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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zedz
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#651 Post by zedz » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:43 pm

No. So there's another clue: better than Night of the Hunter. Sort of narrows things down rather drastically, doesn't it?

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swo17
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#652 Post by swo17 » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:44 pm

knives wrote:
Siddon wrote: 14 Foreign films
That makes me think this will likely be the last American dominated list at least until the '80s.
Interestingly, ever since I've been doing this (the '30s), films from the U.S. have always comprised very close to 50% of the points and number of films in the total tally. The '50s list so far is no different.

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#653 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 7:46 pm

zedz wrote:No. So there's another clue: better than Night of the Hunter. Sort of narrows things down rather drastically, doesn't it?
To nothing? Actually I'm pretty sure that Night of the Hunter is only my second highest Criterion. Still I could never conceive of a better American horror story. It even has Daffy in it.

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Cold Bishop
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#654 Post by Cold Bishop » Thu Sep 13, 2012 8:21 pm

A few 12th hour hail mary recommendations for the adventurous viewer:

Sous le ciel de Paris and Voici le temps des assassins (Julien Duvivier, 1951/1956) - We may be a long way from the Pepé le Moko, but don't count Duvivier out. Two stone cold classics of French noir. I'm not crazy about femme fatales, so I prefer the former, but these are both essential French films of the decade.

La vérité sur Bébé Donge (Henry Decoin, 1952) - Any icy, severe portrait of marital strife for the francophile who exhausted his decade's ration of Clouzot and Duvivier. Tough stuff from a underrated director who never quite made it to one of the Great Ones. More films like these, and he might have...

The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz, 1950) Curtiz's masterpiece? Garfield's best performance? This social realist film noir adaptation of "To Have and Have Not" is tough, unadorned film-making, culminating in one of the saddest final shots in Hollywood cinema.

711 Ocean Drive (Joseph M. Newman, 1950) - A whirlwind of narrative economy that would make Raoul Walsh proud, this is a miniseries told in 102 minutes. A lowly telephone operator climbs to the top of the L.A. crime racket. A favorite of James Ellroy, this is a b-movie saga that could have taken place on the edges of his L.A. Quartet...

The Halliday Brand (Joseph H. Lewis, 1957) - This was a last-minute entry into my Westerns list, where it fared none too well. Luckily, it has since made its way into the Archive. This Oedipal Western might have been th best thing Lewis did this decade... if IMDb had settled on leaving Gun Crazy a 1949 film.

The Angry Street (Mikio Naruse, 1950) - Naruse does film noir! Perhaps that may sound uncharacteristic (I don't really think it is), but like Ozu before him, he knocks it out of the park. Honestly, it might not be until Pigs and Battleships that a stronger crime film comes out of Japan.

Der Verlorene (Peter Lorre, 1951) - This might not be a Night of the Hunter, but its still an impressive one shot from an actor-turned-director: a fatalistic mix of post-war realism and expressionistic flourishes, this is a noirish thriller with no less an ambition than tackling the weight and guilt of the Holocaust on the German psyche. Certainly, far too ambitious for Lorre's grasp as a director, but the film is worth it just to see Lorre the actor giving a damn again after his exile in Hollywood...

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dustybooks
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#655 Post by dustybooks » Thu Sep 13, 2012 9:58 pm

Though it's in the lower reaches of my list, I'm going to put a quick end-of-the-line word in for Blake Edwards' Operation Petticoat, a film that has a not-undeserved reputation as a flighty and frivolous Cary Grant / Tony Curtis submarine comedy but conceals a strangely pervasive melancholy that I find highly intriguing and affecting. The farcical elements are fairly typical of Edwards, so if you tend to lose patience with him this likely won't have much appeal. But if you like the idea of seeing strange wisps of attempted normalcy in the middle of wartime lives fraught with danger, I can recommend the film as an oddly endearing artifact of its era.

There's one particularly strong sequence in which the entire crew of men and women attempt to have a meal atop the vessel to celebrate the new year, spontaneously and emotionally sing "Auld Lang Syne," then have to abandon it all after an unexpected attack. Edwards' shot of water overtaking their makeshift picnic ephemera is, for me, rather beautiful.

Also, it seems of little value to plug anything of Hitchcock's, since history suggests he'll have little trouble doing well in what was undoubtedly (I feel) his best decade, but if anyone's running short on appreciation for the sometimes neglected Dial M for Murder, a tip: I found myself greatly engrossed in David Bordwell's recent blog post about that film, which got me thinking more about it than I had in some time. (Swo et al. can let me know if linking someone else's work to promote a film isn't kosher here.)

