1950s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[TMDaines]

Is this disc good? Not too concerned with the quality of the movie at the moment, just want to actually see some German movies this round.

Strange you ask, because, incidentally, I've been about to order this film. I've been able to find absolutely no information about their multiple Die Bruecke releases, so I'm going to take the Edition Deutscher Film version from Grooves Inc.

I noticed there's also a HDTV rip of this film too. A Blu-ray would be nice.

[antnield]

Last year I rented the previous UK edition of The Bridge from Digital Classics - definitely subtitled and it came with this documentary (which was admirably thorough) among the extras. I don't remember there being anything untoward about the transfer, but then I don't recall it being exceptional either.

[TMDaines]

Last year I rented the previous UK edition of The Bridge from Digital Classics - definitely subtitled and it came with this documentary (which was admirably thorough) among the extras. I don't remember there being anything untoward about the transfer, but then I don't recall it being exceptional either.

Edited my post. Thanks for the info. The edition with that documentary in Germany is much more expensive! Anywhere between 15 and 25 euros. Looks like I'll get this UK edition.

[Tommaso]

just want to actually see some German movies this round.

Unfortunately, there are far fewer German movies this round that are worth seeing, and of those few, the best of them aren't available commercially. The 50s are certainly the nadir of German filmmaking, even though there are some good films by Käutner and Staudte, for instance. And Peter Lorre's only film as a director, Der Verlorene, has my highest recommendation. But all in all, please don't judge classical German cinema from what was made in this period.

[knives]

I'm mostly just guilty of only seeing four and six films respectively from the last two decades considering the German boosting this board gets. Even the failures I'm sure have their importances and plus this is about broadening horizons and stuff anyway. Glad to hear that the DC disc is at least average by the way.

[Michael Kerpan]

Josef von Baky's The Two Lottes (Das doppelte Lottchen) is a very nice children's film. (This is the first adaptation of the story Disney used in The Parent Trap). I like this a lot more than the undeniably entertaining (first) Disney adaption. The twins are actually played by twins -- and more focus is placed on the girls trying to adapt to their switched circumstances. Might not make my list -- but a film I was glad to watch.

The 50s also yields a color re-make of Emil and the Detectives and an adaption of yet another classic Erich Kastner book (The Flying Classroom). I have yet to watch these (I can't imagine Emil being better adapted than it was in the 30s version).

[zedz]

I won't be voting for any German films in the 50s (unless some unsuspected masterpiece falls in my lap), but also worth considering are Lang's Indian films (although I'm definitely not a fan they have plenty of enthusiastic supporters) and Siodmak's The Devil Strikes at Night.

[Lighthouse]

Lang's India films are both pretty mediocre. Stuff of my childhood ...

[Tommaso]

I won't be voting for any German films in the 50s (unless some unsuspected masterpiece falls in my lap)

I probably won't either, too strong competition from most other major filmmaking countries in this very rich period; many more seminal masterpieces than in the 40s, I'd say. Helmut Käutner's Die letzte Brücke (1953) is a candidate though, but it's only available on a Käutner set made for the Goethe Institute, so those outside Germany actually have a better chance to see it than the Germans on the board. And I will also probably put an Austrian film on my list, Wienerinnen (1952) by Kurt Steinwendner, the first 'neo-realist' Austrian film, totally different from anything else made in the country at the time, and while being very modernist, it also owes a lot to experimental and silent film aesthetics. Available on a dvd from Filmarchiv Austria, and via Hoanzl. More on these films later, but if you can find them easily, just check them out already.

[puxzkkx]

I do something quite embarrassing - I'm a bit of an acting fan, so if I'm on holiday or sick with nothing to do I will troll through the first 1000 or so titles on IMDb in older years and look for more obscure or overlooked films that might have great acting for me to check out. Of course this helps me make wish lists for my film watching regime in general. But I've found a couple interesting-looking German or German-language films from this period - of course it is mostly Heimatfilm at this time but here's some from the early and late 50s that have piqued my interest (I haven't seen any of these btw:

Sterne - Konrad Wolf, 1959 (East Germany)
A tragic love story between a German guard and a Greek Jewish inmate in a Bulgarian prison camp.

Das Mädchen Rosemarie - Rolf Thiele, 1958 (West Germany)
In postwar West Germany, a woman sleeps with German industrial powers and later sells their secrets to the French.

