There are those times - and it seems to happen more in film than in other media (although I don't know how far I would push this argument) - that an OK artist somehow produces a masterpiece. I always associate it with Michael Curtiz, who was a dependable, serviceable director, who somehow directed Casablanca. I don't know why I settled on Curtiz for this designation - and it's no doubt a bit harsh - because he also directed Mildred Pierce and The Adventures of Robin Hood and Yankee Doodle Dandy and Passage to Marseille and White Christmas. That said, Casablanca always makes the short list for greatest films of all time, while those other films are pretty good or entertaining at best. However, somehow everything came together on Casablanca - and the distance between it and any of his other films is profound. Having said that, maybe it would be better if I identified that category by Jacques Tourneur instead. He directed Out of the Past, which is simply a great film and maybe the great film noir of all time. Tourneur's next best film might be - the original Cat People? Last night we watched Tourneur's 1948 film Berlin Express, which the Criterion Channel was trying to foist off as a film noir (which they tend to do, because, well, all film nuts love film noir), but it's more of a failed political thriller. It's pretty bad. The photography is beautiful, and the scenes of bombed out post-war Frankfurt were amazing/sobering to see. Robert Ryan looks like he would have been much more comfortable in a true film noir, while Merle Oberon (Wuthering Heights) and Paul Lukas (Watch on the Rhine) were trying to remember when they were in better movies. I think a good rule for judging a film is if there is a third person voiceover throughout the entire movie it's probably a bad movie.
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