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Winchester ’73 (1950, USA, Mann)

Aka the Brotherhood of the Travelling Winchester, the perfect gun that brings out the murderer in everyone – especially murderers.  Watched it all before, and again now, because there’s nothing quite like an Anthony Mann western, and James Stewart is so adorable at this point you just want to hug him.

Highway 301 (1950, USA)

This much is certain: When a movie opens with three separate state governors declaring that the story is based on cold, hard facts, well, then maybe it is based on cold, hard facts, but it’s not going to be very interesting.  Watched: 3 minutes.

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All About Eve (1950, USA, Mankiewicz)

The way I remembered it, it was Marilyn  Monroe, the star of the 50′s, who came in at the end and is destined to kick Anne Baxter off the throne she herself had just kicked Bette Davis, the star of the 30′s, off.  But that would have been too prophetic.  Monroe’s character gets shuffled off to play in television.  Watched it all many times before, and I’ll watch it again any time I get the chance.  I’m actually supposed to hate movies about actors, for the same reason I don’t like it when bloggers blog about blogging, but somehow I keep forgetting that principle the moment George Sanders starts speaking.

State Secret (1950, UK, Gilliat)

Decades of Cold War thrillers have made me expect something a bit more campy than this from the adventures of a Westerner stuck in Generic East Bloc Country.  But I guess every genre has to start somewhere.  Watched: 21 minutes.

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Devil’s Doorway (1950, USA, Mann)

The best westerns were always about law and anarchy, property and theft, the building blocks of society.  Sociological SF.  And this is one of them.  All the forces are in balance: Nobody’s entirely right, but nobody knows how to act otherwise, so everybody loses.  Watched it all.  Also, when it comes to Hollywood anti-racism and feminism, I’d rather take Anthony Mann’s brand of it than anyone else’s.

A Woman of Distinction (1950, USA)

Ah yes, this is that movie where the successful career woman learns that she needs a man in her life after all.  Watched: 2 minutes.

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At War With the Army (1950, USA)

Hey, this is something new: A comedy that isn’t completely execrable.  I even find myself laughing from time to time.  It’s basically just Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin goofing around on a cheap set, doing all the usual military jokes, but it’s fresh.  Watched it all.

La Ronde (1950, France, Ophüls)

I find it very annoying when a movie opens with a character who speculates on whether he is the author of the story we’re about to watch, or a stand-in for the audience, and whether the movie is set on a stage, in a studio, or in the magical magical past.  Watched: 5 minutes.

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Gun Crazy (1950, USA, Lewis)

John Dall’s not such a bad boy really, he just likes to steal guns, and fondle them at night, and maybe shoot them, that’s all. It takes reform school and a Bad Woman to turn him into a criminal. Watched it all before, and again now. Dall’s performance in Rope was so great that it rubs off on his character here.

A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950, USA)

Look, I don’t ask much from special effects, but don’t show me what’s obviously just a model train, making me expect a movie about model train enthusiasts, and then tell me it’s supposed to be real.  Watched: 5 minutes.

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Broken Arrow (1950, USA, Daves)

The Apaches here are played and written like Klingons, or is it the other way around?  Whatever it is, this is one of those movies where every scene resonates like the lines of an epic ballad.  Watched it all.

Scandal (1950, Japan, Kurosawa)

The photograph of Toshiro Mifune standing next some random woman is a big deal to the scandalsheets, and to him too, for some reason.  Watched: 25 minutes.

The White-Haired Girl (1950, China)

The oppressed peasants of China truly are wonderful people.  Let’s hope some over-educated fool doesn’t come along and starve them all to death.  Watched: 8 minutes, then fast-forwarded to see the Red Army reunite the young lovers who were torn apart by their cruel landlord, which inspires the People to break out into a song arguing for the landlord’s execution.

Rashomon (1950, Japan, Kurosawa)

Truth is a slippery thing. Some say Japan’s war aim was to liberate Asia from its European oppressors.  Others say they themselves were the evil imperialists.  Who can really know for sure?  Perhaps the truth lies somewhere inbetween.  Watched it all before, and again now, because this really is Kurosawa’s best so far, even if the message he sends is kind of convenient.

Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone (1950, USA)

“Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone, a pair of wacky characters the like you’ve never known”, the title song tells us.  And they’ve written everything in a wacky font, too.  Watched: 3 minutes.

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950, USA, Huston)

I’m trying to figure out what it is that separates the bad gangster and noir movies from the good and truly excellent ones.  I don’t know what it is, but I know how it feels: It feels like the difference between a blurry photograph and one that is in focus.  And this – this is so much in focus that it hurts.  Watched it all before, and again now.

