Sunset Gun

Halloween With 'Repulsion'

"I hate doing this to a beautiful woman."
--Roman Polanski cameraman Gil Taylor

Roman Polanski knows women because he understands men. He knows both sexes because he understands the games both genders play, either consciously or instinctively. He understands the perversions formed from such relations and translates them into visions that are erotic, disturbing, humorous and, most important, allegorical in their potency. One should not (as so many did with his misunderstood Bitter Moon) take Polanski's films literally, for they are often heightened versions of what occurs naturally in our world: desire, perversion, repulsion.

Film writer Molly Haskell said that at the core of Polanski's work is the "image of the anesthetized woman, the beautiful, inarticulate, and possibly even murderous somnambulate." Her observation is astute, but it's followed by the tired criticism that in all of Polanski's films, including one my favorites (and a great choice for Halloween) Repulsion, "the titillations of torture are stronger than the bonds of empathy." Of course. Polanski's removed morality is exactly why he is often brilliant: He is so empathetic to his characters that, like a trauma victim floating above the pain, he is personally impersonal. He insightfully scrutinizes what is so frightening about being human, yet he doesn't feel the need to be resolute or sentimental about his cognizance. He is also, consciously or subconsciously, aware of the darkness he explores, especially in his female characters, who could be seen as extensions of himself. 1965's Repulsion proves as much.

Starring ice goddess Catherine Deneuve, Repulsion is one of the most frightening studies of madness ever filmed. Deneuve plays Carol, a nervous young manicurist who shares an apartment with her sexually active sister (Yvonne Furneaux). At first Carol goes about her days in the salon, where she quietly tends to bossy old ladies' fleshy cuticles; walking outside, where she unsuccessfully avoids the leering glances and advances of men; and languishing about the apartment, where, with disgust, she listens to the noises of her sister's lovemaking and silently despises the men who visit. She exhibits a pathological shyness and repression that slowly spiral into madness after her sister leaves on holiday. Carol's dementia creates perplexing hallucinations: sexual acts with a greasy man whom she simultaneously loathes and lusts after; greedy hands poking through walls and kneading her soft flesh; and the moving and cracking of walls. Left alone, she is able to act out what she is so afraid of: the dark sludge of desire.

The obscure, slippery and decayed complexities of such desire are conveyed brilliantly in Repulsion. The diseased atmosphere of Carol's womb is meticulously created with Polanski's use of camera angles, sound effects and images of clutter. Though music is used effectively, Polanski relies more on amplifying the sounds of everyday life--the ticking of a clock, the voices of nuns playing catch in the convent garden, the dripping of a faucet--to convey the acute awareness Carol acquires in response to her fear. Polanski also dresses the film with pertinent details that further exemplify both Carol's madness and the aching passage of time: Potatoes sprout in the kitchen, meat (rabbit meat, no less) rots on a plate and eventually collects flies, various debris of blood, food and liquids form naturally around Carol. The film's inventive use of black-and-white film, wide-angle lenses and close-ups creates an unsparing vision of sickness, and Deneuve's performance is effectively mysterious. The viewer, however, is able to empathize with Carol, which is how she lures us into her web in the first place. As Polanski cameraman Gil Taylor muttered during filming, "I hate doing this to a beautiful woman."

And yet, one loves doing this to a beautiful woman, especially one like Deneuve--at first. Deneuve's loveliness makes Carol's madness more palatable (her unfortunate suitor thinks she is odd, but he can't help but "love" this gorgeous woman), but eventually it becomes horrifying. Carol is not simply a Hitchcockian aberration of what lies beneath the "perfect woman," she is the reflection of what lies beneath repressed desire--in men and women. Polanski has a knack for casting women who are nervously exciting (Faye Dunaway in Chinatown is a blinking, twitching mess), and therefore dangerous to desire. He makes one insecure about longing for them.

And Deneuve is certainly nerve-racking. She is so physically flawless that she often seems half human: An anemic girl, she can barely lift up her arm, yet at the same time she is highly sensual, an ample, heavily breathing woman with more than a glint of carnality in her dreamily vacant eyes. Deneuve makes one feel the confusion of a corrupted child: She is an arrested adolescent who, like an anorexic, cannot face her womanliness without visions of perverse opulence and violence. Carol is the personification of sexual mystery--she is what lurks beneath the orgasms of pleasure and pain. What Polanski finds intriguing and revolting is perceptively female, making Repulsion a woman's picture more than women may want to know.

Happy Halloween.

One Brilliant Ball Of Fire

Most all of the classic movie stars have their impersonators -- we've seen them so much that, after time, they become just too easy. There's the Bette Davis camp in all their bitchy, clipped speech, swirling cigarette glory. There's loads of Katharine Hepburns, ranging from comedic Martin Short routines (as Hepburn's "cousin" running a hot dog stand) to Oscar winning Cate Blanchett performances ("The Aviator"). And, of course, there's the overdrawn Joan Crawfords with their requisite (and rather unfair) battle cry of, "No wire hangers!" But where, pray tell, are the Barbara Stanwyck vamps? Considering her exhaustive, genre-hopping career; her iconic performances; her sexy, clever, plain-speaking glamour; and her sheer brilliance as an actress, surely the great lady has earned a few.

But I've only seen one stab at Babs, hilariously and appropriately in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. It's by a male Malibu gatekeeper, who screws his face into a perplexed Phyllis Dietrichson (from Double Indemnity) and repeats: "I don't understand it. I just don't understand it." Watching that, I realize one reason why Miss Stanwyck isn't aped with frequency: She is, fittingly, one tough babe to crack.

The actress, whose birth centennial is this year (she died in 1990), had such singular style while exhibiting an expansive range that moved through melodrama, screwball, noir, Western and television with seeming effortlessness. A rare blend of leading lady and character actor, Stanwyck possessed something usually reserved for men like James Stewart or Jack Nicholson: an offbeat sex appeal that was as recognizable as it was mysterious. And yet, aside from devoted cinephiles, we hear less of Stanwyck than the ladies mentioned above. Hopefully that will start to change. With the release of her DVD box set ("Barbara Stanwyck: The Signature Collection") I'm honoring the woman's career with her greatest performances, a difficult task because, well, we can't find a performance that isn't great. With that, here's 6 of my 10 from MSN (OK, 11) that are not only brilliant, but also make me, like Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve, a little cockeyed.

Stella Dallas (1937)

The moment you think Barbara Stanwyck is one of the sassiest, steeliest babes of the silver screen, she then goes and makes you bawl your head off -- hard and for a long time. King Vidor's fantastically touching Stella Dallas is melodrama with a capital M, something tailor-made for Stanwyck, who gives a performance that could have been soapy and over the top but manages to be tough, tender and subtly moving, even when she breaks your heart. Stanwyck plays Stella, a working-class woman who marries above her social station but stays true to who she is -- something that's both refreshing and kind of maddening. When given the opportunity of moving to New York with her husband, she instead sticks around her mill town, hanging with rowdy friends over her husband's classier crowd. The marriage suffers, and when their daughter (Anne Shirley) inherits her father's refined characteristics, Stella eventually makes a heart-wrenching sacrifice. Stanwyck was only 30 years old when she played Stella, but she ages naturally throughout the movie, beginning as a cute little number who matures into a garish middle-aged woman. What's so poignant about her performance is how Stanwyck's Stella, as frustrating (and frustrated) as she can be, unquestionably loves her daughter deeply -- and her daughter loves her back. No one is a villain here, making the picture and performances more complicated and true to life. Sympathetic toward Stanwyck for not wanting to conform, but aware of how insecure she is (an overheard conversation on a train is especially sad); Stanwyck manages the somewhat impossible task of making Stella Dallas a real woman and a martyr.

Baby Face (1933)

Among Stanwyck's other sizzling pre-code pictures, including Night Nurse and Ladies They Talk About, Alfred E. Green's Baby Face was so brazen that censors snipped five minutes out of the picture, hoping viewers would leave a little less shocked by the experience. The trick didn't work, as the movie (thankfully now restored with extra minutes intact) is still considered one of the raciest pictures of the '30s and remains controversial even today. Stanwyck is Lily Powers, a young woman who leaves an abusive father and a small-town speakeasy for a job in a New York bank. In a very obvious depiction of sleeping her way to the top, Stanwyck ascends the stories of the office building, leaving scores of used men behind her. She ultimately becomes a kept woman -- happily so -- until a tragedy gums up the works. But she's still hard-hearted and out for herself, something that's surprisingly sympathetic, almost glorified in the film. Commenting on the Depression -- how desperation can crumble one's morality (if morality really matters) -- she's both a victim of her time and nobody's fool. Stanwyck, always game, dived right into the scintillating material with her special brand of plucky, hard-boiled sex appeal; she's likable, awful and totally understandable all at once.

