The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions (Decade Project Vol. 4)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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TMDaines
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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#276 Post by TMDaines » Thu Feb 13, 2020 9:45 am

La casa del ángel (1957 - Leopoldo Torre Nilsson): I know we talked about this a lot earlier on in the thread, but I never actually shared my thoughts on the film. First of all, good news, far improved subtitles got posted on the backchannels and I popped them on my Google Drive too. I could then enjoy the film properly. The film is certainly very intriguing, full of style. For a film of 1957, it has a very modern aesthetic, the cinematography stands out with a reel of interesting shots and ambitious angles. It reminds me very much of Il conformista in that regard. There's a very strong gothic feel to this one and it wasn't too much of a surprise to learn that this is considered one of Nilsson's gothic trilogy. Not sure this will be near my top 50, but it was well worth watching. Strangely, it's shortish runtime for a feature is its downfall for me. The film is not long enough to substantiate the political and historical aspects of the plot during its 76 minutes, and would either better be lengthened to accommodate them, or cut even more tightly and be even more elliptical, disorientating and experimental with its editing. There's a potential masterpiece in there, but not quite realised in this instance.

Bell Book and Candle (1958 - Richard Quine): Decent festive romantic comedy. Love James Stewart, so was never going to go wrong here. Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon both ably support too. The psychedelic colours in the film are utterly fantastic with some great set design and costuming. The film is very entertaining and the runtime flew by. Despite a plot synopsis perhaps leading you to believe that this is all fantasy, witches and spells, the film actually feels fairly grounded. I'm surprised it isn't known and watched more, especially with Novak and Stewart making Vertigo in the same year. It turns out that James Stewart has (at least) three decent Christmas films.

Auntie Mame (1958 - Morton DaCosta): A decent watch over the Christmas period, but a month or two on, I'm struggling to remember a massive amount to note. It was certainly very camp and loud, with Rosalind Russell absolutely dominating the film and commanding the screen. The film ultimately serves as a vehicle for her talents as much as anything, with the feeling of a filmed play.

Non è mai troppo tardi (1953 - Filippo Walter Ratti): Italian adaptation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol featuring a young Marcello Mastroianni. This is one film that has sadly never had a proper release, and there are no fan subtitles yet, but it is still worth muddling through a fairly ropey TV rip. The atmosphere of the film feels on point and it is a fairly faithful adaptation bar for a few changes that do not detract. Paolo Stoppa makes a good Scrooge, albeit dubbed Antonio Trabbi here.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#277 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:43 pm

La Strada: Fellini wastes no time kicking in the plot and flooding us with overwhelming introductions just like Mesina’s rapid sendoff, placing us in the same position alignment from the start. The director's strengths here are in the exposition of contrast in Mesina’s moments with Quinn and her moments free from him, how she internalizes the concept of purpose and her natural reversion to engaging with the world with wonder. The scenes where she is physically apart from Quinn, especially the one where she attends an evening out, are nothing short of whimsical bliss. The dynamic itself is complex in an inverse of what one would expect for codependency, and perhaps it’s not that, but it is one of need on a level of more than practicality. Quinn needs to be validated and superior while Mesina needs to care for another and commit the actions of a considerate empathizer in accordance with her authentic self. She is like the nuns of the church, innocent and possessing a calling even if it’s one she hardly understands, like a simple-minded version of Hesse’s Siddhartha, trying different journeys until she arrives at her sense of purpose. What better way to help the needy than to stand by the most pained man she encounters, a clearly troubled person who is begging to be aided in removal of sin. Fellini’s storytelling is almost as good as his mystical/realism concoction, and it’s hard to negate that skill (this balance would eventually reach its pinnacle in his best film, La Dolce Vita, where Fellini’s protagonist falters frantically between momentary magical escapes into fantastical presentations of his dreams before being repeatedly drawn back out to the cruel reality, by both the world and his own existential handicap in the form of a blockage to being content with the present).

Mesina’s morality becomes an uncontested innocent soul that elicits novel empathy from Quinn, to his discomfort, never having encountered this seemingly in his life. The dissonance between her fantasy and reality becomes too great though, and her mental health suffers from both her own limitations and the intense force of the cruel world. It’s a kind of heartwarming pessimism until the rejection transforms this into tragedy, though it’s not quite on the nihilistic plane as Quinn’s eventual development hints at optimism in growth even if pain, unfortunately another’s, is the ingredient to precipitate this experience (I don’t think Dolce is objectively nihilistic either, but it’s pretty damn close! Instead that opts for an opposite ending where the protagonist doesn’t have any revelation while the child, representing the source possible to trigger him from such a fate, remains out of reach and thus his awareness is doomed to remain hidden and growth stunted indefinitely).

I Vitelloni makes up the second tier of Fellini after La Dolce Vita, though Amarcord and Juliet of the Spirits are right up there perhaps higher, (and if anyone was wondering, the still solid third tier would be La Strada and 8 ½), and like the personal Amarcord he really succeeds at this multicharacter milieu when issuing equality to his participants. The use of acute presenting problems to drive the characterization are masterfully placed and Fellini’s attentive vision allows for the narrative to function as a cohesive whole, for even when comprised of split sections it never feels separated. Fellini creates a closed system where all storylines feel like they must coexist, as if their own manifestation is hinged on the others and vice versa. I always think of Diner when I watch this, as one of the many great films inspired by it. These are my two favorites of Fellini this decade, though I should give Nights of Cabiria another chance after an apathetic reaction years ago, but they’re two great films that show his strengths that would either be reissued or built upon in years to come. I'm not his biggest fan despite his best being one of my all-time favorites, and I doubt these will make my list, but they're undoubtedly great and listworthy films.

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knives
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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#278 Post by knives » Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:56 pm

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (dir. Fleischer)
That's quite the euphemism for sex they have going here. This was significantly better than I was expecting even if it remains a bit staid in that Fleischer style during the weak first hour. Joan Collins' Audrey Hepburn imitation placed under duress is great though showing a real complexity of emotion that I don't think first choice Monroe would have accomplished. The way her face looks makes that final shot is haunting an image as possible. Brackett's script uses a lot of the expected beats in interesting if not fresh ways. Ray Milland as the ancient lover gives an odd performance that is overly austere in a way that manages to work while Farely Granger really does embody every woman's nightmare with aplomb. The last act of the film when all of the shoes drop is truly intense and plays to everyone's strengths in a way that make this more memorable than this sort of film typically is.

Also I'm surprised the film got away essentially with using the word bitch.
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I Want to Live (dir. Wise)
If I had seen this poster before I would have seen this movie long ago rather than fearing it as another staid melodrama (there's my word of the day I suppose). This is Wise in pure jazz mode with fabulous editing by William Hornbeck. He honestly makes a simple insert of some playing cards feel like some of the most intense stuff you could imagine. The movie is really firing on all cylinders though there was one element that took some getting used to and of course it is what put this in the oscar history books.

For all of its exciting energy the opening does Hayward no favours. She comes across as a dime store Margo Channing being too old for a character better to be played by Joan Collins or the like. It's only as the film unfolds did she become for me the right choice for this character. The pain of the grind of life is such an essential part of her character and that's where Hayward succeeds. I only caught onto her when she's released from prison for the first time and the guard suggests she get married only for the film to acidly show what a marriage means for someone with her social standing.

The Wings of Eagles (dir. Ford)
A surprising source for Kill Bill especially in light of Tarantino's later statements. Despite having the reputation of dish water I thought this was excellent and engaging throughout. It is perhaps too generically Fordian to stand out as something special, but it also becomes engaging through that typical makeup. One somewhat unusual feature is O'Hara's wife character who seems modern in a way at a remove from the rest of the film. She's a woman full of feeling and independence. Not so strange for Ford, but the exhausted and aged way O'Hara allows herself to be represented. The sheer physicality of her performance shocks the film every time she's on screen and forced me to reconsider what I've seen up to this point. Her performance is the best of the film and makes it truly moving in the first hour, but Wayne is great here too. He's not asked to do his usual thing in its best moments, but instead is forced to be a quiet and weak man. The John Wayne character removed from his virility. Immediately after Ad Astra I couldn't help but connect this to Tommy Lee Jones as well playing a weak version of his persona. The actors' touch makes this film. I mean, Bond's performance alone keeps this at least in the middle of the pack.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#279 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 17, 2020 4:32 pm

knives wrote:
Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:56 pm
I Want to Live (dir. Wise)
If I had seen this poster before I would have seen this movie long ago rather than fearing it as another staid melodrama (there's my word of the day I suppose). This is Wise in pure jazz mode with fabulous editing by William Hornbeck. He honestly makes a simple insert of some playing cards feel like some of the most intense stuff you could imagine. The movie is really firing on all cylinders though there was one element that took some getting used to and of course it is what put this in the oscar history books.

For all of its exciting energy the opening does Hayward no favours. She comes across as a dime store Margo Channing being too old for a character better to be played by Joan Collins or the like. It's only as the film unfolds did she become for me the right choice for this character. The pain of the grind of life is such an essential part of her character and that's where Hayward succeeds. I only caught onto her when she's released from prison for the first time and the guard suggests she get married only for the film to acidly show what a marriage means for someone with her social standing.
I didn't like the film as much as you did, but I had a similar reaction in finding it difficult to access Hayward, which I took as a form of judgment. This was fitting as the contrast between expectations and delivery working through the narrative came around to eliciting empathy for her character in both her physical position as a socially excluded prisoner whether behind bars and not, as well as from the subliminal oppressive attitudes that devalue her. It worked two ways, implicating me as complicit in that alienation as well as forcing me to align with her experience as one who has been a victim of judgment based on uncontrollable characteristics rather than her personality.

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HinkyDinkyTruesmith
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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#280 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Thu Feb 20, 2020 1:19 am

I don't usually write this sort of way, but I rewatched All About Eve last week and found myself unable to write about it, caught by the very simplicity of its plastic qualities that Christian Keathley acknowledges makes analyzing some classical Hollywood cinema so difficult in his essay on Otto Preminger's Whirlpool. After sitting on it a week, I found myself writing in a much more abstract and ponderous manner than usual, so many of these thoughts are indeed more speculation than firmly rooted observation, but they reflect a feeling I have about one of the most mature, adult, and incredible of 50s films.

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All About Eve
The film's title is immensely simple on the one hand: all of the following story, is going to be about Eve; it's telling then that when the line is uttered, early in the film, it is to direct attention away from Eve; narratologically but not dramatically, as in that moment it's all about the very old actor speaking, drowned out by Addison DeWitt's narration: a series of smotherings, ego on ego on ego.

On another hand, however, let's divorce the title from its context; this film is all about Eve, as opposed to Adam; it is a film about women: men can shove it. Critics have suggested the film is ultimately restorative of heteronormative order, but simply because these women operate under patriarchy does not mean that they are not women and that their desires are not true. This is a film about women.

And on a third hand, even more divorced from context, moving towards an abstraction of syntactic logic: we have the plural and the singular set beside each other, the plural channeling into the singular. Anyone who's anyone in this film talks, and in many ways, they all have their own unique, individual voice: even Eve, who attempts to reproduce Margot, fails to provide an authentic replication in any performance not on stage: where Margot speaks in rich, riveting wit and originality rivaling Addison in snark if not in elegance, Eve speaks in cliché, from her opening gambit to her hysteric pandering to Addison at the close. None of these characters can replicate each other, try as they might, and that is the very heart of Margot and Lloyd's argument, about actors rewriting lines to fit them. Whose words do these people speak?

Mankiewicz's words, in fact, and in that way the film never becomes truly polyphonic; rather it is a polyphony of monophony: flashbacks report words, people quote each other, misquote each other, are quoted in print, so there are certainly layers in which the characters themselves find their words reorganized by others (and how objective are these flashbacks? Totally, because they come not from the characters' heads but from Mankiewicz's, regardless of any evidence to the contrary). His narrative then is more sophisticated than the earliest of novels like Defoe's where polyphony is truly flattened; it more resembles the homogenized polyphony of the laborious Henry James.

This question of voice, which to Mankiewicz is the manner in which individuals assert their independence and their humanity, to say what they are thinking, sparks the most profound challenge of the film, which is to hold and accept someone else's love, authentically. Eve's motivations are never clear, but she seems to have muddled thinking when halfway through the film she tries to seduce Bill: her having taken Margot's place seems to be more erotically important than her own charms, which Bill has dismissed of any value from the moment he meets her. Meanwhile, Margot's arc is the acceptance of the love that Bill offers for her as herself, which is a "junkyard," which is 40 years old, which is a hot mess. She revolves around this issue, ebbs and flows of acceptance and denial, until finally they agree to wed. Bill's love for Margot is profound because it is the means in which Margot can accept herself, and no actress could give a better performance about the ambivalent nature of self-assessment than Bette Davis, the ugliest and most beautiful actress in cinema.

Margot's struggle to accept Bill's love (and understand how he can love her, which might be the same thing as loving herself), besides being her engagement with her own vanity, is engagement with mortality. Men age slowly––Bill will be 32 for twenty years according to Margot's math––but Margot is aware of her inability to play 20 even as she continues to do so, because the love and admiration of the audience is always kept at a distance, regardless of how warm the embrace of the applause is. Yet this is the only love Eve earns and craves, and her sociopathic ambition for it reveals the falsity of all her other relationships in the film, which are founded on unoriginal and hackish attempts at a replication of reality. It is necessary that we don't see Eve's performances––for one, they could never rival the mythos of absence; for another, it is difficult to believe that Eve could truly be as good as she is stated, perhaps she only seems as good because she recycles the very richness of other people's stories, lives, performance (but is this not acting itself?), rather than invent from herself the raw stuff of life. We can reverse engineer this as well: just as Eve gets an Eve of her own at the finale, was perhaps Margot herself an Eve once upon a time? Was she not a young woman lacking in all worldliness building performances out of sob stories and signifiers of Americanism, only to grow old living the parts she played and find herself now too old to play them, desperate to live for real, for once. Where do the boundaries between theatre and life stop and start? For Addison, they are one; his own loneliness is kept in check only by his own unceasing self-love, but for all others, the question remains.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#281 Post by serdar002 » Thu Feb 20, 2020 9:05 am

