A-Z of favourite films - Flippin' 'el, it's L

And we're onto L in my A-Z list of favourite films. Hey, it's nearly halfway!

After the relatively narrow range of films available in the last couple of letters, J and K, we’re now up to a choice of about 80 that I’ve seen beginning with L. Don’t worry, I won’t mention them all here, just the ones that are in the running for the top five shortlist.

The earliest offering in the list is The Lodger from Alfred Hitchcock in 1926. Arguably the first true Hitchcock film, by which I mean the film where he hit his stride and addressed themes that would recur throughout his career over the next 70 years such as the wronged man and the Hitchcock blonde. It also contains some nice directorial touches which, in retrospect, show great promise for a directing career.

There’s then six Laurel and Hardy short films in the L category; the best of which I’d say is Laughing Gravy, a fine comedy about the duo trying to keep the presence of a dog secret whilst staying in a guesthouse – and failing miserably! Looking further afield Rene Clair’s 1931 French comedy Le Million is also a decent watch with characters trying to get their hands on a winning lottery ticket. In the same year, but with a completely different tone, came Little Caesar, one of the most influential gangster films of early Hollywood, and with a standout performance by Edward G Robinson. Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon crops up in the 1930s too, though it didn’t greatly appeal to me, then Hitchcock crops up again in 1938 with the marvellous British comedy-thriller The Lady Vanishes. There’s competition for Hitch’s best British film (39 Steps, Man who Knew too Much etc) but The Lady Vanishes has got to be a contender with its mix of British humour and spy thriller.

The 1940s start with The Lady Eve from Preston Sturges, a typically well-crafted comedy from the director with Henry Fonda in the lead role as a rich explorer who encounters con-woman Barbara Stanwyck on his journey home aboard a cruise ship. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a fine drama from the Powell/Pressburger team; a film that Churchill wanted banned as he thought it would have a negative effect on public morale during the war. However it is a great biopic of the fictional Colonel Blimp. Hitchcock returns yet again in 1944 with the excellent Lifeboat; a film set entirely on a lifeboat following the bombing of a cruise liner. Not many directors could pull off that feat, but Hitchcock certainly did. Four other notable films crop up in the 1940s – for brevity’s sake I’ll just mention them by name – Otto Preminger’s Laura, Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai, and from Max Ophuls, Letter from an Unknown Woman. Each of these is worthy of more explanation but I don’t want this to turn into a dissertation.

I’ll just pick two highlights from the 1950s – both from Ealing Studios. There’s The Lavender Hill Mob from ’51 and then four years later came The Ladykillers. Both exquisite films, sharp and humorous but with a dark underbelly, especially the latter. The Coen Brothers tried to remake The Ladykillers 50 years later but even they couldn’t match the Alexander Mackendrick original with its cast that included Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, though the film is stolen by the elderly Katie Johnson – the lady that the killers are trying to target. A must-see film.

The 60s begins with The League of Gentlemen – no, not the Royston Vasey kind, but the Basil Dearden film that follows the planning and execution of a bank heist by a group of ex-military men, led by Jack Hawkins. Just a shame that crime couldn’t be shown to pay. Our other film of the 1960s is Lawrence of Arabia – David Lean’s masterpiece, making epic use of the desert locations and creating a work of art with Peter O Toole as the eponymous lead.

The Last Picture Show had its fans in the 1970s but I wasn’t really blown away by it; the same could be said of Last Tango in Paris which I just found cold – I know that it’s probably meant to be like that, but I just didn’t warm to it. Passing over the Bond film Live and Let Die, and Logan’s Run, the decade ended with the superb film The Long Good Friday, the British gangster movie with Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren in the lead roles and even with Pierce Brosnan popping up in an early film appearance.

The 80s is dominated by Local Hero, Bill Forsyth’s gentle comedy drama about an oil tycoon trying to buy up a village on the Scottish coast. Wonderful performances and a pitch perfect script make this one of the best British films ever made. Burt Lancaster appears as the American tycoon and his salary took up most of the budget but it’s the Scottish cast that make the film so endearing and a pleasure to watch. Other entries for the 80s include the first 2 Lethal Weapon films – a further 2 would follow – with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover teaming up as the “mismatched” couple. There’s the 2 Timothy Dalton films – License to Kill and The Living Daylights – both more violent than the preceding Roger Moore films, but decent enough nonetheless. Scorsese courted controversy with The Last Temptation of Christ and on a similar theme, the decade ended with Look Who’s Talking – a film that you can be pretty sure won’t make the final five.

The 90s are ridiculous with over 24 contenders – one could say flipping ‘L, but I won’t. Well, not again anyway. Of these, LA Story is a highlight, as is The Last Seduction and Leon with Jean Reno and Natalie Portman forming an odd partnership, directed by Luc Besson. Nicholas Cage won an Oscar for his performance in the bleak Leaving Las Vegas, and two interesting low budget offerings crop up with The Last Supper and Living in Oblivion, both in 1995. The Long Kiss Goodnight is a decent “suspend disbelief” action thriller with Geena Davis and Samuel L Jackson, and then in 1997 came the excellent LA Confidential. Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Kevin Spacey all took leading roles but it was Kim Basinger that won the Oscar for her turn as the moll in this film-noir thriller, full of twists and turns, and excellently filmed by Curtis Hanson. Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful is also worthy of mention – a comedy set in a concentration camp may sound like something of an oxymoron but he just about pulls it off. From the UK came Little Voice, and then Guy Richie hit the scene with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels which appealed to mockney gangsters everywhere.

Into the 2000s and I may as well say now I’m not a great fan of Lord of the Rings, hence I’ve only seen the first one. Sorry, but I was a bit bored by it so whilst it’s got its fans, I’m not one of them. I wasn’t really looking forward to The Last Samurai but, even with Tom Cruise in the starring role, I thought it wasn’t bad. Not good enough to make the final five, but not bad nonetheless. Lost in Translation was another supposed classic that left me a bit cold and I didn’t really buy into the hype around it. Lady Vengeance from Korean director Chan-Wook Park was more to my taste, as was Little Miss Sunshine, gem of a low-budget indie film that came in 2006. Our list ends with the recent Let the Right One in, a quite remarkable vampire film from Sweden, which I’ve addressed previously in another blog entry. Tender, beautiful to look at, a real surprise of a film, and in a good way.

And after all that the final five is:

The Lady Vanishes – Hitchcock’s 1938 film, his penultimate one before leaving for Hollywood. An old lady disappears on a train but no-one seems to believe she was ever there, a spy dresses as a nun, two Englishmen discuss cricket scores, a shootout on a train, a coded message – what else could you want from a film?

Lifeboat – Hitchcock again, this time from 1943. A group of diverse survivors from a ship end up in a lifeboat with a German U-Boat commander for company. Can they trust the man who bombed their ship out of the water? A tense tale, made all the more claustrophobic for being set solely in a small lifeboat.

The Ladykillers – Ealing comedy from Mackendrick, just winning out over The Lavender Hill Mob for a place in the final five. Devilishly dark and funny, a gem of a film.

Local Hero – Bill Forsyth’s greatest hour, almost harking back to the days of Ealing with its focus on community coming together. A delightful watch and bizarrely, as I learnt the other day, Jeremy Clarkson’s favourite ever film!

Let the Right One in – I’ve discussed this in more depth here in a previous blog and my opinion hasn’t changed since – I still think “it’s a thoughtful atmospheric film offering far more than the odd chilling moment.”


And the winner is:

The Ladykillers – following Kind Hearts and Coronets, an Ealing film takes the title for the second letter in a row. It’s just a hair’s breadth above the other contenders.