griggs's - AFI 100 List

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When her father threatens to annul her marriage to a fortune-hunting playboy, spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) hops on a cross-country bus to New York, where she plans to live happily ever after with her handsome new hubby.

Romantic complications however, when she's befriended by fellow passenger Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a brash and breezy reporter who offers his help in exchange for her exclusive story.

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The story of the fragile sentimentalism of a former prostitute who visits her sister only to be taunted mercilessly by her childish brother-in-law.

A Streetcar Named Desire: The Original Director's Version is the Elia Kazan/ Tennessee Williams film moviegoers would have seen had not Legion of Decency censorship occurred at the last time. It features three minutes of previously unseen footage underscoring, among other things, the sexual tension between Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) and Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), and Stella Kowalski's (Kim Hunter) passion for husband Stanley.

Jefferies (James Stewart), a photographer with a broken leg, takes up the fine art of spying on his Greenwich Village neighbours during a summer heat wave. But things really hot up when he suspects one neighbour (Raymond Burr) of murdering his invalid wife and burying the body in a flower garden.

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After shaking the world with his hugely controversial epic 'The Birth of a Nation', pioneer filmmaker D. W.

Griffith spared no expense in putting together his next project: a powerful examination of intolerance as it has persisted throughout civilisation, set across four parallel storylines that span 2500 years. There is the Babylonian story, depicting nothing less than the fall of Babylon; the Judean story, which revolves around the crucifixion of Christ; the French story, which presents the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in all its horror; and a modern American story of class struggle, crime, and the plight of life in the early 20th century set within urban slums and the prison system. Starring such luminaries as Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge, and Miriam Cooper, who share screentime with an enormous main cast and some 3,000 extras, Griffith's film - the most expensive motion picture ever produced at the time - went on to become a critical success whose influence has only grown in the decades since.

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With the help of a courageous fellowship of friends and allies, Frodo (Elijah Wood) embarks on a perilous mission to destroy the legendary One Ring. Hunting Frodo are servants of the Dark Lord, Sauron (Sala Baker), the Ring's evil creator. If Sauron reclaims the Ring, Middle-earth is doomed.

Winner of four Academy Awards, this epic tale of good versus evil, friendship and sacrifice will transport you to a world beyond imagination.

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The Greatest Love Story Ever Told...in the most acclaimed musical of all time...! Experience every sensational song, dazzling dance number and magical movie moment of 'West Side Story' as never before, in sparkling high definition with pure digital sound.

A triumph on every level, this electrifying musical sets the ageless tragedy of 'Romeo and Juliet' against a backdrop of gang warfare in 1950s New York. Featuring an unforgettable score, exuberant choreography and powerful performances by Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno and George Chakiris, West Side Story will forever resonate as a true cinematic masterpiece.

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"Taxi Driver" provoked fierce controversy when it was released, running into censorship problems in America as some of the scenes of violence were described to be "as gory as Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs".

In addition there was an outcry at a 13-year-old schoolgirl actress (Jodie Foster) co-starring as a prostitute. It won Best Picture at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and received Academy Award Nominations for Best Film, Best Actor (Robert de Niro) and Best Supporting Actress (Foster).

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When Michael (Robert De Niro), Steven (John Savage) and Nick (Christopher Walken) are captured by the Vietcong, they are forced to play Russian Roulette by their brutal captors, who make bets on their survival.

The experience of capture leaves them with terrible physical and spiritual wounds, and when Michael returns to Saigon to fulfill an old promise to one of his friends, he makes an unexpected, horrific discovery. Also featuring astonishing performances from Meryl Streep as the woman both Michael and Nick fall in love with, and John Cazale as their unhinged and insecure friend Stan, 'The Deer Hunter' is widely acknowledged as one of cinema's great masterpieces and contains some of the most memorable scenes in film history.

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Hailed as one of the best comedies ever made and nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, the story focuses on army surgeons who develop a lunatic life-style in order to handle every day horrors encountered in Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean war.

Though highly skilled and deeply dedicated, this irreverent mob of madcaps is equally adept at making a shambles of army bureaucracy.

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Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not a spy. And he's certainly no murderer. Nevertheless, Thornhill's a wanted man: enemy agents want him dead, the police want him arrested, and a cool, mysterious blonde (Eva Marie Saint) just plain wants him.

A victim of mistaken identity, Thornhill can't afford to make any mistakes of his own - so he embarks on a death-defying run for his life. Relentlessly pursued by plane, train and automobile, Thornhill's cross-country chase finally ends atop Mt. Rushmore where, if he doesn't watch his step, he could be in for a terrible fall.

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When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town's chief of police (Roy Scheider), a young marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a grizzled shark hunter (Robert Shaw) embark on a desperate quest to destroy the beast before it strikes again.

Featuring an unforgettable score that evokes pure terror, 'Jaws' remains one of the most influential and gripping adventures in motion picture history.

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This is the film that catapulted Sylvester Stallone into the international spotlight and launched one of the most successful series of films in movie history, This is the story of a loser, a two bit boxer from Philadelphia, who gets a second chance in life by being offered an impossible shot at the

heavyweight title. Stallone's performance is as powerful as his character's punches in the ring. This is one of the most exciting action movies you will ever see. Rocky is the simple story of a man whom fate chooses for a shot at glory in what has otherwise been an ordinary life. And while this subject matter is nothing new, it was unusual for Hollywood to release an old-fashioned 'feel-good' movie in the seventies, a decade whose films were mostly unconventional in attitude and anti-establishment in tone. Rocky is, of course, a fairy tale, but by grounding its characters in an everyday reality, the filmmakers were able to make them seem real and alive. And making the major contribution to that sense of reality was Sylvester Stallone, an out-of-work actor/writer whose faith in himself took him from utter obscurity to world-wide fame and fortune virtually overnight.....

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'The Gold Rush' is widely reported to be the film that Chaplin most wanted to be remembered for. It sees The Tramp as a lone prospector venturing to Alaska looking for gold.

He gets mixed up with some burly characters, falls in love with the beautiful Georgia (Georgia Hale) and tries to win her heart with his singular charm.

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Taking place over five days in the nation's music capital Nashville, Tennessee, the film follows two-dozen characters struggling for fulfilment, both personal and professional, amongst a backdrop of country and gospel musicians, outsider political campaigning, and the peripheries of life inbetween,

building from one encounter at a time to create a wide-ranging tapestry of rich drama and human comedy.

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Apointed political satire, 'Duck Soup' is the Marx Brothers' funniest and most insane film. Groucho is Rufus T. Firefly, the hilarious dictator of mythical Freedonia. Harpo and Chico are commissioned as spies by Groucho's political rival, the calculating Trentino (Louis Calhern).

The film contains many of the Brothers' famous sequences: the lemonade stand, a masterpiece of slow burn: the Paul Revere parody; the "We're Going to War" number, a beautiful spoof of '30s' musicals; the hilarious mirror scene; and a final battle episode that has been copied by everyone from Woody Allen to Mad Magazine.