The Girl in the Red Velvel Swing 1955 - that's a Walter Reisch script, Brackett's contributions must have been minor, since he isn't mentioned in the book on Reisch by the Filmarchiv Austria. And I can think of several actresses who'd have been better than Joan Collins who spoils the film for me, which I like a lot

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knives
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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#282 Post by knives » Thu Feb 20, 2020 12:00 pm

The Lusty Men (Dir. Ray)
Man, I haven't noticed Hayward much before now, but between this and the Wise I have a ton of respect for her now. Her performance here is absolutely amazing working effectively with an empathetic camera that allows her to steal the show. Mitchum is more of a background player her like a sexed up Mephistopheles. This leads to the film having a fascinating female gaze going where we see the men all in relation to the women and through their eyes. When a woman sees them as sexy that's what they are. The women feel disgust and the men look disgusting as a result. In a lot of ways this reminded me of Bigger Than Life and though dealing with a tougher class of people the effect of excitement on the family seems much the same.

We're No Angels (dir. Curtiz)
This follows one of my favorite joke structures so perfectly it has a chance of being my new favorite comedy just for the narrative punchline. The Arrested Development Dead Dove joke is probably the most Internet ready example wherein the punchline is explained to the audience who are lead to believe that expectations will be undermined only for it to turn out, yes, that's a dead dove. This film again and again explains quite politely that these three people are deadly criminals that shouldn't be taken lightly. Resulting from the Christmas setting and habit though reformation seems like a guarantee. That's how Hollywood tells stories after all, but no, a criminal won't repent over nothing and that's hilarious. That's also something that will likely keep this lively on repeat watches.

Pat and Mike (dir. Cukor)
This is so bad as to be entirely ethereal. I'm pretty sure it doesn't even exist any longer. Makes me glad I have only one more of these mediocre Hepburn-Tracy movies left unseen. Aldo Ray's role is fun though.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#283 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 20, 2020 5:13 pm

Silver Lode: Fun western that takes a “wrong man” narrative and makes us stew in one isolated general area, containing the movement of the adventure portions of the film into tight quarters. This is also lobbying for a cynical dismissive judgment of collective groups over consideration of priorities as they abandon a friend based on fear and hiveminded projection. In a way it’s an attempt at an honest account of loyalty to oneself- me and mine- a judgment of the conservative position that here adds fuel to the fire on the persecution of a good man. Another seething Duryea role is always welcome, and although there is a colorful artificiality sewn through the expressionism in the frames, there is a grimy attitude and de-romanticized desperation that bounces back to sustain a strong engagement, along with the stacking of setpieces, pit stops, and fleeting character interactions inherent in the traveling man-on-the-run story, but here functioning as a high stakes game of hide-and-seek as Payne circles around the posse from building to building rotation. Above all else it's a good time with a lot of intelligence spun into its web, and one that packs a brutality in violence when you least expect it, ironically from characters taking shots they don’t usually follow through with threats of in your typical western, which only shows how ridiculous those are and adds layers of sobering risks on top of passive pleasures.

Killer Shark: This on-the-cusp-of-being-a “lost film” from Budd Boetticher is one of the worst I’ve seen. Nothing is interesting or even bearable: no characters no plot no acting- there’s no sense of atmosphere, which should be the first priority on a seafaring adventure, but there’s not even adventure. I honestly don’t know what this film was trying to be. Usually I can say something good about even the worst of films, but this was just horrible.

Athena: A gem hidden among better-known musicals most of which aren't nearly as good, here is a relatively humble genre entry as far as they go- basically an oxymoron. The choreography is mostly quiet but if one focuses their attention on the minute details in the sequences of subtle movements manipulating common spaces, there’s a flood of creativity here, and I thought this may be the film's strongest aspect despite its softness. The music is also terrific, far above average for even the best musicals. To top it all off the characterization and humor is strong, and I found a lot of depth to the chemistry between the leads which helped greatly with investment in the story (itself so silly one must meet the film on its level and welcome its inspiration in taking the eccentric social bubble lovers have to penetrate in these films to detailed new levels). Some glorious setpieces, including the terrific “Never Felt Better” (which immediately catapults onto my all time musical scenes list, and is the best thing Debbie Reynolds has ever done?) add icing on the cake, with situational humor coming out at unexpected moments especially when initiated by the women at the expense of the self-serious men. Highly recommended for musical lovers.

