▶

Dragnet, the movie (1954, USA)

This is just close enough to modern police procedurals to be recognizable as one, but different enough to be disturbingly alien. Where is the brilliant outsider with a Personal Flaw who for some unbelievable reason helps the police solve murders? And why doesn’t anyone arrive at the scene of the crime and say, “what’ve we got?” I feel lost, help! Watched it all. (Actually, it’s not so alien. I suddenly get all the Police Squad jokes now.)

Executive Suit (1954, USA)

The old tycoon is dead, and all the little vice tycoons start circling in the air, hungrily eyeing his carcass. Watched: 42 minutes. If forced to choose, I’ll take a 50s message movie over a modern one. They’re so earnest you can’t really hate them even when they start to preach.

▶

Shetlandsgjengen (1954, Norway)

While watching this movie about the boats that carried refugees and information from Nazi occupied Norway to the Shetland Islands, it struck me: To the list of heroic episodes in Norwegian history that involve sea transport, another entry was added at Utøya on July 22. Watched it all.

Aldri annet enn bråk (1954, Norway, Carlmar)

Meet Vigdis Røising, Norway’s first teenager! She’s quite obnoxious, but the future belongs to her and her kind. Watched: 20 minutes, then fast-forwarded through the rest, looking for scenes from Old Oslo. There are many, but I can never tell where they’re from.

▶

Them! (1954, USA)

Hey, the giant mutant ants in this movie are almost actually genuinely creepy! And when, after descending into the underground lair of the ant queen, Joan Weldon orders her soldier friends to burn all the larva to death, you suddenly realize where the entire movie Aliens was stolen from. Watched it all. This is pretty much the perfect 50s monster movie, (incidentally featuring, drumroll, the recently invented Wilhelm Scream.)

Men of the Fighting Lady (1954, USA)

Contemporary American movies about the Korean war were all pretty awful, and I wonder why. Some of the best movies ever made about the Second World War were made during or right after the war itself, (contrary to the myth of mindless jingoism). But Korea, you barely notice it, and by now it’s all over, and there aren’t even any good stories to remember it by. Watched: 5 minutes.

Gog (1954, USA)

Here’s another movie that sets a template for later sci-fi, with the old “scientists stuck in high-tech underground facility where Everything Goes Wrong” trope. It must have been used hundreds of times – and that’s just counting Dr Who. Nice to meet you, welcome on board! Watched: 42 minutes. Oh, and Gog and Magog work well as early Daleks.

▶

Lowlands / Tiefland (1940s/1954, Germany, Riefenstahl)

When wolves threaten the sheeple, it is time for a great Shepherd to come down from the mountains and Lead them to freedom. Watched it all. People who are uncomfortable with Leni Riefenstahl, (or, more stupidly, claim she’s actually an anti-fascist), must be unaware of just how much fascism there is hidden away in all of our art, (including, probably, several of your favorite movies.) That’s where it belongs. The problem is when it escapes into real life. Anyway, this is a fantastic movie.  It was filmed during the war, and is a reminder of what Riefenstahl could have achieved after it if she hadn’t already done such a great job for Hitler.

Botostroj / Giant Shoe-Factory (?!)  (1954, Czechoslovakia)

Oh, you evil capitalists with your evil ways, you make me so mad! Watched: 21 minutes. You can always count on totalitarian movies for a certain intensity that normal movies lack. Everything that happens resonates with Destiny. But this is still pretty stupid.

▶

A Star is Born (1954, USA, Cukor)

This reconstructed version goes on and on and on forever. It’s been patched together using still photos in place of lost scenes and everything. Dear god, why?! The beginning is good, though, and Judy Garland has never sounded better. Watched it all, although with only half an eye for the last seven hours. (Oh, and, believe or not, it uses the Wilhelm scream. Twice!)

