The Best of the 1980s

Think you know the most memorable films of the decade? Think again.

By Harry Kloman

As the decade of 1980s cinema dragged on and on and on, I began to wonder if I'd ever be able to find enough films to place on a list of the decade's most memorable. But looking back over the films of the 1980s revealed many delights.

Here, then, are my trailers on the films, listed alphabetically, that I choose to call the most significant of the decade. My choices are neither arbitrary nor scientific, so take note of their stories, their forms, their stars and their makers because - not entirely by coincidence - they preview some of the decade's most significant artists as well.

These are all films that excited us when we first saw them, but also films which - using the limited hindsight that comes with the end of a decade - seem to be about the themes and frustrations of their time. That was my number one criterion for selecting them.

1. After Hours (American-1985), directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Joseph Minion. A nightmare comedy that takes place all in one night as a regular guy in new York city drifts from lunatic to lunatic in an effort to have a cup of coffee and end his doldrums. It's a rare movie that manages at once to be darkly funny and just plain dark; and it's about the city, a terrible place that has come to represent everything that's wrong with contemporary society.

2. Atlantic City (American-1981), directed by Louis Malle, written by John Guare. In the once-great city of leisure, an aging, retired gangster (Burt Lancaster) falls in love with the girlfriend (Susan Sarandon) of a shaggy drug dealer whose busi ness he takes over when thugs kill the younger man. Guare uses the decaying Atlantic city -financially revived by legal gambling and its inevitable illegal cousins, like drugs and prostitution - as a metaphor of social decay, yet he laces his grim story w ith sly wit and some tender romance. Malle's images subtly overlay the narrative with thick ironies in what may be the most wisely directed movie of the 1980s, a tale of how the times and the generations change.

3. Blood Simple (American-1985), by Joel and Ethan Coen. From two independent Minneapolis brothers comes a sharply photographed, brilliantly underwritten thriller about an oily Texas bar owner murdered by an oilier private detective he'd hired to prove that his young wife was having an affair with his bartender. when the bartender discovers his blood-soaked boss, he thinks the wife/lover did it and begins a coverup by burying the not-quite-dead body, paving the way for more murder before the grue some affair ends. It's a jaundiced Northern look at southern greed and stupidity done with expert precision and an eye for detail both in its narrative and its characters.

4. Contract (Polish-1981), by Krzysztof Zanussi. Made on the wave of Solidarity's power and exported two months before martial law, Zanussi's penetrating, Altman-like drama of an upper-class wedding succeeds both as socially conscious (and scoldi ng) melodrama and as political metaphor. Its fiery final scenes are riveting, and it has both an immediacy that senses the times and a universality that keeps it relevant.

5. Heartburn (American-1985), directed by Mike Nichols, written by flora Ephron (based upon on her autobiographical novel). A New York food writer (Meryl Streep) marries a Washington columnist (Jack Nicholson) and moves to the beltway to establis h a new social life, have two children and catch her husband having an affair. Nichols' touch is so perfect and invisible, and Ephron's script so coy and funny, that together they have made perhaps the most insightful marriage comedy of the 1980s. It also contains Carly Simon's low-keyed score and "Comin' Around Again," her best song in many years. It's a social comedy for the 1980s, just as Nichols' film of The Graduate was for the 1960s.

6. The Long Good Friday (British-1982), directed by John Mackenzie. An ominous drama about London's top gangster (Bob Hoskins) whose friends, family and business holding are suddenly besieged by a string of murders and bombings. He systematicall y trounces every rival gangster in the city before discovering that the IRA held a grudge against one of his key advisers. It ends with him locked in the back seat of an IRA limousine, which slowly drives him to his execution. It's the movie that introduc ed Hoskins to American movie audiences, and it uses its genre to make a remarkable statement about a fading modern Britain and the awesome power of the IRA. Listen to its driving brass score.

