My Favourite Films of the Fifties

The fifties were another very good decade for films, so much so, in fact, that my progress through the 1960s has turned out to be something of a disappointment. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s stick to the fifties for now and I’ll finish it off by sharing with you my Top Ten films. Not an easy task, narrowing it down to my ten favourite films, and then comes putting them in order! In fact, I’ve been debating it for a couple of days but it’s time to just make a commitment. Here goes:

1. The Third Man (1950)
2. 12 Angry Men (1957)
3. On the Waterfront (1954)
4. Rear Window (1954)
5. All About Eve (1950)
6. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
7. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
8. The African Queen (1951)
9. North by Northwest (1959)
10. Rififi (1955)

Runners Up: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), High Noon (1952), East of Eden (1955), Vertigo (1958), Floating Weeds (1959)

I feel pretty good about the top ten list itself but I’m still a bit uncertain about the ordering. On any given day the movies might actually move around a little bit (for instance, I changed #2 and #3 around last night and then switched them back today). At this point, the top six movies on this list (at least) have a very good chance of appearing on my final Favourite Fifty Movies list, not bad for one decade and for movies that are over 50 years old!

I think I’ve probably mentioned all of the movies on this list at some time or another except #10, Rififi. This is a French film, a heist movie (burglary of a jewelry store), very intriguing and very well done. So well done, in fact, that the centerpiece of the film, an intricate half hour heist scene depicting the actual crime in detail, shot in near silence without dialogue or music, was apparently mimicked by criminals in actual crimes all around the world. I don’t know any of the actors or the director, Jules Dassin, but I understand he is an American who left the US after he was blacklisted from Hollywood and found work in France when he was asked to direct Rififi. The film earned Dassin the award for Best Director at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. It was also nominated by the National Board of Review for Best Foreign Film and is highly acclaimed by modern film critics as one of the greatest works in French film noir. It has a very high 8.2 rating on IMDb and a superb Metascore of 97. Then film critic and now acclaimed French director François Truffaut praised the film stating that “Out of the worst crime novel I ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best crime film I’ve ever seen.” It is very good and another of those unexpected gems I’ve so enjoyed during my “year at the movies”.

That said, I’ve placed nine films above it on my Top Ten list but if you are a film aficionado at all you’ve probably seen most of these great films. If not, then get to it!!

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Oscar-winning Films of the Fifties

Moving right along to the 1950s (to my pleasant surprise another really great decade for film), here are the Best Picture Oscar-winning movies and noted alongside, if applicable, my (alternative selection). I have to say that for at least a few years in this decade, it was very difficult to choose between several great movies (1950, 1951, 1954 and 1957, especially). Anyways, here goes:

• 1950 – All About Eve (The Third Man)
• 1951 – An American in Paris (The African Queen)
• 1952 – The Greatest Show on Earth (High Noon)
• 1953 – From Here to Eternity (Agreed)
• 1954 – On the Waterfront (Agreed)
• 1955 – Marty (Rififi)
• 1956 – Around the World in 80 Days (The Searchers)
• 1957 – The Bridge on the River Kwai (12 Angry Men)
• 1958 – Gigi (Vertigo)
• 1959 – Ben-Hur (North by Northwest)

As I mentioned, for several years in the 1950s it was difficult to choose between two and sometimes even three great films – as an avid movie fan, not a bad dilemma to be in!

For instance, in 1950 I watched a small sampling of just four films but had trouble choosing my favourite between three of them: All About Eve, the Oscar winner which stars Bette Davis as movie star Margo Channing and Anne Baxter as the deceptive Eve Harrington, a small town ingénue who underhandedly maneuvers her way into (and basically over) Margo’s life (the film was nominated for 14 Oscars, won six including Best Picture and Best Director but both Davis and Baxter lost out in the Best Actress category as did Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter as Best Supporting Actress); Sunset Blvd., another classic female-starring film with Gloria Swanson as faded silent screen star Norma Desmond who woos struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) into a relationship that ends in murder and madness (nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won three, but lost out in all the acting categories as well as Best Picture and Director); and The Third Man, a brilliant and highly underrated film noir directed by Carol Reed about pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) who travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna to visit his friend Harry Lime (played by Oscar Welles) only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of his old friend who turns out to be a black-market opportunist. Everyone’s heard of All About Eve and Sunset Blvd., I think, but perhaps not The Third Man. I would highly recommend this one which to me sort of combines notes of Citizen Kane (including its stars Welles and Cotten) with the atmosphere of Casablanca (actress Alida Valli reminded me somewhat of Ingrid Bergman). Personally, I would have chosen The Third Man as Best Picture, Carol Reed as Best Director, Bette Davis as Best Actress and William Holden as Best Actor.

