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The Barkleys of Broadway (1949, USA, Walters)

Here it’s way past the prime of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but they’re more alive than ever.  It’s the Comden & Green magic.  Featuring Oscar Levant, the gnome-faced mascot of Hollywood musicals.  Watched it all.

The Adventures of Jane (1949, UK, Whiting)

Jane was a comic strip character who had the habit of “accidentally” losing most of her clothes, thus pioneering fanservice. Wikipedia earnestly speculates that Jane’s last name Gay did not necessarily imply that she was a lesbian, as “gay” may possibly^{[original research?]} have had a different meaning^{[citation required]} in 1949.  Watched: 10 minutes.

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I Was a Male War Bride (1949, USA, Hawks)

I’m becoming familiar with post-war Berlin as a movie backdrop. Everyone was making a Berlin movie at this time. It seems to work well with everything, from sentimental neo-realist movies to screwball comedies such as this.  Berlin really is the most promising new actor to emerge in the late 1940′s.  Oh, and that airhead Cary Grant is unusually interesting here as well.  Watched it all.

Christopher Columbus (1949, UK, MacDonald)

Columbus was a 15th century visionary who dared to believe – against all “common sense” – that the world was round.  Watched: 6 minutes.  Actually any educated person at the time knew the world was round.  Columbus just thought it was small enough that he could sail around to Asia.  It’s not, and he would have died if there hadn’t just happened to be another continent in the way.  Which, when you think about is, is to be extremely lucky.

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Give Us This Day (1949, UK, Dmytryk)

An Italian-American bricklayer has big dreams and works hard, but circumstances go against him, and we watch his hope die, slowly, over the course of decades.  Watched it all.  I don’t know if it is because the other movies of this year were unusually terrible, or because there was something in the air, but the ones that are good, they’re good.  They’re alive – and honest.  Like this one.

She Shoulda Said ‘No’! (1949, USA, Newfield)

The ‘teen-agers refer to it as “tea” or “tomatoes”, but the technical name for this latest threat the police defends our kids against is “marihuana”.   If we were only to scale up to a full-out war, maybe we could eradicate this killer drug once and for all.  Watched: 7 minutes.  I question the use of the theremin in the soundtrack, though.  It makes this horrible, evil, deadliest of drugs sound kind of intriguing.  As does the scenes of frantic dancing.

Pinky (1949, USA, Kazan)

I don’t know.  The concept here, a white girl who’s legally considered colored because of her black grandmother, and comes home to the Dirty South and starts confronting everyone and everything, ending up in one of those righteous courtroom scenes – it’s a little convenient.  The message seems to be that even in a movie about racism, the main character still has to be white.  Then again, it’s only been 9 years since Santa Fe Trail, a movie that openly celebrated slavery(!), so I guess it’s progress.  Watched it all.

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Thieves’ Highway (1949, USA, Dassin)

I love how this movie makes the apple trucking business appear dangerous and exciting. Even the honest guys are hard-nosed entrepeneurs, living right on the edge of broke and always looking for a good deal. This is really a drama about capitalism (for or against according to your bias). Railroad Tycoon the movie – with lots of crooks but no guns, because why would apple truckers carry guns? Watched it all. I also love how everybody’s an immigrant or has immigrant parents, and break into some European language whenever they get angry.

The Winter of Three Hairs (1949, China)

A beggar boy walks hungry in the streets, visions of food dancing before him.  Oh, if only there were some sort of movement or army that could liberate the people and (after a brief transition period) make sure that nobody in China would ever starve again!  Watched: 11 minutes.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949, USA)

At last – a Disney movie I don’t like at all!  In fact, it’s awful!  This is wonderful!  I’ve seen so many less-than-classic 40’s Disney movies in this marathon, and sort of liked them all, that I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with me.  And it’s quite fitting that it would arrive in the worst movie year of the decade.  Watched: 9 minutes.

Adam’s Rib (1949, USA, Cukor)

One way a marathon like this warps your perspective is that suddenly you start thinking things like: Another Tracy and Hepburn comedy? That’s so thirties! Watched: 10 minutes.

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Passport to Pimlico (1949, UK, Cornelius)

A street of much-rationed, much-regulated Londoners discover that they’re technically part of the Duchy of Burgundy, and decide to secede from England.  Watched it all.  What an amazingly libertarian movie this is, especially for the time.  What they’re really doing is creating an economic free zone, free from regulators and moral busybodies.  Suddenly the economy is booming, everyone’s getting involved in local politics, and are generally having a good time.  Of course it doesn’t last, but only because they’re sabotaged by the British government.

Border Incident (1949, USA, Mann)

Most Mexicans who want to work in the US are law-abiding citizens who enter it legally, but there are some who try to cross the border illegally!  Unfortunately they are usually killed by bandits.  Which is a shame, so let’s send the police to protect them.  Watched: 15 minutes.