7. My Beautiful Laundrette (British-1996), directed by Stephen Frears, written by Hanif Kureishi. An energetic political comedy-drama set in Maggie Thatcher's England, the movie concerns London's immigrant entrepreneurs: a successful businessman, his English mistress, his malcontent/alcoholic/ex-socialist brother, the brother's gay son and a failing laundrette the son revives for his uncle with the help of his punkish lover (Daniel Day-Lewis). Kureishi is an intelligent, socially and politically committed writer; Frears' direction is thoroughly original.

8. Poltergeist (American-1982), a Steven Spielberg production. A real-estate whiz - he sells indistinguishable pre-fab homes in a California bedroom community - finds his happy family of four haunted by noisy ghosts who kidnap pretty blonde toddl er Carol Ann by pulling her into the family's overheated television. Turns out the man's home, built by his company, rests on top of a cemetery from which the company greedily relocated headstones but not corpses. with whirlwind special effects, it's a ro llicking good scare and a creative sendup of suburbia which tips a sincere hat to old-fashioned values like fidelity and the family unity.

9. The Return of the Secaucus Seven (American-1980), by John Sayles. The writer/director's debut film brought together seven 1960s college pals for a reunion-picnic at the New England country home owned by two of them (still unmarried and cohabit ating). The dialogue has a novelist's polish, and the project (made for $60,000) looks at times like a home movie - both of which are enormous strengths. It introduced one of the decade1s most important new filmmakers and did the best job yet of articulat ing 1960s sentiment through the discoloring filter of 1970s experience.

10. She's Gotta Have It (American-1986), written and directed by Spike Lee. A breakthrough film for black cinema, Lee's debut is also intelligent, provocative, funny, imaginative and skillfully made. The story of a professional woman and the people in her life - especially the three men who court her - it's a revelation for all audiences, black or white, and it heralds both the debut of a significant new American director and a long-overdue new direction for the American cinema.

11. The Shining (American-1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick, screenplay by Diane Johnson & Stanley Kubrick, from the novel by Stephen King. The nightmare of middle-class domesticity, rendered by Kubrick as a bloody horror story. The Father (Jack Nicholson) provides for his family by trying to kill them. The Mother (Shelley Duvall) stares bug-eyed at the enormous kitchen where she can barely handle the utensils. The Son (Danny Lloyd) tries to "play nice" but only sees visions of dead little girls. And on the TV, a husband and wife go on a hunting trip together and end up lost in the snow. You can watch this as a horror movie if you like, but Kubrick is up to much more: He deconstructs The American Family and turns domestic cliches into nightmares.

12. Silkwood (American-1983), directed by Mike Nichols, written by Nora Ephron & Alice Arlen. The true story of Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep), who uncovered fraud at a plant that manufactured components for nuclear reactors. Through her own carelessness - and perhaps through a company conspiracy - she was exposed to dangerous doses of radiation, but she died in a suspicious auto accident on the night she was to turn incriminating documents over to The New York Times. Nichols' seamless, semi-documentary style is effective in its own right but amazing when compared to his New wave-influenced 1960s films. It also may be Streep's finest performance among many.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

With one exception, the films on my list didn't have the kind of big commercial success which might have lionized them as pop-cult icons, unlike E.T., Top Gun, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rambo, Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, the Star Wars sequels and so many others that most moviegoers surely would name as their "favorite" movies of the decade. And that shouldn't be a surprise or a problem, for every generation of cinema - and the cinema, particularly, among all current artforms, because films are so costly to make and, therefore, must appeal to such wide audiences - every generation of cinema has produced a long list of blockbusters, few of which ever become measures of the cinema's quality and development.

That Poltergeist made millions and millions of dollars, just like The Godfather did a cinema generation before it, shouldn't diminishes its standing; nor should it matter that my choices of the decade's best films failed to draw big audiences, just as Citizen Kane, Bonnie and Clyde and so many others failed at the box-office in their release years.

My list also reads like a partial who's who of the decade's key artists: Established directors like Nichols, Malle and Sanussi; independents like Sayles, Frears and the Coens; and actors like Streep, Hoskins and Day-Lewis. A lot more can be said for all of these people, and if you add to these names another short list of directors, writers and actors, you have an ample star gallery of 1980s cinema, which begins to seem much better when you talk about its individuals and their films.