The next year, 1951, posed a tough choice as well. I watched five films and was able to narrow my favourites down to two: The African Queen and A Streetcar Named Desire. These are both great films with the action-adventure and on-location setting of The African Queen being a strong selling point as well as the great chemistry between its stars Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, and the steamy, sordid New Orleans setting and torrid relationships of A Streetcar Named Desire including an awesome performance by Marlon Brando as the infamous Stanley Kowalski (“Stella!!!!!”) being the strong points of the latter film. I wouldn’t even put Oscar winner An American in Paris (a musical with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron) in the same category as these other two films. But what I really can’t fathom is Streetcar winning in three of four acting categories (Vivian Leigh for Best Actress, Kim Hunter as Best Supporting Actress and Karl Malden as Best Supporting Actor) with Brando LOSING OUT to Humphrey Bogart. Brando made that movie while a clear downside to me was Vivian Leigh’s overacting on occasion. And while I love Humphrey Bogart (and this was his only career Oscar win), I don’t think this was his Oscar-winning performance; I would have chosen him Best Actor in Casablanca and/or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (or even The Maltese Falcon). Marlon Brando was robbed!!

Speaking of Brando, he was in the Oscar winning movie from 1954, On the Waterfront, and did take home the Best Actor statuette as well (and deservedly so). This film won eight Oscars and lost in another four categories (including three nominations in the Best Supporting Actor category). This is a great film which includes the famous line by Brando’s ex-prize fighter Terry Malloy, “I coulda been a contender!” While I would agree to this as being the best film of the year, I have to say that Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window “coulda [shoulda] been a contender” too except for the fact that it wasn’t even nominated! As I’ve noted before, Rear Window is my favourite Hitchcock film of his many, many classics but based on Brando’s performance and also the socially important and very well-told story, I would give the nod to On the Waterfront.

The other year I struggled with was 1957 when the Oscar-winning picture was The Bridge on the River Kwai, a film primarily about the psychological drama going on in a World War II Japanese prisoner of war camp. This is a great David Lean-directed epic film, which won a total of seven Oscars, and included amazing performances from its stars Alec Guinness (Oscar winner), William Holden and Sessue Hayakawa (Oscar nominated) as the Japanese camp commandant. But as good as Kwai is, I would have to say that my favourite film from 1957 is the Sidney Lumet-directed legal drama, 12 Angry Men. This is such a great film, about the justice system, about the presumption of innocence and burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt particularly in face of the death penalty, about the effect of personal biases and prejudices in one’s decision-making process and, specific to movie-making, about the ability to make a great film with stark simplicity, just one primary set, no action, and just a number of fine actors interacting verbally. I should also mention another strong runner-up in 1957, Stanley Kubrick’s World War I film, Paths of Glory, a powerful anti-war film, with a great performance by Kirk Douglas, which many consider one of Kubrick’s best.

The other thing the 1950s Academy Awards are notable for is two of perhaps the worst choices ever for Best Picture, The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952 and Around the World in 80 Days in 1956. I’ve looked at a number of websites and lists that discuss the Oscars through the years and these two are almost universally mentioned as two of the all-time worst winners. I would have to agree and the even sadder thing is that not only are they lousy films but they’re exceedingly long (152 and 167 minutes, respectively).

A little bit of 1950s Oscar trivia:

• All About Eve is the only film in Academy Award history to receive four female acting nominations (two for Best Actress and two for Best Supporting Actress).
• 1957 was the first time in Oscar history that all five directors of the Best Picture nominated films were also nominated for Best Director.
• Marty (1955 Oscar winner) was the first and only film to win both the Best Picture Oscar and the Palme d’Or, the highest award offered by the Cannes Film Festival.
• Gigi (1958) was the first Best Picture-winning film to win nine Academy Awards which broke the eight Oscar record held by Gone with the Wind (and equaled by From Here to Eternity and On The Waterfront). It won a clean-sweep (9/9), the first Best Picture-winner to do so which was not repeated until 1987 by The Last Emperor. They are the only two Best Picture films to win nine Oscars from nine nominations but a third Best Picture winner scored a clean-sweep of 11 out of 11: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
• The year after Gigi’s record setting score (1959), Ben-Hur became the first of only three films to win 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture (the other two are Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).

 

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A Postscript Regarding “The Red Shoes”

I came across this little item today from young actress Chloe Moretz, from an interview she gave while publishing her new Martin Scorsese film, Hugo:

When I shot Hugo, I told Scorsese how much I love Audrey Hepburn. I think she’s the most amazing actress. I’ve seen any movie she’s ever been in. He was like, “Since you like Audrey, I’m going to show you a film called The Red Shoes. Watch it and tell me what you think.” And I absolutely loved the movie. And he goes, “That’s actually one of the films that my charity the Film Foundation found and restored.” Once I heard that, I had to be a part of it. I fundraise. I publicize it. My friends haven’t seen a lot of old movies, until I showed them. I just try to get my generation into it.

Isn’t that sweet?? 

So there you have it, a 14 year old girl and a 69 year old man recommending the same movie (as well as a woman whose age will remain unmentioned but let’s just say it falls somewhere in between the two).

Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes

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