Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

A Streetcar Named Desire
Directed by Elia Kazan
Written by Oscar Saul and Tennessee Williams from the play by Williams
1951/USA
Chales K. Feldman Group/Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#245 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Blanche DuBois: I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don’t tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.[/box]

This is a practically perfect adaptation of a powerful and poetic masterpiece.  Only freedom from Hayes Code restrictions could possibly have made it better.

Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) has come to the end of her rope.  Having burned all her bridges behind her, she arrives tin New Orleans o seek safe haven with her younger sister, Stella (Kim Hunter).  Stella is used to Blanche’s demands and airs and, although pregnant, welcomes her extended stay.  Unfortunately for Blanche, Stella is married to and passionately in love with Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando).  Stanley is the diametric opposite of Blanche.  He is brutally honest, confrontational and uneducated while Blanche is trying desperately to preserve the illusion of some imagined past as a Southern belle and quotes from the great works of literature.

Things do not work out well in the cramped Kowalski flat to say the least.  Blanche is constantly putting Stanley down while he spends all his time seeking to strip her bare of her pretensions.  It is obvious that her current situation is untenable so Blanche sets out to win Mitch (Karl Malden), the most civilized of Stanley’s poker buddies.  In the meantime, Blanche’s presence has strained Stella and Stanley’s relationship and Stanley becomes more and more determined to rid himself of an unwanted houseguest.

What can one say about this classic?  The acting could not be bettered.  I don’t know if Leigh gets enough credit for her performance of a very difficult part.  It’s easy to overlook when she shares the screen with the volcano that was young Brando. One of his triumphs was the humanity he brought to what could have been the part of a mere bully.   I could not have lived with Blanche for ten minutes but Tennessee Williams makes her fate stand in for all the pain of a hard and heartless world.  Most highly recommended.

A Streetcar Named Desire won Academy Awards in the categories of: Best Actress (Leigh); Best Supporting Actor (Malden); Best Supporting Actress (Hunter); and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black–and-White.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor (Brando); Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Costume Design; Black-and-White; Best Sound, Recording; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer

A Place in the Sun
Directed by George Stevens
Written by Harry Brown and Michael Wilson from a play by Patrick Kearney and the novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
1951/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#249 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Angela: Did you promise to be a good boy? Not to waste your time on girls?
George Eastman: I don’t waste my time.

Such a sad and beautiful movie.

This is a much more romantic version of the Dreiser novel.  George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) was raising singing on street corners by his very religious missionary parents.  His mother’s brother, on the other hand, is enormously wealthy and the owner of Eastman Industries.  George shows up at the factory one day looking for work.  He is hired as a lowly shipping clerk and basically forgotten about. Although fraternization is strictly forbidden by company rules, he takes up with a fellow shipping department employee, Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters).  Before long, they are lovers.

Then his uncle spots George in the shipping department and decides an Eastman should be doing something better.  He asks George to a party at his home to discuss the matter.  There George meets the simply ravishing Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor).  It is love at first sight and soon Angela and George are an item.

In the meantime, Alice has discovered she is pregnant.  She is unable to find a doctor to help her out of her predicament and demands that George marry her.  Her demands become most insistent at the very moment when it looks like George has or will soon be accepted as a full-fledged member of the Eastman family and a suitable marriage partner for Angela.

On the day they were to have been married, George takes Alice out for a ride in a row boat.  The boat capsizes and she drowns.  The rest of the movie follows George’s travails up to and including his murder trial.  With Anne Revere, in her last role before her blacklisting, as George’s mother and Raymond Burr as the District Attorney.

This film is the point at which the studio system met method acting.  It deserved all the accolades it received.  The acting is brilliant and the production from the cinematography to the music is stunning.  There may never have been more glorious love scenes than those between Clift and Taylor in this movie.  I felt sorry for every single person in the story by the end.  Recommended.

A Place in the Sun won Academy Awards for Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Costume Design, Black-and-White; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Actor (Clift) and Best Actress (Winters).

