The films of our lives

I think that we all have films like this in our lives, some more than others.

For me (although I am only seventeen), I think the film would be Fellini's 8 1/2. We have a man, flawed, yes, but who isn't? He has his struggles with nearly everyone around him, especially those whom he wishes to make the film with (his producers, his writer, etc.), which, we can all assume, is the quintessential fact of being a big-budget director. When I saw it last year for the first time, I was astounded. I knew that I had not, of course, reached a point in my life where I could know what Guido knows, or anything even close to that, but I could feel it, very deeply within me, that his struggles would be my own (no matter how large the budget is), that I will be constantly seeking, seeking the ight thing to make, rather than what others around me wish me to make.

In one of my film classes, we suddenly lost the ability to create films that were free, and we were restricted to film certain projects that the teacher had to choose for us. It was one of the more difficult times I've had of late (although I was able to do creative projects, still), as I could not do the stories, the images, that struck me as truly beautiful and worthy of a film. I felt that restriction, and I knew what I would deal with, and what Guido must have dealt with, all along. When something truly beautiful comes up in your mind, a work of art that stands completely for you, and you alone, a work that could epitomize your entire body of work into a single masterstroke, you are pushed down, your ideas are buried deep, deeper, into the ground, and you feel as though you can no longer go on. Filmmaking was Guidos passion, and he knew what he wanted. Likewise here.

Savvy

One of the beauties of film I've known is that it allows us to understand individuals different from ourselves. But you describe another beauty: one where a movie becomes a marker which you can then revisit to remember the events and emotions where you grew from.

I was trying to think of such a film that I could also share with you, Roger, but most films I see I only identify with obliquely. The closest I can come up with is the fairly standard answer of Citizen Kane. He doesn't represent me, per se, but he does represent one side of me. The side that wants to do great things and to be recognized for them. The side that wants people to love me on my own terms and play by my own rules. When he fails and falls, I identify because my own experiences have also shown me that to base your satisfaction around those desires are ultimately unfulfilling, pushing the people you love away.

(Interestingly enough, I saw Party Monster recently in which those same desires led to a much darker direction. I didn't identify there, but it did make me stop and think about what those desires could make me become.)

But I hope I can find something closer. As I keep watching films, I hope to one day find one as powerful, immortal and personal as La Dolce Vita is for you.

I recently wrote about a similar sentiment I had about another Fellini movie, "I Vitelloni."

When I first saw the film in college as a 20-year-old, I looked down upon the "Big Kids" of the movie, snottily judging them from my high, unearned perch. Four years later when the film played at the Florida Film Festival, it completely changed for me. It caused me to lament the malaise I was in during my immediate post-collegiate years. The "wagging finger of shame" (yes I just stole that line) that Fellini--and I--were pointing at the characters had all of a sudden been turned on me.

Like for you with "La Dolce Vita," the film had not changed a single frame, but I had changed a great deal and so too it's impact and meaning for me. Part of what I think makes some movies great is that they are layered enough to reach you in different ways and ways you had not thought possible. I think it's a testament to them and to Fellini specifically with these two films (and 8 1/2 and Amarcord and, well, so many of his other movies) that they can resonate so endlessly.

Jeez, Roger; That didn't just "break the spell", I almost sneezed coffee all over my keyboard!

While I never felt quite the same attraction you did for Marcello's character in the film, I certainly felt an attraction of a different sort for Ms. Ekberg.

I originally saw "La Dolce Vita" in 1964 or 1965 in a small "arthouse" theater in Michigan. I was either 12 or 13, & my mother, God love her, took me (her eldest child) to see it.

My mother loved films that bespoke emotional connections between people, and she hoped I might love them as well, since my father had little time for such "stuff & nonsense" in those days. Because of her, I saw "8 1/2", "Satyricon", "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", "Ship of Fools", "La Strada", and many other films no one my age was supposed to have been interested in.

That is how I came to be a lifelong devotee of film, and likely explains the collection of several thousand movies I maintain to this day.

After careful consideration, I would have to say (subject to change without notice), that the "film of my life" is "The Thin Man"; the B&W classic with William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Like your experience with "La Dolce Vita", I wished to lead the life of Nick Charles; happy, rich, seemingly carefree -- but made more fascinating by his use of his wit and derring-do to solve bewildering crimes, always in the company of his beautiful and feisty wife, the glorious Nora.

I have maintained my crush on Myrna Loy for more than forty years; it easily survived her passing. I told each of my three wives (the third is still with me - bless her!) before marriage (only half-joking) that should Myrna appear on my doorstep one day, smiling that devastating smile of hers and hinting that we should be alone, I wouldn't care if she were 80 years old; I would hand my wife money to go see a movie or something...and don't slam the door on her way out.

If there is an afterlife, I hope to see William & Myrna, if only for a moment, so I can express my gratitude for the countless hours of joy they gave me over the decades; and the hours of happy fantasy Myrna blessed me with, even if completely unbeknownst to her.
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My turn to spoil the mood. In reference to your blog entry regarding "Wit": I saw (with my mom, naturally) "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" during its original theatrical release in 1969. The movie stunned me, and to this day I consider it one of the most emotionally powerful films I have ever seen. Almost forty year later I can still see it clearly... but I have never been able to watch it again since. Gig Young won the "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar; I can still see his tired smile as he intones "Yowzah, yowzah, yowzah...just look at those wonderful kids". Jane Fonda was nominated for "Best Actress", but lost out to Maggie Smith. I was seriously upset until I saw "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" a few months later; then I actually agreed with the Academy voters. Susannah York was up for "Best Supporting Actress", but also lost out (to Goldie Hawn, for "Cactus Flower" -- an egregious mistake). But the biggest surprise to me was that Sydney Pollack did not win "Best Director". Seeing his work for the first time, I became a fan -- and stayed one ever since.

Thank you, Roger. Once again you've managed what few film critics have ever done: provoked me into thinking about my love for films from a new and slightly different perspective.

Great entry, Mr. Ebert. Just wanted to let you know that you can rest assured that though "La Dolce Vita" was 1962, and I was born in 1987, there are young people today that are still finding inspiration in Fellini's film. And I'm not the only one to feel this way. Perhaps you saw the recent Judd Apatow film, "Superbad?" Did you notice the name of the shop lying prominently in the background of the final shot? "Fellini's." On purpose? I'd be surprised if it was an accident...

I apologize - "Superbad" was not an Apatow film. It was directed by Greg Mottola. Applies all the same though.

Roger,
I benefit from and respect your practice of your craft!
I follow and appreciate your blog!
Namaste.
Joel

Ah yes, 'La Dolce Vita'. For me it is like 'The Graduate' in that I understand why they are important, but are essentially 'boy films'; heavy on existential angst, light on romance and...well, lightness.

Marguerite Duras wrote that women, for the most part, think in terms of practicalities. I'm not sure that I agree. I like to think the questions of human existence interest me as deeply as they do any man. But in watching 'Dolce' and 'Graduate', I catch glimpse of what she meant.

The movie of my life is 'Holiday'. At thirteen or so, I have literally no idea what I was doing up so early the morning it came on A&E. But I do remember that at the time my future was a topic of great interest to me...and my parents. Grant's philosophy, the idea of designing one's own life without regard to familial or societal norms, was a revelation to me.

Watching Hepburn break free of her stifled existence...it's hard to describe what it did to me, what it still does. It was as though someone opened a door inside my soul. A nonconformist from the womb, I was born into a very by-the-numbers-don't-throw-away-the-book family. Until that moment it had never occurred to me to flummox and terrify my parents with my life choices.

More importantly, the ideals that life was a quest, an adventure, infected me like a virus. And flummoxing and terrifying my parents as they say, 'for fun and profit', that's been good too.

In "Last Tango in Paris" there is a scene where Brando talks to his wife's lover and on the wall there is a print of Henri Cartier-Bresson's portrait of Albert Camus. I have a postcard like this on my wall which I bought from the Cartier-Bresson foundation in Paris, along with a larger print of his famous shot at Saint-Lazare station.

I spent three weeks there without purpose. I remember I found the time to walk over the Bir-Hakiem bridge where Brando walks at the beginning of Tango. There is a bicycle lane despoiling it now. I took a photograph of a man on a motorbike. I noticed that from the bridge you can see the Eiffel tower and realised Bertolucci was careful to avoid photographing it, except in one shot through the curtains of a window. I can see the point: such a shot would be obvious, iconic, like a tour. Paul wouldn’t take the time to lift up his eyes to see it: he walked with his head down.

I read your review before I saw the film and it didn’t appeal to me, but when I caught it halfway through on television I recognised it, somehow, from intuition and the few clues you had given me, almost as if I had seen it in another life. I bought it immediately. Why a film with rats and buttered sodomy and so many excruciating scenes would affect me so I don’t know but it did. There are so many lines I would love to say. “Really, Marcello, I wonder what she ever saw in you.” I love the mood, the sly jazz score, the long sequence simply observing two people talking in a bedroom. If I can describe any film as healing I think it would be this one. I think I have exhausted it by now, but it took a long time. The only other work of art to work on the same level was “Tender is the night”. I must have read it nine times, but I remember the first time I was nineteen, twenty, and it shook something in me. Eros is the star guiding both pieces of art - why this is what heals me, I don't know.

Paris itself went by like a dream, a vision. It was perfectly executed. Sometimes it felt like providence, like I was being led. I took a lover for a night and day – a pretty, sorrowful South Korean girl whom I took to the Luxembourg gardens. When time is limited these things are poignant but still unhurried and I studied her eyes, her face, wanting to remember but also to let things be as they must be. I saw Antonio Canova’s statues of Cupid and Psyche in the Louvre, as I’d hoped. I spent a day or two in Nice by the ocean in a little room the size of a coffin, dreaming in French I didn’t understand, astonished to see the world Fitzgerald had described to me, the stones on the beach, the black of the Mediterranean at night. I spent a day in Versailles (stealing past a guard after having bought the wrong ticket), so well-captured in “Marie Antoinette”. I think Sofia Coppolla understood how grotesque the interior of the palace actually is. I went to the ballet. I wandered aimlessly at night, in the rain, any time, doing nothing, going nowhere, stopping at churches, wandering through cemeteries. I spent half a morning trying to find a corkscrew to open my cheap red wine. I had one long meal each day. I spent a surreal day in the catacombs with two other tourists. On my last day I walked aimlessly through the cobbled streets of the Montmartre heights, stunned simply by the beauty of this place, feeling deeply moved.