Champagne for Caesar (1950, USA)

Is Vincent Price spooky yet?  No?  Only a little peculiar?  Moving on.  Watched: 5 minutes.

Les Enfants Terribles (1950, France, Melville)

The young ones enter adulthood like whirlwinds, making their own rules about life.  Watched it all.  This is a silly but intense movie, as are its characters, but what’s really memorable is the eyes of Nicole Stéphane.

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Summer Stock (1950, USA, Walters)

There are two views on super-cheerful musicals like this: One is that they are naive and old-fashioned, because everyone knows you can’t have real art without despair.  Mine is that any hack can portray angst, what’s really hard is doing larger-than-life cheerfulness right.  Watched it all before, so this time I just fast-forwarded through all the talkie parts.

The Wooden Horse (1950, UK, Lee)

Hey, I read this story in Donald Duck & Co once!  It’s the one where the Beagle Boys use a vaulting horse to hide the tunnel they’re digging out of prison.  Except here it’s British POW’s, for some reason.  Watched: 2 minutes, then fast forwarded to see how many details the Beagle Boys got right.  I’m not sure I like POW movies, anyway.  There’s something phony about doing a movie about the two guys who escaped to freedom, while millions were dying randomly all around them.

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King Solomon’s Mines (1950, USA)

It’s very principled of Deborah Kerr to head out in the African wilderness wearing a corset.  One must have standards.  And it’s absolutely adorable the way she says, about Quatermain, “oh, he’s a dreadful man”.  Watched it all.  But what this movie really needs is some airships.  It makes me shiver just thinking about it.

No Way Out (1950, USA, Mankiewicz)

Hollywood.  One moment they make all-white and borderline racist movies.  The next they’ve wholeheartedly embraced the preachy anti-racist message movie.  Is there no middle ground?  Watched: 20 minutes.  But it’s interesting to see Sidney Poitier in his first big role.

Harvey (1950, USA, Koster)

The invisible giant rabbit from outer space seeks out lonely drunks and befriends them, making them appear even crazier than they actually are.  I think he’s probably an intergalactic practical joker, but James Stewart doesn’t mind.  He’s reached the part of his career where his previously creepy grin makes him look distinguished, and the touch of rabbit-induced senility he affects here elevates him right up to the realm of saints.  Watched it all.

Federal Man (1950, USA)

He’s from the government, and he’s here to help you stay away from drugs.  Isn’t it funny to watch these old movies from a time when people believed that substance abuse could be stopped by throwing lots and lots of police and jail time at it?  It’s so funny, I’m nearly smiling.  Watched: 4 minutes.

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Treasure Island (1950, “UK”, Haskin)

Young Guybrush Threepwood, a likely lad, sets out on a pirrrate adventurrre on the high seas, with the heaving to, and the avast me mateys, and a fantastically shifty-eyed Long John Silver.  Watched it all.   I think this may qualify as the first triple-R pirate movie. It’s also quite brutal for its time.  Disney: Pioneers in movie violence!

American Guerilla in the Philippines (1950, USA, Lang)

Tyrone Power actually was a Marine during the war, and served as a pilot at Iwo Jima, but I still say casting him as a technicolor guerilla fighter is yet another step towards insincerity in war movies.  Watched: 16 minutes.  Btw, read The Jungle is Neutral, a real-life account of similar events in Burma.

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Side Street (1950, USA, Mann)

A postman tries his hand at being dishonest, which he’s not very good at.  Then he tries being honest, which turns out even worse.  It all takes place in that same hard, unforgiving universe as all the rest of Anthony Mann’s movies.  Watched it all.  Featuring possibly the earliest exciting car chase put on film.  Oh and that’s a fantastic movie intro, above.  Corny, but I love that kind of stuff.

Francis, God’s Jester (1950, Italy, Rossellini)

St. Francis and his band of masochists roam the medieval countryside, looking for opportunities to be abused and humiliated.  Watched: 11 minutes.  Look, I’m not judging.  I just personally find religious fetishes a bit freaky.

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The Men (1950, USA, Zinnemann)

There was a moment during the war when you got down to earth war movies, honest movies, with actors so real that many of them were fresh off the battlefield, and no fake Drama.  This is kind of a follow-up to that, but now all the soldiers are paraplegics, who’ve ended up in some dead-end hospital while the rest of the world moved on without them.  Watched it all.  Featuring young upstart Marlon Brando in his first role, setting his mark on the decade right from the start.

Paid in Full (1950, USA, Dieterle)

I can forgive many things of a movie, but starting with an interesting event, and then doing a flashback to the boring backstory, is not one of them.  Watched: 8 minutes.