20 Great Years of Movies, Part 11: 1948

1. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (director: John Huston): A simply marvelous film about the power of greed; this is simply a one-of-a-kind movie and one of Bogart's most fascinating characters as he changes from relatable to deplorable.
2. Rope (director: Alfred Hitchcock): I like this film a lot more than many, I think - I think it's one of Hitchcock's finest, but others just can't get past the gimmick. The gimmick - that the movie attempts to look as though it were filmed in a single take - is what I love about the film. I love the tricks Hitchcock used to disguise his edits, I love the way the camera moves around the set. It's great achievement in film.
3. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (director: H.C. Potter): A very amusing comedy about home ownership and all the headaches associated from it, particularly the sense that your money is being pilfered by everyone with an angle.
4. The Fallen Idol (director: Carol Reed): A very interesting picture about a boy who thinks he's witnessed a murder committed by a man he admires and isn't sure how to react.
5. The Big Clock (director: John Farrow): A very strong thriller where a man is charged with finding a supposed murderer by his employer, but unknown to the employer, the protagonist is the man he's seeking, which creates an awesome dilemma.
6. Key Largo (director: John Huston): Claire Trevor received an Oscar for her supporting role as an alcoholic gun moll and he really was brilliant, but boy, Bogart and Robinson were not exactly sleepwalking - this is great film, easily Robinson's last great gangster picture.
7. The Snake Pit (director: Anatole Litvak): An interesting look at mental illness as a woman gradually recovers from her issues; it's certainly not what would be considered proper in this day, but I give this movie a lot of credit for at least showing that recovery is a lengthy process with ups and downs.
8. Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (director: Charles Barton): Man, I loved Abbott & Costello as a child - and this was my introduction to them. Yet I approached this like a horror movie - I was genuinely afraid of the Wolfman, Frankenstein's Monster & Dracula. So, props to Universal for making the horror scenes land.
9. Oliver Twist (director: David Lean): A very good adaptation of Dickens' novel, although the filmed musical has really eclipsed this film in the public. Alec Guinness is quite the standout as Fagin but the film has a lot more going for it with some moody cinematography in the opener that beats anything found in Wuthering Heights!
10. Portrait of Jennie (director: William Dieterle): David O. Selznick really believed in this movie and I'm not quite sure why... but it's an interesting premise about a painter who keeps meeting the same woman but she's grown older at each point in time. An unusual romantic fantasy.

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!

20 Great Years of Movies, Part 9: 1946

1. It's a Wonderful Life (director: Frank Capra): This film looms large in my family, where it's one of the few movies we try to watch together every Christmas. I appreciate that James Stewart's character is presented with admirable traits and a few flaws The film's fundamental message of how one person's life can affect so many others is expressed perfectly.
2. The Best Years of Our Lives (director: William Wyler): This is the filim which ensured It's a Wonderful Life would be a flop, but it's an immensely worthy film as well. The examination of veterans trying to adjust to the end of the war is deftly handled but it was the decision to cast an actual amputee as an amputee which really helps this film stand out. Utterly engrossing.
3. Notorious (director: Alfred Hitchcock): A terrific Hitchcock thriller with Ingrid Bergman as a woman who goes undercover to ferret out escaped Nazis and the cruel lengths the caddish Cary Grant is willing to push her to get what he needs.
4. The Killers (director: Robert Siodmak): An excellent crime film starting from the opening assassination scene, continuing through the many flashbacks, and then picking up speed near the end when the titular characters suddenly return.
5. The Postman Always Rings Twice (director: Tay Garnett): Another great James M. Cain title. Like Double Indemnity it concerns a wife plotting to kill her husband with her lover and all the ways in which it goes wrong.
6. The Spiral Staircase (director: Robert Siodmak): This gothic thriller feels like it was made to exploit Dorothy McGuire as the mute servant - but boy, it's a huge improvement over the original book! A murderer is loose and it seems to be someone inside the home with the titular staircase. It plays out very neatly.
7. The Stranger (director: Orson Welles): A pretty good film with Welles as a Nazi war criminal trying to keep a low profile in a small town and Edward G. Robinson as the detective who figures him out.
8. The Big Sleep (director: Howard Hawks): The plot of this film becomes so murky that I lose track of what exactly one scene had to do with its predecessor, but this Philip Marlowe story is acted out with such compelling performances by Bogart and Lauren Bacall that it doesn't really matter.
9. Black Angel (director: Roy William Neill): A very good adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich novel with some interesting changes. A woman wants to clear her husband of a murder charge. The dead woman's husband eventually volunteers to help find the killer.
10. Green for Danger (director: Sidney Gilliat): A great murder mystery surrounding a death in a hospital during wartime, mostly memorable because Alastair Sim steals and elevates every scene he's in as the detective.