On the flight home I listened to John Lennon and Simon and Garfunkel and the song “For Emily, whenever I may find her” stays in my mind whenever I think of that time. It sounds somewhat like a James Salter novel, and it was, but a little less bleak.

That one long moment took away any need I might have felt to live in the maelstrom. It was important that I take the time to do these things, at 23, as if to leave nothing in my youth undone. But now I am happy in my obscure corner of the world. I love obscurity and think I can find “The good life” everywhere or nowhere. The most important moments happen in a room between two people and so can happen anywhere. Those kinds of memories are even more precious to me. They stay the same and yet my attitude towards them changes. I still yearn a little, mourn a little, but I have come to terms with it a little more. It is over, that is all.

In “Death in Venice” Mann records that his protagonist felt satisfaction at the thought that the object of his desire won’t live past his youth. The same desire is in “Lolita”. I think it’s a hideous thought, the kind that makes martyrs to youth out of the Monroes, Deans, Cobains and Phoenixes of this world. I want to imagine all my former lovers happy, growing old, married and settled down. I want them to change. I want things to happen to them when I’m not there. I want their lives to go on without me.

There is a Velvet Underground song "Pale blue eyes" which at first decimated me and against which all of me later protested. There is a line "The fact that you are married only proves you're my best friend. But it's truly, truly a sin." I think that line finally destroyed music for me. It is the most egotistical statement I have ever heard, right there in the most honest song I have ever heard.

"Beyond the clouds" lingers in my memory too. I must have been sixteen when I saw it. I didn't know who John Malkovich was but now I recognise him and his voice. I recall the scene where the young man walks away from his lover and his voice-over talks of his folly; "That quiet folly of this city." I didn't understand that scene then but I do now. I remember walking away when I should not have. I can see that it was folly, that there is nothing more in life than what I had with a young woman. I no longer understand the reasons I had for walking away. I've not been able to track the film down but I can if I try hard enough; I hear it got bad reviews, but from what I remember of it there is little in it that can spoil it for me, since it was built of melancholy, love-making and the ocean.

To feel this kind of identification with a fictional character, you have to have an emotional tie to the character. In your case you connected with Mastroianni's character through his behaviour: Rubini's suave, sophisticated playboy represented at first your aspirations, then your situation, then what you had left behind.

But emotional resonance can exist in other ways. To take a more recent example, many of my friends have recently found themselves identifying with the characters in "My Winnipeg". Although described as everything from a "docu-fantasy" to a "hallucination" by American and Toronto critics, "My Winnipeg" is really a long, imaginatively complicated series of in-jokes about Winnipeg as interpreted by characters who are basically standard Prairie people. Everyone I know who is from here sees himself or herself in every character because the characters are absolutely true to life. If my friends return to the movie in ten years I doubt they'll feel the same sensation of moving through and beyond it as you did with "La Dolce Vita", because in this case the connection isn't with what the characters do but with what they are at heart.

(For the record, I think you either have to be either a native-born Winnipeger or completely unfamiliar with the city to get Maddin's movie. The sense of unrealism fades if, like me, you know a little bit about the city but not enough to get the in-jokes. I enjoyed and appreciated it, but I didn't experience the same sense of dreamy fantasy as you and A.O. Scott did nor did I find it as funny as the locals do; at the viewing I attended, the laughter began about a minute in and didn't stop until the credits were halfway over. I've never heard that kind of response before at *any* movie.)

Dear Mr. Ebert,

Spell or no spell, you make our lives sweeter.

It is indeed a pleasure in life to mark the profound changes in our perception when, after many years, revisiting a film, book, painting, piece of music, city, country, natural wonder...

It telescopes time and refocuses our lives as time and again we return to these works of art that illuminate our paths and help define them.

Your recent review of "Cool Hand Luke" was a delight, at once incisive, bold, and generous with a trenchant nod to the times we live in where no anti-hero would be surprised, as Luke seems to be, at his defeat.

Then, while reading your 1967 review of "Cool Hand Luke" it is a pleasure to mark your journey as a critic. You are excellent in both reviews but the recent one glows with a certain freedom that reflects a trust and understanding of your readers, yourself, and even our world, such as it is.

No movie has yet become a landmark for the progression of my life, yet perhaps many of the reviews of yours of particular throughout my life have.

I am only 27, and as such can't really say that there are any films which I could consider a "film of my life." Certainly my perspective and taste have changed, though, and the films which are truly important to me have changed. As a teenager I loved "Pulp Fiction" because it represented, for me, a major rebellion against my parents; it was full of drugs, sex, and all that other stuff my parents thoroughly disapproved of. In college I developed something of a pretentious nature and began to feel I was "too cool for school" concerning "Pulp Fiction" (or any other bit of music or cinema that was popular with my generation). Today I thoroughly enjoy "Pulp Fiction" again, but for very different reasons; I enjoy the sharp dialogue, the imagery, and the paradoxical nature of the characters' thoughts, feelings, and actions. It no longer represents rebellion for me, but rather an attempt at understanding people, who they are and why they do what they do.

For me, the movie of my life is Pather Panchali (which I watched thanks to your "Great Movie" review). That may seem strange coming from a white, middle-class American, but what the film captured for me wasn't a setting (nor an aspiration, as La Dolce Vita did for you), but a relationship, namely, my wife and I.

This is what I wrote when I saw it for the first time two years ago:

I watch a movie where nothing much happens. It's just a family, doing family things. Children play and study and get into mischief. Neighbors gossip. Parents work and worry and argue about money and persevere. I watch, and steadily my astonishment grows.

I'm on the screen. I'm in this movie. My wife is in this movie. My family and my life are in this movie.

My wife watches next to me. Over and over, we glance at each other, smiling and laughing as we recognize ourselves on the screen. We laugh, we sigh, we weep together as the film gently unfolds.

In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck had one of his characters say of the movies, "I was to a show oncet that was me, an' more'n me; an' my life, an' more'n my life." I watched a movie like that last night. It was made in India over 50 years ago. It's in Bengali. Its name is Pather Panchali. And it's about me.

I wonder what I will think of this movie in 20 or 30 years.

I'm a film school grad, living in LA, looking for an opportunity to do what I love to do as a career. I have seen 'La Dolce Vita' three times now, and I own it. Though I have many great films yet to see from Bergman, Bunuel, and the French masters, I have seen many. I believe that it is the greatest movie ever made.

It's funny how discussions of this film tend to linger on Ekberg; and she is iconic. But there are so many things about this film to remember, that the whole is indeed greater than the some of its amazing parts. Fellini uses every tool and trick available at a very high level, and yet as I attempt to study what he has done, I can almost hear his voice in my ear, saying, "Arthur, do not pay attention to the work, but hear the film's message."

I too am fascinated with the very best that life has, and I wonder how fate can be so cruel. But God is not cruel. And he presents this amazing masterpiece to me as a warning, which is very personal; I simply must cling to that which is eternal, forsaking what is fleeting. It's hard. Ekberg is so gorgeous. God understands this. Fellini does too, and somehow I see him as a kindred spirit.

What a great filmmaker.

The movie that made me love movies was James Whale's "Frankenstein." Though I'm only in my late twenties, I speculate that it is probably the film of my life. I I watched that film when I was six and instantly connected with its antagonist the Monster (or is that protagonist?) in a way I'd never connected with a movie character before. Even at that young age, I understood the sympathy that we were meant to feel for the Monster; I felt anger against Dr. Frankenstein, Fritz and the crowd who waged war on a misunderstood innocent. It's amazing how my reading of that film, and the Monster, has remained essentially the same even as I have grown to understand the language of cinema, Whale's technique, and come read the film in different ways. The more complex the movie becomes in my mind, there is that simple, unchanging Monster who I have always loved and felt extreme sympathy for. He's the anchor that brings me back to the film. I recently watched "Spirit of the Beehive," which adds even more layers to the profound simplicity of the film. People say "Frankenstein" is the greatest of the early monster movies (in all fairness, I'd give that distinction to "Bride of Frankenstein", or perhaps Murnau's "Nosferatu"); I wonder if it is actually not the ancestor to films like "E.T." or "Water Horse," in the way it has a misunderstood creature in its center who communicates directly to the innocence of children while still inspiring the authentic sympathy of adult viewers. But I ramble, as I always do when discussing "Frankenstein." I only know that as I age, I'll still be shedding a tear for the bolt-necked Big Guy.

Though too young to have a film that I have known for decades, I know that I WILL have one in Bergman's great "Fanny & Alexander."

Today a young man walked past me wearing a "White power" T-shirt. He was all in black, with his militant boots and cap, looking somewhat like Linda Hamilton in "Terminator 2". He walked like he was filled with hate. It was early afternoon on a Sunday. Where did he get that kind of nerve?

I live in a quiet little town, more a suburb than a country town but it is a toss-up between the two. I live on campus on what used to be an agricultural college and walk past a field of cattle on my way home. It is rare to find a black or Asian face here, unlike most parts of Sydney (except on the campus itself where, thank God, there are international students. Without them life would be unbearable).

Since I first became old enough to be politically conscious around the late nineties, race and racism has defined politics in Australia more than any other issue. Most of the time it is fairly harmless, cultural, mild, even jovial. But when did it become like this? I've noticed a strong deterioration at all levels of society, politics, the media, on the street. I wanted to talk to this young man. I wanted to talk some sense into him. He made me think of - Columbine High School.

When I think about it this longing might trace back to Morgan Freeman in Shawshank. His speech on rehabilitation probably had a greater influence on me than any other moment in cinema, though it wasn't so obvious to me, because it isn't an emotional scene, at least not in any conventional way. Consistently I find myself letting my mask slip and saying what is really on my mind, come hell or high water, just as he did. I also feel that same urge to talk to my younger self, and to other young people, to try and ward them away from harm. Just once it worked, though I took a fist in my face first. But that is a long story.

In 1991 Nirvana's music label asked them to change the lyrics of Smells like Teen Spirit from "Load up on drugs and kill your friends" to "Load up on guns and bring your friends". Back then drugs were more frightening than guns. I still love and remember Kurt for standing up and singing: no I don't have a gun, even if he later developed a kind of Travis Bickle fascination for them (at least according to Christopher Sandford's contested biography). Certainly no musician has ever meant as much to me, or will. He is certainly frozen in time and the further away it gets, the more I am conscious of how different that world was from mine.

I realised today that the injuries of love don't hurt me anymore. The sense of wasted youth that I used to feel, that used to hurt very much, I don't feel that anymore. But other things hurt: misjudged words, opinions that I had. Things I should never have said. The rapid alienation my society has driven itself into, which I am powerless to stop. The kind of alienation and hate that produces suicide bombers and rapists. The nagging intuition that tells me the world I live in is neither safe, or good. The wars we thought we had to fight (and maybe we did, but that doesn't make it hurt less).

But back to Shawshank. The idea that even when you're trapped in unhappy place that you can use your intelligence to think your way out is an idea that has owned me for as long as I can remember. It is there in Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn. It is there in Mamet. Most recently it is there in the beautiful and inspiring "Rescue Dawn". That film made me realise that the reason I am attracted to refugee law and want to devote my life to it is because it is about helping people escape.

I saw “La Dolce Vita” in 1988 when I was seventeen at an art house theater that, sadly, didn’t survive my teenage years. I put a timestamp on the first time I see the most meaningful movies in my life and remember the moments that surrounded it. For, me “La Dolce Vita” was the first foreign-language film I ever saw and I am happy to say that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

When I first experienced the moment in the Trevi Fountain my focus was on Anita Ekberg – naturally – and without even forming the words in my brain, I whispered to myself “That is the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen”. Admittedly, it was a combination of her ethereal beauty, her hair, her lips, her eyes and of course her impressive bosom (remember, I was seventeen). I put that moment in a bottle and I didn’t see the film again for many years.

When I was 29, out of college and with a deeper appreciation for the filmmaking process, I watched the film again and this time I began to focus on the fact that the scene means more to me because of my new appreciation for black and white films. The photography is complemented by her heavenly beauty an the moment has a kind of dream-like quality. I was caught up in the magic of the moment but somehow my view of Sylivia was different as I realized that the character was about as deep as that fountain. At that moment she became a representation that beauty is only skin deep. What I took from that was that as I was searching for my soulmate, I needed to look beyond the exterior and find the same substance in a wife that I have been searching for in my pursuit of film. To some this all sounds ridiculous, but remember, I view film as an education.

Watching the film just last year, I remembered a line from Peter O’Toole in “Venus” when he looks at the Rokby Venus and says “For most men, a woman's body is the most beautiful thing they will ever see.” I looked at the scene again with that statement in mind and that joyful experience of seeing Sylvia for the first time came flooding back to me. This time, I wasn't overwhelmed by the need to be with Sylvia but simply with the excitement of seeing such beauty frozen in a moment of time.

It is amazing how films can be the mile-marker for your life. You can bottle a moment in your heart and in your mind and years later when you’ve grown, when you’ve experienced life, when you’ve gained a greater appreciation for the world around you, you can revisit a film and all of those earlier moments and memories can come flooding back. There, I think, lies the true magic of movies.

Interestingly many of the movies being mentioned here in the comments are classics. The Graduate, Citizen Kane, Last Tango in Paris and of course Roger's great tribute to La Dolce Vita.

As a movie lover in his twenties, I can see myself in all of these movies. Yet I wonder, what movies today, what contemporary movies are poised to become the movies of people's lives?

Excellent post, Roger. I feel you could have written about this for 10000 words, but this was the right treatment. You could go on and on about why it is the film of your life, but no explanation is necessary, nor would one do your feelings justice.

At the tender age of 33, I feel I can not claim a "film of my life" just yet. But there are many films I've admired over the years and reacted to far differently with greater maturity and experience.

1) Risky Business -- The film may not be set in reality, but as a 12 year old, it was captivating for all the obvious reasons.

2) Clerks -- When I first saw it, I was 19. Dante seemed so old. He was a mature adult with a wealth of life experience compared to me. Now, of course, I see him more as the inactive slacker his girlfriend felt he was.

3) Say Anything... -- Informed much of what I thought dating would be like as a youngster, and in a lot of ways proved to be correct. The story seems smaller to me now. I have my doubts about Lloyd and Diane going the distance, but find Lloyd and more admirable and idealistic character than I used to. In some ways I have more in common with him than I expected to and less in common with him than I did upon first viewing the movie.

Plenty of others I think will have this kind of impact on me. I anticipate feeling those moments with: Shine, 8 1/2, Annie Hall, Léon, Stand By Me, Big Night, High Fidelity, Ikiru, Lost in Translation, The Barbarian Invasions, and every Ingmar Bergman film ever made will all change for me as I change, yet remain inherently the same.

My love for cinema began when I was fourteen years old, when, for the first time, I witnessed the awesome power of The Shawshank Redemption. At that point, I remembered viewing it, with such wonderment, that a film could make me feel overjoyed and empowered in the face of grand adversity. But I didn't understand its greatness. I only understood the feelings The Shawshank Redemption engulfed me in, as I experienced the slow progression of time within the world of the film.

I viewed it several times over the years, but it wasn't till a personal tragedy occurred in my life that The Shawshank Redemption became something else entirely to me. Whereas before, I viewed it as a natural feel good film, I now viewed it as the trials people must face and overcome on a daily basis. The will to live, and the drive to face the dark areas of your life, such as Ellis Redding does throughout the duration of the film, became for me, a calling to face the trials I had to deal with at that point in my own life. The maturity and the depth from subsequent viewings of this film make me treasure it all the more, if only because, like La Dolce Vita for Mr. Ebert, I am able to look back at moments in my life, and see the person I was, and the person I am to become.

Ooh... I don't think any movie has ever been closer to describing my life than the wonderful dream that is Forrest Gump. I remember the first time I watched it was with a friend, and I spent most of the time trying to keep him from seeing me cry.

Interestingly, the first half of the film plays like a a parody of my life. Specifically my younger brother has autism and bears great semblance to the Tom Hanks character. But the second half is totally alien to me; wonderful but unfamiliar. Sometimes I like to think it's the future. Isn't it wonderful when a great story becomes your story? I'm only 19 years old, my life may end up turning out nothing like I imagined, but I will always have hope because of the image of that idiot running across the country.

I'm too young to have your experience, as many have stated before, but I now find myself reflecting on films that have affected me at certain points in my life.
I saw Donnie Darko at midnight on HBO when I was about 14, and it had a profound effect on the way I watch movies. It's lost its luster a bit as I've got older but I remember how I felt after watching it the first time, and it brings me back to that time when I was becoming a more intelligent and well rounded film goer.
My mother showed me Fargo when it was on TV and it is now one of my favorite films of all time. As I grew older, I was able to understand it more and get all the jokes and asides and moments that make it so brilliant, and although my mother is still alive I know I'll look back on the film with fondness once she is gone.
Superbad absolutely nailed my high school experience (some of the conversations were almost verbatim with ones I had) and it will be an interesting time capsule to go back to and remember those days when anything seemed possible, much like Dazed and Confused, which captures the feelings I think most of us have upon entering the adult world.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of my favorite films of the decade, is pretty much where I am when I think about love, and Lost in Translation gave me characters that show where I could be going. Being in college is an overwhelming experience with alot of possibility, and I know now that, to semi-quote you, I may not solve all my problems, but at least with reflection and time I can feel better about myself and my life.
Certainly there are numerous other films that fit this blog entry, but only time will tell which films are remembered and which films affect me the most in my later years. Thank you for sharing this with us, Roger, because I know that, despite being only 19, I have a long path ahead of me with which to enjoy and love and identify and celebrate characters and moments in films that are meaningful.

As I blast off to college, I carry with me a love of film that can only be traced back to "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly." What's fascinating about that film is its simple and profound use of silence. When I began to understand and appreciate Leone's minimalism, a curtain seemed to draw back and I discovered the world of Fellini and the other great auteurs: the world of minute human shifts and feelings, desires and failures. In other words, I discovered the language of film. There is a poetry in every image on the screen, if it's done correctly, that I'm sorry to say is seldom found in the cineplex today. I can't describe the feeling of defeat that overwhelmed me at the end of La Dolce Vita, when that sincere, compassionate girl- the hope left over from pandora's box- calls out to Marcello, who simply doesn't recognize her. Fellini was always going through a crisis of his own making, and so are we.
I love this topic, Roger! Come visit Columbia University sometime!

Truly it's awesome to hear of how the greatest movies do not age, but we merely change our perspective of the work and find valid responses at all times determined by our own place in life. This article by you is almost a kind of flipside to your last one, isn't it? Some films we find too painful to watch due to our contextual understanding, some may become a revelation to us only years later.

I can't say I've ever had a movie which I found unbearable, but that's mostly due to my lack of experience in life and my convenient subconscious ability to completely disassemble a cinematic text if it starts to have a negative effect on me, (that is to say, with movies such as Cannibal Holocaust, Men Behind the Sun, Salo etc. Rather than agressively and emotively reacting, something in me switches over and I begin to see the picture in purely intellectual, technical terms. ie "That amputation was done with wax and latex")

I have had films which I at first dismissed and only really fell for much later, such as 2001, Lost Highway and Andrei Rubelev. All of which I saw at 10 and only really appreciated when I was fifteen. I desperately look forward to the time when I find myself so changed that a film's meaning is completely transformed, but alas that hasn't happened yet.

I only have one movie to think of here: "Nashville"

I remember the first time I saw it, I remember the tens of times I've seen it since.

For this Connecitcut-born American of an English-German-Irish and Canadian native-and-still-citizen father and an Italian-German-Irish and American born mother it may not make sense for a film focused on southerners to appeal to me, but everytime I watch it, I see something new. Not just certain details within the film, but certain facets of each character that describe the American experience. The film is brilliant in that way; all two dozen or so characters need to be studied in order to truly appreciate the movie.

Thus my first viewing at age 16 has led to much different opinions at age 22, and I'm sure it will at age 32 and 42. Maybe I'll be able to appreciate Lady Pearl more if I leave such a Catholic (as I am) area of the country, but at the same time I'll be able to understand more the land of Tommy Brown or Barbara Jean.

Right now, maybe I am more Kenny Frasier (only with a love interest), but in 10 years I may be more like Bill, and then another decade may make me like Delbert Reese. Hopefully when its over I'll be like Mr. Green, hopelessly positive and optimistic even in the worst of times.

I don't know, no one does. But Nashville at least shows us where we are, where we may be, and where we may be going in the end, and thus has held my imagination all these year.

This thread almost makes me wish I could choose a movie to call my own. For me, individual scenes may be deeply affecting, but it's impossible to think of an entire film which sustains this sort of a psychic punch for me. There are lines and characters and moments which can be shattering, devastating in effect. Spencer Tracy's voice, in his dinner monologue in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" reminded me, the first time I saw it, so much of my grandfather's voice - my grandfather who had died when I was seven - I was compelled to buy the video some time later. I have watched this copy only one single time. But the rest of the film has nothing to do with me. Jimmy Stewart, in his youth, so powerfully resembles a boy I once loved that I am compelled just to look at him whenever the scene on the phone in "It's A Wonderful Life" happens by on my screen. The confusion and reluctance and intensity of lust and emotion hits home every durn time. And I can't stand that film. Ahh. But that scene. He's tall, dark, lovely and utterly naked there. Perfectly beautiful.

The things which strike hardest at my heart, then, seem to be moments and immediacies set outside a whole. Movies made to be identifed with, films made to "speak to" audiences, almost never do so with me. But a moment, caught off guard and intending nothing in terms of its effect, can unbalance my experience of a film, even a show, completely. For me, it seems, there is more truth in accident than in any attempt to relate to me as a viewer.

Life itself is like that. The single most cinematic moment I ever experienced was the sensation that my gaze was turning on gimbals, a zoom occurring ... a moment climaxing in the closeup of a lifetime: the first time I ever set eyes on my Love. I had no idea I would ever see such a man, no idea that night would be give to me the greatest gifts, the most painful challenges I would ever come to know. I was taken absolutely by surprise.

Likewise, only when films surprise me are their scenes, moments, characters able to worm into me and really, acutely *matter*. The Valentine my mother gave me a week after my father died, with his words of love in it, forces me to my knees in the ecstasy of loss. The photo album that card lies in encompasses too much to keep such a powerful effect going.

I agree with Maya's post above, too. Perhaps "boy films" are more designed for such sustained personal identification ... ?

(I see enough repeat names posted here it's tempting to delineate my poste with some sort of identity ... so far, here, I am just the Diane who f***s. Oh dear.)

I will hold "The Wizard of Oz" forever in my heart. When I was six years old, I sat in my parent's living room watching the film for the very first time on CBS with my parents, my brother and my grandparents. It was the only time I ever remember the six of us being together for anything (the death of my grandfather plus other things would soon follow) but I remember that moment 30 years ago like it was yesterday. There are key moments when lines of dialogue trigger memories from that night, moments in that film that elicited reactions from everyone in the room.

Forgive me if that sounds corny and sappy but when you talk about "The Movies of Our Lives" that for me remains so personal. For years, I watched it every year harkening back to those memories so long ago and now I revisit it every ten years and gauge the length and experience of my life. I grow, learn things and age but when I watch the film, Judy Garland never changes, she is still young and beautiful, still captured forever in the camera's eye in a moment before she became so overwhelmed by personal problems, before life kicked her down. Maybe I see myself in her (though I didn't have nearly as many problems) when I go back to that memory in 1978 when my whole life was before me.

Films have a magical effect on me at times. They show me what I dislike about myself, or what I need to change. They show me that certain ways of treating people, of living live, of engaging in a relationship, or of dedication to work, isn't how I want to live.

I think its these moments I get attached to most. And its very interesting to revisit those movies from time to time and then say 'I used to be like that.' You can almost thank the movie for helping you to make a personal change.

It could work in the other direction too. A certain character might define what you believe to be 'cool,' and thus you achieve that at the expense of being a good person. Sometimes I will ignore what happens to that character with the typical 'well that won't be me.' Oh but it basically is.

The camera lens has a way of showing how the world sees you like nothing else.

For me, it's Pinocchio. The first movie that I ever saw. At 7 years old, I was that little boy, being disobedient and seeing the consequences. At 44, I am Geppetto, loving my own Pinocchio unconditionally.

I first saw A Trip to Bountiful when I was six or seven. I was just old enough to sit through an adult movie. It wasn't my first adult movie. But, it was the first one that ever made me cry. I used to tease my Mom that her favorite genre of movie was "losing the farm movies." There seemed to be a lot of those kind of movies when I was a youngster. For my Mother--who suffered from severe mental illness--the movie represented her belief that the country could be restorative and curative. I didn't watch the movie again until 7 years ago. I in graduate school, newly married, pregnant, and feeling overwhelmed... At that moment the movie spoke evocatively to me of how far I had gone from home. It was a mixed feeling. I felt a sense of groundedness, a sense of distance traveled, and a sense of profound longing for home.

With apologies to THE GRADUATE, E.T. and TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, it seems that the movie of my life, the more of it I live, is George Lucas's AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Apart from being very close to my ideal of a perfect film (it has equal parts entertainment value and poetic weight), it's the movie that directs itself most like an arrow to my heart, my experiences, my feelings and ways of seeing the world. (No personal nostalgia factor at play here, as I was born the year GRAFFITI was released) As I age, now, I see that the passage from adolescence to adulthood acts like an event horizon would on the verge of a black hole - those stretched-out twilight days of my youth (replicated so well by Haskell Wexler in GRAFFITI) just before "big decisions" were placed before me felt hopelessly past for years, thru my 20s, but now they seem, I don't know, higher somehow, deeper, fully lived and still paying off their dividends. The days I live now seem like half-days, snatches of afternoon sun, then as many hours sleep as I can afford, then mornings. And while I was no kind of golden god in high school (didn't date much) I can look back on myself and all of us back then as not so much innocent but very much pure, head-first, unsullied by the grey edges of the real world. (Or, I should say, what we are told to expect of the real world, after we are informed that "life is hard")... In Lucas's film, that particular night is forever, what follows is afterthought, a few lines of on-screen text will do as to our character's fates after that golden moment. As young life spills from cars and radios, as what looks like "Happy Days The Movie" to some very uniformed souls runs its course, I am again reminded of how much one can get done or not get done when time is not of the essence (even though the film makes it clear that time is running out); I've had great love, some success, but nothing as rarified as those teenage nights, as things were closing down after graduation, as my Bruce Springsteen fandom grew with tales of escape from the life they had planned for us - those days and nights were full of potential, and what looked like "laziness" to the grown-ups (sitting around all day, bombing around all night) was in fact the very opposite. It was an attempt at a last full measure of embrace, to do or not do it all, but see it all before me and know I could enter any door, bear the consequences, and still have a long life ahead of me.
As I age (and I'm not quite there yet), GRAFFITI stays beautifully itself, grace moments (like the camera flash timed to the opening of "I Only Have Eyes For You", or the lens flare when Ron Howard and Cindy Williams embrace after the car crash) act like moments on a road map. Movies, to me, aren't escapism. They're time travel, dreams, parallel dimensions, necessary vacations from this greyed-out tubing I'm encouraged to recognize as the days of adult life. GRAFFITI still hums, whether people mistake it for taking place in the 50s (it doesn't) or for inspiring the 50s set HAPPY DAYS (maybe it did, but don't blame GRAFFITI) - This is a film that actually kicked off the nostalgia boom, but it was honest. This actually was an era that had gone missing, so evident just ten years prior to the film's release. And what it meant to George Lucas might not mean what it means to me, but I still go for walks with an old buddy through the halls of my old high school, twenty years after graduation... and I still try and find my old locker (can never remember where it is anymore) and I still try what I think is the old combo... and I'd be upset if I DIDN'T get the reaction Dreyfuss does in Graffiti: the lock won't budge. So am I nostalgic for the movie or for my high school days? Or have both swirled into a melange of a reverie? Either way, bring on the Blu-Ray disc of GRAFFITI, so I can get an even better look at this chunk of my soul that exists outside my body.

Great post Roger. I think the movie that most exemplifies everything that I wish life could be is Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise." I don't think there is a more romantic film in the world. Jesse and Celine's story is so simple, sweet, and beautiful that it puts all other romantic films to shame.
I have to say, however, that "Pulp Fiction" has probably changed my life more than any other film. I loved movies before I saw Pulp but Quentin Tarantino showed me things that I never thought film could be capable of. Pulp has such amazing dialogue, crazy plotting and philosophy that only gradually reveals itself after several viewings.

...the Fellini recollection is so cool.

I have stated for years to anyone who would listen and most didn't,that Anita Ekberg was the hottest of all the so called sexpots in movie history. My initial introduction to this lady's charms were slightly less esoteric than yours,R. It was at a cheesy drive in- a classic B film double feature. The first flick was lousy as usual but then came Screaming Mimi-and Anita. This one may have been B grade also, but not Anita. She was A#,double A#, in fact. Could she act? Who cares, definitely not me, or my fellow film critics, a couple of my horny high school buddies. But she sure had cast a spell that has stayed with me right into my golden(rusting) years.

