The ones you’ve already seen
Hammer time
Guns
Devils
Heroes
Lovers
Next up: 1958, on account of it being the year that followed 1957, with some 643 movies and clips in the queue.
Category Archives: Best of
The best movies of 1956
My favorite movies of 1956 were made in the Soviet Union. This came as a surprise to me. For some reason, I associated the USSR with cold, empty art movies, but these aren’t. They’re like Hollywood movies from an alternate universe, just as ambitious, but more sentimental. I hope this Khrushchev guy stays around for a while:
Also, average westerns got noticably better that year:
Sci-fi began to find its bearings:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando played some very odd roles:
Powell & Pressburger returned to form:
The Germans told us that we shouldn’t blindly trust authority:
Spencer Tracy was one of the few classic stars still worth watching:
Hollywood took revenge on the communist hunters:
And we got the first(?) child psychopath:
Next up: 1957, with about 700 movies. Fortunately I have a fast-forward button.
1950s movies marathon – Best of 1955
The best movies of 1955, or at least those that had an opening that was interesting enough for me not to immediately hit the fast-forward button. I’ve collected the best scene from each movie, plus some amusingly bad ones, in this playlist.
The ones I’d heard about
Mad, murderous preachers
Priests, maddened and nearly murdered
Mann, with and without Stewart
Start of a promising career
Go, go, Rasputin!
Movies! with! exclamation! point! titles!
Commies and Nazis
Nice Britain
Not so nice Britain
Goodbye Hayes
Madness and/or sanity
Next up: 1956, featuring a queue of ca 500 movies + various clips from the Internet Archive.
The best movies of 1954
The 1950s movies marathon crawls on, one fast-forward button press at a time. 1954 went slower than usual, but not because of the movies. Here are my favorites.
For the visuals
Heroic priests
Doomed love
Creature From the Black Lagoon
Nazi’s, anti-Nazis, ex-Nazi’s and post-Nazi’s
I can’t pretend to hate Hitchcock any more
Prototypes for later classics
Japan discovers its sense of fun
Next up: 1955, a year that surprised everyone by coming right after 1954.
1950s movies marathon – Best of 1953
Compared to 1952, 1953 was an excellent year for movies. Some of them were even in widescreen and stereo, technologies one starts to miss after watching little but old movies for a couple of years.
Revenge of the nerds
Dangerous youths
Dangerous adults
Ladies and “ladies”
Top of the world, ma
.. and best of the best, also uncategorizable:
Next up: 1954, with 414 movies begging for attention, which may make you wonder how much time I actually spend on this marathon. Surprisingly little, but it helps not to have a TV.
1950s movies marathon – Best of 1952
1952 was either one of the worst years in movie history, or I’ve been unusually hard to satisfy lately. Or perhaps it’s that it offered little new, and this marathon is above all about newness. I’ll watch anything as long as it’s interesting, and what makes it interesting is that I don’t quite know where to place it. Almost everything from 1952 fits neatly into existing categories, adding nothing of their own, and what’s left is this meagre picking:
The Importance of Being Earnest
Next up: 1953, with 370+ movies lying ready to face the fast-forward button. (Wait, 370?! Yes. And rising steadily, year by year.)
1950s movies marathon – Best of 1951
From someone who has mostly watched movies from the 1920′s, 30′s and 40′s for the last two years, it may come as a surprise to hear that I don’t particularly like old movies. I just don’t like them less than new movies, and when you’re trying to uncover All the Good Movies Ever Made, you have to start somewhere. But even the best of the good Golden Age Hollywood movies can be a bit unimaginative and soft around the edges.
That’s why I love the two new kinds of movies of the early 50′s: Intelligent, even angry, “message” movies, and science fiction movies. I’ve mostly heard bad things about 1950′s science fiction, but the only thing that is cheesy about the 1951 sci-fi movies are the effects. Otherwise they’re everything I missed in the 40′s.
So here they are, the best (or at least pretty good) movies of 1951:
Best of the best
Hey everyone let’s invent the science fiction movie!
Aspiring towards theater
Aspiring towards cinema
Aspiring towards opera
Italian movies that don’t suck
Four Ways Out / La Citta si diffende
Satirical Japanese color movies
The ‘other’ bin
1950s movies marathon – Best of 1950
With a project like this movie marathon, motivation varies from week to week. It’s hard to find the balance between giving 300 movies each a chance to prove itself, and also having fun. But – when you end up with movies like the ones below, motivation is not a problem.
Birth cries of a new Hollywood
Actually funny comedies
Actually interesting westerns
Victorian adventures
Still a bit of life in death and violence
Movies about giant talking rabbits
Truth – huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing
Just watch the clip, and either it clicks or it doesn’t
40′s movies marathon – the most memorable movies of the decade
Before we leave the 1940’s for good, here are not the best movies of the decade, but the ones that stick most in my mind, for some reason:
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.
40′s movies marathon – best of 1949
What an awful year in movies that was, especially for Hollywood, but the ‘49 movies that are good, are real good, and unique in a way earlier movies weren’t. The end of the “golden age” was the end of one size fits all movies, and the beginning of “let’s try anything that could possibly draw some viewers away from television”.
Working class heroes
Libertarian rabblerousers
Old violence with a new edge
Neo-realists can make okay movies too
Gategutter / Boys From the Streets
War, death and other humorous subjects
The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend