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TM2YC's 1001 Movies (Chronological up to page 25/post 481)

TM2YC

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The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Director: William Wyler
Country: United States
Length: 172 minutes
Type: Drama

'The Best Years of Our Lives' is an early post-war movie examining the return of three Iowa soldiers from the conflict and their struggles to re-integrate into society. Fred (Dana Andrews) is a decorated Airforce Captain from a broken-home and the bad side of town, trying to be something more. Al (Fredric March) is an Army sergeant who returns to his respectable up-town middle-class family and job at the Bank but begins to rely on drink to get through it all. Homer (Harold Russell) served in the Navy and comes from one of those idyllic, picture-box 1940s American suburbs. He has had his hands replaced by mechanical hooks and has to learn to deal with how others see his disability and how he sees himself.

Harold Russell was a non-professional actor who had actually lost his hands in the war but he gives one of the best performances in the film. The scene where he finally sums up the courage to share the hard truths of his reality with his sweetheart is tender and emotional. The Academy gave him a special Oscar but then he ended winning the Best Actor trophy anyway, making him the only person to win two Oscars for the same performance! It was interesting to see a scene where two of the Veterans encounter a right-wing nut (and Nazi apologist) who is wearing one of those little flag-pins that a certain type of US Politician still hide behind today (things never change). Homer rips it off his lapel and then Fred kicks his ass :D . The scene of Fred wondering among already rusting and abandoned B-17s stretching as far as the eye can see, is a powerful visual metaphor. 'The Best Years of Our Lives' was a huge box-office hit, probably because it gave a nation the chance to unpack what just happened.


The first film in the list from David Lean next.

By the way... I hadn't realised until the line was spoken, that the title of the Manic Street Preachers song 'Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky' is from this movie and is a darkly comic reference to a photo of a B-17 surrounded by flak explosions.

 

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Brief Encounter (1946)
Director: David Lean
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 86 minutes
Type: Romance

The first time I watched 'Brief Encounter' years ago, I misjudged it as laughably sexless, even for 1946, not helped by Celia Johnson's ever "so dreadfully, dreadfully" clipped English accent. Watching it again within the context of other 1940s films, I can see that it's actually boiling over with sexual desire but it's about two characters that are too decent and honorable to act upon them. Johnson and Trevor Howard play two happily married people who meet by chance at a railway station cafe and fall passionately in love. The film becomes about them trying to resist acting on their impulses and facing up to the fact that they can never be together, without first breaking up the families that they love.

The affair is told as a flashback confessional that Johnson can never actually make to her husband. Cleverly the main middle-class couple tortured by the possibility of their indiscretion being revealed, is contrasted with two working-class background characters who are enjoying flirting harmlessly, loudly and openly. The rising sound of passing trains is timed to emotional crisis points, a technique that was famously re-used for 'The Godfather's restaurant slaying scene. The beautiful cinematography is a British take on Noir, all shadows and steam. Several trips to the movies are used for some fun pops at the film-industry. The film-within-a-film "Flames of Passion" is billed as being "Based on the novel 'Gentle Summer'" :D . I'm sure the use of Rachmaninoff for the love theme, inspired Marion's theme for 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. I still don't think 'Brief Encounter' is the official '2nd greatest British film' ever but I do now think it's right up there.


Another war film from Roberto Rossellini next.
 

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Paisan (1946)
Director: Roberto Rossellini
Country: Italy
Length: 134 minutes
Type: War

'Paisan' ('Paisà') is the second in Roberto Rossellini's loose "War Trilogy". The film is broken up into six quite separate "Episodes" but all take place during the Allied campaign to take Italy from the Nazis and Italian Fascists. 1. An Italian peasant girl and an American GI try to communicate while on guard duty. 2. An African-American MP and an Italian street-urchin cause trouble. 3. A drunken US soldier and an Italian prostitute reminisce. 4. An American nurse and Italian Partisan on a nail-biting "parkour" chase across a war-torn city. 5. A 500-year-old Catholic monastery takes in three US Chaplins for the night but the monks get into a flap when they discover one is Jewish and one is Protestant. 6. OSS and Partisan operatives try to hide from the Nazis in river marshes. The tales end with life-lessons, or unexpected twists of a bitter-sweet nature. I could take, or leave episodes 1 and 6 but the other four are fantastic for different reasons, being in turn, charming, romantic, action-packed and spiritual.