Except for a memorable appearance in an otherwise forgettable rat pack Western,she seemed to disappear from view(heard she went back to Europe). I wasn't that big on the 60's art film genre, except for the haunting,exceptional Woman in the Dunes which I caught on a trip to Chicago. Anyhow I just somehow missed La Dolce Vita-simply wasn't playing at many theaters in my local area.

Then,just a few years ago, a miracle happened. I was browsing the used VHS tapes at a Denver video store and there it was, screaming out at me from the close out bin-Anita in her all splendor-Screaming Mimi Redoux. I felt like I had rediscovered a great lost treasure. But rushing home, disaster struck. The tape was a total ruin,unwatchable.I swear the dvd player itself let out a scream when the tape broke. Anita was lost forever and I didn't even get to see the good parts after she got out of the nuthouse.

Somehow later on, it dawned on me- La Dolce Vita-rented it,immediately kicked myself for not seeing it earlier, then bought a copy,and the rest,as cliche goes, is history.

Postscript:For years I have been spreading around the dastardly rumor, to those who would listen and most didn't, that Screaming Mimi was only film ever written by certified lunatic, an instutionalized homicidal maniac. This is an absolute fabrication.The novelist,the late Mr Fredric Brown was an excellent writer of science fiction, perfectly cogent,amiable,witty, and lauded by his peers for writing the shortest horror story ever,reprinted here uncut and unedited.

"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door."(IMDB)

Steven Soderbergh's film Solaris is the film of my life. I will not try to argue it into the ranks of films such as Citizen Kane or Cool Hand Luke. Everyone finds that perfect film.

When I was 21, I saw a film that opened my eyes to the possibilities of cinema. It's related to Fellini because it was strongly influenced by him: Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories."

There are other Allen films I prefer to this: "Annie Hall", "Match Point", "Hannah and Her Sisters." However, there was something very compelling about the dreamy quality of this picture. The comparison to Fellini's "8 1/2" is inevitable, but there are a lot of Allen's trademark touches that really work here: the infidelity, the regret, and the general despair - and it's all very funny, too.

This movie really stuck with me. It reminded me of a longing for my childhood, a more magical time. I always think of Allen's character, Sandy Bates, in the film as a child with his magic act.

"Stardust Memories" got me interested in film in general. Besides openning a very valuable gateway to Fellini, it made me think more of behind the scenes. Allen in the film, after all, is a director. People come up to him: "I love your films, especially the funny, early films." And while Allen always insisted that this is not autobiography, it's moments like this that make us feel that, with Woody, even with all the fantastic elements in his films, we'll always get nothing but the uncompromised emotional truth from him.

Favorite dialogue: Sandy says: "I know people think that I'm egotistical and narcissistic, but it's not true. I, as a matter of fact, if I did identify with a Greek mythological character, it would not be Narcissus." Audience member: "Who would it be?" Sandy replies: "Zeus."

The films of my life are the films that almost got away, that's why "Siskel and Ebert" (and later you and Richard) was so important to me. Through all incarnations of that show, I was introducted to smaller films and documentaries that don't have million dollar ad campaigns.

Because of that show I found some of my favorite films like "The Waterdance", "Brother's Keeper", "The Music of Chance", "The Long Day Closes", "Election", "After Life", films that gave me the joy of discovering film and movies that have become the movies of my life. Not to say that I don't indulge in big budget Hollywood product but without you and Gene and Richard, I might never have seen these wonderful films. Thank you.

I think that the films that we will be able to revisit throughout our lives and examine as we mature will be the Disney catalog of classics.

We are first introduced to them when we are younger, and immediately identify with the handsome princes who slay the evil dragons ("Sleeping Beauty") or the pretty princesses. When we reexamine them in our teenage years, perhaps the boys will still identify with the princes, but the girls will realize that these pretty princesses are more than just a great voice: they want more to life. They want to attain things and branch out...become something more than they are. And suddenly, many of the films take on new meanings.

And when we are older and have children of our own we can look at the films again, perhaps with a raised eyebrow to the ease of the happy endings or respect for the journey the leads go through to attain a greater sense of themselves and being.

For example, I'm 23, and recently rewatched "Hunchback" for the first time since I can remember. When I was a child, I loved the singing gargoyles. Now I realize how mature the storyline is, and how much Disney can embrace the dark side and aim for more than simple children's entertainment.

This collection of great films, many masterpieces in their own right, will live with us for decades, if not centuries to come, and the best part is that many of them seem to mature WITH us and take on new meaning as we reexamine them. And the best part? We know our children will have that same journey with the movies we loved.

Roger,

I will say that one film that continues to age with me (and I am, I should point out, in no way old, but older than a majority of those who have posted so far, it seems, with their love of all things SHAWSHANK - not a knock on that brilliant film, btw) is definitely David Cronenberg's film RABID. I know, I know - low horror schlock - but what I find fascinating is that it continues to work, even now, when the film admittedly shouldn't. Hell, even as a horror film it's an oddity that not many people seem to know what to do with.

My first time seeing it, I just remember being entranced by Marilyn Chambers (her performance is one for the ages) and the weird story that I couldn't quite make sense of. As the years have passed, I have of course become a much more astute observer of details, and the blood-sucking appendage that mutates and grows from her arm pit makes perfect sense to me now...at least as far as the film's reality makes perfect sense for itself.

Of all filmmakers, the two I find myself constantly returning to and rediscovering are Scorsese and Cronenberg. The feeling I get when watching their films is a difficult one to describe, certainly, but it is probably similar to how you seem to feel about LA DOLCE VITA. Sure, I've seen films that are better than at least a third of either Scorsese's or Cronenberg's, but none have continued to affect me for so long.

Raised in south Dallas and paying regular visits to the local drive-in as a child in parents' tow, I would have to say the film of my life is unequivocally "Billy Jack." Sure, we probably cannot hold Tom Laughlin's awkward labor of love next to the towering beacons of Bertolucci, Allen, Kubrick or Fellini, but he could sure deliver a well-choreographed hapkido kick to the stomach of corrupt systems. How corrupt the system truly was, in my own mind as a child, was another matter. Tom Laughlin's character, a pseudo "Shane" riding down from the mountains and pissed at the world because of Vietnam, racism, pollution, guns, whatever, was a great hero to kids with little clue. As an adult, I have come to realize that racism, pollution, guns and whatever, do indeed exist. Sadly, Billy Jacks do not. I would like to think Tom Laughlin is riding his motorcycle somewhere on the outskirts of Fort Sumner, New Mexico sticking the finger at a busy world passing him by. I watch the final scene as Billy Jack, handcuffed in a police cruiser, is driven towards the sunset while students line the road with clinched fists held skyward. It was a different world in 1971, and we cheered for the hippie hero in black T-shirt and jeans. Today, we cheer for Batman and Hellboy and X-Men, I suppose. The drive-in's gone, but no matter. The film is there when I'm interested in crunching a time capsule. I can see its warts and cringe occasionally. I can also see how much the world has changed.

The film that moved me most at an impressionable age, and that I still find hard to watch years later as an adult, is the documentary Salesman (1968). Directed by Albert and David Maysles, it follows the difficult and sometimes despicable lives of four door-to-door bible salesmen.

These hucksters are the greatest actors in the world, in many ways, comedic and at the same time devastatingly tragic. It is impossible to watch this movie without laughing and crying and getting angry, all at the same time, as these men try to sell grotesquely expensive bibles to people who can't afford them.

Paul Brennan, who tells stories of his boyhood in a fake Irish brogue, is the most charming and yet the most miserable of the salesmen featured. Charming, because he is a gifted storyteller who should have been a troubadour, not a charlatan. Miserable, because he can't sell a bible to save his life and it's heartbreaking to see a man fall short repeatedly. He is the real-life version of Shelley "The Machine" Levine, the character Jack Lemmon played so expertly in Glengarry Glen Ross. He is a failure and it's terrible to watch his failure; yet it's a relief to know that he isn't profiting off the piety and the gullibility of low-income families. Mixed feelings cannot begin to describe the response this documentary provokes in me.

I was eighteen when I saw this film for the first time and it was easily the most powerful movie I had ever seen at that point in my life. It was so powerful, in fact, that I re-watched immediately after finishing it the first time. I have since then watched Salesman twice more over the last fifteen years, and it has never failed to amaze and devastate me.

It is still the most powerful movie I have ever seen.

Ebert: It still resonates with me, too.

I'm 48 now and I associate films growing up with my family. When I was a child my Dad (he and my brother like me love fantasy, sci-fi) took me to see the Disney animated films - and the one that resonates with me the most is Pinocchio - when the puppet is kidnapped while playing hooky the boys turning into donkeys. One of the few animated (Disney or otherwise) films to teach lessons like the old fairytales did - quite a few villains did not get their comeuppance unlike the boys on Pleasure Island. It certainly emphasized responsibility to your family and of doing the right thing. The need for and importance of family was essential. The Wizard of Oz always - Glenda the good witch (I love fairies and good witches)- "there's no place like home" - those flying monkeys - the fear of losing parents, of needing a home - made this a film that stuck with me and I watch frequently. Epic films with strong characters were watched by the whole family when I grew up - I remember watching Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia when the first arrived on television when I was 10 or 11 and loved every minute of them - Ben Hur always watched at Easter the way A Christmas Carol is in December. Lawrence is one of my favourites - O'Toole's performance and Lean's visually majestic film just transports me out of this world. I think think these films are becoming rarer - there was only one David Lean. Violence - it came front, creating mixed feelings within me when my grandmother,haha, took me when I was 8 or 9 to see a double feature (sat on the balcony, in the smoking section - For A Few Dollars More and A Fistful of Dollars - needless to say I became a diehard Eastwood fan like my grandmother but I also remember the high body count and for the first time seeing women being gunned down in A Fistful of Dollars and that was not pleasant. My whole family went to see Barry Lyndon. I was seventeen, my brother fifteen and we both still love this film. Later on in the eighties it was Amadeus and The Last Emperor (aunts, uncles, cousins included)- always like the epics and there seems to be a lot of loners in these films (Lawrence,Salieri) - I'm something of a loner myself maybe that's the attraction. Before he died my grandfather went with us to see Star Wars - which he loved however he was too ill with cancer to see The Empire Strikes Back and I always think of him when seeing the Lucas - Spielberg action flicks. Great films stay with you especially in great company.

