The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions (Decade Project Vol. 4)

[Rayon Vert]

Well I've bought those TT's over the last while mostly because of you domino...

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Broken Arrow (Delmer Daves, 1950): Former army scout Tom Jeffords (Jimmy Stewart) travels into Apache territory in search of "yellow iron", and is only allowed to live because he had previously saved the life of a wounded Apache youth. He falls for Sonseeahray (Debra Paget), a member of the tribe and tries his best to broker a sliver of peace with Apache leader, Cochise (Jeff Chandler). While he finds that the Apache are willing to let the US mail carriers go through, the army is bent on genocide and reluctant to make any concessions. Thanks to Tom's efforts, he's able to broker a broader peace deal between the warring factions, but a cabal of the white settlers are unwilling to accept it. It was refreshing to see the Apache presented as actual humans after watching several films from the decade where they were treated as blood thirsty savages. I did not like the redface of white actors portraying native Americans, but it was still a pretty good story. Stewart has always been one of the greats when it comes to westerns, and it's no different here.

Circle of Danger (Jacques Tourneur, 1951): Clay Douglas's (Ray Milland) brother was the only casualty in an operation that took place in Nazi occupied France. Unwilling to accept the official narrative of the casualty, the American Clay travels to England to question the British members of the commando team that carried out the raid. After interrogating a few ex-soldiers, Clay begins to realize that the story he had been force fed is false, and that a member of the British army killed him. But what will happen to Clay when he confronts the murderer? Tourneur is one of my favorite directors from the studio era. While I wouldn't say that this is the equal of his best work from the 40s and 50s, it's still better than most of the other films from the era. Hollywood was eager to look back on the war in the years after it ended, but this one stands out given its noir elements. Definitely recommended.

Gunman's Walk (Phil Karlson, 1958): In the wild days of the old west, cattle rancher Lee Hackett (Van Heflin) helped to tame it with his six shooter. Decades later he now has two adult sons in crisis. The younger, sensitive Davy (James Darren) doesn't want to be a gunman like his father. Instead he's in love with the biracial Clee Chouard (Kathryn Grant), who Lee refuses to accept because of her Indian blood. Older brother Ed (Tab Hunter), is quick to a fight and wants to make a name for himself as a gunslinger. Early on, Ed kills Clee's brother by running his horse off a cliff, but he's let go after a white man's testimony is counted as more reliable than two native witnesses. Emboldened by getting away with murder Ed lashes out against the town, ushering a wake a violence behind him. Will Davy be able to repair his relationship with Clee? Can Lee tame his wild son before its too late? This was an exceptionally good western, with a lot to say on the intergenerational effects of violence and racism. I'm mostly familiar with Tab Hunter from his campy work, so it was refreshing to see him give a straight performance in a dramatic role. Van Heflin was wonderful as the controlling patriarch. This one was a real winner.

Hit the Deck (Roy Rowland, 1955): Third generation navy man and son of rear admiral Daniel Smith (Walter Pidgeon), Danny Smith (Russ Tamblyn) is on 48 hour leave along with a pair of swabs, Bill Clark (Tony Martin) and Rico Ferrari (Vic Damone). Each of them have to grapple with their own problems during this time. Bill has been engaged to showgirl Ginger (Ann Miller) for the better part of six years, and she's had enough of his delaying the wedding. Rico's 40-something year old mother is being courted by an Italian immigrant, but he seems to keep getting in the way of her love life. Danny's sister Susan's (Jane Powell) virtue is put on the line after she tries out for a role in a navy themed musical sharing a name with the title of the film. The three team up to try and help each other out, but soon enough they're wanted men with the whole of the navy searching for them on the streets of San Fransisco. The song and dance numbers are memorable, particularly an inventive one done at an amusement park fun house. The guys were a bit of chumps in the movie, but the women, including Debby Reynolds, really stood out. It's not my favorite musical from the era, but it's still a decent one.

I'm All Right Jack (John Boulting, 1959): Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) returns from the war to find himself stuck in a series of entry level blue collar jobs that are hardly fitting for someone from his upper class background. His army buddy Sidney DeVere Cox (Richard Attenborough) gets him a job at a missile factory where he comes under the wing of leftist union leader Fred Kite (Peter Sellers) and plant owner Major Hitchcock (Terry Thomas). Soon enough Stanley finds himself caught between the striking workers led by Kite and a group of greedy capitalists led by Hitchcock. It's quite clear that the filmmaker is cynical of both sides in the conflict, though Stanley ultimately makes his choice. I didn't realize it when I saw it, but this is a sequel to a 1956 film called Private's Progress. It stands well as an independent experience though, and is an exemplar of the dry British humor that Sellars and Thomas excelled at.

