Trouble in Paradise
(Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
Trouble in Paradise was not the first romantic comedy I fell in love with - that would probably be His Girl Friday, which to this day remains the pinnacle of Hollywood sophistication for me. And I have a special place in my heart for some more recent stellar entries in the genre, most notably Groundhog Day and The American President. But the first time I saw Trouble in Paradise I knew there was never going to be a romantic comedy that surpassed it for me. The dialog sparkles like it does in no other film, the characters are wicked but lovely, sophisticated and dirty. Lubitsch was at his best from the opening scene of a garbage man in Venice to the final reveal in the cab shuffling off to Happily Ever After. Perfection.
Here's what I wrote for my Criterion blog about my favorite romantic comedy of all time.
Vertigo
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
It's nice to have a stock answer to a handful of questions in life, and one of those is "What's your favorite movie?" It's a bit arbitrary, but right now and for the last ten years or so my answer has been Vertigo. There are a lot of reasons for this - both personal and analytical - but two stick out. The first is that I have an intensely vivid memory of first seeing the film in its restored re-release in West LA in 1996 (I was lucky enough to see it again later that year at the Castro theater in San Francisco where it belongs - I've seen it four more times in theaters and try to go whenever I can). The experience of watching Vertigo for the first time is everything I look for in the movies. Hitchcock opens with a quick out-of-context chase before slowly building up the main story of the film. When the rug pull happens halfway through the movie, it's hard if not impossible to imagine where the film will go. The viewer had assumed the movie was about Stewart's attempts to save Novak from the clutch of fate, the never ending cycle of violence and injustice, but soon it becomes clear that we were all horribly wrong, and the second half of the movie is perhaps one of the most disturbing and yet invigorating acts in all of cinema. Which leads to my second reason for loving Vertigo so much: the undeniable truths of creating film contained within its terrifying central theme of obsession. Like all the best movies ever made, Vertigo is about itself as much as it is about its protagonist.
Dr. Strangelove
(Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Little shit that I was, I wrote my college essay about my love for Dr. Strangelove. I'm not sure why I thought that would ingratiate me to anyone looking for young minds to shape, but I guess I figured I didn't want to go anywhere where people still had even a little bit of hope for humanity. Dr. Strangelove isn't Kubrick's darkest movie (that would be Eyes Wide Shut) or even his best (that would be Paths of Glory, which just as easily could have made this list), but it is his funniest, and the best representation of Peter Sellers's genius. Kubrick earns extra points from me for being able to make a movie that is almost entirely irrelevant now in terms of specifics and yet far too relevant in terms of politics and human nature in general. I also own an original copy of this poster, and it's pretty cool.
Manhattan
(Woody Allen, 1979)
Manhattan was the first movie I ever watched that I immediately rewound (remember that?) and watched all over again. I grew up in a pro-Woody household, so I was raised going to see his films every year. It wasn't until I was in my teens that I saw Manhattan, however, and it marked the moment my love for his work was my own and - maybe even more intensely - I fell for the fantasy of New York City, which here looks more beautiful than Brigette Bardot or Rita Hayworth could ever muster. This movie is probably why I went to school in New York, but it's also one of the key movies in my development as a film fan, because Allen was so effortlessly able to create a genuine work out of the cinema and surroundings that inspired him. The film often strikes the modern viewer as awkward considering Allen's later scandals, but ignore everything but Gordon Willis's cinematography, iconically paired with George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and fall in love with the greatest city in the world.
The Vanishing
(George Sluzier, 1988)
Obviously, this is the least famous title on this list - in fact, no one associated with this movie did anything else especially notable in their careers. Most notoriously, Sluzier himself went on to remake the film in America starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jeff Bridges, and a young Sandra Bullock, creating one of the worst remakes of all time despite the fact that he had directed the original. But let's not think of bad things, and instead concentrate on what makes The Vanishing so damn good. Is it the beautifully constructed plotting? The heart-wrenching final moments? The creation of one of the greatest movie villains of all time? There are other movies that could have made this list, but The Vanishing is here because I've never seen any other movie that is able to straddle the line between low and high cinema so beautifully, that is terrifying one minute and philosophically challenging the next. The Vanishing asks its viewer to stare into the depths of their greatest fears and not blink, all for the sake of an insatiable curiosity. Isn't that what film is all about?
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