In honor of UCLA film professor Howard Suber‘s recently released “The Power of Film” (Michael Weise, 424 pages), Hollywood Elsewhere will be running a series of bite-sized Suber Lessons taken straight from the book. Lesson #1: What do the following popular classic films have in common? Amadeus, American Graffiti, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, Bonnie and Clyde, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Brokeback Mountain, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Capote, Casablanca, Chinatown, Citizen Kane, A Clockwork Orange, The Deer Hunter, Doctor Zhivago, Double Indemnity, Dr. Strangelove, E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, Easy Rider, Frankenstein, The French Connection, From Here To Eternity, The Godfather, Gone With The Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, Heat, High Noon, The Insider, King Kong, The Last Detail, Lawrence of Arabia, The Limey, The Maltese Falcon, The Manchurian Candidate, Midnight Cowboy, Million Dollar Baby, Monster, Mutiny on the Bounty, Network, On The Waterfront, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Paths of Glory, Patton, The Pianist, Platoon, Psycho, Pulp Fiction, Raging Bull, Rebel Without a Cause, Rosemary’s Baby, Schindler’s List, The Searchers, Sexy Beast, Shane, The Silence of the Lambs, La Strada, A Streetcar Named Desire, Sunset Boulevard, Taxi Driver, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Unforgiven, Vertigo, West Side Story, The Wild Bunch. Answer: You tell me.
Note of explanation: I didn’t think Suber’s list was current enough so I added some of my own titles to the list, including Paths of Glory, Brokeback Mountain, Million Dollar Baby, The Pianist, Sexy Beast and The Insider. Each and every one is a classic in my book.