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

[knives]

Nazarin more than any other film I've seen by Bunuel makes me wish he was still alive. Not because it's his best (it isn't), but because of how powerfully it decimates the christian culture and how it does it. The film might as well as be a Rossellini film (it is basically Europa '51) in how it presents Christian ideas with such weight and concern. It really feels like a film that needs to be seen by every one, but especially so called christians. It actually made me genuinely angry the thought that a person like this could exist even if only as a fiction and yet we have people in real life using the same concepts that this character uses to excuse murder and oppression. Some how this calmest and most inconspicuous of films is the one that makes me the angriest. On a completely unrelated side to that was there any importance to him coming from Spain rather than Mexico?

[matrixschmatrix]

The Wages of Fear

Well, shit. In some ways this is an easier movie to admire than to like- though the ultimate villain is American colonialist capitalism, pretty much everyone we see is horrible at least a significant part of the time, and the tension in the latter half of the movie is so ratcheted up that it's almost physically hard to take- but it's pretty clearly a masterpiece, and sweetening it in any way would detract from the force of it.

It's reminiscent of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in any number of ways, but the critique is much sharper and much nastier. It's not wealth itself that drives men mad, it's the indifferent exploitation of the third world by the first. They've got our guys coming and going, first putting them in a situation of inescapable squalor, then manipulating that situation to force them to get themselves killed in hopes of getting out of it. Nobody rides off a hero, and nobody ever had even a hope of getting genuinely rich.

Spoiler

I do like that we're not encouraged to see these men getting killed and think 'aha! It's because they did this or that or the other thing wrong, and I would have made it past there', as in a zombie movie. The whole trip is insane, and half the guys get killed off-screen and without explanation, because that was inherent to the nature of the journey. And Jo's death isn't because he was a coward, or because Mario was driven mad by greed, or because of any real character flaw- it's because that was the position they were in, and there were no other choices. It's a hard, hard movie- and Jo's death, with no hope of an afterlife, may be the hardest part- but it keeps the blame in the right place.

Incidentally, if anyone's ever seen the MST short Assignment: Venezuela, it makes for a pretty hilarious counterpoint.

[colinr0380]

Wages of Fear is also very harsh in its idea of human relationships being almost entirely transactional and predicated purely on fulfilling short term needs (Vera Clouzot's character being passed around the men of the town is perhaps the major example, but it is all over from the big oil corporation picking the dregs of society up for the suicide mission to the changeable 'love triangle' between Mario, Jo and Luigi), with the moments where the characters seem to be feeling betrayed or upset by, or excited by and needing another person being the moment of their downfall.

Except for the oil corporation whose need for those drivers gets paid off handsomely, with a representative being able to thank the survivors for their superhuman effort before they return to being just human again and can be discarded now that their job is over.

Yet amongst all that harshness and cynicism there feels a profound respect for the effort and determination on display by those men throughout their mission. It doesn't matter that the goal is pointless or stopping the oil derrick fire matters to them or not, it is that individual struggle together that means the most. In that sense I wonder if it could be considered one of the greatest war films ever made - it certainly has that kind of tone and structure to it, if dissimilar content.

[Tommaso]

Enjo (Kon Ichikawa, 1958): Even though I basically liked this film, I have somewhat conflicting feelings about it. So to get this from my chest first: I think as an adaptation of Mishima's "Temple of the Golden Pavillion" it fails almost entirely. While it's basically following the major plot points of the story, it doesn't convey much of what makes the book so intriguing: the search for beauty, the aestheticism and philosophy of its young protagonist (which even Schrader manages to get across better in the short section devoted to the novel in his 1983 Mishima film). Instead, Ichikawa opts for making the events leading to setting fire to the temple into a mainly psychological drama of an insecure young man. What's worse, he also tones down some of the more shocking moments in the novel (notably the meeting with the GI and his Japanese girlfriend), and I'm also not entirely convinced of the flashback structure. The frame story in the police station tends to make the film into a more conventional 'why did he do it' kind of affair.

I'm very well aware that approaching a film as a 1:1-translation of a novel is certainly wrong, but while simplifications and changes are necessary with such an adaptation into a different medium, I simply think that Ichikawa misses the point of the book (quite unlike, say, Wyler's "Wuthering Heights" or Fassbinder's "Effi Briest", or to take a Japanese example, Shinoda with his excellent film version of Kawabata's "Of Beauty and Sorrow"). Still, of course the direction is immaculate, and especially Tatsuya Nakadai is excellent as the crippled friend and antagonist (or tempter figure) of the main character. Everyone else is fine, too, and in the end this may be a gripping film in its own right. Perhaps I can overcome some of my irritations with a second viewing.