The first Lana Turner film in the book next.
 

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The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Director: Tay Garnett
Country: United States
Length: 113 minutes
Type: Drama

After seeing it, I'm still questioning the inclusion of this Hollywood adaptation of 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' on the 1001 list, when the 1943 Italian version 'Ossessione' was so much better. The two murderers are played by John Garfield, who is a little wooden and Lana Turner, who I thought was somewhat miscast. She is just too glamorous for the waitress/cook in a 2nd-rate roadside Diner.  Things only get interesting about two thirds in when we switch from the murderous plotting, to the law trying to catch the pair. In this version, the authorities know they are guilty instantly but they need to prove it. The shady practices of the lawyers trying to entrap the two and put them in the gas chamber, over a $100 bet, actually had me feeling sorry for the killer couple.


Another John Ford Western next.
 

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My Darling Clementine (1946)
Director: John Ford
Country: United States
Length: 97 minutes
Type: Western

The title of 'My Darling Clementine' had me thinking it was a Comedy/Musical Western but it's actually a Noirish take on the Wyatt Earp story. Henry Fonda plays a stern yet likeable Earp but it's Victor Mature's fatalistic turn as Doc Holliday that steals the show. He's dressed all in black with a face lined with sadness, anger and tragedy. His gravel voice reciting doom-laden Shakespeare verse, while choking from consumption. I don't think I've ever seen a Victor Mature film before but I now plan to watch many more. When we now think of the Western Genre, I think we often tend to picture it CinemaScope but the way John Ford frames Monument Valley in the Academy Ratio is something else. The people appearing ant-like in the bottom third of the shot with acres of sky and landscape above and below, it looks so desolate and vast:

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A Scope Western would probably compose that same shot more like this:

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(Dammit I read afterwards that there is a slightly longer "preview" cut available (I watched the Theatrical Cut). I would have happily spent more time with these guys.)


Orson Welles' third film next.
 

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The Stranger (1946)
Director: Orson Welles
Country: United States
Length: 95 minutes
Type: Drama, Noir

'The Stranger' finds Orson Welles trying to make a successful mainstream film, rather than an epic art project that only pleases the critics. Orson plays a Nazi 'Franz Kindler' (a fictional architect of the "Final Solution") hiding in a quiet American town, about to marry the daughter of "a famous liberal" politician (a fact that amuses Kindler). Edward G. Robinson plays the UN Nazi hunter who has tracked him down. The plot is neatly arranged so that Robinson knows Kindler lives in the town but cannot be certain of the identity he has assumed. Welles had to make some compromises, like removing a whole South American opening sequence and having his original choice of a woman (Agnes Moorehead) as the Nazi hunter vetoed, which would have been a more interesting casting choice. That's not to say Robinson isn't very good in a part, playing it like a proto-Columbo.

Welles had seen the footage of Concentration camps but much of the American public had not, so he includes a scene where Kindler's wife is shown Billy Wilder's 'Death Mills' documentary (that was an otherwise restricted military film). Mostly we just see the light of the projector and the resulting revulsion flicker on her face but a few of the less harrowing shots are cut into the movie. Robinson eventually zeroes in on his prey when Kindler makes an unguarded comment at a dinner party discussing how Karl Marx's ideology differed from the Nazis. Kindler replies "but Marx wasn't a German, Marx was a jew" not realising he's let his disguise slip but Robinson notices.

The Library of Congress sourced 35mm print on the Kino Lorber blu-ray is in pinsharp HD but totally unrestored, so frames are missing, the picture is unstable, scratches are all over the place, the soundtrack crackles and you can hear/see the difference when reals are changed... but still it's a damn sight better than the VHS level DVD I used to have. Hopefully Criterion, or some other label will undertake a full cleanup one day.



Next up is a Jean Cocteau film.
 

