'Gone with the Wind' (Victor Fleming, 1939)

Title: 'Gone with the Wind'

Release Year: 1939

Director: Victor Fleming

Cast: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel.

Plot: Scarlett O'Hara is a beatutiful, selfish, greedy woman whose world and life will be turned upside down when civil war hits the country and, by extension, her beloved Tara.

Review: 'Gone with the Wind'. The famous (and long) 'Gone with the Wind'. It's one of those movies you've seen plenty of times on TV but you've never had the will power to watch entirely. Well, once you finally do it, you don't regret it.

Yes, maybe I had to make a break every 2 hours to rest, but even with its extreme length it's a big, powerful movie with huge performances, especially the great Scarlett O'Hara performed by Leigh. In fact, I think it's its length what makes it so huge. It'a a feeling of completion; the film explains war from the beginning to the end. It's so wide that it had time for every bit of it, making of Fleming's immense creation a work of art and an epic classic.

Another aspect that has been widely discussed, it's Rhett and O'hara's relationship. Did she ever love him? I think so. All the time? Maybe. Perhaps she was just too confused and distracted with Ashley to realize it. The ending proves it: once she discovers that her love for him is not requited (as she all the time thought it was, although he couldn't admit it) she realises how much she has made Rhett suffer and how much she misses him (too late, maybe?). Anyway, they surely have a rocky relationship (no wonder why it's said that the actors hated each other); even once married it was like seeing old hollywood golden life that sparkles in the outside but it's rotten in the inside.

And O'Hara? She's been named many things, but in my opinion, she just was clever. Clever enough to see that if she wanted to survive, she had to forget her scrupulousness and do whatever she could, as she herself says in the iconic 'I'll never be hungry again' scene.

Leigh's iconic quote:"As god is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"

Yes, if 'Gone with the Wind' is somthing, that's iconic. From its powerful score, through her characters (including McDaniel's Mammy or the honest and good Melanie Hamilton) to its gorgeous ending. Because, even with its few flaws, it leaves us devastated with its 4-hours duration, convincing us that, "after all, tomorrow is another day".

Ending her greates movie, Leigh looks to the future while saygin her famous 'After all, tomorrow is another day!'

'The Wizard of Oz' (Victor Fleming, 1939)

Title: 'The Wizard of Oz'

Release Year: 1939

Director: Victor Fleming

Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton.

Plot: Dorothy dreams of travelling to 'somewhere over the rainbow', and that's exactly what she does when, after a big tornado, she finds herself very far away from her native Kansas.

Review: I simply LOVED this movie. What a beautiful surprise! I expected it to be just a children's tale, but it exceeded every expectation.

To start with, the transition between real world and Oz using technicolor is nothing but remarkable. The difference between both places and the magic that spreads the second one are in part thanks to that detail. In Kansas, everything is sad for Dorothy and the environment is gloomier, while a pinch of hopelessness is seen in her eyes when her dog is going to be killed. A way to restore that lost hope in the viewer: her magnificent voice.

'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' performed by Judy Garland in the movie

Seriously, what a voice! Every time I'm sad and I listen to that song, I close my eyes and everything looks better. It's like it had a healing power. I still wonder why they wanted to cut it off...

Anyway, once in Oz, everything reaches a dreamy pitch. In a world populated by real faces transformed in scarecrows and witches, everytime I heard the famous 'We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz' sung in the characters way through the yellow brick road, I couldn't help but start singing. It was like if I was a kid again, but who wouldn't? With much less technology facilities than nowadays, Fleming and Garland created a dreamy world that spreads so much magic that it is impossible not to lose yourself in it.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz! We've heard he is a Wiz of a Wiz...

Speaking of Garland. 'The Wizard of Oz' is her. From the tip of its toes to the bottom of its head. Garland gives here a magnificent performance that, together with her voice and her heart-breaking crying scenes, makes of her the perfect and only Dorothy.

What else can be said of such an endearing story apart that it's now one of my favourite films? Well, just as and ending question; all the way to the wizard just to discover that he has no powers? And then Dorothy could have returned to Kansas at the very beginning! It's true that it was necessary for her to stay in Oz to see how much she missed home, but still... Well, as Dorothy would say, There's no place like home.

