Tag: top fifty films of the 40s

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

Dan Seeger

#31 — Edge of Darkness (Lewis Milestone, 1943) Sometimes the quality that really distinguishes a film is commitment. The bigger the concepts and the more intense the conflicts within the film, the more tempting it is to default to the counterbalance of restraint. Edge of Darkness takes the opposite tack, heartily embracing its own heightened emotions with a acceptance of the natural floridness of the tale. Trafficking in the fervid narrative grammar of wartime propaganda, director Lewis Milestone’s film ratchets up the tension at every opportunity, at times threatening to push the material into a sort of perversely grounded fever dream. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-One

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

Dan Seeger

#32 — Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) Alfred Hitchcock had an abundance of theses he kept circling around to during his career, a natural outcome of his prolific nature and usual ability to take his pick of projects. That’s a significant part of the reason cineastes tend to flip over Vertigo: it’s the one instance in which the master filmmaker took a swing at the piñata of his creative psyche and every laced candy came tumbling out. Part of the fun of examining the best films of Hitchcock’s career, then, is considering precisely where they fit into the puzzle of his … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Two

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

Dan Seeger

#33 — The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) Though The Big Sleep would never be considered experimental enough to suggest that it’s deliberating courting an antinarrative approach, it does oddly wind up making its own accidental argument about the invalidity of sanctifying cogent storytelling. Stories about the convoluted plot of the film flummoxing practically everyone involved are legendary. Based on a Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, the film had three formidable writers credited on the screenplay: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman. Additionally, with Howard Hawks in the director’s chair, The Big Sleep boasted one of the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Three

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

Dan Seeger

#34 — His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940) According to Hollywood lore, the simple and brilliant notion that changed His Girl Friday from a straight adaptation of the play The Front Page, which had been filmed within the preceding decade, was hit upon largely by accident. Howard Hawks had his female secretary read the lines of male character Hildy Johnson while auditioning actors to play the other lead, Walter Burns. Something about the back-and-forth made Hawks realize that the film could be bolstered by carrying that gender switch into the production proper, which also opened up the possibility of incorporating a fractious … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Four

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

Dan Seeger

#35 — All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen, 1949) Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men was first published in 1946, just a few years after he left a teaching post at Louisiana State University. Warren openly acknowledged the heavy influence his time in the Bayou State had on his best-known novel. Willie Stark, the central character of the book, was inspired by Huey Long, the famed and infamous governor and senator from Louisiana who was known for the power he wielded and the astonishing levels of corruption that ran through his career. The totality of the United States … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Five

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

Dan Seeger

#36 — Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Surges, 1944) It was Sandy Sturges, the wife of Preston Sturges, who offered the ideal summation of the writer-director’s approach to tugging his own brand of creativity through the many graters of oversight required during his time in Hollywood. She offered, “What Preston said he did was: ‘Obey strictly the letter of the law…and totally ignore the spirit.’” Sturges had plenty of overseers whose strictures he chose to evade. Not only was he confined by the so-called Hays Code and the constantly voiced dismay of his studio bosses (after leaving Paramount Pictures, Sturges maintained, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Six

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

Dan Seeger

#37 — Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942) Lots of films have indelible images, those visual moments that don’t just endure in the memory but are so closely, solidly associated with a single work of art that any approximation that follows, no matter how tangential of glancing, automatically stirs comparison. There is no way, for example, for a horror film director to set a smart, evocative scene at an indoor swimming pool without calling to mind Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, at least for a certain breed of film fan. (Those who think the horror genre started with Friday the 13th likely escape this … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Seven

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

Dan Seeger

#38 — Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) Rebecca holds a unique place in Oscar lore as the sole Alfred Hitchcock film to nab the Best Picture trophy (or Outstanding Production, as it was still called at the time). The famously unrewarded filmmaker lost out to John Ford (for The Grapes of Wrath) the second of four Best Director awards Ford collected in his career. Of course, naming Rebecca Best Picture without similarly honoring Hitchcock is patently absurd, given the director’s always distinctive stamp characterized by a nearly unparalleled skill at the interlocking of the mechanics of narrative with a striking visual sense (to be … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Eight

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

Dan Seeger

#39 — Without Love (Harold S. Bucquet, 1945) Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy made nine films together. It is without a doubt one of the great screen partnerships in American film history, practically defining what that elusive quality chemistry looks like for every generation to follow. Of course, there was an off-screen pairing between the two of them, officially secret but widely known, that added turbo to the fuel, but the real life twinkle of romance does explain everything. It’s entirely possible that the splendid contrasts of their acting styles — she strident, he relaxed, she crisply intelligent, he scruffily … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Nine

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Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty

Dan Seeger

#40 — Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941) For all the huffing and harrumphing that plenty of people resort to when engaged in discussions of the broken state of modern politics (and I include myself in that “plenty”), there’s a sad, corrosive truth at the core of our problems. To borrow a handy bit of phrasing, this dysfunction of our politics isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. That’s perhaps best evidenced by the ways in which the damage decried today as proof of the historic animosity and corruption within the power structure can be found recurring through U.S. history like the clearest … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty