As we continue working our way through the genres,
this list we're focusing on thrillers, the smartest, tensest,
twistiest suspense rides that cinema has ever conjured up.
This is our list of the ten best thrillers of all time
(Music).
(Sound) Starting things off,
one of the best vehicles for non-stop tension is peril nipping at your heels.
The terror of being haunted, of running from men or monster, or
the frightening unknown.
The classic here is The Fugitive.
But some of the other great thrillers that make us feel like the pray
in waiting include, Catch Me If You Can, Cape Fear, Night of the Hunter, and
The Most Dangerous Game.
However, if there's a force of unstoppable nature that's kept our pulses
pounding in one of our favorite ever pursuits,
it's gotta be Anton Chigurh's in No Country for Old Men.
>> Call it.
>> Call it?
>> Yes.
>> For what? >> Just call it.
>> Well, look, I need to know what I stand to win.
>> Everything.
>> How's that?
>> You stand to win everything, call it.
>> All right.
Heads then.
>> No Country for Old Men built relative unknown Javier Bardem into
one of the most terrifying forces of nature thriller cinema has ever seen.
Intelligent, cold, relentless, and deeply fatalistic,
the film casts Chigurh as an embodiment of the uncaring cruelty of the universe.
The result is a thriller built on existential angst, structured around
nearly a dozen sequences of quiet tension and pin drop hair triggers.
Each one playing with a new form of silence or shadow or sub text or motive or
cruelty or fate punctuated by either brief moments of violent intensity or
even quieter implication.
(Sound) One of the more straightforward
ways to engineer suspense is with physical danger, where our heroes are a slip and
fall away from doom, and the word precarious is to be taken literally.
And in this form of thriller, we get films that crossover towards action as with
Die Hard and The French Connection and The Bourne Trilogy, as well as high octane,
knifes, edge, danger contraptions like Speed, The Sorcerer and its original and
our number 9 pick Wages of Fear.
>> It’s a real tough job.
I’ve got to get a ton of nitroglycerin to Derrick 16.
That stuff’s nitroglycerin.
(Noise) My goodness.
(Laugh) >> With a ton of that stuff on there,
the slightest bump, the slightest heat, you're a goner.
>> If you liked No Country for Old Men,
Wages of Fear will likely also be right up your alley.
It is another cynical tale about dead end men playing an unpredictable game
with fate.
But instead of sociopath with a bowl cut,
this time it's two trucks full of nitroglycerin they've been hired
to drive along a road colloquially referred to as the washboard.
And if driving trucks sounds like small potatoes in practice, it is anything but.
Its escalating obstacles are so fantastically conceived, shot, and
edited for maximum tension,
that you're pretty much guaranteed to bite your nails down to the quick.
(Music)
Sometimes suspense comes in service of other emotions beyond just the flop sweat
inducing anxiety.
Consider the comedy thriller.
A genre that trades on swinging audiences back and
forth from the seat-edged breathlessness of tension to the uproarious laughter of
the quite literal comic relief.
It's handled marvelously in Charade and The Player, Fargo and
The Big Lebowski, Safety Last and The Thin Man, but our favorite comedy thriller and
third pick is actually In Bruges.
>> Why are you suicidal here?
He's a walking dead man.
He keeps going on about Hell and Purgatory.
>> When I phoned you yesterday, did I ask you, Ken will you do me a favor and
become Ray's psychiatrist please?
No, what I think I asked you was, can you go blow his [BLEEP} head off for me?
>> I put a loaded gun to his head this morning, I stopped him.
>> This gets (Bleep) worse.
Let me get this right, not only have you refused to kill the boy,
you've even stopped the boy from killing himself.
Which would have solved my problem.
Which would have solved your problem.
Which sounds like it would have solved the boy's problem.
>> Before In Bruges, Martin McDonagh was a massively award winning
film maker pushing the boundaries of polite sensibility.
He was a massively award winning playwright doing the same,
where he cut his teeth on the hilariously transgressive filled with
whip smart dialogue that unravels in ways guaranteed to surprise you.
Mostly because you weren't willing to even let yourself consider
how twisted its turns might go, but twist it does.
Exemplified by In Bruges manic, comedy, suspense,
whiplash that has you laughing at murder and suicide in the same half breath,
with a handful of spectacular set pieces that tie the thrill to the comedy to
fantastic effect, in a tale about two hit-men who hide
out in a silly little Belgian town after a hit gone wrong (Sound).
On just about the opposite end of the spectrum from the comedy thriller,
we have the erotic thriller.
A staple sub genre of the 80s and 90s, that is,
in my humble opinion desperately overdue for a comeback.
