Vanity Fair Presents the 50 Greatest Films of All Time* *Plus Old School.

All About Eve

Twentieth Century Fox, 1950

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Writer: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter,

George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill,

Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter, Marilyn Monroe

Oscars: Best picture, director,

screenplay, supporting actor (Sanders), costume design (black-and-white),

and sound (recording)

Fact: When All About Eve came out, many people believed that the character

of Margo Channing (Davis) was based

on Tallulah Bankhead. While Davis may have imitated Bankhead's hairdo, voice,

and mannerisms, All About Eve was adapted from a 1946 Cosmopolitan short story called "The Wisdom of Eve," which, in turn, was based on a proto-All About Eve incident involving actress Elisabeth

Bergner. Bankhead was incensed by the perception that she was Margo Channing, and she told listeners of her radio

show that when she got her hands on Bette Davis, "I'll pull out every hair

in her mustache."

Amarcord

F. C. Produzione/P.E.C.F., 1973

Director: Federico Fellini

Writers: Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra

Starring: Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Magali Noel, Ciccio Ingrassia, Nando Orfei, Luigi Rossi, Bruno Zanin, Gianfilippo Carcano, Josiane Tanzilli, Maria Antonietta Beluzzi, Giuseppe Ianigro, Ferruccio Brembilla

Oscar: Best foreign-language film

Fact: Amarcord, an exploration of

Fascism's hold on a provincial town based on the one where Fellini grew up in

the 1930s, may be the most personal of all Fellini's films. It includes many

characters inspired by people from his

childhood, and he couldn't resist inserting himself into the film in certain places. Fellini does several voice-overs in

Amarcord; he interrupts a speech by the town's pompous lawyer (Rossi) by

making raspberry sounds; and, in an exchange added to the script during

filming, he pelts the lawyer with a

snowball from off-camera.

Annie Hall

United Artists, 1977

Director: Woody Allen

Writers: Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman

Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton,

Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon,

Shelley Duvall, Christopher Walken,

Colleen Dewhurst, Janet Margolin

Oscars: Best picture, director, actress (Keaton), and original screenplay

Fact: Woody Allen originally wanted Annie Hall to be called Anhedonia, a

reference to a psychological condition marked by the inability to experience pleasure, from which Alvy Singer (Allen) clearly suffers. United Artists objected

to such an esoteric title, and Allen

eventually agreed to name the film after its leading female character. After skipping the Academy Awards ceremony at which his film won four Oscars, Allen was

asked how he felt about the honor. He was happy for his co-star (Keaton),

co-writer (Brickman), and his producers, he said, "but I'm anhedonic."

Blowup

Premier Productions/MGM, 1966

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Writers: Michelangelo Antonioni and

Tonino Guerra (inspired by the short

story by Julio Cortazar; English dialogue

in collaboration with Edward Bond)

Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, David Hemmings, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Gillian Hills, Peter Bowles, Verushka,

Julian Chagrin, Claude Chagrin

Fact: In the original script for Blowup, the photographer's manager, Ron (Bowles), had a speech that Bowles felt was "the linchpin of the film." But before filming began, Antonioni cut the speech. Bowles pleaded with the director to put it back

in, arguing that the speech was essential

to help audiences understand the

photographer (Hemmings). According to Bowles, Antonioni replied that he cut the speech precisely because it explained too clearly what the film was about, and he wanted to keep people guessing. The director told Bowles, "It's very important to have a film people write about," and film critics have indeed been speculating about Blowup's meaning for decades.

Bonnie and Clyde

Warner Bros., 1967

Director: Arthur Penn

Writers: David Newman and Robert Benton

Starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman,

Estelle Parsons, Denver Pyle, Dub Taylor,

Evans Evans, Gene Wilder

Oscars: Best supporting actress

(Parsons) and cinematography

Fact: When creating the screenplay for Bonnie and Clyde, David Newman and Robert Benton were heavily influenced

by the work of France's New Wave

directors, particularly Francois Truffaut. The first two directors they approached were Jean-Luc Godard and Truffaut, but no studio was willing to fund an American gangster movie with a French director. The script was almost dead until Beatty read it and liked it so much that he

came on board as a producer and star.

Breathless

UGC DA International, 1960

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Writers: Jean-Luc Godard and

Francois Truffaut

Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo,

Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger,

Jean-Pierre Melville, Liliane David

Fact: To give Breathless a spontaneous

feel, Godard shot without sound and called out the lines himself for the actors to repeat; their voices were dubbed in later.

To make street scenes look more authentic, Godard had cinematographer Raoul Coutard hide in a large canvas mail cart with his camera lens sticking out through a small hole. Coutard was then pushed along the sidewalks with the camera rolling as he filmed the unsuspecting crowds.

Bringing Up Baby

RKO Radio Pictures, 1938

Director: Howard Hawks

Writers: Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde

Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charlie Ruggles, Walter Catlett,

Barry Fitzgerald

Fact: During the jailhouse sequence,

Susan (Hepburn) puts on an accent and pretends that she and David (Grant)

are gangsters, in order to placate the

slow-witted constable Slocum (Catlett). She tells the constable that David's

underworld nickname is Jerry the Nipper,

which was actually a nickname of Grant's

character in the 1937 comedy

The Awful Truth. David, not wanting

to go along with Susan's scheme,

protests: "She's making all this up out

of motion pictures she's seen!"

Casablanca

Warner Bros., 1943

Director: Michael Curtiz

Writers: Julius J. Epstein,

Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch (from a play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison)

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains,

Conrad Veidt, Dooley Wilson, Peter Lorre,

Sydney Greenstreet

Oscars: Best picture, director,

and screenplay

Fact: After filming was over, the

makers of Casablanca decided to …