Der veruntreute Himmel - Ernst Marischka, 1958
A poor woman provides for what she thinks is her nephew's education as a priest. She shows up unexpectedly at his 'parish' after a long time of sending money and realises that he is using it to fund a seedy lifestyle.

Taxichauffeur Bänz - Werner Düggelin, Hermann Haller, 1957 (Switzerland)
A taxi driver struggles to provide for his family.

Bäckerei Zürrer - Kurt Früh, 1957 (Switzerland)
An aging baker encounters tensions with his younger daughter, who still helps with his business, and his older sons who want nothing to do with it.

Rose Bernd - Wolfgang Staudte, 1957 (West Germany)
A housemaid awakens dormant tensions in an old family house.

Lissy - Konrad Wolf, 1957 (East Germany)
Story of a working-class Berliner who encounters the rise of Nazi sentiment when her husband is fired by his Jewish boss and joins the SA out of anger.

Vergeßt mir meine Traudel nicht - Kurt Maetzig, 1957 (East Germany)
A war orphan falls in love with a policeman.

Die letzte Brücke - Helmut Käutner, 1954 (Austria)
A female German doctor is kidnapped by Yugoslav partisans during WWII. Known as one of Maria Schell's best roles.

And a few vehicles for German megastar Ruth Leuwerik that seem better than the others:

Die ideale Frau - Josef von Báky, 1959 (West Germany)
A wife and mother refuses to give up her career, creating scandal in her small town.

Immer wenn der Tag beginnt - Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1957 (West Germany)
Open-minded school teacher enters a rigid system.

Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska! - Wolfang Liebeneiner, 1957 (West Germany)
Daily life of a reporter and his wife.

[swo17]

John Ford's The Rising of the Moon, commercially unavailable and recommended by domino here, will air on TCM this Saturday.

[knives]

Managed to get an absurd number in this week.
I vinti
In general I'm not a fan of Antonioni who I find too interested in appearing smart and artistic to actually be, but he's pretty good here even if the films away from home tend to have a travelogue absurdity (this especially affects the French segment which is comically stereotyped). All the same he does do a great job quickly building his little worlds and destroying his lead children. Despite being screwed with so much I actually feel the Italy segment stands strongest with a pitiful lead and just a beautifully temperamental melodrama. Though the English segment is probably the strongest with the smartest politics and best humour. I could see a really wicked feature being built on just that, but he manages to leave with just the right level of satisfaction.

Solomon and Sheba
Thank god for The Metaphor or else poor Vidor would have to have this be his swan song. It's not as terrible as its reputation suggests, but lord is it as goofy as a Yul Brynner in a wig starring biblical epic could be. The weakest point is Gina Lollobrigida's Sheba which almost comes across as a parody of the sort of bad foreigner performances you see crop up in Hollywood from time to time. It makes you appreciate the subtleties of Kim Novak.

Sincerely Yours
The director of Them! did not deserve this mess and Liberace is horrible in new sorts of ways.

The Long, Hot Summer
...And to finish the worst performances of the decade trifecta we have an ugly mush mouthed Orson Welles who manages to out Brando Brando's worst tendencies. This performance is so bad it nearly ruined the film for me which is a shame since otherwise it's the first great colour Ritt film I've seen. It's certainly several hundred steps up from his next Faulkner adaptation. Naturally the Woodward/ Newman stuff is the best parts of the film (it actually reminded me of a better version of the James Dean story from Giant), but I also really adored the son's storyline which makes me think despite Ritt's later failing that a great adaptation of The Sound and the Fury is possible. The digging sequence is such a weirdly comic depressing combination that it becomes hard to remember this isn't actually happening and some one had to think it up. Also despite my Welles misgivings I think Lansbury does a lot to make that subplot work very well.

The Maggie
Mackendrick really is one of the most underrated directors and while this isn't his best of the decade it's still an amazingly strong penultimate strike to his Ealing years and a truly fine hustle and bustle that looks forward and backward to his career in just the right sort of way. He manages to balance this truly giant cast of characters in a way that makes them impossible to forget, but never really feel. It's an interesting way to humanize the characters bordering on distance if not for the great feeling of emotional intimacy.

