This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.
"Dark Passage" - An exciting Bogey and Bacall film noir about an escaped convict that uses the unusual technique of showing the majority of the action from the first person POV of Bogart's character, with a "subjective camera." His character's face is also covered in bandages from plastic surgery, so we don't actually get to see his famous mug until the last few minutes of the movie - and the reveal is worth it.
"The Lady From Shanghai" - A fairly typical murder plot is rendered immortal by Orson Welles' finale sequence that takes place in a hall of mirrors. Welles stars alongside his ex-wife Rita Hayworth, and famously didn't take a directing credit as the surviving cut is much shorter and very different from what Welles had originally assembled. Alas, like "The Magnificent Ambersons," the removed footage has never been found.
"Lured" - Before Lucille Ball became a comedy icon, she was a bona fide screen star. This is my favorite of her early pictures, where she plays a dancer recruited to go undercover by the police, and has to go up against a fiend played by Boris Karloff, among other villains. George Sanders is first billed, but it's Ball's picture. This is also a good example of the early work of director Douglas Sirk, before he would go make his famous 50s melodramas.
"Miracle on 34th Street" - Who could resist a premise like this, where Santa Claus comes to New York City and eventually has to prove his identity in court? Edmund Gwenn is a delight as Kris Kringle, Natalie Wood is perfect, and the finale with the letters all being delivered in the middle of the hearing is absolutely joyous. This one has earned its reputation for being one of the classic Christmas movies, even if it has become less well known.
"Nightmare Alley" - I suspect that I only remember this film so well because of the recent Guillermo Del Toro remake, and frankly I prefer the remake. However, that doesn't take away from how unsettling and how psychologically complex the original is, charting the rise and downfall of a con man with a spiritualism act. The cast is very good, especially Tyrone Power as the leading man. The nihilistic ending is especially memorable.
"Black Narcissus" - One of Powell and Pressburger's undisputed masterpieces is this gorgeous, epic tale of a group of nuns who try to establish a convent in the Himalayas, and underestimate the psychological effects of the environment on their members. Kathleen Byron as the unstable Sister Ruth is unforgettable, but it's the production design, with its searing colors mirroring the psychology of the characters, that really has to be seen.
"Brute Force" - A prison drama with Burt Lancaster that builds to a terrific climax. This was the first of Jules Dassin's crime films, with a focus on showing the inhumane conditions of the justice system that prisoners were forced to endure. I expected the messaging to have a negative effect on the drama, especially since it's so blunt, but this isn't the case. The tragic ending is so much more impactful with the weight of so much real world importance involved.
"The Pearl" - A Mexican-American co-production brings John Steinbeck's novel to the big screen. Boldly emotional and very faithful to the source material, the film critically depicts the social mechanisms that keep a poor family from finding a better life, even though they're received a rare windfall. The suspense and action sequences are especially impressive, with strong black and white cinematography capturing the roughness of the characters' lives.
"Record of a Tenement Gentlemen" - An early Yasujiro Ozu film that follows a poor widow who is obliged to take in an abandoned child, and through him regains a purpose in life. I was expecting a very different kind of story, and was utterly won over by Ozu's portrayal of the funny, touching, and very bumpy relationship that develops between the foster mother and her foster son, and the hardscrabble community surrounding the pair.
"Dreams that Money Can Buy" - Finally, this is a collection of experimental shorts from some of the great visual artists of the surrealist and dadaist movements. Contributors include Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Fernand Leger, and Man Ray. The shorts range from Duchamp's spinning disc illusions to a love story between mannequins.
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