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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-One

Dan Seeger

#21 — Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943) Family is a twisty, tricky thing. For Charlie (Teresa Wright), a cheery teenager in a small California town, the imminent arrival of her uncle, also named Charlie (Joseph Cotten), is cause for rejoicing. The two have an obvious connection through their shared nickname (he’s Charles, she’s Charlotte), but there are hints at other parallels, with director Alfred Hitchcock framing them in similar ways in their respective introductions. The connection is positioned as profound, which of course only serves to make an eventual spiritual betrayal all the more harsh. Shadow of a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-One

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Two

Dan Seeger

#22 — The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) I need to begin with a confession. As might occasionally be the case in a lifelong journey through film, I was initially wrong about The Third Man. First encountering it in a college film class (or, to be more precise, an English class taught by a movie-crazy professor who found a way to wrangle her passion into three credits worth of her teaching load), I found Carol Reed’s lush film noir to be, well, dull. It’s too long ago for me to pinpoint what triggered this reaction, especially when refracted through my later … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Two

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Three

Dan Seeger

#23 — The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges, 1944) My general inclination is to look askance at films that overtly rely on cultural daring to make their impact. This isn’t always true, as the use of variants of “audacious” in any number of rave reviews will testify. Further, that policy softens significantly the earlier a film’s copyright date. There are instances where I can’t help but marvel at the material that was slipped past Hollywood’s strict codes. I’d like to think that my critical acumen remains heightened enough that I can see through the older films that are as hollow as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Three

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From the Archive: City Slickers

Dan Seeger

In picking old reviews that feel appropriate for unearthing in the warmer months, I’ve pulled twice previously from the edition of The Reel Thing, our bygone radio program, that looked back on the top-grossing films of summer 1991. So why not go ahead and complete the excavation of my portion of that particular show. City Slickers finished in the third position on the particular chart. It is with renewed amazement that I look at the numbers noted here, specifically that there were only three movies to cross the $100 million threshold that summer. Now if we have a summer in which only … Continue reading From the Archive: City Slickers

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Four

Dan Seeger

#24 — The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946) Some actors get it right from the very beginning. They find their onscreen persona, the approach to character that will run like a throbbing nerve through their entire career, unifying every role they play, no matter how disparate. To a degree, that can be chalked up to unfortunate pigeonholing, especially in the desperately safe era of the studio system, when constantly reinforcing audience expectations was the smartest strategy. The performer doesn’t land upon something in themselves so much as they’re forced to offer spectral repetition of the first thing they ever did, at … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Four

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Banks, Bergman, Hamilton, Limon, Polanski

Dan Seeger

1971 (Johanna Hamilton, 2014). Clearly positioned as a history lesson for those who venerate Edward Snowden for his digital freedom fighting in bringing to light information about the U.S. government’s shady spying on its own citizens, 1971 focuses in on a break-in at a Pennsylvania FBI office in the year of the title. Those who are shocked by the modern transgressions against privacy can watch this documentary for a bracing reminder that federal crime-fighting agencies are in full-scale same-as-it-ever-was territory, Patriot Act or not. Of course, that doesn’t make current abuses acceptable, but the indignation is best shaped as part of … Continue reading Banks, Bergman, Hamilton, Limon, Polanski

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From the Archive: After Dark, My Sweet

Dan Seeger

This is a review from early in the run of The Reel Thing, the 90FM movie review show that was conceived twenty-five years ago this summer. (Twenty-five years! Oy!) Plying our critical trade in dinky Stevens Point, Wisconsin made it difficult to fill a weekly, hour-long show with only releases that made it to one of our nine screens. So there were periodic jaunts to the metropolis of Madison to watch and then review films that were probably never going to land in our little burg. This episode this review was drawn from was heavy with those out-of-town titles. Besides … Continue reading From the Archive: After Dark, My Sweet

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Don’t tread on an ant, he’s done nothing to you, there might come a day when he’s treading on you

Dan Seeger

By now, I think I’m largely over the shock over exactly which characters from their vast library of costumed, super-powered heroes and villains Marvel manages to turn into legitimate big screen figures. Deprived of cornerstone heroes Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men, all licensed out before the long-time comic book publisher decided they could do movies on their own, Marvel boldly committed themselves to the next tier down, convinced that the multiplex wasn’t all the different from the spinner rack of old. The individual heroes weren’t as important as the perceived stamp of quality that came from having the word … Continue reading Don’t tread on an ant, he’s done nothing to you, there might come a day when he’s treading on you

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Five

Dan Seeger

#25 — Adam’s Rib (George Cukor, 1949) When considering classic Hollywood cinema, there exists a commonly held, wholly understandable desire to project more modern social belief systems onto certain films, celebrating them for an ahead-of-their-time embrace of, say, greater tolerance or general mindfulness. Fairly often, I suspect this is wishful thinking, an attempt to partially wipe away the decades of lamentable portrayals of, well, really anyone who wasn’t a white male. I love Duck Soup like few other films, but I get woozy with dismay every time I hear Groucho Marx deliver the joke in which “darkies” is a central part of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Five