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Side Street (1950, USA, Mann)

A postman tries his hand at being dishonest, which he’s not very good at.  Then he tries being honest, which turns out even worse.  It all takes place in that same hard, unforgiving universe as all the rest of Anthony Mann’s movies.  Watched it all.  Featuring possibly the earliest exciting car chase put on film.  Oh and that’s a fantastic movie intro, above.  Corny, but I love that kind of stuff.

Francis, God’s Jester (1950, Italy, Rossellini)

St. Francis and his band of masochists roam the medieval countryside, looking for opportunities to be abused and humiliated.  Watched: 11 minutes.  Look, I’m not judging.  I just personally find religious fetishes a bit freaky.

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The Men (1950, USA, Zinnemann)

There was a moment during the war when you got down to earth war movies, honest movies, with actors so real that many of them were fresh off the battlefield, and no fake Drama.  This is kind of a follow-up to that, but now all the soldiers are paraplegics, who’ve ended up in some dead-end hospital while the rest of the world moved on without them.  Watched it all.  Featuring young upstart Marlon Brando in his first role, setting his mark on the decade right from the start.

Paid in Full (1950, USA, Dieterle)

I can forgive many things of a movie, but starting with an interesting event, and then doing a flashback to the boring backstory, is not one of them.  Watched: 8 minutes.

The Quiet Duel (1949, Japan, Kurosawa)

Again Kurosawa uses disease as a theme.  This time it’s syphilis, which the men carry home from the war, and are unable to cure.  And the women suffer their own permanent consequences from wartime accidents.  There’s no easy return to normalcy.  Something good that once existed is irrevocably lost.   But it’s still up to everyone how to deal with this loss: As honorable or dishonorable people.  Watched it all.

Intruder in the Dust (1949, USA, Brown)

Hollywood continues to discover racial discrimination.  Once again the main characters are all white, because, come on, you have to draw the line somewhere.  Watched: 10 minutes.  Btw, I think Rich Hall mentioned this movie in his excellent BBC documentary The Dirty South, which you should go and watch now.

.. and, dear god, that was it for the 1940′s. I can’t believe I actually did it.  As far as I know I’m the first person ever to do this – at least on this scale, and in this particular way, with several thousand movies unfiltered by critics, watching everything until I get bored, and writing about it afterwards.  And this really is a fantastic way to watch movies.  I don’t think I can go back to the old way now.  In fact, I think I’ll continue right on to ..

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Tension (1949, USA, Berry)

I love how they’re beginning to push the noir formula to its extreme: Here, the unfaithful wife is practically a prostitute, and the cuckolded husband is particularly pathetic – until the tension tears him apart, like the rubber band in the brilliant intro (above).  Watched it all.

Batman and Robin (1949 serial, USA)

Worst. Batmobile. Ever.  And worst Robin.  Batman’s not too bad, just very very dull.  I’m beginning to see what they were parodying in the 1960′s.  Watched: Half an episode, then fast-forwarded to see the hilarious cliffhangers, and to look for interesting villains.  There aren’t any, just some stupid guy in a mask.

The Third Man (1949, UK, Reed)

However it may seem to naive American authors, with their pulp stories about gunfights at noon, real life isn’t like a western story.  Real life is more like film-noir, with shadows and desperate women and the kind of cafés Peter Lorre might hang out in, even though he isn’t actually in this movie.  Watched it all.  Even movies I’ve seen several times before appear in a new light as part of this marathon.  For instance, the plot here always was a little hazy to me, but after a decade’s worth of this sort of thing, it now seems quite straightforward.

The Great Madcap (1949, Mexico, Bunuel)

Luis Bunuel, isn’t he the Spanish surrealist who made incomprehensible movies with Salvador Dali in the early 1930′s?  This is decidedly unsurreal and comprehensible.  I guess everyone has a mortgage to pay.  Watched: 5 minutes.

