Invaders from Mars (1953) - Vanishing act

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Invaders From Mars (1953, USA)

I wonder if perhaps those people who see the red scare reflected in all those 1950s sci-fi movies are overanalyzing things a bit.  Sometimes a regular dad who acts like he has a terrible secret is just a regular dad who has been possessed by invaders from Mars.  Watched it all.

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953, USA)

Hey, they’ve finally invented CinemaScope! Widescreen! Stereo! Oh, how I’ve missed it all.  Okay, so they’re overdoing the stereo effect a bit.  It’s not necessary to move all the sound to the left when the character is on the left side of the screen.  And there are some odd lense effects when the camera moves.  Watched: 15 minutes.

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The Wages of Fear (1953, France)

All the scum of Europe have ended up in a bar in Nameless South America.  Nothing to do but sit around in the heat and dream of food and money, and nothing to hope for but for the local ugly American to come around and exploit you.  Watched it all.  I think I read this story in Donald Duck & Co in the 80s.

Hondo (1953, USA)

The only reason I’ve heard of Hondo is because it was described as the greatest western of all time in an episode of Married With Children, where Al missed it on TV and learned he would have to wait to 2011 for the next airing.  Well, it’s now 2011, but I don’t see what all the fuss was about.  Watched: 10 minutes. Perhaps I’ll give it another chance in 2028.

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I Vinti (1953, Italy, Antonioni)

The post-war kids are absolutely terrible.  They look innocent, but their souls are bottomless pits.  They murder, and steal, and the worst creep of them all is some sort of proto-21st century self-promoter, whose first thought on discovering a dead body is to put it up on YouTube.   Watched it all.

Prisoners of the Casbah (1953, USA)

You know, I think the Grand Vizier may be evil.  1) He has a beard, 2) he’s an efficient administrator – and 3) he’s the Grand Vizier.  Watch out, curiously American-looking princess of that Arab desert tribe, so beloved by Hollywood, where one covers the faces of women but not their midriffs!  Watched: 8 minutes.

Pickup On South Street (1953) - Every extra buck has a meaning of its own

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Pickup on South Street (1953, USA, Fuller)

In addition the laughably bad, there were also some good movies about Communist spies.  The Thief was one, here is another.  What they have in common is that Communism is just another variation on “generic evil organization that keeps the plot boiling”.  Watched it all.  Oh, and this one too ends with the commie traitors getting punched in the face.  Awright!

The Glenn Miller Story (1953, USA, Mann)

Oh, Anthony Mann – why? Why?!  I understand that cheerful, sappy, historically worthless biopics must be made, because it makes viewers feel in touch with Greatness without having to deal with anything real and disturbing, but why you?  Watched: 13 minutes.

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The Wild One (1953, USA)

The first outlaw biker movie does to the 1950s what Marlon Brando’s gang does to the town they terrorize: Enter it noisily, jeering and taunting, and leave everyone less innocent than they were before.  There’s no turning back now.  Watched it all.

Magnetic Monster (1953, USA)

Radioactivity! Magneticism! Computers! Mumbo-jumbo! Yes, the bad science fiction movie has arrived, and I sure hope it’s here to stay for a while.  Watched: 20 minutes.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T (1953) - Practice makes perfect

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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953, USA)

Locked in a surreal castle, young Patrick McGoohan is forced to conform to the strict piano discipline of Dr T and the new Number Two, his own mother.  Watched it all.  Although Dr Seuss more or less disowned it, this may be the first good children’s movie that takes children seriously, by being absolutely, utterly ridiculous.  And the message it imparts to the kids of the 50s is that sometimes your parents are stupid and you shouldn’t listen to them.  I wonder how that will play out.

Dance Hall Racket (1953, USA)

The only nice thing I can say about this is that I have no idea what they’re trying to do here.  There’s a dance hall.  With crime.  And everyone just stumbles lazily through a script that is like a sketch show without jokes.  And it’s written by and stars Lenny Bruce?!  Watched: 9 minutes.

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Children of Hiroshima / Genbaku no ko (1952, Japan)

A woman returns to the ruins of her childhood home in Hiroshima.  Watched it all.  One of the odd things about this marathon is to experience the contrast between two familiar but exclusive points of view: The American view of Japan during the Second World War, and Japan’s view of itself immediately afterwards.  There is hardly any overlap, and yet they’re both partly valid.  To be honest, I love such moments, when I find myself holding multiple incompatible views in my head.  I actively seek them out.  It’s a rush.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952, USA)

I wouldn’t say it’s that great.  But the circus acts are okay.  And Charlton Heston looks like you will have to pry that Indy hat out of his cold, dead fingers.  Watched: 8 minutes, then fast forwarded to see an impressive but not entirely plausible (model) train accident.

Clash By Night (1952) - Barbara Stanwyck is bad for you

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Clash by Night (1952, USA, Lang)

The Barbara Stanwycks of the world are doomed to choose between stupid, kind men and charming douchebags.  No matter what they choose, it turns out wrong.  Watched it all.  This is the first movie where I’ve actually liked Marilyn Monroe.

Les Miserables (1952, USA)

Since the purpose of movies based on famous novels is to save those who haven’t read them from feeling left out of Culture, and I have already seen a Les Miserables, I don’t think I’ll bother with this one.

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The Importance of Being Earnest (1952, UK)

The thing about Oscar Wilde plays is that I always feel certain that I’ve already seen them, but then it turns out that I don’t recognize a single scene.  Surely I must have seen Earnest before, but who are all these people?!  Watched it all.

Invasion USA (1952, USA)

How to do a war movie on a shoestring budget: 80% military stock footage, 20% some guys hanging around in a bar listening to a newscast about the invasion.  Watched it all – with MST3k commentary.

Kvinnors vantan (1952, Sweden, Bergman)

I remember having seen some good Ingmar Bergman movies, but there certainly are a lot of bad ones, and there is something uniquely annoying about a bad Bergman movie.  Watched: 7 minutes.

The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1952, USA, Welles)

This edition comes with an updated, partly electronic, stereo soundtrack.  This is possibly a travesty, or at least very very odd.  As for the rest, I have the sense that I’ve been beaten over the head with dramatic shadows.  Watched: 17 minutes.

To Live / Ikiru (1952, Japan, Kurosawa)

Bureaucrats are unloved zombies who follow pointless rules for decades, and then they die, just at the point of discovering that it has all been in vain.  Watched: 14 minutes.

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Viva Zapata! (1952, USA, Kazan)

Marlon Brando is the Mexican Moses, who leads the slaves out of Mexico into, well, Mexico.   Watched it all.  As biopics go, this one seems to be not intolerably inaccurate, although at the price of confusing viewers who have not made it a purpose of their life to study every twist and turn of the Mexican Revolution, which seems to have had an above average number of twists and turns.

Phone Call From a Stranger (1952, USA, Negulesco)

One thing I can’t tolerate in a movie is intentionally annoying characters.  They’re just too annoying.  I want to punch them.  I want to get away.  And then I remember – I can.  Watched: 10 minutes.

Captive Women (1952, USA)

1000 years in the future, Earth is a battlefield, and John Travolta stalks the land.  Watched: 10 minutes.

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Singin’ in the Rain (1952, USA)

Make them laugh, make them laugh, make them laugh.  Watched it all, many times before, and again now.  Partly because it’s fantastic, and partly because for the first time now I understand the context it was made in.  This is MGM’s goodbye to old Hollywood, a response to Sunset Boulevard, and its exact opposite in every way: Cheerful where Sunset was dark, naive where it was cynical.

