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Some of my friends and I have occasionally tossed around the question, "Which four movies would you pick if you were a Turner Classic Movies guest programmer?" The subject came up on Twitter again the other day, and I finally decided to go ahead and actually pick my four films!

1. The Man in the White Suit

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Had to get Alec Guinness in there somehow! I could have gone with Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Bridge on the River Kwai or Great Expectations or The Lavender Hill Mob or many other well-known and wonderful films. But many (if not most) movie buffs already know those, so I'd like to give a more obscure one a chance. This "science-fiction satirical comedy" (Wikipedia) has a good, thought-provoking story that makes the point that a contentious social issue may have more than one side (imagine that!) -- and even that sometimes all sides may be wrong. It has a fine comedic lead role for Guinness as a brilliant but slightly bumbling inventor, and it also has the splendid Joan Greenwood (who was also in Kind Hearts). Just the way Greenwood says one word -- "No" -- as if it were an entire speech ought to have got her an Oscar nomination. She deserves to be better known these days, and so does the film. So it gets the primetime spot.

2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

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This film, with its powerful vision of "plain, decent, everyday, common rightness" can't be seen too often, if you ask me.

3. Singin' in the Rain

Because it's my favorite, duh. :-)

4. A Tale of Two Cities (1958)

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Another one that needs to be much better known. Most people know the 1935 adaptation but not this one, which is a shame. The former may stick somewhat closer to the book, but the latter is so much better acted. (Also, the fact that ATOTC is mentioned in Singin' in the Rain makes for a nice little segue. At least in my own mind!)

Feel free to treat this as a meme, and come up with your own block of four classic films that you'd like to host on TCM if you could!