A-Z of favourite films - I of the tiger

It's the ninth in the series of my favourite films by letter and we're on to I

To be honest, I thought “I” would be an easy category as I’ve only seen around 50 films beginning with that letter, but there’s many top quality ones in amongst them; it’ll be most difficult to get them down to a final five.

From the 30s comes The Invisible Man from Frankenstein director James Whale; it utilises such stunning special effects to portray the invisibility that you really marvel at how they were done considering the film was made in 1933. A year later comes the multi Oscar winner It Happened One Night – a Frank Capra comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It was the first film to win all five major Academy Awards – Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay – this feat wouldn’t happen again until 42 years later with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Two notable entries from the 40s. First there’s Powell and Pressburger’s charming I Know Where I’m Going; maybe not up to the standards of A Matter of Life and Death, but still among their top films. Then, there’s the perennial classic It’s a Wonderful Life – another Capra film; a dark masterpiece with Jimmy Stewart as the man who wishes he’d never been born, only to be shown another side to his life by n apprentice angel.

In 1950 Nicholas Ray and Humphrey Bogart teamed up for In a Lonely Place, a dark tale of a Hollywood scriptwriter which contains one of my favourite movie lines: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me; I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” Another of Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ikiru crops up in 1952 – one of his films set in the modern day rather than his samurai epics for which he is more famous. A lesser Hitchcock, but hey, still a Hitchcock arrived a year later in I Confess with Montgomery Clift playing the Catholic priest falsely implicated for murder. 1956 brought Don Siegel’s Invasion of the body Snatchers, filled with analogy and subtext; more straightforwardly John Mills was just looking for an ice cold beer in the war adventure Ice Cold in Alex a couple of years later. Stanley Donen’s Indiscreet draws the decade to a close, a soufflé of a romantic comedy.

The swinging 60s brought an unlikely tale about a prostitute in Irma La Douche. Directed by Billy Wilder and with a cast including Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine, it’s not as sordid as it sounds though and is immensely entertaining. The working class alternative to Bond made his debut in The Ipcress File, starring a bespectacled Michael Caine, and then in the US, race relations came to the fore in In the Heat of the Night, another Oscar winning film with sterling work from Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger on screen. If tales of boarding school shenanigans are what you are after then Lindsey Anderson’s If may be for you, though be warned – it’s no Harry Potter. The 60s end with the British classic The Italian Job; Michael Caine again taking the lead in the crime caper with minis.

The 70s are a tad disappointing for I films. There’s the infamous In the Realm of the Senses from Japan, famous for its sexually explicit subject matter, but actually quite dull. I’m not going to recommend I Spit on Your Grave, and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is fairly interesting but not up to the original.

Indiana Jones appears in the 80s with instalments two and three actually beginning with “I” ( the first was Raiders of the Lost Ark so not to be found here). I prefer Indiana Jones and the last Crusade to the earlier Temple of Doom, mainly due to the banter between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery in the latter film. Plus Temple of Doom is saddled with that most annoying character played by Kate Capshaw.

A plethora of I films arrive in the 90s. In the Line of Fire is a decent thriller with Clint Eastwood as the ex-presidential bodyguard. It Could Happen to You is a charming romantic comedy of the sort that Frank Capra could have made had he still been around at the end of the century. Independence Day is extremely silly but does its job as mindless entertainment and you find yourself carried along despite yourself, mainly due to the charisma of Will Smith in the leading role. From the Dogme school came Lars Von Trier’s The Idiots; a film with which I can’t decide my opinion – on one viewing I thought it was hideous; on another I quite liked it and saw its merit – I’m still undecided. Michael Mann’s The Insider gave Russell Crowe a chance to flex his acting muscles and the decade ends with the fabulous animation The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird (later to helm The Incredibles), a film full of charm and adapted from the Ted Hughes poem, it packs an emotional punch.

Into 2000 and Wong Kar Wai comes up with a masterpiece In the Mood For Love. Full of atmosphere with a great score and buckets of atmosphere, this is a heartbreaking film – it’s kind of like a Brief Encounter for the 21st Century, only set in Hong Kong. Also from Hong Kong, the first decade of the century brought the Infernal Affairs trilogy; a labyrinth of a film series, Shakespearian in its complexity and depth of characters. It would be remade by Scorsese as The Departed, but the original in this case is still the best. From the US came a fine emotional drama about the death of a son with In the Bedroom, and then Brad Bird re-emerged with The Incredibles; a massively successful superhero animation from Pixar. We’ll ignore the fourth Indiana Jones movie, mainly because it was pants. From the UK came In Bruges, a superb, if foul mouthed drama about a hitman, starring Brendan Gleason, Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes. Speaking of foul mouthed, the spin off from the TV series The Thick of It arrived with In the Loop, a superb satirical comedy about the lead up to a fictional war; a thinly disguised take on the lead up to the Iraq war.

The final five

It’s a Wonderful life – Capra’s life affirming film from 1946 marked the comeback from James Stewart after his wartime service, and what a comeback it was. Actually a flop on first release and you can see why – most of the film’s very dark, tackling suicide and a man’s sense of worthlessness of his own life. It’s not what you’d call cheerful fare for the majority of its running time. This only makes the ending all that more joyful though. Quite possible Capra’s best ever film, and the only film I’ve seen at the cinema where the audience broke into spontaneous applause at the end.

Ikiru – We’re on a dark theme in this final five – this modern day (for 1952) tale from Kurosawa deals with a bureaucrat who leads a monotonous life until he is diagnosed with cancer and told he has less than a year to live. The film deals with his search for life’s meaning and whilst it may not have any easy answers and address grim issues, it’s a beautiful film with Takashi Shimura giving a career-highlight of a performance in the main role.

In the Heat of the Night – Oscar winning drama with Sidney Poitier as the black detective from Philadelphia helping Rod Steiger to investigate a murder in a racist town in Mississipi. He encounters all sorts of bigotry, even from his new colleague. A superbly atmospheric film, nominated for 7 Oscars and winning 5.

In the Mood for Love – Along with Chungking Express, perhaps Wong Kar-Wai’s best film. It’s not for everyone; some find it frustratingly slow, and if it’s action you’re after, perhaps give it a miss. However give it a chance and it’ll draw you in, seducing you with the characters as well as with the film-making techniques – the sound, lighting and cinematography are all near-perfect

Infernal Affairs – Actually a trilogy of films, adapted into The Departed by Scorsese, this examination of both sides of the criminal divide in Hong Kong is fascinating filmmaking at its best. A gang member is undercover in the police; a policeman is undercover in a gang; what does that do to their identities, and at the end of the day who’s really on whose side?

And the winner is ...

It’s a Wonderful Life – beating off 3 East Asian films in the top five, it’s one of my all time favourites and worthy of repeat viewing time and time again. Just don’t watch the colorized version – sacrilege!