20 Great Years of Movies, Part 8: 1945

1. Dead of Night (director: Charles Crichton): An utterly amazing horror film done in the portmanteau style with a variety of people discussing the strange dreams and situations they'd been in. Some of them are utter classics in the spine-tingling genre. The section with the ventiloquist's dummy has received the most attention, but it's all fantastic.
2. The Lost Weekend (director: Billy Wilder): This depiction of a man grappling with alcoholism succeeds thanks to Ray Milland's great perfomane and Wilder's careful direction, particularly the nightmare sequence.
3. And Then There Were None (director: René Clair): A great adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel. In spite of the changes this is the best film of its kind as a group of strangers realized they've been summoned together in order to be picked off one at a time.
4. The Bells of St. Mary's (director: Leo McCarey): An excellent sequel to Going My Way with Ingrid Bergman as a nun who is determined to obtain a better property for her students.
5. Story of G.I. Joe (director: William A. Wellman): A great look at journalist Ernie Pyle, one of the most celebrated World War II correspondents, who unfortunately died before the movie came out. Burgess Meredith is great as Pyle and if you've read Pyle's articles you'll appreciate seeing them brought to life on film.
6. The Body Snatcher (director: Robert Wise): An adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson story, albeit considerably lengthened (the original story is covered in about 10 minutes at the climax). But Boris Karloff is great as the titular body snatcher.
7. Mildred Pierce (director: Michael Curtiz): Another fine James M. Cain novel adaptation, this one features a fractured mother-daughter relationship which compels the mother to attempt murder.
8. Isle of the Dead (director: Mark Robson): An odd and atmospheric film - lumped in with horror movies but really just doing its own thing. It was inspired by the painting of the same name.
9. Hangover Square (director: John Brahm): An interesting thriller about a composer who suffers from blackouts in which he commits murder. Laird Cregar is so good in the lead role that it makes the picture worth seeing.
10. Spellbound (director: Alfred Hitchcock): The nightmare sequence designed by Salvador Dalli is utterly amazing. The rest of movie ain't too bad either -- the solution to the problem is not that great, but the tension of whether Gregory Peck is the protagonist or the killer is handled well.

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.

20 Great Years of Movies, Part 6: 1943

1. Shadow of a Doubt (director: Alfred Hitchcock): This is one of Hitchcock's finest; a young woman who feels a strong bond to her uncle learns that her uncle is a serial killer. But because she loves him so much, she can't bring herself to turn him in. But is the uncle's love equally unconditional?
2. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (director: Preston Sturges): This is my favourite Sturges film. It concerns a young woman who, some time after a night out with some soldiers, finds herself pregnant but doesn't know who the father is. To solve this problem, she offers the boy who's always been pining for her a chance to get her out of trouble. But their attempted fix goes spectacularly awry!
3. Arsenic and Old Lace (director: Frank Capra): This is not really a Capra film as it mostly just recreates the famous stage play, but the performances are so perfect that the director hardly seems to matter. It's a shame that Karloff wasn't allowed to reprise his role, but Massy is still very good in the role; the first time I saw the film I didn't know about Karloff's involvement and the "he looks like Boris Karloff!" line still made me laugh. But even then, Peter Lorre is an utter joy in his part.
4. Journey Into Fear (director: Norman Foster): I think what I admire most about Eric Ambler's thrillers is how unconventional they are. His set-up, with a man on the run from a gang of killers, could have been done in Hitchcock. But Ambler's world is a little more chaotic than Hitchcock's. The various moments where the protagonist comes up with plans to unmask the antagonists, only to fail - that gives this story a different sort of suspense than Hitchcock's.
5. Bataan (director: Tay Garnett): This is really a remake of The Lost Patrol and doesn't quite hit that movie's highs (no Karloff) but I find this interesting as a war movie made during World War II about a battle which the USA lost. It's a little different seeing a war picture in which all the protagonists are dead by the time the credits run.
6. I Walked with a Zombie (director: Jacques Tourneur): So this has been called Jane Eyre with zombies and yes, that's pretty much it. The atmosphere surrounding the zombies - in particular the titular "walk" - is absolutely macabre. It's offbeat by the standards of 1940s horror movies and all the better for it.
7. Sahara (director: Zoltan Korda): One of Bogart's few non-Warner pictures; a tank crew in North Africa try to bluff their German adversaries into believing they have a supply of water. Rex Ingram was particularly good as the Sudanese soldier.
8. The Leopard Man (director: Jacques Tourneur): An unusual horror film where something... someone... is killing women at night. A leopard? Or a leopard man? Like the director's Cat People it leans more to suspense than horror and that's a strength.
9. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (directors: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger): I know that as a film afficionado I'm supposed to like Powell & Pressburger, and I have tried. There's something about their works which leaves me a little cold - perhaps it's the same thing which their many fans adore. But this one I rather like as a compelling portrait of man's life against tumultuous, changing times. I have no idea why they used the comic strip "Colonel Blimp"'s name, though.
10. Air Force (director: Howard Hawks): In anyone else's hands, this movie would be just another World War II aviation film. But with Hawks... well, Hawks already proved his love of aviation in Only Angels Have Wings. The lengthy scenes getting into the details of preparing the plane for launch are strangely the most memorable. I appreciated that Hawks did a lot of research to put this film together and was happy to show off what he'd learned.

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.