Forty Guns (1957)

By the 1950s, Barbara Stanwyck had aged into a handsome woman, just as sassy, capable and, though in her huskier way, sexy. The reality of aging appeared (as it should for every healthy woman) a natural progression -- unlabored. And unlike many older actresses then or now, she never appeared desperately obsessed with her youth. So Stanwyck fit like a glove in Samuel Fuller's glorious Forty Guns, a Western that honors the actress' hot, wizened visage with an inventive, feminist bent. Stanwyck plays the man, or rather, the woman in black here, as Jessica Drummond, a corrupt cattle matriarch who dominates her Arizona territory astride a white stallion, brandishing a whip and with 40 hired guns blazing behind her. Though the picture is stylistically masterful and filled with terrific performances (and some choice moments of double entendre), it is Stanwyck who rules in every way possible (she even did her own stunts), making this a character filled with a tough depth one rarely sees in females on-screen. The opening tracking shot of Stanwyck on her horse is absolutely iconic, proving that, like a man, Stanwyck was a seasoned figure of strength -- enough to produce chills when she utters her first line of dialogue.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Already proving her mettle in screwball comedy, Stanwyck took on the dark art of film noir with nasty brilliance. Creating one of noir's most inspired, iconic femmes fatales, Stanwyck's double-crossing, bitch-seductress Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's seminal Double Indemnity remains unparalleled. Donning the now famous blond wig, a sexy, cynical smirk and (dear God!) that anklet, she oozes a snaky sex appeal that manages to be evil and, in flashes, vulnerable. After eyeing her mark in Fred MacMurray's insurance salesman, Stanwyck convinces the lovesick lug to help plot and execute the murder of her husband in the hopes of cashing in on the dead man's insurance policy and supposedly living happily ever after. But, as usual in these situations, nothing ever comes off without a hitch -- numerous hitches, in this case. All dolled up in pom-pom heels, creamy sweaters and dramatically lined lips, Stanwyck's Phyllis, who's not as young as she used to be and not quite as lush, can't hide the poison within her. And her chemistry with MacMurray sizzles as they swap barbs and coos (co-written by Raymond Chandler from a James M. Cain crime novella) with sleazy ease. They yearn for more, but Stanwyck, the prototypical noir siren, seems perfectly aware of how fatalistic this kind of dream really is. Sometimes murder really does smell like honeysuckle.

Ball of Fire (1941)

When Stanwyck falls for a guy, she submits with a dreamy worldliness that never, ever comes off corn-pone. So when her sassy, slang-slinging "Sugarpuss" O'Shea admits to loving the bookish linguistics professor Gary Cooper in Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire, quite naturally she admits: "Yes, I love him. I love those hick shirts he wears with the boiled cuffs and the way he always has his vest buttoned wrong. He looks like a giraffe, and I love him." But there's much she utters in this screwball classic that's so utterly charming, clever and deliriously rapid fire, that you're a little amazed at how natural she appears. Especially when conjugating "scram:" "Scrow, scram, scraw!" she good-naturedly demands. As the gangster moll chorus gal (she sings a mean "Drum Boogey" with a brilliantly spasmodic Gene Krupa on skins), who falls for Cooper's innocent professor, she's gloriously earthy yet glamorous and, in the end, almost heartbreakingly sweet. As Cooper and his seven eggheaded associates (beautifully played by a group of character actors) study "Sugarpuss," a modern marvel of street lingo, they are all understandably in awe of the leggy temptress. And so are we. I'm not sure how many women could make the term "Crabapple Annie" sound sexy and endearing, but Stanwyck, shimmering genius that she was, does just that.

The Lady Eve (1941)

The Lady Eve is Barbara Stanwyck's crowning achievement, a role that's so brilliantly tuned in its blending of satire, romance, sexiness and slapstick, that you leave the picture believing she just might be the perfect woman. Directed by the great Preston Sturges, Stanwyck plays Jean Harrington, a steely, smart, clever, gorgeous and very sexy (get a load of those gams!) card sharp who dupes a naïve Henry Fonda while traveling on a luxury liner with her father/partner in crime (Charles Coburn). The scintillating swindler easily ropes in Fonda, heir to a brewery fortune who's just spent a year up the Amazon studying, of all things, snakes, and he's swiftly admitting to being "cockeyed for her perfume." Stanwyck, who talks not just to Fonda but at him (at his lips, at his eyes, at every aspect of his libido) generates a lusty allure that's hot and aggressive but amazingly not vulgar or obnoxious. She's disarming and completely in control and entirely equal to the man she'll eventually fall for herself. In scene after scene, Stanwyck boasts an intelligence and verve that remains modern to this day. You can see Hepburn taking on this role, but she wouldn't have touched Stanwyck's combustible mixture of silky rawness and mystery. There's a sense of the unexpected to Stanwyck that's incredibly natural while being deliciously sophisticated, especially in The Lady Eve, where the battle of the sexes is such glorious, subversive fun. And no one can match Stanwyck with a compact -- watch the movie and you'll understand.

Babs, Coop, Krupe, Hawks:

Read my entire list at MSN Movies.

Love, Death And Sex: 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Before 2009 comes to a close, I'm dipping into my archives to consider ten years of Eyes Wide Shut. One of Stanley Kubrick's most underrated pictures, and a movie that in terms of love, sex, death, fuck, fear and träume remains timeless.  It's also a great Christmas movie...

In Stanley Kubrick's cinematic universe reality, dreams, order and insanity progress on distinct, intersecting planes. Whether he was depicting an absurd, chillingly real war room in Dr. Strangelove, the disturbing but oddly sexy ultra violence of an Orwellian future in A Clockwork Orange, the siren call of insanity in The Shining, or the hyper fantastical yet authentic Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, the irony and powerlessness among such transcendent opulence in Barry Lyndon, life was a surreal work in progress -- an ambiguous joke that veered from hilarious to sexy to terrifying, sometimes within seconds. Attempting to understand order, or how any system designed to make our universe more rational or safe seemed fruitless. Think Sterling Hayden approaching such a predicament at the end of Kubrick's The Killing. He watches his life literally fly away on an airport tarmac and bitterly spits one of cinema’s greatest final lines: “Eh, what’s the difference?”

Which brings me to the final line of Kubrick’s frequently misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman states rather flatly, “Fuck” -- as in, that’s the answer, that’s what we need to do. A movie I’ve defended since its release, it’s a picture that deserves closer inspection and a worthy finale for the enigmatic auteur.

The controversial movie (some thought it silly, some, un-erotic) Eyes Wide Shut found the director once again studying the perplexing nature of dreams and reality, this time exploring them in a more personal and private arena: sexuality. As he did with Lolita, Kubrick created more than a film about sexual desire; he created a film about bitter romance, troublesome marital bonds, societal contradictions and, significantly, the fear of death.

An updating of the 1927 Traumnovelle (Dream Novel) by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, the picture remains an unsettling blend of antiquated garishness and modern transgression -- an alternate sexual universe haunted by ghouls of the past, present and future.

In this universe “live” the healthy, handsome walking dead -- Dr. Bill Harford (an impressive Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (a slinky, wonderfully creepy Nicole Kidman), a glamorous, rich couple who appear the picture of storybook perfection. But like most supposed perfection, there are cracks in that portrait, and in their case, it’s the usual: they want to screw other people (or at least they think they do). At a sumptuous party given by Bill's obscenely wealthy friend Victor (Sydney Pollack), Bill almost strays upstairs with two models while Alice flirts with a bizarre Hungarian man who looks like one of the cadaverous party-goers from The Shining. The next evening, in a fit of jealousy over Bill's near indiscretion (he ended up contending with a beautiful, naked drug overdose instead of a debauched roll in the hay -- though the way her body sits in this shot is disturbingly erotic), Alice confesses that she’s had thoughts of cheating and, even worse, reveals that if things had been different, she would have thrown her entire life away for one flight of sexual fancy.

Unmasking something that should remain one of those deep, dark secrets you never confess to your significant other, Alice deftly rattles Bill's perception of her fidelity and the strength of their marriage in a speech that makes his mind spin out of control (Kidman's performance here is superb). After this confession, Bill is abruptly called away to confirm the death of a patient and keeping in tune with the love/death/sex of the picture, the daughter of the deceased makes a pass at him. The grief stricken but, considering the circumstances, kinky gesture aids in Bill’s decision to not immediately return home. Instead, he wanders the streets of New York and embarks on a sequence of actions that, though not as outwardly comic, somewhat resemble those in the Scorsese movie After Hours: He discovers a surreal sexual underworld that he’s both attracted to and repelled by.

