20 Great Years of Movies, Part 14: 1951

1. Scrooge (director: Brian Desmond Hurst): This phenomenal adaptation of A Christmas Carol simply obliterates the need to bother with any other adaptation. This is definitive and a staple of my Christmas - a perfect film.
2. Strangers on a Train (director: Alfred Hitchcock): One of Hitchcock's best, the famous story of two men who "swap murders." Or rather, one man decides that what they've decided to do, does his part then insists his "ally" follow suit. The protagonist is a lot more likeable here than he was in the book, but he has some interesting flaws which add to the drama - though the antagonist is the most meaty part in the film by far!
3. The African Queen (director: John Huston): A great romantic comedy and wartime drama with Bogart and Hepburn filmed in the actual Congo. It's amazing that at this point in his career, Bogart had basically become Clark Gable -- that is, a credible romantic lead, a tough guy with some hidden softness. Quite a feat!
4. The Lavender Hill Mob (director: Charles Crichton): Another great Ealing Studios comedy, featuring gold thieves who try to smuggle the gold in the form of souvenir statuettes, which tunrns out to be a bad idea!
5. On Dangerous Ground (director: Nicholas Ray): An interesting noir which quickly steps away from the city and into the country, which is not the usual setting for such stories. It concerns a cop chasing a criminal into the snowy wilderness; and since the cop is Robert Ryan, you know he's not a clean-cut hero. If you think all noir is the same, give this one a try.
6. Der Verlorene (director: Peter Lorre): AKA "The Lost One" this is the movie Peter Lorre went back to Germany to make, but by the time he got it into cinemas he found out audiences were basically tired of feeling bad about World War II. Lorre is terrific in this film as a scientist whose conscience is tormented over what did for the Nazis, but as far as I know it has no official subtitled release - I got my copy bootleg.
7. The Man in the White Suit (director: Alexander Mackendrick): A brilliant Ealing Studios comedy with Alec Guinness as the inventor of a suit which cannot become dirty -- and all the forces who want to prohibit his product from being released.
8. The Day the Earth Stood Still (director: Robert Wise): This film did a lot to set the tone for science fiction of the 1950s. It's mostly remembered for the robot Gort, but the film's message of peace is still a worthy one and was a bit against the grain of its time. It's better than most 1950s science fiction, largely due to Robert Wise.
9. Native Son (director: Pierre Chenal): This film was so hard to make at the time that it was done in Argentina; it also stars the book's author Richard Wright in the lead role, who does well for a non-actor. It's a tough movie and one can see how, say, rape, racism and dismemberment might not be what US studios wanted to produce.
10. A Streetcar Named Desire (director: Elia Kazan): One of the definitive 1950s drama films, the movies where interpersonal drama and method acting gave a different sort of energy than the "classic" Hollywood pictures. The film holds up - it's not really one of my favourite but I admire the craft that went into it.