Pal Joey (George Sidney, 1957): Down on his luck nightclub singer Joey Evans (Frank Sinatra) returns to San Fransisco, where he built up quite a reputation as a troublemaker a few years earlier. Joey gets a job singing at a cabaret, where showgirl Linda English (Kim Novak) works. The womanizing singer sets his sights on the young chorus girl that he shares a flat with, but at the same time tries to romance Vera Prentice-Simpson (Rita Hayworth), a rich widower and old flame. Soon Vera agrees to finance Joey's dream of owning his own night club, but her jealousy and Joey's wondering eye get in the way. With the exception of Suddenly, I'm generally not a fan of Sinatra as an actor, but he does a competent job here as the only lead that sings their own songs. Hayworth does a good job as the selfish Vera, but the best performance comes from Novak as the naive chanteuse. The scene after she performs a striptease is heartbreaking.

Two Men in Manhattan (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1959): Director Jean-Pierre Melville stars as Moreau, a French reporter stationed in New York, who is commissioned by his newspaper to investigate the disappearance of the French envoy to the United Nations. He soon recruits the bottom feeding photographer Delmas (Pierre Grasset) to accompany him in his mission, but Delmas's lack of scruples constantly threatens to undermine their mission. Their only clue to the diplomat's whereabouts come in the form of a photograph of three women that they visit over the course of the night. When one of them, an actress, fails in a suicide attempt, they get the truth out of her, and find out the French envoy's ultimate fate. The two leads do decent jobs in their roles, with Grasset really standing out as the unscrupulous photographer. However, the film never reaches the heights of Melville's best works. It's a competent film, but nowhere near the level that we're used to from the director.

[domino harvey]

Agreed on Gunman’s Walk. A terrific reminder of what the genre at its peak did best in using the western motif to explore far more complex ideas under the guise of being just another programmer

And RV:

[Rayon Vert]

Gunman's Walk sounds good. I wasn't aware of it and will try to see it. Broken Arrow is definitely known historically for being a game-changer in its more sympathetic view of Native Americans. It's unlikely to make my list but is on my rewatch list for the blu upgrade.

[domino harvey]

Gunman’s Walk has a good German Blu-Ray, and looks to be available to rent on Amazon for a few bucks if you want to test drive it first. Heflin’s perf as Lee J Cobb is terrific (and this is coming from someone who finds him a rather inexplicable Oscar winner), and Tab Hunter is indeed bewilderingly good. Would be a good double feature with Broken Lance

[senseabove]

I Want to Live! (Wise, 1958) Susan Hayward plays a sass-mouth "party girl"—that part's great—who gets framed for murder and sent to death row—that part's meh. Hayward's good, but the story is too earnest. The insistence on Hayward's innocence oddly drains the last third of any tension, making it a kind of tortuous Wise wasn't going for, and it seems to undercut its own point: it's clear early on that we're going to see an injustice, even if you don't know the outcome of the real-life case beforehand, and it feels like the sliver of doubt we're served on a platter

Spoiler

with the coerced confession

is there to make that more palatable, when to really bring it home, it should have been sneaked in the back way and hidden in a corner of the court room as a kind of perverse inversion of its message, that doubt and human fallibility mean the death penalty can only ever be barbaric. It's got some style and some good jazz when it's not in straight-ahead earnest mode, at least.

Some Came Running (Minnelli, 1958) Seeing who else Hayward was up against for her Oscar win that year did remind me that I'd been meaning to watch this one, though, and for that I'm very thankful—except for the part where Maclaine didn't win Best Actress. The scene at the schoolhouse alone should've won it for her, and the whole thing comes alive once she comes into her character and becomes the moral center of this small universe. I already intend to watch this one again, actually, so that's all I wanna say until I can piece together more of my own thoughts and reactions to the other write-ups, but I expect this one's gonna rocket up my list...

[bamwc2]

Gunman’s Walk has a good German Blu-Ray, and looks to be available to rent on Amazon for a few bucks if you want to test drive it first. Heflin’s perf as Lee J Cobb is terrific (and this is coming from someone who finds him a rather inexplicable Oscar winner), and Tab Hunter is indeed bewilderingly good. Would be a good double feature with Broken Lance

Broken Lance is coming up in my next round.