A prostitute, a piano player, a bizarre costume-store owner and his Lolita-esque 14-year-old daughter lead Bill to the film's infamous ritualistic orgy sequence, during which participants are cloaked and masked, and naked women are used as sacrificial sex lambs. The gothic, terrifying yet titillating feel of this sequence walks a fine line between horror and parody and true to Kubrick’s genius, manages to cross into both camps. The magnificent, exacting camera work and unrelenting music compel us to look, no matter what happens, and though I was actually a little scared the first time I saw this moment, I found myself highly amused --laughing even. If ever a person was out of place in a Bohemian Grove-like orgy, it is Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill. And yet, I was absolutely hypnotized, watching these moments like a waking dream and investing it with multiple meanings. What the hell is going on here besides a bunch of silly old rich men getting their jollies with beautifully breasted, long legged Helmut Newton models? And further, what do all of Bill’s adventures mean? Are Bill's encounters simply nightmares that will damage his marriage beyond repair, or are they mere titillating fantasy -- fodder for a closer relationship and better sex with his spouse?

Well, I can’t answer that. Given the picture's ominous tone, however, there is something definitely rotten within its slinky, Christmas-lit loveliness. Like the impeccable environment of The Shining, the aura of Eyes Wide Shut is one of beauty ready to be defiled, sexuality ready to be slaughtered, lovely exteriors that reek of formaldehyde. The pall that hangs over this picture is fear: fear of the unknown; fear of yourself or of others; and fear that if sex can lead to freedom, it can just as easily lead to death.

In fact, the picture can be viewed as a commentary on sexual attitudes in the last few decades -- a time when meaningless indiscretions can lead to horrifying blood-test results. It is no surprise, then, that Bill is a doctor and that throughout the film, he flashes his physician's ID as a police detective would his badge. "I'm a doctor," he constantly says, for both reassurance and intimidation. In a profession that requires intimate investigation of flesh that may well be on its way to the morgue, sex is serious. These unsettling references to AIDS, necrophilia and forbidden sex (not to mention Kubrick's own death upon bringing the film to completion, une petite mort of sorts) permeate the picture like one giant prick tease. In today's world, sex is still there for the taking, but at what cost and for what gain? Kubrick's frustrating, brilliant coda neither answers nor ignores its own questions. Rather, it leaves us in a mysterious, contradictory mishmash of dream and reality, where not only are our eyes wide shut, but our legs are too.

Front To Back: Five Actors As Directors

Though the term is sometimes discussed with a question mark, the actor-turned-director has proven to be an impressive evolution (or merging) since the beginning of cinema. From film pioneers like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin to innovators like Orson Welles, Elia Kazan and John Cassavetes to icons like Warren Beatty, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood to major stars like Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson and Tom Hanks, an impressive array of directors have worked both sides of the camera with distinction. Add actors such as Sean Penn (who has made some great pictures, including his latest, Into the Wild), Denzel Washington and Sarah Polley into the mix and you'll see that the double-duty directors are a talented brood that appears to be increasing.

The newest addition to this multitasking film family is Ben Affleck, whose bleak adaptation of Dennis Lehane's Gone Baby Gone, starring brother Casey, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, is already garnering positive buzz. So, with Affleck's work from the director's chair in mind, I'm looking at some of cinema's most interesting movies directed by actors. Excluding actors largely associated with their directed work (which leaves off filmmakers and actors like Keaton, Kazan, Cassavetes, Eastwood, Woody Allen and more), I'm focusing on filmmakers who surprised, inspired and impressed with their unique turns behind the camera. Some made just one film, others crafted more, but all brought something unique to a screen they know so well. With the exception of The Night of the Hunter, here's a few American actor/director not discussed enough:

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

Director: Robert Montgomery

Cool leading man Robert Montgomery (star of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Here Comes Mr. Jordan and They Were Expendable) made a few interesting pictures in the 1940s, chiefly in the genre of film noir. His experimental adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake (shot entirely from Philip Marlowe's POV) is one of the genre's most interesting curios, but the strangely (and sexual) titled Ride the Pink Horse, adapted by the great Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, is his most notable effort. Montgomery stars as the picture's mysterious protagonist, Lucky Gagin, an ex-GI drifter who seeks money and revenge from the sadistic gangster Frank Hugo (played by Fred Clark), the creep who murdered his best friend. The story twists when the FBI enters the picture and Lucky takes refuge at an old carousel run by carnival ride operator Pancho (a terrific Thomas Gomez) and meets the young and attractive Pilar (Wanda Hendrix). Boasting marvelous performances by everyone, with Montgomery leading the proceedings with an alienated, brooding, bitter character, Ride the Pink Horse conveys palpable postwar aimlessness. And it gives us the satisfaction of knowing what the title means: Lucky thinks all the horses on the merry-go-round look the same, something that leads him to tell a girl (who is asking which horse to ride) that she "might as well ride the pink one." Stylish, fascinating and complex, Ride the Pink Horse is an underseen gem.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Director: Marlon Brando

Famous (and infamous) for being Marlon Brando's lone stab at directing, One-Eyed Jacks has remained underrated, underseen and misunderstood since its messy release. Coming in an era when the creative actor (and sometimes genius) would find difficulties in many of his roles, it's not surprising that when problems arose he simply decided to direct himself in this creative Western -- and replace Stanley Kubrick no less. The picture began with a rocky start -- first with Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling's initial rejected treatment; second with Sam Peckinpah's nixed screenplay (Kubrick didn't like it, so Brando fired Peckinpah); and third with new scripter Calder Willingham, who, with Kubrick, was also eventually canned. That left Brando to hire himself as director, resulting in a four-hour cut that was extensively trimmed by Paramount to 141 minutes. The story finds bank-robbing Brando facing off with his ex-partner and betrayer (Karl Malden) -- a man who became a "respectable" sheriff while Brando served five years in a Mexican prison. After Brando escapes and learns what Malden's been up to, he seeks revenge, resulting in an affair with Malden's adopted daughter (played by Pina Pellicer), a situation with the imitable Timothy Carey, and a final showdown with Malden. Though many critics find the film aimless and overly long, the picture, even with its messy backstory and clipped final product, remains an interesting, moody, richly realized Western that is, not surprisingly, beautifully acted by Brando and Malden.

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Director: Ida Lupino

In the 1930s and '40s, Ida Lupino earned deserved esteem as an actress with her tough, sensitive performances in movies like High Sierra, They Drive by Night and Road House, and would continue her talents into the 1950s with The Big Knife, While the City Sleeps and On Dangerous Ground. But the intelligent, unique and creative actress spent time studying the mechanics behind the camera, resulting in her directorial debut, Outrage, in 1950, a thoughtful, emotional B-thriller that took on the controversial subject of rape. Throughout her career as a director (she made seven pictures), Lupino would continue to approach taboo subjects with sensitivity and grit (The Bigamist is another interesting standout), but her greatest film is the intriguing psychodrama The Hitch-Hiker, starring Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy and a brilliant William Talman. Chronicling a horrifying road trip in which two fishermen (O'Brien and Lovejoy) pick up a deranged hitchhiker (Talman), Lupino directs with shadowy menace and intense nervousness (mirroring postwar anxiety) in this tight character study/thriller. Though she called herself the "Poor man's Don Siegel," she was dubbed the "Queen of the B's" and enjoyed a successful career (especially for a female director), making a string of entertaining, thought-provoking pictures that stand the test of time.

Little Murders (1971)

Director: Alan Arkin

Alan Arkin had quite the challenge on his hands when he decided to direct what would turn out to be an impressive, pitch-black screen adaptation of Jules Feiffer's stage play, a disastrous production that only lasted seven days in its initial 1967 run. The movie fared better, though not by much, and has remained a deserved cult item since its release. Expressing the unease and understandable neurosis ending the 1960s (Feiffer wrote the play partially in response to the Kennedy assassination), the picture merges comedy, violence, romance and anxiety with a jangling wit that makes viewers increasingly unsettled, putting them on the precipice of cinematic nervous breakdowns. Elliott Gould plays a photographer and "apathist" who allows violence upon himself while his girlfriend (played by Marcia Rodd) receives daily obscene phone calls from unknown perverts. The disparate lovers get married (for whatever reason) but happiness isn't their future as their personal problems increase and New York becomes even more violent and dystopian. Arkin bravely paints broadly here, with standout performances (Donald Sutherland is especially memorable as a hippie minister) and set pieces (the first meeting of the family is brilliantly anarchic and hilarious) that pile up the movie's absurdities and yet weirdly realistic feel for the anxious. A cultural panic attack of a movie, the disturbing Little Murders is something of a masterwork and unlike anything you've ever seen.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Director: Charles Laughton