▶

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954, USA, Donen)

I try to imagine how this movie was pitched. I think it went like this: All the MGM bigshots sit around a table discussing ideas, and one of them says, “I know what, let’s take that old Roman legend, you know, the one about the rape of the Sabine women, and make a bright, cheerful musical out of it!”  And everyone thinks it’s a brilliant idea.  Brilliant.  “But”, says one, “could we lose the rape angle? Some of our viewers are women, and may be a bit narrow-minded about that sort of thing.”  “Sure!  We’ll just pretend that when a gang of lonely men kidnap a group of women, and keep them locked up in their cabin over the winter, sex would be the furthest thing from their minds!  And they’ll all fall in love in the end, so it’s okay!”  (Actually, that was how the Romans spun the story too. As if!) And thus was born the most unintentionally disturbing musical ever made.  Watched it all before, and bits of it this time.

Casino Royale (1954, USA)

Ah yes, the famous quiz question: Who was the first James Bond? I’ll tell you: It was Barry Nelson. But I encourage you to register a protest with the quiz master, because this made for TV version of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel has stripped away everything that is Bond about Bond. Watched: 15 minutes.

▶

Heat Wave (1954, UK)

The first (and last?) Hammer film noir that’s any good, and it’s not even any good. But it does have a cynical author doing voiceovers while getting mixed up in a love triangle, which is a very traditional and proper thing for this sort of movie to do, and it makes you feel at home.  Watched it all.

The Mad Magician (1954, USA)

Vincent Price’s brilliant and potentially murderous inventions bring him no fame, just persecution and ridicule. But he’ll show them. He’ll show them all!  Ahem.  So, anyway, do you want fries with that?  Watched: 19 minutes, then fast-forwarded to see the gruesome deaths. There are only two, and they’re not that gruesome.

Det brenner i natt! (1954, Norway, Skouen)

The unbearable weight of his journalistic genius turns Claes Gill into a pyromaniac. Oh, will nobody in this cold, cruel world of ours show him a bit of compassion so he can overcome his disease?! Watched: 24 minutes. The scene where he stares longingly at a pack of matches stands out as the most unintentionally hilarious among many. Is this the moment when Serious Norwegian Filmmaking began to go wrong?

Troll i ord (1954, Norway)

The Norwegian mountains take the breath away of Danish girls, and make them vulnerable for decent proposals. Watched. 25 minutes.  Actually, the downhill ski flirt scene was used by Hollywood at least a decade earlier, with Sonia Henie.  Btw, hilarious mistranslation in the subtitles: “Å, da jeg spilte på kam?” => “When I threw up on the roast?”

▶

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954, UK)

Well, it’s Nineteen eighty-four, and an excellent version too, featuring that guy who played a few scenes in Star Wars. But not only that, this is an early example of that huggable British form of sci-fi television where the sets look like cardboard, but the words are poetry.  Watched it all.

The Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954, USA)

Members of the French academic elite use the power of phrenology, Freudianism and other pseudosciences to pin the murders on the gorilla. It’s an outrage of justice!  Watched: 20 minutes, + lots of screaming and Karl Malden with a very sinister moustache.

▶

Gojira / Godzilla (1954, Japan)

Yes, I guess Japan has made many contributions to the world of serious art, but what we really love them for is their outrageous sense of fun, isn’t it, and that all starts here. Watched it all. It’s pretty good for a stupid monster movie, and the Harryhausen-inspired stop motion effects are quite cute.

Carmen Jones (1954, USA)

After decades of segregation, there are not enough movie stars to fill this black version of Carmen with, only second raters. And the color line stands firm: No white actors at all, no mixing. It’s all or nothing. What a shame.  Watched: 10 minutes.  Now, Rita Hayworth, there was a Carmen who could lure disco donalds to a life of vice.

▶

Davy Crockett (1954, USA)

Davy, Daaaavy Crockett!  Was this the first good TV series ever made? It’s a silly children’s adventure story, but Disney Corp are great at silly children’s adventure stories, and, by 1954 production standards, this is HBO. Watched: 1 episode. This show launched a Crockett craze that reached Norway in the form of Danish author Karen Brunés’ books under the pseudonym Tom Hill, which I devoured in a reprint 30 years later. And here I am back at the beginning. Round, like a circle in a spiral / Like a wheel within a wheel / Never ending or beginning / On an ever spinning wheel.

Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Japan, Mizoguchi)

Until Japan discovered their sense of fun, (whenever that was, Godzilla?), there was only Kurosawa, and lots and lots of dull, serious historical dramas. This falls in the latter category.  Watched: 8 minutes.