[therewillbeblus]

The Mating Season (Leisen, 1951) Thelma Ritter plays Thelma Ritter, lifelong- but now ex-owner of a now bank-owned Jersey City burger joint; John Lund is her college-educated son, ladder-climbing his way into the top brass at some indistinct mid-western corporation; Gene Tierney is the woman he sweeps of her feet in a meet-cute, who is not a snob despite being the boarding-school-raised daughter of a dear, departed diplomat and Miriam Hopkins, who plays, from what I've heard, Miriam Hopkins (definitely a snob). This being a late screwball very much in the vein of Leisen's 30s masterpieces (so you know where I stand), hijinks ensue when Tierney, mistaking Ritter for the help Lund ordered from the employment agency, ushers her into the kitchen as the rescue cook for that oh-so-mid-century marital trial, the Couple's First Dinner Party. I'll let the movie explain how Lund and Ritter end up playing the deception for far longer than they should (of course), but Leisen keeps everything at the perfect pitch, each character just desperate or histrionic or understanding or upset enough to carry it through to a hilarious breaking point, with Hopkins crouched by the fridge in the middle of the night overhearing a completely mis-contextualized conversation. And the script spreads out mid-century class anxieties in a fascinating way, giving even the villains enough of a background sketch for them to be a pointed contrast, not just a foil, to Lund and Tierney's uncertain relationship to the ill-fitting classes they keep finding themselves mixed with. Which isn't to say this is a treatise or anything—it's just hilarious, without trying too hard for the moral or the mug, but playing our expectations against everyone's expectations of everyone else's expectations beautifully. If you're fond of Leisen, I can't recommend this one enough.

I was looking forward to this, but unfortunately I didn't love it like you did. Aside from the misinterpreted overheard convo (which is pretty great) none of the comic bits worked as well as they intended to, nor did the more obvious bits of social commentary. I'm admittedly not a Leisen-enthusiast, even if I do like him, so it could be that his pitch is a bit cool and muddled for me at times, where even loud performances appear too restrained before taking off. What I did like a lot about this film, however, was exactly how Leisen, Brackett, et al. deliver their own branded twist on the consequences of classist attitudes.

Lund's character is so clearly the most problematic person in this film, for even if Hopkins is self-absorbed and naive in her elitism, his self-conscious obsessions are poisoned with a worldview that breeds deceit, mistrust, and self-pity, affecting Tierney in an arguably abusive way. The "everybody marries a stranger" line (and that scene in general) is so unbelievably dark I almost didn't believe where they were going, especially having thrown him into this position from early on in his manipulations within the workplace. The reason it felt so unique isn't that this setup is new, but just how the team separates Lund's personality from the plot.

Normally, the writers might have him enter the relationship for the wrong reasons or based on a lie, and have a subsequent moral revelation as progresses through the narrative; or perhaps enter with confidence and have the dissonance in social status slowly brew making him paranoid.. but instead we have Lund and Tierney authentically form a union divorced of his preoccupations, while his character is still rooted in them consistently outside of that part of his life. They only enter the picture in minute intrusive thoughts and posturings, and then come to a boil messily and indirectly after the spat; spilling out without any catharsis for either character or the audience, since this wasn’t set up as a promise to begin with.

I may not be articulating this well, but I felt this to be a much more convoluted relationship between identities merging with social ideologies, and for Lund to come out of it looking like the most harmful person without having made a specific, clear immoral choice as expected, was the film's greatest strength and one that was incredibly bold when audiences expect a stronger motivation to define how they should feel. On the surface the film seems to be nothing special (I still think it's duller than it wants to be), but that upheaval of the traditional route for exploiting fears surrounding social status is subtly more acidic than usual. Those marginalized group members aren't just depicted as capable of being the oppressors too at times, but in this case generally worse people, taking on the selfish characters of those they admire and burning out on them in ways their social betters don't need to do because of what they have. The film half-asks, if actions are what matters and that extends to those we hurt.. isn't that worse?

[knives]

I guess you spell depression No Down Payment. Bowie apparently thought it was a great film, but hoped that it wasn’t as true a reflection of America as it felt. Right away, less then ten minutes in, there’s this scene with a kid turned monster by television which left me so uncomfortable I was half tempted to turn off the film out of emotional exhaustion. Ritt doesn’t let up at all. The opening drive of signs is right out of a horror film and the beautiful framing of the psychology of the characters doesn’t let up until that destructive finale.

It’s interesting to compare this to Black Orchid, my favorite Ritt, as that film treats real problems with a light air and optimism whereas this one serves with largely minor problems held down with the weight of the world. Tony Randall is the star of that aspect greasy and loathsome in a way that quickly becomes a pitiable suicide in slow motion.

