40 - THE LIFE OF BRIAN (Terry Jones, 1979)
Despite an interlude in which its put-upon hero is abducted by aliens, this
savage deconstruction of the Christian story is by far the most coherent of
the Python movies. Presented with a proper budget, fancy North African
locations and sets borrowed from Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of
Nazareth, Jones and his team combined public-school humour, religious
satire, surrealism and timeless daftness, sidestepping accusations of
blasphemy by having Graham Chapman’s messiah born on the same day as Jesus,
but in the next stable. Ed Potton
39 - THE GRADUATE (Mike Nichols, 1967)
There have been few more memorable depictions of the transition from education
to adulthood — or, indeed, of the complex charms of the older woman — than
Nichols’s adaptation of the novel by Charles Webb, which Webb wrote shortly
after graduating from Williams College, Massachusetts. Dustin Hoffman beat a
far-too-assured Robert Redford to the role of Ben Braddock while Anne
Bancroft, in reality only six years Hoffman’s senior, was a purringly
predatory Mrs Robinson (we never learn her first name). Her stockinged leg
in the promotional poster actually belonged to Linda “Sue Ellen”Gray, who
went on to play the role on the West End stage four decades later. Ed
Potton
38 - REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
Like Rope and Lifeboat, Rear Window was one of Hitchcock’s
exercises in cinematic economy: virtually every shot originates from the
apartment of James Stewart’s photographer, holed up with a broken leg during
a Manhattan heat wave. He becomes fascinated by the shady deeds of his
neighbours, specifically Lars Thorvald, played by Raymond Burr, whose
resemblance to Hitchcock’s interfering producer David O. Selznick has been
noted. The result was one of Hitch’s most gripping and cheekily symbolic
films. Freudian analysts had a field day with Stewart’s immobile (read
impotent) state, and his subsequent resort to larger and larger spying
apparatus: binoculars, telephoto lenses. Ed Potton
37 - BEAU TRAVAIL (Claire Denis, 1999)
Loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Denis’s stunning
film is powered by wordless physical tensions and the repetitive rhythms of
sculpted bodies training under the desert sun. Denis Lavant, his face
weathered into a bitter history, plays Galoup, an ex-soldier who recalls his
time as a Sergeant Major in the Foreign Legion. Stationed in Djibouti,
Galoup is second-in-command to a commandant he idolises. When Sentain
(Grégoire Colin), a new soldier, arrives at the camp, Galoup immediately
sees him as a threat; a rival for the approval of the commandant. Galoup’s
jealousy is the kind that drives a man to desperation. None of this is
explicitly spelt out – Denis instead creates an increasingly oppressive
mood. She films the soldiers’ exercises like a piece of gymnastic ballet;
meanwhile gnome-like Galoup is tortured by the beauty around him. Wendy
Ide
36 - JAWS (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
The blockbuster was born thanks in part to the efforts of a tuba player called
Tommy Johnson and a lump of fibreglass named Bruce. Johnson played the
famous “daa-da” motif on John Williams’s ominous soundtrack; Bruce was a
mechanical shark, named after the lawyer of the film’s sophomore director,
Spielberg. In the summer of 1976, 67 million Americans flocked to hear one,
see the other and develop lifelong fears of the ocean. Curiously, though,
tourist figures trebled at Martha’s Vineyard, the Massachusetts resort where
the film was shot. Ed Potton
35 - WITHNAIL AND I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)
For students of the late 1980s, this bohemian comedy is as iconic as the
Clash. Robinson’s scabrous account of two unemployed actors with no money —
but an insatiable appetite for drugs, lighter fuel and alcohol — captures
that fearful crunch when a young man’s dream hits the steel buffers of
reality. Richard E. Grant is perfectly cast as Withnail, the self-appointed
scourge of mediocrity, who uses his naive flatmate, Marwood (Paul McGann),
to stoke his ego and fund the booze. The genius is in the gaseous mix.
Withnail’s fruity blasts of indignation, and Marwood’s shrieking panic,
create the combustible atmosphere of hysteria. Ralph Brown’s deadpan
drug-dealer, Danny, inventor of the Camberwell Carrot, strikes the match. James
Christopher
34 - THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (John Ford, 1962)
Forever hidden in the shadow of the bloated and overrated The Searchers,
the subsequent John Ford/John Wayne collaboration is in fact their greatest
movie, and one of the smartest westerns ever made. Wayne plays rugged
frontiersman Tom Doniphon, a two-fisted hero who is gradually ostracised by
the increasingly civilised West, as embodied by lawyer and idealistic
smoothie Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart). And though Doniphon rids the town
of the titular menace Valance (Lee Marvin), he is declared obsolete by a
movie that laments the rise of a vulnerable American democracy and includes
the knockout line “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!” Kevin
Maher
33 - ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (Milos Forman, 1975)
Passed the rights to Ken Kesey’s asylum novel by his father Kirk — who had
played its central character, Randall McMurphy, in a stage version —
producer Michael Douglas binned the old man in favour of Jack Nicholson, and
the rest is history. With Nicholson on riveting form, Louise Fletcher
chilling as Nurse Ratched and a supporting cast full of frazzled humanity,
it became only the second film after Frank Capra’s It Happened One
Night to win all five major Oscars: actor, actress, director, picture
and screenplay. Ed Potton
32 - THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
The only one of George Lucas’s six multi-billiondollar blockbusting space
operas with an emotional kick, The Empire Strikes Back surrounded the
usual pyrotechnics with narrative twists and morbid themes, transforming the
further adventures of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) with dream sequences,
Oedipal revelations (“I am your father!”), torture scenes and a
gob-smackingly downbeat ending (Solo frozen and kidnapped, everyone else a
bit tired). Kevin Maher
31 - HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Howard Hawks, 1940)
The fizzing, crackling dialogue and the careless way that Cary Grant and
Rosalind Russell chuck their lines at each other like lit fireworks makes
this one of the great screwball comedies of all time. Grant is delicious as
Walter Burns, a newspaper editor and an incorrigible cad; Russell plays
Hildy Johnson, his star reporter and sometime wife who is about to give up
the newspaper game for a quiet married life in suburbia with Bruce (Ralph
Bellamy). Meanwhile Hildy can’t resist the thrill of one final big scoop for The
Morning Post. The wisecracks come so thick and fast that you barely dare
breathe in case you miss one. Wendy Ide
