Clearly everyone was waiting for World War II to be over. With the Allies emerging victorious, a horde of great films came out this year, from all over the world. In a war filled decade, this year is one of the bright spots for great cinema.
John Ford does his western thing, per usual magnificent and majestic, with horses and gunfights galore. This time though, he’s taking on a legendary story: that of Henry Fonda’s Wyatt Earp, Victor Mature’s Doc Holiday and the gunfight at the OK Corral. Oh yeah, the titular song is really catchy too.
You thought Disney did this first. Au contraire! Jean Cocteau actually make the first version. This one’s MUCH creepier and adult than the kid version, with ephemeral shadows and lighting, plus really effective creature design telling the story we all know and love.
Shawshank fans will recognize this film by Rita Hayworth’s hair flip. Hayworth is excellent playing the woman married to a crippled tycoon of a man (George Macready), but able to attract anyone she wants, men like Glenn Ford, who melt every second they spend with her, despite his proclaimed hatred of her. Gilda makes it easy to see why Hayworth was such a sexpot in the 40s/50s, hair flips and dancing numbers for the win!
A movie year from the 40s/50s feels complete when Alfred Hitchcock releases something. He doesn’t disappoint here, pairing Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman together in one of the master of suspenses twisty tales. Spies. Forbidden love, twisty storytelling, lush location shoots, and harrowing suspenseful sequences.
David Lean is a good directing choice for a Charles Dickens adaptation, as he’ll give the movie the epic scope the story deserves. John Mills and Valerie Hobson are good enough as Pip and Estella, but it’s Lean who’s the star here, making each scene just gorgeous and huge for the eyes.
The run on thrillers begins. Orson Welles directs and stars in this one as a Connecticut professor, mundane as can be. Things get weird when an old associate shows up in town, forcing Welles to confront a terrible, terrible past. Like his more legendary first film, Welles uses shadow and silent passages effectively, conveying a closing sense of dread for him and his tiny little Connecticut town.
Humphrey Bogart is perfect for a world weary private eye, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Here, like all noirs, he gets sucked into a sinister underworld, revolving around Lauren Bacall who Marlowe can’t help but be drawn too. Never a bad choice to have a sexy flirty convo game with all sorts of film noir action sequences. Convoluted plot aside, all the actors elevate the story and have a great time doing it; another great film in Howard Hawks’s great resume.
William Wyler directs this postwar study of relationships. It opens with 3 friends arriving home after World War II, and focuses on their lives trying to settle down and find love, while trying to communicate what happened to them overseas, our early look at PTSD. Each character gets the right amount of room to breathe, and the script is shockingly astute about the day to day struggles of veterans and their loved ones as they navigate a new, strange way to live. Also props to Harold Russell, a man who lost his hands in WWII, playing an early screen version of a paraplegic and giving him all sorts of humanity to admire/appreciate.
Also from Italy! Vittorio de Sica has an eye for the poetically tragic. Here he focuses on two shoeshine boys, struggling to make ends meet after the war. Because of their situation, they’re pushed into the justice system. De Sica shows how a punitive system and poor decision making escalates quickly into tragedy, and make the concept of “violent behavior” much more complicated.
Frank Capra, wide eyed optimist of a director, writes and directs one of the great life affirming films ever created. Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey is a hard working good natured man, married with kids. But life turns him cynical, making him consider ending his life…except apparently he has a guardian angel named Clarence who can show him what happens if he didn’t exist. If you need a movie version of a warm hug, this is your movie, regardless if it’s Christmastime or not.
