Favorite Film?

Top five

1. Laura
2. Anatomy of a Murder
3. Angel Face
4. Advise & Consent
5. Bonjour Tristesse

For me, its a three-way tie:

Anatomy of a Murder(1959) James Stewart
Advise and Consent(1962) Henry Fonda
In Harm's Way(1965) John Wayne

Those three movies have big casts* behind those three big names(and Fonda is briefly in the Wayne picture) but it is as if Otto elected to use three of the most senior and beloved American movie stars to "anchor" a trilogy of films -- all in black and white, all with the flavor of the "50's/60's cusp" (In Harm's Way is from 1965, but FEELS like 1962), all pushing censorship boundaries with flair -- that together told a tale of "American systems": Courtroom Law, Politics, and the Military. All three films have a taste for the compromises and ambiguities of such systems , and the bureaucratic infighting. But all three films find honorable men and women trying to do honorable things.

Interspersed among those three b/w pictures are Preminger's color epics Exodus(1960) and The Cardinal(1963), but the "b/w trilogy" are better linked and, again, anchored by "All-American Old Stars." Its those three I like the best,and, after In Harm's Way, Preminger's career was never that major again.

*The big casts include: (1) Advise and Consent: Walter Pidgeon is the lead as the heroic Senate Majority Leader and Charles Laughton(in his last role) is a flamboyant Southern Senator(Fonda is almost a cameo); (2) In Harm's Way: John Wayne is given Kirk Douglas as his ultra-loyal-aide with some dark personal secrets; plus a wonderfully mature and sexual Patricia Neal as Wayne's love interest; and (3) Anatomy of a Murder: James Stewart as a criminal defense attorney is pitted against a relatively new and young George C. Scott as an ace prosecutor....plus these casts are filled with other "names" in other roles.

Laura