[puxzkkx]

I don't really feel like writing much, but Naruse's Anzukko was wonderful, exploring three lives through the history of one relationship. As with his best work he creates the most profound impressions of pain and tragedy through implication and the suggestion of it in quite everyday domestic tensions. His soundscape here is fantastic, too, musical motifs becoming the snakes and ladders that connect different scenes and time periods. And finally Kyoko Kagawa has a role that suits her perfectly, indulging the slight air of bitterness that probably kept her from becoming a major star.

[matrixschmatrix]

Stage Fright

Seemed a bit underwhelming, though enjoyable throughout- it seemed oddly like a throwback to Hitch's 30's films, a bit crowded and drab compared to most of the more impressive 50s stuff and the intensity of the 40s, without quite matching the charm or propulsiveness of 39 Steps or Lady Vanishes. It seemed a shame to push Alistair Sim and Marlene outside the center of the film, too, as they were hugely more entertaining than our theoretical leads (though I enjoyed the character of Ordinary Smith). I was also hoping throughout to see Marlene exonerated, both as that seemed like it would have been more interesting and as I just like her more than the rest of the cast- as it is, we don't even really get closure on her story.

At any rate, I'm almost never unhappy to watch a Hitch, but this felt more like Hitch the potboiler maker and less Hitch the past-master. Fun enough, but I can't really imagine voting for this in a decade that saw the release of Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Strangers on a Train.

[Mr Sausage]

What I like about Stage Fright is the way it uses your own knowledge of Hitchcock films against you. Spoilers: it plies you with a wrong man scenario, knowing that your familiarity with Hitchcock films will have you implicitly believing in the innocence of the lead no matter how he behaves, only to yank the rug out from under you by revealing the wrong man was the right one all along. Of course it can only accomplish this by maneuvering the audience away from the initial hero/villain and on to Wyman's character, hence Dietrich and co. get increasingly side-lined. But oh well, it's a fun little film even if it probably works only the once.

[matrixschmatrix]

I can see that, and it's definitely worth a watch- I think it just suffers a bit compared to the other things Hitch did around then. Speaking of which-

Senso

For maybe three quarters of this movie, I couldn't quite get a grip on it- I kept pausing and coming back, interested enough to keep watching but not fully caught up in it. Part of it, I think, is just Visconti's style- I had sort of the same experience the first time I watched The Leopard, and wound up loving it the second time. Part of it is the fact that Granger is so obviously speaking English, and usually it's possible to sync up the English subtitles with his lip movements- it's difficult for me to look focus on what's actually happening when my eyes are doing that, and I really wish there was some way to get the Granger English dialog off The Wanton Countess and splice it in. And a huge part of it is that I kept comparing it to The Leopard, which I had already connected to- and doing so made it that much harder to connect here.

(Spoilers in the next section, but I'm not going to tag them unless people rather that I would, as it seems silly here)

It's not without thematic connection to the later film in any case- indeed, if I understand the chronology of the revolution, The Leopard might almost be a sequel. And as much as the comparisons distanced me at first, I think the whole film came into focus in the last scene between Franz and Livia, where Franz identifies them both as part of a world that he knows will disappear- which, of course, is essentially Fabrizio's whole viewpoint, the attachment to a world which will inevitably die. But while the Prince can look upon his world with favor, Franz is fully aware that his is a worthless life lived in a world which is better off dead, and it is his self loathing that changed the whole nature of the movie- with it on display, the stereotyped figure of the heartless, dashing romantic heel becomes a role that Franz himself was playing, and he is revolted at the recognition that he will not have a last minute turn towards the heroic, and will inevitably die dissolute and worthless. He is essentially begging the Countess to do away with him.

And of course, it's lovely to have a movie so wedded to a woman's viewpoint, particularly a war movie- even when it pulls away from her to show a battle, the purpose is to remind us of what she's lost and what she's betrayed. Though she's a tragic figure, she's a richly characterized one, and Valli plays her desperation well: it is the desperation of someone who knew exactly what she was doing to herself at every step, a woman who chose her own doom.

I'm not sure how to rank this movie, because as I say I spent so much of it not fully attached. I wish I had more time, as ideally I'd watch it again, knowing where it was going, and process it more fully as I eventually did The Leopard.

[swo17]

I'm just now seeing that at some point in the last few months, IMDb reclassified Rohmer's Le Signe du Lion as a 1950s film, so it is now eligible for inclusion on your lists.