The erotic thriller traffics on the push-pull tension of where desire for
someone comes up against the danger they represent, creating a space of
the taboo that is nonetheless overcome by animalistic passion and a sexual payoff.
Some of the best in the business include Femme Fatale, Eyes Wide Shut,
Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Body Heat, and The Handmaiden.
But, we really think the best and original erotic thriller goes all the way back to
Billy Wilder's unsurpassed Double Indemnity.
>> Mister Neff, why don't you drop by tomorrow evening around 8:30,
he'll be in then.
>> Who?
>> My husband.
You were anxious to talk to him, weren't you?
>> Yeah, I was, but I'm sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
>> There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff, 45 miles an hour.
>> How fast was I going officer?
>> I'd say around 90.
>> Predicting and inspiring the erotic thrillers for decades to come,
Double Indemnity is an absolute gem.
It is the story of an insurance man seduced into an affair and a murder.
The erotic half of the equation is palpable and
hangs in the air like a thick odor of perfume, but it's never explicit.
This is the Hayes Code era, after all.
Instead, it's smeared all over the crackling banter that is as sharp as it
is seductive.
And as for the thriller half, it's simply one of the best.
There's hardly a moment where our hero is not visibly inches from some form of
destruction.
Billy Wilder's brilliant hybrid of a film finds such a fascinating connection
between the excitement of sex and the thrill of crime.
It is about thrill, about how these conflicting forces are actually two sides
of the same coin, and in that way it is a work of genius.
(Sound) Of course if you wanted to be pedantic,
you might protest that Double Indemnity is actually film Noir,
the grandfather of the erotic thriller, but not the same thing.
And we would have to agree that film Noirs and erotic thrillers are surely different
animals, but we would then counter that Double Indemnity is actually both.
But let's look now at the film Noir.
The moody, Chiaroscuro definitively Hollywood 40s and 50s genre that
combines an anti-hero cynicism and crime-centered plot with demure romance.
They're not all heavy on the tension, but a tour through those that are would
include highlight stops at the Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil,
Sunset Boulevard and especially our number six pick and perennial favorite,
The Third Man.
>> Go home Martins, like a sensible chap.
You don't know what you're mixing in, get the next plane.
>> As soon as I get to the bottom of this, I'll get the next plane.
>> Death's at the bottom of everything, Martins, leave death to the professionals.
>> Mind if I use that line in my next Western?
>> You can't chuck me out, my papers are in order.
>> There's no doubt that we're big fans of The Third Man over here at Cineflix's
movieless desk, but despite our favoritism,
it's hard to deny it as peak Noir.
The lighting and camera work are pushed to their logical expressionistic conclusion,
each character is a bigger bastard than the last.
The plot zigs right when you think it's going to zag.
The dames are duplicitous, the dialogue is razor sharp and
the tension mounts in the game of deception and
cover-up that contains one of our favorite twists in the genre.
In the words of Steven Soderbergh, The Third Man, really is a great film in spite
of all the people who say it's a great film and we couldn't agree more.
(Sound) Opposite romance on the filmore portion of
the thriller spectrum, we end up with a pure crime thriller.
And here, we're back to the thrill of the pursuit, but not so
much the physical pursuit of No Country as an informational pursuit.
Will they be exposed?
Will the perpetrators reveal themselves?
Will they get away? Who will find out what and when?
The ambiguity of these questions drive the thrill on our crime short list that
include Rififi, M, LA Confidential, Memories of a Murder, and Se7en.
However, topping the tautness,
we find none other than
Akira Kurosawa,
who started strong in Stray Dog,
but really takes the cake
with High and Low.
(Foreign) >> Toshiro Mifune is the president of
a shoe company that has maxed himself to the ears in debt in order to wrest control
back from a greedy board, when he receives a call.
His son has been kidnapped and all of that money will be necessary to pay his ransom,
but his son isn't missing.
His chauffeur's son however, is.
He has to decide whether to bankrupt his family, or
save the boy as police race to find him first.
The decision isn't an easy one, nor is the investigation.
But the result is cop caper of the highest possible caliber,
an important thriller for any best of list.
(Sound) Of course, where there's cops trying to solve crimes and
criminals trying to evade them, there's also governments trying to swindle and
cheat, and good citizens caught up in the middle of it.
This is the conspiracy thriller.
Trading on that same informational faucet drip as the crime thriller,
but with some added duplicity and the outrage that goes with it.
Our participation trophies this round goes to films like JFK,
All The President's Men, North by Northwest, The Conversation, and
The Insider, while the gold for our number 4 slot goes to the inimitable Blow Out.
(Sound) Jesus Christ.
>> Blow Out's Brian De Palma is a thriller heavyweight and
Blow Out is easily his best work.
