20 Great Years of Movies, Part 10: 1947

1. Miracle on 34th Street (director: George Seaton): This is a holiday favourite in my family, although not one I grew up with as a child. Edmund Gwenn is simply perfect as Santa claus and the film is a welcome antidote to cynicism.
2. The Lady from Shanghai (director: Orson Welles): Speaking of cynicism, here's Welles' great noir thriller where he's a pawn between a deceitful couple. The hall of mirrors sequence on its own is a must-see.
3. The Bishop's Wife (director: Henry Koster): Another holiday favourite of my family with the story of a bishop who asks God for help and is a little perturbed when it's answered by an angel who seems all-too-eager to interfere in the bishop's affairs.
4. Crossfire (director: Edward Dmytryk): Here's one that could use a little more attention. It's not quite as tough as the original novel - which tackled homophobia instead of anti-semitism - but this story, about an ex-GI who murders a man, is a very strong noir. Robert Ryan makes a terrific louse, which he would continue to do for pretty much the rest of his career.
5. Out of the Past (director: Jacques Tourneur): When it comes to noir, this is one of the films you're obligated to mention - Robert Mitchum's first great noir role which follows pretty much all the "rules" of noir (to the extent that something as amorphous as noir has rules). It has the femme fatale, it has the USA's dirty underbelly and it has a downbeat ending. If you like noir, you've probably already seen this one.
6. Odd Man Out (director: Carol Reed): This film is, er, odd. James Mason plays an Irish terrorist who is abandoned by his comrades after being wounded and left wandering through Northern Ireland, encountering a motley crew of folk who each seem to be projecting their own attitudes upon him.
7. Boomerang! (director: Elia Kazan): An interesting noir with a slight touch of The Ox-Bow Incident on it as a man is arrested for murder while a mob eagerly awaits his death, but he might not be the actual killer.
8. Dark Passage (director: Delmer Daves): There was interest in shooting films from a first-person perspective around this time (see The Lady in the Lake) and the opening of this film which is shot from the perspective of Bogart's character is the most interesting part - it feels much more modern than the rest. The rest is a pretty good thriller, but once Bogar's face finally appears on screen it becomes a little more predictable.
9. Body and Soul (director: Robert Rossen): An interesting John Garfield movie where he played a boxer who becomes entrapped by his new lifestyle and unable to comprehend how success has cost him his soul.
10. Brute Force (director: Jules Dassin): If you want an ugly, downer of a film, check this out. Burt Lancaster and others plot a prison break from a facility overseen by a tyrant played by (believe it or not) Hume Cronyn. The chaos of the prison break feels like the most violent spectacle in film up to that year!