Moving on to 1949...

The Third Man - Show me an Orson Welles movie that wasn't directed or produced by Welles.  Well here we are.  One of the great films noir, directed by Carol Reed and starring Welles and Joseph Cotton and written by Graham Greene.  There was always some intimation that Welles at least assisted Reed in the direction of the film, but it's pretty well agreed at this point that that was not the case.  Though his influence can definitely be felt throughout.  Post-war Venice was honestly a super interesting place and this film absolutely uses that to great effect.  The original ending by Greene and favored by David O. Selznick was properly jettisoned by Reed for the somber ending that helped make this a classic.  The acting, the camera angles, the wild soundtrack, just a brilliant film.  



White Heat - One of the great gangster films of all time and, for my money, James Cagney's last great performance.  And it really is kind of all about Cagney and his role as Cody Jarrett which is absolutely brilliant.  The film does stand as something of a coda to the early days of gangster/prison films while paving the way for the heist films that would tend to dominate the 1950s.  But when all's said and done it's Cagney that stands out.  



She Wore a Yellow Ribbon - The second of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy."  Just a nice old-school "A" western with John Wayne as an aging cavalry officer on the brink of retirement with one last mission to fulfill.  As always the John Ford stock company is just a joy, with nice performances by Ben Johnson and Victor McLaglin.  Not one of those stand-out special films, but just a super solid entry.  My biggest knock is that the Monument Valley scenery, while beautiful as always, is inappropriate for a movie about fighting Cheyenne and Arapaho.  



Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff - Not a patch on Meet Frankenstein, this is still a super fun movie.  Karloff is fun as the Swami and the "changing room" gag with the body is crazy fun, even if it's a rehash of a similar gag from Hold That Ghost.  



A few films that I know that I liked, but haven't seen in way too long to be able to say how I'd feel about them now, including, Sands of Iwo Jima, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and Criss Cross.  

Couple of pretty important animated shorts from the boys at Termite Terrace.  

Fast and Furry-ous - the first Road Runner & Wile Coyote film.  I'm not a huge fan of the series, personally, but they were pretty important.  

Long-Haired Hare - Excellent Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short with our rabbit hero going up against  an opera singer who had the audacity to start shit with Bugs.  Another step in the evolution that will lead to some of the best animated shorts of all time.  "Leopold!"  



So my favorite...pretty obviously The Third Man.  Just a great film noir with incredible acting and one of the most interesting visual films of all time.  

1949 in movies as a reference. 

Late Spring is Ozu's first masterpiece, and has my vote for one of the greatest films of all-time. Kind Hearts and Coronets is a delightful dark comedy, and Tati's genius is on full display in Jour de Fete. Kurosawa and Mifune made another noir that was very much in the vein of Drunken Angel, named Stray Dog. Aside from that, there's quite a lot I haven't seen -- William Wyler's The Heiress w/ Monty Cliff, Robert Wise's The Set Up, Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway, Jean-Pierre Melville's The Silence of the Sea, Burt Lancaster in Criss Cross, Max Ophuls' The Reckless Moment, and Samuel Fuller's directorial debut, I Shot Jesse James. Lots of intriguing stuff there. 

Finally a few minutes to move on to a new decade in 1950.  

Sunset Blvd. - I'm not really sure what there is left to say about this movie.  Considered by many to be the ultimate film noir it is simply a fantastic film in pretty much every respect.  Excellent performances by William Holden, Erich von Stroheim and, of course, Gloria Swanson.  An incredibly clever script and brilliant direction by Billy Wilder (who, as we recall, gave us Double Indemnity).  It is also the ultimate Hollywood movie about Hollywood.  



Rashomon - I've admitted before and readily admit that I'm not terribly well-versed in non-English language movies.  One of the exceptions to that is the oeuvre of Akira Kurosawa, with which I'm pretty well versed.  Rashomon is probably my favorite of his films.  The film should be required watching for all jurors before they sit down at a trial.  It's an almost text-book example of the unreliability of eyewitnesses to any event, but particularly to something as highly emotional as a crime.  Absolutely amazing screenplay and direction and a fabulous acting job by Toshiro Mifune.  



Rabbit of Seville - I've tended to leave animated shorts to the end of the post (though not always) but they really shouldn't be an afterthought.  And there are some coming up that are absolutely NOT an afterthought.  With Rabbit of Seville, Chuck Jones, Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan, Michael Maltese and Carl Stalling show why this era of shorts from the Warner's team are not just just some of the best cartoons ever, but frequently some of the best films ever.  Bugs and Elmer take on Rossini in 7 minutes of absolute bliss.  And, frankly, The Scarlet Pumpernickel is almost as good.  



Gerald McBoing-Boing - UPA had shown they had serious animated chops when they revived the moribund Fox & Crow series.  They showed they were special with Mr. Magoo.  But it was Gerald McBoing-Boing that showed these upstarts were playing in the big leagues.  Teaming up with Dr. Seuss in a story about a little boy who doesn't talk but makes noises instead.  The color palette and limited animation are used brilliantly in a gorgeous little film.  



Cinderella - Having dug his way out of the hole that WWII had largely left him in, Walt Disney finally left behind the war-era "features" that were generally longish short films with some connectors and returned to the type of feature cartoon that made him famous.  Visually this is prime Disney, lush and beautiful.  The songs are maybe not as good as one could hope, but the story is classic Disney from one of the best periods for the studio. 