[matrixschmatrix]

Toyko Story

I think knowing this movie had a relationship to Make Way for Tomorrow did me a disservice, as the comparison largely isn't a helpful one- both are certainly about an elderly couple and their ungrateful offspring, but both the way the plot develops and the ideas that come out of it seem largely to be hugely different. Here, not all the children are horrible- only Shige seems to be completely awful, and both the youngest daughter and the Setsuko Hara character are terribly sweet- and the parents are never shown to be infuriating, as the couple in Make Way are so much of the time. And though ingratitude is part of the movie, and the idea of making time for one's elders is in there too, it seems as with much of Ozu that all that sort of dissolves away at some point, and it becomes just part of the textural experience of life, and how it manages to slip out from under you.

As such, if there's any key scene, it's Setsuko Hara talking to Kyoko about how her siblings aren't to be blamed, really, it's just part of getting older and growing away from one's parents. On the one hand, it's obviously bullshit, Hara's character just being nice and trying to make a case for the clearly indefensible shittiness of the others- but it also has a fundamental truth to it, in that even the sweetest relationships will eventually fade. The way it's delivered, it transcends what could elsewhere be a mere platitude, or an encouragement to give up and accept the status quo or decadence and decay or whatever else- I don't think Ozu's point is ever that life must be meekly surrendered to- and seems to become something that isn't just about life, but actually contains it, and everything there is in it.

In some ways, the director that Ozu seems most comparable to, here and elsewhere, is Mike Leigh- though Ozu's characters' cultural context and inflections are sometimes bafflingly foreign, they have in common with Leigh's a feeling that the could be real people, and that they have a life before, after, and beyond the text of the film. The movie feels like it contains all of life because it doesn't bother to pretend it could ever squeeze a life into half an hour, just some scenes and moments that reflect the whole, like a shard of a mirror. I found the scenes in which the family comes together over Tomi's death almost unbearable, largely because they were so muted, and the emotions reminded me so painfully of my own mother, who died when I was just shy of being an adult, and my siblings were all grown and leading their own lives- screamed recriminations and wailing grief would have felt like a melodrama, but the quiet thinking over one's life (followed almost immediately by a reversion to one's prior self) is exactly what I remember it feeling like, and it triggered all the emotions I'd felt as surely as seeing my mother on old home movies does.

I'm not at all confused as to why this movie is such a classic, though it's certainly not as obviously a thundering worldbeater as Vertigo or Kane. It's nice to know that delicacy and real emotions have a place, too.

[matrixschmatrix]

The Flowers of St. Francis

One of the good and the bad things about working your way through the canon is that you wind up being blown away over and over again. I'm not sure I have much to say about this movie- it's just overwhelmingly lovely and lovable, the kind of movie I feel like I will turn to when I'm feeling unable to cope with things or people or whatever else. The idea that it is a revolutionary act actually to live one's life in a continuing act of love and kindness- and that making a film representing a very human version of that way of life is itself somewhat revolutionary- is both somewhat upsetting (as, for me at least, it puts me in a position for a fresh attack of Catholic guilt, feelings of inadequacy, and a general sense that I'm pretty meek, but I could stand to be meeker) and very freeing, in that it gives me a feeling that however much everything else turns to shit, there's a way of life where one can genuinely help people and not hurt anybody and make the world a better place. I don't know that I'm capable of that life, or that I've ever met anyone who lives it, but it's nice to know it's out there, that it's an option of a kind.

I'm curious, though, as to how well it comes off to those who have a neutral or adversarial relationship with religion, Christianity, or the Catholic Church.

[knives]

I'm curious, though, as to how well it comes off to those who have a neutral or adversarial relationship with religion, Christianity, or the Catholic Church.

As an ethnic Jew raised and stayed atheist I love it (and Rossellini in general who is probably my favorite director). Sometimes it can be very difficult for me to grapple with his take on religion since it comes from such an alien place (probably the easiest on this front is Flowersof St. Francis' sister film Europa '51). For example the scene in the film where they go around preaching and get kicked out on their asses into the mud gets a very strong yet even more mixed reaction from as I'm unable to grasp at it. I want to condemn Francis' action in this moment since it is fairly obnoxious, but there's something in shadow about the whole thing that makes me doubt such a straight forward reading. Other parts of the film are absolutely wonderful with no internal confusion on my part though. I think it is easy to point to the leper scene, but I will anyway as it is so powerful in showing this man is more complex than his stern face shows and brings light to his philosophy that allows it and the film itself to not necessarily be christian. It can be appreciated exclusively through a very personal and moral prism devoid of the religion that does make up the film. The genius to Rossellini here and elsewhere is in not allowing his person to get in the way of larger points. This didn't happen overnight of course (hello homophobia), but by the end of his career I'd argue Rossellini as one of if not the most humane and loving film makers ever.

