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Post by berkley on Jul 1, 2022 1:02:35 GMT -5
War of the Worlds and Roman Holiday were my favorites from 1953. Rear Window is my favorite from 1954, with Sabrina, Godzilla and Dial M for Murder just slightly behind. The original Godzilla is not as schlocky as you might think. It's actually quite serious and dark, despite the primitive look of the monster and effects. It's only the follow-ups that started to get goofier and comic at times. The schlock was a call-back to Creature From the Black Lagoon, not to Godzilla. I have only the vaguest memories of the original Godzilla. There's been a recent theatrical re-release of the Japanese version of Godzilla and it's nearly a completely different movie to the one most of us in the west are familiar with from childhood on. Very much worth looking for. |
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Post by berkley on Jul 1, 2022 1:46:54 GMT -5
1950 highlights:
Born Yesterday - loved this watching it on tv as a kid but wasn't sure how'd it would play to my adult, 21st-C sensiblities, and in particular Judy Holliday's performance, because she really does lay it on thick, by today's standards. But to my relief, and maybe to my surprise as well, it was a fun as I remembered. For me, she has an inner quality that is strong enough to come through what might seem an outdated, overplayed caricature of a part. I'm going to have to re-watch her other movies now, like Pffft!, and so on. There is one part, that I didn't remember at all from seeing it as a kid, that was really quite horrifying, when her husband hits her in the face: was it edited out of the tv version or were we just so inured to things like that at the time? I think I would have remembered it, the scene was in such drastic contrast to everything else, and her terrorised reaction is very realistic.
Broken Arrow - this was a new one to me, just saw it for the first time a few weeks or months ago. I can't speak to the historical accuracy, but considering the times in which it was made, I found it a very commendable effort towards looking at the Native vs European conflict at least in part from the Native POV. Jeff Chandler wasn't indigenous himself, and there'd be a huge controversy if he'd taken on the role of Cochise today, but he was more than impressive - it's obvious why this was the movie that made him a star. He's a bit forgotten today, perhaps because he died quite young, in the early '60s - a great loss, because he had the kind of strong features and physical presence that I think might have made him an even bigger star in the '60s than he'd been in the '50s - and he was one of the biggest for much of that decade. Jimmy Stewart is good in this too - thanks to Prince Hal for encouraging me to try more of his movies - but it's really Chandler who makes it memorable.
In a Lonely Place - Nicholas Ray seems to deliver more often than not, though of course he had a first rate cast to help him along here. One of Bogart's darker and more subtle roles. Good chemistry between him and Gloria Grahame, I thought.
Night and the City - American stars in non-American settings often don't feel right to me but Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney don't seem out of place in this classic Noir, set in the seedier milieus of London. Very downbeat atmosphere, even for noir. I would have liked to see Tierney have a bigger part, but looking at it objectively, too much of her character would have detracted from the overall mood of the film - she was one of perhaps only two that weren't in the end completely focused on themselves and their own ends.
this is taking longer than i thought it would, so I'll have to carry on with it later.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 2, 2022 8:37:07 GMT -5
Just for my OCD purposes, here's my top 10 list for pre-1930 movies in sequential order
Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari 1920
Kid 1921
Haxan 1922
Hunchback Of Notre Dame 1923
Safety Last 1923
Battleship Potemkin 1925
Gold Rush 1925
General 1926
Metropolis 1927
Circus 1928
Here's the other pre-1930 films I own in digital or physical form
Birth Of A Nation 1915
Behind The Door 1919
Dr. Mabuse The Gambler 1922
Nanook Of The North 1922
Nosferatu 1922
Ben-Hur 1925
Lost World 1925
Chicago 1927
Jazz Singer 1927
King Of Kings 1927
Lodger 1927
Ring 1927
Underworld 1927
Wings 1927
Docks Of New York 1928
Last Command 1928
Passion Of Joan Of Arc 1928
Steamboat Bill Jr. 1928
Trail Of '98 1928
Blackmail 1929
Cocoanuts 1929
Hell's Heroes 1929
Manxman 1929
Pandora's Box 1929
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,211 
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Post by Confessor on Jul 4, 2022 19:00:29 GMT -5
1954My favourite film of 1954 would be On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint. It's a taught, pressure-cooker of a mob drama, in which Brando's tough-but-vulnerable dockworker Terry Malloy finds himself torn between his allegiance to the ruthless mob for which he runs errands and his desire to clear his name of the wrong doing he's undertaken on their behalf. What I particularly enjoy about this film – apart from the wonderfully filthy, run-down backdrop of industrial Hoboken – is the moral ambiguity of its central characters, especially Malloy. Here is a hard-as-nails guy, with a sensitive side, caught up in an unfortunate situation and, as a result, split between his desire for individuality and being forced to conform to the prevailing mob mentality (both figuratively and literally). And who could forget his "I could have been a contender" monologue? Just brilliant stuff! Oh, and Eva Marie Saint is superb whenever she's on screen, coming across like some ethereal, Angelic urban nymph in amongst the boiling testosterone that surrounds her.  Other runners up that I've seen would include... - Rear Window, which I watched with my wife over the pandemic and which is really, really gripping and kept us both guessing right to the end.