Winchester '73 - The first western collaboration of Jimmy Stewart and director Anthony Mann, this is one of the movies I point out to folks who only know "gosh-wow" Jimmy Stewart.  Stewart is driven and menacing as a man bent on revenge.  By all reports Stewart spent a ton of time shooting so he'd look natural and it absolutely shows.  Another link in the chain that makes this one of the golden eras of the Hollywood western.  



Rio Grande - The third of John Ford and John Wayne's "cavalry trilogy" is, in my opinion, the weakest of the three.  It does, however, team Wayne with Maureen O'Hara in a match that would become a long-term great film pairing.  A solid, but unspectacular western. 



D.O.A. - Another classic film noir that far outperforms its relative poverty budget.  Edmund O'Brien is excellent as a poisoned man trying to find out who killed him before he dies.  Add in some brilliant camerawork and you have an important and influential little movie. 



Treasure Island - It's actually been a long time since I've seen Treasure Island.  But it's one of those movies that instantly takes me back to childhood.  Watching The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights with my family.  Robert Newton will always be Long John Silver and Bobby Driscoll (may his tortured soul rest in peace) will always be Jim Hawkins.  



1950 is really a super strong year in films with a number of movies I remember liking that I haven't seen in FAR too long, including Harvey, The Asphalt Jungle, Night and the City, Gun Crazy, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Panic In the Streets.  

So, my favorite film of 1950.  I probably have to go with Sunset Blvd., though The Barber of Seville and Rashomon are right on its heels.  


1950 in film as a refresher.  

I remember loving it, particularly Sterling Hayden, but it's been a long long times since I've seen it. 

I've fallen way behind so here's my quick look at favourite films of 1946:

The Big Sleep - we've already talked a bit about this one: the plot is all over the place and Bogart isn't really anything like how I imagine Marlowe, whether in looks or in personality, but great atmosphere, great dialogue, and ultimately a great film.

Gilda - recently re-watched this and what stood out this time is what a complete bastard Glen Ford's character is to Rita Hayworth's Gilda in the second half of the film, to the point where I was wondering why she took him back at the end. But that's an aside, this is one of the all-time great film-noirs and one of Hayworth's signature roles. Her character is perhaps a bit too sympathetic to be a pure femme-fatale and I think this leads to some confusion when people talk about the movie: the famous Put the Blame on Mame dance scene for example, is her, drunk and angry, deliberately acting like the "fallen woman" Ford's character thinks she is, so the implied strip-tease she seems to be about to do is horrifying rather than sexy - you want someone to stop her. The whole movie is full of things like that. Not that her character, Gilda, is perfect, by any means: it's still a film noir, so no one is entirely "pure".

The Killers - saw this recently too and was suitably impressed. Both Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner had their first big parts in this and became stars, and Lancaster especially makes a huge impact with his physical presence, which I think was of a different order to anything that had been done onscreen up to then. The Killers of the title are two relatively minor supporting characters played by William "Cannon" Conrad and an actor I hadn't known named Charles McGraw, who I thought was perfect for the role of menacing hired killer, though he didn't get much to do. Only the opening scenes are based on the Hemingway story, the rest is a flashback constructed to fill in the blanks and then back to the present to tie up the plot. I disliked the insurance investigator protagonist, Reardon, played by Edmond O'Brien, who struck me as one of those smirking, self-satisfied characters that are popular for some reason in American pop culture but that always rub me the wrong way.

A Night in Casablanca - another one I watched just a few weeks ago. Apparently they had originally intended this to be a parody of Casablanca, down to the specific scenes and characters of that film, but the studio threatened legal action so they had to drop the idea. This is late Marx Brothers and usually not rated highly by critics but I thought it was really good. Sure, it probably doesn't quite reach the level of their top two or three masterpieces but still a classic in my book, and hilarious from start to finish. I really liked the actress who played the femme fatale character, Beatrice - her name was Lisette Verea. You could see that she really got into her part and had a lot of fun with it.

Notorious - Hitchcock, Cary Grant, and Ingrid Bergman: three of the greatest names in film history and I think most film fans and critics would agree that this is a contender for the best work of each of them. And even so, I sometimes think it might be under-rated, because it doesn't get the love of a Casablanca or what have you, but I suppose it just isn't that kind of movie. Like almost all Hitchcock's films, there's a certain underlying darkness, coldness, and distance to it that is disturbing, beyond what ends up happening in the plot. Grant and Bergman are perfectly matched - wish they had done more movies - though from memory they don't actually get a ton of scenes together. But the ones they do have are so effective, they're a big part of the movie.

The Postman Always Rings Twice - John Garfield has been one of my favourite actors since my late teens when I saw him in Four Daughters, and I've always thought of this movie mostly as a great John Garfield performance; but re-watching it recently I appreciated it more as an overall piece of film-making and, as Slam Bradley mentioned in his lines above, a great performance by Lana Turner. She captured the repressed self-indulgence, if that isn't a contradiction in terms, of her character so impressively. When she says lines like "But I don't want to dance", you can tell she wants to shout it but it comes out as a near whisper that is more impressive than a scream would have been. The beach scenes were brief but well done, and I think important symbolically as a representation of Garfield and Turner sort of falling into the abyss of their desire and ambition.


Postman and Gilda are very strong contenders, especially after watching or re-watching them so recently, but I have to stick with Notorious as my pick for 1946, though it's been a while since I last saw it.