Ruby Gentry
Now this is Vidor I can recommend. Even note is so ingeniously pursued that I'm almost at a lost. Even Heston gives a once in a lifetime performance with this being arguable Jones best moment. It toys with noir in such a way that the genre expectations become somewhat blurred and what must have been old hat even then has several striking layers and unexpected plot movements. The way that Ruby is treated throughout the story reminds me of many similar attempts now a days at the same sort of thing or more particularly this success highlights why they fail. The real disarming thing is that Jones is never sexualized or highlighted in a particular beautiful light. She's made as ordinary and every day as is possible despite being unusual in her outward strength. The film manages to make a point by going out of it's way to avoid doing such making everything that follows all the more tragic.

Look Back in Anger
If every kitchen sink melodrama was this good and well handled than the style may have been worth a damn, but this is a pretty great consolation prize all the same. The big difference is the lacked of caricatured working class masturbation from the above. Everything is left to the level of the characters with no added misery from the director or writer. In fact there's quite a few laughs that makes the hardships more honest. Also while I understand the complaints leveled against Burton I don't think it really matters since he remolds the character into some sort of complexity where his impotence is entirely mental (which I suppose foggies some of the class discussion, but that might also help). In fact I think if he were as weak as the script suggests he were that would make for a horrible message that strikes me as more Americana. Here even the strongest and the brightest can get absolutely ravaged by the system until they drop, but that continued physical posture also suggests that it is possible to fight back.

Julius Caesar
This strikes me as possibly the hardest Shakespeare to adapt to the time due to the ease that it would take to turn it into some sword and sandals trash, but thankfully Mank appreciates the power of words and lets everything play out as small scale as the opportunity will allow. Even the choice of black and white strikes me as trying to be as unlavish as possible. Any stylistic oddities seems to come from the actors (not even Brando who's barely in the movie) who seem to conflict with each other with their ticks in a way that builds the tension and mood in a way that Mank doesn't seem to want to do with the camera. It's a pretty ingenious exercise that's different enough to take notice with.

People Will Talk
This is either the most wonderful failure of Mank's career or the sloppiest success. The tone's all over the place with stuff like grown men fighting over a train set and a look at the HUAC trials slipped in. The performances are all classic screwball yet the direction is as dead serious as they come in a way that suggests an attempt at black comedy, but it really doesn't come together as such. Yet somehow this spirit of daring is enough to give the impression that they're working.

Kiss Them for Me
Even aside from the miscasting of Jayne Mansfield the first half of the film is turgid and misplaced, but (and I don't know what) in the second half this becomes such an ugly, grim, angry, violent assassination of the greatest generation by it. Grant just totally blew me away with a James Stewart in Vertigo type performance as a PTSD suffering soldier who comes across as something out of Fitzgerald (yet somehow presents himself as pure screwball once again). This is a significantly better balancing of tone than the previous Grant and even Mansfield becomes an enjoyable part of the story by the end. Speaking of actors, there's this one David Wayne looking fellow from the main trio who's just perfect. He presents a different sort of misery from Grant while still functioning as comic relief giving his ever changing status.

[domino harvey]

Wow, a lot of good movies (even if sounds like we didn't agree on some of them). Glad you dug Cary Grant's very atypical performance in Kiss Them For Me. Can't stand Ruby Gentry, but Vidor is one of those directors whose appeal mystifies me. People Will Talk is one of those fascinating failures that could only have been made by a talent as great as Mankiewicz's. Interestingly enough I teach a couple of these films (Look Back in Anger and the Long, Hot Summer)-- It's always weird to get a "film fan" perspective on them, but they're both wildly popular with my students. I don't think Look Back in Anger works much beyond the great first act, mainly because of the shift of focus from Ure to Bloom (inherent in the source, admittedly), but Burton is just fantastic and my students always start this one out skeptical that they could enjoy a black and white British film from the 50s and end up in total awe of Burton's performance. Speaking of performance, uh, they love Welles too-- "big" still plays to some audiences!

[knives]

Welles just struck me as a little too Boss Hog. I guess there's even too much ham out there for me though. I actually agree with you on Look Back in Anger, but I think Burton's character and performance are enough for me to glide with the problems.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, I read that last post before reading what movie you were discussing, thought you were referring to Welles in Touch of Evil, and was prepared to do some violence.

