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House by the River (1950, USA, Lang)

Horrible things float by on the river, bad memories that won’t stay down.  This is the most visually interesting movie in a long while.  It’s like a silent movie, all shocking images and dramatic shadows, and it could actually work well without any sound at all.  Watched it all.

Cinderella (1950, USA)

A girl who suffers from horribly deformed feet, but otherwise has the looks and bearing of a natural aristocrat, gets her army of animal servants to do all her chores for her, so she can live out her dream of running off and marrying some fancy prince somewhere.  Because she’s special.  Rodents of the Cinderella home, throw off your shackles!  Watched: 15 minutes.

Outrage (1950, USA, Lupino)

The actor Ida Lupino, who was great in Road House and Lust for Gold,  also directed a series of socially conscious movies, movies about unwanted pregnancy, disease, – and here, rape.  It was all very groundbreaking, I’m sure, but also dull and preachy.  Watched: 4 minutes, then fast forwarded to the (quite shocking) rape scene, then the courtroom scene, where we learn that society was really to blame for treating the rapist like a criminal all his life.

Destination Moon (1950) - Newton's laws in action

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Destination Moon (1950, USA, Pichel)

I expected a bad SF movie, but this has more in common with Victory Through Air Power, Walt Disney’s mad/visionary airplane movie.  Except here it’s Robert Heinlein, trying to inspire viewers to aim for the moon.  His vision gets a low-budget treatment, and that’s probably a good thing, because it leaves the nerdy core and the Heinleinian touches intact: The heroes are maverick industrialists, and most of the drama comes from realistic engineering and physics problems.  Watched it all.  This is the earliest space-oriented SF movie I’ve seen that actually feels like one.  There’s a direct line from here to Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey – and the actual moonlanding.

This Can’t Happen Here / Sånt händer inte här (1950, Sweden, Bergman)

Yes, but when you make a movie about evil agents from the Soviet Union, why say they’re from the generic dictatorship of “Liquidatzia”, and why pretend they’ve come to a generic small country where everyone just happens to speak Swedish?  Cowards.  Watched: 15 minutes.

Madeleine (1950, UK, Lean)

I love David Lean’s style here, but it takes something beyond exceptional to make me watch a drama about some rich Victorians and their stupid little love affairs.  Watched: 14 minutes.

Sunset Blvd. (1950) - I am big - it's the pictures that got small

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Sunset Blvd (1950,  USA, Wilder)

The forgotten stars of the silent movie era walk around in the shadows of Hollywood, proud and vain, waiting for people to start loving them again.  Watched it all.  It’s true, of course: The end of the silent era was the cruellest joke in celebrity history.  So much fame, snatched away so quickly.

Path of Hope / Il Cammino Della Speranza (1950, Italy, Germi)

The workers are on strike because their unprofitable mine is about to be closed.  Where’s Maggie Thatcher when you need her?  Watched: 5 minutes.

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Gone to Earth (1950, UK, Powell)

I never know what I’ll get from a Powell & Pressburger movie, only that it will be something memorable, overwhelming, and disturbing.  This delivers all three, and I’m not even sure what it is I’ve just watched.  It’s like they’re on a separate track of their own.  Everyone else is going one way, but look – over there, what was that gleam out there in the forest?  Let’s go have a look!  Watched it all.

Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950, USA)

It’s amazing how the Robin Hood myth has survived so many awful movie retellings of it.  I guess if I had to choose, I’d take the silly and colorful Robin Hood who fights for the Magna “FREEEEDOM” Carta over the more realistic attempts, but why can’t anyone ever make a decent Robin Hood movie?  Watched: 5 minutes, then fast-forwarded through all the standard Hood scenes.  Don’t worry, they’re all there.

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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.