Remixing Antonioni's Blow Up, where a photographer discovers evidence of
a murder in the background of his photographs,
Blow out finds a sound technician who accidentally discovers
an evidence of a murder in the background of his audio recordings.
But where Antonioni takes these scenic route to nowhere with this discovery,
De Palma opens up the can of a massive conspiracy and
one that is uniquely cinematic by virtue of its mode of discovery.
And conspiracy leads to cover up, leads to disbelief, and potentially more
murder in sequence after sequence of the best clenched jaws you'll ever have.
(Sound) Now after conspiracies, we couldn't forget the spy thriller.
Less of a curtain slowly pulled back to reveal the treachery behind than
a landscape not so surprisingly filled with it.
This style of thriller puts on the edges of our seats,
precisely because we know there's danger behind every door.
Our favorites here include The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Marathon Man,
Three Days of the Condor, The Manchurian Candidate, and The 39 Steps.
But our bronze metal pick of this list goes to The Day of the Jackal.
>> Over what range do you fire?
>> I'm not sure yet, but probably not more than 400 feet.
>> Will the gentleman be moving?
>> Stationary.
>> Will you go for the head shot or chest shot?
>> Probably head.
>> And what about the chance of a second shot?
>> I might get the chance, but I doubt it.
>> In any event I'll need a silencer to escape.
>> The Day of the Jackal is a thrilling game of cat and mouse about an attempted
assassination of French President General Charles de Gaulle.
And the film excels in it's spy film essentials, skillfully attending to
the most basic of logistics in the riskiest in the most cleverest of ways.
Building towards the implausible achievement of a monumentally
difficult murder.
And then it takes the reverse view on the equally difficult counter
spy efforts these two made in secret.
And finally when the one end meets the other and
the assassin must outwit the secret police who are trying to outwit him themselves,
the ride has really just begun.
>> (Sound) Closing in at number two,
we're looking at a favorite sub-genre of a different sort, the contained thriller.
It's an exercise in claustrophobia, an entrapment, and a need to escape.
And it lends itself to a simple,
minimalistic plot that makes maximum use of its environment and its characters.
And our favorite containers?
They come in the form of a warehouse house, of a boat, of a coffin, of a cabin,
of a Manhattan apartment, and of a Canadian radio station.
But the very best, that's probably gotta be a prison from Robert Bresson's one and
only, A Man Escaped.
(Sound)
>> This film does so much with so
very little.
Bresson finds such fascination in uncertainty and
importance in the littlest of details, the passing of a note,
the slight shaving of wood, the pitch of the footsteps down the hall.
The entire film is made up of quiet inanimate details such as this,
with little dialogue, or characterization, or classical drama, and yet,
there's hardly a film more scintillating or more human behind it.
(Music)
And here we are at the end of the line with hopefully just one very glaring
omission, the psychological thriller.
Where we're not just uncertain about what might happen or what we know, but
about the reality testing ability of the characters or even ourselves.
Here we contend to not only with deception on the part of the people in our film, but
of the film itself, withholding and misrepresenting and
outright manufacturing our filmic world.
You know it from Fight Club, and Memento, and Mulholland Drive, and Cache, and
The Game, and Oldboy, and Blue Velvet, and Dead Ringers, but come on, there
is a classic clear master here, the master of suspense and his name is Hitchcock.
He knocked us dead in Psycho, made us lock our windows in The Birds,
destabilized us in Spellbound, but best of all, as far as we're concerned,
he sent us into a dizzying world of deception in Vertigo.
>> I asked you to come up here Scottie, knowing that you've quit detective work,
but I wondered whether you'd go back on the job as a special favor to me.
I want you to follow my wife.
No, it's not that.
We're very happily married.
>> Well, then- >> I'm afraid some harm may come to her.
>> From whom?
>> Someone dead.
Scottie, do you believe that someone out of the past,
someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?
>> No. >> If I told you that I believe this has
happened to my wife, what would you say?
>> Vertigo, a superlative film at the peak of a superlative career.
It's so brilliantly weaved, a gripping tale about a man obsessed and
in love with a woman who is, in so very many ways, a construction of his,
of a criminal mastermind, of Hitchcock's.
And the film's brilliance is in how it ties the story of obsession, and love, and
disorientation, and yes, vertigo, to the viewers experience of it.
This is a thriller that plays with murder and deception and danger, but most of all,
with states of mind.
It is thrilling and fascinating and visually masterful in equal measure.
And a damn good film at that,
which is why we think it's one of the best thrillers of all time.
(Music)
So, what do you think?
Disagree with any of our picks?
Did we leave out any of your favorite thrillers?
Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe for
more Cinefix Movie Lists.