hard times, great films

"MODERN TIMES"(1936)

Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp represented every person who was ever poor or downtrodden. The character -- who made Chaplin the movie industry's first millionaire -- made his last appearance in this film. The image of Chaplin trapped between the cogs of an assembly line is one of the key images of machine-age dehumanization. The finale shows him ever-optimistic, walking down the dusty road toward the future, his beloved at his side.

"THE BICYCLE THIEF"(1949)

A film of powerful simplicity, set in the rubble of war-ravaged Rome. Impoverished Antonio (nonprofessional actor Lamberto Maggiorani) lands a job hanging cinema posters of Rita Hayworth around town. He needs a bicycle for the job. When his is stolen, he and his son search the city to reclaim it. The film is the hallmark example of neorealism, which abstains from fictional adventure in favor of the ethically complex drama of everyday life.

THE APU TRILOGY(1950-59)

Satyajit Ray's films "Pather Panchali," "Aparajito" and "Apur Sansar" swept the top prizes in Cannes and Venice and marked a realistic new cinema for India. The story follows Apu from the simple joys of his rural childhood to the challenges of founding a family of his own in Calcutta, where he is rejected for the most menial of jobs. The series parallels the experience of many Third World families migrating to the city. With each film, there is a sense of innocence lost.

"SUPER FLY"(1972)

A year after his father's trailblazing "Shaft," Gordon Parks Jr. released the first black action movie to become a crossover hit. Shot in ghetto locations, it dramatically recast images of black poverty, which had been mostly portrayed as a rural problem. With songs like "Pusherman" and "Freddie's Dead," Curtis Mayfield's score functions as a Greek chorus commenting on the human consequences of drug running.

"IRONWEED"(1987)

Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep are electrifying as Depression-era derelicts in Albany, N.Y. The film -- scripted by William Kennedy from his Pulitzer-winning novel -- is a stark, heart-wrenching, intense and realistic depiction of lives that all of us could fall into but would rather not be reminded of. A forgotten classic with two of America's greatest actors giving two of their greatest performances.

"CITY OF GOD"(2002)

A crime saga and a coming-of-age epic set in a Rio de Janeiro shantytown. The storytelling is a dizzying rush of colorful characters, white-knuckle gang warfare and chronological hopscotch. Criminality is almost engineered into the crumbling favela. In an unforgettable sequence, the film focuses on a single apartment over time as it devolves from a family home to a drug dealer's den.

COLIN COVERT