Adios Jingo!

Adios, Jingo! -- Happy Independence Day, everyone, both here in the states, and abroad as well. In honor of this patriotic holiday, I offer this humble list of 10 American films that best exemplify certain qualities that seem to me uniquely and terrifically American. Some of these may cast a critical and jaundiced eye on the various excesses of the American scene, and some may excorciate us for sins and transgressions, both past and present. But some also celebrate those things like tolerance and sacrifice that make the ongoing American experiment worth pursuing, and the "more perfect union" worth achieving. In this crucial political year, it's more important than ever to realize that patriotism is not the sole province of the lazy few who blindly follow leaders and swallow their empty platitudes. It's not a bad thing to be proud of your country, but it's also not a bad thing to question and criticize the direction and policies of your country. This list of movies is not a best-of list by any means, but these are movies that make me proud to be an American.

In no particular order:

Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz) -- I've always loved this movie. Early WW2 patriotism at its most transparent, yet at its most sincere. Cagney sings and dances, and still plays the lovable tough guy. FDR is shown in silhouette as he presents George M. Cohan a medal. Favorite scene: the older Cohan tapdancing down the stairs in the White House after receiving said medal.

The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola) -- The promise of America is expressed when the new immigrants pour to the side of the ship to catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty when the boat pulls into New York Harbor. The curse of American largesse is coldly seen in the last shot of the movie: Michael Corleone alone in his compound in Nevada, his power and wealth consolidated, yet his family and soul destroyed.

Blue Collar (Paul Schrader) -- Very few American films deal with the working class. Schrader's directorial debut is one of the few that do. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphett Kotto play work buddies who try to screw over the system. Ultimately, the system screws them over, playing the race card to divide them. It would be hard to see a movie like his be made nowadays, not unless it deals with Wal-Mart employees. Another plus: great American artist Captain Beefheart sings over the titles.

Nixon (Oliver Stone) -- A lot of people can't stand Oliver Stone. I find him one of our more interesting writer/directors, although he's in bit of a slump lately. His ham-fisted style is at its best and most garrulous in 1995's Nixon. Richard Nixon, as brilliantly portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, is ultimately a tragic figure, a man with a chip on his shoulder who attempts to control events but soon finds himself the victim of them. Not as overbearing and outrageous as J.F.K. or Natural Born Killers, but it still has that that visually excessive style that exemplified his filmmaking at the time. It's forever playing on cable. Give it a chance if you haven't already.

Night of the Living Dead (George Romero) -- The film's first shot is an small American flag fluttering in the foreground of a western Pennsylvania graveyard. The terrible strife of 1968 as horror film. Americans eat their own. Children kill and consume their parents. A crisis of leadership leads to the most pessimistic ending in any American film from the '60s. The monsters are us.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (John Ford) -- I'm not a big John Ford fan, but I really like this stark black & white western. Image and myth transcend truth and nuance. Its message seems more relevant today than it did in 1962. Too many legends becoming fact.

Nashville (Robert Altman) -- America as widescreen canvas. But instead of the grandeur of American landscapes, Altman concentrates on funhouse faces, dialogue bumping into dialogue, the carnival of politics, singers drowned out by the roar of automobiles, the sting and danger of celebrity. It's a long, meandering mess, heartbreakingly beautiful in places, uch like the country it both mocks and celebrates in equal measure.

North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock) -- On the faces of great men scurry the small and insignificant, the merest of pawns in the grandest of geopolitical matches. "War is hell, Mr. Thornhill," cants the professor, played by Leo G. Carroll. "Even when it's a cold one." Cary Grant answers: "If you fellas can't lick the Vandamms of this world, without asking girls like her to bed down with him and fly away with him and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars!" Simple decency butts against the imperatives of outfoxing your opponent, even when one's ideals form an obstacle. Hitchcock fought to retain these lines in the picture against the desires of the MGM brass. Heavy for a Hollywood movie in 1959.

Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner) -- Right wing poem on the thrill and glory of military victory and achievement, or ironic post-Vietnam rumination on the anachronism and utter absurdity of warrior-wise men in the age of automated war? Either way, it's simple but powerful cinema. At the film's end, Patton walks among windmills, too tired and resigned to tilt at them any longer as he may have in the past, aknowledging his day is done. The pastoral impulse need not be peaceful or gentle.

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone) -- Not American created, but this great western touches on all the great American themes of reinvention, the retention of perhaps outdated ideals, the usurping of the wild and unspoiled by creeping civilization. This movie is enriched by a great American cast (Fonda, Robards, and, yes, Bronson), and by Leone's first opportunity to shoot in Monument Valley and other locations in the USA. The great American film genre was never the same after Leone borrowed enough to create something bright and new.