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The Spider and the Fly (1949, UK, Hamer)

I guess any well-worn trope becomes interesting when I haven’t encountered it in a while.  In this case it’s the gentleman thief, who foils the French police in humorous ways, then goes off into World War I to serve his country, because one is after all a patriot.  Watched it all.

Post Office Investigator (1949, USA, Blair)

One trend in the late 40’s was to make movies about all the brave deeds government employees did to keep their country safe: Fighting terrorists, Communists, illegal immigrants, and, in this case .. er, stamp thiefs.  They were really scraping the barrel at this point.  Watched: 3 minutes.

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Rotation (1949, Germany, Staudte)

I’m actually a bit offended that the first German-made post-war movie I see is about a couple of ordinary Germans whose lives are mildly inconvenienced by the reign of Adolf Hitler.  As if that was the great crime of the Nazis: That they made life difficult for German dissidents.  But I grudgingly approve, because this is a good movie, and that trumps anything.  Watched it all.

Tokyo Joe (1949, USA, Heisler)

Humphrey Bogart must have really not wanted to visit Japan for this movie.  Every scene that shows his character in the streets of Tokyo is shot with a double, from behind, or with Bogart acting against a rear projection.  It looks ridiculous.  Watched: 9 minutes.

Love Happy (1949, USA)

As a Marx Brothers disciple I’m ashamed that not only didn’t I know that this movie existed, I didn’t even know it featured a not yet famous Marilyn Monroe for about 30 seconds.  Watched it all.  It’s awful though.  When Chico says “tutsi fruitsy ice cream”, referencing his own part in one of the funniest scenes in movie history, it’s actually kind of sad.  And when Harpo plays the harp, as he always did, it’s even sadder.  Because it’s all over now.

Red Light (1949, USA, Del Ruth)

There’s something about a 1940′s thriller when they get it just the right amount of hard-boiled.  Not too clever, no fancy film-noir love triangles, just a dangerous anti-hero with a gun.  This is almost there, but falls short by being terrible.  Watched: 20 minutes.

Stray Dog (1949, Japan, Kurosawa)

The same theft turns two war veterans in two different directions: One towards becoming a cop, the other to become a criminal.  But they’re both in a sense similar, stray dogs burning up with anger and despair.  Watched it all.  In post-war Japanese movies you never see any sign of the American occupation forces, because of censorship.  But in movies like this you do see how society was changing under their impact.

Fängelse / The Devil’s Wanton (1949, Sweden, Bergman)

If you were to make a parody of an Ingmar Bergman movie, it would probably be about a movie director who has long, philosophical discussions with his bohemian friends about life, the nature of evil, and the atom bomb.  The parody wouldn’t be funny at all, and that would be the great joke.  Watched: 16 minutes.

Mighty Joe Young (1949, USA, Schoedsack)

It pays off to pay attention to the credits.  This one has Ray Harryhausen working on the special effects.  Watched: 3 minutes, then fast-forwarded to see Harryhausen’s stop motion scenes, which are amazing.  It looks like they were having fun thinking up creative ways for the stop motion gorilla (who has the face of a Wallace & Gromit character) to interact with the live action characters.

Døden er et kjærtegn (1949, Norway, Carlmar)

A car mechanic who talks like an old-timey radio announcer gets picked up by a married woman who also talks like an old-timey radio announcer.  Their shared speech impediment becomes the basis for a dangerous romance.  Watched: 28 minutes.

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Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949, UK, Hamer)

Twelve D’Ascoyne’s stand in line between Dennis Price and the dukedom he believes is his birthright.  They’re all played by that asshole Alec Guinness, so that makes it okay when he starts bumping them off, one by one.  Watched it all.  Watching these early Guinness movies makes me wonder what Star Wars would have been like if he’d played Obi-Wan Kenobi as a really creepy, mean old man.

Sands of Iwo Jima (1949, USA, Dwan)

Only four years after the war, and already there’s a streak of insincerity in the war movies.  The characters are just a little bit less real, and more like stock characters.  Basically, they’re less Robert Mitchum, and more John Wayne.  Watched: 9 minutes.

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On the Town (1949, USA)

Hey, lonely sailor!  Come to New York, where you’ll meet girls in no time, even if you look like Frank Sinatra!  Watched it all. It seems that Betty Comden and Adolph Green were involved with everything I think of as Real Musicals.  They took the whole corny “hey let’s break out into song” trick and made it just the right amount of self-aware.  But this isn’t one of my Comden&Green favorites.

The Bridge(?) (1949, China)

“Quickly rob to live, warm waters all grew a Chinese foot of half”?  “The bridge shelf sees and then take not to live”??!  I knew Communist Party rhetoric could be dense, but in this case I suspect the problem is the translation.  Watched: 3 minutes.