Harikomi (i.e. The Chase; Stakeout): barryconvex wrote this up well, and I really appreciated Nomura’s forced awareness in the pace as well as the acts of sitting without distraction to awaken the characters and us to the realities of the injustices and relativist ethics all around us, that we feel comfortable ignoring with the noise of routine and structure. This extends to society’s gender disparities but also a meditation on right and wrong or good and bad, as the detectives see the grey space in not only their stakeout target but their own complicit actions by way of non-action, rigid worldviews and complacency in their respective lives. The forced humanism contrasts with their ideologies and it makes for an interesting ethical play outside of excellent filmmaking, that balances perspective and angles to allow the audience intimacy and subjective alliance and participation while remaining ultimately objective in our clearance to each space (including inside a thinking mind of one observer, just after spending ten minutes on an intimate couple's conversation!), which only increases that sense of contextual relativism and illumination of perspective as necessary to assign true judgment outside of law or social mores.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#284 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 27, 2020 9:37 pm

knives wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 12:00 pm
We're No Angels (dir. Curtiz)
This follows one of my favorite joke structures so perfectly it has a chance of being my new favorite comedy just for the narrative punchline. The Arrested Development Dead Dove joke is probably the most Internet ready example wherein the punchline is explained to the audience who are lead to believe that expectations will be undermined only for it to turn out, yes, that's a dead dove. This film again and again explains quite politely that these three people are deadly criminals that shouldn't be taken lightly. Resulting from the Christmas setting and habit though reformation seems like a guarantee. That's how Hollywood tells stories after all, but no, a criminal won't repent over nothing and that's hilarious. That's also something that will likely keep this lively on repeat watches.
I wasn’t so sure about this one for the first part until the joke’s development was exposed and all pieces clicked into place. The rest repeated this idea in more creative ways to use the darkly comic premise than I’d imagine possible. What elevates it beyond a witty black comedy is the dynamic between three great performances from different personalities that all embody the same idea of a personality. Their differences each lend a novel spice to the gags all under the umbrella of nonchalant attitudes, and the interplay is hysterically deadpan, especially Peter Ustinov who has some long-gestated moments one of which you can see Bogart barely able to fight back laughter. The other layer is how they dip their toes into attempting to engage in appropriate social skills but from a sociopathic place of practicality rather than emotionality. The notion that one can be right and recognized as such while being rooted in complete insanity and moral as well as social deficits is just icing on the cake as they try to integrate in their milieu. Honestly this kind of film has been tried many times and usually comes up mediocre but I agree that when done right it’s just a comedy goldmine, and this is a smart well written and acted romp with a lot of praise for Curtiz for making all the wild parts fit together so perfectly.

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knives
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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#285 Post by knives » Thu Feb 27, 2020 10:51 pm

I wonder how much of the structural flim flam you noticed comes from this being an open adaptation with all the scenes not in the story being written for the movie. Certainly that is the cause of that code friendly ending which is otherwise out of character for the film.

Also, yeah, Ustinov and his wife stories are the film's performative highlight.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#286 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 27, 2020 11:11 pm

The code friendly ending is perfect though because you know it’s coming and they found a way to appease the censors by
SpoilerShow
allowing the criminals to not only have agency over their fates but choose prison nonchalantly with a shrug over the society we viewers live in. Part of the strong impact of the film is that these three guys are antisocial psychopaths and yet their perceptions of events yield worthwhile insight, so the commentary that prison and our “free” culture aren’t different enough to prefer one over the other is one of the biggest middle fingers to the Code I can think of, plus they get to have their cake and eat it too- murder and picking where they go fully in step with their wills. They let us have our world, because they don’t want it!

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#287 Post by knives » Fri Feb 28, 2020 6:41 am

I like that interpretation enough to steal it.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#288 Post by knives » Sat Feb 29, 2020 11:59 pm

Stranger on the Prowl (dir. Losey)
Losey in his first European movie lacks the confidence to do his own thing so instead presents a De Sica knock-off complete with a cute kid (though the biggest comparison before it becomes a noir that I was thinking of was La Strada). The big difference is the presence of Paul Muni ensuring the genre elements take hold over the social elements. That helps it to become a fascinating proof on neorealist philosophy highlighting the truth and nonsense to it. As a film itself it's a good watch. Short enough to never become unwelcome and filled with enough characters to leave just about anyone with a perspective they want more of.

The Men (dir. Zinnemann)
What an incredibly stupid film. This is terrible in a fashion that could only be associated with Stanley Kramer. I feel less a person for having seen this garbage. The premise is great and had been with variants on it being made into great cinema throughout this period. You have Bright Victory and Pride of the Marines showing this new lost generation through blindness and of course there's that greatest of films The Best Days of Our Lives which in casting this aspires to. To tackle the topic with the difference in perspective quadriplegia presents should make for great cinema. Instead the film talks down to its characters and audience alike leaving Brando and his group a bunch of children. Even the one character that you would expect to break through such nonsense, the self appointed human rights advocate, talks about how life after paralysis means no women. It's maddening in the grossest sort of way.

I appreciate in this era there was still a lot of ignorance about disability out there and this is merely a reflection of that era. So what though? As those other examples above show there was no excuse for this sort of paternalism in 1950 especially when this film pretends to care and pretends to be teaching people a lesson in empathy. It really can't be said enough: there's no worse filmmaker than Stanley Kramer even when he exists at the distance as a producer.

The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (dir. Rowland)
Dr. Seuss' war on Dick and Jane continues with a lively if totally kitsch film whose loss of identity is part of the fun. I wouldn't argue that this works entirely because there seems to be a lot of unease with how to transfer Seuss to live action. If only Chuck Jones could have been given the keys to the kingdom, but I guess the world needed to wait for The Phantom Tollbooth to get a Jones feature length Seuss.

Back to complimenting the film though, despite its problems it does paint a compelling portrait of youth with Tommy Rettig looking like a Seuss character while also having a sort or ironic air to his performance which works really well in selling this as an anti-suburbia fantasy. Looking up on the film's history it sounds like originally it had more of that before Stanley Kramer had to take a dump on the fun. Some things naturally shine through though such as Hans Conreid's amazing Basil Rathbone impression perfectly representing '50s petty oppression. If just a bit more of that survived the process perhaps this would be a great film rather than only an interesting one.

Bellissima (dir. Visconti)
This is not what I was sold on. Rather than the out of character satire Visconti presents a de Sica inspired melodrama of the lower class' attempt to rise up through the system. It really is the feminine mirror to The Bicycle Thieves and like that film while I admire elements of the movie overall it rings as merely okay to me. Magnani, who I have never caught the appeal of is at least well cast as a stage mother who has no conception of what she's staging. As a performance it works mostly thanks to being tailored to Magnani's strengths and allowing her to simmer in frustration with an unearned assurance.

That hits on the main thing I like about this style of Italian films which is that they desired to show the need for empathy even for unsympathetic protagonists. Visconti's love of classical story telling has him fail to commit entirely as Magnani's main character trait is a benign ignorance rather than being actually noxious. Her being overwhelmed is relatable in a way that provides for an excuse for sympathy for the audience. Her situation becomes minor to her emotion. That's not a bad tactic especially as the film firmly sets itself in the melodramatic mode, but it also limits the movie's complexity. It also won't scare anyone from the prejudice that Italian cinema is just a bunch of people incoherently screaming at each other.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#289 Post by barryconvex » Sat Mar 07, 2020 3:00 am

The Goddess (John Cromwell 1950)

One of the greatest damaged woman films ever made, with an unbelievable lead performance from Kim Stanley as Emily Ann Faulkner / Rita Shawn and a lock for the upper echelons of my list. Made by the same man responsible for the great women in prison film Caged, it's clear Cromwell understood the female mind in a way few of his contemporaries did. His film is equally adept at exploring the male psyche as well, and contains one of the best portrayals of an alcoholic on film- by Steven Hill as the son of a famous actor- and probably the best work I've ever seen (although I admit it's a horribly limited sample size) by Lloyd Bridges as a retired boxer unsure of what to do with the rest of his life. They play Rita's first two husbands and for differing reasons, neither man fully understands her or is capable of giving her what she needs most but Bridges' attempts to mold her into something resembling the traditional American housewife show the movie is at its most astute and heartbreaking. Bridges' character, Dutch, isn't just incapable of giving, he's utterly clueless about the woman sleeping next to him, if not all women in general, who he seems to think are kept around mostly for sexual purposes. He's not an inherently bad man, he's just representative of the status quo of 50s white American male and a lot of women from that era would've been happy to have him for a husband, but he's blinded by Rita's star power and makes matters worse for himself by mistaking her for a malleable and naive young gamine. Her level of psychic damage is beyond his experience and he'll end up paying dearly for his error in judgment.

It's Stanley's movie though as we watch her character's life story split into three sections- youth, early adulthood and worldwide stardom. The tale of the beautiful person who seemingly has the world on a string but in reality has nothing has been told before but it's shown here with such remarkable candor and black cynicism that any thoughts of companion films left early on. One scene with the oily Hollywood producer left me squirming. He's ready to sign off on Rita's entire career but first she has to meet him at his house for dinner. She knows what's going to happen at that "dinner" but holds onto a sliver of hope when she weakly asks him, "Is it formal or should I dress casually?" He replies,"What does it matter?" I'll leave it to better minds to diagnose Rita's core issues but her problems start with a lack of affection from her mother, something she'll never outrun and a void which she continuously tries to fill with men, and alcohol/drugs and finally, God.