The contrast ultimately seems to come from the milieu which doesn’t really translate to a lot of modern perceptions even though both films remain painfully true. In best translation Black Orchid’s immigrant, southern Catholics because they have real problems to deal with are able to have a freedom to be happy. Here though in sterile suburbia, which is cramped in its own way, nothing can satisfy and provide a true sense of freedom because there is always a more that needs to compensate for something.

There’s a second thing that Ritt fortunately eggs on just enough is how this dream existence was a lot to begin with given the racial hatred it was born out of. Ritt handles this conversation with startling maturity and intelligence that remains a narrative experience even with its essay content.

I feel like death right now, but am glad for the experience.

[senseabove]

The Mating Season (Leisen, 1951)

Well, this went from a quick over-coffee reply to how I spent an unexpectedly rainy morning. So here's the kind of lengthy response you like to see, twbb

This feels like another case of our humor differing more than our reading. This time, I think I'm able and willing to expand a bit on why the film's class complexities are the source of the humor for me, so that it seems like what's too restrained for you is funny to me because of its restraint. So yes, unequivocally, Lund is the worst person in the movie—the most craven, the most pliable, the most duplicitous (Junior and Hopkins are at least blatant)—but with "good" (that is, well-founded) reasons, and ones that underpin how the humor is all built around the convoluted relationship between (individual) identity and (class) ideology you point out. Everyone is susceptible to the same kind of awfulness, to varying degrees, but Lund commits the particularly American sin of being the most aware of class of all of them.

Spoiler

Tierney, by dint of her upbringing, may be able to see through the class pretensions of those she has always hobnobbed with, but she overlooks how she still relies on and benefits from them ("I know good 'help' when I see it!" "Oh? Well, look kid, I'm just not that kind of 'help'—" "Oh any kind will do."). She may not have any herself, but she hasn't quite caught on to what the money she's surrounded by affords her anyway; and even if she isn't rich, having been raised as the daughter of an ambassador afforded her certain class exceptions that Lund has never had. Everyone knows she's not UC by blood or bank, but her dad is/was important, so they treat her as one of the clan. That's why the conflict between Tierney and Mrs. Williamson and its fall-out is so interesting: we've been told the snobbish woman likes to "vet" the families of company men, and she's treating Tierney as if she needs to prove herself the same way Lund has to every day. Mrs. Williamson seems to require class-conformity and character, which is unexpected for a snob, and what Tierney's not usually challenged on. She may be good people, but she's never had to prove it! Her "people" turn a blind eye to Junior's shenanigans or picking up the dice too fast, because to insist anything is wrong with either is a kind of class betrayal that only the most dominant party can risk. (Lund, of course, would never challenge Junior's behavior. But, unlike Tierney, he knows how to grovel before the Haves so they let you keep your seat at the table.) Ritter, in contrast and in keeping with class stereotypes, just has a nose for character, regardless of class, and doesn't need to do any vetting, as we're told and shown when she and Mrs. Williamson finally do meet. But even Ritter's working-class brusqueness isn't impervious to a working-class conception of money as an indicator of worthiness: "You ever bought an $18 hat?"

They're all playing to or against those class expectations to some degree, Lund is just the only character who's fully aware of the implicit and explicit expectations of both the upper class world he aspires to and the working class world he comes from, and especially how those expectations change for people who are crossing the border. The other characters are new at that game (or possibly retired from it: Hopkins might have a similar story, and the hint at that possibility is another way the film undercuts her pretensions of inherent class superiority, but she's very vocally forgotten them now: "Ellen, for the thousandth time, I've told you people are not called 'he' and 'she.' [to Junior] Say who does she remind you of? I'm being driven absolutely mad." "Sounds like I'm a 'she' to you.") Ritter knows there are differences, but doesn't care how they work in practice, and sometimes just doesn't know how they work in practice: "She know you're from college?" "Everybody goes to college, ma." "Well, it's nice anyway. I'll tell her you're from college." Tierney's the same way: "Oh Val, when you've been brought up in half a dozen embassies, the little princess and little dukes and little diplomats bowing from the waits and kissing your hand, what do you think you dream about? You dream of meeting a man."

