20 Great Years of Movies, Part 5: 1942

1. Casablanca (director: Michael Curtiz): This is another film often called one of cinema's greatest and again, I agree. This is studio filmmaking done right - lots of snappy dialogue, great character actors, memorable performances - everything about this movie lands just right for me.
2. Yankee Doodle Dandy (director: Michael Curtiz): By the same director, another very good film - a musical biography of George M. Cohen, starring James Cagney. I understand it apparently doesn't bear much resemblance to the real Cohen, but Cagney is quite game in the lead.
3. The Ox-Bow Incident (director: William A. Wellman): From the other end of the axis, a very sobering film. A western, yes, but a different kind of western - I first learned of it when I read a list of the greatest films made about law. This film is concerned, in particular, with mob law and lynchings. It's a tough film, yet for all that, is less bleak than the story it's adapted from.
4. To Be or Not to Be (director: Ernst Lubitsch): This was the only movie Jack Benny made which he actually felt well about, but it was marred by Carole Lombard's death around the time of the premiere. It's a pity that her death dulled this film's impact - Benny is perfect as the conceited actor who gets to use his abilities against the Nazis.
5. The Magnificent Ambersons (director: Orson Welles): This film seems to be best-remembered for the controversies surroundings its creation and the alterations to Welles' climax. But what's remained was still a mighty fine movie, a portrait of a film that cannot bend with the changing times.
6. Bambi (director: Samuel Armstrong): This is a Disney film I genuinely admire. It has the likeability I associate with Disney, but the depiction of both nature and man as cruel and capricious is different than most of their product.
7. Tales of Manhattan (director: Julien Duvivier): I really love this film and I wish it had more of a following - it's a portmanteau film, with various stories connected by the presence of suit which keeps changing owners. There's comedy, there's drama, there's Paul Robeson singing. I wish there more like this one.
8. Cat People (director: Jacques Tourneur): This is the first real horror film to make my lists since I started at a time when the horror genre was mostly quiet. This film helped get horror moving again and the neat ways it overcomes its limited budget by emphasizing tension and suspense instead of showing the monster itself was a very well-judged decision which makes this picture a classic.
9. The Palm Beach Story (director: Preston Sturges): Another very fine Sturges movie, this one concerning a wife who loves her husband so much she tries to leave him and line up a new suitor so that her new lover can finance her husband's impractical invention! This film goes for a happy ending designed to satisfy everyone and I love how intentionally ridiculous that conclusion is!
10. This Gun for Hire (director: Frank Tuttle): A fine star-making turn for Alan Ladd as a killer without much of a conscience who meets a woman who tries to direct his vengeful wrath at the people who deserve it. A really different kind of thriller, though it would have surely been a much tougher film had it come out 4 years later.