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White Heat (1949, USA, Walsh)

Here’s how it goes with movie tropes: They go out of favor, then return self-aware, building on everything that came before.  That’s why you don’t need a big intro here, you just throw viewers into the middle of a James Cagney gangster story, with the dials turned to Nightmare, and they’ll know their way around.  It was the same with Key Largo.  The result is maybe the greatest gangster movie ever made.  Watched it all.

Madame Bovary (1949, USA, Minnelli)

Once in a while during a movie intro I start thinking about Ben-Hur, for no apparent reason.  And then I notice that the music is by Miklos Rozsa.  Anyway, when it concerns literary classics like this, known primarily for being a great novel, maybe I’ll read it one day, or maybe I won’t, but there’s not much bloody point watching the movie version, now is there?  Watched: 6 minutes.

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The Small Back Room (1949, UK, Powell & Pressburger)

This reminds of that 1979-81 series The Sandbaggers, where we followed the manouverings and infights of the bureaucrats who stay at home while James Bonds go out into the world.  Here it’s a research center during the war.  There’s the same tone, and the same basic story: Smart people working with and against the whims of their politically apt superiors.  Watched it all.

Thirst / Törst (1949, Sweden, Bergman)

I think it’s very wicked of this young upstart “Ingmar Bergman” to make all these parodies of the works of his famous namesake.  Watched: 17 minutes.

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The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949, USA, Sturges)

Betty Grable rampaging across the West, shooting bullets and Preston Sturges’ dialogue.  Yes!  Watched it all.  An unpolished, but otherwise worthy forerunner to  Blazing Saddles.

City Across the River (1949, USA, Shane)

Did you know that Poor People often live in Slums and suffer terribly from Juvenile Delinquency?  Watching a movie that pretends to know what that is like is the least you can do about it.  Watched: 8 minutes.

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Mr Belvedere Goes to College (1949, USA, Nugent)

I feel like Shirley Temple is the nemesis of this movie marathon.  She’s been there since the mid-30′s, and even now she’s still playing teenage roles.  I’d be depressed if I didn’t know  she would retire a year later.  (And btw, she’s still alive!) To be fair, though, this is quite good, with Temple playing only an ignorable minor role.  It’s the old “successful grown-up returns to college to get a formal education” ploy, featuring Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory.  I’m particularly impressed with Mr Belvedere’s familiarity with Norwegian, demonstrated in the clip above.  Watched: 7 minutes.

The Inspector General (1949, USA, Koster)

Through accidental circumstances, Danny Kaye is thought to be someone he isn’t.  Hilarity ensues.  He’s maybe the only funny comedian of the 1940′s, but I’m getting tired of Kaye.  He’s like Jim Carrey: Once you’ve seen him make one or two odd faces, you’ve seen it all.  Watched: 25 minutes.

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The Fall of Berlin (1949, USSR, Chiaureli)

I can learn to like Communist war epics, if they’re all like this, the original Der Untergang.  The emotions are all heightened: All joy, all love, all rage.  The first scene with Stalin is shot with an angelic choir humming in the background.  And the scenes of the actual battle of Berlin are like nothing that actually happened – mythical, crossing over to delirious when Stalin himself shows up, and all the nations on Earth join hands to sing his praise.  Watched it all.  I guess I’m able to watch this with moral detachment because it crosses over into fantasy.  Fantasy was the element that held Communism together.  Which is why I look forward to more of these movies.

Battleground (1949, USA, Wellman)

Another step towards insincerity in war movies.  I don’t mean that The Fall of Berlin (above) is particularly sincere.  But at least it doesn’t pretend to be.  Watched: 4 minutes.

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A Letter to Three Wives (1949, USA, Mankiewicz)

We never see Addie’s face, only the effect she has on her desperate housewife friends, all of whom are less beautiful, less interesting, less cultured, less alive, less perfect than she is.  They know it, and their husbands know it too.  Watched it all.

Who Done It (1949, USA)

The Three Stooges – another of the massively unfunny comedy teams of the 1940′s.  I know they won a war and all, but the World War II generation should be ashamed of themselves for having such a terrible taste in humor.  Watched: 3 minutes.