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For seventy years now movies have pervaded the world's atmosphere - vivid, seductive, habitual, and essential. Whatever the point at which we have come under their spell - whether we were present at the creation with Griffith, or see with the contemporary eyes of Bertolucci - the possession has been complete. And so everybody is an expert. We are therefore the perfect audience for "The Great Movies."
William Bayer has constructed his wide-ranging list in terms of categories. He has picked twelve genres broad enough to accommodate practically any film ever made, yet specific enough to permit meaningful comparisons and judgments. Eight are familiar storytelling forms that have preoccupied movie makers - and captivated moviegoers - since the less-than-great Great Train Robbery first showed the way: Westerns, Comedies, War films, Musicals, Intrigue and Suspense, Fantasy and Horror, Period films, and films of Adventure. Three- Manners, morals and Society, Personal Expression, and the Cinema of Concern were devised to organize the unique and intensely personal visions of great directors. And one,- Films About Films - pays tribute to the movie industry's eternal narcissism and occasional unblinking self-revelation.
Altogether, they represent a coherent vision of the movies, internally logical, extremely solid and energetic in its arguments, challenging to disagree with, and fun to read and look at.
"The Great Movies" are the world's all-time great films. There are 60 of them. Those 60 were selected because they were the best, one way or the other - from box-office smash to artistic breakthrough - of the thousands made since the first crank of the camera.
If you can stop looking for a moment at the 377 marvelous photographs - many from private collections and rarely, if ever, published before - check the text. See what Bayer says about 2001, about Blow-Up, about Stagecoach, about Metropolis. Learn why Garbo is out, why Janet Leigh is in. Read about the greatest B picture ever made. Consider several masterpieces of trash. And learn a few things about Citizen Kane, the picture about which there is nothing more to be said.
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