This is the year the 50’s threw in some amazing early film genres, actors, and directors. Marlon Brando, fresh off Broadway, becomes a force of nature in Hollywood. Alfred Hitchcock gives us an early glimpse of a legendary decade of thrillers, and the space based science fiction movie and adventure romcom were baselined as well!
A requisite school reading material hits the big screen. Audie Murphy plays the everyman: a wide eyed boy enlisted to fight in the Civil War, who is unprepared for the horrors he’s about to witness. The movie, like the book, is mostly uplifting though, encouraging people to push past their fears so they can do great things.
Jean Renior’s film about young love in a strange but welcome place in 1951 for movies. Three teenage girls: English, American, Indian, grow up in India. A man arrives which causes all 3 to learn lessons about love and life, while Renior uses the Technicolor filming to make Indian life vibrant and exceptional.
Following up the tragic Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio de Sica takes a more humorous tone with the same themes in this little arthouse romp. Francesco Golisano stars as Toto, an orphan who is powered by exuberance and good spirits, believing he has magical powers to make people’s lives better.
John Carpenter would draw inspiration for his 1982 film from this longer titled one. Same, terrific premise: a group of arctic researchers find a UFO crash landed, and thaw out the pilot, who wreaks havoc on the men inside. And like Carpenter’s movie, this one makes the characters worth rooting for and not rooting to be killed by the creature.
Billy Wilder’s tale is as relevant today as it was in 1951. Kirk Douglas is a reporter, working on a story about a man trapped in a caved in mine. Douglas, great as ever, isn’t one of those unbiased reporters though, he’s a “journalist” who knows this is his big moment in the sun, and hopes to capitalize on the story as much as possible.
George Gershwin made a lot of great music didn’t he? It’s used to lavish big spectacle her in this musical about Gene Kelly’s painter searching for love in Paris, along with his friends. The story’s not the sell here: it’s how lavish and amazing the musical sequences are, some of the best choreographed in movie history by Vicente Minnelli.
John Huston’s adventure classic. Two of the greats star: Humphrey Bogart is a gin swilling frumpy man, paired with the uptight mannered Katharine Hepburn during World War I in Africa. What follows is the template for every romcom movie made since, and also an exquisitely shot movie that should dazzle the eyes and the senses.
Robert Wise’s sci-fi classic. A UFO lands near the White House, and out steps Michael Rennie’s Klaatu and Gort, a robot with death rays for eyes, who desire to meet with world leaders. The movie is one of the great sci-fi social commentaries about excessive military force, tolerance, and prejudice while telling a great story about an alien invasion.
An early sign of a great decade of thrillers from Alfred Hitchcock. Farley Grainger plays a tennis pro who happens to meet Robert Walker’s rich bored man on a train. Walker proposes to Grainger that both kill the person who’s ruining the other’s life. Grainger walks away weirded out, but then bodies start showing up dead around him. The big moments on this thriller are an amazing scene on a merry go round, and a legendary shot at a tennis match that will give everyone the chills.
The great Tennessee Williams play birthed a great Elia Kazan movie. Helps a lot when Vivien Leigh is your Blanche Dubois, the southern belle with a past she’s trying to outrun, and the volcanic Marlon Brando as her brother in law Stanley, so electric this started his legendary film run. Greats like Kim Hunter and Karl Malden in supporting roles were also so good they brought home gold, in large part thanks to the brilliant Williams script.
