as 1960's The Apartment would be, Seven Year Itch nonetheless tackles a topic that likely was largely taboo in 1955 America.

I also have to imagine that the conceit behind Some Like It Hot--with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressing in drag to travel to Florida with a group of female musicians, including Monroe--was considerably more shocking in 1959 than it feels today, but I can't concur with AFI's ranking of it as the funniest film of all-time.

Still, it seems to stand as Billy Wilder's most famous film, and shouldn't be missed in any exploration of his (or Marilyn's) best work, or even a rather modest survey of classic comedies.

Amidst the Audrey/Marilyn pictures came a wonderful courtroom thriller: 1957's Witness for the Prosecution, starring Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich with a wonderful supporting turn by Charles Laughton. AFI ranks Witness as the 6th best courtroom drama ever made in the U.S., and while I best leave the plot entirely out of evidence, my verdict is that you shouldn't miss this one.

Nor, for that matter, The Apartment, in which Jack Lemmon stars as a bachelor who rises in his company due to letting executives use his convenient flat for extramarital trysts, while an attractive young Shirley MacLaine demonstrates a bit more temerity than one might expect from a woman in her position in 1960. The societal commentary is rather biting in The Apartment, which won Best Picture and earned Wilder his second Best Director Oscar (out of 8 nominations).

I've yet to see One, Two, Three (1961), Irma la Douce (1963) or Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), all rated 3-1/2 stars by AllMovie.com, but liked 1966's 4-star The Fortune Cookie more than I might have expected.

Two years before The Odd Couple, Fortune Cookie was the first film pairing of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, who would go on to star in nine more movies together. Lemmon is a football cameraman who gets run over by a member of the Cleveland Browns, played by Ron Rich. Though not seriously injured, Lemmon is convinced by his brother-in-law (a deliciously unscrupulous Matthau) to act as though he is, in order to cash in on a lawsuit. While I lack any real knowledge of the American legal system of the mid-60s, Fortune Cookie plays like a treatise on tort reform, likely well before it became a buzzword.

As I mentioned many paragraphs ago, I have not yet seen the last of AllMovie.com's 4+ star rated Wilder directorial efforts, 1970's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, nor 1948's A Foreign Affair.

So there is still something for me to explore, as well as much to re-explore in years to come. I am grateful for easy access to most of Billy Wilder's films through the excellent Skokie Public Library, but it shouldn't be hard for anyone to find many of his classics.

When you do, you might be surprised to find that a director who, 11 years after his death at age 95, may best be remembered for his comedies, delved deep--and with unstinting sagacity--into issues like alcoholism, adultery, faded glory, media hype, wartime captivity and more.

If you ever want to scour old movies that may tell you more about the present day than most current films, you could do a lot worse than to work your way through the remarkable oeuvre of Billy Wilder.

While you likely won't be equally wild about each of his films, you may end up considerably wilder about motion pictures in general, and the way they once--and should still--pointedly reflected the world of those who watched them.