[matrixschmatrix]

From my view (confirmed Catholic, now intentionally lapsed) I think the version of Christianity presented in St Francis is hard to argue with, without really being a bunch of airy pleasantries- it's a rigorous philosophy, just an incredibly difficult one to follow (while being simple enough for a senile old man to embrace.) I think the parts of the movie that ring of a sort of ecstatic masochism- like the one you cite, where it seems almost as though they were looking to be attacked- spring from a sense that one of the primary moral guideposts they use is that the most difficult path is probably the correct one. Thus, if someone's going after them without them having done that person any wrong, they can probably assume that they're both remaining properly humble while still moving in generally the right direction.

If the whole movie were that kind of thing, it would turn appallingly self righteous (and I've known Evangelicals who really seem to relish it when they foist their preaching on an unreceptive target who eventually makes some move to have them thrown out), but it seems like the specific context is Francis feeling as though he doesn't know how best to do right, or what kind of goals he can reasonably set for himself. It's definitely key that he seems to regard himself as a failure throughout- his weeping after the leper scene read to me as though he were angry that there was not something more or better that he could do to help the man- and we seen him sort of recalibrating himself on the side of the thrown out rather than the thrower out. He's happy, because he knows that's the better of the two positions.

[knives]

Absolutely. These almost contradictory elements seem to allow it to not seem condescending and be genuinely curious as to how to best be a good person (or however the catholic version of that is). The Italian title is probably super important to this point as it explicitly references that main disciple how is a failure in every way until he meets with that giant. I admit that it took me forever to realize what the purpose of that scene was since in many respects it is nothing like the rest of the movie, but it seems to tackle with perhaps some overthought this concept of simplicity head on in a way to ensure that it is not just some kind of masochism. It stops in that moment from being about getting thrown out, but about if the other person is willing to do that. He turns in that moment into a flower with no agency within the situation allowing for the villain to actively and independently do the right thing. This isn't a christian conversion either. He probably won't be a christian after that incident, but be a good human being which the film at least seems to place greater emphasis on.

[Tommaso]

I've just posted my few initial thoughts on Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent over in the specific thread for the CC release, so I don't want to repeat them here, but would still suggest that anyone who's missed out on the film so far should watch it for the listmaking. This must be one of the most visually striking films of the whole period, and I think I must put it on my already overcrowded list. Such cinematography simply must be acknowledged.

[matrixschmatrix]

Is it actually eligible? IMDB has it listed as a 1960 film.

[swo17]

Yeah, unless someone gets IMDb to change the release date, it's not eligible until the '60s list.

[Tommaso]

Oh damn, I trusted the CC cover there. In this respect, just if anyone has it on their lists: Franju's "Eyes without a face" is also not eligible, even though CC also has it as a 1959 film. So don't forget about these two for the next round.

[swo17]

It's probably a good idea at some point for everyone to review the "Eligibility - Reminders / Special Cases" section of the first post, so as to, ahem, remind you of any special cases with regard to eligibility (such as the ones Tommaso notes above) that you ought to be aware of while finalizing your lists.

[knives]

Also just double checking IMDB is always a good idea.

[Tommaso]

In this respect, just out of interest (I'm not going to vote for it anyhow): what about Riefenstahl's Tiefland? This is very obviously a film entirely made in the early 1940s, and breathing the style of the time, but it was only premiered in 1954 (when Cocteau desperatedly wanted to have it for the Cannes festival, but the German authorities interfered).

[swo17]

The easy answer is that IMDb says it's a 1950s film, and unless there's a real possibility of someone voting for it, the easy answer prevails. If someone were really passionate about voting for it, and doing so for the '40s list, I would be open to making an exception if their argument for such was convincing enough.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Also just double checking IMDB is always a good idea.

I agree on that. I.e Konrad Wolf's late fifties film Sonnensucher/Sun Seekers has been pretty high on my preliminary list until I realized that imdb lists it as a 1972 production, as it got shelved for about 15 years due to its topics (uranium mining in a Soviet-owned mine in the GDR). Well, it's a fifties film through and through so I recommend it to anyone interested in early Defa cinema but I'd never put it on a 70s list.

[Tommaso]

But that then seems like a classic case where an exception should be allowed. Otherwise such a film typical for a certain period would never get a chance to make it on any list. And not because of the film, but only because of the nefarious historical circumstances, which would mean further injustice.

[swo17]

I'm perfectly fine making an exception for Sun Seekers to make it eligible for the '50s list. I'll reflect this in the first post.