1950s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

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

#626 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:10 am

I'll have to ration my Sirk to probably three, he might still be the most prolific director in my list anyway (with Satyajit Ray probably).

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swo17
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#627 Post by swo17 » Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:06 pm

With 15 lists in now (perhaps half of what we'll end up with), here are some stats:

- 145 films have more than one vote. A film currently needs to have at least 52 points to make the top 100.

- There are presently 227 orphans, so the average list contributor has about 15 (ranging anywhere from 6 to, um, 29). So now's the time to talk up any films you feel might be hurting. And there's no film too big or small to champion. (One film from our last top 10 has yet to receive a single vote!)

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domino harvey
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#628 Post by domino harvey » Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:29 pm

I don't even need to ask if I'm the sap with 29 orphans!

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swo17
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#629 Post by swo17 » Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:38 pm

You actually only have 26!

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#630 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 2:54 pm

I'll be optimistic and assume I've only got the six, but there's a four that I expected to be orphaned from the start.

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the preacher
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#631 Post by the preacher » Thu Sep 13, 2012 3:00 pm

I guess my first (of many) orphan could be Pietro Germi's "Un maledetto imbroglio". What can I say? It's simply the best European murder mystery of the decade.

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swo17
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#632 Post by swo17 » Thu Sep 13, 2012 3:39 pm

Just to be safe, you should all assume that you have 50 orphans and start sending out life rafts.
matrixschmatrix wrote:Night and Fog

Oh my god. There's almost nothing you can say about this movie, it drives you into a corner and makes you weep like a child. Literally, in my case. Part of the power of it is that it refuses to allow the horrors it depicts to be historical, dead, locked away- they're alive, and they're part of us, and I honestly can't deal with looking at that. Thank Christ this movie is half an hour long, if it were 90 minutes I think I'd be dead by the end of it.
You've touched on this a little, but more than just forcing us to confront the horrors of the Holocaust, part of what makes this film great for me is how it examines the distance in time between the commission of an atrocity and the present day, and questions how much we really could have healed from all of this in the meantime. It's part of a natural human coping mechanism to put these things in the backs of our minds and go on with our lives, but one would think that there's also a cumulative effect of having to constantly brush this stuff aside, of knowing that these are all things that we've survived, that we're capable of. Healing can of course eventually occur--gradually, with time--but if you view it as something binary (i.e. healthy vs. ailing, like a Schrödinger's cat scenario) then when do you cross from one side to the other? (For instance, my neighborhood still puts out flags in memory of September 11th, but not for Pearl Harbor Day. At what point is a decision like that made?)

Resnais of course elegantly weaved this same concept into a narrative structure in Hiroshima mon amour. This film initially really rubbed me the wrong way, particularly with its focus on a romance between young lovers in the foreground of one of our greatest global tragedies. But upon reflection (gradually, with time!) I realized that this film is precisely the antidote to something like Titanic. As playfully as you can for this kind of subject matter, Resnais parallels the deterioration of the couple's relationship with the healing from a tragic event that I discussed above, as though that spark that they felt when they first met was the dropping of a bomb, and the remainder of their time together is spent wondering how it ever could have happened, and gradually discovering a gulf of time and space growing between them. Unlike Titanic, they aren't simply there to give the audience something easy to identify with (as though one of the most famous events of the 20th Century needed window dressing to be palatable to the masses). In fact, Resnais' film notably takes place some time after the bombings, allowing the characters a further dimension of reminiscence as they lament both the past tragedy and the loss of their youth.
Last edited by swo17 on Thu Sep 13, 2012 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#633 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Sep 13, 2012 4:10 pm

One of the things that comes up in Hiroshima that's incredibly complex, given the subject matter, is the idea of moving on as the death of a former self- the lead must allow the girl who loved the soldier to die to continue having a life rather than being locked in the past. Which is fine, obviously, and perhaps unremarkable in other contexts, but here we have that idea wedded to the imagery of some of the most horrific forms of death imaginable, combining death as moving on with death as a horror show, a monstrosity from which one must recoil.

I don't think, though, that Resnais is trivializing the deaths in Hiroshima at all- I think the parallel is more in examining how once raw grief becomes eventually changed into a series of symbols, which eventually mutate in meaning and become something totally other. He observes the process with some sadness, I think, and the consciousness of how easily people forget is one of the motivating forces behind Night and Fog, and the equivalence with death is less 'you must let your old self die', though that's true, than a willingness to mourn that which is gone, even if what one is letting go is something painful.

I think putting out flags is an interesting thing to connect here, as it's already the sort of symbolic stage into which Resnais seems to see grief as being processed, yet it's also the immediate connection people made on the day of the trauma.