'Modern Times' (Charles Chaplin, 1936)

Title: 'Modern Times'

Release Year: 1936

Director: Charles Chaplin

Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard.

Plot: After losing his mind (and his job) over the frantic work life, a workman will have to struggle against the situation instituted by Industrial Revolution, while discovering a beautiful friendship with an orphaned young girl.

Review: One of the things I like the most about Chaplin is his ability to connect with the social problems of society (and how he manages to achieve this while staying silent in sound era ten years after the invention of Vitaphone). After years of higher than normal unemployment numbers, this movie was a clear reflexion of the crazy world they lived in. A world that we still inhabit sometimes.

Every scene of the film is an example of that and of Chaplin's mastery: the sheep's metaphore of workers entering the factory, how they have to deal with all kind of exigences or experiments, how they're treated like one of many who would give anything to work... Chaplin uses all this and a tramp gone crazy to exemplify his modern days situation. As always, we'll see him trying to do everything right but failing miserably with a comedy level only he owns.

Who doesn't remember this iconic scene?

But my favourite parts are, without a doubt, the ones she shares with future real life wife Paulette Goddard. Their strange relationship is a weird friendship between two human beings trying to survive. Endearing, isn't it? Chaplin films always are. And that's perhaps what made him so famous; his ability to make us laugh at the same time that he touched something inside of us. The finest example? The ending (a detail that he controls and beautifies in every movie), features both a beautiful score and one of the topics that you find in more than one of his pictures; hope, giving to the viewer the promise of a better tomorrow.

'It Happened One Night' (Frank Capra, 1934)

Title: 'It Happened One Night'

Release Year: 1934

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Conolly.

Plot: Ellie Andrews, tired of his controlling father, escapes one day and begins a trip to join the man she's married (who her father doesn't approve of). What she may not now is that many surprises are waiting for her on the road...

Review: Best picture, director, actor, actress and writing. This was the first film in cinema history to win the 'big five' Academy Awards. Does it deserve them?

Well, while it might not be my favourite movie, it has many aspects to be remembered. 'It happened one night' is an entertaining and funny journey lead by the strong performances of Gable and Colbert. During it, it's not difficult to see the good chemistry both actors had and how that affected their characters.

Watching how Ellie and Peter's love-hate relationship works is the main success the film achieves

Secondly, the screenplay was really an intelligent one; the adventure iniciated by Ellie and Peter is both credible and entertaining, creating an ideal environment for what would be a blossoming romance.

And finally, I love how both personages interact; his determined and easy-going nature contrasts with her usual bad mood and difficult persona. How they affect one another's manners is endearing and makes of this film an interesting and ageless tale about a romance that 'happened one night', featuring one of the most curious endings and subtle ways to describe sex that I've ever seen, using a simple blanket as the infamous 'Jericho Walls'.

'King Kong' (Merican C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

Title: 'King Kong'

Release Year: 1933

Director: Merican C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

Cast: Bruce Cabot, Robert Amstrong, Fay Wray.

Plot: After casting Ann Darrow as the lead actress in his next movie, Carl Denham and his team make their way to a mysterious island full of dangers, an experience that leads to a monstrous discovery.

Review: It's quite curious to see how films that now become blockbusters thanks to their big budgets are remakes of movies made many years ago, even with a much lower technology. That's the case of 'King Kong': we may have heard of Peter Jackson's 2005 film, but would we believe the same story was told more than 70 years ago?

Back in 1933, the wild primate became a huge hit and the movie he led, an outstanding piece of technical innovation. Of course if you see it now it's horribly fake. Some of the scenes are even funny but, somehow they still manage to scare you to death. I think that's the greatness of Kong's; even mixing dinosaurs and giant gorillas on an island with variable success, its entertaining power never goes away.

The well-known scene of a cinema classic

Add to that a well-chosen cast (specially Robert Amstrong's cool character and performance) and the joy of watching such iconic scenes like Ann screaming at the vision of Kong or him climbing the Empire State Building, and you will have a solid, terrifying, amusing piece of work, which even has time for a little bit of romance. Yes, I had thought that eventually, Ann would stop just shouting and would understand the beast's feelings for her, but the film ending with Amstrong's terrific quote 'It was beauty killed the beast' makes up por previous flaws.