I’ve got my own list, and it’s not my five favorite films. Actually, I don’t know that I could honestly declare the “greatest” of all time. How many lifetimes would it take to see every good film, much less the dregs too?

No, the list is exactly what it says: I liked them all a lot, and the top three are universally acknowledged masterpieces. But I wound up seeing them the most times for various reasons. Surely the most important reason is that they are all old films, and when television was free (yes, it actually was free at one time), they were shown endlessly, and gave me many hours of pleasure and artistic enrichment.

One final qualifier: the actual number of times seen is approximate, especially since I sometimes only caught part of the film. Actually, I reduced the numbers stated for that reason. But they are definitely the five seen most often, and the ranking by numbers is exact. I’ll post a large still or two from each film. Can you identify it just from that? Scroll down slowly.

5th Place – (SEVEN TIMES)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) was a very early favorite of mine. It was based on a play by George S. Kauffman and Moss Hart. I was about ten, and loved the film from the very first. But I also loved to read humor books at that time. I devoured them, especially Robert Benchley. Soon I was reading Broadway comedies, and when I saw the book of the play in the library, I grabbed it. After that, it was my dedicated pleasure to see the film again every Christmas AND to re-read the play. I did this as a ritual for at least six years, then mysteriously stopped (I think I had – belatedly – discovered girls). But this past Christmas, it was shown on tv after what must have been decades (on TCM) and, to my delight, it still gave me bright, bright smiles.

William Keighley, while no Leo McCarey, knew how to direct farce and keep the action moving. But Bette Davis hated the film, and called Keighley a hack. I think she just hated the role. It was one of the few times she played a relatively well-adjusted, neurosis-free American girl. That must have been torture for her!

 

4th Place – (EIGHT TIMES)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was eleven, I remember reading that an old Humphrey Bogart film I’d never heard of, something called The Maltese Falcon, was going to be on the Late Show. My mother, a star-struck ex-chorus girl, was excited about it because it was one of her favorites. It soon become one of mine, and it began a life-long appreciation of the films of John Huston. Later that year, 1958, I saw The Roots of Heaven in a theatre, and was moved and spellbound. The latter film, unfortunately, is somewhat dated now, but – amazingly! – the falcon still flies high.

What makes it hold up so well is the character of Sam Spade. Released in 1941, the film totally transformed the public’s image of the private detective. Cold, tough and rude, he was uncannily right about knowing when he’s being lied to, and also about what lies he can get away with. He does nothing heroic. Loyalty is a joke to him, which allows him to have an affair with his partner’s wife. But when she pretends to grieve over her husband’s murder, Spade almost laughs in her face. The fact that he serves justice by turning the murderers over to the police is just coincidental; it’s their skin or his after all. He loves money but is wary of greed because he’s seen what it makes people do, both to others and to themselves. But, for all of his experience, and all of the cynicism bred from it, he’s never seen anything like what greed has  made these people do…and all for a hunk of metal shaped like a bird. When he’s asked what it is, he can only shake his head. “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

 

Third Place (TEN TIMES)

There’s no point in trying to “guess” what film this is. Citizen Kane (1941) is iconic of cinema itself, as is every image within it. I’d seen excerpts on television before I ever saw the complete film, and I knew of its reputation as the greatest of all time. But I contend that it’s reputation-proof. The first time, you will be as overwhelmed as I was. That’s a guarantee.

The final image, with “ROSEBUD” rising in the form of smoke into the starry night, is the single greatest final shot for any film, equalled only by the final shot of my most often seen film (see below).

Pauline Kael’s famous essay is the most essential critical evaluation of Citizen Kane, although I’ve never known anyone who totally agrees with it. Incidentally, the most recent international critics’ poll in 2012 is the first one ever which did not list it as the greatest film of all time. It came in second to Vertigo (I’m only up to five times with the Hitchcock masterpiece).

 

 

Second Place (THIRTEEN TIMES)

 

 

 

Let me state outright that Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train, which was released in 1951, has two major distinctions for me. First, Robert Walker’s Bruno is my all-time favorite movie villain. He’s the complete package. Good-looking, polite, sincere, imaginative, has a good sense of humor and generally fun to be with. Oh, he’s also a deranged homicidal maniac with a strain of sadistic cruelty. Definitely someone you don’t want as your enemy. Or as your friend. Also, and this is important, he is smoothly seductive and sexy.

We can see why the hero’s estranged wife is intrigued by the well-dressed man following her at the carnival. When he approaches her, smiling, in an isolated area, she’s more than willing to welcome his embrace. Too late does she realize that it’s with his hands around her throat! The audience sees her murder as a reflection in her eyeglasses, which had fallen to the ground from her struggles.

The second distinction – and I admit it is a purely subjective one – is about the film’s final action sequence. This more than ten minute scene, cross-cutting between multiple locations until the action is climaxed in a life-and-death struggle on a runaway merry-go-round is, I still believe after many years, the cinema’s single most brilliantly sustained action sequence of the sound era up until that time. There’s no point in comparing it with the greatest of Eisenstein or Griffith; silent film used an entirely different aesthetic. But, with the advent of sound, the great film innovators slowly expanded the vocabulary of cinema, finding ways to thrill and excite audiences as never before. But I can’t recall an action sequence in any previous sound film that was as propulsive, tingling, witty, frightening and, ultimately, gratifying, as that one. Or one that sustained the excitement for such a length of time. A book could be written alone on how the music – and I think it was Dmitri Tiomkin’s greatest score – was used by Hitchcock in ways that were revolutionary for its time.

 

First Place (SIXTEEN TIMES)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This final shot of the Carol Reed – Graham Greene collaboration, The Third Man, released in 1949, is the most memorable final shot of any film that I’ve seen, along with the aforementioned conclusion of Citizen Kane. The camera is stationary, and we see Alida Valli walking slowly towards us as Joseph Cotten leans against the car, watching her. All the while, the music track, played entirely on a zither, creates a feeling of loss, of poignancy. Once her face is clearly seen, her expression doesn’t change until she exits the frame on the right. She won’t even acknowledge the man who loved and protected her. We then see Cotten take out a cigarette while continuing to stand there.

This is a perfect ending to a film that is perfect at every moment. But, surprisingly, I was disappointed slightly the first time I saw it. I had seen Reed’s magnificent Odd Man Out – with the unforgettable performance by James Mason – and I was expecting something more in the same style: starkly dramatic, breathlessly exciting and, ultimately, tragic. The Greene film – while absorbing – was somewhat sly, more consistently ironic.

But the second viewing overwhelmed me. I became fully immersed in the story of the friendship between two men, of the layers of the relationship. Of the simmering rivalry and distrust that can co-exist with devotion and shared pleasures. This is a universal theme, and it was explored in a very original way. It explains why the film is so universally admired. The arc of that relationship became the real story, but the way Greene and Reed used it to comment on the existing political conditions in the world at that time was unique. Each viewing has given me new things to admire in it.

 

So now you know my five. What’s your most viewed film?

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