Love your reviews and your topics Roger.
All the best
Linda

I see that a few people have mentioned Pulp Fiction. On a less personal level that might be the film of my generation. On a personal level I'd still can it the film of my life so far (I'm 29). A movie about criminals doesn't seem like a movie that would fit but the theme of the movie is deeper and really isn't about the drugs and violence. It's about redemption. And I think that's something anyone could identify with. Of course the great dialog and the fact that it is a flawless movie doesn't hurt.

I am originally from a rural area of India. There were no movie theatres near by. My uncle used to show a collection of black and white Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy comedy films on a white screen to the local kids. I can't describe how much laughter and happiness these movies brought into our childhood. My favorite movie of all time-cinema paradiso.
Ramana.

Although I think films like The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, La Dolce Vita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Seven Samurai, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane are among the greatest ever made, I would not call them the films of my life. I would say the films of my life are Wings of Desire and Being There because their characters remind me of myself. The angels from "Desire" and "Faraway, So Close" and Peter Sellers in "Being There" were once isolated and alone (a feeling I often had), but eventually they would play a greater role in people's lives (a desire I often had and in some ways have achieved).

I think it is more important for a film to have characters we can relate to than it is for a film to be great.

There are three films that I consider to be the "Films of My Life".

I was eleven years old when Back to the Future came out. I still remember the awe I felt in the theater watching the film. Now more than 20 years later, that film holds a special place in my heart. Each time I watch the movie I revert back to my childhood and the memories of my family and childhood friends come flooding back.

My late teens and early twenties was a time of general melancholy, I was unhappy and just stuck in a rut. Then I saw The Shawshank Redemption. The themes of the film spoke to me - patience, hope, and the potential for redemption. The film helped me to realize that my melancholy state was only temporary, and more importantly, the film reminded me that I was in charge of my own destiny. This is not to say that I changed my behavior right away, however the themes of this film always lingered in the back of my mind. Simply put, the film offered me hope.

Finally, no film has made a bigger impression on me over the last ten years than Magnolia. The characters in the film were so damaged and were desperately seeking love and just to fit in somewhere. The film encouraged me to "wise up" and take control of my life. Today, the film serves to help me remember how far I have come since I first saw that film ten years ago. The film caused me to take chances and make positive changes in my life. For that reason, Magnolia will stay with me forever.

Great topic, Roger. Over the years I've been introduced to so many wonderful films solely because of your writing, and I really have to think about this one.

Interestingly enough, I have one in mind that perfectly captured my young adult years (an anime film, of all things), but now I am a husband, father, and professional. I'm not sure I've found anything that captures that for me, but I know when I find it, it'll jump right out at me.

Roger, I'm almost embarrassed to say I haven't seen La Dolce, but your thoughts have inspired me to put it in my Netflix queue...

The film of my life has to be A Hard Day's Night, which I saw in full for the first time on a PBS station back in the 1970's; I was so excited, I recorded the audio on cassette (40-ish and beyond folks, remember when we did such things?).

And to this day, despite time, technology, and the loss of John and George, whenever I pop in the DVD nowadays, I'm instantly transported back to the age when a wide eyed pre-teen Beatles fan added terms like "mixer" and "grotty" to his vocabulary, perplexed elementary school peers be damned...and "what a lovely springtime" that was.

--Jeffrey

Your multiple viewings of -La Dolce Vita-, which made an impression on me when you first wrote about them in your "Great Movies" series, reminds me of Roland Barthes' writing about photography in his book -Camera Lucida-. Barthes argues that the essence of photography is death. The moment we are photographed, an still image is peeled away from our living selves, and from that instant we begin to pass on and age beyond that captured instant.

But Barthes says something beguiling about film in his book as well, something that he never had a chance to explore because he died soon after its publication. He distinguishes film from photography, arguing that instead of being forever frozen before the camera's eye, the people we see in film are glimpsed -passing- before us (this is not a direct quote, but from memory, as I don't have the book in front of me).

I believe that Barthes is here speaking to the -duration- of film, its occupation of time, as a kind of mirror of our own. We literally spend time watching a film; for the length of the film, its time is our own. Insofar as a film "ages"-- follows its story from beginning to end-- we age with it.

The sense of life that inheres all films, which is perhaps analogized most sublimely by Ekberg in -La Dolce Vita-, is not just illusory, but genuine, in the sense of this "passing": the images generated from the quite literal movement of 24 frames per second. And thus it is in the -replay- of the film, the revelation of its mechanical repetition, that vertigo lies. Ekberg's seemingly limitless youth and vitality -is- limitless, destructively so. As with all time, it saps our own.

"The Lion in Winter" stands as the film of my life. I saw it for the first time when I was a young girl of maybe 9 or 10 on cable. I loved it even though I didn't get a lot of it. From there I caught it from time to time until I eventually found a copy of my own. The family implosion, the love/hate dynamics, the royal self absorption and entitlement, the open family combat, the implausible yet real devotion, the incredible dialog delivered in such a powerful way. My parents were in the midst of a separation when I first viewed the film after many years of a fierce marital relationship. I caught glimpses of our situation and the enduring love between Eleanor and Henry despite their detestation for one another gave me a strange hope that somehow all would be well with my family. As I grew older the hope managed to win out and my parental situation grew more and more amiable. When I re-visit the film, sometimes yearly, sometimes over longer periods I admire it more and more. I love the over the top Henry hanging onto his kingly right even in the face of his own mortality, tiredness and bombast that is slowly and reluctantly becoming more bark than bite. Peter O'Toole is a marvel. Katharine Hepburn's Eleanor of Aquitaine stands as the finest portrayal by an actress on film- ever, period. Many may find that an arguable statement but I stand by it- all I need to do is think of her uttering in the most defeated, fatalistic way "...well every family has their ups and downs." - Hair raises on my arms every time. At the end ... well I won't ruin it for those that may not have experienced it first hand but I find myself a tiny bit teary and laughing just at the thought- heaven. And the supporting cast- fantastic. It is in the way the film captures the joy and heartbreak of living and loving and aging. It rings truer for me everytime I see it- I have probably watched it at least 20 times and I am now pushing 40. Everytime the credits role I can't wait to experience it again, and I wonder how it will be different, and what will stay the same, on the next go-round. It has never failed to rend, absorb, exhilirate, instruct, surprise and entertain. Thank you Roger for giving me another opportunity to re-live the experience and enjoy it all over again!

Thank you Roger for your thoughtful essay.

I am Jewish, and the core occupation of an observant Jew is to read the Torah -- once through every year, a consecutive portion every week. The Torah consists of the first five books of the Old Testament -- it is the home of most of the geat "Bible stories," many of them quite cinematic -- but as a work of literature it is short. The content appears at first easy to master. But we read it again and again, and every year at a holiday service the congregation celebrates completing the reading and then at the very same service begins anew. Yet, I have never heard a Jew say that the readings were becoming "boring."

The reading is the same every year but it is also different every year, because we are different. We have been buffeted by at least a year of living since the last reading, and that has changed us. The story that meant one thing to us as a teenager means something else as a young adult and something else again when we are no longer young.

It seems to me that one measure of great art is that, even though its content is unchanging, it speaks differently to us as we change. Whether it is a Fellini film, a Shakespeare drama, a Frost poem, or a Mozart symphony, a profound work of art establishes a dialogue with us that keeps the work alive and fresh even though it is anything but new.

I have not seen La Dolce Vita for years (since college), but if and when I see it again it will not be the same. It will speak differently to me, just as those "simple" Bible stories seem to speak differently over the years. Of course, it is me changing. But if it were not great art, it would not have the capacity to say new things.

I first saw La Dolce Vita on your recommendation. At the time I was (and still am to this day) an aspiring writer and journalist, often frustrated by the act of writing itself and constantly wanting to join in the sea of life surrounding me. Marcello's conflict between staying true to himself as a writer and having a life resonated with me, informing my entire writing career. I watch the movie now each night before a trip; I don't want to be Marcello, casting away my ideals with the sea monster on the beach, but there's a lot in him with which I identify.
In his book The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien writes, "And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story." Stories - in particular, movies - are a form of self-preservation, a way to measure ourselves against the sands of time. When I first saw Say Anything..., I was still in high school; I watched it again the night before I graduated, and I have probably watched it once every two months since. It, like La Dolce Vita and so many other films, is a memory box; it reminds me of what I once was, what I wanted to be and what I could be still.

I really don't have a film of my life, although Ordinary People comes closest: one rigid and distant parent (father); one understanding parent; suicidal thinking, behavior and attempts. Fortunately, I haven't had a sibling die, nor had a close friend kill themselves; unfortunately, I've never had a therapist like Judd Hirsch.

From Ebert: Because of a software overhaul, comments sent on Wednesday, July 16 may not have been received. If you wrote during that time, please end your comment again. Thanks, Roger

I propose that an evolution occurs in people's minds as they go through their lives, and a moment occurs at the onset of adulthood when an emotional/intellectual window opens and whatever people see during that open window moment becomes the yardstick movie of their lives. Age 17 through 24 seems to be the range- probably more like 19 to 22.

So Mary Poppins blew away childhood me, but my adult judgement mechanism wasn't in place yet. The original "The Haunting" gripped young me in fear; as an adult I found the movie unwatchably dull and talky. Early jolts go on a different shelf.

My window moment occured at the turn of the 70's into the 80's, and I saw three movies in a row; Alien, Days Of Heaven, and Airplane. I was 22. Each movie seemed the best of it's kind I had ever seen. I walked around in a sea of perfumed communion with those flicks; the movies seemed made to fullfil some long promised epiphany. I began doubting my critical facilty--I'm a critical guy, how could they have seemed so perfectly realized? But they did and they still do. Those three constitute an origin point on the graph of my life, where the axises cross, the starting point of my adult movie-quarrying self. Then the window closed, and I became John Q. Public once again and forever.