It's hard to believe that the brilliant, poetic masterpiece The Night of the Hunter was Charles Laughton's sole directorial effort, and yet it is not so hard to understand: A picture this lyrical is hard to come by and certainly tough to top, by anyone. Laughton, a respected actor of stage and screen, famous for The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and other iconic performances, adapted Davis Grubb's novel (with film critic James Agee as screenwriter) into an expressionistic children's fairy tale/nightmare, utilizing dreamlike angled compositions (by cinematographer Stanley Cortez), chilling religious motifs, dark humor and disturbed perversity to full, elegiac effect. Casting Robert Mitchum was just one of Laughton's ingenious moves, giving the barrel-chested leading man his greatest, scariest performance -- electrifying the picture with a deep uneasiness and inspired weirdness. As the handsome and hatefully dangerous hymn singing "Preacher" who seduces vulnerable women only to take their money (as well as their lives), Mitchum's demented faux reverend Harry Powell hunts down the two children of poor Shelley Winters with big talk, questioning threats ("Where'd you hide the money Pearl?") and finally, just plain murderous intentions. From its most famous scene involving Mitchum's love and hate speech using tattooed knuckles, to Winters' beautiful yet horrifying watery grave, to the frightfully gorgeous way Mitchum sings ("Leaning on the everlasting arms"), especially with pure-hearted Lillian Gish, every inch of this picture is absolutely amazing.

Read the five other pictures that topped my list from my story at MSN Movies,

To Be Perfectly Frank

"He's the only man in town I'd be afraid to fight for real. I might knock him down, but he'd keep getting up until one of us was dead."

--Robert Mitchum on Frank Sinatra

Thank you Frank Sinatra. After spending two solid days listening to Gram Parsons, Kris Kristofferson and Neil Young I realized I was slipping into an alt-country music coma from which I would never recover. Not that I don’t love these guys but after blaring “Love Hurts” and “The Silver Tongued Devil” like a brown turtleneck, jean-jacketed sad sack -- I needed a change. In went a movie, up came the croon "If they asked meeeee, I could write a book..." and I was no longer in the rust tinted musical state akin to sitting in the back of my mother’s station wagon after she signed the divorce papers. I was now swathed in furs and jewels and crying in my Eggplant Parmigiana, preferably from Patsy's, one of Sinatra's favorite joints.

Coveting Frank Sinatra is nothing new. We all witnessed the early ‘90s retro embracing of Ol’ Blue Eyes by younger fans, mostly genuine but for some with a Tiki Torch irony that grew as tiresome as Bettie Page bangs and China Doll wigs. But one can’t allow hordes of obnoxious cigar bar patrons laboring over the malt of scotch ruin the party. Frank is genius. And nothing can cease my warm memories of Sinatra. There's my stoic dad singing “My kind of town, Chicago is my kind of town” while rolling in his powder blue Caprice Classic. There's the time I stayed home "sick" from school and caught A Hole in the Head on channel 12 (oh, the excitement of happening upon an old movie as a kid). And then there was the day I actually saw Sinatra (at the Puyallup Fair -- it was the only way I could see him -- and I convinced an older friend to drive me up there), with a fantastically ribald and still gorgeously leggy Shirley MacLaine (the "mascot" as the Rat Pack called her) opening for him -- a show I'll never forget. And then there's right now with Pal Joey -- a movie that just saved me from sewing a rainbow patch on my Levi’s or thinking far too long that Jim Croce needs closer consideration. Or reading anything else about the Manson family.

Humphrey Bogart once said of Frank Sinatra: "Frank's a hell of a guy. If he could only stay away from the broads and devote some time to develop himself as an actor, he'd be one of the best in the business." Bogart's opinion of his friend's screen talent was on target, but I can only think, thank God Sinatra never took the time to "develop himself as an actor." He didn't need to. Studying the craft would have stultified the magic he displayed in some of his most memorable performances.

