The Great Movies III

In the nineteenth century, literature offered itself as the central art for making sense of history, society, and personal relationships. Art, said Zola, was nature seen through a temperament. We learned to call a personal problem Jamesian in its intricacy, or to label a friend as straight out of Dickens or Jane Austen. Accordingly, the man of letters delicately traced the interface between modern life and the arts dedicated to interpreting it. But movies-and here's another gospel of the Film Generation-furnish our culture's touchstones. Now we recognize another person as Rupert Pupkin or Alvy Singer; a faculty meeting reminds us of the Marx Brothers or The Godfather. Once, at a committee meeting, I said of a project: "I have a bad feeling about this." Immediately a colleague said: "That's the first time I heard you quote Star Wars." I had no idea I was doing it.

Ebert understands that movies have become our lingua franca, our window and rangefinder and microscope. By thinking hard about them, he shows us how the pleasures and challenges of cinema open us up to wisdom. The great movies both teach and please, and each anchors us so firmly in its coordinates that we see our ornery world, for the moment, transformed into something bright, sharp, and comprehensible.

Pervaded by the love of film and the love of ideas, Ebert's Great Movies essays do what one variety of belletristic writing has always done. They trigger unexpected thought with a minimum of apparent effort. Chiseled apercus lead to deeper enjoyment and greater reflection on how the world would look if the artwork's premises were perfectly universal. This may be a lot to hang on a batch of film essays, but I think that their blend of incisiveness, lack of pretension, and openhearted celebration fully warrant it. Roger Ebert demonstrates that film viewing, undertaken with zest, opens a path to understanding life.

DAVID BORDWELL

on might be surprised by how many people have told me they're working their way through my books of Great Movies one film at a time. That's not to suggest these books are in any way definitive. I loathe "best of" lists, which are not the best of anything except what someone was able to come up with that day. I look at a list of the " ioo greatest horror films," or musicals, or whatever, and I want to ask the list maker, "But how do you know?"There are great films in my books, and films that are not great, but there is no film here to which I didn't respond strongly. That's the reassurance I can offer.

I believe good movies are a civilizing force. They allow us to empathize with those whose lives are different than our own. I like to say they open windows in our box of space and time. Here's a third book filled with windows.

I was just now looking over the hundred titles in this third volume, and I wanted to watch most of them again. That's not a figure of speech. Although the sainted Pauline Kael was adamant about never watching a movie twice, I think of a good film similarly to a favorite music album that I might listen to time and again. In a sense, a movie is a place for me. I go there. Just as I return time and again to London, I return to Fitzcarraldo, Dark City, Late Spring, and Bergman's trilogy Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence, and Winter Light.

In fact, there is a fourth Bergman in this book, Fanny andAlexander-his films have been very important to me recently. I have no desire to belabor my adventures with health during the period since The Great Movies II, but I went through a period of seeing and writing about no movies at all. The first film I saw in a theater after a period of abstinence was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. On reflection, that was an excellent choice. It was gloriously what it was. You won't find it in this book-or the next one, if there is one-but it's still an excellent choice.

After returning home from the hospital, I resumed my usual schedule. Above all that included a Great Movie essay every other week. Most of them I watched on DVD; several, like The Godfather: Part II, on big screens. Some I was able to see in theaters. I saw Melville's Touchez Pas au Grisbi (reviewed in GM II) in a revival house in Seattle while I was there getting dosed with radiation. Like the others, it conferred the gift of taking me to another place. It also confirmed my affection for Melville and Jean Gabin.