I watched Hitchcock's "To Catch a Thief" the other night, a movie notable mainly for bringing Grace Kelly to Monaco for the first time, where she'd marry Prince Rainier and retire from acting not many years later. While the movie is fairly light-hearted and not even close to Hitchcock's masterworks like Vertigo or Rear Window, it was quite entertaining (Kelly is great, Cary Grant has his moments as well), and made me realize yet again how many of these older movies (that one is from 1955) are only really watched by the older generations and a handful of younger cinema lovers.

Hence this survey, to hopefully find some other gems or at least entertaining movies that I should watch. If somebody wants to rank their movies or just stick with a personal favourite or top three, be my guest, personally I'll just name some I highly recommend, in no particular order. Most of mine are movies most people will at least have heard of and possibly seen, I hope some people can name some lesser-known but equally good movies.


- All About Eve (1950): Often named in the top ten of movies of all-time, and not without reason as far as I'm concerned. Excellent story about an aging theater diva and a fervent admirer of hers who turns out to not be as innocent as she looks, excellent acting by all involved, and a priceless Marilyn Monroe in one of her first notable (if rather small) roles. Bette Davis inexplicably failed to win the Best Actress Oscar, but has the satisfaction of having been vindicated by history.

- Vertigo (1958 ): I haven't seen too many of Hitchcock's movies, but of the ones I have seen, this one is the best by a mile. A complicated but excellently crafted story about a detective investigating a mysterious woman, with a few massive unexpected twists, and great acting by James Stewart and Kim Novak.

- Some Like It Hot (1959): Probably Monroe's biggest success, at least in hindsight, and has been named as one of the best comedies ever. Monroe does what she does best, playing a blonde girl rather less ditzy than she seems at first sight, while Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis star as two gangsters forced by circumstances to pretend they're women, which doesn't help their efforts to pursue Monroe's character romantically. The final line is a classic. The look and feel of the movie is of course dated, but the humour remains superb.

- Sunset Blvd. (1950): Closely connected to All About Eve in many regards: the topic (an older actress on her retour), the year of release, and the fact that lead actress Gloria Swanson was snubbed just like Bette Davis for the Best Acress Oscar that year (indeed, the story goes the deadlock between the two allowed the Oscar go to a third candidate). The story is rather different, though, perhaps not quite as captivating, and Swanson's character is a delusional actress stuck in the silent movie era, and refusing to accept her glory time lies twenty years and more behind her. The climactic scene is heartbreaking and rather impressive, but the movie as a whole is slower and perhaps less interesting for modern audiences.

- The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934): Kind of like To Catch a Thief in terms of making little claim to being an excellent or deep movie, but also very amusing. Leslie Howard, much better known for his portrayal of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind, stars with the remarkably (if unconventionally) beautiful Merle Oberon in a story about English spies in Revolutionary French trying to save French aristocrats from the guillotine.

- Gone With the Wind (1939): I considered not including this one because it's so blindingly obvious, and instead putting Vivien Leigh's other famous Oscar-winning performance, in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), but while Streetcar is a great movie with excellent acting from Leigh, Marlon Brando and others, I found it too depressing to really love it the way I do GWtW. Leigh is perfect as the selfish, spoiled but strong-willed Scarlett O'Hara, and the same goes for Clark Gable as the rather similar Rhett Butler. How a love story between two characters who are so anti-heroic and even downright unlikeable in many ways became as legendary as it did, both in book form and in the movie, I'm not sure, but it isn't undeservedly. Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard and Hattie McDaniel are all very good, but it's Leigh and Gable who make the (four hours long) movie larger than life.