“Champagne for Caesar” to “Chicago”
Champagne for Caesar (1950) This is one of the most hilarious films ever made. Ronald Colman plays a human encyclopedia who goes on a TV quiz show sponsored by Milady Soap (the soap that sanctifies) and goes farther than anyone expected. Great cast, including Vincent Price, Art Linkletter, Celeste Holm and Barbara Britton. This TV satire, when TV was in its infancy, is still, over fifty years later, sharply barbed. (GS)
Charade (1963) Director Stanley Donen brings Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and a rogues’ gallery of guys you don’t ordinarily expect to see in a rogues’ gallery, together in a movie that Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud to call his own. Mancini’s score is pretty sweet, too. (KCL)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) A challenging violently anti-war movie with one of the best scripts of Charles Wood’s career (the writer noted that, since he didn’t know how people talked in the 1850s, he made up his own syntax which sounds so authentic every period movie since has ripped it off). Stunning battle sequences and a genuine sense of the confusion and madness of war look in David Hemmings eyes and you can see the bloodlust. Natasha and Joely Richardson’s film debuts (as children in their mother’s wedding party). (KT)
Charly (1968) Inspired from the exquisite Daniel Keyes short story, Flowers for Algernon, Cliff Robertson won an Oscar for his portrayal of a mentally handicapped adult who, after an operation, awakes as a genius and has trouble adjusting to the new world open to him. (GS)
Chicago (2002) This is a dark tale of a murderess on death row; not the kind of subject youd generally see a musical about, but it would be a shame to miss this Oscar-winning film thats full of great tunes and even better performances. Yet further proof that the musical isnt dead. (GS)
Originally published in Raspberry World – Volume 2, Issue 1 (June/July 2007)