By Tom Schnabel
Music director at Los
AngelesÕs KCRW radio station, Tom Schnabel started the daily program Morning
Becomes Eclectic in the 1980s,
first bringing world music to U.S. radio with such artists as Buena Vista
Social Club, Ravi Shankar, and Caetano Veloso. Schnabel is also currently the
program adviser for the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
1. Trouble in
Paradise
Witty, wonderful,
wacky Lubitsch at his best. His daughter worked at KCRW!
2. La strada
I always cry at the
end, then go out for pasta and cheap red wine.
3. Children of
Paradise
You can hear J.-L.
Barrault cry ÒGarance!Ó from the other side of the world.
4. M. HulotÕs
Holiday
So funny I disrupted
a screening with my laughter.
5. The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The only thing
better than this great movie is Bu–uelÕs autobiography, My Last Sigh.
6. The Wages of
Fear
The suspense is
mesmerizing, even paralyzing.
7. Woman of the
Dunes
ItÕs as much an
impressionist painting as it is a film.
8. Tokyo Olympiad
This great film was
made back when Olympic athletes were regular folk.
9. Unfaithfully
Yours
YouÕll never watch a
conductor the same way after seeing this great Preston Sturges film.
10. And God Created
Woman
I saw this movie as an
adolescent in the late fifties, at the Bay Theatre in Pacific Palisades, and it
made me feel strange things IÕd never felt before . . . I also thought that
Brigitte Bardot was the number-one sex kitten on earth.