- Them!, which is ridiculous, but really fun atomic monster schlock.
- Creature from the Black Lagoon, which is a classic '50s monster movie and the design of that monster is simply iconic.
- The Belles of St. Trinian's, the first instalment of the vaguely saucy English girl's school comedy series, starring a very young George Cole.
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I was absolutely enchanted by as a little kid and, even as an adult, it's still a visual treat.
- Stranger from Venus, which is basically a cheap re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still, but one that has a mid-50s British charm all of its own.
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Post by commond on Jul 4, 2022 19:14:45 GMT -5
I forgot about The Belles of St. Trinian's. Alastair Sim was brilliant, wasn't he?
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Post by berkley on Jul 5, 2022 6:14:10 GMT -5
1954Other runners up that I've seen would include... Stranger from Venus, which is basically a cheap re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still, but one that has a mid-50s British charm all of its own. Don<t think I knew about this one, will have a look for it. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 7, 2022 11:08:38 GMT -5
Onward and upward to 1955. I find, upon review, that while I've seen quite a few of the films of 1955 there are few of them that I've seen more than once and very few that I've seen recently enough to retain any firm opinion. So I probably need to come back at some time and revisit 1955. Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton's only turn as a director gives us one of the absolute great films noir. Adapted from Davis Grubb's novel of the same name this is just a chilling film with Robert Mitchum creating one of the great villains of film history in Reverend Harry Powell and the Love/Hate tattoos on his fingers have become truly (and I usually hate the misuse of this word) iconic. The supporting cast of Shelly Winters, Lillian Gish and Billy Chapin are quite good. But it's Mitchum and Laughton's show and they give us a film and a performance for the ages. Kiss Me Deadly - Robert Aldrich's nihilistic take on the Mike Hammer novel is a film that has, possibly, an outsized influence for what it is. At face value it's a pretty decent, though incredibly dark, take on Spillaine's detective. But Aldrich's take is so stylishly nihilistic that it ended up being a fairly large influence on the French New Wave and on such American filmmakers as Alex Cox and Quentin Tarantino. Ralph Meeker probably had no business playing Hammer. Ultimately, for almost inexplicable reasons, the film works as a great film noir. Bad Day at Black Rock - It's been, admittedly, quite a long time since I've seen this one, but I remember it pretty well. A solid neo-western with Spencer Tracy in a somewhat unusual role. While it's a tad melodramatic it is, overall, a perfectly fine film buoyed by a super strong case with Tracy, Robert Ryan, Ann Francis, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. The Ladykillers - Just an incredibly funny black comedy with great performances by Alec Guiness, Cecil Parker and Peter Sellers. The script is a brilliant slow burn. Another gem from Ealing Studios. The Desperate Hours - Solid film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March. Bogie is in villain mode as the leader of three escaped convicts who take March and family hostage in their home. A good, though not spectacular noir. One Froggy Evening - Possibly the best of the Warner Brothers one-off cartoons. Chuck Jones, Mike Maltese and Milt Franklyn absolutely kill on this story about a singing frog...that only sings when it's not convenient. Steven Spielberg called it "the Citizen Kane of animated shorts." While I might not go that far it is easily one of the very best animated shorts ever. Brilliantly funny, with no dialogue, the animation of the frog is simply amazing in the difference between when he's performing and when he's...frogging. So my favorite? It's Night of the Hunter in a squeaker over One Froggy Evening. Two very different films. Two films that are among the best of their genre. Just a plethora of films from '55 that I either haven't seen or haven't seen in so long it's the functional equivalent. Including, To Catch a Thief, Diabolique, East of Eden, Rififi, Rebel Without a Cause, and The Man From Laramie. 1955 in film for those who need a reference. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 7, 2022 11:57:49 GMT -5
