Kenneth Turan’s 54 favorite films
After nearly four decades of film criticism, the Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan has compiled his list of favorite movies, which we’ve listed chronologically for you here. Turan expounds on his selections in the new book “Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites From a Lifetime of Film.”
‘Sherlock Jr.’
A silent comedy about a film projectionist who gets a chance to fulfill his dream of being a detective when he is framed for stealing.
Director: Buster Keaton
Stars: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire
‘I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang’
This drama adapted from a real-life fugitive’s autobiography follows a wrongfully convicted man amid brutal conditions on a chain gang.
Directors: Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell
‘Love Affair’
A Frenchman and American woman fall in love aboard a ship, arranging a rendezvous atop the Empire State Building six months later to test the strength of their affections.
Director: Leo McCarey
Stars: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya
‘The Shop Around the Corner’
Two bickering gift shop employees have no idea that they’re falling in love with each other as anonymous pen pals.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Stars: James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan
‘Pride and Prejudice’
The drama, based on Jane Austen’s novel of the same name, follows a rural family whose matriarch is eager to find husbands for her five unmarried daughters.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Stars: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier
‘The Lady Eve’
A father-daughter con artist team target a socially awkward heir to great fortune, but their plan falters when the daughter falls in love with her mark.
Director: Preston Sturges
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn
‘Casablanca’
Set during the onset of World War II, the romantic drama focuses on a man who must make difficult decisions when he encounters a former lover in Africa.
Director: Michael Curtiz
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Raines
‘To Be or Not to Be’
This comedy follows a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Poland who get tangled in a Polish soldier’s efforts to find a German spy.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Stars: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack
‘Random Harvest’
In this film adaptation of the 1941 James Hilton novel, an amnesiac World War I veteran falls in love with a singer, later suffering an accident that restores his original memories but erases his post-war ones.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: Ronald Colman, Greer Garson
‘Children of Paradise’
This French film tells the story of a courtesan and four men (a mime, an actor, a thief and an aristocrat) who love her in their own ways.
Director: Marcel Carné
Stars: Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur
‘Great Expectations’
Charles Dickens’ classic novel about an orphan who comes into unexpected wealth is the first of two Dickens adaptations from David Lean. He later directed “Oliver Twist.”
Director: David Lean
Stars: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Alec Guinness
‘Bicycle Thieves’
In this Italian film, a poor father takes his son on a search for a stolen bicycle that is vital to his job.
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Stars: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola
‘The Third Man’
The British film noir follows a pulp writer who arrives in postwar Vienna for a job, only to discover that the friend who invited him there has been murdered.
Director: Carol Reed
Stars: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles
‘Sunset Boulevard’
An unsuccessful screenwriter is drawn into the world of a former silent-film star who dreams of making a comeback.
Director: Billy Wilder
Stars: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim
‘Singin’ in the Rain’
Hollywood’s difficult transition from silent films to talkies is the subject of this musical comedy.
Directors: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Stars: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds
‘Sweet Smell of Success’
A tale of immorality unfolds as a powerful newspaper columnist attempts to sabotage his sister’s relationship with a man he disapproves of.
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis
‘Touch of Evil’
Set south of the border, “Touch of Evil” pits a Mexican policeman against his corrupt colleague when his investigation of a bomb explosion threatens his and his new bride’s life.
Director: Orson Welles
Stars: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles
‘Vertigo’
A retired detective suffering from acrophobia becomes dangerously obsessed with an old college buddy’s wife after he is asked to investigate her strange behavior.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: James Stewart, Kim Novak
‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’
When recognized by reporters, a high-profile senator attending a small town funeral decides to set the record straight about what made him famous.
Director: John Ford
Stars: James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin
‘Falstaff’ / ‘Chimes at Midnight’
This film’s plot centers on the relationship between Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff and his patriarchal relationship with Prince Hal, King Henry IV’s son.
Director: Orson Welles
Stars: Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, John Gielgud
‘Point Blank’
The film, based on a novel by Donald Westlake, focuses on a man who is determined to seek revenge after his business partner leaves him for dead.
Director: John Boorman
Stars: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson
‘The Godfather’
A view of the dark side of the American dream shown through a man’s reluctant succession of his aging father’s crime empire.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Stars: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall
‘Chinatown’
A private eye hired to expose the infidelity of the city’s water system builder gets ensnared in plots of corruption much bigger than adultery.
Director: Roman Polanski
Stars: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
‘Distant Voices, Still Lives’
The second installment in an autobiographical trilogy about living as a working-class family in Liverpool in the 1940s and 1950s.
Director: Terence Davies
Stars: Pete Postlethwaite, Freda Dowie
‘Howards End’
An Edwardian era film based on an E.M. Forster novel about the love and conflict between three families, each from different socioeconomic classes.
Director: James Ivory
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave
‘The Best of Youth’
An epic that follows one family for nearly four decades, and how its members react to the defining events of Italian history.
Director: Marco Tullio Giordana
Stars: Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Sonia Bergamasco
‘Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains’
A documentary that recounts the story of a rugby team from Uruguay and their struggle to survive after their plane crashes in the Andes Mountains.
Director: Gonzalo Arijon
‘Of Gods and Men’
Tension surfaces in unlikely places in “Of Gods and Men,” a film based on a true story about a group of French monks facing a life-or-death crisis.
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Stars: Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale