It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, USA, Capra) – An angel teaches James Stewart that if you’re the warmest, kindest, most giving person in town, you shouldn’t kill yourself, because people will miss you.  Also that you should give loans to people who can’t afford them, or your town will become a fun place to hang out.  Watched it all.  Actually, another message here is that you don’t need a government program to do good.  The good deeds done here are inspiring precisely because they are done voluntarily, by individuals.  Btw, I love the current state of colorization technology.  It looks perfect – not technicolorful, which would be distracting, but just right.

The Yearling (1946, USA, Brown) – A boy grows up among all the happy woodland critters, accompanied by uplifting choir music.  Watched: 9 minutes.

Shock (1946, USA, Werker) – Nervous wreck Anabel Shaw witnesses a murder and goes into a state of “shock”, a diagnosis about as plausible as Padmé dying from grief, but it allows us to see Vincent Price being EVIL, which is about time.  One first step towards this.  Watched it all.

The Truth About Murder (1946, USA, Landers) – Ah, the quaint old 1940′s, when people thought the magic power of a “lie detector” could be used to tell when people were lying!  Watched: 3 minutes.

The Time of Their Lives (1946, USA, Barton) – Was I unfair to Abbott and Costello when I said earlier that the Marx Brothers were the only comedy team of the 30′s and 40′s that was actually funny?  No, I don’t think I was.  Watched: 8 minutes.

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946, USA) – A mad pianist dies, and the vultures descend on his estate.  Then his ghost descends on the vultures.  Best moment: Peter Lorre screaming, over the top of his voice, “I tell you, it’s alive!”  Also, Peter Lorre displaying various contorted facial expressions.  Watched it all.

Genius at Work (1946, USA, Goodwins) – Bela Lugosi has fallen so low that he’s not the master criminal who toys with the police by sharing secrets with a radio show – he’s just the henchman, to some guy.  Oh, Bela.  Watched: 9 minutes.

To Each His Own (1946, USA, Leisen) – Olivia de Havilland goes into flashback mode to explain how she got that way.  Watched: 15 minutes.

The Flying Serpent (1946, USA, Newfield) – I guess one reason the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl doesn’t feature in more movies is his name.  Que..what?  And then there’s his fellow gods Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli and Chalchiuhtlicue, who do not appear in this movie.  Try saying them out loud, it’s fun!  Watched: 5 minutes.

A Scandal in Paris (1946, USA, Sirk) – A crook makes good in 18th century France.  All the best lines are voice-overs, such as “Emile was that grimmest of characters: An early morning optimist.”  Watched: 12 minutes.  The main character is so ironically detached that he probably doesn’t mind.

Strangler of the Swamp (1946, USA, Wisbar) – There’s so much fog in the swamp that there’s bound to be all sorts of evil things hiding in it.  I’m with the superstitious village women on that one.  Watched: 9 minutes.

Shoeshine (1946, Italy, de Sica) – Two boys try to make a living on the streets of Rome, but end up in juvenile prison, where they are hurled towards inevitable doom.  The system is to blame.  Watched it all.

Heartbeat (1946, USA, Wood) – Some guy runs a school for pickpockets in Paris. He invites people to job interviews, and recruits the candidates who take the opportunity to steal from him.  The premise is so great that it’s a shame everything else sucks.  Watched: 16 minutes.

Night and Day (1946, USA, Curtiz) – Cole Porter was young once too, and faced adversity etc.  But not too young, or too much adversity, or they couldn’t have gotten Cary Grant to play him.  Watched: 11 minutes.

Colonel Effingham’s Raid (1946, USA, Pichel) – A Colonel Blimp goes to war against a city government run by corrupt carpetbaggers who want to remove symbols of the town’s Confederate past.  Think of it as a Mr Smith Goes to Washington but with implicit racism and an obsession with women’s legs.  As in, every time the Shockingly Independent Woman With a Job enters the screen, the camera zooms in on her legs, and we hear a crowd whistle appreciatively.  Pretty bad, but hard to stop watching.  Watched it all.

Centennial Summer (1946, USA, Preminger) – Life of some stupid family during the 1876 Centennial celebration.  Hey, I just read a Flashman novel set at that time.  Quite interesting.  Indian wars and everything.  Did you know scalping isn’t fatal?  Watched: 6 minutes.

