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The Searchers (1956, USA, Ford)

I’ve heard it said that the anti-heroic tone of this movie, where John Wayne is almost as hateful and murderous as the Comanches who have kidnapped his niece, represented something new in westerns in 1956. But Anthony Mann had been making cynical westerns for year. What this is, though, is an exceptionally well-made western, and that has always been rare. Watched it before, several times, but I didn’t notice until this time how much the Tatooine scenes in Star Wars owe to it.

The Conquerer (1956, USA, Hughes)

This movie is best remembered today for (allegedly) causing half the cast and crew to (eventually) die from cancer, because it was filmed downwind from a nuclear test area. Also, for the odd choice of having John Wayne playing a cowboy dressed up as Genghis Khan.Even the Obligatory Decadent Banquet Scene is unusually silly. Watched: 8 minutes.

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Between Heaven and Hell (1956, USA)

Whenever a movie opens with a piece of music that makes me sit up and pay attention, more often than not the music is written by Hugo Friedhofer. In this movie he borrows the Gregorian chant for Dies Irae, which was used to even more chilling effect in the intro to the T. H. Dreyer movie Vredens dag, (a movie intro so ominous that it makes you want to go out and invent black metal). Anyway: Watched: 12 minutes.

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The Forty-First (1956, USSR)

Even Soviet war movies were good in 1956. Like many Soviet movies of this time, it feels like an alternate reality Hollywood movie, in this case an alternate reality Civil War western: A lost company of soldiers trek across a desolate landscape in search of their army, dragging an enemy agent along with them. And this isn’t The Fall of Berlin. The bad guys are mostly bad, but the good guys are all human. And the ending – ah, I love Russian sentimentalism. It’s my second favorite type of global superpower sentimentalism. Watched it all.

Around the World in Eighty Days (1956, USA)

I love how seriously the  intro takes itself, explaining how technological progress has turned many of Jules Verne’s fantasies into reality, and may soon even make it possible to travel to the moon. That’s the spirit that eventually got them to the moon a decade later. But the movie itself is too farcical. Farce is all wrong for this story. Watched: 37 minutes. Beautifully shot, though. One of the best-looking widescreen movies so far.

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The Violent Years (1956, USA, Wood)

Most 50s teenage gang movies seem like they’re made by peaceful, law-abiding adults who try to imagine what this “juvenile delinquency” they read about in the papers is all about. Something to do with music, guns, and .. mmmm dangerous gangster girls dragging innocent boys into the woods. Oh yes, yes yes yes. Ahem. Watched it all, with MST3K commentary.

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Karnavalnaya Noch (1956, USSR, Ryazanov)

I had no idea that in the Soviet Union in 1956 you could make a musical about how the spirit of youth will triumph over the habits of old, stupid men still stuck in the Stalin era. But they did. They really did. Watched it all. It’s basically a Soviet The Band Wagon. I’m now officially a fan of mid-50s Soviet cinema. I wonder how long they got away with doing things like this. The satire here is almost subversive.

War and Peace (1956, USA)

This sort of movie is made for people who don’t want it to be known that they don’t know what the great classic novels they haven’t read are all about. Well, I haven’t read War and Peace, but, although I’m not proud of this, I’m certainly not going to cheat by watching it. Watched: 5 minutes.

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Bus Stop (1956, USA)

This is one of those charming comedies where, by changing just a few lines and the way they’re spoken, you end up with the disturbing tale of a retarded backwater rapist who kidnaps and forcibly marries a weak-willed bimbo. Watched it before, and again now. It’s a strange movie, even if you don’t see it as a rape tragedy. Both the main characters are annoyingly stupid, but for some odd reason the movie itself isn’t. It seems to be showing us what you’re left with when you take away all the dishonest pleasantries of courting: An ugly, pathetic war of the sexes. In other words, we’re better off being hypocrites.

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The Bad Seed (1956, USA)

And then gradually you begin to suspect that your daughter has no soul. Watched it all. It’s the movie birth of the psychopatic child – and the child-like psychopath. Patty McCormack does an amazing job portraying pure evil with a moderately plausible outer layer of innocence. The only thing wrong with this movie is the absurd happy ending, where an Act of God solves all problems, but even so, this is one of the most disturbing movies Hollywood had made up to that point – another nail in the coffin of the Production Code.