[swo17]

Odds Against Tomorrow works really well I think from several angles--as a jazzy portrait of New York, a sumptuous noir/heist film, and a raw look at racial tensions of the time. Regarding this last point, I was expecting something more preachy or cloying at the end, but what we get instead is a moral that is more hidden in the fiber of the narrative, particularly in the subtle plot point that

Spoiler

the robbers may not have met their demise if Ryan's character had had enough respect for Belafonte's to give him the keys to the getaway car.

Also of note is the fantastic title sequence and a screenplay by Abraham Polonsky (Body and Soul, Force of Evil).

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Also of note is the fantastic title sequence and a screenplay by Abraham Polonsky (Body and Soul, Force of Evil).

And a great soundtrack album revisited as well as a MJQ title

[thirtyframesasecond]

Recent viewings were Wyler's 'Carrie', which I liked but would be very surprised if it made my list. I'm actually just about to start Dreiser's novel. Maybe I was expecting something tougher and Jones doesn't make the most convincing social climber. Clair's 'Belles de Nuits' is a charming fantasy about a frustrated musician whose dreams become incredibly vivid and is handled very lightly. The surefire inclusion though will be Lewin's 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman', which is not only very sumptuously shot by Jack Cardiff but also has a strong emotional resonance too. Shame I missed the cinematic re-release as it's not quite the same on the unrestored Kino DVD.

[puxzkkx]

I saw Youssef Chahine's Cairo Station, which I would definitely recommend. The tone vacillates between a chaotic sort of observant neorealism, airy comedy and dark psychodrama. Chahine appears to be making a sneaky political point here about the status of women in Egyptian society - it is hard not to see Qinawi as a symbol of a patriarchy using religion or tradition as tools in the perpetuation of a chauvinist system. With Qinawi, Chahine seems to be blaming Egyptian chauvinism on sexual frustration brought about by the tensions between the lust for sex and the social obligation of marriage. Hanouma is not an especially likeable character, but Chahine positions her as deserving of respect for her basic personhood. On the other hand, Qinawi, the protagonist-turned-'antagonist', inspires pity rather than contempt.

The visual and structural style of the film changes all the time, too - from deep-focus tableaux to long, sophisticated travelling shots to rapid montage to noir-inspired lighting setups. A strong and illuminating work from a culture whose films are not often exported.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, just finished watching 12 Angry Men for the first time (shocking, I know.) It's a hard movie to say anything about, but it's also not hard to see why it's become a classic. Though Lumet's shot choices are limited, whether by choice, by necessities of setting, or by inexperience, the shots he does use are intensely expressive: as with Do the Right Thing, the heat is palpable, with lots of tight single or two shots showing sweaty faces and stained suit shirts, and it feels as much like No Exit as it does a paean to trial by jury.

It's not too hard to see how people could attack it, it's theatrical, it's obviously the talkiest movie in town and it's dogmatic enough to feel like a case of special pleading (particularly with the Ed Begley character), but it also has the pleasures of a good theater show- particularly the intensity of direct expression. As much as I hate to feel like I'm just reinforcing the canon, there's no way this won't show up on my list.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I vinti
In general I'm not a fan of Antonioni who I find too interested in appearing smart and artistic to actually be, but he's pretty good here even if the films away from home tend to have a travelogue absurdity (this especially affects the French segment which is comically stereotyped). All the same he does do a great job quickly building his little worlds and destroying his lead children. Despite being screwed with so much I actually feel the Italy segment stands strongest with a pitiful lead and just a beautifully temperamental melodrama. Though the English segment is probably the strongest with the smartest politics and best humour. I could see a really wicked feature being built on just that, but he manages to leave with just the right level of satisfaction.

I quite like I vinti. All three segments are beautifully shot, though the Italian and especially the French are sort of cheap melodramas. The English section is fascinating when approached as a trial run for Blow-up.

Spoiler

A young man commits (or invents) a murder in a deserted park in order to run around London talking about it. What's most striking though is the section's non sequitur final shot, where the camera rise from the action to capture a tennis court in the distance, an image that has nothing to do with I vinti but everything to do with its successor.

A very strange decision, but one that makes clear that Antionioni was Antonioni before the revelation of the Vitti films.

I vinti may make my list, but the Antonioni of the decade for me is Le amiche, and it will probably crack the top ten.

