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Phffft (1954, USA)

A happily divorced couple try to rediscover the single life, which involves more alcohol, creepy strangers, annoying roommates and fear of dying alone than they remembered. Watched it all.  Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday aren’t great Hollywood lovers, they’re slightly pathetic people whose best shot at happiness is to tolerate each other’s flaws.

Lucky Me (1954, USA)

Doris Day has my favorite voice of the 1950s so far – it gives me goosebumps. In this movie she dresses like a civilized woman, but that doesn’t fool me for a second: I can tell there’s a singing, dancing, gun-toting (and arguably lesbian) Calamity Jane underneath. Watched: 14 minutes.

Dial M For Murder (1954, USA, Hitchcock)

I’m not a fan of murder mysteries, I’m skeptical of Hitchcock, and unconvinced of Grace Kelly, but even so, this is absolutely perfect. And I always did tolerate Columbo, which this is a precursor to, down to the “just one more question” routine. Damn you Hitchcock, why won’t you let me hate you? Watched it all before, and again now.

The Garden of Eden (1954, USA)

A city woman stumbles into a nudist colony where she learns that being naked is the most natural thing in the world, for both kids and adults.  Watched: The naughty bits, of which there is actually quite a lot. The “gosh, I guess clothing is just a social convention like any other” moments are like a badly written Heinlein novel. They should have gotten him to write this, he was a real life nudist.