Tag: top fifty films of the 40s

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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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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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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

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

Dan Seeger

#26 — Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948) At the midpoint of this particular countdown, this is the fourth Howard Hawks film included. It says something significant about the director that each has belonged to a distinctly different genre. Sure, there’s a little bit of film noir blood running through both To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, but the former is a wartime drama and the latter a detective story, the shared pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall making them seem more similar than they really are. The other film covered thus far, His Girl Friday, can make a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Six

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

Dan Seeger

#27 — To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944) Lauren Bacall was nineteen years old when she made her film debut in To Have and Have Not. Famously spotted on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar by Nancy Keith, the wife of director Harold Hawks, Bacall was given the role of Marie Browning. Nicknamed Slim, just like Keith, the character was a singer in a bar, spotted by Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart), the captain of a small chartered fishing boat. More importantly, Slim was designed to provide the formidable match for the film’s leading man. As Hawks explained to Bogart, “You … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Seven

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

Dan Seeger

#28 — Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) It seems Notorious began with a desire on the part of director Alfred Hitchock to cast Ingrid Bergman as a woman involved in deceits and duplicitous machinations at the highest levels. This inkling would have come to him at right around the time Bergman was collecting accolades and a bright, shiny Academy Award for her work in Gaslight and as he was on the cusp of working with the actress on Spellbound, a film similarly preoccupied with the way madness can infiltrate as person’s psyche, including through the manipulations of others. Whether or not Hitchcock … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Eight

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

Dan Seeger

#29 — Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) There is something about film noir during its heyday that bought out the twisty darkness in every filmmaker who waded into its murky depths. While director Otto Preminger had a career that was varied enough to defy easy categorization, I generally think of his works as clean and resolutely open-eyed, utilizing careful craft to tell relatively straightforward stories. Even a great film fringed with darkness like Anatomy of a Murder becomes methodical under Preminger’s guidance, almost anticipating modern procedurals in its keen attention to the simple progression of events, the whirring machinery of a court … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Nine

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty

Dan Seeger

#30 — She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949) One of the pleasures of examining the long swath of Hollywood film history is considering the ways in which the long-lasting masters of the form adapted to the technological changes that came their way. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was not John Ford’s first film in color, but it virtually quivers from the great director’s efforts to construct his film visually with all the possibilities that Technicolor had to offer as the nineteen-forties were drawing to a close. Like few of his contemporaries, Ford used the screen the way a master … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty