Dracula Presents: The Top 100 Movies of All Time (2015 List)

40. Bonnie and Clyde

Year: 1967

Director: Arthur Penn

Writer(s): David Newman and Robert Benton

Starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, and Estelle Parsons

Distributor: Warner Brothers

Country of Origin: USA

Language: English

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde started a lot of revolutions within Hollywood. The most obvious is that it was the first major film to really take advantage of the fact that the production code was finally gone and really pushed the envelope for what would be allowed in American film. This was a bloody movie, not only was it violent but one could argue that it both glamourized and sexualized its violent content in a way that audiences had never really seen before. Beyond that though, the movie has a lot more going on beneath the hood. Arthur Penn’s clear and stated goal at the time was to bring the style and attitude of the French New Wave to Hollywood and while the film is a bit more straightforward than something like Shoot the Piano Player, you can certainly see the youthful energy of something like Band of Outsiders on display in the film. This was no small accomplishment, one could easily argue that it was the first shot of the New Hollywood revolution that would last for the better part of the next decade and give us countless classic films. But it is perhaps doing this breezy crime film a bit of a disservice to solely assess it for its role in influencing other films. The film is a very entertaining movie in its own right which worked just fine as a great drive-in movie for audiences that had no idea what the French New Wave was.

Love Bonnie and Clyde. There's a shot with Beatty double-fisting a pair of pistols shooting frantically out a window. It's pretty awesome.

38. 12 Angry Men

Year: 1957

Director: Sidney Lumet

Writer(s): Reginald Rose

Starring: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley Sr., E. G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec, and Robert Webber

Studio: United Artists

Country of Origin: USA

Language: English

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
There are a lot of movies that achieve greatness on a large scale but it takes a really special talent to make something amazing when given more or less the same tools as a stage play. Such were the challenges faced by a very young Sydney Lumet when he made the film 12 Angry Men, a scathing film that manages to take a tough look at a lot of American society all while being set almost entirely in a single room. Focusing on a jury’s deliberations, which is one of those high concepts that’s so brilliant that you have to wonder why no one thought it up sooner, the film takes a hard look at just how easily someone can get railroaded into prison by institutions that don’t have the patience to stop and really think about someone for a couple of minutes. It’s a film that taps into a very real desire (perhaps fantasy) that a lot of people have that they can help someone out just by being the one person who gives a damn and takes a stand on their behalf. It isn’t just the script that the film draws its power from though, it also has a cast that just seems to have clicked perfectly and it’s a perfect vehicle for Henry Fonda. The film is really effective drama throughout and there's a really exciting thrill to seeing Fonda win over juror after juror as the deliberations proceed.

I hear they're remaking it with an all female cast.

37. The Crowd



Year: 1928

Director: King Vidor

Writer(s): King Vidor and John V.A. Weaver

Starring: James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, and Bert Roach

Studio: MGM

Country of Origin: USA

Language: English

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1
King Vidor is often overlooked in discussions of Hollywood directors and of silent filmmakers, but he managed to do a lot of interesting things with his career. Martin Scorsese once posited King Vidor as one of the first great players of the “one for them, one for me” game that allowed him to experiment within the studio system. Case in point, look at The Crowd, a film that Vidor was able to make because of the spectacular success of his World War I epic The Big Parade. The film tells a decidedly un-Hollywood story about the struggles of a common man to survive in an uncaring world and provide for his family. That sounds a bit dour, but Vidor really makes the story come to life with some Murnau inspired camera movement and gives the movie this really universal feel. It also has some of the best written title cards of the era, giving it the unlikely distinction of being a silent movie with great dialog. It is perhaps ironic that this movie about economic struggle would be made one year before the stock market crash. Durring the Great Depression filmmakers like Frank Capra would find more accessible (if cornier) ways to tell stories like this but they rarely matched Vidor’s film. It’s not the easiest film to find today, I believe it’s the only film on this list to not have a DVD or Blu-Ray release, but it’s well worth checking out.

36. Sunset Boulevard

Year: 1950

Director: Billy Wilder

Writer(s): Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D. M. Marshman, Jr.

Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, and Lloyd Gough

Studio: Paramount

Country of Origin: USA

Language: English

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1
Pretty much since its inception Hollywood has been making movies about itself and an overwhelming majority of them have been pretty negative. I guess it’s because there are a lot of frustrated and disillusioned people walking around L.A. and littering the streets with angry screenplays but there are few rosy movies about the lives of people in “the business.” Of course the undisputed king of the “Hollywood sucks” genre is Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, a really bitter noir infused film about the fleeting nature of fame and about the lengths that people will go to in order to be somebody in that industry. The film follows a bitter screenwriter as he enters the weird world of the washed up silent film star Norma Desmond, who has gone insane and is under the delusion that she’s still a beloved star. Desmond is a fascinating and disturbing character made more interesting by the fact that her biography mirrors that of Gloria Swanson, the woman who plays her. The movie does a lot of meta stuff like that to slightly blur the lines between reality and fantasy like its decision to feature Cecil B. DeMille as himself and Erich von Stroheim as a character not unlike himself. The whole movie has a weird vibe to it right from the start where it becomes clear that it’s being narrated by a dead person. It’s a bitter movie, but a comically bitter one that never feels indulgent or unpalatable.

For my money, Sunset Boulevard is Billy Wilder's masterpiece. Glad to see it here.

The great irony of the film is that Stewart, despite being the adventurous one, is totally useless and incompetent when it comes to actually taking action. Kelly is the one who actually does something. I actually just finished an essay regarding this topic.

To me, the whole thing is about male weakness and insecurity. Stewart says he doesn't wanna marry Kelly because their lifestyles don't match, but in other conversations he talks about being intimidated by her perfection. Going off that, one could argue his leg-cast is a symbol of impotence. Even his status as a voyeur (someone who watches but does not engage himself) has a certain theme of sexual incompetence. Even the murder is based partly on the fact that the dude's wife is seen belittling him (while in bed, adding another sexual layer). Plus, when we Raymond Burr finally confronts Stewart, he's pretty pathetic and sad. Male weakness.

33. Metropolis

Year: 1927

Director: Fritz Lang

Writer(s): Thea von Harbou

Starring: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge

Based on: The novel "Metropolis" by Thea von Harbou

Studio: UFA

Country of Origin: Germany

Language: German

Running Time: 148 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is often called the first science fiction film, which certainly isn’t true (just ask Georges Méliès) but in many ways it feels like that’s the case simply because it was the first time that audiences were treated with a vision of the future that had been so fully constructed and fleshed out. Today this industrial future is even more interesting than it probably was originally simply because it takes on a sort of retro art deco quality that makes it extra fascinating. The film is steeped in symbolism but also influenced by the labor unrest of its time. Lang's vision of a decadent city atop a factory-like underground is certainly a potent, if perhaps on the nose, metaphor for class warfare and it’s as potent now as it ever was. The film also features Maria, one of the first cinematic androids which is interesting both in its robotic form and when it’s disguised as a sort of uber-flapper. As the film goes on its immense production value becomes more and more pronounced, especially as it leads up to an epic finale which almost feels like it comes from a modern action movie in a strange sort of way. The film was quite possibly the most expensive movie that had ever been made up to that point and it was one of the last movies for a while to really attempt to create a massive fantasy world like it did. Nothing even really attempted to match it for at least a decade and it remains one of the greatest movies of its genre.

Cool choices lately.