Three Strangers (1946, USA, Negulesco) – Three strangers of deplorable character meet under the statue of a Chinese goddess to pray for the one thing that will make them happy: Money.  They then go out and destroy their lives beyond the repair of any divine power.  Watched it all.

She-Wolf of London (1946, USA, Yarbrough) – Gah.  Watched: 7 minutes, which I’ve already forgotten.  The Warren Zevon song is pretty good though.  Also the one about that headless Norwegian.  Hm, where did I put my Zevon songs?

Green for Danger (1946, UK, Gilliat) – The problem with stopping movies when I don’t like the beginning is that some of them get better afterwards.  If I had stopped this one after the first 25 minutes, where people at a hospital just walk around being miserable, I would have missed the part where it turns into a dark, witty whodunnit.  Watched it all.

The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946, USA, Lubin) – These monster movies would be a lot more interesting if they didn’t spend the first half trying to ease us slowly into the fantastic premise.  Watched: 3 minutes, then fast-forwarded to see the spider, but there isn’t any.  There is an evil mansion that burns down at the end, though.

The Bamboo Blonde (1946, USA, Mann) – This is the second ’46 Anthony Mann movie that is absolutely terrible .. and yet I find myself watching it to the end.  Who is this guy?  This one is sort of a cheap version of a Preston Sturges movie, featuring Stan the used boat salesman from Monkey Island.  Watched it all.

Till the End of Time (1946, USA, Dmytryk) – Marines come home from the war, and find that nobody wants to know what they’ve been through.  The war has created a gulf between those who fought, and those who didn’t.   Watched it all.

Magnificent Doll (1946, USA, Borzage) – Abandoning the White House during the 1812 war with Britain, Ginger Rogers makes sure to take with her the original Declaration of Independence and the portrait of George Washington.  Watched: 4 minutes.

The Dark Mirror (1946, USA, Siodmak) – Either Olivia de Havilland or her identical twin Olivia de Havilland have murdered a man, and they won’t say which one.  Faced with this conundrum, the police is helpless.  Watched: 16 minutes.

Strange Impersonation (1946, USA, Mann) – The weirdest noir so far, with some really inventive touches, such as all the main characters being women, so I don’t mind that it’s terrible.  Watched it all.  IMDB reviewers complain that this isn’t strictly noir or strictly good or strictly coherent, which is to miss the point: It’s strange and fun!

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946, USA) – All these biopics are the same.  This one’s about Jerome Kern, some composer who I’m sure faced the usual adversity etc. etc.  Watched: 9 minutes.

Wanted for Murder (1946, UK, Huntington) – A woman dates a psychotic asshole, despite there being a perfectly fine nice guy available.  He’s probably the murderer referred to in the title, (unless it’s the nice guy, you can never trust these quiet ones).  Watched: 17 minutes.

No Regrets For Our Youth (1946, Japan, Kurosawa) – A group of anti-militarist students try to find their place in the Japan of the 30′s and early 40′s, but there isn’t any.  All they have is old ideals and a dream that things may one day be different.  Watched it all.

Tomorrow is Forever (1946, USA, Pichel) – Claudette Colbert faints when she hears that her husband Orson Welles has been killed in the war,  (the previous one).  Watched: 10 minutes.  Did you know that shock and fear does not actually cause people to faint?  The only exception is people who are afraid of blood or needles.

Devotion (1946, USA, Bernhardt) – The lives of the Brontë sisters (and their brother Dot) were just as interesting and dramatic as the novels they wrote.  Watched: 6 minutes.

The Jolson Story (1946, USA, Green) – Al Jolson loves to singa, about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a, he loves to sing-a.  Watched: 54 minutes, mostly spent reading the much more interesting Wikipedia entry about Jolson, where I learned that he was the Elvis of jazz, blues and ragtime, and also that the movie is completely fictitious.

Cloak and Dagger (1946, USA, Lang) – The OSS recruits Manhattan Project scientist Gary Cooper to go to German-occupied Europe as a spy, to prevent the Nazis from acquiring the nuclear bomb.  Oh come on, that’s just retarded.  Well, maybe Feynman could have done something like that.  Watched: 13 minutes.  Btw, the Office of Strategic Services is a much cooler name for a spy organization than the Central Intelligence Agency.

