In partnership with The Film Foundation, iconic film director and classic movie lover Martin Scorsese's exclusive monthly contribution to the TCM newsletter Now Playing in February 2017.
Each February, the TCM programmers do a salute to the Oscars®. They always go about their task in a different way. This year, it's alphabetical. I thought I'd follow their lead. Surprisingly, there's no letter E--did they forget about East of Eden and Easy Rider and The Exorcist? Unsurprisingly, there's no X. I guess that X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes wasn't nominated for anything in 1963.
A is for The Asphalt Jungle, John Huston's remarkable 1950 adaptation of W.R. Burnett's novel.
B is for The Big Country, William Wyler's Technirama western with one of the best of all movie scores by Jerome Moross.
C is for King Vidor's The Crowd, one of the peaks of the silent era.
D is for Delmer Daves' directorial debut, Destination Tokyo, a tense submarine picture.
F is for A Foreign Affair, Billy Wilder's underrated and extremely funny postwar Berlin comedy, with Marlene Dietrich.
G is for John Ford's adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a great American film shot by Gregg Toland, a true genius.
H is for Hail the Conquering Hero, one of the last and best of the run of incredible films made by Preston Sturges at Paramount.
I is for Federico Fellini's moving, funny and sad autobiographical film I Vitelloni--it should have been alphabetized under V instead of I, but any excuse to mention it...
J is for Jaws, so beautifully made by Steven Spielberg and his first massive success...which did not seem like a forgone conclusion when he was trying to finish it.
K is for Key Largo, John Huston's second picture of 1948 with Humphrey Bogart, very rich and exciting.
L is for Logan's Run, an excellent science fiction film made in the 70s (excellent production design by Dale Hennessy) about a future in which everyone over 30 is rounded up and executed.
M is for Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller--a one-of-a-kind picture that looks and feels like no other, shot by Vilmos Zsigmond (who passed away just about a year ago). I should also mention the production designer on this picture, Leon Erickson.
N is for Fred Zinnemann's adaptation of Kathryn Hulme's The Nun's Story, a meticulously realized story of faith, now almost forgotten.
O is for Carl Reiner's Oh, God!, a huge hit back in the '70s and a picture I've always enjoyed about an ordinary guy (played by John Denver) who comes face to face with God, a nice old man played by George Burns.
P is for Pride of the Marines, Delmer Daves' fourth picture: a harrowing true story of Al Schmid, who came back from the Pacific without his eyesight. Wyler screened this film for his crew before he shot The Best Years of Our Lives.
Q is for John Ford's The Quiet Man, a lovely, funny, romantic, moving, raucous comedy.
R is for The Razor's Edge, a very good adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel directed by Edmund Goulding.
S is for The Silver Chalice, Paul Newman's film debut--the picture itself is not great, but Boris Leven's Art Direction is.
T is for George Pal's lovingly crafted adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine.
That's it for February. In March: U is for Ugetsu, V is for Vertigo, Y is for Young Frankenstein and Z is for... Z.
