The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)

Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, and Judd Nelson
in The Breakfast Club

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, John Kapelos, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy. Screenplay: John Hughes. Cinematography: Thomas Del Ruth. Production design: John W. Corso. Film editing: Dede Allen. Music: Keith Forsey.

John Hughes's movies have stood the test of time, not by evoking nostalgia so much as reflecting a moment in American cultural history: the peaking of the Baby Boom. The central figure in The Breakfast Club is none of the teenage detainees -- the jock Andrew (Emilio Estevez), the nerd Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), the hood John (Judd Nelson), the princess Claire (Molly Ringwald), and the basket case Allison (Ally Sheedy) -- but rather their harried detainer, Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason), struggling to assert the authority that he thinks belongs to him. The year of the film's release, 1985, is the point at which the Boomers were on the cusp of turning 40, with all the anxious reappraisal that comes with that birthday. It's summed up in a conversation between Vernon and the janitor, Carl (John Kapelos), in which Vernon expresses his angst at the thought that when he gets older, the detainees are "going to be running the country ... these kids are going to take care of me." To which Carl responds, "I wouldn't count on it." The fear being expressed is clearly that of writer-director Hughes, born in 1950 and hence right in that moment of recognition. A lot of the movie's contemporary critics didn't see this, dismissing The Breakfast Club -- and most of Hughes's other films -- as entertainment for the kind of kids shown in the film, whose actors became rather condescendingly known as the Brat Pack. Hughes, however, recognized and even celebrated the self-awareness that develops in these teenagers, contrasting it with the worn-down cynicism of their parents, who want the kids to achieve the things they failed to do: Brian's parents pressure him to excel in school; Andrew's father looks to him to accomplish the athletic feats he failed at; Claire's obviously see her social status as a validation of their own tenuous success; meanwhile, John's and Allison's have simply given up, letting him run wild and her slump into disarray. The Breakfast Club could have been stronger in moving its subtext into the explicit substance of the movie, but to do so would probably have heightened the didacticism into which the film threatens to fall when Brian reads aloud his essay, protesting against being stereotyped and insisting that each of them is a little bit of a brain, jock, princess, basket case, and hood.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987)

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987)

Cast: Steve Martin, John Candy, Laila Robins, Michael McKean, Kevin Bacon, Dylan Baker, Martin Ferrero, Edie McClurg. Screenplay: John Hughes. Cinematography: Donald Peterman. Production design: John W. Corso. Film editing: Paul Hirsch. Music: Ira Newborn.

Air Force (Howard Hawks, 1943)

John Garfield, George Tobias, and Harry Carey in Air Force

Capt. Quincannon: John Ridgely
Lt. Williams: Gig Young
Lt. McMartin: Arthur Kennedy
Lt. Hauser: Charles Drake
Sgt. White: Harry Carey
Cpl. Weinberg: George Tobias
Cpl. Peterson: Ward Wood
Pvt. Chester: Ray Montgomery
Sgt. Winocki: John Garfield
Lt. "Tex" Rader: James Brown
Maj. Mallory: Stanley Ridges
Col. Blake: Moroni Olsen
Susan McMartin: Faye Emerson

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Dudley Nichols
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Art direction: John Hughes
Film editing: George Amy
Music: Franz Waxman

"Fried Jap coming down!" crows gunner Weinberg as a Japanese fighter pilot and his plane attacking the Mary-Ann are consumed in flames. It's a much-quoted and much-parodied line that puts Howard Hawks's Air Force squarely where it belongs: in the wounded jingoism of the period immediately post Pearl Harbor. We wince at the line today, but Air Force has endured not so much because it's a period piece as because it's a tremendously effective piece of filmmaking. Hawks, who was a licensed pilot and had served in the Army Air Corps during World War I, was the exactly right person to make the film, which producer Hal B. Wallis put into production shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and which he wanted to release on the first anniversary of the attack in 1942. Hawks was too savvy and persistent a craftsman to allow anything like an arbitrary deadline to hinder him, and his failure to adhere to Wallis's schedule led to a brief replacement as director by Vincent Sherman. Wallis was exasperated in particular by Hawks's constant departure from the producer-approved screenplay, particularly the dialogue. Nevertheless, Hawks persisted, and called in William Faulkner to rewrite Concannon's death scene, which the director found too saccharine. The result is one of the most affecting moments of the film. The rest is pretty much razzle-dazzle heroism and entertaining male-bonding: There's no Hawksian woman in the movie to take the guys down a peg, although Faye Emerson's bit as McMartin's sister and Williams's girlfriend has a good deal of the Hawksian tough cookie about her. Hawks wanted the film to be a wartime version of his great movie about pilots, Only Angels Have Wings (1939), but the propagandist pressures to support the war effort, and probably a good deal of meddling from Wallis and Warner Bros., kept him from achieving that goal. Still, the action is exciting and the performances are good, especially John Garfield as the reluctantly heroic Winocki and Harry Carey as the oldtimer mechanic -- though Carey, in his mid-60s, was probably more of an oldtimer than the role strictly calls for.

Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941)

Gary Cooper and Joan Leslie in Sergeant York

Alvin C. York: Gary Cooper
Pastor Rosier Pile: Walter Brennan
Gracie Williams: Joan Leslie
Mother York: Margaret Wycherly
"Pusher" Ross: George Tobias
Major Buxton: Stanley Ridges
Ike Botkin: Ward Bond
Buck Lipscomb: Noah Beery Jr.
Rosie York: June Lockhart
George York: Dickie Moore
Zeke: Clem Bevans
Lem: Howard Da Silva

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Abem Finkel, Harry Chandlee, Howard Koch, John Huston
Based on a diary by Alvin C. York edited by Tom Skeyhill
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Art direction: John Hughes
Film editing: William Holmes
Music: Max Steiner

Sheer Hollywood biopic hokum made watchable by Howard Hawks and Gary Cooper, along with a colorful supporting cast. Sergeant York earned Hawks his one and only Oscar nomination for directing -- not Bringing Up Baby (1938) or Only Angels Have Wings (1939) or His Girl Friday (1940) or To Have and Have Not (1944) or The Big Sleep (1946) or Red River (1948) or Rio Bravo (1959), more than two decades of the most entertaining movies anyone ever made. It was in fact Hawks's lack of the kind of high seriousness so often rewarded with Oscars that makes Sergeant York still entertaining today, which is why he lost to John Ford for How Green Was My Valley, a directing Oscar that by rights should have gone to Orson Welles for Citizen Kane. It's fairly clear that Hawks doesn't take Sergeant York entirely seriously, with its exteriors built on the soundstage, its well-scrubbed hillbillies, its cornpone hijinks and caricature religiosity, not to mention dialogue that sounds straight out of Al Capp's "Li'l Abner." But it also takes a Gary Cooper to deliver speeches like "I believe in the bible and I'm a-believin' that this here life we're a-livin' is something the good lord done give us and we got to be a-livin' it the best we can, and I'm a-figurin' that killing other folks ain't no part of what he was intendin' for us to be a-doin' here." Granted, Cooper had just turned 40 and was a good deal too old to play Alvin C. York, but his characteristic sly, shy self-effacement is essential to the role. The old story that York himself said that he wouldn't allow himself to be played on film by anyone else but Cooper sounds like the work of a Warner Bros. publicist, and one biographer has suggested that it was a hoax cooked up by producer Jesse L. Lasky to persuade Cooper to take the part, but se non è vero, è ben trovato -- if it's not true, it ought to be. Sergeant York cleaned up at the box office, especially when it got a second run after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and raked in 11 Oscar nominations, winning for Cooper and for film editing. Other nominees include Margaret Wycherly as Mother York -- a far cry from her killer mama in Raoul Walsh's White Heat (1949) -- and Walter Brennan, with his false teeth in and his eyebrows darkened, as Pastor Pile, along with the screenwriters, cinematographer Sol Polito, the art direction, the sound, and Max Steiner's patriotic tune-quoting score. It can't be taken seriously today, but it can be enjoyed.