20 Great Years of Movies, Part 7: 1944

1. Lifeboat (director: Alfred Hitchcock): An unsettling film in which survivors of a sunken ship rescue one of the German sailors who sunk them. The conflict between the survivors and the sailor gives this movie its bite.
2. Double Indemnity (director: Billy Wilder): We're getting into the world of film noir now, and this film is frequently cited as one of the masterpieces. Truly, you can't go wrong with a James M. Cain story! If you don't know it, this is the story of an insurance salesman whose latest client wants his help in murdering her husband. They have a good plan, but there are a lot of factors they don't consider, foremost being what the murder investigation will do to their relationship.
3. Going My Way (director: Leo McCarey): A very fine musical-comedy-drama with Bing Crosby as a laid-back priest who has to phase an older priest out of his long-time parish. As a pastor's son, it's not entirely alien to me.
4. Hail the Conquering Hero (director: Preston Sturges): Another great Sturges comedy, this time concerning a US Marine who washed out of training but can't bear to let his mother know; some Marines he meets take upon themselves to force him to return home, intending to pass him off as a hero. But the town is so ecstatic over his return that the lie keeps growing as he becomes less and less willing to go along with it!
5. Murder, My Sweet (director: Edward Dmytryk): Dick Powell is kind of an odd choice to portray Philip Marlowe, but then, that was the point - he was trying to change his image. And this film turned out great - not quite as hardboiled as the novel, but still a very memorable noir story, particularly Mike Mazurki's performance as Moose Malloy. I saw this one in a packed cinema just before the pandemic and it definitely holds up with audiences!
6. Laura (director: Otto Preminger): A great mystery story about a detective who falls in love with a murdered woman - and then the murdered woman turns up alive! At that point the film actually becomes less interesting, but the investigation up to that point is very well-presented.
7. Ministry of Fear (director: Fritz Lang): A great Graham Greene thriller in which a man happens to get himself involved in a spy plot and can't seem to convince the enemy agents that he doesn't know anything.
8. The Uninvited (director: Lewis Allen): One of the better ghost stories put to film, this concerns two siblings who discover their new home is haunted by both an evil spirit and a benevolent one, so expelling the ghosts is not an easy task.
9. National Velvet (director: Clarence Brown): I'm not really the target audience for this film but I admire how well-done it is, particularly Mickey Rooney's performance as the jockey with a strained past.
10. Phantom Lady (director: Robert Siodmak): A very good Cornell Woolrich yarn with a female protagonist trying to save the life of her beloved by locating a missing witness who might prove his alibi - yet the witness seems to have vanished.