Years later I met a young film student, full of ideas and learning, and she couldn't cease of praising the Coppolla Dracula movie: The color pallet, the use of effects, the sexuality of vampires, the mythic place of women in storytelling, etc. I didn't smirk at her or put it down. It was her window movie, the one she inhaled. It was her spirit-in movie, where she drew a lifetime of meaning and inspiration.

So my take is that your yardstick movie tells you when a certain stage in your personal evolution happened. It's almost as if the movie doesn't matter. The moment matters, and that moment will find a movie that speaks to it. My three movies are 2/3 lowbrow, but time and tide stuck them in front of me at the crucial time in the childhood of my adulthood, and here I am, singing their praises.

Thinking about it "Higher Learning" has perhaps had a strong influence on me, or at least, reflected my attitudes to Higher education. The idea that you should read books for their intrinsic value rather than "for a class" and that there are truths to be learned outside the system has always been a part of me. It hasn't equipped me well for the modern university system, which requires a certain naivety, a belief that this self-centred, time-consuming institution and its prescribed curriculum is the key to your success and enlightenment.

Watching it again I realise my meory has mistranslated a scene. There is one where Laurence Fishburne talks to a young black woman about her essay and he says he wont give her favorable treatment because she is black. His policy is non-discriminatory, but the way I remember it he was actually *harder* on her because she is black and because of the difficulties she might face in a discriminatory world. Perhaps that was the implication of the scene many years ago when I saw the film, now lost.

The film is scarcely one that I can describe as important to me, or one that I think about often, but I can certainly see a symmetry in my attitudes. The caption "Unlearn" at the end over the American flag is a powerful statement.

I also love the line by the little neo-nazi before he dies: "I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to build things." That is also what I wanted for him.

The other day the thought occurred to me that the films that might mean as much to me simply haven't been made yet. Having seen the "Dark Knight" I think perhaps this is the first of those films. It might not endure but it certainly has the power to cause tremors in the present.

I've searched for a "film of my life" and couldn't find one. The best I could come up with was Tango, a film I love, but which is not my film. Watching the butter scene I read it as revenge against Mcarthyism, rage at era I didn't live through. Though I might often feel like a middle-aged man I am not and so the film doesn't speak to me at that level. With a younger Brando (with all the beauty of "The Wild One") and an edgier love interest I think you might have something for me - but that film exists in my imagination.

Films from my time are "Farewell my Concubine" and "The Crying Game". I responded powerfully to themes of gender and sexuality then and that has endured. Whilst I have never crossed over into transgenderism, I took from the nineties a total openness to questions of gender and sexuality, helped somewhat by a young Goth girl who introduced me to bands like "Placebo" and liked boys who were "pretty". I am still deeply interested in feminist and gay literature and that is something that the nineties has bequeathed to me. I don't believe this has its roots in any latent homosexuality (to some this is a deux ex machina, resolving all plot points) but it is certainly something which is very much a part of me. The world I live in is too self-conscious to allow me to be a transgender person: I am not permitted to confuse desire for being. Besides, I am happy in my own skin.

These questions are not for the here and now. It isn't the world of Abu Ghraib, where pornography and war converged. It isn't Iraq or Afghanistan. It isn't 2001.

I grew up on Hitchcock and recently I realised that suspense occurs more powerfully when it arises from morality than danger. I saw this in that reluctant serial killer film "The dead girl". I also saw it in "Sex, lies and videotape" with James Spader's haunting moment where he confesses that he used to "express my feelings non-verbally."

Now with the Dark Knight I see a film that understands this fact to its bones. It takes ti a step further and places the moral suspense within the audience. It flaunts rather than hides its subtext. Christian Bale as Batman is an exceptionally good idea; he carries all the weight of "American Psycho" with him in this role. More than a good Batman he is an exceptional Bruce Wayne: the part that matters. He suggests James Bond, or even Gatsby.

Ledger's performance is awe-inspiring and eery. From time to time he evokes Brando in "Apocalypse Now" or Hopkins in "Silence". Most of all there seems an almost self-conscious reference to Brandon Lee in "The Crow" and his untimely death. Ledger's own death seems almost in a gesture of "..and I mean it." I can't escape the thought that if it wasn't deliberate, it was at least self-aware, comprehended. He seems unhinged. Nothing he has done before led me to think he was capable of a performance like this.

Beyond that I wont say anything about the film: it demands to be talked about and yet it should be seen cold. It benefits from viewing with an audience and in a cinema, the only place you can hear the soundtrack as it is intended, and where it encourages you to think about the experience of being in a crowd of strangers, not knowing who they truly are.

I love your journal Roger, I love the comments, and I especially love that someone mentioned Before Sunrise. What a strange movie to consider among one's favorites! I thought I was the only one.

The movie of my life is no doubt, no doubt, Star Wars... and if allowed to cheat a bit, I'll say Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars is among the first I ever saw in the theater, when I was three or four. I saw it as often as I could when I was young. It defined what a movie was to me.

Into high school it honestly helped me define right and wrong (sort of like, what would Yoda do?) Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side are they. With movies like these who needs religion?

In college a friend suggested I watch The Power of Myth with Joseph Campbell and finally understood the underlying reasons for liking Star Wars so much. I felt like I discovered an essential part of myself- that although I had never been religious, I had always been spiritual, and that spirituality manifested itself at least partly in my appreciation of Star Wars. That's not to say it was a religion, but rather that it followed the same basic archetypes of any religion, myth, Indian legend, etc.

Also in college I became seriously interested in films and Star Wars became a way to analyze their different dimensions- story, direction, acting, music, mise en scene, screenwriting, editing etc. Each time I saw Star Wars it was as if I'd never seen it before.

After college I saw episodes one through three, and although I liked each one a lot, they fell short of the transcendence I discovered in the first ones. That is, except for one shot... the final shot of Luke's aunt and uncle holding him while watching the suns set. That shot conjured in me the exact same feeling I felt from as far back as I can remember. I'm not going to try to describe it.

So now in my mid-30's I feel no dire need to watch the movies any time soon... but I'd imagine I'll have kids sometime, so no doubt the movies will still have resonance into my 40's. Beyond that, grandkids?

ALthough I can't say it is one of my favorite films, "Star Wars" made a huge impact on me the very first time I saw it at the theater. I was nine years old. And I agree with Roger and many of the others who have posted that who you are and where you are developmentally and emotionally helps certain films make an impact and resonate with you. (I took my four teenage daughters to see "Wall-E" and found myself laughing hysterically at the condition of the humans on the space cruise ship..I don't think I would have gotten that joke when I was a child.) Up until that time my theater cinematic experiences were strictly kid's fare: Disney animated classics like "Snow White", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", and non animated Disney films such as "Apple's Way", Dr. Syn Alias the Scarecrow" etc......but "Star Wars" struck a cord in me that had not be struck yet. It was a glimpse of how wonderful cinema could be. At the time the special effect were astonishing and the scope of adventure wide and enveloping. What an exciting Sunday afternoon that was. Oh how wonderful it must of been for those old enough to experience "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly","2001: A Space Odyssey" at the theater for the first time. Alas these were all films I saw for the first time on television edited for time and interrupted by commercials.(As an aside, I must thank the home video industry for showing me how much I had actually missed watching the classic films on tv. They were edited for time to fit into 90 minute televison blocks with commericals. I was not getting the entire film!) I had fallen in love with the Universal horror classics and other old films that were available on weekend afternnoons before that but there was and still is a huge difference between experienceing something on a small screen in the confines of your living room and watching it with strangers in a great auditorium on a giant screen. The smell of old popcorn; sticky floors and rude patrons cannot be compared. Its part of the social experience that is going to movies. In fact even as ticket prices continue to climb, I would still rather plunk down $10 to experience a bad movie for the first time in a movie theater than plunk down $4 to experience a great film for the first time on dvd/tv.
Mr. Ebert I have followed your reviews since the first time I caught "Sneak Previews" on PBS on Saturday evening in 1979 as you and Gene Siskel reviewed "The Main Event" and "Dracula." Since that time I have enjoyed your television exploits and even more so your print reviews and my ever increasing collection of Roger Ebert books dedicated to this passion we call FILM. Thanks for the journey.

I will never forget something that you said on your show, Roger, in your DVD review of “Ghost World”. You said (and I am quoting from memory) “Do you ever feel like you are watching a movie that was made just for you? Well I feel like “Ghost World” was made just for me”. I feel that way about “Juno” because it has a way of portraying a know-it-all teenager who is suddenly gob-smacked by life in a way that no other film does.

Most teenagers in movies are either so cynical that they keep me at arms length or they seem to exist only to repeat a bunch of pop culture buzzwords. Juno is different, like me at that age, she is smart, has no interest in fitting into a social group and has a personality that is unique. But then, as it happens to all of us, life gives her the cold water treatment and she realizes that her preconceived notions about the world. It is one of the great films because it isn’t what happens to her that is important but the journey she takes.

We are starved for images of ourselves either in literature or in the movies and when we see them portrayed in a way that reflects our own experience it makes us feel validated in some way. In one sense, I am forever looking for the movies of my life and rarely do I find it. That’s why is so special when I find one that seems as if it were written just for me.

Dear James Kazan (or other Jewish readers),

I am looking for films for my Religion and Film class that deal with theological themes, moral struggles, stories that resonate in some way with the Jewish tradition. This is a huge question I know. For instance, on the Christian side, I hope to show FARGO and discuss Augustine's notion of privative evil... I was just wondering if anyone had any rich resonances between film and the Jewish theological traditions.

Thanks,
J

I find myself unsure of how to begin this comment, because I've thought often of e-mailing you, Roger, or more recently, of commenting on one of your fascinating blog entries. But I've never been able to figure out how to explain that you're terribly important to me, that I think you are a genuine, decent human being of immense intelligence and humanity, and that you've helped me appreciate movies more richly than perhaps I would have without your presence in my life. Pretty heady stuff coming from a complete stranger, I know. But it's true. I admire you.

