Drama: Casablanca
Comedy: Young Frankenstein
Yeah, but it looks like a typo. Here’s an apostrophe for you: ’
Actually, it was a typo… but I realized as soon as I made it, and decided not to fix it.
I love Stage Door! So many wonderful actresses in that one. We’re always quoting the line about the calla lilies being in bloom again. Funny that the one actress who was supposed to be such a wonderful actress in the movie was about the only one who really wasn’t terribly successful in real life.
And The Women is great, too. You know that every character in the film is female? Even all the dogs in the beginning and the horse at the ranch in Reno? We love watching the dog bit over and over, because we have dachshunds. And they do have bad breath.
Casablanca and A Night At The Opera.
Thanks for this rec. Decided to watch it this morning, and it was a hoot! I was really thrown for a loop by the “I just went gay all of a sudden” line, as it seemed – at least to me – that it clearly was not just using the term in the “happy” sense, given the situation in the film. But then I thought, maybe that’s my modern sensibility of the term kicking in. After googling it, it does seem to be that that was the first time the word “gay” meaning “homosexual” was used in at least American cinema (and apparently was an improvised line by Grant.) But I guess there’s enough plausible deniability that it got by the censors.
Yeah, I think by that time “gay” meant “gay” in the gay communities, at least in Hollywood, San Francisco, and New York.
So when Cary said “gay” he meant “gay.” Wasn’t he gay, anyway? What a waste of the young Dyan Cannon…
It’s possible that Cary Grant was bisexual, but there’s certainly no evidence that he was exclusively homosexual. He was married five times, and Wikipedia lists five other women that he dated for a while. It’s hard to tell whether to believe the claims that he had homosexual relations in addition.
While there are probably some great old black and white comedies, especially pre-code, I don’t know them, so I’m going with **Young Frankenstein.
Although I’m not sure if it’s my top, no one has mentioned Hud**, yet, so I will.
For the interstitial space between comedy and drama, I give you Spike Lee’s debut: She’s Gotta Have It.
Drama: Metropolis or The Big Sleep. (Does Metropolis count as drama? If I had to categorize it, I’d probably say Science Fiction.)
Comedy: Dr. Strangelove, The General, or My Man Godfrey.
In 1964 there were two movies about accidental nuclear war. One of them had Larry Hagman and Dom DeLuise; the other was a comedy.
I just saw the 1951 remake of M today. Not as good as the original, of course, but interesting. There were some familiar faces in it (a young William Schallert, for instance). And there’s a fantastic sequence shot in the Bradbury Building; I was just there a few months ago.
I definitely want to add The Best Years of Our Lives and ***The Music Box ***to my list.
It’s easier for me to think of dramas, rather than comedies: Objective: Burma, The Purple Heart, Town without Pity, and Experiment in Terror, f’rinstance. And I heartily concur with Anatomy of a Murder and Stalag 17.
Has no one mentioned Roman Holiday yet?
Young Frankenstein/Casablanca
if *YF *is cheating, then The Gold Rush
Lots of good choices here, but I’m going with
A Night at the Opera for comedy
The Seven Samurai for drama
Comedy: Duck Soup (like I was going to choose something different, right?)
Drama: I’m torn between Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. Ten or twenty years ago, it would have been no contest for Casablanca, but The Maltese Falcon keeps getting better and better for me.
Casablanca for drama (although Hitchcock’s *Notorious *is also terrific), and Paper Moon for comedy. Both works of genius.
Paper Moon was filmed in B&W?
Comedy: His Girl Friday
Drama: Third Man
Comedy: Dr. Strangelove
Drama: The Third Man
I could change my mind about the comedy, but The Third Man is my all-time favorite movie.
The Sweet Smell of Success
Kind Hearts and Coronets