Tierney isn't a frivolous brat who wants to slum it; she's as earnest as Lund is, but, like Ritter, not aware of how Lund has to navigate class differently than she has always been able to. Lund is aware of that, so he goes along with Ritter's plan, yes, as Tierney says, because he wanted to be "Upper Case for the Calingers," but also because he knows that the working class is better at being condescended to than the upper class is at descending to equality, however willing and noble in attitude some parties may be. So the "dark turn" you saw, I thought was just a blunt statement of the discomfort the comedy springs from: both Lund and Tierney are figuring out how the other is and is not of their perceived milieu. Only, Tierney is "in" the in crowd. She has some power to arbitrate who else is included, as proven by Lund's swiftly being ushered into it, but Lund has to learn how she would use it for cases other than himself before he can ask her to use it for his mother (who, it turns out, does just fine when she meets an upper-class man of character—but that's a reminder that I'm mostly ignoring the marital aspect, concern for which is Ritter's motivation and which dovetails with both Tierney's and Lund's motivating anxieties, like hiding that the party planning isn't actually going well, or that the maid you certainly can't afford is your mother.)

And that all that absurdly complex class interplay of who's expecting what behavior from whom is the source of the humor is probably most succinctly demonstrated when Ritter's boarding-house landlady stumbles out in her shawl while berating her dog: "You naughty boy! Mother's so ashamed of you, forgetting your manners that way—what would your lady doggie playmate say! What would little Charmaine say!" Charmaine, of course, could give a literal shit, but Charmaine's owner might care, and that's what the landlady is reacting to. Yes, Lund is the ridiculous landlady in that analogy, but he has very good reasons to be obsessed with other people's class solidarity.

In contrast, while Has Anybody Seen My Gal? plays similar fish-out-of-water class inversion to more overtly entertaining effect, it trades nuances of individuals' class awareness for gags of class-based situational humor: poor people don't know about art, rich people don't know about the trade-offs of close-living, etc. The Mating Season has, safe to say, objectively fewer laugh-out-loud funny moments, but Leisens' coolness revs up to genuine sparks of amusement much more frequently for me. I think that's just my brand of humor in general, though; looking over my list as it currently stands in a very rough, unpruned draft, the only non-musical "comedies" (by Letterboxd's genre classifications) on it are all, comedicaly, on the very, very dry side: Roman Holiday, The Model and the Marriage Broker, and Beat the Devil. (But I also find Bringing Up Baby to be excruciating, which I never had the nerve to assert or desire to explain in the Hawks thread, so there's that.)

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks for the thorough reply! I think your reading it spot on, probably also more in line with what the filmmakers intended, but I picked up on a different possible lens where that awareness is sidelined for the harm it causes. Everyone is playing into their roles to some extent, so Tierney has more privilege (great point about how she has power over who is included) and even if she's more humble than her mother, those engrained social behaviors of superiorities like the exchange with his mother, are fair game for judgment. My supposition is that despite all of this and the truth that Lund did not choose his status, there's a reading that throws all of those conditions out the window and doesn't particularly care if Lund is oppressed or has "good reasons" or even awareness; but that what he does with them can be viewed as problematic exclusive from his social conditions. Under this view, he is arguably the worst offender, not so much through a larger judgment of socially-constructed "American sin" but pragmatically via a behaviorist approach.

I don't personally subscribe to such a thin pathologization, but it's interesting to look past how this normally elitist stance could become one that takes behavior at face value, separated completely from those reactive pains of social comparison. I like looking at both outlooks, and yours certainly lends itself to a grey pool of identity-compromised exchanges breeding comedy, but I liked that darker angle that didn't care about what the film was even about for the sake of seeing this guy as a problem and only caring about that for a moment before the empathy kicks in and everyone kisses and makes up.

And I agree that we are a bit off on comedic tastes - though not always, and if you like dry, as I do too, please check out We're No Angels which is easily making my list. I didn't get that impression from the class-distinctions in Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, in many ways the opposite, with my favorite gag being the art gag between Coburn and the little girl where he has no idea what he's doing. I see that film as more of an exposure of such false stereotypes embarrassing the elitist in practice, at least objectively for us, which robs them of their pedestaled worth.

[alacal2]

Two 'on the run' films. One about a crooked financier redeemed (sort of) by a dog and one about a murderer redeemed by an abused child.

Across The Bridge (Ken Annakin, 1957).

This comes with some considerable baggage to live up to. According to Mackillop and Sinyard's book 'British Cinema of The 1950', this is "one of the finest of all the Graham Greene adaptations" (although the first half is a completely new 'add-on') and one of Tarantino's top ten films (whatever that means). Apparently Mike Leigh considered it a masterpiece. Sinyard even considers it in the same breath as Welles' 'A Touch of Evil'! So, everything about this film screams "Ripe For Rediscovery!!!". Well, at least one of those words is correct given that it stars Rod Steiger as the criminal financier fleeing New York on a train for Mexico. In attempting to get a new identity by throwing a lookalike murderer off the train, he inherits not only a Mexican passport but a dog called Dolores. saved from a scorpion by Dolores he finally bonds with the dog who becomes his only friend but ultimately leads to his downfall. Steiger's masterclass in brow-wiping etc seems to have been kept under control by Annakin's judicious editing according to the director's comments in the DVD's accompanying feature. If all this sounds dreadful the film is not without its merits. The train journey is tense and impressively edited but it disappointingly runs out of steam in the second half although the dynamics between Steiger and the police chief are good. Am happy to hear from Leigh, Tarantino or anyone else to encuorage a second viewing.

Hunted aka The Stranger Between (Charles Crichton 1952)

Indebted to Nabob of Nowhere for this reccommendation. Dirk Bogarde plays a murderer on the run reluctantly thrown together with a child played by Jon Whiteley running in fear from his abusive adoptive parents after setting fire to his home. All of which is brilliantly established in the opening few minutes. Winner of the International Jury Prize at the 1952 Locarno Film Festival the two were paired together again in The Spanish Gardener - a film I'm hoping to view in the next couple of weeks. Crichton has always been good at setpieces and there's a brilliantly edited and shot scene when Bogarde tries to break back into his house in a block of flats watched on by the police. The rest of the film is taken up with a journey to Bogarde's brother in Scotland and the gradual bonding with the boy. There is a very moving scene halfway through when Bogarde is asked by the boy to tell him a story to send him off to sleep. Bogarde starts with a half-remembered fairy tale that blends into his own past and touches the boys own experiences that reduces both to tears. Not a masterpiece or a contender for my Top Fifty but well worth an hour and twenty minutes of your time.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Broken Lance (Edward Dmytryk, 1954): Matt Devereaux (Spencer Tracy) is the patriarch of a clan of ranchers whose sons work for his Arizona cattle ranch at the end of the 19th century. As the film opens, he captures two of them with a group of cattle thieves and orders them hanged. He's not much kinder with his surviving sons, including Ben (Richard Widmark) from his marriage to his late Irish wife, and Joe (Robert Wagner) from his later marriage to Señora (Katy Jurado), a native American woman. Conflict arises early between Ben and Joe, with the former wanting to run his half-brother out of town. Further problems come for the family as a copper mine's runoff starts poisoning their cattle. Matt tries to hold his family together, but his actions and the internal conflict between the sons makes this all but impossible. Tracy is magnificent as the troubled head of the family, and Wagner disappears into his role as the biracial Joe. Widmark is slightly hammy here, but nowhere near his performance in Saint Joan. Domino was right. The family dynamics in this makes for a perfect double feature with Gunman's Walk. I liked both films very much and would hate to have to choose a favorite between the two. Be warned about viewing this on Amazon though. Their stream is in the wrong aspect ratio, and stretches every character until they look like The Giant from Twin Peaks. I got used to it eventually, but can understand why others would consider this unwatchable.

Come Back, Little Sheba (Daniel Mann, 1952): Shirley Booth stars as Lola Delaney, a middle aged housewife and partner of chiropractor Doc (Burt Lancaster). In the opening scene Lola rents out a room to college art student Marie Buckholder (Terry Moore), who brings both a renewed life and troubles into their household. Though she's engaged to a beaux who remains off screen, Marie strongly flirts with her model/fellow college student Turk Fisher (Richard Jaeckel), igniting a sense of renewed passion in the older couple. Doc is an alcoholic, who, after many years of recovery, finds himself drawn back to the bottle with the stress that Marie brings to the house. I've known alcoholics in my life, but thankfully never struggled with it myself. That being said, this film felt like a gut punch as Doc succumbs to his addiction. The scene where he is drunk for the first time after years of sobriety is one of the most painful things I've ever seen in a film. Lancaster gives a tremendous performance in this film, whether his character is in control or not. This was another major find for me. I hope to find room on my list for it.