I'm on the verge of 30 years old, so my own "film of my life" is perhaps not yet settled. But the film that immediately came to mind when I read this entry was "Stand By Me". I first saw that movie when I was 12 years old, during a sleepover with some friends. Although I'm a girl and so the nature of the friendships depicted differed in some ways from my own friendships at the time, I was incredibly moved by the story. I identified with Gordie for the simple fact that I was also a writer, and had been jotting down and sharing stories with friends since I learned to write. And I was blown away by the line Richard Dreyfuss types at the end of the movie. He muses that he's never had friends like the ones he had when he was twelve years old, then asks, does anyone? I found the film so emotional, and felt so close to my own friends, that I remember actually stopping for a moment and taking the time to appreciate my own friendships at that point in my life, at the tender age of twelve.

As an adult, I've watched that movie a with a whole new appreciation for just how true that sentiment is, and with a greater understanding of the absolute transience of life. How you move on and times change, and you're left with only the memories of those powerful attachments you once had, of experiences you shared with people who were once your whole world, whom you no longer know. And after River Phoenix's death, I find the last shot of him disappearing into thin air almost unbearably poignant.

The theme of the loss of innocence resonates a lot more powerfully for me as an adult, as well. Looking back, I can see that at twelve years old, I was poised at the brink of my own loss of innocence, in many ways. Life was about to get a lot more complicated. That's something I can appreciate in that film as an adult, that I didn't truly understand as a child. I am moved every time I see "Stand By Me", but my interpretations of the film, and what I take away from it, most definitely change as I grow older.

I just watched it again a couple of weeks ago. This time I saw it and thought of my three-year-old son. The friendships he will have, the innocence he will one day lose. The transience of life.

Roger--
Your comments on screening "La Dolce Vita" at the World Affairs Conference in Boulder bring back many good memories. As a CU student (BA Phil/Film Studies '86) you were a corrupting influence, as I had to cut more than one class in order to attend your presentations each day for a week. This was in April 1983, when you used to hold court at the Memorial Forum in the old Student Center- the place was packed every day; no wonder you moved to Macky Auditorium in later years! You and Buckminster Fuller were my inspirations- I went on to take Film History for a year from Stan Brakhage (RIP), and also took Lesley Brill's Hitchcock course, where I fell in love with "Marnie" for the first time.

Naturally, you receive royalties every time a DVD is released with commentary and supplements, since you essentially invented the form, right??

Speaking of your own commentary, are you going to review the Director's version of "Dark City" that is released next week? I anticipate your reaction and comments---

I was inspired to write you to thank you for enabling, in the most infectious and insidious way, my lifelong love of the (best) movies!
God bless you, stay strong, and kudos for telling Disney where they could insert YOUR "Thumbs Up"!---------------------Bruce Donley

Dear Roger,

I will miss your informative and entertaining show very much. You, along with a film student friend at university turned me on to so many great films - too many to mention (Hitch became one of my all time favourite directors). I gained a new appreciation for many movies I had previously watched - saw them from a different perspective. There - the cliches run on.

Your passion for film is something I will miss on the television(I miss Gene's). I will miss the contrasting views, the bickering, or the shared love for a film. I hope I will always be reading your reviews on your website. I hope to be able to hear or read Richard's and Michaels reviews as well.

Glad you told Disney where to go and that you have kept the shows name and trademark. Take care of yourself. Looking very much for what you do in the future.

Two Thumbs way UP!

Roger;
Back in 78' I used to watch you and Siskel. Loved you guys!!!Always ready for a smackdown plus insight from you both.You went national. Stopped watching you,both of you had lost your edge. Found out about your blog. Welcome back. You've got your edge back. THANKS!!!

Thank you for the wonderful piece. I've only seen Fellini's 8 and 1/2, and need to take the time to view his other films. At least I saw my one Fellini movie on a big screen, with a packed art house audience in Berkeley more than 15 years ago.

In reading your posting and the subsequent comments, I've tried to think about what movie is the movie of my life, and I have to say that it's Aliens by James Cameron. I saw it in the theater when it was first released, and I vividly recall the terror and excitement of the movie, which is a pitch-perfect action movie. Seeing it since then, I'm still impressed by the action, but I'm mesmerized by Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of Ellen Ripley. Here was a tough, smart woman, who was broken by a terrifying experience, is dismissed by her former employer as a liar, and initially considered useless by the marines she accompanies on their mission. Yet she is able to find the strength of spirit and character to save herself and others. She's human, she's fallible, but she is a survivor. As a role model for the young woman I was when Aliens was released (I was 16), Ripley was (and remains) one the best role models I have ever had.

I took a while to think about this, but I agree with Grace on Alien and Sigourney Weaver. She's a woman; she's tough and as unlikely as it may seem, she's tough, she's smart and she is a hero and a survivor.

I was recently told that because I was petite, I couldn't really think of myself as a warrior, but I do and I have done things that I know many people were afraid to do--not death defying as Ripley, but rather because it defies what people expect me to do...keep quiet and don't make waves, conform.

For that reason, I would also say that "The Way We Were" also is a movie about my life. To be a strong, articulate, intelligent woman isn't easy and having that sort of passion for justice is often in conflict with the kind of passion and love one wants to experience with a man. Most people take the easy choice and it is easier if it is the man making the hard choice so the woman follows than if it is the other way around.

The movies of my life?
The Sound of Music-the first I remember...
Gone with the wind-I saw it so many times with my sister,eating lots of candies,changing places quickly during the interval,leaving a mess behind...
Monsoon wedding-It really helped me change my life...Cry a lot too...

Thank you from my heart, Mr. Ebert (& all contributors); I love this thread!

The movie that deeply moves me every time is Phillip Kaufman's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." I read the book (imho, a masterpiece), saw the film when it first came out, & I own several versions of it. I have also commented on it on several sites

I always felt that the movie stands firmly on its own: stunningly photographed, inspired & masterful direction, a haunting score (Janacek's exquisite music as narrator), brilliant performances by everyone - including minor actors, & heart-wrenching, intercut footage of the actual invasion in 1968 of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union & most of its Warsaw Pact allies (I cry throughout the invasion.) In counterpoint to this horror, there are these shimmering images (that never fail to make me cry, every time): of Tereza looking at Tomas after she knows he has just been with another woman ("Must it be? It must be."), Tomas & Sabina twirling in each other's arms reunited in Geneva (what joy!), Tomas wading into water with swans in twilight (what melancholy!), & the touchingly expressive face of a dog who teaches Tereza what love is (what love!).

This film is forever etched in my "poetic memory." - (all quotes from Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being.")

I also think your review of it was brilliant!

The film of my life is Fellini's I vitelloni,It has this scene where Moraldo is saying goodbye to the young boy and the movie cuts to his friends sleeping while he drifts away. He disappears while everyone is asleep and completely relaxed at their mundane, cyclical existence. Maybe he did this because he’s also delighted with this kind of living but then he’s passive character makes him able to see the pattern that no one could see in their little town. He’s deeply connected with his friends but at some point he knows that this have to end.

I saw a great documentary that touches on some issues that the readers here might be interested in.

It's called "Passing Poston" and it's playing again in New York - next at Two Boots Pioneer Theater from August the 8th till the 14th. "Poston" is about the Japanese-American citizens forcibly placed in internment camps during WWII, and their ongoing search for a place to belong in a country that once labeled them the enemy.

Great movie! more info at http://www.passingposton.com/

i did see la dolca vita about 10 years ago... i am sorry, i did not get it... it was well made and was a wonderful story, but it was not one of my "movies" like "Casablanca" is or "The Maltese Falcon"... maybe one had to be a male to get it... just my 2 cents..

How about some cautionary words about "The Film of My Life" choices of others?

1) With apologies to Don from Ohio: Beware anyone who finds deep meaning in the Star Wars trilogies. Watered-down Joseph Campbell plus light sabres do not a philosophy make. I knew I needed to break up with someone when he claimed Jar Jar Binks was a kind of holy fool who was only irritating because he "did his job too well".

2) It is okay to like Annie Hall, but with an asterisk, i.e. acknowledging the misogyny but recognizing Woody Allen's revolutionary advancement of the cinematic narrative form -- kind of the same way one can appreciate the technical achievements of Olympia while still decrying Leni Riefenstahl's politics. Anything else is creepy.

3) Guys: Please be careful about dating anyone whose movie of her life is Say Anything. You will never be Lloyd Dobler and we really want you to be. Approach with caution.

4) Gals: Please be careful about dating anyone whose movie of his life is Say Anything. Few people can pull off poignancy and kick-boxing. Approach with caution.

There are those movies I have seen many times, like Beat the Devil, The Third Man, Orphee, and 8 1/2. (And Young Frankenstein, of course.) But at my advanced age, it's Bergman's Wild Strawberries that has followed me (or I have followed it). There are scenes that are just deeply wistful, and scenes that chill the blood.

The only problem I have with it is the casting of Max von Sydow as the gasoline station owner. "My God, there's von Sydow," one says. But how could Bergman have known in 1957 that von Sydow would become a huge international star? Well, there is that face...

You do not seem to have mentioned Korol Lir and I find it hard to think you might have missed it. Having just relished it it really brought me a little closer to the essence of what I always found to be a somewhat puzzling drama. It turns the drama into a magnificently expanded black and white heart rending experience embedded in the stark and voluminous slavic landscape. The liberties it takes with the plot are logical ones to transmute it from a play to cinema--it's pure cinema with vast and bold brushstrokes. Unlike Ran which is not really Lear this really amplifies the drama and I am convinced the bard himself would have applauded. The fools performance is no less than of the protagonist. And how imaginative, the fool survives to the end to shed the final tear! I am looking forward to the same director's Hamlet and Peter Brook's Lear if accessible.

Possibly you did not review it because you did not think much of it. Come to think of it Lear, or Lir does look dyspeptic at times. You might blame it on ideology. But it does acquire vitality at points and the Siberian desolation gels with the spirit of the play. Glorifying shabbiness and poverty is probably the obverse side of opulence and excess.