[puxzkkx]

I saw Yves Allégret's 1950 noir Manèges which repped some of the first significant roles for Simone Signoret, Bernard Blier and Jane Marken. The story concerns a portly, timid riding-school manager who lands a wife, Dora. Marken plays her mother who is always buzzing about obnoxiously. At the beginning Dora has been in a bad car crash and her husband is going to see her before she goes to surgery. Her mother shows up too, and the film launches into a dual-flashback structure: Blier's flashback explaining his love and devotion to Dora (linked with an iris motif and numerous blurred dissolves that handily represent his tunnel vision regarding his own marriage) and Marken's gleefully vicious storytelling explaining how she and Dora have been making a habit of marrying rich men for years - the mother acting as a sort of pimp - and leaving them once the money runs out. Actions are fetishistically focused and refocused on, certain images are shown again from different angles (in Blier's flashback we see him from behind as he kisses Signoret's neck, in Marken's story we see them from the front as she flashes a look of comical disgust at her mother, who is watching) to draw lines between Blier's subjectivity and Marken's 'reality'. In one scene Blier has to break an uncomfortable truth to Signoret and the camera shifts out of focus as if as scared of capturing her reaction as Blier is of facing it. It is all quite clever and nastily entertaining - this thing is pitch-black. What I gathered watching it, however, is that Allégret really hates women - there's not a single positive female character in this film: Signoret's Dora has at least some shading and is shown as a product of her mother's influences and disappointments, but Marken is a gorgon whose motivations are hinted at but never explained, and the other women function as annoyances and comic asides. The film ends with a line from a minor female character that carries some cruelly misogynistic implications. The male characters aren't portrayed in the best light either, but even the dastardly ones (such as Villard's lower-class lothario, a love-object-turned-co-conspirator for Dora) are presented as living by some sort of honour code.

The acting is tremendous, however - Blier's voice over is wrenching and his physical performance inspires both pity and contempt. Signoret combines menace with a subtle kind of waifishness, Villard gives complex shading to his smaller role and Marken is a love-it-or-hate-it whirlwind of monster-mother grotesquerie (for the most part, I'm in the 'love it' camp). This is very interesting for its cast and its visual/structural experiments, but I hope other Allégret films don't carry such a noxious attitude towards women.

[matrixschmatrix]

After the discussion about Mizoguchi earlier, I finally got around to watching my first from him- Ugetsu, because apparently I'm the most obvious man alive. I can definitely see where the implied viewpoint of the movie is problematic in some ways- it's got a pretty conservative stay in your place/stay in your caste strain to it, and outside of Lady Wakasa the women don't seem to have much agency (and even including Lady Wakasa they don't seem to have many interests outside of staying home, doing housework, and helping their men.)

But I think most of the criticisms I could level at the movie are also critiques I could make of Sunrise, and as with Sunrise the sheer poeticism of the story (particularly the journey across the river and the climax of the Genjuro/Wakasa arc) overwhelm the issues I have with it. I'm not sure I wound up getting the ghost story I was expecting, exactly, but it did feel like a well realized sort of fairy tale, one which expresses and reinforces a culture's underlying ideology. I may not like that ideology, but I don't think I can reject the story nor the beautifully expressive telling of it.

[puxzkkx]

I saw Yves Allégret's The Proud and the Beautiful as well which is a bit more palatable in its gender politics. In its first two thirds it has some stunningly sensual images of Michèle Morgan and an indelible mood of heat and alienation. The final third lets the ball drop a little bit as shifts in character are not fully justified by the script, and the ending is a corny bit of hokum that has me wondering whether censorship or studio pressure was involved. Morgan and Gérard Philipe are good.

In terms of Mizoguchi's sexual politics - which I find kind of uncomfortable sometimes but never awful - his geisha-house-set films are a lot more questionable than Ugetsu or Sansho.

[Cold Bishop]

If you haven't seen Un si jolie petite plage yet, I strongly recommend it. I doubt it'll change your mind about his misogyny, but hey, there's one sympathetic female character!

Common opinion is that Yves Allégret started to decline after the noir trilogy of Dédée d'Anvers, Un si jolie petite plage and Manèges. Then again, Cahiers du cinéma considered him among the best French filmmakers ("the ambitious") as late as 1956. Unfortunately, so few of his films from this decade are available, so I don't know who to believe.