John Hughes – a career in clips, from The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller to Curly Sue

John Hughes defined high school for a generation. Whether or not you actually attended – maybe you were too old, or young, or from a different country – his films not only invented a genre, they informed the experience and they crystallised the memories, too. It was a remarkable coup of cultural conditioning.
At the time of release, Hughes's films struck a chord because they were fresh and funny, and because they acted as a comforter. They showed what every teenager may have suspected: schools are quasi-prisons, staffed by beings who seem from a different planet.
Hughes's genius was to think like a teenager but write like an adult. He never patronised his target audience, but he also made films that (particularly compared with the brainless raunch of something like Porky's) their parents could, even sneakingly, approve of; even sympathise with. It's easy to see the link between Hughes's oeuvre and the likes of The Graduate - not just in terms of, say, artful music cues, but sensibility, too.