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Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Director: Jean Cocteau
Country: France
Length: 93 minutes
Type: Romance

'Beauty and the Beast' ('La Belle et la Bête') uses makeup, set-design, glowing light and mysterious shadow to create a sense of intoxicating enchantment. Director Jean Cocteau also uses deceptively simple in-camera tricks like slow-motion, reverse photography, wire-work, crossfades and trick editing to put on an in-camera conjuring show. Belle cries tears that transform into diamonds, the Beast's fur smoulders as if it's catching fire and statues come to life.  It's a literal case of "smoke and mirrors". Jean Marais is wonderful as The Beast and so is Josette Day as Belle. I'd compare this very favourably with the definitive Disney animation (which I now notice makes visual references to the 1946 film). The myriad little plot differences in Cocteau's version (while still feeling like the same plot) also serves to illustrate how little Disney's later live-action remake bothered to even try.


More Bogart and Bacall next.
 

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The Big Sleep (1946)
Director: Howard Hawks
Country: United States
Length: 114 minutes
Type: Noir, Detective

'The Big Sleep' was shot soon after 'To Have and Have Not', re-uniting the chemistry of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Due to WWII ending, the film was held back for over a year until Warner Brothers had cleared their backlog of war movies. When it was finally released about 20-mins of re-shoots were added to include more Bogart/Bacall magic. So we have the option of watching two cuts, I went with the re-shot theatrical release as it's supposed to be marginally better and includes the dynamite scene where the pair are discussing horse-racing but are really talking about f***ing :D . The whole movie is just as sexy, with Bogart's PI 'Philip Marlowe' half-flirting/half-verbally-sparring with every girl he meets (and several of the men too). The convoluted plot is notoriously hard to follow but you somehow don't care "who killed who" because you are too busy enjoying the moody atmosphere and snappy dialogue.


Burt Lancaster's very first role next.
 

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I believe I have a copy of this edit. Get in touch if you're interested
 

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The Killers (1946)
Director: Robert Siodmak
Country: United States
Length: 103 minutes
Type: Film-Noir

'The Killers' grips from the opening tension-filled scene, as two dangerous looking men walk into a diner and begin to intimidate the staff. They are there to kill "The Swede" (Burt Lancaster), an ex-boxer, who for unknown reasons simply accepts his fate. The rest of film is told in flashback, out of sequence, building up a picture of Swede's tragic life, via an insurance investigator interviewing the boxer's old associates. He uncovers a story of double-crosses, betrayal, robbery and murder. The Noir Cinematography looks amazing in HD, Lancaster impresses in his first ever film role and the tightly wound mystery keeps you guessing 'til the end.


Another Powell and Pressburger masterpiece next.
 

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A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 104 minutes
Type: Romance

'A Matter of Life and Death' (aka 'Stairway to Heaven') is a romantic and philosophical fantasy and is so far above and beyond the set brief of "make a film about British and American shared values", that only Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger could have conceived it. A British WWII pilot (David Niven) aboard a stricken Lancaster, spends his last minutes talking to a female American radio operator. He jumps out with no parachute but miraculously survives the fall, chancing upon the same girl the next morning, they instantly fall in love. He then begins to have visions of somebody who may be an angel, who reveals that he should have died in the fall but got lost in the English fog ("a real pea-souper"). What follows is a trial in heaven to decide if he should live or die... or maybe he is simply concussed from the fall (the plot cleverly plays both ways).

The afterlife is rendered in stark futurist monochrome and the "real" world is shot in lush magic-hour Technicolor. I do wonder if the set-designs influenced the look of the Fortress of Solitude and Krypton in the 1978 'Superman'. Also, the way the film begins with a narration against a slow pan across a galaxy of stars is very like the opening shot of the 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' title sequence. Roger Livesey plays the British defense council and Raymond Massey (famous for playing Abraham Lincoln on screen) is the American prosecuting attorney in this vast celestial courtroom. Impressive matte paintings, convincing miniatures and expansive sets are used to give everything an otherworldly scale. The giant heavenly escalator is the most enduring and influential visual image.