Dead-on with Night of the Hunter, Slam_Bradley . A tour de force that mixes genres perfectly, creating the feeling of a long dream. The most enduring image of many enduring images is the one of -- I'll keep this as generic as possible -- a woman sitting in a car. Desperate Hours is frightening and realistic. Catches what it would really be like if career criminals held your family hostage. Frederic march would love to turn inot Bruce Willis, but that ain't happenin'. Bad Day at Black Rock is such a good movie. Plus it's like watching the best acting lessons available. May I add... Rebel Without a Cause, much imitated, never equalled. And yeah, iconic. But don't jjust watch the iconic James Dean, as good as he is, but the performances of Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and almost everyone else, especially Ann Doran and Jim Backus as Dean's clueless parents. To Catch a Thief may seem a Hitchcock confection, but it has many a good moment, not least of which is the eerie foreshadowing of Grace Kelly's death as she careens recklessly down the steep and curvy roads of Monaco. Lady and the Tramp was much watched and enjoyed by all of us here when our "kids" were kids. Mister Roberts is a rueful look at leadership, sacrifice and World War Two, frequently disguised as a service comedy. The final letter-reading ( the "having coffee" part) makes me angry every time. Blackboard Jungle now seems overwrought and preachy at times, but it was a asensation when it came out and still hits hard. Vic Morrow is chilling as Artie, the classic JD; Sidney Poitier and Glenn Ford are so good as the two characters from different worlds. Many great stars and future stars are in the cast, and the soundtrack (early rock and roll) is electrifying. Watching what happens when naive Richard Kiley's character thinks he may bring culture to his students by playing his precious collections of jazz 78s for them is unforgettable and heartbreaking. The Man from Laramie is a Stewart-Mann Western. 'Nuff said. We're No Angels, directed by the protean Michael Curtiz, is a Christmas story set on Devil's Island. Bogart is charming, as are Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov as his fellow escapees. Trust me, you've never seen anything like this movie. All That Heaven Allows, directed by the subversive master of sub-text, Douglas Sirk, is a damned perceptive take on the hypocrisy of 1950s dressed up in melodramatic drag. Sirk's movies have experienced a renaissance of sorts and deservedly so. Here he takes on not just the snobbery and shallowness of the 50s, but May-December romance, class distinction, female sexuality, and the spoiled natures of the early baby-boomer generation. And his usual attention to color, composition and set decoration as crucial to the story and themes. Richard III stars and was directed by Olivier. Shakespeare on screen has come a long way from this, but Olivier blazed the path, and this may be his best Shakespeare film. His Richard is both appealing and repulsive, as he should be. Supposedly based his make-up and look for Richard on Jed Harris, the much loathed Broadway producer/director, who, legend has it, was the visual inspiration for Disney's Big Bad Wolf.    |
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Post by mistermets on Jul 7, 2022 12:22:31 GMT -5
My choices from 1920-1955. 1920- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1921- The Phantom Carriage 1922- Nosferatu 1923- Safety Last 1924- Thief of Bagdad 1925- The Gold Rush 1926- Faust 1927- Metropolis 1928- The Passion of Joan of Arc 1929- Pandora's Box 1930- All Quiet on the Western Front 1931- M 1932- Freaks 1933- King Kong 1934- It Happened One Night 1935- A Night at the Opera 1936- Modern Times 1937- Snow White and the Seven Dwarves 1938- The Adventures of Robin Hood 1939- Gone With the Wind 1940- Pinnochio 1941- Citizen Kane 1942- Casablanca 1943- Day of Wrath 1944- Double Indemnity 1945- Mildred Pierce 1946- It's a Wonderful Life 1947- Black Narcissus 1948- Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1949- The Third Man 1950- All About Eve 1951- The African Queen 1952- Singin' in the Rain 1953- Tokyo Story 1954- Rear Window I just watched my favorite movie of 1955 for the first time a few days ago. Night of the Hunter and Bad Day at Black Rock could easily be top in a different year. My previous choice was the French thriller Rififi. And then I saw Ordet...  It took me a while to watch this, because I thought it would be difficult. After all, it is a movie from a director with a reputation for long shots about a family suffering a crisis when the middle son thinks he is Christ. That was a mistake. It's easy to follow, and while we see the difficulties of the family, we see some joys. And it gets into some really interesting questions about what it means to truly believe. It's certainly worth watching, and discussing. There was a conversation on film twitter about great directors, and someone said that Spielberg was the most versatile after West Side Story came out, since that proved he could excel in any genre. There was one alternative path to being recognized as a great director: overwhelming success in one genre. So it was Spielberg's versatility against John Ford's westerns, Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, Martin Scorsese's crime films, Ingmar Bergman's psychological dramas, and Kurosawa's samurai epics. With this, the Passion of Joan of Arc, and the other films where he explored these deep Christian questions, Dreyer joins the list with his skill in religious drama. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 7, 2022 12:34:07 GMT -5