Did I mention Kim Stanley is brilliant? She was great in Seance On A Wet Afternoon too but this is a much deeper and far more demanding part, a once in a lifetime type role and she nails it. I don't want to say much more about it as I'm not certain how many here have had a chance to watch it but suffice to say that everything here works beautifully.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#290 Post by domino harvey » Sat Mar 07, 2020 4:14 am

Sorry, I’ve seen and hate that one. The worst tendencies of Method Acting run amok. At least we agree on Caged! Apart from this, Lloyd Bridges is a limited but pleasant enough actor, and he’s in my two favorite low budget westerns of the decade, the Tall Texan and Little Big Horn, if you’re looking to see more of his work for this project (though Method pix they ain’t)

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#291 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Mar 07, 2020 12:23 pm

It's 1958, not '50, right? I'm in the middle of you two. Not fully satisfying, but I did also think Stanley's performance was terrific, and liked the docu-realism photography.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#292 Post by domino harvey » Sat Mar 07, 2020 4:56 pm

Yep!

I obviously gave up writing up my 50s viewings after the first wave, but I do want to give a shout out to a wonderfully scuzzy noir I just watched, Female Jungle (Bruno VeSota 1955), which is just glorious gutter trash of the best kind. Lawrence Tierney's police sergeant goes on a bender the same night a movie starlet is killed and he starts to suspect his blackout may be tied to her murder. The film is amateurish in a striking way that is often unsettling: everything's too dark and shadowy (even for this genre), dialogue and events sometimes overlap in unexpected ways (the phone call scene with Jayne Mansfield while Tierney is in her room is inadvertently brilliant), the emotions are un-tethered and often punctuated with intrusive close-ups and angles more befitting a horror movie (and one could argue that narratively this film is as much an early slasher precursor as it is a late period noir), &c. This is pretty much a best case scenario for a fourth or fifth-string independent noir production. Plus, you get John Carradine looking dapper as hell as the film's Waldo Lydecker:

Image

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#293 Post by knives » Sun Mar 08, 2020 6:16 pm

The Trouble with Harry (dir. Hitchcock)
his is the last of Hitchcock's American films for me to see and it's a great sort of close. It isn't one of his most amazing films, but it is one of his most entertaining and hilarious. Edmond Gwenn's performance as a sad sack who thinks he's committed murder has a Malvolio type flavour to him. The whole film expands from that point with the central joke being worthy of Kaurismaki as people just accept this corpse like they would a pet dog.

The Savage Innocents (dir. Ray)
On the one hand it is a disappointing statement on the evolution of ethnic relations that this film required face acting whereas its '30s predecessor had an all Inuit cast. On the other hand Ray clearly sees this as essentially a fantasy film so worrying about reality seems very besides the point. On the whole this is the film that really highlights the connection between Ray and von Sternberg, who Ray served as a replacement for on Macao, as this plays with a lot of the sexual energy in the same way that defined von Sternberg's last film. This is a hedonistic ode to love and happiness naturally ruined by the real world (I imagine some would call the film anti-modern, but it seems to me to be going even further by rejecting reality on the whole). The scene with the missionary with its creepy, predatory feel is probably the apex of this in more than one way. The film also gets surprisingly avant garde such as a scene where Quinn becomes a seal in order to hunt.

Teacher's Pet (dir. Seaton)
This is fairly kneecapped at the start as I really don't like that screwball plot of deceit leading to love. It's gross at best. At times the movie, especially with its January-December romance, is terribly uncomfortable for me which greatly limited my enjoyment. That said the movie does do impressive work on defeating the plot device and producing a genuinely funny and interesting film. The main benefit working in the film's favour is that Day's professor is basically correct throughout the film. She's hardworking, honest, and shows ideas that breed fruit. This helps make it feel less like the film is pulling the wool over her eyes than it is beating down on Gable who slowly has all his virility stolen. The Kanins' script goes out of its way to show both Gable's duplicity as a bad thing and also how he is trapped in it until the end of the show. The movie is at its best when it highlights him as a talented and knowledgeable person who nonetheless could benefit from a more exacting training. This also comes up with a few background details like the contrasting junior reporters.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#294 Post by barryconvex » Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:47 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sat Mar 07, 2020 4:14 am
Sorry, I’ve seen and hate that one. The worst tendencies of Method Acting run amok. At least we agree on Caged! Apart from this, Lloyd Bridges is a limited but pleasant enough actor, and he’s in my two favorite low budget westerns of the decade, the Tall Texan and Little Big Horn, if you’re looking to see more of his work for this project (though Method pix they ain’t)
Really? I thought the method school of acting totally redeemed itself here, and I'm not usually a fan of it. Nothing felt excessive and Stanley reached a lot of the same emotional places Brando and James Dean also reached. I know she was as big a proponent of the method as anyone but can't speak for the rest of the cast- are you referring to her acting running amok or others?