I See a Dark Stranger (1946, UK, Launder) – Raised on stories about British atrocities, Deborah Kerr goes to Dublin to join the IRA.  Turns out the old IRA isn’t very active these days, what with the independence and all, but Nazi Germany wouldn’t mind some help with their heroic struggle against the British.  Watched it all.

Mysterious Intruder (1946, USA, Castle) – An old man hires a private detective to find a girl who lived nearby.  All he remembers about her is that she was 14, and had long, blonde curls.  Okay, that’s creepy.  Watched: 6 minutes.

A Night in Casablanca (1946, USA, Mayo) – The Marx Brothers are getting old, literally.  But this is pretty good for one of their later movies.  The jokes are actually funny, and the rest doesn’t get in the way.  Watched it all.   Of course, Horse Feathers is five times funnier.  And Duck Soup.  And A Night at the Opera.  Did I mention that the Marx Brothers are the only 30′s and 40′s comedy team that was funny?  I had no idea before I started this marathon, but it’s true, or at least interesting.

Angel on My Shoulder (1946, USA, Mayo!) – A murdered gangster goes to Hell, where Satan recruits him to spread the cause of gangsterism back on Earth.  I guess that’s plan B after Nazism failed.  Watched: 17 minutes.

The Blue Dahlia (1946, USA, Marshall) – Alan Ladd comes home from the war and discovers that his wife has turned into a shrewish, child-killing femme fatale, a common occurence in those days, judging from what I’ve seen so far.  Also, his friend has gone mad from war trauma.  And it’s raining.  Watched it all.

The Mask of Diijon (1946, USA, Landers) – A former illusionist is being a complete asshole to everyone he knows because he wants to “get in touch with the infinite”.  I believe meditation or drugs is the generally recommended approach.  Watched: 12 minutes.

The Kid from Brooklyn (1946, USA, McLeod) – Opens with an army of pretty girls singing about how much they just love to milk cows.  What could they mean?  Watched: 9 minutes.

Humoresque (1946, USA, Negulesco) – Virtouso violinist John Garfield enters into a complex relationship with Joan Crawford, a troubled New York aristocrat.  His mother doesn’t approve, and I don’t either.  There’s no reason not to go with the nice girl in this one.  Watched it all.  Lots of good music.

Two Years Before the Mast (1946, USA, Farrow) – The captain of the Pilgrim is a real meanie, who works his crew to death and sends out press gangs to find replacements.  But if you ask me, the real problem is the exploitation inherent in the capitalist system of production.  Watched: 15 minutes.

91:an Karlsson (1946, Sweden, Bolander) – The Swedish officer corps is full of fat and jolly old men.  Staying out of the war by cosying up to Nazi Germany clearly has its benefits.  Watched: 7 minutes.

Great Expectations (1946, UK, Lean) – John Mills has a Dickensian childhood in alternate, gothic England, and after a series of rather unlikely events he gets married and lives happily ever after.  Watched it all.

The Overlanders (1946, UK, Watt) – Australians evacuate the Northern Territory, because the Japs may be coming.  Finally an Ealing movie that isn’t particularly good, perhaps because it isn’t about the English National Character.  Watched: 8 minutes.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946, USA, Milestone) – Barbara Stanwyck kills her aunt in a fit of juvenile delinquency, and ends up married to Kirk Douglas, a cowardly alcoholic.  Life sucks all around, but at least they’ve got money and power and an entire little town to boss around.  Watched it all.

Anna and the King of Siam (1946, USA, Cromwell) – Welcome to the half-barbaric land of Siam!  (Cue dramatic music by Bernard Herrmann.)  Watched: 6 minutes.

Gilda (1946, USA, Vidor) – Glenn Ford is the cynical gambler who makes his own luck.  Rita Hayworth is the boss’s wife who sleeps around.  They’re headed for love/hate, murder and ruin etc.  These noir plots are beginning to get predictable, but oddly enough that actually makes them more enjoyable.  Watched it all.

Without Reservations (1946, USA, LeRoy) – Claudette Colbert has written a popular inspirational novel that makes everyone feel all warm inside despite the cover looking just a tiny bit like a Nazi propaganda poster.  She wants Cary Grant to star in the movie version, but will probably have to settle for John Wayne.  Watched: 13 minutes.