When it came to acting, Sinatra was a natural. Like Dean Martin, Sinatra was one of those fabled one-take wonders who preferred his freshest read, to tackle his magic head-on. But he wasn't necessarily against rehearsal or research, especially for meatier roles. For Otto Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm, Frank actually studied the frenzied state of drug withdrawal to play his heroin-addled jazz drummer Frankie, (one has to assume he knew a few junkies as well) and a more complicated Frank graced other impressive films including John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, Vincent Minelli's Some Came Running and Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity, which earned Sinatra an Academy Award for his downtrodden little guy Maggio.

All of those performances were excellent, but there were other actors, gifted actors, who could have performed a few of them (though Sinatra did bring something special and un-matched). Eli Wallach was set to play Maggio (and he’d probably have done an equal job...but maybe not), but because of either the oft-told Mafia legend or his own talent, Sinatra landed the plum part. And then...Sinatra was in the running for Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's masterpiece On the Waterfront which might have been interesting but certainly not as brilliant (again, who knows?) -- regardless of Sinatra's chops, he couldn't have matched the raw, soulful intensity of Brando. But then, in another instance, Brando couldn't entirely do Sinatra -- as witnessed in their shared screen musical Guys and Dolls. Brando, gorgeously cast as gangster Sky Masterson, mysterious, sexy and quirky, sings "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" with an intriguing, bizarre-o Brando edge (I actually love Brando's bizarre version), but truly, the song was tailor-made for Sinatra.

Proof positive was when Sinatra later recorded the song -- he not only sang the tune, he grabbed it by the hair, and (as he probably wanted to with Brando's face) attacked it. With his witty, punctuated singing style, Sinatra still sends shivers by singing the lyric, "A lady doesn't wander all over the room and blow on some other guy's dice." You can practically feel the cocked eyebrow through the vinyl of the recording.

But perhaps Sinatra's greatest role was one that didn't involve a beat down a la Maggio, or require the harrowing pain of drug dementia a la Frankie. No, I think Sinatra's best role was as the gigolo lounge singer Joey Evans in the underrated (though overly scrubbed) screen adaptation of John O'Hara's epistolary novel and subsequent Rodgers and Hart stage musical Pal Joey. For those who prefer Sinatra after his crooning bobby-soxers days, and before the awful Duets project, Pal Joey is quintessential Sinatra.

The definition of lovable cad, Sinatra's Joey Evans is all swagger and crass class. But he's talented, and the ladies cannot resist his goomba, plain speaking charms. When he's hired at a San Francisco nightclub, he beds nearly all of the girls on the chorus line (he calls them "mice") with the big (very big) exception of the luscious, mysteriously melancholic Kim Novak (even when she smiles, the lavender lady is sad), or as he puts it "the mouse with the built." Feminists may not revel in Joey's tomcat antics, but they might at least feel vindication for his stereotypically female role: Joey uses his voice and body to milk older gals for money. In this case, the still drop-dead beautiful Rita Hayworth whom he's hustling into giving him a club he'll christen "Chez Joey."

But since the movie version is something of a fantasy, Frank's cad is more than a mere smooth operator, he's a bona-fide musical genius, which goes a long way when when wooing a mouse like Rita Hayworth. And so, with his rendition of "The Lady Is a Tramp," he drops a musical masterpiece on the woman, giving viewers one of the sexiest on-screen musical sequences ever filmed. Singing to Hayworth in a closed nightclub, Sinatra sits at the piano and casually begins his song, tossing it out there as easily as he instructs Novak's dog to get out of his drawer (he says "Off! O-R-F"). He snubs out his cigarette and kicks the piano back (all in wonderful punctuation to the tune) and builds the song towards full tilt Frankness. Skulking across the stage, he crafts the tune so brilliantly, and with such amazing timing, that near the finale, he ends the regularly sung lyric "she broke, but its oke," with "she's broke..." -- no words, just a shrug of his shoulders. We don't need to hear if she's O.K. or not. She, he, anyone, would certainly be "oke" by then.

It's just so glorious -- slinky and earthy, nasty and sweet, stern and cool. And so goddamn Frank. No performer at any time could have played and sung this scene with the genius of Sinatra. In Pal Joey. Sinatra is rascal, cheater, charmer, lover...a man whose philosophy was to treat a "lady like a dame, and a dame like a lady" -- which still works today. I’m certain that Kris Kristofferson would have to concur.