I'd watched 'A Matter of Life and Death' once before on DVD and remembered the washed-out bleeding colours, so this time I wanted to see it at it's best. Importing the Criterion blu-ray (at no small expense) was well worth it because their 4K restoration has all the Technicolor records in perfect digital registration, resulting in a stunningly clear and rich picture.



A Dickens adaptation next.
 

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Great Expectations (1946)
Director: David Lean
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 118 minutes
Type: Drama

David Lean's tight and concise adaptation of 'Great Expectations' is full of Gothic set design, Expressionist lighting and Noir-ish photography. It almost comes across as a Universal-style Horror movie. The 38-year old John Mills is heavily made up to look like young Pip but there isn't any disguising he's not in his early twenties anymore. Having said that, the 32-year old Alec Guinness does convince in a similar role. Bernard Miles is totally lovable as the simple blacksmith Joe Gargery, as is Francis L. Sullivan as Pip's commanding lawyer Mr. Jaggers. This 1946 film sets a high bar for all the later Dickens translations on the big and small screen.


Another Hitchcock film next.
 

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Notorious (1946)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country: United States
Length: 101 minutes
Type: Drama, Romance, Thriller

It feels like 'Notorious' very much belongs to the later glamorous spy-caper colour period but Alfred Hitchcock is still in the last phase of his black & white work ('Rope' would soon be his first foray into colour). Ingrid Bergman is fantastic in a complex role, portraying the daughter of a Nazi who is recruited by a US Government Agent (Cary Grant) to infiltrate a Nazi ring hiding in Brazil. She is of course "Notorious" because of her parentage but also because she is promiscuous (for 1946) and has a drink problem and temper, no doubt down to barely repressed and misplaced self-loathing. The pair soon fall in love but the kicker comes when Bergman's assignment requires her to seduce a top Nazi (Claude Rains) causing heartache and drama for the romantic couple. The film is generally a high-class thriller and a winning romance but it totally missed an opportunity to address Nazism, in the way Orson Welles did in 'The Stranger'. Rains' character and his associates might just as well have been crooks of any variety, nothing more sinister than that.


Yet another Powell and Pressburger film next (much rejoicing).
 

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Black Narcissus (1947)
Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 100 minutes
Type: Erotic-Drama

'Black Narcissus' is another Technicolor feast for the eyes from Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger ('The Archers'). A small group of Anglican nuns take up an invitation from a Himalayan General, to establish a hospital and school in an abandoned palace and former harem. They soon find themselves becoming disturbed and distracted by their sensual new surroundings. Exotic perfumes (which the title refers to), Kamasutra-style paintings on the walls, a wanton young local girl and their ruggedly handsome English liaison, all conspire to re-awaken forgotten memories and erotic obsessions in the nuns.  Deborah Kerr (as the head nun, Sister Clodagh) conveys such a range of emotions on her face as she struggles to maintain her composure.  Kathleen Byron plays the already unbalanced Sister Ruth, who is driven to madness by the new temptations. Her mad raving eyes are quite unsettling.

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It's filmed almost entirely in the studio but the feeling created in the mind is of vast mountain ranges, plunging vertiginous valleys and endless open skies, that's the magic and genius of The Archers' film-making at work.  The many glass-shots of the Himalayas look like beautiful paintings but that actually blends well with the studio footage, as that also has the warm subtleties of a Michelangelo fresco. I'd watched part of 'Black Narcissus' years ago but my decision to wait to see it in fully-restored HD was well worth it.


(I noticed this is mislabeled as a 1946 film in the book, not 1947.)

Frank Capra's Christmas masterpiece next.
 