The Killing (1956, USA, Kubrick)

The classic caper formula: First the crew gathers, then they execute, and then they fail tragically. Watched it before, and I think I liked it, but this time I find myself too annoyed with the voiceover. The director being Kubrick, this movie invites pretentious over-analysis, but come on, it’s just a well-made throwback to film noir with some inspired touches, nothing truly new.

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Rock Around the Clock (1956, USA)

This is the second ’56 rock’n roll movie about two middle-aged has-beens who try to wrap their heads around this new music the teenagers are listening to, so that they can make lots and lots of money off of it. I guess it’s a story producers could relate to. Watched it all.

Alexander the Great (1956, UK)

This epic movie about the epic leader Alexander the Epic is so epic that I’m already falling asleep. Watched: 7 minutes.

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Teahouse of the August Moon (1956, USA)

American imperial administrators arrive to bring the light of civilization to Marlon Brando and the other barbarian natives of Okinawa. Watched it all. This is almost a Marx Brothers movie, with Glenn Ford as Groucho, Marlon Brandon as Chico, and Machiko Kyo as Harpo.

The Ten Commandments (1956, USA, DeMille)

Not unlike certain high-budget TV producers of today, Cecil B. DeMille takes the social values of his day and places them in the legendary past, creating a spectacular multi-hour epic with bad writing and worse actors. Watched: 18 minutes, then fast-forwarded through the exciting bits, to find out if the Charlton Heston-sounding clips in this Hanzel und Gretyl song were actually from this movie, (they are). I thought I’d seen this movie before, but I can’t remember a single scene, and there are scenes here you’re not ever going to forget once you’ve seen them. Unfortunately, the total effect of it all is to highlight all the ways in which this story is utterly implausible. I prefer the book.

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Spring on Zarechnaya Street (1956, USSR)

Love is possible in the brown and dusty industrial cities of the Soviet Union – just possible. Watched it all. The few post-war Soviet movies I’ve seen so far have an almost American level of ambition to them. Earlier the ambition was channeled into Stalin worship, but the ’56 movies feel freer, more alive. Human. Look at the scene above – Hollywood could have made that scene. The French or Italians would have bungled it completely.

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X: The Unknown (1956, UK)

These early Hammer sci-fi horrors are basically prototypes for Doctor Who: Level-headed and massively ambitious all at the same time. And this one features the earliest plausible atomic monster I’ve seen in a movie. Watched it all.

Gun the Man Down (1956, USA)

Faster, angrier – it really does look like 1956 was the year the tolerably good bad western was born. Watched: 14 minutes.

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The Undead (1956, USA, Corman)

Hypnosis .. reincarnation .. medieval witches ..  Satan .. something something .. Tibet something something. Wait, what? Watched it all – with MST3K commentary. It may in fact be harmful to watch this movie without help from Mike and the bots, and this is one of the best riffs they ever did.

Qivitoq (1956, Denmark)

One of those movies where the scenery is the main character, in this case Greenland, beautifully shot in widescreen and color. Watched: 13 minutes.

Baby Doll (1956, USA, Kazan)

Tennessee Williams seems to be cycling through all sorts of eccentric characters in the hope of coming across some that are both new, interesting, and can be used to tell a good story. Here, too, he ends up with two out of three.  Watched: 25 minutes.

Ilya Muromets (1956, USSR)

The high budget Soviet movies of the 40s and 50s often feel like they were made in an alternate universe where the ambition that in Hollywood was channeled through greed, instead was channeled through the Ministry of Culture of a borderline-totalitarian dictatorship. Which is more or less what really happened. Watched it all. This is a fantastic fantasy epic, visually ahead of the rest the world, and it makes up for being weird in bad ways by being also weird in good ways.

Starik Kottabych (1956, USSR)

A Young Pioneer discovers a mischievous genie in a bottle, which teaches him valuable life lessons about power and responsibility. Watched: 20 minutes. I think this is the first Soviet movie I’ve seen that portrays anything resembling daily life in the modern Soviet Union.