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#295 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 10, 2020 8:20 pm

knives wrote:
Sun Mar 08, 2020 6:16 pm
The Trouble with Harry (dir. Hitchcock)
his is the last of Hitchcock's American films for me to see and it's a great sort of close. It isn't one of his most amazing films, but it is one of his most entertaining and hilarious. Edmond Gwenn's performance as a sad sack who thinks he's committed murder has a Malvolio type flavour to him. The whole film expands from that point with the central joke being worthy of Kaurismaki as people just accept this corpse like they would a pet dog.
I hadn’t seen this since childhood and remembered very little so I was surprised to find how funny this was in its dry obliviousness, which likely zoomed over my head as a kid. The Kaurismaki comparison is apt regarding the apathy towards the body as a focal point, though I think the most interesting aspect is how these externally kind people internalize this responsibility as a way to make the situation about them. It’s an ironic egocentrism of self-depreciation while unable to step outside of the idea that one must be the most important person in the story. In some cases it’s almost as if they want to be responsible as a key player, once they are implicated publicly of course - until then they hide away in flight, showing even more true colors. This clashes well with that rural mountain friendliness and shows the self-obsession even in humility. Because the people are so nice and idealize altruistic behavior, they can’t grapple with the notion that they can be glad or ambivalent about a dead person so they turn inward to make sense of it through their own tangible blame, and in the process show their joy and ambivalence, as well as their own selfish tendencies and overall moral flexibility! It’s a psychological joke than doesn’t damn these people as hypocrites as much as declare contradictions and egocentricity as human nature that is not mutually exclusive from empathic warmth, and fits with Hitchcock’s interest in psychology as a pathway to anthropological complexities. The idea may be one that is better in concept for a short than a full feature, but Edmund Gwenn steals enough moments to make this barely hit the 99 minutes without more than a few dull patches.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#296 Post by knives » Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:18 pm

I think it's also interesting as an excuse to allow Hitchcock to let his English hang out. It's probably the most old country of any of his American films.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#297 Post by domino harvey » Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:19 pm

No wonder I don't like it!

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#298 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:41 pm

To be fair I think the ideas are more interesting than their execution, and it’s definitely uneven enough not to be considered highly- I had just remembered it as godawful so anything more than that was destined to impress! Aside from Gwenn’s scenes, especially the routine around the burial, Mildred Natwick‘s disclosure as she makes the quick transition from playing dumb to taking credit as a kind of pleasure foreign to even herself is just terrific though and basically makes the movie for me.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#299 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Wed Mar 25, 2020 11:49 am

I enjoyed these three Antonio Pietrangeli comedies currently on Prime. The liveliness in their depiction of the mysteries of human behavior fit the bill in distracting from the dismal news.

The Bachelor (1955) features a terrific comic performance by Alberto Sordi who plays a thirty-something confirmed bachelor who is finally persuaded by family and friends that he needs to marry but is completely unprepared in how to make the right choice.

It Happened in Rome (1957) is a breezy travelogue in summertime Italy (including Venice) following the exploits of three young women hitchhiking and meeting men of all sorts. These include Vittorio de Sica, Gabriele Ferzetti and Sordi. Pietrangeli’s first color movie in need of restoration and not shown in the proper aspect ratio, still eminently watchable, not least for the presence of Isabelle Corey who played the memorable teenage femme fatale in Melville’s Bob the Gambler. Look for a brief appearance by Dario Fo as a museum tour guide.

In March’s Child(1958) Jacqueline Sassard is top-billed with Gabriele Ferzetti in an emotional study of a mis-matched (by age and temperament) married couple. You might recall Sassard from Chabrol’s Le Biches and Losey’s Accident where she is used more or less as a mannequin. Here she is a non-stop chatterbox playing a spoiled brat who can’t seem to figure out how to be happy. The poignancy is that the much older Ferzetti can’t seem to stop loving her despite all.

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Re: The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#300 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:19 pm

I revisited To Catch a Thief a few weeks ago (I think right around mid-March when the virus-fear exploded here) as one of my go-to compulsively watchable comfort films, and I'm continuously struck by how it retains this magical power in the face of what should be flaws, all of which are reframed as strengths. I've always found the ending to be underwhelming, though it plays well as a calmer middle version of similar, more tense, cliff-threat endings in several other Hitchcocks before and after! The entire film is one of tranquility, and this is the exceptional attribute that is so tonally consistent throughout to the point where a lack of flooding suspense isn't a problem so much as it is in step with the suave confidence of Grant's Bond-like winner. So it all comes down to the journey through the spectacle, where suspense can be soothing, perhaps a paradox in other hands but not with a master like Hitchcock at the helm. Drawn out setpieces like the silent costume party are glorious because they carry with them their own sense of mystery and tension but feelings that are elegant and consoling. There are fewer scenes as visually striking as Kelly's white dress juxtaposed with the darkness of the room and night's sky. This is simply a very pleasant, uplifting, and comforting film, intriguing and delightful every step of the way. I may watch it another time or two before list submissions but it'll be placing quite high for me, even in the context of at least four others that will be making my list.

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