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It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Director: Frank Capra
Country: United States
Length: 130 minutes
Type: Drama, Romance

If you haven't seen this film already, you've been wasting your life  ;)  but I'll briefly describe the plot anyway. George Bailey (James Stewart) is a young selfless small-town guy with ambitions of exploring the world but because he is always there to help everybody and put himself last, he never manages to go anywhere, or achieve any of his dreams. When he is driven to thoughts of suicide, an Angel called Clarence (Henry Travers) arrives and shows George what impact his life has had on people. Frank Capra and James Stewart take us and George to the very depths of darkness and despair, making the ultimate salvation and celebration ecstatically joyful. It's one of the few movies that makes me cry every single time (this re-watch being no exception). If there is such a thing as a "perfect movie", then this is certainly one of them. e.g. Acting, Direction, hair and makeup, sound and music design, lighting all come together to make a powerful scene like this:


I don't recall when I first watched 'It's a Wonderful Life' but I do remember the first time I saw it projected in 35mm, on the final night for my home town's family-run Art-Deco Cinema. It had been open for 65-years and was where I first saw Star Wars but has now been bulldozed into a car park and a sh*tty soulless digital multiplex opened elsewhere. The audience (sitting in those old red-velvet chairs you used to get) gave a little cheer as George ran down the street of Bedford Falls joyfully shouting "Merry Christmas movie house!" when he sees it is still there. So even though 'It's a Wonderful Life' does feature an angel and travels to a parallel reality, it always feels rooted in truth to me. I can't imagine ever getting tired of re-watching 'It's a Wonderful Life'.


The Rita Hayworth film in the book next.
 

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Gilda (1946)
Director: Charles Vidor
Country: United States
Length: 110 minutes
Type: Film-Noir

'Gilda' is about a volatile love/hate triangle between Mundson, the owner of an illegal Argentinian Casino, his new and much younger wife Gilda and Johnny, his shady floor manager. Gilda (played by the gorgeous Rita Hayworth) has one of the most famous introductions in film history. Mundson enters her bedroom and asks "Gilda, are you decent?" and Hayworth flicks her head up into shot, with a mischievous grin and says "Me?". It tells you everything you need to know about the character in one shot, one movement and one line. That's real film-making.

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I was absolutely loving the film and it's world of glamorous nightspots, sexy verbal sparring, Noirish lighting and political corruption... up to a point. Johnny starts off as a bitter lowlife but slowly turns into a total evil b*stard, psychologically abusing, imprisoning and controlling Gilda and finally actually hitting her. I was fully expecting him to meet a nasty end, like Film-Noir "anti-heroes" usually do but instead he walks off into the proverbial sunset with Gilda! The dialogue makes out that because Gilda was constantly flirting and (pretending) to cheat with other men, to make Johnny mad, they are just as bad as each other. No they are not movie, go away and think about what you did!  :mad: This ending wouldn't fly in 2018, thank goodness.


The last Charlie Chaplin film in the book next.
 

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Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Country: United States
Length: 124 minutes
Type: Comedy

Charlie Chaplin stars (and writes, produces, scores and directs) in this upbeat witty comedy about a fictional serial-killer called "Monsieur Verdoux", based on a story by Orson Welles, in turn inspired by the real French killer Henri Désiré Landru. Verdoux criss-crosses France romancing and then murdering wealthy widows. Chaplin does everything he can to make us sympathise with Verdoux, by not showing any actual violence or murder, making his motive providing for his disabled (original) wife and child, by showing him to be kind and gentle to animals (and the occasional person he considers worthy to survive) and even gives him a closing speech arguing for the morality of murder, in the face of worldwide genocide. The subject and humour are dark but the tone is whimsical and fun. The farcical middle act where Verdoux repeatedly tries and fails to bump-off a vulgar lottery winner who was "born lucky" is a lot of fun. Chaplin makes constant little furtive looks out at us the audience, making the viewer complicit in the murders, much like the Francis Urquhart character from 'House of Cards'. I've seen 'Monsieur Verdoux' a few times now and I think it might be Chaplin's finest sound film.


The first Robert Mitchum film in the list next.
 

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If Scarlet Street isn't on the list, it ought to be.

I don't want to spoil anything because I saw it without knowing anything about it, but I will say:
1. Edward G. Robinson stars.
2. Fritz Lang directs.
3. It wasn't long after the movie started before it had me by the ankle, and didn't set me back down till well after it was over.

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I know you recommended it to me in PM, but I wanted to come here and say THANKS because its the best movie I've seen in a while.
 
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