The Indian Epic (Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das Indische Grabmal) (Fritz Lang, 1959): Told over two parts, the film earns its title as an epic. In the first film, German architect Harold Berger (Paul Hubschmid) commits to building a hospital in the land of Maharaja Chandra (Walter Reyer). Harold meets and falls in love with the biracial temple dancer Seetha (Debra Paget), who the Maharaja covets as his own. The conflicts causes Seetha and Harold to flee for their lives, where the Maharaja's forces follow them into the Indian desert. In the second film, the pair of lovers are caught as the Maharaja commissions Seetha's tomb from Harold's brother-in-law. The German lover is kept deep in the pits of a subterranean labyrinth, while Seetha has to dance for her life (literally). Prince Ramigani (René Deltgen) launches a coup attempt, which leads to Harold's release and a grand battle for control of the palace. Neither Hubschmid nor Paget are particularly compelling in their roles. In fact, with the exception of Paget's dance numbers, they're both rather wooden. The consensus seems to be that this was a minor entry into Lang's oeuvre. I tend to agree. Both films are full of action and adventure, but never seem to add up to much. Is it also too much to ask for Indian characters to be played by Indian actors? I know that having white actors do everything was the norm in the 50s, but today it just feels gross.

It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda, 1958): A salesman comes across the body of an elementary school aged girl in the German speaking region of Switzerland. She was murdered with a razor blade, and since he sells straight razors, the police initially try to put the crime on the man who reported it. Oberleutnant Matthäi (Heinz Rühmann) has his doubts and insists on investigating the matter further. He tracks down a young girl like the murder victim (as well as a air of previous cases which he believes are related), and inserts himself into the lives of her and her mother. Without letting his real motives on, he sits in wait for the killer to take the bait. This movie begins as a traditional police procedural for the first 2/3, but transforms into a dark, twisted look into the mind of an officer hunting a child murderer in its final act. It's truly bonkers. Again, if you're interested in viewing this, I would recommend skipping the Amazon stream. It's a bastardized English dub that doesn't do the original version any favors.

Reach for the Sky (Lewis Gilbert, 1956): Telling the story of Royal Air Force Group Captain Douglas Bader (Kenneth More), the film begins with a warning that certain liberties with his story were taken by the script writers. Just how close this is to the actual biography of the real Bader, I cannot say, but it is an entertaining biopic. As the film begins, Bader enters the RAF as a scruffy and scrappy ragamuffin who gets by anyway he can. Soon enough he crashes his plane and has both legs amputated in the aftermath. Although he's fitted with prosthetics, Bader is told he'll never fly again. Unwilling to allow his disability to define his life, Bader learns to get around and love a woman without his original legs. Eventually, Bader is allowed to fly again versus the Nazis, but is taken as a prisoner of war. The Third Reich wasn't exactly known for their humane treatment of the disabled, so what fate awaits Bader there? I have to say that I was initially bored with the picture, but my interest was piqued once Bader had to learn to live without the use of his legs. It's no masterpiece, but I'd give it a mild recommendation.

Suddenly, Last Summer (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959): Montgomery Clift stars as Dr. John Cukrowicz, a psychosurgeon at an underfunded hospital that specializes in the miracle cure of lobotomies. One day his institution's financial woes are seemingly solved with wealthy widow Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn) offers them $1,000,000 if John agrees to lobotomize her niece Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor). Catherine was close with her late cousin Sebastian. Apparently, Violet is unhappy with Catherine's "ramblings" on his death which she calls a heart attack. John works with Catherine to help her remember the truth about Sebastian, much to the chagrin of her aunt. Based on a script adapted by Tennessee Williams's play of the same name, the film was meant as an unambiguous critique of lobotomies, a procedure that Williams saw carried out on his sister a decade earlier. It's far from the best Tennessee Williams adaptations (for my money, that's A Streetcar Named Desire), but it is a passable melodrama.

Summer Stock (Charles Walters, 1950): Jane Falbury's (Judy Garland) idyllic life on her New England farm is interrupted by the invasion of a theatrical troupe there to rehearse their latest musical at the behest of her little sister Abigail (Gloria DeHaven). The troupe is lead by Joe Ross (Gene Kelly), a talented song and dance man who soon steals Jane's eyes away from her fiance Orville (Eddie Bracken). Of course, the play's star abandons the production, and it's up to Jane to step in as its new lead actress. Both Garland and Kelly were absolute masters of the musical genre, and they're both given the opportunity to shine here. I wouldn't call it the best work from either of them, but its still an enjoyable little romp.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Reach for the Sky (Lewis Gilbert, 1956): Telling the story of Royal Air Force Group Captain Douglas Bader (Kenneth More), the film begins with a warning that certain liberties with his story were taken by the script writers. Just how close this is to the actual biography of the real Bader, I cannot say, but it is an entertaining biopic.

Well for what it's worth my Grandmother was Bader's driver during the last years of the war. She described him as a foul-mouthed predatory narcissistic bastard.
File alongside Calamity Jane I guess in the bio-veracity stakes I guess.

[bamwc2]

Reach for the Sky (Lewis Gilbert, 1956): Telling the story of Royal Air Force Group Captain Douglas Bader (Kenneth More), the film begins with a warning that certain liberties with his story were taken by the script writers. Just how close this is to the actual biography of the real Bader, I cannot say, but it is an entertaining biopic.

Well for what it's worth my Grandmother was Bader's driver during the last years of the war. She described him as a foul-mouthed predatory narcissistic bastard.
File alongside Calamity Jane I guess in the bio-veracity stakes I guess.

[Rayon Vert]

Is it also too much to ask for Indian characters to be played by Indian actors? I know that having white actors do everything was the norm in the 50s

I know it was rhetorical but I think you've answered your own question. If that was the norm in the 50s, then yes it's too much to ask (doubly so since you're asking in 2020). Same thing with Broken Arrow and any other film you point out in the decade this way.

[bamwc2]

Is it also too much to ask for Indian characters to be played by Indian actors? I know that having white actors do everything was the norm in the 50s

I know it was rhetorical but I think you've answered your own question. If that was the norm in the 50s, then yes it's too much to ask (doubly so since you're asking in 2020). Same thing with Broken Arrow and any other film you point out in the decade this way.

Rayon Vert, I realize that I'm bringing contemporary standards to work done 70-61 years ago, but it's highly disappointing. As someone who works on issues of social justice, I find it dispiriting.

[bamwc2]

FWIW, the commentary track on the MoC edition of Das indische Grabmal, mentions that Lang wanted to make another film set in India with actual Indian actors before he died. It's a shame that he never got the chance to do so.

[knives]

It also might have been impractical for a lower budget German film to find Indian actors fluent in the language. This doesn’t even get into how concepts of race were radically different at the time. Hopping over to America next decade Kazan cast Estelle Hemsley to play a Greek woman with no one blinking. Our ideas on race now in many respects are more definitive and segregated than then.

[senseabove]

I assume they also explain The Indian Epic's personal importance in the commentary and why it's even more of an "it was another time" situation than just being made in the 50s. It was a script based on a novel by his early collaborator/scenarist/wife Thea von Harbou (who co/wrote the scripts for nearly all the movies Lang made in Germany) which Lang wanted to direct early in his career, but as he was still making a name for himself and it was a big-budget production, it was given to someone more established. So it's a significant choice for Lang's first film upon returning to Germany, and it's a conscious callback to the country's pre-war film industry and the action adventure movies of his early career, many of which had extremely "orientalized" plot elements. I'd agree with bamwc2 about its quality... It's a fine, middling adventure yarn, mostly notable for a few striking set pieces, its personal significance to the director, and its Rip Van Winkle-quality of being a movie from the early 1920s made almost forty years late, in vivid color.

[mizo]

The consensus seems to be that this was a minor entry into Lang's oeuvre. I tend to agree. Both films are full of action and adventure, but never seem to add up to much.

It's a fine, middling adventure yarn, mostly notable for a few striking set pieces, its personal significance to the director, and its Rip Van Winkle-quality of being a movie from the early 1920s made almost forty years late, in vivid color.

Meanwhile, I think it's (they're?) Lang's best work of the decade, maybe ever. It comes down to pure formalism, which is rarely enough to win me over on its own. But Lang's skill at putting together a sequence, of folding the (literal visual) perspectives of characters into his mise-en-scene via compositions emphasizing sharp diagonals, both static and in motion, combined with the aforementioned vivid colors, make these films just constantly breathtaking for me. It's part of their highly constructed, even hermetic quality. In spite of Lang's oft-expressed intentions of capturing gritty reality in his films, I find they're at their best the more artificial they are. These movies are practically airtight.

I agree with bamwc2 completely on Come Back, Little Sheba though! Proof that Hollywood didn't really need to borrow talent from TV in order to "adult" itself up. Funnily enough, my provisional list features the Indian epic and Little Sheba almost back-to-back!

[therewillbeblus]

I already wrote it up earlier in the thread but for my money it's the most accurate depiction of alcoholism, and the condition's interpersonal reinforcers, of the decade- alongside the Frankenheimer Playhouse 90 version of Days of Wine and Roses (which, now that I think of it, I assume is eligible for this list as technically an episode for an anthology show?)

[swo17]

Correct

[therewillbeblus]

Well then, I highly recommend it as last-minute viewing for those interested in seeing Piper Laurie fully embody alcoholism's turbulence in one of the better perfs I can think of offhand

[knives]

I just jumbled to together a provisional list and am almost embarrassed that it’s nearly identical to my old one. Have I really maxed myself out on the decade?