Susaki Paradise (1956, Japan)

The bar right at the edge of the red light district is a convenient place to work for girls who are not entirely sure which of the two worlds they belong to. It’s less convenient for her loser husband, who gets constant reminders of his inability to provide. Watched it all.

1984 (1956, USA)

The 1954 BBC version is better. It even features that guy who had that minor role in Star Wars. Watched: 13 minutes.

Break the Darkness Before Dawn (1956, China)

If high-budget war movies are a sign of prosperity, then I predict that Chinas will have enough to eat for everybody for years to come. Watched: 22 minutes.

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, USA)

The tiredest cliché about 1950s sci-fi is that it was all Really About Fear of Communism, because, you know, people had this irrational belief that the Soviet Union was governed by a clique of murderous fanatics who desired to rule the world, and they didn’t know how else to express it. But, trust me on this – when old Hollywood wanted to make movies about Communism, they knew how to make movies about Communism. When they made movies about a zombie apocalypse from outer space, it was probably for the same reason they do so today: because they wanted to tell a good story. Watched it before, and again now.

The Girl Can’t Help It (1956, USA)

Two middle-aged has-beens try to make some money on all this music the young people are into. This also seems to have been what the producers had in mind, because this is the highest budget rock’n roll movie so far. Watched: 19 minutes, plus the musical numbers. Features Jayne Mansfield trying her best to impersonate Marilyn Monroe, but the hottest thing here is the music.

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The Burning Hills (1956, USA)

Did westerns get a lot better in 1956? Not the best ones, they were always good, but the ones that are hardly more than competently assembled revenge fantasies, the kind that might inspire someone to invent the spaghetti western. Watched it all.

Reprisal! (1956, USA)

Look, “Reprisal” is just a bad title for a western, and it doesn’t get any better by adding an exclamation point. Watched: 7 minutes.

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Solid Gold Cadillac (1956, USA)

Miss Smith goes to Manhattan, and teaches the fat cats about corporate ethics and the rights of the Small Shareholder. Watched it all.

Our Mr Sun (1956, USA, Capra)

A charming science documentary with one flaw: That there’s nothing uglier than 50s animation. Also, it’s meta, which gets old. Watched: 10 minutes.

The Captain from Köpenick (1956) - New uniform

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Der Hauptmann von Köpenick / The Captain from Köpenick (1956, West Germany)

In Wilhelmine Germany authority is everything, and appearance gives authority. Anyone who can find a uniform and put on a stern manner, and knows enough military mumbo jumbo to impress the guards, can just walk right into the Kolsås NATO base and steal their whisky supply. Or .. no, let’s not go there. Watched it all.

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956, USA)

The creature that walks among us is the one from the Black Lagoon, who is kidnapped by scientists who want to dress him up as a man and teach him about the rains of Spain. Watched: 10 minutes. It’s dull. But – the title of this movie is poetry.

Le Mystère Picasso (1956, France)

A movie made out of nothing but Picasso drawing on the screen before our eyes, proving beyond a doubt that he was a fairly competent cartoonist. Watched: 20 minutes.

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Star in the Dust (1956, USA)

This isn’t very good, but for some reason it feels more like a Western than most of the other not very good Westerns so far. Maybe it’s the closeups, the (admittedly awful) gitar music, and the no-nonsense (but admittedly ridiculous) “town edging steadily closer to war” story. Watched it all.

Liane, Jungle Goddess / Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald (1956, Germany)

A number of movies have been made about white women who are worshipped as goddesses by childlike African tribes. Of course, it adds a certain piquancy when the story is told by Germans, (and not only because their goddess happens to walk around topless). Watched: 9 minutes, plus the naughty bits.

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Swamp Women (1956, USA, Corman)

Roger Corman has what most B movies so far have been lacking: Sympathy for the Devil. Plus, hardened girl criminals in short pants. Watched it all, though to be fair this is a bad movie.

Rock, Rock, Rock (1956, USA)

It says something about how little life there was left in the swing generation that there’s more great music in this half-assed rock’n roll B-movie than there were in all the major movies of the previous years. Watched the musical bits, of which this Chuck Berry song is the one that makes me the giddiest.