Kid Monk Baroni (1952, USA)

Hey, it’s Leonard Nimoy, as an angry young punk off the streets!  I love first sightings of famous actors, (although Nimoy is arguably more famous as a poet).  Watched: 5 minutes.

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The Thief (1952, USA, Rouse)

I think this is the only movie I’ve seen that has no dialogue whatsoever.  It’s not something I want to see emulated too often, but it’s perfect for this tense thriller about a spy who steals nuclear secrets for the Communists.  Watched it all.

The Prisoner of Zenda (1952, USA)

The best moment in any Deborah Kerr movie is when she wrinkles her nose at all the unseemly business she finds herself involved in.  Which is pretty much all the time.  But in this case you have to suffer through two copies of Stewart Granger, early 50′s MGM’s idea of movie star material.  Watched: 6 minutes, (plus the occasional nose wrinkle scene).

Monkey Business (1952, USA, Hawks)

Marilyn Monroe billing watch: Fourth.   Watched: 4 minutes, then fast-forwarded to see if Marilyn’s voice has become less annoying. Not really.

Stars and Stripes Forever (1952, USA)

A biopic of John Philip Sousa. Which means you get to spend one and a half hour listening to music by .. John Philip Sousa.  Whoever thought this was a good idea?!  Watched: 4 minutes.

Above and Beyond (1952, USA)

I have nothing to say about the movie, but listen to this music, by Hugo Friedhofer.  If anyone wonders why I keep up this marathon,  it’s because it allows me to stumble unprepared into moments like these.

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Bend of the River (1952, USA, Mann)

The farmers who headed out West for some hard, honest work in some green valley somewhere find there’s a not so honest city next door, and it’s right in the middle of a gold rush.  It’s city values vs pioneer values, and only James Stewart knows how to speak both languages.  Watched it all.

Trost i taklampa (1952, Norway)

Rural life can be pleasant, but it will eat your soul.  At best you’ll end up talking like Alf Prøysen.  Get out of there!  Watched: 20 minutes.

Affair in Trinidad (1952, USA)

It says something about which time track I’m most in touch with these days that the other day I was listening to the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis show, and I actually got one of their celebrity jokes, about Rita Hayworth’s marriage to Aly Khan.  Anyway, it seems to be over now, and she’s back on screen driving Glenn Ford mad with that well-tested old Gilda shtick again.  Watched: 11 minutes.

Big Jim McLain (1952, USA)

HUUAC member John Wayne goes to Hawaii to find himself some communists to bust.  Watched: 8 minutes, then fast-forwarded to see if it ends, as these movies often do, with the hero punching a communist in the face.  It does!  In fact, he punches a whole stinkin’ filthy red cell of them.  Hell, yeah! Er .. I mean, how uncivilized.

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Eight Iron Men (1952, USA, Dmytryk)

There are basically three types of war movies at this point: The sentimental ones that open with the Marine Corps hymn and feature John Wayne as the sergeant, the cheerful ones where the title has or might as well have multiple exclamation points, and the down to earth ones, like this: Just eight desperate characters stuck in a very bad place.  Watched it all.

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952, USA)

It’s very convenient for a crime writer to have the trainspotting bookkeeper Claude Raines turn into a strangler when the plot calls for it, but I don’t believe it.  Watched: 22 minutes.  This actually feels a lot like an episode of Columbo, which isn’t such a bad thing, as crime goes, but not so special either.

The Wild Heart (1952, UK/USA)

David Selznick’s butchered version of the odd but unforgettable Powell & Pressburger movie Gone to Earth, which turned Zelnick’s wife Jennifer Jones into some sort of doomed faerie creature.  Zelznick didn’t get it, and decided to “improve it” for the US release.  Not even my favorite scene is intact.

Sailor Beware (1952, USA)

This is that movie where Jerry Lewis overcomes his nerdiness by signing up for military service, a concept so inherently funny that he and Dean Martin reused the plot again and again, and saw no need for adding additional jokes.  Watched: 8 minutes.