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domino harvey
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#634 Post by domino harvey » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:00 pm

Some titles I voted for which I haven't mentioned (At least, I don't think):

I never got around to finishing my director guide to Mark Robson but Peyton Place and Trial made my list. Trial is probably the lesser known title, a clever liberal-leaning (!) Communist scare pic that contains the single best performance of the Fifties in Arthur Kennedy's barn-burning trial lawyer. The "Sea of Green" bit alone has more punch and vigor than that found in entire careers of his studio player contemporaries. That he lost the Oscar to Jack Lemmon for Mister Roberts is up there with Joan Fontaine losing to Ginger Rogers. Four of Kennedy's five Oscar nominations came from Mark Robson films, by the way, and that his despicable character in Peyton Place garnered him his final nomination is still surprising given what a lecherous and utterly indefensible character he chillingly portrays. Peyton Place, while cleaned up from its source, is still the best of the Small Town Undercurrent films.

Gidget (Paul Wendkos 1959), available only via TCM or iTunes (?) in its proper 'Scope ratio, is far from the carefree goofy teen comedy it sells itself as. Rather, it's one of the decade's brightest and most keenly-observed treatments of teen sexuality, and the sad state of Men Gidget meets in the film's climax shows us how little things have actually changed for women in society. The Best of Everything (Jean Negulesco 1959) also tackles how women were digested and compartmentalized in the Mad Men era and the film's sexual politics provide the ideal antidote to that series' convoluted approach to misogyny.

From my Noir ballot I've carried over: A Kiss Before Dying, the Blue Gardenia, Caged, Detective Story, Kiss Me Deadly, the Tall Target, Tomorrow is Another Day, and Two of a Kind

From my Westerns ballot I've carried over: Backlash and Man of the West

From my Musicals ballot I've carried over: the Band Wagon, Daddy Long Legs, Hollywood or Bust!, Lili, My Sister Eileen, and Singin' in the Rain

My most represented directors are Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente Minnelli and Nicholas Ray with three films each.

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#635 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:05 pm

I kind of wished you had the time to do the Robson walk through as Peyton Place is one of the best discoveries I had for the decade and I am very ignorant of his post-Lewton work (of which I'm proud to say I've seen all of). It might not be the best film of the decade, but it will probably be the one I think the most of when I think '50s from now on. God I wish these ballots were larger.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#636 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:13 pm

Which Rays, dom? I've got Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger than Life, Johnny Guitar, and In a Lonely Place making my list at the moment, and On Dangerous Ground wound up being a pretty hard cut.
Last edited by matrixschmatrix on Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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domino harvey
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#637 Post by domino harvey » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:16 pm

Bigger Than Life, Born to be Bad, and Rebel Without a Cause

Knives: If only! Certainly I Want You, Bright Victory, the Bridges at Toko-Ri, and the Inn of the Sixth Happiness are among the other list-worthy Robson films from this decade, even if they didn't make my final cut

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#638 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:31 pm

I misread Bright Victory as Bitter Victory. I hope it is as good as that masterpiece. I was actually a little nervous about The Inn of the Sixth Happiness given how most Hollywood films of this topic are. Then again I haven't really had the time to watch all of the films I did manage to collect for this list with still about thirty in the ol' kevyip (though I am still trying to get in at least one a day until the 16th). The same thing happened with Rossen who I only managed to get one film on my list. Though I think They Came to Condura is such a masterpiece, probably my favorite Rossen, that it would force anyone to watch his other nine immediately afterward.

I certainly can't think of a film that goes so far in questioning are value system of other people while ultimately enforcing the broad ideas it is fighting against. The end result should have been very confused as Rossen never seems to take any one position leaving a sort of intellectual emptiness for the audience that I'm still trying to fill up. In a weird way it makes me think of other films even and question how much the heroes are heroes and how much is just them being heroes in the moment with their offscreen lives probably being unforgivable. That's rare in a film to improve other totally unrelated films.
Last edited by knives on Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mike_S
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#639 Post by Mike_S » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:51 pm

Two films I voted for which may not be universally popular are Anthony Asquith's Orders to Kill and Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse.

Asquith's film is one of the best character studies of an assassin that I've ever seen, perhaps not surprising as it was written by the great Paul Dehn who trained agents during the Second World War. It's slightly distanced by the rather quirky central performance by Paul Massie and Eddie Albert is a touch too boisterous but Irene Worth and James Robertson Justice both do their best work on screen. What makes it fascinating is that it's a film about ambiguity and moral compromise in warfare at a time when British cinema was still in love with the national victory of thirteen years before.

There are four Preminger titles on my list but the highest is Bonjour Tristesse for a multitude of reasons but perhaps most of all for the way it uses David Niven's screen image and forces him to give a performance rather than a series of familiar mannerisms. Then there's the stunning cinematography, the ruthless irony and an ambivalent performance from Deborah Kerr.

Looking at my list, certain directors seem to recur but I am not embarrassed to state that my favourite Fritz Lang film of the decade is Clash By Night while I vastly prefer The Magician to The Seventh Seal.

Uncle Otto got the most votes on my list with 4 but 3 each went to Hitchcock, Lang and Minnelli.
Last edited by Mike_S on Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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domino harvey
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#640 Post by domino harvey » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:53 pm

knives wrote:I was actually a little nervous about The Inn of the Sixth Happiness given how most Hollywood films of this topic are.
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is a great example of what makes a Robson film different. He has a healthy fascination with actuality film-making, and his best filmic moments resemble documentaries in their formal approach to the subject being filmed (never more present than in the Bridges at Toko-Ri, wherein he slyly makes one of the great anti-war films by presenting the dramatic events without commentary). So Robson, instead of seeking to inspire the viewer with the plights and tribulations of the figure at the center of the Inn of Sixth Happiness, instead focuses on how utterly fascinating her whole story is. That desire to arrive at some sort of knowledge, of perceived observation yielding insight, is part of what sets the Inn of the Sixth Happiness (and Peyton Place) apart from other prestige pictures of the era.

Preminger is of course one of the all-time greats, but Angel Face was the last film I cut to make it to 50, leaving only Saint Joan for my list. I suspect, however, that your selection will be his highest-ranked film on the final list, as it's perhaps more beloved on the forum than anywhere outside of the Cahiers offices

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#641 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:03 pm

Well you've just sold a copy. Also thanks for summing up what works about The Bridges of Toko-Ri. I liked it at first watch, a feeling which has slowly turned to love, but couldn't really sum up why until just now. The film certainly has it's fair share of hokey war movie-isms, but I think that distance from the material allowing the characters to simply exist within a situation is the real attraction. Things aren't so much the war as the people who compose and die in it. It almost is the tragedy that they must meet under these circumstances.

Mike_S
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#642 Post by Mike_S » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:11 pm

swo17 wrote:With 15 lists in now (perhaps half of what we'll end up with), here are some stats:

- 145 films have more than one vote. A film currently needs to have at least 52 points to make the top 100.

- There are presently 227 orphans, so the average list contributor has about 15 (ranging anywhere from 6 to, um, 29). So now's the time to talk up any films you feel might be hurting. And there's no film too big or small to champion. (One film from our last top 10 has yet to receive a single vote!)
I'm new to this so have to ask - is it bad to have an 'orphan'? I'm fairly sure some of mine will not meet "popular approval", as it were. But on the whole, my list is woefully pedestrian I think.

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#643 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:20 pm

It's not bad to have an orphan, just means you have more stuff to encourage others to see or look at in a new way. An orphan just means that nobody else has voted for the film.

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swo17
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#644 Post by swo17 » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:29 pm

Ideally, if you write in this thread why a film that you suspect is doomed to orphanhood means so much to you, it might convince someone else to consider it for their lists when they wouldn't have otherwise, and perhaps that film will perform better in the final tally as a result. There are many films I've included in my own lists in the past that I wouldn't have watched without someone else's recommendation, or that I reconsidered after someone shared their thoughtful analysis.

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Cold Bishop
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#645 Post by Cold Bishop » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:34 pm

I'm still on the fence whether to slap together a list - I haven't had the time to participate in this at all - but I'd go recording on saying that I'm much more interested in people's orphans than the final top 10.

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zedz
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#646 Post by zedz » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:39 pm

Mike S: Finding out about other people's orphans is for many of us the raison d'etre of this whole process.

I might as well send swo my list now and await my own provisional orphan tally.

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Siddon
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#647 Post by Siddon » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:09 pm

My number #1 is likely an orphan, I think the rest of my top ten will make the cut but I worry about my #1. I'd love to know what my orphan tally is.

Anway's my director breakdown

Ingmar Bergman - 3
Billy Wilder - 3
Alfred Hitchcock - 3
William Castle - 2
Henri-Georges Clouzot - 2
Akira Kurosawa - 2
Stanley Kubrick - 2

23 Criterion Titles made my final fifty,
2 Oscar Winners for Best Picture
10 Best Picture Nominees
5 Director debut films made my list

Horror/Sci-Fi/Thrillers dominated my list, obviously certain titles have some overlap

Horror - 8
Sci-Fi/Fantasy - 8
Thrillers - 19

1 Animated Disney Movie
1 Musical/Comedy
1 Western
3 Comedies
14 Foreign films

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#648 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:15 pm

Siddon wrote: 14 Foreign films
That makes me think this will likely be the last American dominated list at least until the '80s.

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zedz
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#649 Post by zedz » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:37 pm

zedz wrote:I might as well send swo my list now and await my own provisional orphan tally.
Having done so, I am informed that I have 21 orphans. Way too many to fit into a boat and escape an enraged Robert Mitchum, anyway.

I'm shocked to find that my number 1 film is among the orphans, since it's a well-loved, Criterion-endorsed classic, and (obviously) one of the greatest films ever made. Y'all are crazy.

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#650 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:40 pm

If the Mitchum reference is to your numero uno I definitely had that on my list.

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