1. "Splendor in the Grass" (Elia Kazan; 1961) 4 stars

Superb, vibrantly emotional drama of a blighted teenage love in 1920s small-town Kansas, with young Bud Stamper and Deanie Loomis (played by off-screen lovers Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood) driven together by passion, torn apart by class and small-town mores. The last scene, the leave-taking on the farm, just tears your heart up. (on DVD and video)

2. "Lilith" (Robert Rossen; 1964) 4 stars

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Ignored at the time in America, but highly praised in Europe, this is a neglected classic: a perverse and lyrical study of madness and desire from J.R. Salamanca's novel. Beatty plays the idealistic young therapist in an insane asylum for the rich, who falls in love with madwoman Jean Seberg and suffers for it. (video)

3. "Bonnie and Clyde" (Arthur Penn; 1967) 4 stars

One of the key American movies of the '60s: producer-star Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard are a glamorized version of the Bonnie Parker-Clyde Barrow Gang. They're a naive but murderous bunch whose reckless Depression criminal career turns into a romantic, terrifying odyssey of blood, fame and reckoning. The last flailing images of death, surprise and yearning still have a painful beauty. (DVD/video)

4. "Shampoo" (Hal Ashby; 1975) 4 stars

Star/co-writer Beatty plays Hollywood ace hairdresser George (loosely inspired by real-life stylist Gene Shacove), a salon phenom who's also a compulsive womanizer. In this near equivalent to the old '30s screwball comedies, we watch George as his innumerable affairs -- with girlfriend Goldie Hawn and the wife (Lee Grant), daughter (Carrie Fisher) and mistress (Julie Christie) of a businessman (Jack Warden) -- begin to unravel. The movie is wonderfully quick and light, but its roots are dark. (video)

5. "Reds" (Beatty; 1981) 3 1/2 stars

Director/co-writer/star Beatty tries to shake the world as John Reed, Harvard laureate of the Russian Revolution. Beatty makes Reed a romantic rebel, crushed between history's juggernauts. Meanwhile, Reed's real-life contemporaries recall him, and lover-comrade Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). With Jack Nicholson (as Eugene O'Neill), Gene Hackman, Maureen Stapleton, Paul Sorvino, Jerzy Kosinski. (video)

Michael Wilmington is the Chicago Tribune movie critic.