Unlike a great many other conservatives, I don’t hate Hollywood. By my count, I’ve seen something like twenty to thirty movies in the theatre this year and I typically rent at least two movies a week. So, it goes without saying, I’m not really interested in a crusade against the “Homos in Hollywood”, as James Carville once recently put it.

With this in mind, I thought I’d put together a short list of films that I’d recommend to conservatives. I decided to do this after a search for a list of great ‘conservative films’ turned up a list filled mostly with British movies from five or six decades ago.

1) Network:

Even though this movie won four Academy Awards in 1977, it is surprisingly little-remembered today. That’s a shame because, in my opinion, it’s simply one of the greatest movies of all time. In fact, if I was forced to choose, I’d rank it as my favourite movie.

There are two questions here: first, what’s so great about Network? Second: what makes it a great conservative film?

Network is the story of Howard Beale, the fading star anchor of the “UBS” television network in the mid-1970’s. Fired, as a result of his low ratings, he announced on-air that he plans to kill himself. His lunatic statement results in a spike in his ratings, which results in him being put back on their air, where his increasingly-obvious descent into madness seems to draw ever-higher ratings.

The movie features wonderful performances from Peter Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duvall (among others). Together they tell a story of the casual amorality of the world of entertainment.

Dunaway plays a network programming executive who devises a program (“The Mao Tse Tung Hour”) which serves as a sort of proto-reality show, featuring real-life footage of communist terrorists committing crimes combined with a fictional drama show constructed around that footage.

The harder question is the second one: what makes this a great conservative film? Superficially, it would seem to be a left-wing indictment of the evils of corporate America. Except, I don’t think it is.

The people running UBS aren’t evil for the sake of being evil: they’re evil because a decayed cultural and moral environment in America forces them to be in order to be successful. They, like the people who run the Entertainment industry today, don’t provide depraved material because they’re naturally depraved: they provide it because that’s what the free market will bear.

For the real message of the movie, I think, you should look to Beale’s final speech which, I think, comes closest to the essential truth that the creators were trying to convey.

2) MacArthur:

Mostly overlooked both at the time and today, I list MacArthur because, in my view, it’s one of the best portraits of a great American ever put onto film. While it takes a little bit of time to portrays MacArthur’s faults (and, in so doing, gives us the closest-to-life portrayals of both FDR and Harry Truman that I’ve ever seen on film) it’s clearly sympathetic towards the great General.

Played by Gregory Peck in the film, we see MacArthur as the great-but-flawed man that he was. An egotist with results. A hero who was the saviour of many nations.

That the equally-good Patton won such acclaim while MacArthur sank nearly without a trace (I wasn’t even aware of it until I stumbled on an aging copy in the $1.99 bin at a video store one day in the mid-1990’s) is an enduring mystery to me. The best I can come up with is that between the early and late 1970’s there was a hardening of anti-military attitudes in the country which made the public less open to such films.

3) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:

How a John Ford Western starring both John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart can be so little-known is an absolute mystery to me, especially when the movie is as good as it is.

Stewart plays a novice lawyer from somewhere in the East who emigrates to the West during the fading days of the Old West. A believer in law, he shuns the way of the gun, even after he’s robbed at gunpoint on his way into the town of Shinbone.

John Wayne is an aging gunfighter whose day is clearly passing. Both he and Stewart compete for the affections of the same girl.

I won’t spoil the ending, save to say that I think the film teaches two very conservative lessons. First, Stewart’s character learns the necessity of force. Second, the movie shows a strong deference to settled history and tradition, as opposed to the relentless tearing-down of Gods and icons.

4) It’s a Wonderful Life:

Frank Capra’s film is now justly-celebrated as a classic due to one of those happy accidents of history (because of a mistake in its copyright, television networks were able to play the movie for free, thereby allowing the movie, which was initially a flop, to become traditional Christmas viewing for many families). The story of poor George Bailey, whose despair at the state of his own life brings him to the verge of suicide on Christmas Eve, the values espoused by the film are profoundly conservative.

It’s basically the opposite of virtually every other movie I’ve ever seen which touches upon the topic of personal dreams. The message of the average film is, “do whatever you want, responsibilities be damned.” That isn’t what this movie has to say.

Dutiful George Bailey shirks his dreams in order to do what must be done. The manager of the local trust company, he helps house much of his town. When his father suddenly dies, he puts off going to college in order to keep the Building and Loan running. Instead he sends his brother off to college. When a bank panic hits on his wedding day, he forgoes his honeymoon and uses his money to keep the Building and Loan afloat.

As he stands at the edge of the bridge, an Angel takes Bailey to show him what the world would be like without him. He comes to understand how his doing what had to be done, his keeping his place, has made the world a much better place than it otherwise would have been.

It’s truly an anomaly: a movie which suggests that the road to happiness lies in living up to one’s obligations, rather than running from them.

5) Bob Roberts:

An odd movie to add to a list of conservative films, to be sure. So let me explain.

I have a certain theory of movie-watching. Basically, I view a movie as though it were an account of true events as produced by the mainstream media. In the case of Bob Roberts, since the film is presented as though it were a British documentary, this is easier than in most cases.

For those who don’t know (and since the movie only made $4 million as the box office, I’ll assume that to be most of you) Bob Roberts is Tim Robbins’ story of a folk-singer/investment banker who wins election to the Senate from Pennsylvania as a far-right Republican.

The best reason to watch the movie is the songs which, sadly, were never released in soundtrack form (because Robbins, rightly I think, feared that conservatives would adopt them as their own).

Seriously, read the lyrics to some of the songs, they’re simply a blast.