30 - REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (Nicholas Ray, 1955)
The film that gave voice to the new phenomenon known as the generation gap
also created one of the lasting film icons of the 20th century. James Dean’s
Jim Stark is a masterful portrayal of a directionless teen seeking guidance
from parents who are preoccupied with problems of their own. The film has
acquired a morbid reputation since all three of its leads, Dean, Natalie
Wood and Sal Mineo died in tragic circumstances. Dean’s death mirrored the
car accident in the film, while Mineo was murdered in 1976 and Wood drowned
in 1981. Nigel Kendall
29 - DUCK SOUP (Leo McCarey, 1933)
Groucho Marx, toying with the matronly Margaret Dumont in Duck Soup:
“Where’s your husband?” Dumont: “He’s dead!” Marx: “I bet he’s just using
that as an excuse.” Dumont: “I was with him at the very end.” Marx: “No
wonder he passed away.” Dumont: “I held him in my arms and kissed him.”
Marx: “I see, it was murder?” And on it goes, breathtaking rapid-fire
badinage coupled with a fantastically provocative satire about the tin-pot
dictatorship of Marx’s Rufus T. Firefly (he runs the European nation of
Freedonia) at a time when genuine European dictatorships were emerging. Kevin
Maher
28 - GONE WITH THE WIND (Victor Fleming, 1939)
Well fiddle-deedee, “as God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!”
Screen’s biggest love story, as Atlanta burns around it, is not (at 222
minutes) for those with short attention spans. But Gone with the Wind,
which won eight Oscars, is more than Scarlett standing on the scorched earth
of her home, or the famous staircase scene. The chemistry between Vivian
Leigh (as Scarlett) and Clark Gable (as Rhett) is as colourful as the
scenery of Fleming’s epic. It is remembered for “Frankly, my dear, I don’t
give a damn”, but the sparring throughout is classy. Tim Teeman
27 - A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (Stanley Jubrick, 1971)
Kubrick’s most notorious film is a striking vision of a world terrorised by
fashionable delinquents. Malcolm McDowell’s bad-boy reputation was cemented
by his performance as Alex, a gang leader who memorably murders a
professor’s wife with a giant phallus. The film became a cult the moment the
British release was pulled by Kubrick himself after tabloid reports of
copy-cat violence. The film’s real target is the Orwellian “cure” embraced
by the Establishment: notably the use of psychological torture to transform
sick minds into model citizens. James Christopher
26 - GOODFELLAS (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
“I’ve been waiting for this book my entire life,” Martin Scorsese told
Nicholas Pileggi after reading the proofs of his Mafia memoir, Wiseguy.
“I’ve been waiting for this phone call my entire life,” came the delighted
answer. Their collaboration was a match made in, if not heaven, then a
captivating version of hell. Assuaging Scorsese’s worries about returning to
the gangster genre, its authenticity and unflinching violence proved a key
influence on that other Mob masterpiece The Sopranos, whose creator David
Chase described it as “my Koran” and cast a total of 27 Goodfellas
alumni. Ed Potton
25 - PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (Peter Weir, 1975)
A film that seeps creepiness and atmosphere, which — while shocking — doesn’t
overdo overt shock. It’s crept into our heads as being based on fact but
isn’t. A group of Australian Victorian schoolgirls go into the countryside
for a day trip. It is stiflingly hot and Weir hints at all kinds of hidden
passions and desires simmering beneath the surface. Four of the girls
disappear; one returns with no memory of what has happened. A trailblazing
film, it launched the Aussie avant-garde and Weir went on to direct films
including Gallipoli (1981), Dead Poets Society (1989) and The
Truman Show (1998). Tim Teeman
24 - THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (George Cukor, 1940)
Katharine Hepburn plays a naughty heiress in this fizzily brilliant romantic
comedy. Hepburn was “box-office poison” after a string of flops, but the
spunkiest of the Golden Age actresses was determined to revive her
reputation. Bought the rights to Philip Barry’s play by her then boyfriend
Howard Hughes, Hepburn secured a sympathetic director, Cukor, and set about
finding a pair of debonair gentlemen to play her competing suitors. First
choices Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy were unavailable, so the poor girl had
to make do with Cary Grant and James Stewart. Ed Potton
23 - SOME LIKE IT HOT (Billy Wilder, 1959)
A brawny man in a dress is one of those failsafe devices that will always get
a laugh. Add to that a wickedly sophisticated script, a gang of
lantern-jawed gangsters and Marilyn Monroe, and you have one of the great
American comedy films of all time. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play a pair
of itinerant musicians on the run after they inadvertently witness a
gangland shoot-out. They take cover, in somewhat unconvincing drag, in an
all-girl jazz band. But boys will be boys, and the arrival of Monroe’s
delectable Sugar Kane has them battling for her attention like smitten
schoolboys. Meanwhile Lemmon’s Daphne has her own persistent admirer in the
wealthy ankle-fetishist Osgood Fielding III. And while, to quote Osgood,
“Nobody’s perfect”, this film comes pretty close. Wendy
Ide
22 - THE BREAKFAST CLUB (John Hughes, 1985)
We felt we couldn’t have both this and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
(written and directed by Hughes, 1986), but boy it was close. The mix of
characters stuck in a ball-achingly boring detention swung it: Emilio
Estevez as jock Andy, Anthony Michael Hall as the nerd, Judd Nelson as the
slightly terrifying John Bender, Molly Ringwald as brittle prom queen Claire
and Ally Sheedy as the goth. As with Ferris Bueller, Hughes wrote and
directed a teen classic, a zesty mix of squabbling, soul-searching and
scrapping. Tim Teeman
21 - BONNIE AND CLYDE (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Arthur Penn’s folk legend tapped into the late 1960s zeitgeist of rebellion
and counter-culture like almost no other film of its time. Violent, stylish
and sexy, it had its audiences sympathising with the bad guys — the young,
glamorous bank robbers Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye
Dunaway) — while the cops are portrayed as the antagonists. Against the
backdrop of depression-era America, the photogenic outlaw couple seem
impossibly thrilling. Audiences adopted the distinctive fashions: thousands
of berets were sold after Dunaway wore one. Wendy Ide
