griggs's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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Arts patron Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) intends to pay pompous opera star Lassparri (Walter Woolf King) $1,000 per performance.

Hey, maybe that's why they call it grand opera! Grand comedy, too, as Groucho, Chico and Harpo cram a ship's stateroom and more than wall-to-wall gags, one-liners, musical riffs and two hard-boiled eggs - all while skewering Lassparri's schemes and helping two young hopefuls Rosa and Riccardo (Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones) get a break. To save the opera, our heroes must first destroy it. And they must also gain ocean passage as stowaways, pull the wool (if not the beards) over the eyes of City Hall, shred legal mumbo-jumbo into a Sanity Clause, pester dowager Claypool and unleash so much glee that many say this is the best Marx Brothers movie. Seeing is believing.

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HMS Bounty sails for Tahiti by way of Cape Horn...and into movie lore as an American Film Institute Top-100 American Films selection. Grandly filmed, 'Mutiny on the Bounty' captured the 1935 Best Picture Academy Award and eight nominations total.

Charles Laughton portrays Captain Bligh, a seafaring monster ruling with the law of fear. Solidifying his status as Hollywood's No. 1 male star, Clark Gable is first officer Fletcher Christian, whose will to obey erodes under Bligh's tyranny. And Franchot Tone plays idealistic midshipman Byam, torn by his allegiance to both. That all three portrayals are vividly memorable is accented by the fact that for the only time in Oscar history, three stars from the same actor were Best Actor nominees.

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Errol Flynn shot to stardom as Peter Blood, a 17th-century physician turned pirate after escaping unjust political imprisonment. It was a role the handsome, sea-loving Tasmanian was born to play, and he shaped it into Hollywood's archetypal image of the adventurous hero.

That he also became a romantic idol and a vision of gallantry in love is due in large part to his ideally cast co-star: radiant Olivia de Havilland in the first of their eight films together.

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The Little Tramp punches in and wigs out inside a factory where gizmos like an employee feeding machine may someday make the lunch hour last just 15 minutes.

Bounced into the ranks of the unemployed, he teams with a street waif (Paulette Goddard) to pursue bliss and a paycheck, finding misadventures as a roller-skating night watchman, a singing waiter whose hilarious song is gibberish, a jailbird and more. In the end, as tramp and waif walk arm in arm into an insecure future we know they've found neither bliss nor a paycheck but, more importantly, each other. The times and satire remain timeless in 'Modern Times'.

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It's Christmas 1940 and the people of Everytown, unprepared and ill-equipped, find themselves at war against an enemy who has been planning such a conflict for years.

The land is devastated by the horrors of aerial bombardment as the war drags on for thirty years, causing a period of despair, with feudal tyrants ruling a downtrodden populace suffering famine and pestilence. Can the human race rise above its desperate circumstances and build a scientific utopia?

When a small-town idealist Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) goes to New York to collect a $20 million inheritance, he finds romance with wisecracking journalist Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), becomes the target of ruthless businessmen and relatives, and finally decides to give his fortune away because it's so much trouble.

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In this irresistible musical, the legendary dancing duo Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are at the pinnacle of their art as a feckless gambler and the shrewd dancing instructor in whom he more than meets his match.

Director George Stevens laces their romance with humor and clears the floor for the movies showstopping dance scenes, in which Astaire and Rogers take seemingly effortless flight in a virtuosic fusion of ballroom and tap styles. Buoyed by beloved songs by Dorothy Fields and Derome Kern - including the Oscar-winning classic "The Way You Look Tonight" - 'Swing Time' is an exuberant celebration of its stars' chemistry, grace, and sheer joy in the act of performance.

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Carole Lombard and William Powell dazzle in this definitive screwball comedy by Gregory La Cava - a potent cocktail of romantic repartee and social critique.

Irene (Lombard), an eccentric, wealthy Manhattanite, wins a society-ball scavenger hunt after finding a "forgotten man" (Powell) - an apparent down-and-out drifter - at a dump. She gives him work as the family butler and soon falls head over heels for him. Her attempts to both woo Godfrey and indoctrinate him in the household's dysfunction make for a string of madcap high jinks that has never been bested.

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One of the finest films of the 1930's, this classic Samuel Goldwyn production was based upon the hit Broadway play written by Sidney Howard, which had in turn been adapted from the 1929 novel by Sinclair Lewis.

Ahead of it's time in dramatizing the disintegration of a marriage, the story centers on the title character, Samuel 'Sam' Dodsworth (superbly played by Walter Huston, who originated his role onstage), a wealthy automobile manufacturer whose wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton, in her final American film role) desperately craves an aristocratic lifestyle in Europe. 'Dodsworth' indulges her fancies to a degree, but their clashing desires-compounded by her affair with a European baron Tubby Pearson (Harlan Briggs) and his affection for a sympathetic widow Edith Cortright (Mary Astor) - create further tension and mutual rancor. 'Dodsworth' was perhaps the first Hollywood drama of the sound era that maturely addressed the complexity of a failing marriage and impending divorce, made especially compelling since 'Dodsworth' is such an admirable and upstanding character who means well and upholds the ideal of marital commitment.

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Life story of a charming scoundrel, with little dialogue other than the star/director's witty narration. As a boy, only he survives a family tragedy when he's deprived of supper (poisonous mushrooms!) for stealing...concluding that dishonesty pays.

Through years of dabbling in crime and amusing adventures, two women appear and reappear in his life, a dazzling blonde jewel thief and a stunning brunette gambler. Finally, he meets the mysterious Charbonnier who had saved his life in World War I, leading to the surprising next phase in his career...

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Life in 1847 Paris is as spirited as champagne and as unforgiving as the gray morning after. In gambling dens and lavish soirees, men of means exert their wills and women turned courtesans exult in pleasure.

One such woman is Marguerite Gautier (Greta Garbo), the 'Camille' of this sumptuous romance tale based on the enduring Alexandre Dumas story.

In the performance which made him a cinematic icon, Jean Gabin plays Pepe le Moko, a notorious gangster hiding out from the police and his rivals in the Casbah of Algiers. In the labyrinth of the Casbah he is safe; until a Parisian playgirl tempts him out into the open...

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In this Chinese version of 'The Phantom of the Opera', the mysterious Song Danping terrorises the newly rebuilt opera house and it's young star.

After falling in love with the daughter of a wealthy lord, Song was beaten, scarred with acid and left to die years ago in the burning wreckage of the old opera house. Now, he's looking for someone to star in his own private production.

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Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, two of the great Hollywood character actors, portray the couple whose house the bank has foreclosed upon, and who are forced subsequently to move into their children's homes in the city.

A near-musical restructuring of gratitude and debt ensues once the offspring deem the couple's lodging an imposition: the two are separated, then reunited weeks later... as they glide inexorably into an uncertain future.

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The fishing schooner We're Here has just pulled up a different kind of fish: rich, 10-year-old Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew), who tumbled off the side of a sleek ocean liner.

Harvey will have to wait months before the We're Here returns to harbour, months that will transform him from a spoiled whiner into an honorable young man - all because of the life lessons he learns from Manuel (Spencer Tracy), the humble fisherman who befriends him. From Rudyard Kipling's classic, 'Captains Courageous' thrills with its seagoing action, grand scale and all-star cast. Set sail for cinema glory.