I'd put Michael Curtiz up against anybody; he excelled in directing gangster films, horror, musicals, adventures, comedies, film noir, Westerns, suspense, and mysteries (among other genres), and capped it all with the multi-genre genius of Casablanca. And all on limited budgets of time and money working within the strictures of the studio system.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 7, 2022 12:49:48 GMT -5
Lady and the Tramp was much watched and enjoyed by all of us here when our "kids" were kids. Mister Roberts is a rueful look at leadership, sacrifice and World War Two, frequently disguised as a service comedy. The final letter-reading ( the "having coffee" part) makes me angry every time. The Man from Laramie is a Stewart-Mann Western. 'Nuff said. We're No Angels, directed by the protean Michael Curtiz, is a Christmas story set on Devil's Island. Bogart is charming, as are Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov as his fellow escapees. Trust me, you've never seen anything like this movie. I almost mentioned Lady and the Tramp as I have pretty mixed feelings about it. It's also been quite a while since I've seen it as it was not a favorite of my boys. I recall it being overly treacly and sentimental. But there are certainly great scenes in it. The spaghetti scene is a classic. Mister Roberts and We're No Angels are two more films that I've seen but only vaguely remember. One thing that bugged me were that Lemmon and (particularly) Fonda were too old for their ranks. I love the Mann-Stewart westerns. It's just been a long time since I've seen most of them. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 7, 2022 12:54:46 GMT -5
There was a conversation on film twitter about great directors, and someone said that Spielberg was the most versatile after West Side Story came out, since that proved he could excel in any genre. There was one alternative path to being recognized as a great director: overwhelming success in one genre. So it was Spielberg's versatility against John Ford's westerns, Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, Martin Scorsese's crime films, Ingmar Bergman's psychological dramas, and Kurosawa's samurai epics. With this, the Passion of Joan of Arc, and the other films where he explored these deep Christian questions, Dreyer joins the list with his skill in religious drama. I get what people are saying, but John Ford was definitely not defined by his westerns. Dude could do comedy (The Quiet Man), drama (The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley), biography (Young Mr. Lincoln). Trying to pigeon-hole him as a western director ignores a ton of his best films. |
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Post by badwolf on Jul 7, 2022 15:55:20 GMT -5
My favorite films of 1955 were To Catch a Thief and Guys and Dolls. I re-watched the former recently and it had been a while, and I was amused to find I complete misremembered it. I could have sworn that {Spoiler: Click to show}
Grace Kelly's character was the new Cat. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 7, 2022 16:16:41 GMT -5
My Top Ten 1955 films-most already mentioned above
Bad Day At Black Rock
Desperate Hours
DiabolIque
Kiss Me Deadly
Lady And The Tramp
Mister Roberts
Night Of The Hunter
Rebel Without A Cause
Seven Year Itch
We're No Angels
Daibolique was a suspenseful murder thriller, excellently directed
Seven Year Itch is classic Marilyn Monroe
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Post by commond on Jul 7, 2022 18:20:06 GMT -5
This is a difficult one. Night of the Hunter is probably the best film of 1955, but I have several favorites. I'm a huge fan of Kiss Me Deadly. It's by far my favorite film noir. I also love Douglas Sirk, and All That Heaven Allows is his masterpiece. Rebel Without a Cause, The Man From Laramie, and Rififi are highly entertaining. I have a strange relationship with Diabolique. I was first introduced to it in a screenwriting textbook, and the description of the film's story was so intense and so suspenseful that when I finally saw the film it was a disappointment. I wouldn't mind seeing it again though. Ordet is excellent, as is Night and Fog, Alain Resnais' short documentary about the Holocaust. Smiles of a Summer Night isn't a favorite of mine, but it's among Bergman's better regarded films. Shout out to Artists and Models. I like those Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedies. My pick for the year goes to Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. I'm not a huge fan of the other two films in the trilogy, but the first film with the young boy is a phenomenal piece of filmmaking and makes my top 10 for the decade.
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