‘The Official DVD Forums Top 100 Films’ Poll

There’s a thread running over in the DVD Forums to find ‘The Official DVD Forums Top 100 Films,’ so if you’re a member make sure you vote (and if you’re not a member, why not?) You pick just your top five films for the poll, and that got me thinking – how do you select five films out of all the classics that have been made over the years?

Do you try and spread them out across genres? Or decades? Or maybe your favourite stars/directors? It’s an impossible choice really. It’s the kind of thing that will vary depending on your mood, but somehow it had to be done.

So what are did I vote for and why? I’m glad you asked.

In reverse order -

5. Dirty Harry

The late 60′s through the 70′s was the golden era for thrillers for me, and I knew I had to have one in my list. There were several contenders – Bullitt, The French Connection, Marathon Man, Chinatown to name just a few, but in the end it had to be Clint. When I think of Eastwood characters it’s always Harry Callahan that comes to mind first. The sequels may have gone steadily downhill but the original is the perfect, no frills, cop movie. It’s hard to believe Eastwood wasn’t first choice for the role (actually he was fourth after Sinatra, Wayne and Newman all passed) as it’s become such an iconic part that it’s now impossible to imagine anyone else playing it.

4. The Great Escape

The king of cool in his coolest role. Without Steve McQueen this would still be a good prisoner of war film, with him it’s the ultimate bank holiday movie. When I was growing up this must have been shown at least twice a year, I watched it every time and it never got boring. It still doesn’t. A great cast – Bronson, Coburn, Garner etc, a first class director, John Sturges, who’s always been under appreciated in my view (much like Don Siegel who made Dirty Harry) and the greatest war movie score ever written.

3. Planet of the Apes

I had to have some SF in the list and it was hard to narrow it down to this. Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were both contenders as were a couple of 50′s SF classics – Forbidden Planet and The Incredible Shrinking Man – but in the end Charlton Heston and those ‘damned dirty’ apes won out. It’s the sort of intelligent, but still action packed SF we rarely see anymore. Heston made a few science fiction films but none of them had a character as good as George Taylor, a man who’s lost all faith in his own kind, only to find what’s replaced them is just as bad. Roddy McDowall will be forever remembered for the Apes films (and spin-off TV series) and rightly so as he’s the heart and soul of the film.

2. The Wild Bunch

The greatest western of the modern era Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece only gets better with time. William Holden has rarely been this good (Sunset Boulevard and possibly Network come to mind) but everyone in the film is at their very best. I never used to like Robert Ryan (a prejudice inherited from my Father that I’ve now overcome) but this was the one film I’ve always enjoyed him in. Johnson and Oates also deserve mention, both did other great films but nothing that surpasses their work here. But lets not forget Ernest Borgnine, my favourite scene in the film is between him and Holden -

Holden ‘He gave his word.’
Borgnine ‘He gave his word to a railroad.’
Holden ‘It’s his word!’
Borgnine ‘That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give it to!’

It’s not an action packed moment, there’s no gunplay. It’s just too superbly written characters (played by actors at their peak) exchanging words, and it never fails to move me. Those lines cut to the heart of who Pike Bishop is and what he stands for and thus to the heart of the film as well.

1. The Searchers

I could have picked a top five list that only included John Wayne films, and all of them would have been worthy of their place, but in the end I decided on just one. The Searchers is, for me, the finest film ever made. Why? That’s a hard one to put down in words but I’ll give it a try.

It’s stunningly beautiful for starters. All of Ford’s westerns are amazing to look at, even when let down by other elements, but this one captures the untamed beauty of the west better than any other. It’s vast open spaces are both a thing of wonder and an alien landscape filled with potential danger. It also has a script that walks the fine line of sentimentality but never strays the wrong side. There are comic moments that can turn dark in the blink of an eye (Wayne having a laugh at the newly ‘married’ Jeffrey Hunter’s expense until he realises his ‘squaw’ wife may know where Debbie is.)

But if there’s one single reason this is my all time favourite film it’s down to John Wayne. My Dad was a Duke fanatic, and I’ve been watching Wayne films since I was a little kid. The Alamo used to upset me as a child. No not because of the speeches, but because Wayne ‘died.’ He wasn’t supposed to die he was indestructible, like Superman. When I first saw The Shootist, after he passed away for real, I cried. However it was The Searchers that had the most profound affect on me, not because he died, but because he was so damn mean.

Here was an anti-hero before there were such things. Ethan Edwards is not a nice man but he’s not a bad man either, he’s a ‘real’ character shaped by experience. This is without doubt Wayne’s finest performance, he’s not just playing himself, as he was often accused of, and even said on occasion. He’s inhabiting the skin of another person in the same way as Brando or De Niro are acclaimed for and it’s a performance that deserves to be compared to the best. Eastwood’s Dollars character sprang from Ethan Edwards, and he’d have felt at home with The Wild Bunch’s Pike Bishop. Wayne may not have liked those characters and the films they appeared in but the character he created would have recognised kindred spirits. And, while he disturbed me as a boy, (has anyone ever had scarier eyes than Duke in this?) as a man I think I’ve come to understand him.

So that’s my five, at least for today, tomorrow it could be different. I’m already feeling the urge to put some horror in there. Maybe Carpenter’s The Thing or one of Romero’s Dead trilogy or perhaps The Exorcist…