#41 — Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959) History doesn’t slow down, and it doesn’t pause to give affected observers time to process what has happened. Sometimes art has to rush to keep up. In the process, it can unearth … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the Fifties — Number Forty-One
#42 — High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) Beware the film critic who has stumbled upon a thesis. This isn’t automatically a problem, but it does lead to an overvaluing of certain films over others, sometimes for fairly questionable reasons. For example, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which we will get to before this feature has run its course (although more quickly than most writers about film would consider prudent), has been elevated to the consensus pinnacle among The Master’s works perhaps as much because of how neatly it fits into pre-existing narratives of the his predilections and obsession than of any exhibited … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Two
#43 — Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953) I like to think that Billy Wilder is the only filmmaker — hell, maybe the only creator — who could make a film like Stalag 17 work, but that’s clearly not the case, on the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Three
#44 — Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) “I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” There. I’ve completed one of the necessities of writing a piece of any amount of skill and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Four
#45 — Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956) No matter how many times the comparison is invoked by those trying to distract from the damage wrought by the sport, boxing isn’t poetry. It is instead angry prose slammed into place by harshly struck typewriter keys. The definitive cinematic statement of this truth is and will forever be Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, though there are certainly predecessors to that masterpiece that make the same argument with similarly brutish authority, most notably Somebody Up There Likes Me. Based on the autobiography written by middleweight champion Rocky Graziano (with what was … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Five
#46 — Beat the Devil (John Huston, 1953) Like most people, I suspect, I have a tendency to think of films of the nineteen-fifties–at least Hollywood films of the nineteen-fifties–as fairly staid and safe, lacking the rush of invention and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Six
#47 — The Nun’s Story (Fred Zinnemann, 1959) Given the potential rich complexity of the subject, it’s somewhat surprising that matters of faith aren’t fodder for feature films more often. The operative term in the above sentence is “somewhat,” as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Seven
#48 — Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958) I believe the current consensus is that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is supposed to be viewed as, at best, a compromised adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Eight
#49 — The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) Flying saucers raced across the movie screen with impunity in the early nineteen-fifties. In the first two years alone, there was Flying Disc Man from Mars, The Flying Saucer, The Man from Planet X and The Thing from Another World. That doesn’t even take into account all the movies dependent on more conventional rockets to get eager youngsters into the mayhem of their weekend matinees. Most of these sci-fi offerings (and “sci-fi” seems far more appropriate a term than “science fiction” in this instance) show off their dashed-off, cash-in … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Nine
#50 — Lady and the Tramp (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, 1955) Everything I know about romance I learned from Lady and the Tramp. I’m not sure when I first saw it. Maybe it was during its 1980 … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Fifty
Coffee for Two 