Seventy-year-old newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane dies in his palatial Florida home, Xanadu, after uttering the single word “Rosebud.” While watching a newsreel summarizing the years during which Kane built a dying newspaper into a major empire, married and divorced twice, ran unsuccessfully for governor and saw the collapse of his newspaper empire during the Depression, an editor decides they have not captured the essence of the controversial newspaperman and assigns reporter Jerry Thompson to discover the meaning of Kane's last word.
Thompson first approaches Kane's second wife, singer Susan Alexander, in the Atlantic City nightclub where she now performs. After the drunken Susan orders Thompson to leave, the accommodating bartender reports her claim that she had never heard of Rosebud. Next, Thompson reads the unpublished memoirs of Wall Street financier Walter Parks Thatcher, Kane's guardian and trustee of the mining fortune left to Kane by his mother: Thatcher first meets young Kane in 1871 at his mother's Colorado boardinghouse. Learning that she has become wealthy from mining shares left her by a former boarder, she is determined that her son will be reared and educated in the East. As young Charlie plays outside with his sled, Mrs. Kane hands over management of the mine's returns to Thatcher, against her husband's wishes, then grants the financier guardianship over her son. Despite the boy's protests, he is sent away to live with Thatcher. When Kane turns twenty-five, he assumes control of the world's sixth largest private fortune, and while professing disinterest in most of his holdings, writes Thatcher that he intends to run The Inquirer, a small, New York newspaper acquired through a foreclosure. He moves into the paper's offices and with the help of his best friend, Jedidiah Leland, who acts as the drama critic, turns it into a lively, muckraking publication, which attacks slum landlords, swindlers and big business. In 1898, The Inquirer attempts to draw the United States into war with Spain. After the 1929 stock market crash, Kane relinquishes control of his empire to Thatcher's syndicate. Thompson finishes his reading of Thatcher's memoir without learning anything about Rosebud.
Thompson next questions Bernstein, formerly Kane's general editor and now chairman of the board. Bernstein describes the early days of Kane's tenure at The Inquirer: After Kane and Leland take over the publication in 1892, Kane prints a declaration of principles--that he will report the news honestly and will make the paper a champion of his readers' rights as citizens and as human beings. Leland senses the document's importance and keeps the handwritten declaration as a memorial. Six years later, when Kane acquires the top reporters from the rival paper, whose circulation The Inquirer has surpassed, Leland worries that Kane's approach to the news will also resemble his rival's. During this period, Kane begins to collect the European statues and furniture that will later crowd the rooms of Xanadu. On one European trip, Kane meets and becomes engaged to Emily Monroe Norton, the President's niece, whom he marries in 1900. After relating these events, Bernstein suggests that Rosebud was probably something that Kane lost, perhaps a woman.
Taking Bernstein's advice, Thompson visits Leland, a self-described “disagreeable old man,” in the hospital where he is living out his old age. Leland claims Kane believed in nothing except himself, but suggests that Kane's story is about how he lost love because he had none to give: As Kane's empire expands, his marriage to Emily deteriorates. One night in 1915, Kane encounters Susan as she is leaving a pharmacy after purchasing a toothache remedy. Susan innocently offers to let Kane, who has been spattered by mud from a passing carriage, use her apartment to clean up. Kane is at ease with Susan, who has no idea of his importance, and when he learns that her mother wanted her to become an opera singer, requests that she sing for him. In 1916, Kane runs for governor against corrupt political boss Jim Gettys. After a successful campaign speech, Emily sends their son home alone and asks Kane to accompany her to Susan's boardinghouse, where they find Gettys with Susan. Gettys admits that he forced Susan to contact Emily and tells Kane that he will reveal their relationship unless he withdraws from the campaign. Despite the hurt that scandal will bring to his family and Susan, Kane refuses, convinced that he has the love of the electorate. He is mistaken, however, and loses the race. Leland accuses Kane of treating “the people” as if he owned them and asks to be transferred to The Inquirer's Chicago branch. After Emily divorces him, Kane marries Susan and in 1919, builds the Chicago Opera House for her. Susan's voice is very poor, however, and her debut is met with ridicule, except by The Inquirer critics. When Kane finds Leland slumped over his typewriter in a drunken stupor after beginning an unfavorable review of Susan's performance, he finishes the notice himself, retaining the negative viewpoint, but then fires his old friend.
Thompson now returns to Atlantic City to question Susan again. She insists that it was Kane's idea that she have an operatic career and describes their tempestuous life together: During a noisy quarrel with Susan, Kane receives a special delivery from Leland, returning the $25,000 check Kane sent after firing him and including the handwritten copy of the declaration of principles, which Kane burns. When Susan begs to quit, Kane insists that he will be humiliated if she leaves the stage, and forces her to continue singing until she attempts suicide. Later, they retire to Xanadu, where a bored Susan spends her days working jigsaw puzzles. Finally fed up with his overbearing attempts to orchestrate her life, Susan reproaches Kane for trying to buy her affections with jewels and other material things. He slaps her in anger, and she leaves him. Her story finished, Susan sends Thompson to talk to Raymond, the butler at Xanadu. Thompson confesses to Susan that he feels sorry for Kane, and Susan admits that she does, too.
At Xanadu, Raymond agrees to speak with Thompson for a price, then relates the events following Susan's departure: The furious Kane tears apart Susan's room, until he comes across a small glass snow globe with a tiny cabin inside. Kane picks it up, murmurs “Rosebud” and leaves the room, seemingly unaware of the servants who surround him. Still as ignorant of the significance of Kane's dying word as when he started, Thompson prepares to leave Xanadu with the other reporters and photographers. Passing through rooms where Kane's possessions are being inventoried and crated, Thompson is now convinced that even if he had learned the meaning of Rosebud, it would not have explained the man. Unnoticed among the boxes and crates is an old child's sled. As a workman throws the sled into a furnace, the word Rosebud, painted across the top, is consumed by the flames.
2. Casablanca (1942)
During World War II, Casablanca, Morocco is a waiting point for throngs of desperate refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. Exit visas, which are necessary to leave the country, are at a premium, so when two German couriers carrying letters of transit signed by General DeGaulle are murdered and the letters stolen, German Major Strasser and Louis Renault, the prefecture of police, are eager to find the documents. Strasser is particularly concerned that the letters not be sold to Victor Lazlo, the well-known Czech resistance leader, who is rumored to be on his way to Casablanca. That night, Renault and Strasser search for the killer at Rick's Café Americain, a popular nightclub run by the mysterious American expatriate Richard Blaine. Earlier, Ugarte, a shady dealer in exit visas, had asked Rick to hold the stolen letters temporarily, explaining that he has a buyer for them and with the money from their sale, he plans to leave Casablanca. Although Rick fought on the side of the loyalists in Spain, he has grown cynical, and when Renault advises him not to interfere with Ugarte's arrest, Rick replies "I stick my neck out for nobody." He makes a bet with Renault, however, that Lazlo will manage to leave Casablanca despite German efforts to stop him. After Ugarte is arrested, Lazlo and his companion, Ilsa Lund, arrive at Rick's. Ilsa recognizes Sam, the piano player, and while Lazlo makes covert contact with the underground, Ilsa insists that Sam play the song "As Time Goes By." Reluctantly, Sam agrees, and a furious Rick, who had ordered him never to play the song again, emerges from his office to stop him. Rick is taken aback when he sees Ilsa, whom he knew in Paris. Later, after the café is closed, Rick remembers his love affair with Ilsa: After a brief happy time together, the Nazis invade Paris and, worried that Rick will be in danger because of his record, Ilsa advises him to leave the city. He refuses to go without her, and she agrees to meet him at the train station. Instead of coming, though, she sends him a farewell note, and Sam and Rick leave just ahead of the Nazis. Rick's thoughts return to the present with Ilsa's arrival at the café. She tries to explain her actions, but when a drunken Rick accuses her of being a tramp, she walks out. The following day, Lazlo and Ilsa meet with Renault and, there they learn that Ugarte has been killed while in police custody. After Rick helps a young Romanian couple win enough money at roulette to allow them to leave the country, Lazlo, suspecting that Rick has the letters, asks to buy them. Rick refuses and, when Lazlo asks his reasons, suggests that he ask Ilsa. Angered when Rick allows his orchestra to accompany a rousing rendition of "La Marseillaise," Strasser orders the closing of the Café. That night, while Lazlo attends an underground meeting, Ilsa meets Rick and explains that she stayed behind in Paris because, on the day Rick left Paris she had learned that Lazlo, her husband, whom she had married in secret and thought dead, was alive. Now realizing that they still love each other, Ilsa tells Rick that he must made decisions for both of them. Meanwhile, the police break up the underground meeting, and Lazlo takes refuge at Rick's. Before he is arrested, he begs Rick to use the letters to take Ilsa away from Casablanca. The next day, Rick sells the café to his competitor Ferare, the owner of the Blue Parrot, and tricks Renault into releasing Lazlo from prison. They head for the airport, but Renault has managed to alert Strasser, who hurries after them. At the airport, Rick tells Ilsa, who thought that she would be staying with him, that she is to leave with Lazlo because she gives meaning to his work. He then tells Lazlo that he and Ilsa loved each other in Paris, and that she pretended she was still in love with him in order to get the letters. Lazlo, who understands what really happened, welcomes Rick back to the fight before he and Ilsa board the plane. Strasser arrives just as the airplane is about to take off and when he tries to delay the flight, Rick shoots him. Renault then quickly telephones the police, but instead of turning in Rick, he advises them to "round up the usual suspects," and the two men leave Casablanca for the Free French garrison at Brassaville. It is, Rick says, "the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
3. The Godfather (1972)
In August 1945, during the lavish wedding reception of his daughter Connie, Don Vito Corleone, head of a large New York crime family and "godfather" to the Italian-American community, listens to requests for favors, honoring a long-standing Sicilian tradition that a father cannot refuse a request on his daughter's wedding day. While FBI agents jot down license plate numbers of the guests, and hundreds of celebrants dance, eat and gossip in the Corleone family's Long Beach compound, Don Vito, assisted by his foster son and consigliere, Tom Hagen, listens to a plea by the undertaker Bonasera, who seeks justice for two American boys who mercilessly beat his daughter. After mildly chastising Bonasera for refusing his friendship in the past, Don Vito agrees to help in exchange for some future service. Next, Don Vito greets the amiable baker Nazorine, who seeks help in preventing the deportation of Enzo, a young apprentice baker who wants to marry Nazorine's daughter. Outside, as the family welcomes guests such as crime boss Don Emilio Barzini and Don Vito's godson, popular singer Johnny Fontane, Michael Corleone arrives at his sister's wedding with his American girl friend, Kay Adams. Michael, college educated and a decorated soldier during World War II, relates stories about Luca Brasi, a large, violent man who is unquestioningly loyal to Don Vito, but tells her "It's my family, Kay, not me." In Don Vito's study, the final supplicant is Johnny, who cries that powerful studio head Jack Woltz refuses to give him an important part in a new war movie, even though it would be a perfect, career-saving role for him. After slapping Johnny like a child and admonishing him to be a man instead of a "Hollywood finocchio," Don Vito comforts him and promises to help. Just before his father-daughter dance with Connie, Don Vito talks with his son Santino, nicknamed Sonny, and Tom, telling them that Connie's new husband, Carlo Rizzi, may have a job, but should never be privy to the family's business. Don Vito also instructs Tom to fly to Los Angeles to speak with Woltz. At Woltz's studio, when Tom politely suggests that Johnny be cast in the war film, Woltz angrily dismisses him with curses and ethnic slurs. However, after Woltz has learned that Tom is representing the Corleone family, he invites Tom to his lavish estate and apologizes for his earlier rudeness. When the men sit down to dinner after Woltz has shown Tom his beloved race horse, Khartoum, Tom again asks for the part to be given to Johnny, prompting Woltz to erupt in a rage, shouting that Johnny "ruined" a young starlet with whom Woltz had been having an affair, thus making him appear ridiculous. One morning a short time later, Woltz discovers the severed, bloody head of Khartoum in his bed, prompting him to scream in terror. Back in New York, Don Vito is approached by Sollozzo “The Turk,” a ruthless, Sicilian-born gangster who owns poppy fields in Turkey. Sollozzo, who has the backing of the rival Tattaglia family, proposes that the Corleones finance his drug operations. Although Tom and Sonny have argued that narcotics are the way of the future, and Sonny tries to say so in the meeting, Don Vito refuses to risk losing his political influence by embracing the drug traffic and declines Sollozzo's offer. Later, Don Vito privately asks Luca to let it be known to the Tattaglias that Luca might be interested in leaving the Corleones. Just before Christmas, when Luca meets with Sollozzo and one of the Tattaglias, he is caught off guard, stabbed through the hand and strangled. That same evening, Fredo, Don Vito's meek, oldest son, tells him that their driver, Paulie Gatto, has called in sick. Before entering his car, Don Vito decides to buy some fruit from a vendor and is shot several times by assailants who flee before Fredo can react. Tom is kidnapped by Sollozzo that night, and later, as Michael and Kay leave the Radio City Music Hall, Kay notices a newspaper headline announcing that Don Vito has been killed. Stunned, Michael immediately calls Sonny, who relates that their father is barely alive in the hospital and insists that Michael return to the safety of the family’s Long Beach compound. Late that night, Tom is released by Sollozzo, who is infuriated that Don Vito has survived the attack, and warns Tom that he and Sonny must make the narcotics deal with him and the Tattaglias. At the compound, Sonny and Tom try to insulate Michael from their discussions about the family business, knowing that Don Vito had wanted him to have a different kind of life. While arguing over whether or not to take Sollozzo's deal, they receive a package of a dead fish, a Sicilian symbol that Luca "sleeps with the fishes." Now the hot-headed Sonny insists that there will be a war between the Corleones and the Tattaglias. Sonny tells Clemenza, one of his father's lieutenants, to buy mattresses and other supplies to house their men in a safe place during the war and instructs Clemenza to kill Paulie for his part in Don Vito's ambush. A few days later, frustrated by his enforced idleness, Michael goes into New York City to have dinner with Kay. After telling her that she should go home to New Hampshire, but not saying when they will see each other again, Michael goes to visit his father. When he finds the hospital floor deserted and Don Vito's room unguarded, Michael checks to make certain that his father is alive, then calls Sonny to relate what has happened. After moving Don Vito's bed with the help of a nurse, Michael whispers in his ear, "Pop, I'm with you now." Moments later, when the baker Enzo innocently arrives to pay his respects, Michael advises him to leave because there will be trouble, but Enzo enthusiastically offers to help. Michael and Enzo then wait on the steps of the hospital. Because of their menacing appearance, when a car stops, the thugs inside see what they think are Don Vito's guards and drive off. Just then, several police cars appear, and the abusive Capt. McCluskey starts yelling at Michael for interfering, then brutally punches him in the face before Sonny, Tom and their men arrive. The next day, Sonny argues that they must hit back at Sollozzo, even though the corrupt McCluskey is his protector. Because Sollozzo is now asking for a meeting with Michael, who is regarded as a "civilian," Michael volunteers to kill both Sollozzo and McCluskey. A bemused Sonny does not want Michael involved, and Tom argues that this is business, not personal, but Michael insists that to him it is business. When Sonny learns from a police informant that the meeting will be held at Louis, an Italian restaurant in the Bronx, Clemenza arranges for a gun to be planted in the men's room, then teaches Michael how to kill at close range. At the restaurant, Sollozzo offers a truce to Michael if the family agrees to his terms. After excusing himself to go to the men's room, Michael retrieves the gun from behind the toilet, walks to the table and shoots both McCluskey and Sollozzo in the head, then coolly walks out to a waiting car. To avoid being the victim of a revenge killing by the Tattaglias, Michael is forced to leave for Sicily for an extended period without saying goodbye to Kay. When Don Vito, who is now recuperating at home, hears that Michael killed Sollozzo and McCluskey, he weeps over Michael's involvement. While Michael is in Sicily, a wave of violence envelopes the Corleones, the Tattaglias and the other members of the five New York crime families. At the same time, Michael falls in love at first sight with a beautiful Sicilian girl, Apollonia, and soon marries her. Some time later, when a pregnant Connie hysterically calls home and tells Sonny that Carlo has beaten her, Sonny, who had previously warned Carlo never again to hit his sister, impulsively races away from the compound without waiting for his bodyguards. When he stops to pay a toll on the deserted highway, he is ambushed by several henchmen who riddle his body with bullets before speeding away. That night, after Tom reveals Sonny’s death to his father, Don Vito says that the killing must now end and orders no more acts of vengeance. Later, he accompanies his son’s body to Bonasera’s, where he tearfully asks the undertaker to repay his debt by making Sonny presentable to his mother. Shortly thereafter, Don Tommasino, Michael’s protector in Sicily, tells him of Sonny’s death and says that he and Apollonia must leave for their own safety. As they are about to leave, Apollonia decides to surprise Michael by driving his car. Moments after Michael sees one of his bodyguards, Fabrizio, suspiciously run away, Apollonia dies when the car explodes. In New York, Don Vito has called a meeting of representatives of the five crime families of New York and New Jersey, asking for peace. After arguments on both sides, the families reach a peace accord and agree to enter the narcotics trade. As they are driving home from the meeting, Don Vito tells Tom he finally realized at the meeting that Barzini has always been behind the Tattaglias and was responsible for everything. Some time later, Michael goes to New Hampshire, where Kay has been teaching. Although he has been home for more than a year and not contacted her, he tells her that he loves her and asks her to marry him. She is reluctant, and does not understand why Michael now works for his father, but agrees because of her feelings for him and because he assures her that within five years, the Corleone family business will be completely legitimate. Soon Michael becomes the tacit head of the family as Don Vito semi-retires. Michael plans to sell the family’s olive oil business, which had been a legitimate cover for their gambling and prostitution operations, and become the sole owner of a Las Vegas casino. He sends Carlo to Las Vegas, as well as Tom, privately telling the disappointed Tom that there will be trouble at home and Tom is not a “wartime consigliere." Weeks later, on a business trip to Las Vegas, Michael is annoyed that Fredo, who was sent to Las Vegas several years before, has let himself become subservient to Moe Greene, their partner in the casino. When Greene angrily refuses to sell his interest in the casino, Fredo sides with Greene, prompting Michael to warn him never again to side with someone outside the family. One afternoon, Don Vito warns Michael about Barzini and predicts that the person who suggests a meeting with Barzini will be a traitor setting Michael up to be killed. That same afternoon, while Don Vito plays with Anthony, Michael and Kay’s three-year-old son, he has a fatal heart attack in his vegetable garden. At Don Vito’s funeral, Salvatore Tessio, another Corleone family lieutenant, tells Michael that Barzini would like a meeting. Tom is surprised that Sal, rather than Clemenza, is the traitor, but Michael realizes that, for an ambitious man like Sal, it is the smart move. He then reveals that the meeting will be held after the baptism of Carlo and Connie’s baby, also named Michael, for whom he has agreed to be godfather. While the baptismal ceremony takes place, Barzini, Tattaglia and several other Corleone enemies are gunned down in New York and Greene is killed in Las Vegas. At the compound, Tom confronts Sal, who says to tell Michael that it was only business, and resigns himself to his fate. That afternoon, Michael confronts Carlo, promising him leniency if he will just confess that he set Sonny up to be murdered. Though terrified, Carlo believes Michael and reveals that Barzini was behind it. Moments later, thinking that he will be driven to the airport, Carlo enters a car and is strangled from behind by Clemenza. When the Corleones are packing to move to Las Vegas, an hysterical Connie rushes into Don Vito’s old study and accuses Michael of murdering Carlo. Kay tries to calm her down, but when she and Michael are alone, she asks if it is true. Michael initially erupts in anger, then says that, just this one time, Kay may ask him about his business, then answers “No,” and the couple embraces. This satisfies Kay until she sees Clemenza kiss Michael’s ring and address him as “Don Corleone,” before his lieutenant, Neri, closes the study door.
4. Gone with the Wind (1939)
In 1861, Scarlett O'Hara, the headstrong sixteen-year-old daughter of wealthy Georgia plantation-owner Gerald O'Hara, is sick of hearing talk about going to war with the North. She much prefers to have beaux like Brent and Stuart Tarleton talk about the next day's barbecue at Twelve Oaks, the neighboring Wilkes plantation. When the twins reveal the “secret” that Ashley Wilkes is planning to marry his cousin Melanie Hamilton from Atlanta, Scarlett refuses to believe it because she is in love with Ashley herself. Her father later confirms the news when he returns home to Tara, the O'Hara plantation, and advises Scarlett to forget about the serious-minded Ashley, because “like should marry like.” At the barbeque, Scarlett acts coquettish with all of the young men, hoping to make Ashley jealous, then, during an afternoon rest, sneaks into the library to see him. He says that he will marry Melanie because they are alike, but leads Scarlett to believe that he loves her instead of Melanie. When he leaves, Scarlett angrily throws a vase and is startled to discover Rhett Butler, a notorious rogue from Charleston, who has been lying unnoticed on a couch the entire time. She is angry at his seeming indifference to the seriousness of her feelings for Ashley and annoyed by his frank appreciation of her physical beauty. Later, when news arrives that war has broken out between the North and the South, Scarlett is stunned to see Ashley kiss Melanie goodbye as he leaves to enlist, and in a daze accepts the impulsive proposal of Melanie's brother Charles.
Just after Ashley and Melanie marry, Scarlett and Charles marry as well, delighting Melanie, who tells Scarlett that now they will truly be sisters. Some time later, Scarlett receives word that Charles has died of the measles, and she is forced to don widow's black clothing and refrain from going to the parties she loves. Her understanding mother Ellen decides to let her go to Atlanta to stay with Melanie and her Aunt Pittypat, hoping that Scarlett will feel less restless there. At an Atlanta fundraising bazaar, Scarlett is so bored watching other girls dance, that when Rhett bids for her in a dance auction, she enthusiastically leads the Virginia Reel with him, oblivious to the outrage of the shocked local matrons. Rhett, who has become a successful blockade runner, continues to see Scarlett over the next few months and brings her presents from his European trips. As the war rages, Melanie and Scarlett receive word that Ashley will be returning home on a Christmas leave. Atlanta is now suffering the privation of a long siege, but the women manage to give Ashley a small Christmas feast. Before he returns to the front, Ashley tells Scarlett that the South is losing the war and asks her to stay by the pregnant Melanie.
Melanie goes into labor as Atlantans leave the city before Northern troops arrive. When Aunt Pitty leaves for Charleston, Scarlett desperately wants to go with her, but remembers her promise to Ashley, and remains with Melanie. Because Melanie's labor is difficult and the doctor is too busy attending wounded soldiers to come to her aid, Scarlett must attend her alone. After the baby is born, Scarlett sends her maid Prissy for Rhett, who reluctantly arrives with a frightened horse and a wagon. Though he thinks that Scarlett is crazy when she insists upon returning to Tara, he risks his life to drive the women and the infant through the now-burning city. Outside Atlanta, as Rhett and Scarlett see the decimated Southern army in retreat, he feels ashamed and resolves to join them for their last stand. Scarlett is furious with him, even after he admits that he loves her and gives her a passionate kiss before leaving. When the women finally arrive at Tara, the plantation is a shambles and the house has been looted. Scarlett's mother Ellen has just died of typhoid and her father's mind is gone. Desperate for something to eat, Scarlett first tries drinking whiskey, then goes into the fields. After choking on a radish, she vows that if she lives through this she will never go hungry again. [An Intermission divides the story at this point.]
Soon Scarlett bullies her sisters and the remaining house slaves into working in the fields. After she kills a Yankee scavenger and, with Melanie's help, hides the body, the contents of his wallet provide them with some money for food. When the war ends, Ashley returns and Scarlett goes to him for advice when Pork, one of the former slaves who has remained with the family, tells her that $300 in taxes are owed on Tara. Ashley offers no solution to her problem, but admits once again that he loves her, even though he will never leave Melanie. More determined than ever to obtain the money after Jonas Wilkerson, a ruthless Yankee who was once Tara's overseer, says that he is going to buy Tara when it is auctioned off for taxes, Scarlett decides to ask Rhett for the money. With no proper clothes to wear, Scarlett and her old governess, Mammy, use material from Tara's velvet drapes for a new dress. In Atlanta, they discover that Rhett has been imprisoned by the Yankees, but has charmed his way into their good graces. Scarlett tries to pretend that everything is fine at Tara, but Rhett soon sees her roughened hands and realizes what her situation is. Because he is under arrest and his money is all in an English bank, Rhett cannot help Scarlett, so she leaves, infuriated. That same day, she runs into Frank Kennedy, her sister Suellen's beau, and sees that he has become a successful merchant. Scarlett tricks Frank into marrying her by telling him that Suellen loves someone else, and is thus able to use his money to save Tara. Scarlett then moves to Atlanta to work at Frank's shop and to make his fledgling lumber business a success. She also uses an unwitting Melanie to help make Ashley come to work at the lumber mill. One day, Scarlett is attacked by scavengers while driving her carriage near a shanty town, but is saved by Big Sam, a former Tara slave. Scarlett is not physically harmed, but that night Frank, Ashley and some of the other men band together to “clear out” the shanty. While Scarlett, Melanie and the other women wait at Melanie's house, Rhett arrives to warn them that the Yankees are planning an ambush. Melanie tells him where the men have gone, and some time later, he prevents their arrest by pretending to the Yankees that they have all been drinking with him at the notorious Belle Watling's bordello. Ashley is wounded, but Frank has died on the raid.
A few weeks later, Scarlett, who is drinking heavily, is visited by Rhett, who proposes to her and offers to give her everything she wants. Though she says that she does not love him, she agrees to marry him, and on their expensive honeymoon, he vows to spoil her to stop her nightmares of the war. A year later, Scarlett gives birth to a daughter, whom Melanie nicknames “Bonnie Blue.” Though Rhett has never cared about Atlanta society, he now wants to ensure Bonnie's future. He begins to acquire respectability, and within a few years his charitable contributions and sincere devotion to Bonnie impresses even the hardest of Atlanta's matrons. Meanwhile, Scarlett still longs for Ashley and has told Rhett that she no longer wants him to share her bedroom. One day, Ashley's sister India and some other women see Scarlett and Ashley in an embrace. Though nothing improper happened, Scarlett is afraid to attend Melanie's birthday party for Ashley that night. A furious Rhett forces her to attend, though, then leaves. Melanie's open affection to her makes Scarlett ashamed, and when she returns home she sneaks into the dining room to drink. There she finds Rhett drunk and a violent quarrel erupts. After Scarlett calls Rhett a drunken fool, he grabs her and carries her upstairs, angrily telling her that this night there will not be “three in a bed.” The next morning, Scarlett is happy, but when Rhett scoffs that his behavior was merely an indiscretion, her happiness turns to anger. Rhett then leaves for an extended trip to England and takes Bonnie with him.
Some months later, because Bonnie is homesick, Rhett returns to Atlanta and discovers that Scarlett is pregnant. She is happy to see Rhett, but his smirk of indifference and accusation about Ashley enrages her so that she starts to strike him and falls down the stairs. She loses the baby, and although she calls to him during her delirium, Rhett does not know and thinks that she hates him. After she recovers, he suggests that the anger and hatred stop for Bonnie's sake, and Scarlett agrees, but as they are talking, the headstrong Bonnie tries to make her pony take a jump and she falls and breaks her neck. Both are shattered by Bonnie's death, especially Rhett, who refuses to let her be buried because Bonnie was afraid of the dark. Only Melanie, to whom Rhett has always felt a closeness, convinces him to let the child go. After her talk with Rhett, Melanie, who has become pregnant despite the danger to her health, collapses and suffers a miscarriage. On her deathbed, Melanie asks Scarlett to take care of Ashley, but when Scarlett sees how much the distraught Ashley loves Melanie, she finally realizes how wrong she has been for years and knows that it is Rhett she truly loves. She rushes back home and tries to prevent him from leaving her, but he will not stay because it is too late for them. Scarlett tearfully asks him what she will do and as he leaves he answers, “Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.” Through her sobs, Scarlett begins to think of Tara, from which she has always gained strength, and determines that she will return there and will think of a way to get Rhett back. She resolves to think about it tomorrow for, “after all, tomorrow is another day.”
5. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Which phase of life is best?
It is said that childhood is the best phase of our life, yet not for everyone. But throughout time, we learn how to live with every emptiness in...
In 1916 British Intelligence supports the Arab rebellion against the Turkish-German alliance. Dryden, a civilian member of the Arab Bureau, selects Lt. T. E. Lawrence, an enigmatic twenty-nine-year-old scholar, to evaluate the Arab revolt. Enthusiastically undertaking this assignment, the officer contacts Prince Feisal, a rebel leader, and persuades Feisal to lend him a force of fifty men. With this skeleton band, accompanied by Sherif Ali ibn el Karish, Lawrence crosses the Nefud Desert. At the journey's end, however, Lawrence learns that one of his men is missing. Undeterred by Arab assertions that the missing man's death had been divinely decreed, Lawrence returns to the desert and rescues him, earning thereby Ali's friendship and the respect of his subordinates. At a well Lawrence is confronted by the sheikh Auda Abu Tayi, whom he persuades to join the assault on Aqaba, a Turkish port at the desert's edge. The Turks, surprised by the overland attack, are routed, and the victory revitalizes the Arab rebellion. Arab unity, however, is undermined by internecine warfare. When one of his troop slays one of Auda Abu Tayi's henchmen, Lawrence in expiation executes the murderer, who proves to be the Arab he had saved in the desert. Unnerved, Lawrence returns to Cairo. Delighted by Lawrence's military success, however, General Allenby provides him with arms and money for future victories. Lawrence launches a series of successful guerrilla raids, which, as reported by American journalist Jackson Bentley, establish his international reputation. While on a scouting mission with Ali, Lawrence is captured and tortured by the Turks. He returns to Cairo, where General Allenby persuades him to spearhead an attack on Damascus. After the battle, Lawrence leads his men in the massacre of the retreating Turks. Upon entering Damascus the British Army is met by victorious Arab forces. Lawrence relinquishes control of the city to an Arab Council, but soon factionalism threatens to destroy it. On May 19, 1935, Lawrence dies in a motorcycle crash in Dorset, England, and is commemorated in services at St. Paul's.
6. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farm girl, lives with her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. When Almira Gulch, who owns half the county, brings a sheriff's order to take Dorothy's little dog Toto away to have the dog destroyed, because Toto bit Miss Gulch's leg, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry refuse to go against the law, and they give the dog to Miss Gulch. However, as Miss Gulch rides away on her bicycle with Toto in her basket, the dog escapes and returns home. Realizing that Miss Gulch will come back, Dorothy runs away with Toto. They come to the wagon of the egotistical, but kindly Professor Marvel, a fortune-teller and balloonist, who tricks Dorothy into believing that her aunt has had an attack because she ran away. Dorothy rushes home greatly concerned, but a cyclone's approach causes her difficulty, and by the time she gets to the farm, Auntie Em, Uncle Henry and the three farmhands have entered the storm cellar. Inside her room, Dorothy is hit on the head by a window and knocked unconscious. When she revives, she sees through the window that the house has risen up inside the cyclone. When she sees Miss Gulch, traveling in mid-air on her bicycle, transform into a witch on a broomstick, Dorothy averts her eyes. The house comes to rest in Munchkinland, a colorful section of the Land of Oz inhabited by little people, and lands on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. Knowing that the dead witch's ruby slippers contain magic, Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, through her powers, has them placed on Dorothy's feet before the dead witch's sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, can retrieve them. The Wicked Witch vows revenge. Glinda then suggests that the wonderful Wizard of Oz can help Dorothy get back to Kansas and instructs her to take the yellow brick road to the distant Emerald City, where the Wizard resides. Along the way, Dorothy meets a friendly scarecrow who laments that he is failure because he has no brain, an emotional tin man, who longingly describes the romantic life he would lead if he only had a heart, and a seemingly ferocious lion who actually lacks courage. Dorothy suggests that they all go with her to ask the Wizard for his help. With help along the way from Glinda to battle a spell of the Wicked Witch, the four friends reach the Emerald City, where in the great hall of the Wizard, they see a terrifying apparition that identifies itself as “Oz” and lambasts Dorothy's companions for their deficiencies. When the lion faints from fright, Dorothy rebukes the Wizard for scaring him, and the Wizard agrees to grant their requests if they will first prove themselves worthy by bringing him the broomstick of the Witch of the West. As they pass through a haunted forest on their way to the witch's castle, the witch sends an army of winged monkeys, who capture Dorothy and Toto. In her castle, when the witch threatens to have Toto drowned, Dorothy offers the slippers in exchange for her dog, but the witch cannot remove them, and she remembers that the slippers will not come off as long as Dorothy is alive. As the witch ponders the proper way to kill Dorothy, Toto escapes. The dog leads Dorothy's friends to the castle, where they rescue her, but the witch's guards soon surround them. After the witch sadistically says that Dorothy will see her friends and dog die before her, she ignites the Scarecrow's arm. Dorothy tosses a bucket of water to put out the fire, and when some water splashes in the witch's face, she melts. The guards and monkeys, relieved that the witch is dead, hail Dorothy and give her the broomstick. Upon their return to Oz, the Wizard orders Dorothy and her friends to come back the next day. As they argue, Toto snoops behind a curtain and pulls it back to reveal a man manipulating levers and speaking into a microphone, who then admits to the group that he is really the “powerful” Wizard. Greatly disappointed and angry at the sham, Dorothy calls him a bad man, but he retorts that while he is a bad wizard, he is a good man. He then awards the Scarecrow a diploma, the Lion a medal and the Tin Man a testimonial, and states that where he comes from, these things are given to men who have no more brains, courage or heart than they have. Confessing that he is a balloonist and a Kansas man himself, the Wizard offers to take Dorothy back in his balloon. However, as they prepare to leave, Toto leaps from the balloon to chase a cat, and after Dorothy goes to retrieve the dog, the balloon takes off without them. Glinda then comforts Dorothy and reveals that she has always had the power to return home, but that she had to learn it for herself. Dorothy says that she has learned never to go further than her own backyard to look for her heart's desire. After Dorothy tearfully kisses and hugs her friends, Glinda tells her to click the heels of the slippers three times with her eyes closed and to think to herself, “There's no place like home.” This she does, and she awakens to find Uncle Henry and Auntie Em at her bedside. Professor Marvel, having heard that Dorothy was badly injured, comes by, and she begins to tell about her journey, which Auntie Em calls a bad dream. The farmhands come in, and Dorothy remembers them as her three friends in Oz and the professor as the Wizard. When Toto climbs on the bed, Dorothy says she loves them all and that she will never leave again, and she affirms to her aunt that there is no place like home.
7. The Graduate (1967)
Benjamin Braddock, filled with doubts about his future, returns to his Los Angeles home after graduating from an Eastern college. His parents soon have a party so they can boast of their son's academic achievements and his bright prospects in business. Mrs. Robinson, one of the guests, persuades Ben to drive her home and there tries to seduce him, but her overtures are interrupted by the sound of her husband's car in the driveway. Blatant in her seductive maneuvers, she soon has the nervous and inexperienced Ben meeting her regularly at the Taft Hotel. As the summer passes, Benjamin becomes increasingly bored and listless; he frequently stays out overnight and returns home to loll around the pool. When his worried parents try to interest him in Elaine, Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Ben agrees to date her to avoid having the entire Robinson family invited to dinner. At first Benjamin is rude to Elaine and takes her to a striptease club, but realizing how cruel he has been, he apologizes and the two begin dating. Outraged, Mrs. Robinson demands that Ben stop seeing her daughter; instead he blurts out the truth to a shocked Elaine, who returns to college in Berkeley. Although Ben follows her and tries to persuade her to marry him, Elaine's parents intervene and encourage her to marry Carl Smith, a student whom she has been dating. Ben returns to Los Angeles, but when Mrs. Robinson refuses to divulge any information about the wedding, he races back to Berkeley and learns that the ceremony will take place in Santa Barbara. Arriving at the church as the final vows are being spoken, he screams Elaine's name over the heads of the startled guests. Elaine sees her parents' anger toward Ben, and realizing what their influence has done, she fights off her mother and Carl and races to Ben. After locking the congregation in the church by jamming a crucifix through the door handles, the couple leaps aboard a passing bus and rides away.
8. On the Waterfront (1954)
At the request of mob boss Johnny Friendly, longshoreman Terry Malloy, a former boxer, lures fellow dock worker Joey Doyle to the roof of his tenement building, purportedly to discuss their shared hobby of pigeon racing. Believing that Friendly only intends to frighten Joey out of his threat to speak to the New York State Crime Commission, Terry is stunned to see Joey topple from the building as he and his brother, Charley “the Gent,” watch from across the street. As neighbors gather around Joey’s body, his distraught sister Edie accuses parish priest Father Barry of hiding behind the church and not helping the neighborhood break free from the mob’s grip. Listening nearby, Terry is disturbed by Edie’s indictment and later joins Charley, Friendly’s lawyer and accountant, at a meeting with Friendly and his lackeys. Friendly assures Terry that Joey’s death was necessary to preserve his hold on the harbor, then directs dock manager Big Mac to place Terry in the top job slot the following day. The next morning, while waiting for the day’s work assignment, the dock workers offer their sympathy to Joey’s father Pop, who gives Joey’s jacket to Kayo Dugan. Meanwhile, Terry is approached by Crime Commission representative Eddy Glover, but refuses to discuss Joey. Edie then comes down to the docks to apologize to Father Barry, but he admits that her accusation has prompted him to become more involved in the lives of the longshoremen. As the men disperse for work, Father Barry asks some of them to meet later downstairs in the church, despite being advised that Friendly does not approve of union meetings. Later, in the warehouse, Charley asks Terry to sit in on the church meeting. When Terry hesitates, Charley dismisses his brother’s fears of “stooling.” Despite the sparse turnout at the meeting in the church, Father Barry adamantly declares that mob control of the docks must end and demands information about Joey’s murder. Several men bristle in anger upon seeing Terry at the meeting, and Kayo tells Father Barry that no one will talk out of fear that Friendly will find out. Father Barry insists the men can fight Friendly and the mob through the courts, but the men refuse to participate. Eventually, Friendly’s stooges break up the meeting by hurling stones through the church windows. After Pop and Kayo are attacked outside, Father Barry presses Kayo to take action and Kayo agrees. Terry insists on walking Edie home and, on the way, she hesitatingly tells him abut her convent upbringing and ambition to teach. At home, Pop scolds Edie for walking with Terry, whom he calls a bum, and demands that she return to college. Edie responds that she must stay to find out who killed Joey. Later that day Edie is surprised to find Terry on the roof with Joey’s pigeons. Terry shows her his own prize bird, then asks her if she would like to have a beer with him. At the bar, Terry tells Edie that he and Charley were placed in an orphanage after their father died, but they eventually ran away. He took up boxing and Friendly bought a percentage of him, but his career faded. Swept up among wedding party revelers at the bar, Edie and Terry dance together until they are interrupted by Glover, who serves Terry with a subpoena to the Crime Commission hearings. Edie demands to know if Friendly arranged Joey’s murder, and when Terry cautions her to stop asking questions, she accuses him of still being owned by the mobster. That evening, Friendly visits Terry, who is evasive about the church meeting, then surprised when Friendly reveals that Kayo testified before the commission. Charley criticizes Terry for seeing Edie, and Friendly orders Terry back to working in the ship hold. The next day in the hold, Terry attempts to speak with Kayo, but the older man brushes him aside, calling him one of Friendly’s boys. Big Mac and one of his henchmen rig a crane to slip, and a load of boxes crashes down upon Kayo, killing him in front of Terry. Outraged, Father Barry gives an impromptu eulogy for Kayo, asserting that Kayo was killed to prevent him from testifying further. After two of Friendly’s henchmen begin pelting the priest with fruit and vegetables, Pop and Edie arrive and watch as Father Barry ignores the abuse and exhorts the men to believe in themselves and reject mob control. Terry furiously knocks out one of the henchmen, angering Friendly and Charley. Later, Father Barry returns Joey’s jacket to Pop and Edie. That night, after Edie gives Joey’s jacket to Terry, the guilt-stricken Terry tries but is unable to tell her about his part in Joey’s murder. The next morning Terry seeks out Father Barry to ask for guidance as he believes he is falling in love with Edie, but is conflicted about testifying and about going against Charley. Father Barry maintains that Terry must follow his conscience and challenges him to be honest with Edie. When Terry meets Edie on the beach later, he relates the details of the night of Joey’s murder, insisting that he did not know Joey would be killed, but Edie rushes away in distress. Later while tending his pigeons on the roof, Terry is visited by Glover and implies that he might be willing to testify. Their meeting is reported to Friendly, who orders Charley to straighten Terry out. That night, Charley takes Terry on a cab drive and chides him for not telling him about the subpoena. When Terry attempts to explain his confusion, Charley brusquely threatens him with a gun. Hurt, Terry reproaches his older brother for not looking after him and allowing him to become a failure and a bum by involving him with the mob. Charley gives Terry the gun and says he will stall Friendly. Terry goes to see Edie, and breaks down her apartment door when she refuses to let him in and demands to know if she cares for him. Edie tells Terry to listen to his conscience, which angers him, but the two embrace. When Terry is summoned to the street, Edie begs him not to go, then follows him. After the couple is nearly run down by a truck, they find Charley’s body hung up on a meat hook on a nearby fence. Taking down his brother’s body, Terry vows revenge on Friendly, and sends Edie for Father Barry. Armed, Terry hunts for Friendly at his regular bar, but Father Barry convinces him that the best way to ruin Friendly is in court and Terry throws away the gun. The next day at the hearings, Terry testifies to Friendly’s involvement in Joey’s death, outraging the mobster, who shouts threats at him. Back at home, Terry is scorned by the neighbors for testifying and discovers that his pigeons have been killed by a boy he once coached. Edie attempts to comfort Terry, advising him to leave, but Terry insists that he has the right to stay in his town. The next day Terry reports to work as usual, but is ignored by the men and refused work by Big Mac. In his office at the pier, Friendly, who is about to be indicted, swears vengeance on Terry. Terry confronts Friendly on the pier, declaring he is nothing without guns, and the two fall into a brutal fistfight. While Friendly’s men help to thrash Terry, the dockworkers watch impassively as Edie arrives with Father Barry. Friendly orders the longshoremen to begin unloading, but the men refuse and demand that Terry be allowed to work, hoping the shipping owners will witness their refusal to obey Friendly and realize their intention to restart a clean union. Father Barry urges on the beaten Terry, who rises and defiantly stumbles down the pier and into the warehouse.
9. Schindler's List (1993)
In September 1939, at the onset of World War II, German entrepreneur and Nazi party member Oskar Schindler goes to Krakow, Poland, where tens of thousands of Polish Jews have been forced to relocate under German occupation. Schindler wants to open a ceramics factory but lacks the necessary capital. He asks Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern to help him recruit Jewish investors, who would go unnamed, as Jews are no longer allowed to own businesses. Stern rejects the idea. However, in March 1941, when Krakow Jews are forced out of their homes and into a sixteen-block walled ghetto, Stern reconsiders. He recruits investors, who initially balk at Schindler’s offer to repay them in ceramic goods, but agree to invest when Schindler convinces them their money will be of no value in the ghetto. Itzhak Stern recruits Jewish workers for Schindler’s factory. Because it is located outside the ghetto, the workers must be deemed “essential” and receive blue cards to allow them to come and go. Stern helps some elderly and handicapped Jews get hired by forging paperwork to prove they are essential. Schindler reprimands him for this practice, but does not fire anyone. He establishes contracts with the German army, and the business gets off to a strong start. Schindler’s estranged wife, Emilie, arrives, and is not surprised when she finds her husband with another woman. Schindler brags to Emilie that he has finally achieved success, and is proud to be a war profiteer. They briefly reunite, but when Emilie offers to stay, if he promises to be faithful, Schindler sends her away. One day, he gets word that Stern has been sent to a concentration camp. He rushes to the train station, threatens the Nazi officers, and retrieves Stern, who apologizes, explaining he accidentally left home without his work card. The exasperated Schindler wonders what would have happened if he had not made it to the station in time. In the winter of 1942, Krakow Jews struggle to withstand the demoralizing conditions of the ghetto. Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Amon Goeth arrives in Krakow to oversee the building of the Plaszow forced labor camp, and establishes himself as a ruthless killer when he shoots a Jewish engineer for being too argumentative. In March 1943, Krakow Jews are again forced to relocate to Plaszow. Their “liquidation” from the ghetto results in mass bloodshed, as Nazi guards gun down anyone who attempts to hide or flee. Schindler observes the atrocity, and is struck by a young Jewish girl in a red coat, moving alone through the chaotic streets. In the ghetto’s infirmary, a Jewish doctor and nurse administer a fatal dose of medicine to patients just before SS officers burst in and shoot them in their hospital beds. At Plaszow, Goeth amuses himself by shooting slow-moving or resting workers with a sniper rifle. When Schindler’s workers fail to report to the factory, he goes to Plaszow to inquire about their whereabouts, and must ingratiate himself with Goeth to allow for their release. Word spreads that Schindler is a benevolent boss. Regina Perlman, a young Jewish woman living in Krakow under a false identity, begs Schindler to hire her parents. Schindler again reprimands Itzhak Stern for his charitable hiring practices. He defends Goeth as someone who is under tremendous pressure, who would not normally act like a tyrant. Stern relays a story about Goeth executing prisoners at random, and urges Schindler to fight against Goeth’s brutality. Schindler relents and hires Regina Perlman’s parents. The next time he visits Goeth, Schindler pulls aside his Jewish housemaid, Helen Hirsch, who recalls Goeth beating her on the first day of work, and predicts he will someday kill her. Upstairs, Schindler tells the drunken Goeth that true power is refraining from killing someone when you have every reason to do it. The next day, Goeth experiments with showing mercy toward the Jewish prisoners, but quickly gives up and kills his houseboy for failing to properly clean his bathtub. Later, Goeth paces in Helen’s quarters, struggling to restrain himself despite his strong attraction to her. Finally, instead of kissing her, he beats her. In the women’s barracks, a female prisoner shares a rumor that at some camps, Jewish prisoners are lured into gas chambers disguised as showers and killed en masse. Others cannot believe it, and laugh it off as impossible. With an incoming shipment of Hungarian Jews arriving at Plaszow, German doctors are called to determine which existing workers can stay, and who must be sent to concentration camps. Children are loaded into trucks and driven out of the camp, as their parents chase after them in desperation. Schindler goes to the train station, where departing Jews are packed into unventilated train compartments. He suggests hosing them down as a prank, but Goeth realizes Schindler is doing it out of pity, to keep them from overheating. Soon, Schindler is arrested for kissing a Jewish worker who presented him with a birthday cake. Goeth negotiates his release. In April 1944, a Nazi edict requires that buried Jewish bodies be exhumed and burned. Plaszow workers are tasked with digging up the dead bodies. Goeth tells Schindler that the “party is over,” and everyone will soon be sent to Auschwitz. Schindler concocts a plan to start a new factory in his hometown of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia. He uses all his money and belongings to bribe SS officials, including Goeth, to allow over 1,000 of his workers, named on a list, to be transferred to the new factory. He wants to add Helen Hirsch to the list, but Goeth plans to shoot her. Schindler entices him to wager Helen in a card game, and Goeth loses, allowing Schindler to rescue her. Although Schindler’s male workers arrive in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, the women are diverted to Auschwitz, due to an alleged clerical error. There, their hair is cut off and they are forced to shower in a large room that they fear is a gas chamber. Schindler goes to Auschwitz and uses diamonds to negotiate their release. SS officers try to steal his child employees, but Schindler insists he needs their small fingers to polish shell casings. Back in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Schindler forbids SS guards from shooting any of his workers, or carrying guns on the factory floor. He reunites with his wife, Emilie, and promises to be faithful to her. When Stern warns Schindler that the company’s new artillery shells are failing tests, the satisfied Schindler vows never to produce working artillery. The workers are allowed to resume observing the Sabbath, despite the SS guards’ dismay. Just as Schindler and the factory run out of money, Germans surrender to Allied forces, bringing an end to World War II. Schindler makes an announcement to his workers and the SS guards that he is a war criminal and will flee that night. He urges the guards, who have received orders to kill all the Jews at the factory, to return home as men instead of murderers. The guards reluctantly leave. Schindler observes three minutes of silence for the Jewish victims of the war. One of the workers allows three of his gold teeth to be pulled, to fabricate a gold ring as a parting gift for Schindler. At midnight, they present him with the ring, engraved with a Hebrew saying that states, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” Stern credits Schindler with saving 1,100 people. Schindler breaks down in tears, disappointed in himself for not saving more. He dons a concentration camp uniform, and flees with Emilie. The next day, a soldier arrives to tell the workers that they have been liberated, but discourages them from going back to Poland. He points them in the direction of the nearest town, where they walk to find food. In time, Goeth is arrested at a sanitarium and hanged for war crimes. Schindler’s marriage and subsequent business ventures fail. In 1958, he is named a “righteous person” by the council of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel. The descendants of the Jews he saved eventually outnumber all the Jews in Poland.
10. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
In 1927, fans gather at Hollywood's Chinese Theatre for the premiere of Monumental Picture's latest romantic epic, The Royal Rascal, starring the popular silent screen couple Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont. Don tells radio commentator Dora Bailey that his motto has always been "dignity" and relates the idyllic story of his childhood and rise to fame, all of which is complete fabrication. The audience applauds enthusiastically at the end of the swashbuckling film and asks for speeches from its stars, whom they think are a couple off-screen as well as on, but Don, who loathes his screechy-voiced co-star, insists that Lina merely smile. Assisted by studio boss R. F. Simpson, Don slips away from the cloying Lina and drives with his best friend, studio pianist Cosmo Brown, to the premiere party. On Hollywood Blvd., Cosmo's car breaks down, and Don is surrounded by fans. To escape the screaming mob, who have torn his tuxedo, Don jumps onto a passing car driven by Kathy Selden. She is frightened at first, but when a policeman tells Kathy who Don is, she offers him a ride to his house in Beverly Hills. Although Kathy says that she is a stage actress, who has seen only one of Don's films, she is actually a chorus girl at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. After dropping Don off to change his clothes, Kathy drives to the party at R. F.'s house, where she will be performing. Don arrives at the party in time to see a short talking picture. Most of the guests are unimpressed by the new phenomenon, even when R. F. says that the Warner brothers are about to release a feature-length talking picture. When the entertainment starts, Don is surprised, but happy to see a scantily clad Kathy jump out of a cake, and tries to talk with her, but she thinks that he only wants to ridicule her. Just as a jealous Lina takes Don's arm, Kathy throws a cake at him, but misses, and hits Lina instead. Kathy quickly runs away, and Don cannot find her. Some weeks later, Warner Bros.' The Jazz Singer is a box office smash and audiences are clamoring for more talking pictures. As Don and Lina start their next film, The Dueling Cavalier, Cosmo makes a crack about all of their films being alike, and Don is stung, thinking that Kathy was right about words being necessary for real acting. Lina continues to complain about Kathy, whom she had fired, which makes Don dislike Lina even more, as he has not seen Kathy since the party. During a break in filming, R. F. announces that they are shutting down production and will resume in a few weeks as a talking picture. Cosmo happily anticipates unemployment, but R. F. makes him head of the new studio music department. Some time later, when a musical number is being filmed for another picture, Cosmo sees Kathy in the chorus. When Don shows up just as R. F. is about to offer Kathy another part, she confesses what happened at the party, but Don tells R. F. that it was not her fault and R. F. agrees. Later, when Kathy and Don are talking, he tells her that his "romance" with Lina is completely fabricated by fan magazines and Kathy confesses that she has seen all of his pictures. Don has difficulty revealing his feelings to Kathy until he takes her to a romantic setting on a sound stage. Soon preparations for The Dueling Cavalier begin with diction lessions for Lina and Don. Although Don is fine, Lina's voice shows little improvement. When filming resumes, director Roscoe Dexter becomes increasingly frustrated by Lina's voice and inability to speak into the microphone, but the picture is completed. When it is previewed on a rainy night in Hollywood, the audience laughs at Lina's voice, howls at synchronization problems, and leaves the theater saying it was the worst film ever made. Later that night, Cosmo and Kathy try to console Don, who thinks his career is over until Cosmo comes up with the idea to turn the film into a musical comedy and have Kathy dub Lina's voice. Don worries that this plan is not good for Kathy, but she convinces him by saying it will be for just one picture. The next day, R. F. loves the idea and they all conspire to keep Lina from finding out. To enhance the picture, they add a modern section in which Don can sing and dance the story of a Broadway hoofer. After the picture is finished, Don tells Kathy that he wants to tell the world how much he loves her, but as they kiss, Lina interrupts them and flies into a rage. She then starts her own publicity campaign proclaiming herself Monumental's new singing star. R. F. is angry, but Lina shows him her contract and he reluctantly agrees that she controls her own publicity. Lina then threatens to ruin the studio unless Kathy continues to dub her singing and speaking voice, but do nothing else. At the picture's premiere, the audience loves "Lina's" voice. Feeling triumphant, Lina boasts that Kathy will keep singing for her, and Don is furious. When the audience clamors for a song from Lina, Don hatches the idea of having Kathy stand behind a curtain and sing into a microphone as Lina pantomines the words. While Lina silently mouths "Singin' in the Rain," Don, R. F. and Cosmo pull the curtain and the audience laughs hysterically when they realize that Kathy is actually singing. Lina does not know what is happening until Cosmo takes the microphone from Kathy and starts singing himself. Lina runs off screaming, and an embarrassed Kathy starts to leave the theater, until Don tells the audience that she is the real star of the film and has her join him in a song. Finally, a billboard proclaims that Don and Kathy are co-stars of the new Monumental film Singin' in the Rain.
11. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
On Christmas Eve, 1945, prayers are heard in heaven for George Bailey of Bedford Falls, New York. To help George, Clarence Oddbody, an angel who has not yet earned his wings, is being sent to earth to keep the despairing George from killing himself on this crucial night. To prepare him for his task, Clarence is shown George's life: As a child, George stops his younger brother Harry from drowning in an icy pond, then catches a bad cold and loses his hearing in one ear. Weeks later, George goes back to work at his after school job in Mr. Gower's drugstore and prevents Gower, who has gotten drunk after learning that his son has died of influenza, from accidentally dispensing arsenic-filled capsules to a sick child. George promises the remorseful Gower never to tell anyone about the incident and he never does. In 1928, as a grown young man, George, who has always dreamed of travel to exotic places, is about to leave on a world tour with money he has saved since high school. That night, at his younger brother Harry's high school graduation party, he becomes attracted to Mary Hatch, a girl who has secretly loved him since childhood. After a Charleston contest that results in an unscheduled splash into the school's swimming pool, they discuss their different ideas for the future until George's Uncle Billy comes for him with the news that his father has had a stroke. After Mr. Bailey's death, George's trip is canceled, but he still plans to leave for college until he learns that the board of directors of his father's financially tenuous building and loan society will not keep it open unless George manages it. Fearing that Mr. Potter, the town's richest and meanest man, will then have financial control of the town, George agrees to stay. Four years later, when Harry returns from college, financed by his brother, George again looks forward to leaving the stifling atmosphere of Bedford Falls and letting Harry run the business. However, when he learns that Harry has just married Ruth Dakin, whose father has offered Harry a good job, he again sacrifices his future to ensure Harry's. That night, George wanders over to Mary's house. Though he is adamant that he never intends to marry, he realizes that he loves her. Soon they are married, but as they leave for their honeymoon, a run on the bank convinces George to check on the building and loan. Because the bank has called in their loan, they have no money, only the honeymoon cash that Mary offers. Through George's persuasive words, most of the anxious customers settle for a minimum of cash, and they end the day with two dollars left. That night, Ernie the cab driver and Bert the cop show George his new "home," an abandoned mansion that Mary had wished for the night of the graduation dance. As the years pass, George continues to help the people of Bedford Falls avoid Potter's financial stranglehold as Mary rears their four children. On the day before Christmas, after the end of World War II, the 4-F George elatedly shows his friends news articles about Harry, who became a Medal-of-Honor-winning flier, while Uncle Billy makes an $8,000 deposit at the bank. Distracted by an exchange with Potter, Billy accidentally puts his deposit envelope inside Potter's newspaper, and Potter does not give it back when he finds it. Later, after Billy reveals the loss to George, they vainly search, while a bank examiner waits. Now on the verge of hysteria over the possibility of bankruptcy and a prison term for embezzlement, George goes home, angry and sullen. He yells at everyone except their youngest child Zuzu, who has caught a cold on the way home from school. He screams at Zuzu's teacher on the telephone, then leaves after a confrontation with Mary. He desperately goes to Potter to borrow the money against the building and loan, or even his life insurance, but Potter dismisses him, taunting him that he is worth more dead than alive. At a tavern run by his friend, Mr. Martini, George is socked by Mr. Welch, the teacher's husband. Now on the verge of suicide, George is about to jump off a bridge when Clarence comes to earth and intervenes by jumping in himself. George saves him, and as they dry out in the tollhouse, Clarence tells George that he is his guardian angel. George is unbelieving, but when he says he wishes that he had never been born, Clarence grants his wish. Revisiting Martini's and other places in town, George is not recognized by anyone and discovers that everything has changed. Harry drowned and Gower went to jail for poisoning the sick child. The town was renamed Pottersville and is full of vice and poverty. When George finally makes Clarence show him Mary, he discovers that she is a lonely, unmarried librarian. Finally, unable to face what might have been, George begs to live again and discovers that his wish is granted when Bert finds him back at the bridge. At home, an elated George is soon greeted by Mary, who has brought their friends and relatives, all of whom have contributed money to help him out. Harry arrives and offers a toast to his "big brother George, the richest man in town." As a bell on the Christmas tree rings, Zuzu says that every time a bell rings an angel receives his wings, and George knows that this time it was Clarence.
12. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
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Early one morning, police arrive at a large house on Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills, where a man's body floats face down in the pool: Six months earlier, while down on his luck, screenwriter Joe C. Gillis is living at the Alto Nido apartments in Hollywood, California. Joe is served with a court order commanding him to relinquish his car or pay $290 in back payments by noon the next day. Hoping to make a quick deal, Joe meets with Paramount studio producer Sheldrake to peddle a baseball/gambling picture he has written, but is turned down. While in Sheldrake's office, Joe encounters studio reader Betty Schaefer, who pans the script as formulaic. Sheldrake then refuses him a personal loan, as does his agent. Despairing, Joe makes plans to return to Dayton, Ohio, where he worked as a newspaper copy writer. While driving down Sunset Blvd., he spots the two men who are trying to repossess his car and successfully eludes them, but then has a blowout. He coasts into the driveway of a dilapidated 1920s mansion and hides the car in an empty garage. Joe then enters the house, where stoic butler Max von Mayerling orders him upstairs to consult with "madame" immediately. Joe soon discovers that he has been mistaken for a mortician, who is due to arrive with a baby coffin for "madame's" dead pet chimpanzee. Joe recognizes the faded woman as Norma Desmond, once a famous silent movie star. When she rails against modern talking pictures, Joe tells her that he is a screenwriter. Excitedly, she announces that she is planning a return to the screen in a story she is writing about the Biblical figure Salomé. When Norma discovers Joe is a Sagittarius, she is convinced of their compatibility and hires him to edit her lengthy screenplay for $500 per week and puts him up in a room over her garage. The next day, Joe awakens to find that all his belongings have been moved from his apartment, and that Norma has settled his debts. Although he is angry at Norma for her presumption, he acquiesces because he so desperately needs a job. Joe soon learns that Norma's fragile but enormous ego is supported by the scores of fan letters she still receives, and two or three times a week, Max projects her silent pictures on her living-room movie screen. As Norma and what Joe calls "the waxworks," Hollywood old-timers Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson and H. B. Warner, are playing bridge one night, two men arrive and tow away Joe's car. To appease the distraught Joe, Norma arranges for Max to refurbish her old Isotta-Fraschini, an extravagant Italian sports car. The once reclusive Norma becomes increasingly controlling. After a rain storm soaks Joe's room, she has him moved into the bedroom adjacent to hers, where her three former husbands slept. When Joe notices that none of the bedroom doors have locks, Max explains that Norma's bouts of melancholy are often followed by suicide attempts. Joe then realizes that Max has been writing Norma's fan letters so that she will not feel completely forgotten. On New Year's Eve, Norma stages a lavish party for herself and Joe, but he flies into a rage because he feels smothered. Feeling rejected, she slaps him, and he leaves the house. At a lively party at the home of his friend, assistant director Artie Green, Joe again meets Betty, who is engaged to Artie, and is excited about one of Joe's stories. Joe asks to stay for a few weeks, and Artie agrees to put him up. When he calls Max to have his things sent over, however, Max tells him that Norma slit her wrists with his razor blade. Joe returns to the house at midnight and finds Norma weeping at her own stupidity for falling in love with him. She pulls him to her and they kiss. After Norma recovers, she has the pool filled, and announces that she has sent her script to Paramount's director of epics Cecil B. DeMille, with whom she made twelve pictures. One night, Joe sees Artie with Betty at Schwab's Pharmacy. Although Betty tells him she has nearly sold one of his stories, Joe says he has given up writing, and leaves. Norma later gets a call from Paramount, but refuses to take the call because DeMille has not called her himself. Finally, Norma visits the studio unannounced. While Norma receives the long-awaited attention she craves on DeMille's set, Max learns that the earlier call was an inquiry about her car, which the studio wants to use for a film. While on the lot, Joe sees Betty, who is busy revising his story, and agrees to collaborate with her on the script in her off-hours. Norma misinterprets DeMille's pitying kindness for a deal, and a staff of beauty experts descends on her house to ready her for the cameras. Betty and Joe, meanwhile, meet repeatedly in the late evenings, and he begins to care for her, but keeps his other life with Norma a secret. One night, Max reveals to Joe that he was once an influential Hollywood director who discovered Norma when she was sixteen and made her a star. After he became Norma's first husband, she left him, but when Hollywood abandoned her, he gave up his prosperous career to return to serve her as a butler. Eventually, Norma, suspicious that Joe is involved with another woman, finds his and Betty's script and goes into a deep depression. Meanwhile, Betty receives a telegram from Artie, who is filming in Arizona, asking her to marry him immediately. She confesses her love to Joe, and he admits he wants her, too. When he arrives home that evening, however, he catches Norma calling Betty to expose him as a kept man and giving her the Sunset Blvd. address. When Betty arrives, Joe bitterly explains that he is Norma's companion. Betty urges him to leave with her immediately, but he tells her he is bound to "a long term contract with no options" and allows her to leave. He then packs, with the intention of moving back to Ohio, and returns all of Norma's gifts. Joe then tells her that there will be no film of Salomé, that the studio only wants to rent her car, and that her fans have abandoned her. Shouting that "no one ever leaves a star," Norma shoots Joe twice in the back and once in the stomach, sending him to his death in the pool. A throng of reporters and policemen surround the house, but the police are unable to get Norma out of her bedroom, until Max directs the Paramount newsreel crew to set up their equipment at the bottom of the stairs, and tells Norma that the cameras have arrived. In a state of delusional shock, Norma descends the stairs as "Salomé" while Max tells the cameramen to start rolling. At the bottom of the stairs, Norma announces, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."
13. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
In World War II Burma, after they are captured by Japanese troops during World War II, British commander Col. Nicholson and his troops march into Prisoner of War Camp 16 whistling their regimental tune. Their crisp arrival is wryly observed by Shears, an American sailor who bribes a guard to transfer him from the burial detail to the infirmary. When the camp’s commander, Col. Saito, imperiously informs the new prisoners that they will all be expected to work on building a railroad that will connect Bangkok to Rangoon, Nicholson protests that under the regulations of the Geneva Convention, all officers are exempt from manual labor. Afterward, Nicholson goes to the infirmary to visit Jennings, one of his wounded men. There Maj. Clipton, the camp’s medical officer, introduces the colonel to “Commander Major” Shears. When Jennings proposes escaping, Nicholson counters that he was ordered by headquarters to surrender, and therefore escaping would constitute a military infraction. Incredulous at the colonel’s naïveté, Shears retorts that escape is their only chance to avoid the death sentence of forced labor. The following day, Saito announces that all the men, including officers, will work on building a bridge across the River Kwai. When Nicholson defiantly waves a copy of the Geneva Convention, Saito slaps him across the face with it and flings it to the ground. Nicholson still refuses to let his officers perform manual labor, and after the other men march off to work, Saito calls for a machine gun and threatens to gun down all the officers. Watching in horror, Clipton runs out of the infirmary and protests that he and his patients have seen everything and will be witnesess to murder if Saito orders the gunners to fire. Saito then changes his mind and forces the officers to stand for the entire day in the merciless sun. Afterward, Saito locks Nicholson in “the oven,” a crude metal shed, and imprisons the other officers in the “punishment hut.” As the troops encourage Nicholson with a rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” Shears, Jennings and a prisoner named Weaver escape into the jungle. Jennings and Weaver are gunned down by the guards, who then pursue Shears to a ridge above the river and shoot him. The guards assume that Shears is dead after he plunges into the river, but he survives and makes his way down river to the shore. Later, Saito summons Clipton and asks him to tell Nicholson that unless he cooperates, the patients in the infirmary will be forced to work. Confronted with the ultimatum, Nicholson still refuses to comply on the grounds that “it is a matter of principle.” With only two months left before the May first deadline for the completion of the bridge, Saito, frustrated by the slow progress, takes command of the project himself. After a segment of the bridge collapses, a defeated Saito has Nicholson brought to his office from the oven and explains that if he fails to meet the deadline, he will be forced to commit hara-kari. Unmoved, Nicholson insists that the Geneva Convention be adhered to, after which Saito orders him taken back to the oven. Meanwhile Shears, who was found near death by some friendly villagers, recovers and begins a solitary boat trip down river. Days later, his water exhausted, Shears passes out, leaving his boat to drift aimlessly. Plagued by ineptness and sabotage in his efforts to build the bridge, Saito orders the weakened and dehydrated Nicholson pulled from the oven and brought to his office where he grants a general amnesty to the officers and declares it will not be necessary for them to perform manual labor. As the men cheer Nicholson’s victory, Saito sits in his office, broken and sobbing. Upon inspecting the bridge, Nicholson criticizes the workers’ cavalier attitude and asks Capt. Reeves, who worked as a civilian engineer, for advice. Reeves observes that the river bottom at the present location is soft mud and suggests moving downstream where the bottom is solid bedrock. When Maj. Hughes, a public works engineer, criticizes the men’s lack of teamwork, Nicholson declares that they will rebuild the company’s morale by building an exemplary bridge. Nicholson, completely oblivious to the fact that he is about to aid and abet the enemy, presents a plan to Saito increasing the men’s daily work quota and suggests that Japanese soldiers should work laying track. Seeing his position crumbling, Saito stoicly says that he has already given the order. Shears, meanwhile, has been picked up by a sea rescue plane and brought to a hospital in Ceylon where he is visited by Maj. Warden, the explosives instructor at a nearby British commando school, who invites him to a meeting at the school. At the meeting, Warden explains that he plans to lead a team into Burma to blow up the bridge and asks Shears to join them. Shears, desirous of returning to civilian life, demurs, confessing that he was merely impersonating an officer and therefore is not qualified for the mission. Warden then informs him that the U.S. Navy already knows about his deception and has authorized his transfer to the British commandoes. Faced with possible imprisonment for impersonating an officer, Shears reluctantly accepts the assignment and retains his rank as Major. At the prison camp, Clipton warns Nicholson that he could be charged with treason for collaborating with the enemy. Obsessed by proving the mettle of his British soldiers, Nicholson turns a deaf ear to the medic’s protest. At the commando school meanwhile, Shears joins a team comprised of Warden, Chapman and Lt. Joyce, a young recruit wary of killing. As the four parachute into the jungle, Chapman crashes into a tree and is killed. The others are met by Yai, a native guide who hates the Japanese, and four women bearers. As they begin their trek through the jungle, they receive a radio transmission from headquarters informing them that a special train carrying troops and VIPs is scheduled to inaugurate the bridge on the thirteenth, and ordering them to carry out the demolition on that day. Realizing that he cannot finish the bridge by the deadline, Nicholson matter-of-factly tells Clipton that he has asked the officers to work beside the enlisted men and they have volunteered "to a man." After Clipton's protests, Nicholson then recruits wounded men from the infirmary to perform “light labor.” In the jungle, meanwhile, Warden’s team is accosted by Japanese soldiers, and in the skirmish Warden is shot in the ankle. Warden subsequently stumbles along on his crippled foot, climbing torturous mountain paths, but when they are just six hours away from the bridge, he declares that the others should continue on without him. Angrily denouncing Warden’s self-sacrifice as the histrionics of a British gentleman, Shears orders him hoisted onto a stretcher, after which they all continue on together, reaching the bridge just as Nicholson is nailing up a plaque commemorating the work of the British soldiers. That night, as the prisoners put on a show in celebration of the completion of the bridge, concluding with “God Bless the King,” Joyce and Shears, aided by the women, pilot a raft filled with plastic explosives to the bridge while Saito, having been bested by the British, makes preparations for hara-kari. After attaching the explosives to the bridge, Joyce takes cover with the detonator while Shears swims back across the river to await the arrival of the train the next day. At daybreak, the commandoes discover that the water level of the river has dropped, exposing the wires leading to the detonator. When the troops march onto the bridge for the ribbon cutting ceremony, Clipton informs Nicholson he wants no part of the festivities and retreats to a hill to watch. As the train whistle is heard in the distance, Nicholson spots the wires and calls Saito to go with him and investigate. Warden watches in disbelief as Nicholson follows the wire to the detonator, incredulous that a British officer would try to prevent an act of sabotage against the enemy. Sneaking up behind Saito, Joyce stabs him in the back with his knife, then informs Nicholson that they have been sent by the British to blow up the bridge. Crazed, Nicholson attacks Joyce, prompting Shears to scream “kill him” and swim to Joyce’s defense. As Warden bombards the bridge with mortar shells, the Japanese open fire, wounding Shears and killing Joyce. When the injured Shears dies at Nicholson’s feet, the colonel realizes his folly just as he is wounded by mortar fire and falls onto the detonator, setting off the explosives as the train approaches the bridge. As the bridge collapses, sending the train spilling into the river, Clipton surveys the scene and utters “madness.”
In Chicago, in February, 1929, federal agent Mulligan sets up a raid on a speakeasy run by notorious bootlegger “Spats” Colombo, based on information provided by small-time gangster “Toothpick” Charlie. As Mulligan inspects the lively speakeasy, two members of the band, saxophonist Joe and bass player Jerry eagerly discuss plans for their salary from their first job in four months. The longtime friends begin arguing about how to spend their salary until Jerry notices Mulligan’s badge and they make a hasty exit as the raid begins, avoiding the police roundup. Putting up their coats as collateral, they place a bet with their bookie, and promptly lose both the bet and their coats. Desperate, Joe and Jerry visit the musicians’ agency building hoping to line up another job. At Sid Poliakoff’s agency, receptionist Nellie Weinmeier, incensed over being stood up by Joe a few nights earlier, reveals there is an opening for a bass and sax with a band in an all-expenses paid trip to Florida. Joe and Jerry eagerly question Sid, only to learn that the positions are in an all-girl band. Sid tells them of a job at a college dance in Urbana and Joe accepts, then charms Nellie into loaning them her car for the Urbana gig. Retrieving the car at a garage owned by Toothpick Charlie, Joe and Jerry unintentionally witness Spats and his men shoot Charlie and his men to death for informing on the speakeasy. Although the musicians are spotted by Spats, he is distracted by Charlie, who revives long enough to allow Joe and Jerry to flee. After they evade the gangsters, Jerry suggests they call the police, but Joe reminds him they will not be safe from Spats in any part of Chicago in spite of the police. Joe then telephones Sid and, using a high falsetto voice, accepts the job with the all-girl band. That evening at the train station, Joe and Jerry, uncomfortably disguised as women, check in with band leader Sweet Sue and manager Beinstock as the newest members of the Society Syncopators, Joe as Josephine and Jerry as Daphne. Once on board the train, Joe fears that Jerry’s enthusiasm at finding himself among so many women will expose them and warns his friend to behave “like a girl,” but in the process, musses Jerry’s outfit. Retreating to the ladies’ room for repairs, the men come upon stunning singer and ukulele player Sugar Kane Kowalczyk drinking bourbon from a flask. Sugar pleads with them not to report her to Sue, who has threatened to fire her if she is caught drinking again. A little later during rehearsal, when Sugar’s flask falls to the floor, Sue responds angrily, but Jerry steps forward, and to Sugar’s surprise, claims the flask is his own. That night, Sugar sneaks to Jerry’s berth to thank him for his action, then abruptly jumps into the berth to avoid Sue. Overwhelmed by Sugar’s proximity, Jerry grows anxious and suggests that he needs a drink and within minutes an impromptu party ensues at Jerry’s berth. Joe awakens and is horrified, but gets drawn into the festivities when Sugar asks him to help break up an ice block in the ladies’ room. There Sugar confides that she is with the all-girl band in order to escape a series of unhappy love affairs with tenor saxophone players and dreams of finding a sensitive millionaire who wears glasses. Upon arriving in Florida at the beachfront Ritz Seminole Hotel, “Daphne” catches the attention of wealthy, oft-married Osgood Fielding III. Once in their room, Jerry, infuriated at being flirted with and pinched by Osgood, demands they give up their disguises and find a male band, but Joe insists they must maintain their masquerade, as Spats will surely investigate male orchestras all over the country. Jerry reluctantly agrees and then accompanies Sugar to the beach. Unknown to Jerry, Joe has stolen Beinstock’s suitcase of clothes and eyeglasses and, dressing in them, goes to the beach where he stages an accidental meeting with Sugar. Joe implies that he is the heir to the Shell Oil company and, captivated by the apparently sensitive “Junior,” Sugar invites him to the band’s opening that night. Back in their room, Jerry receives a call from Osgood inviting Daphne to a candlelit dinner on board his yacht. Joe accepts for Jerry, then tells his protesting friend that he must keep the date with Osgood on shore, as he, in the guise of Shell Oil, Junior, plans to dine with Sugar on Osgood’s yacht. That night during the band’s performance, Osgood sends Jerry an enormous bouquet, which Joe commandeers to give to Sugar with a card inviting her to dine with Junior. Afterward, Joe meets Sugar on the pier as an unhappy Jerry talks Osgood into dining at a local roadhouse. While Jerry and Osgood tango to the music of a Cuban band at the roadhouse, on board Osgood’s yacht Joe convinces Sugar that a romantic emotional shock in his youth has left him impotent and years of expensive medical treatment have failed to cure him. Appalled, Sugar begs Joe to allow her to help, but after numerous passionate kisses, Joe insists he is unmoved. Determined, Sugar pleads to keep trying and Joe agrees. At dawn, Joe climbs back in the window of the hotel room to find Jerry deliriously happy because Osgood has proposed. Taken aback, Joe tells his friend it is impossible for him to marry another man, but Jerry explains his plan to reveal his identity after the marriage ceremony and, after an annulment, force Osgood to pay him alimony. Disturbed by Jerry’s high spirits, Joe urges him to remember that he is a boy, and Jerry sadly wonders what to do with Osgood’s engagement gift, an extravagant diamond bracelet. The next day, gangsters from all over the country, summoned by mob boss Little Bonaparte, meet at the hotel under the guise of attending an opera convention. Mulligan is also present and when Spats arrives, accuses him of the murder of Toothpick Charlie and his gang. Upon spotting Spats in the lobby, Joe and Jerry panic and realize they must flee. In their room, Jerry laments having to give up Osgood and Joe telephones Sugar to disclose that Junior’s family has ordered him to Venezuela immediately for an arranged marriage. Moved by Sugar’s despair, Joe places the diamond bracelet in a box of flowers and pushes it across the hall to her door as a farewell gift from Junior. Joe and Jerry then escape out of their hotel window but are seen by Spats and his men on the floor below. When the pair dash away leaving their instruments behind, Spats finds bullet holes in Jerry’s bass and realizes the “broads” are the Chicago murder witnesses in disguise. Knowing they have been discovered, Joe and Jerry dress as a bellboy and a wheelchair-bound millionaire and head across the lobby filled with Spats’s men. Noticing that Jerry has inadvertently left on his high heels, the henchmen give chase and Joe and Jerry run into a convention hall and hide, unaware that the mob “convention” is scheduled to meet there. Moments later, Spats sits at the table under which Joe and Jerry are hiding, and in a prearranged plan, Bonaparte pretends to honor Spats by presenting him with a giant cake, out of which bursts an assassin who guns down Spats and his men. Terrified, Joe and Jerry bolt, but as Bonaparte orders them found, Mulligan and his men close in to make arrests. Resuming their disguises as women, Joe and Jerry overhear that the remainder of Bonaparte’s men are watching all buses and trains out of town and Joe decides they should escape on Osgood’s yacht after Jerry elopes with him. When Jerry balks, Joe says their only option is certain death by Bonaparte’s men. While Jerry telephones Osgood to make arrangements, Joe hears Sugar and the band finishing a song and climbs onto the stage to tell her that no man is worth her heartbreak, then kisses her before hurrying away. Realizing that “Josephine” is “Junior,” Sugar follows the men down to the dock and the waiting Osgood. As they all board the speedboat, Joe removes his wig and confesses that he is a liar and a phony, but Sugar insists that she does not care and the couple embrace. Meanwhile, Osgood proudly tells Daphne that his mother is delighted about their upcoming wedding. Jerry nervously confesses that he cannot marry him, declaring that he is not a natural blonde, smokes, has lived in sin and cannot bear children, but Osgood remains cheerfully undaunted. At last Jerry snatches off his wig and admits that he is a man, wherein Osgood happily assures him that, after all, “nobody’s perfect.”
15. Star Wars (1977)
During an interstellar civil war, rebels battle against an evil empire, led by Darth Vader and a villainous governor named Grand Moff Tarkin. The imperial stronghold is a planet-sized, armored space station called the Death Star, and insurgent Princess Leia Organa leads a mission to seize the battleship’s blueprints, hoping to reveal its vulnerability. During the ensuing battle, Darth Vader and his military force of stormtroopers capture Leia’s spaceship, but she secretly hides the Death Star plans in a robot “droid” named R2-D2, who flees the spaceship with his companion, C-3PO. Unable to recover the plans, Darth Vader discovers that an escape pod was launched during the attack, and orders the droids detained. Meanwhile, R2-D2 and C-3PO crash land on the desert planet Tatooine. Ornery C-3PO is displeased by his companion’s claim that they are on an important mission, and the two droids part ways. However, they are captured by cloaked scavengers called Jawas and sold to young Luke Skywalker and his Uncle Owen. As the boy refurbishes the droids, he complains that Uncle Owen has thwarted his dream of becoming a pilot and following in the footsteps of his deceased father. Fiddling with R2-D2, Luke unwittingly activates a three dimensional projection of Princess Leia, uttering the plea: “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” Smitten and intrigued, Luke wonders if the message is addressed to a hermit known as “Ben” Kenobi. At dinner, Luke tells Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru about Leia’s message, but Owen orders the boy to erase R2-D2’s memory, and insists that Obi-Wan died alongside Luke’s father. Storming away, Luke discovers that R2-D2 has escaped. The next morning, Luke and C-3PO recover the wayward droid, but are attacked by the hostile, nomadic Sand People. However, “Ben” Kenobi comes to the rescue, and admits that “Obi-Wan” is his real name. Seeking shelter at Obi-Wan’s home, Luke learns that his father was a Jedi knight during the Clone Wars, and was known as the galaxy’s best starfighter. Obi-Wan explains that he mentored Luke’s father and makes good on an old promise, giving Luke his father’s lightsaber. Since Jedis were guided by “the Force,” a mystical energy that unites all living creatures in peace, the neon light sword once upheld universal justice. However, Luke’s father was killed by a colleague, Darth Vader, who used his knowledge of “the Force” to betray the Jedis. As Obi-Wan activates R2-D2’s message from Leia, she explains that she was on a mission to bring Obi-Wan back to her home planet of Alderaan, and adds that vital information has been hidden in R2-D2’s memory system. The only person equipped to retrieve the data is her Jedi father, so the droid must be escorted to Alderaan immediately. Obi-Wan announces he will teach Luke to use “the Force,” so he can be of service on the mission, but Luke insists on returning home. Meanwhile, on the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin announces that the galaxy’s government council has been dissolved, and the Empire is one step closer to ultimate power. Back on Tatooine, Luke discovers his family murdered by stormtroopers and vows to become a Jedi. He joins Obi-Wan and the droids in their search for a pilot at the spaceport town of Mos Eisley. In a seamy tavern, they hire rugged outlaw smuggler Han Solo and his first mate, a tall, hairy Wookiee named Chewbacca. The men narrowly escape a stormtrooper attack in Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon. Meanwhile, Vader tortures Leia to discover the whereabouts of the rebel base, but she remains resolute. Tarkin navigates the Death Star toward Alderaan, then orders Leia’s execution and threatens to destroy her home planet unless she confesses. Although Leia claims the rebel base is on planet Dantoonine, Tarkin incinerates Alderaan. At the same moment, on the Millennium Falcon, Obi-Wan feels pain in his heart. He acknowledges a terrible tragedy, but continues Luke’s lightsaber training, teaching the boy to trust his instincts and to use “the Force.” When the Millennium Falcon reaches Alderaan, the planet is gone and the ship is forcibly sucked into the Death Star by its “tractor beam.” Darth Vader learns that the Millennium Falcon began its journey in Tatooine and realizes it is transporting the coveted Death Star plans. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan uses “the Force” to ensure that no humans or droids are detected aboard the spaceship, but Darth Vader perceives the presence of his former Jedi master. Upon their arrival aboard the Death Star, Han Solo and Luke kill several stormtroopers, don their armor, and capture a nearby outpost. There, R2-D2 plugs into the Death Star’s computer network and discovers seven locations that secure the battleship’s “tractor beam.” Once the locks are disabled, the Millennium Falcon can escape. Obi-Wan declares that he alone must immobilize the locks and leaves after promising Luke, “the Force will be with you… always.” Just then, R2-D2 locates Princess Leia and reports that her execution is pending. Luke convinces Han Solo to join him on a rescue mission with assurances of a bountiful reward. As they release the princess, a gunfight ensues, and Leia orders her rescuers into a garbage chute to escape. There, Luke is pulled underwater by a tentacled monster, but the creature suddenly disappears when the dump walls begin to compact. Radioing C-3PO for help, Luke orders R2-D2 to shut down the “garbage mashers,” and the comrades are saved. As they return to the Millennium Falcon and battle stormtroopers, Obi-Wan disables the “tractor beam” and reunites with Darth Vader, who is intent on killing his former Jedi master. However, Obi-Wan warns that the prospect for peace will become infinitely more powerful if Darth Vader succeeds. When Obi-Wan is confident that Luke can see him, and that Leia has safely boarded the Millennium Falcon, he permits Darth Vader to strike him dead, but his voice remains fixed in Luke’s consciousness. The friends escape a firefight, and Leia warns that the Millennium Falcon has been fitted with a tracking device. The Death Star follows as they proceed to the rebel base on the planet Yavin. There, R2-D2’s data is analyzed and soldiers are briefed that the Death Star’s weak point can only be accessed by a one-man fighter jet. The pilots must navigate down a narrow tre
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Photo: Pixabay
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