Jud Süß (1940), for making me feel what it’s like to hate the Jews
Santa Fe Trail (1940), for its shocking defense of slavery
Fantasia (1940), for making me cry
The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan’s Travels (1941), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), really anything by Preston Sturges
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), for that motorcycle scene at the beginning, also A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), really anything by Powell & Pressburger
Day of Wrath (1943), for being the most metal movie of the decade
Mission to Moscow (1943), for showing that there really were some genuine Communists in Hollywood
Victory Through Air Power (1943), for Walt Disney’s insane ambition of changing the course of the war
Henry V (1944), for delivering the St. Crispin’s Day speech at the exact right moment in history
Dead of Night (1945), for being the only genuinely scary movie of the entire decade
The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), and A Walk in the Sun (1945), for setting the standard in war movie realism
Good News (1947), for that musical number that just makes me really happy
Railroaded! (1947), T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), really anything by Anthony Mann
Rope (1948), for being maybe my favorite movie of all time
The Fall of Berlin (1949), for taking the Jerry Bruckheimer approach to Stalin worship
Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Fountainhead (1949), for being unfashionably libertarian, then and now.
]]>Gategutter / Boys From the Streets
The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend
Again Kurosawa uses disease as a theme. This time it’s syphilis, which the men carry home from the war, and are unable to cure. And the women suffer their own permanent consequences from wartime accidents. There’s no easy return to normalcy. Something good that once existed is irrevocably lost. But it’s still up to everyone how to deal with this loss: As honorable or dishonorable people. Watched it all.
Hollywood continues to discover racial discrimination. Once again the main characters are all white, because, come on, you have to draw the line somewhere. Watched: 10 minutes. Btw, I think Rich Hall mentioned this movie in his excellent BBC documentary The Dirty South, which you should go and watch now.
.. and, dear god, that was it for the 1940’s. I can’t believe I actually did it. As far as I know I’m the first person ever to do this – at least on this scale, and in this particular way, with several thousand movies unfiltered by critics, watching everything until I get bored, and writing about it afterwards. And this really is a fantastic way to watch movies. I don’t think I can go back to the old way now. In fact, I think I’ll continue right on to ..
]]>Betty Grable rampaging across the West, shooting bullets and Preston Sturges’ dialogue. Yes! Watched it all. An unpolished, but otherwise worthy forerunner to Blazing Saddles.
Did you know that Poor People often live in Slums and suffer terribly from Juvenile Delinquency? Watching a movie that pretends to know what that is like is the least you can do about it. Watched: 8 minutes.
I feel like Shirley Temple is the nemesis of this movie marathon. She’s been there since the mid-30’s, and even now she’s still playing teenage roles. I’d be depressed if I didn’t know she would retire a year later. (And btw, she’s still alive!) To be fair, though, this is quite good, with Temple playing only an ignorable minor role. It’s the old “successful grown-up returns to college to get a formal education” ploy, featuring Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. I’m particularly impressed with Mr Belvedere’s familiarity with Norwegian, demonstrated in the clip above. Watched: 7 minutes.
Through accidental circumstances, Danny Kaye is thought to be someone he isn’t. Hilarity ensues. He’s maybe the only funny comedian of the 1940’s, but I’m getting tired of Kaye. He’s like Jim Carrey: Once you’ve seen him make one or two odd faces, you’ve seen it all. Watched: 25 minutes.
]]>I can learn to like Communist war epics, if they’re all like this, the original Der Untergang. The emotions are all heightened: All joy, all love, all rage. The first scene with Stalin is shot with an angelic choir humming in the background. And the scenes of the actual battle of Berlin are like nothing that actually happened – mythical, crossing over to delirious when Stalin himself shows up, and all the nations on Earth join hands to sing his praise. Watched it all. I guess I’m able to watch this with moral detachment because it crosses over into fantasy. Fantasy was the element that held Communism together. Which is why I look forward to more of these movies.