Lastly, I'm an animation nut and must talk up Joy Batchelor and John Halas' Animal Farm a bit, if only because -- while it's been revealed to have existed in part as a result of CIA funding and influence, which casts a pall over it -- it features some of the most effectively eerie and sometimes outright terrifying sequences in animation this side of Pleasure Island in Pinocchio. The Home Vision DVD of the film is exquisite and each time I see it I remember what an effective and harrowing piece of propaganda it really is.

I loved reading this thread and everyone's recommendations, although I didn't get round to as many as I would have liked -- I promise I will do better and contribute more myself next time.
Last edited by dustybooks on Thu Sep 13, 2012 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#656 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 10:05 pm

Animal Farm is humourously enough technically English as that's where the CIA hid most of their funding. In fact I believe it is technically England's first feature length piece of animation.

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dustybooks
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#657 Post by dustybooks » Thu Sep 13, 2012 10:16 pm

knives wrote:Animal Farm is humourously enough technically English as that's where the CIA hid most of their funding. In fact I believe it is technically England's first feature length piece of animation.
Oops, I actually knew that, even. No idea where the "American" tag came from. Thanks, knives!

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#658 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Sep 13, 2012 10:59 pm

Doesn't the animated Animal Farm have a happy ending where the animals keep their hold on the farm, meaning metaphorically where the socialist state remains intact?

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#659 Post by knives » Thu Sep 13, 2012 11:02 pm

The lower animals overthrow their pig tyrants.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#660 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Sep 13, 2012 11:04 pm

Huh. So we have a state with a true Trotsky-style permanent revolution, wherein the ensconced powers are endlessly overthrown by the newly comprised proletariat?

Sounds, uh, like something the CIA would like.

stroszeck
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#661 Post by stroszeck » Thu Sep 13, 2012 11:48 pm

Cold Bishop wrote:Der Verlorene (Peter Lorre, 1951) - This might not be a Night of the Hunter, but its still an impressive one shot from an actor-turned-director: a fatalistic mix of post-war realism and expressionistic flourishes, this is a noirish thriller with no less an ambition than tackling the weight and guilt of the Holocaust on the German psyche. Certainly, far too ambitious for Lorre's grasp as a director, but the film is worth it just to see Lorre the actor giving a damn again after his exile in Hollywood...
I wholeheartedly second Der Verlorene...a films that has seemingly vanished with no trace in America. Although it fell short on my list, it is a truly wonderful piece and worthwhile for any Peter Lorre fan to seek out.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#662 Post by matrixschmatrix » Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:38 am

Flying Leathernecks

A bunch of dumb macho bullshit, intercut with more stock footage than an Ed Wood movie. Seriously, there's absolutely nothing within this movie to indicate 'directed by Nick Ray', and it doesn't even have the verve that people like Ford brought to dumb macho bullshit. I'd get rid of the disc if it didn't have They Were Expendable on the other side.

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#663 Post by knives » Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:42 am

It's important to remember that it isn't really a Ray film in the typical sense as Hughes had just saved Ray's career from blacklisting and as a favour did several jobs for Hughes this being the only full film and one in which Ray had no creative input.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#664 Post by matrixschmatrix » Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:49 am

Yeah, I'm not going to hold it against Ray or anything, nor would I really even if this were his baby that he scrimped and saved to make. I watched it out of curiosity, as I generally can't stand John Wayne WWII movies, and I was curious as to how Nick Ray would alter the formula- as it turns out, not at all. Which makes sense, if this was a pure work for hire movie for him.

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knives
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#665 Post by knives » Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:54 am

If you want to see his take on the genre that is closer to what you'd expect out of him I highly recommend Bitter Victory which is a tough upset sort of film. It gets a little Antonioni-esque in its themes of alienation and civilization if that rocks your boat.

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TMDaines
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#666 Post by TMDaines » Fri Sep 14, 2012 2:40 am

Mike_S wrote:
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.
It's neither good or bad. On one hand, you shouldn't vote for films solely to be contrarian and if you have a lot of orphans, then perhaps you haven't done enough to persuade others to watch them. On the other hand, however, the fact that any particular film may only receive your vote, should never stand against that film receiving that vote.

If your list represents your favourite/best/greatest 50 films of the decade at any given moment then it can't be a bad list. This is completely subjective after all!

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#667 Post by matrixschmatrix » Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:30 am

knives wrote:If you want to see his take on the genre that is closer to what you'd expect out of him I highly recommend Bitter Victory which is a tough upset sort of film. It gets a little Antonioni-esque in its themes of alienation and civilization if that rocks your boat.
I decided to go even more 180 degrees

The Burmese Harp

and my God, it's hard to imagine a better anodyne for a jingoistic American WWII movie- not simply because it's from the Japanese perspective, nor because it's anti-war, but because it focuses so thoroughly on soldiers as people, and has no interest in them at all as killing machines. Even before we know the war is over, it's a movie where any scene of potential combat is one in which you hope that nobody gets hurt, rather than that one side or the other wins, and the moment in which the Japanese soldiers' song is joined by the British soldiers singing is so gorgeous that any other movie could easy have gone out on it- here, though, it's a moment of transcendent humanity that's only the beginning.

