What are the best movies (musical considerations aside) that MR had the opportunity to compose for? We had this discussion a few years back, and I'm sure I've got the thread archived somewhere. But let's start afresh. Why now? Two reasons. First, The Box has naturally brought Something of Value to the fore, and I'm surprised to learn how many people have never seen it. Thanks to its star power (Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier), the film is hardly an obscure one. It's been on tape and on DVD. It was initially telecast in 1963 or so, when Saturday Night at the Movies first turned to the M-G-M catalog, and I've never forgotten that first viewing (one of my earlier Rozsa discoveries on TV). In fact, it helped to shape my moviegoing attitude for life. Like many of us, I grew up under the spell of the sheer theatricality of the big "epics" of the 1950: the wide screen, the reserved seat exhibition, the mighty sound system. But in that summer of 1963, my faith in that genre was shaken by the sodden mess that was 55 Days at Peking. Richard Brooks's small-scale black-and-white drama was an eye-opener to me, demonstrating in its treatment of a not-dissimilar subject (a failed anticolonial revolt) that you didn't need all those grand accouterments of epic cinema to bring the matter to life. Sometimes stark is better. The film has some of the urgency of the later Battle of Algiers and remains a powerful statement of an urgent theme. Yes, it's on my top ten list.
Naturally there were lots of counterproposals. The one I remember best is Lee Hern standing up for Five Graves to Cairo. I hadn't seen that film in decades and couldn't recall much beyond its striking opening. For the rest, I remembered a rather improbable wartime spy melodrama. Five Graves has been absent from the airwaves for a while, but Turner is showing it tomorrow (Feb. 22), and I'm certainly going to have another look. Now to blow the cobwebs off the old VCR and see if I can get the thing properly hooked up again . . .
Naturally there were lots of counterproposals. The one I remember best is Lee Hern standing up for Five Graves to Cairo. I hadn't seen that film in decades and couldn't recall much beyond its striking opening. For the rest, I remembered a rather improbable wartime spy melodrama. Five Graves has been absent from the airwaves for a while, but Turner is showing it tomorrow (Feb. 22), and I'm certainly going to have another look. Now to blow the cobwebs off the old VCR and see if I can get the thing properly hooked up again . . .