Karius og Baktus (1954, Norway, Caprino)

Don’t brush your teeth, or you’ll kill the nice gay couple who lives in your mouth. Watched it all.

Un americano a Roma / An American in Rome (1954, Italy)

The young Italians have gone crazy over American culture.  They eat American, speak American, think American, sing American, dress American.  It’s so funny!  Although, if you ask me, it’s better than being, you know, fascists.  Watched: 17 minutes.

▶

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954, USA)

Man is not alone: Creatures from the dawn of time lurk in the lonely corners of the world, from whence they emerge to fondle our women, murder our native servants, .. and teach us valuable moral lessons about anti-speciesism?!  Watched it all before, and again now.  Earlier generations must has seen a Freudian message here.  Today, it seems more like political commentary.

Tobor the Great (1954, USA)

The Communist Party, for one, would like to turn the giant space robot into our new overlord.  This shouldn’t be too difficult, because the senile professor who built it gave it ESP abilities and a sense of self preservation. Watched: 32 minutes.  I like the intro music.

The Black Widow (1954, USA)

This movie wants to be All About Eve, and then it wants to be Hitchcock, and it’s neither.  Watched it all, but I’m not sure why.  I guess I haven’t filled my quota for stories about society people with claws.

Jail Bait (1954, USA, Wood)

“Jail bait” meant something less interesting in 1954: Anything in general that might land you in jail.  Watched: 11 minutes. Even Ed Wood made movies that were so bad that they were not any fun at all, and this is one of them.  The only thing that stands out as entertainingly bad is the guitar soundtrack, which was inspired by the zither music in The Third Man, but instead of building suspense it grinds you down like Chinese water torture.

▶

Father Brown (1954, UK)

I’ve never read the Father Brown detective stories, so I don’t know if Alec Guinness is a good match, but his power to breathe individuality into his characters is such that, when, after this delightful introduction, I inevitably do move on to the books, I will have no choice but to picture Brown as Guinness.  Watched it all.

The Atomic Kid (1954, USA)

Mickey Rooney survives a nuclear blast, and gets the superpower of speaking at chipmunk speed.  Watched: 3 minutes.  Here’s a thing you don’t want to see at the beginning of a movie: Produced by [Fading star], Introducing [Fading star's wife].

▶

Rear Window (1954, USA, Hitchcock)

I have three problems with this movie: The director is too big for himself, the movie is too big for itself, and, its fans are too big for themselves.  You have barely to mention the name of it to receive a lecture on the role of voyeurism in Hitchcock’s movies and a “did you know he has a cameo in all his movies?”  Hitchcock fans are the worst, along with Kurosawa and Kubrick fans.  But okay, I admit it, it’s a damn good movie.  Watched it all before, and again now.

The Silver Chalice (1954, USA)

Introducing Paul Newman, and, if you pay attention, Lorne Green!  Watched: 7 minutes.  It’s one of those silly  movies where Romans agonize about becoming Christians, but look at this.  Is it the strangest scene you’ve ever seen in a Bible epic or what?!

▶

Sabrina (1954, USA, Wilder)

Audrey Hepburn moves upward, into Society in the movie, and into Hollywood in reality.  The laws of stardom require the rising Hepburn to meet the falling Bogart, which should strain any society’s age disparity standard, but oh who cares?  Billy Wilder is the Pixar of the 1950s, the heart of the industry.  Watched it all.

Three Ring Circus (1954, USA)

Watching Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin movies is like watching the decline part of the career of one of those comedians who used to be great on SNL.  The difference is that I don’t have proof, outside of a few scenes in At War With the Army, that they ever had more than potential.  Watched: 10 minutes.

Too Bad She’s Bad (1954, Italy)

The plot of this movie seems to be that Sophia Loren is Sophia Loren, and everyone else isn’t.  This is a good starting point, which I commend.  Watched: 18 minutes.

White Christmas (1954, USA)

The original was pretty good for a Christmas movie, and I’m sure this one may be too, but opening with Bing Crosby singing White Christmas on a French battlefield on Christmas Eve, 1944?  That’s sappy, and, even worse, dishonestly sappy.  Watched: 8 minutes.