My Favorite Flicks

Tricia's Top Twenty (in no particular order)
I love these films. A consistent characteristic in all of them is the strength of the dialog. Most of these are comedies, but there's also an adventure film, a Hitchcock thriller, a musical, and a melodrama mixed in for good measure. Come to think of it, perhaps I'll have to do separate pages for each genre.....

But for now, here are 20 of my favorite films, and some brief notes on each. Enjoy!

• Stage Door, RKO,1937.
  What a cast! Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Ann Arden, Adolph Menjou, and an *extremely* young Ann Miller in a hard-boiled look at young women looking for fame and fortune on the New York stage in the '30s. Ginger especially shines as a no-nonsense, wise-cracking dame who tangles with Katharine Hepburn's idealistic, starry-eyed blue blood who has "always *longed* to live in an atmosphere like this!" Ginger's response? "My pet, you haven't seen atmosphere yet; wait'll about 5 o'clock in the morning when those garbage trucks start around."

  The dialog in this film is superb, delivered by consummate pros. Eve Arden and Lucille Ball lead the ensemble of wise-cracking hopefuls installed at the Footlights Club, a run-down boarding house in New York City. Director Gregory LaCava had the girls hang out together on the set for a week before filming actually began and had a script girl take notes of their conversations. Much of the final dialog in the film originated from these notes.

  If you can ignore the sappy character played by Andrea Leeds as last year's flash-in-the-pan who can't handle this year's obscurity, I guarantee you will love this film.

• Camille, MGM, 1936.
  Greta Garbo in her finest performance as the doomed 19th century Parisian courtesan Marguerite Gauthier. The sumptuous beauty of this film, its superb production values, and Garbo's exquisite Marguerite offer a feast for the senses and the sensibilities. A very young Robert Taylor acquits himself well as the idealistic romantic, Armand Duval, overcome with his naive passion for the consumptive demimondaine. A film that could easily have been nothing more than a glossy melodrama is transformed by Garbo's knowing, subtle performance. Her demeanor gradually melts from world-weary ennui and reserve to a young girl's giddy intoxication with first love, and, in the tragic ending, her subdued tubercular demise is both dignified and heartrending.

• Notorious, RKO,1946.
• His Girl Friday, Columbia, 1940.
• Bringing Up Baby, RKO, 1938.
• Holiday, Columbia, 1938.
• The Philadelphia Story, MGM, 1940.
• The Adventures of Robin Hood, Warner Brothers, 1938.
• The Thin Man, MGM, 1934.
• Midnight, Paramount,1939.
• The Palm Beach Story, Paramount,1942.
• Easy Living, Paramount,1937.
• My Favorite Wife, Columbia,1940.
• Swing Time, RKO, 1936.
• All About Eve, 20th Century Fox, 1950.
• Roman Holiday, Paramount, 1951.
• The Awful Truth, Columbia, 1937.
• Topper, Hal Roach/MGM, 1937.
• Ninotchka, MGM, 1939.
• It Happened One Night, Columbia, 1934.