Quick takes on 5 CLASSIC films

I’ve seen 2001: a Space Odyssey several times, but it has been many years and I decided to revisit it while I’m watching many classic films for the first time. Another Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, it again showcases his ability to capture vast and beautiful, often stark, scenes, and this time in the setting of space. Most probably know the story of this one: a mission is taken to Jupiter and along the way, the space computer HAL goes bonkers and attacks the human crew. The backdrop is of course the existence of monoliths, which humankind stumbles across at different points in their history, and each time they advance the evolutionary process. The acting in this movie is just ok, nothing spectacular, but you see this movie for the groundbreaking film-making it exhibited. The visual effects are stunning for 1968 (almost 10 years before Star Wars!). Not your typical sci-fi film as we know them today, but a brilliant movie nonetheless.

Purple Noon is a 1960 French film, the original film adaptation of the novel The Talented Mr Ripley. Tom Ripley travels to Italy to curtail friend and playboy Philippe Greanleaf. Philippe’s father wants him to return to the USA and stop his free-spending, free-living lifestyle. Philippe ignores the request and takes his fiancee Marge and Tom out on the sea in his sailboat. To this point, we thought Tom was a fairly decent guy, hanging on to Philippe to get a view of how the rich live, but his ulterior motives come out on the boat. Tom kills Philippe, and sets out on his plan to impersonate him for his money. A very fun film, and received acclaim when it came out, vaulting Alain Delon (Ripley) to stardom. His transformation from good-natured sidekick to nefarious murderer on screen is something to see.

A lot goes on in The Night of the Hunter, though the story on the surface is fairly simple. A psychotic fake preacher, Harry (played by Robert Mitchum), travels town to town killing people but staying ahead of the law. He hears of a man who recently robbed a bank and was hanged before the police could find the money, so he goes there to woo the widow and her two young children. Harry wins over the town and woman, but the boy, John, is wary of him, and refuses to tell that the money is hidden in his little sister’s doll. One frightful night, the kids run away and are taken in by a pious woman in the next town down the river. She protects them as Harry comes looking. Ultimately the movie is a classic good vs evil, and focuses strongly on the innocence of children (the movie was made in 1955). On the technical side, the movie is disjointed and doesn’t always flow well, but Mitchum as the diabolical bad guy is fantastic, and the film has many rewarding moments.

Walkabout, released in 1971, is just ok if you take it at face value, but it can get you reflecting long after it is over. It starts with a businessman in Australia who cracks, taking his teenage daughter and younger son out to the bush and trying to kill them, only to finally kill himself instead. The two kids are left stranded in the middle of nowhere with no survival skills, and would surely die had they not come across a teenage aborigine. Though they don’t speak the same language, this newcomer takes these 2 under his wing and provides food and water, while leading them slowing back towards city life. The movie is a stark look at differences, both city vs the wild, and especially social/cultural (most glaringly at the very end of the film). A moving film worthy of a lot of retrospection, this one will stick with you.

Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest is one of the all time greats. A suspenseful thriller, it starts humorously with the main character, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) being mistaken for an international spy. He spends the first half of the film trying to prove he is not, yet circumstances and his own curiosity to find the people hunting him, keep piling on the circumstantial evidence that he is said spy. When he finally accepts what all the bad guys all ready believe, he tries to find out what their end goal is. Grant is fantastic as to be expected, as is female lead Eva Marie Saint, and the bad guys James Mason and especially the head henchman, a younger Martin Landau in his first film role. Must-see territory for cinema lovers.