Another step towards insincerity in war movies. I don’t mean that The Fall of Berlin (above) is particularly sincere. But at least it doesn’t pretend to be. Watched: 4 minutes.
We never see Addie’s face, only the effect she has on her desperate housewife friends, all of whom are less beautiful, less interesting, less cultured, less alive, less perfect than she is. They know it, and their husbands know it too. Watched it all.
The Three Stooges – another of the massively unfunny comedy teams of the 1940’s. I know they won a war and all, but the World War II generation should be ashamed of themselves for having such a terrible taste in humor. Watched: 3 minutes.
]]>Here it’s way past the prime of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but they’re more alive than ever. It’s the Comden & Green magic. Featuring Oscar Levant, the gnome-faced mascot of Hollywood musicals. Watched it all.
Jane was a comic strip character who had the habit of “accidentally” losing most of her clothes, thus pioneering fanservice. Wikipedia earnestly speculates that Jane’s last name Gay did not necessarily imply that she was a lesbian, as “gay” may possibly[original research?] have had a different meaning[citation required] in 1949. Watched: 10 minutes.
I’m becoming familiar with post-war Berlin as a movie backdrop. Everyone was making a Berlin movie at this time. It seems to work well with everything, from sentimental neo-realist movies to screwball comedies such as this. Berlin really is the most promising new actor to emerge in the late 1940’s. Oh, and that airhead Cary Grant is unusually interesting here as well. Watched it all.
Columbus was a 15th century visionary who dared to believe – against all “common sense” – that the world was round. Watched: 6 minutes. Actually any educated person at the time knew the world was round. Columbus just thought it was small enough that he could sail around to Asia. It’s not, and he would have died if there hadn’t just happened to be another continent in the way. Which, when you think about is, is to be extremely lucky.
]]>An Italian-American bricklayer has big dreams and works hard, but circumstances go against him, and we watch his hope die, slowly, over the course of decades. Watched it all. I don’t know if it is because the other movies of this year were unusually terrible, or because there was something in the air, but the ones that are good, they’re good. They’re alive – and honest. Like this one.
The ‘teen-agers refer to it as “tea” or “tomatoes”, but the technical name for this latest threat the police defends our kids against is “marihuana”. If we were only to scale up to a full-out war, maybe we could eradicate this killer drug once and for all. Watched: 7 minutes. I question the use of the theremin in the soundtrack, though. It makes this horrible, evil, deadliest of drugs sound kind of intriguing. As does the scenes of frantic dancing.
I don’t know. The concept here, a white girl who’s legally considered colored because of her black grandmother, and comes home to the Dirty South and starts confronting everyone and everything, ending up in one of those righteous courtroom scenes – it’s a little convenient. The message seems to be that even in a movie about racism, the main character still has to be white. Then again, it’s only been 9 years since Santa Fe Trail, a movie that openly celebrated slavery(!), so I guess it’s progress. Watched it all.
]]>I love how this movie makes the apple trucking business appear dangerous and exciting. Even the honest guys are hard-nosed entrepeneurs, living right on the edge of broke and always looking for a good deal. This is really a drama about capitalism (for or against according to your bias). Railroad Tycoon the movie – with lots of crooks but no guns, because why would apple truckers carry guns? Watched it all. I also love how everybody’s an immigrant or has immigrant parents, and break into some European language whenever they get angry.
A beggar boy walks hungry in the streets, visions of food dancing before him. Oh, if only there were some sort of movement or army that could liberate the people and (after a brief transition period) make sure that nobody in China would ever starve again! Watched: 11 minutes.
At last – a Disney movie I don’t like at all! In fact, it’s awful! This is wonderful! I’ve seen so many less-than-classic 40’s Disney movies in this marathon, and sort of liked them all, that I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with me. And it’s quite fitting that it would arrive in the worst movie year of the decade. Watched: 9 minutes.
One way a marathon like this warps your perspective is that suddenly you start thinking things like: Another Tracy and Hepburn comedy? That’s so thirties! Watched: 10 minutes.
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