Saturday, April 19, 2008

MOVIES WITH FEMALE NAMES

My not too distant film noir alphabet list mentioned the classic LAURA. Last night, falling back to sleep after the gerbil woke me again, or trying to, I thought of another alphabet list of movies I dig with names of women for titles, of which Laura may be the most resonant, but here’s an attempt to come up with 25 others (though as usual some letters I fell asleep still trying to come up with something for, so help me out please):

ALICE (not a big Woody Allen hit, but definitely another Woody Allen original)
BETTY BLUE
CAMILLE CLAUDEL
DAISY MILLER (considered a bomb and one of the reasons for Bogdanovich’s decline as a director, and his then girl Cybil Sheppard was pummeled by the critics, but I thought she captured exactly what Henry James intended for the kind of “American girl” of the time he was writing about)
ELIZABETH (the late ‘90s one with Cate Blanchett)
FRIDA (Salma and Frida, what could be better?)
GLORIA (the great Gena Rowlands)
HEATHERS
ISADORA (Vanessa Redgrave in the late ‘60s, I think, as the famous dancer Duncan)
JEZEBEL (Bette Davis’ response to Vivien Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND)
KITTY FOYLE (didn’t Ginger Rogers win an Oscar for this?)
LAURA
MARY POPPINS (hey, I like this flick, always have, it’s brilliantly done)
NINOTCHKA (still my favorite Garbo flick)
O?
PETULIA (this could have been on my ‘sixties film list)
Q?
ROXANNE (flawed, but fun)
STELLA DALLAS (and Barbara Stanwyck won an Oscar for this, didn’t she?)
THELMA & LOUISE
U?
VERA DRAKE (another of Mike Leigh’s filmic coups)
W?
X?
Y?
ZAZIE (saw this in the early 1960s when it seemed terribly avant garde and thus never forgot it, there’s also ZITA and ZINA, an unusually rich “Z” for this category)

5 comments:

RJ Eskow said...

"O" - "Orlando," maybe. The title character, played by Tilda Swinton, is both male and female.

"Q"? It's undoubtedly cheating to suggest "The Queen," since that's not her name.

"W" - "Wanda"? No, that was a fish ...

Alternate "K" - Klute, with Jane Fonda. A gripping movie, if I remember correctly.

Best I can do. Oh, well ...

JIm said...

John Adams- I thought the production was great and it brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. John and Abagail had a romance for the ages. I believe she was a self educated lady who could hold her own with some of the intellectual giants of her time. In another age, she might have run for office in her own right. I thought Giamatti and the whole cast was great. HBO deserves credit. It partially makes up for that, Catholic basher, crude, Mahrer.

Tom King said...

How about Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Sibyl, Charlotte Gray, Emma, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, Sophie's Choice, Sophie Scholl, Akeelah and the Bee, Julia, Hilary and Jackie, Carrington, Mildred Pierce, Woman in the Dunes, Marie Antoinette, Three Faces of Eve, Double Life of Veronique, Camille, and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant?

Tom King

Lally said...

rj, Was Klute her name? Orlando would fit all categories, a favorite flick of mine, nice call...
Jim, John Adams, absolutely, but the cheap shot at Maher is unwarranted, he doesn't just bash Catholics, he bashes all religions and those who follow them, and just about everybody else, he's a comedian Jim, and his schitck is based on bashing...
and as for Tom King, Annie Hall I thought of, but it's not my favorite, Hannah and Her Sisters is, but the goal I set for myself was titles of movies that are just female names, not female names plus other words etc., so only a few of your other suggestions would work, but they're all good, so thanks...

Anonymous said...

yentl?