#21 — Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959) It’s entirely possible — likely, even — that Anatomy of a Murder is far better known for the design work of Saul Bass that shapes the opening titles and the poster … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-One
#22 — On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) It happens occasionally in this process: I come to one of those titles for which my enthusiasm for celebrating its merits without all that much concern for explicating the reasoning for its specific … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Two
#23 — The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952) There was a time when Hollywood was all klieg lights and high glamor, at least in its calculated depictions of self. It was lucrative to preserve the myth of happy creative miracles, dreams captured on celluloid for all to enjoy. By the nineteen-fifties, some cynicism was starting to creep in, and filmmakers allowed that their chosen business had a corrosion at its heart. Some of this was surely attributable to the general social shell shock felt in the post-war years, but I think there’s also the slide of Hollywood itself to … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Three
#24 — Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) Search “Touch of Evil” on Google, and the info box that pops up on the right side of the screen lists its release date as September 11, 1998, even as the synopsis … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Four
#25 — An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951) As far as MGM was concerned, there was an element of risk to letting director Vincente Minnelli team up with Gene Kelly for the musical An American Paris. Though proven commodities, they’d … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Five
#26 — A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951) Elaine Stritch was talking about Marlon Brando once, and Elaine Stritch never minced words. In discussing Brando’s time in class with Stella Adler, studying the fiercely emergent acting strategy formulated by Constantin … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Six
#27 — Diabolique (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953) Well before “spoiler” became a word that loomed almost larger than any other for moviegoers, Diabolique was a film that urged viewers to keep its secrets hidden from those who hadn’t yet bought a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Seven
#28 — From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) Any film from the first part of the nineteen-fifties is going to seem tame when measured against the norms at play some sixty years later, so its advisable to remember that the beach make-out scene in From Here to Eternity became iconic, at least in part, due to its raciness. The various censorious powers-that-been offered a fleet of suggestions as to how to make the moment palatable, from having the two lip-locked lovers demurely stand up to slapping a nice, thick bathrobe across Burt Lancaster’s bank vault torso. There was also … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Eight
#29 — Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) Roman Holiday comfortably coheres to many of the patterns that have dictated Hollywood-crafted romantic comedies for about as long as the moving pictures started to talk. There’s the upstanding man’s man, who may … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Nine
#30 — Shane (George Stevens, 1953) No other film genre inspire hyperbolic statements about deconstructionist subversion like the western. That’s in part because the hefty log pile of westerns from the earliest decades of Hollywood are largely so staid and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty
Coffee for Two 