The movie is not at all shy about the brutality of combat, or the self destructive stupidity that fuels it- I think seeing the soldiers whom he cannot persuade to surrender die pointlessly is the beginning of Mizushima's transformation, long before the piles of bodies begin to take over his imagination. The Burmese Harp is a movie at the intersection of humanity at it's sweetest- and nearly everyone, the Japanese, the British, and the Burmese all get to be defined primarily by their moments of grace and decency- and the ugliest things imaginable, and it manages to resolve the conflict without ever feeling as though it's trying to justify the horrors. I don't know, it's very late and I'm tired and I'm not expressing myself well, but I think it may be the perfect War is Over movie- nobody needs to kill anybody, but there's work to be done.

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swo17
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#668 Post by swo17 » Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:14 pm

TMDaines wrote:
Mike_S wrote: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.
It's neither good or bad. On one hand, you shouldn't vote for films solely to be contrarian and if you have a lot of orphans, then perhaps you haven't done enough to persuade others to watch them. On the other hand, however, the fact that any particular film may only receive your vote, should never stand against that film receiving that vote.

If your list represents your favourite/best/greatest 50 films of the decade at any given moment then it can't be a bad list. This is completely subjective after all!
I agree with most of this, but I must say that I'm not sure it's possible to "vote for a film solely to be contrarian," or for that matter, to "vote strategically." Sure, it's easy to look at someone else's list and think that that's what motivated some of their choices, but speaking just for myself, I wouldn't even know how to begin constructing a list this way. I may have some opinions that are contrary to popular opinion, but they're still valid opinions. If I put something really high on my list that no one else likes or knows about, that will naturally call attention to it. Why would I do this unless I genuinely wanted to call attention to it? If I leave a film off because it's really popular/already widely celebrated, why would I do this unless I wasn't that enthused about the film to begin with? By definition, if you put something at #1 on your list, it's because you either legitimately believe it to be the best/greatest/your favorite, or because you want it to receive the most votes, which implies that you favor it above all other films and so it is ipso facto your favorite. Same goes for anything else that makes your list or doesn't--listing it wherever you do is evidence that you like it about that much, and not listing it is evidence that you either don't like it, or don't like it as much as the ones that you did list. Unless you're suggesting that people are including films on their lists that they don't actually like, just to be different. But again, why would anyone do this? On the contrary, I think most people will tell you that it was brutal to have to pick only 50 films, and that there are any number of beloved films that it pained them to have to leave off.

Even people who impose rules on themselves (like no more than one film per director, which I personally could never live by) are implicitly saying that they value diversity more than they value their second favorite film by a particular director, and so their list is still a valid illustration of their opinion.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#669 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Sep 14, 2012 2:56 pm

matrix -- love your write-up of Burmese Harp. I think you are right on target. The film's success is especially impressive when one considers the source book was quite problematic.

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TMDaines
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#670 Post by TMDaines » Fri Sep 14, 2012 5:23 pm

swo17 wrote:
TMDaines wrote:
Mike_S wrote: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.
It's neither good or bad. On one hand, you shouldn't vote for films solely to be contrarian and if you have a lot of orphans, then perhaps you haven't done enough to persuade others to watch them. On the other hand, however, the fact that any particular film may only receive your vote, should never stand against that film receiving that vote.

If your list represents your favourite/best/greatest 50 films of the decade at any given moment then it can't be a bad list. This is completely subjective after all!
I agree with most of this, but I must say that I'm not sure it's possible to "vote for a film solely to be contrarian," or for that matter, to "vote strategically." Sure, it's easy to look at someone else's list and think that that's what motivated some of their choices, but speaking just for myself, I wouldn't even know how to begin constructing a list this way. I may have some opinions that are contrary to popular opinion, but they're still valid opinions. If I put something really high on my list that no one else likes or knows about, that will naturally call attention to it. Why would I do this unless I genuinely wanted to call attention to it? If I leave a film off because it's really popular/already widely celebrated, why would I do this unless I wasn't that enthused about the film to begin with? By definition, if you put something at #1 on your list, it's because you either legitimately believe it to be the best/greatest/your favorite, or because you want it to receive the most votes, which implies that you favor it above all other films and so it is ipso facto your favorite. Same goes for anything else that makes your list or doesn't--listing it wherever you do is evidence that you like it about that much, and not listing it is evidence that you either don't like it, or don't like it as much as the ones that you did list. Unless you're suggesting that people are including films on their lists that they don't actually like, just to be different. But again, why would anyone do this? On the contrary, I think most people will tell you that it was brutal to have to pick only 50 films, and that there are any number of beloved films that it pained them to have to leave off.

Even people who impose rules on themselves (like no more than one film per director, which I personally could never live by) are implicitly saying that they value diversity more than they value their second favorite film by a particular director, and so their list is still a valid illustration of their opinion.
In this particular case, I just meant that as long as you're not trolling, then vote for it. If you genuinely love a film, then vote for it. I didn't expect this chap to be putting films he hates, I was merely being hypothetical in answering his question.

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YnEoS
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#671 Post by YnEoS » Fri Sep 14, 2012 11:15 pm

On "strategic voting":

I don't think anyone would strategically vote against their tastes. But if one of your favorite movies is guaranteed to be in the top 10 or so because of its reputation, someone could put it down at #20 or so knowing it will rank highly regardless. Though this makes more sense if you're not concerned with how films rank, but more with which films make the final 100.

Also, votes near the very bottom will have little effect on well known titles. But those vote slots might pushes the 2nd vote that pushes someone else's #1 from an orphan to making the bottom of the list.

Of course all this assumes a "non-strategic" voter who orders their films from favorite to least favorite paying no attention to how the points will play out.

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swo17
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#672 Post by swo17 » Fri Sep 14, 2012 11:58 pm

I guess I would argue that the very act of moving what might have been your #1 down to #20 indicates that on some level it was never really your favorite. You don't Sophie's Choice your actual favorite just because you guess it might do alright on its own. And besides, what good would that do--add one point to each of 19 films? That's not going to make a discernible difference for any of them.

This is all of course far less interesting than talking about movies. Sorry for the distraction.

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domino harvey
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#673 Post by domino harvey » Sat Sep 15, 2012 12:39 am

I've come to accept that a majority of the films I cherish will not connect with enough fellow members to make anything approaching the consensus needed to make the list. So I vote for what I like, trying to make sure the spectrum of my tastes and the filmic achievements which mattered most to me within each list's perimeters are represented. If some of those titles end up making the list, well, great, but as has been said over and over, the list is but a curiosity, a blip-- It's the viewings and discussion beforehand where the interest lies

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#674 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sat Sep 15, 2012 2:59 am

Bitter Victory

Phew, knives wasn't wrong about this one- though in a funny way, it's as much what you'd expect from a Richard Burton war movie as Flying Leathernecks is what you'd expect from a John Wayne one. There's something fascinatingly perverse, though, about using glorious 2.35 widescreen photography in the most wide open landscape possible to tell a story this interior, as what develops could (after the first half hour so) be a sort of existentialist chamber drama- it's a question of whether or not a man can live with the knowledge of his weakness, and whether that same weakness will prevent him doing anything about it.

In some ways, it's a pretty standard narrative of bad leadership- cowardly, incompetent company man is outshone by the man who actually knows what he's doing, whom the company man must then betray. It's not too far from the sort of thing you might see on an episode of M*A*S*H, with Frank Burns as the major, though it goes further than a TV show generally could. There's an intensity to it, though, the sort of thing that Nick Ray managed to do in nearly everything of his I've seen, that makes it feel like the most important thing in the world while you're watching it- and Burton is really excellent at reflecting that intensity, for all that he's relatively constrained here.

I think the key to the movie, for me, is that the viewpoint character isn't Burton- the Byronic, romantic, soulful, competent, and dashing hero- it's the major, the cowardly, jealous, untrustworthy man who cannot bear Burton because Burton is a walking embodiment of the man he ought to be. It's the major we end the movie on, it's his defeat in the midst of victory that gives the movie its title, and it's he who is made for the world- and what leavening of sweetness in the overwhelming bitterness of the film comes from the hint that the major is at least no longer so certain of himself, and has come fully to accept the lesson in his own cowardice and weakness that Burton taught. There's hope, maybe, but it's a hope rife with scars, for a life that may not be worth living.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 1950s List Discussion and Suggestions

#675 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:12 am

The Steel Helmet

Fuller's got some special talents- he can make war movies full of rough tough soldiers talking rough tough soldier talk without it devolving into macho horseshit, and he can have A Talk About Racism without it turning into cringe-worthy Stanley Kramersville. This movie makes the most of both of those skills, and while it's not a match for The Big Red One for the former nor for Shock Corridor for the latter, it's a solid, hard hitting movie that never feels like a throwaway cheapie.

I really like Fuller, and the worst movie of his I've seen- which would probably be The Baron of Arizona at the moment- is still solid, entertaining stuff, but none of his work from this decade seemed quite strong enough to make my list, and I'm not entirely certain of why that is. There's a certain sense of studio constraint about a lot of it, a sense that he's playing within the rules- and my favorite of his movies, The Naked Kiss (which will certainly make my next list, and probably fairly high up) feels like the uncut version of what he's like. It's possible I'd be more over the moon about these if I didn't have that comparison in my head.

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