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The Day the Earth Stood Still
Directed by Robert Wise
Written by Edmund H. North
1951/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#252 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Helen: Gort! Klaatu barada nikto![/box]

The sleek design of this early sci-fi thriller with a message has held up remarkably well over the years.

America is the the midst of a Red Scare.  So when a flying saucer lands on the Washington DC mall, naturally the aliens are met with tanks and artillery and as soon as one emerges he is shot.  This is Klaatu (Michael Rennie) who has come to deliver a warning to gun-happy earthlings.  Fortunately he heals quickly and is backed up by a gigantic robot named Gort who is capable of vaporizing anything made of metal, including tanks.  Klaatu is taken to the hospital.  Gort remains exactly where he is.  Both the spaceship and the robot are made of a substance which is impervious to all earthly attempts to breach it and cannot be moved.

Klaatu escapes from the hospital and begins to roam the streets clad in clothes belonging to a Major Carpenter.  He has decided to find out what makes these earthlings tick.  He spots a room for rent in a boarding house and rents it on the spot.  There he befriends the open-minded Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her little boy Bobby (Billy Gray).  Klaatu has an especially strong bond with young Bobby and babysits for him while Helen goes out with her boring insurance salesman boyfriend Tom (Hugh Marlowe).

Klaatu has been rebuffed in his desire to address the leaders of all the world’s countries so he seeks out noted genius and Einstein stand-in Professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe).  Barnhardt immediately grasps the urgency of the situation and assembles the world’s scientists to listen to Klaatu’s plea.  In the meantime, however, Tom proves to be a snitch and it is up to Helen to keep our alien in one piece long enough to carry out his mission.

This still looks simply stunning with its clean lines and gorgeous cinematography.  The anti-nuclear message moves what could be a simple fantasy up a notch in significance.  The evocative theramin score by Bernard Hermann is practically an additional character.  This film is a real treat.  Highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray DVD looks really beautiful and contains a fantastic commentary by directors Robert Wise and Nicholas Meyer (The Day After).  There’s an additional commentary by some film score experts that I haven’t listened to yet.

Trailer

The Lavender Hill Mob
Directed by Charles Crichton
Written by T.E.B. Clarke
1951/UK
Ealing Studios
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant
#250 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Turner: The trouble with you, Holland, is that you haven’t enough ambition.[/box]

Was there ever a more versatile actor than Alec Guinness?

The movie begins with “Dutch” Holland (Guinness) recounting his life of crime from a cafe in Rio de Janeiro, where he is evidently the toast of the town and dispenser of goodies to the lovely Audrey Hepburn in her first major film.  It then segues into flashback.

Holland is a seemingly humble and boring bank clerk who oversees the transport of gold bullion from the refinery to the Bank of England.  In reality, he has spent most of his time for years concocting a foolproof plan to steal a gold shipment.  He has everything solved but a way to get the gold out of the country.  His last problem is solved when he meets Mr.  Pendlebury who owns a company which makes “gold” Eiffel Tower paperweights out of molten lead.  Holland as little trouble convincing Pendlebury to make the paperweights out of real gold and send them off to France.

Holland’s scheme is launched a bit prematurely when he is given a promotion at the bank. The two quickly hire a couple of Cockney thieves to assist in the heist.  Despite their careful planning, everything that can go wrong does go wrong.  By some miracle they end up with the gold, however, and the paperweights are shipped off to Paris.  Then six are sold by mistake as souvenirs to some schoolgirls and Holland’s determination to retrieve them causes a whole new comedy of errors.   This was Robert Shaw’s film debut, in a tiny part.

This is a genuinely funny film.  I find the most endearing parts to be the steadfast friendship between Holland and Pendlebury.  Some of the expressions Guinness gets on his face are just priceless!  Recommended.

The Lavender Hill Mob won an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story and Screenplay.  Alec Guinness was nominated for Best Actor.

Trailer

Strangers on a Train
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde and Whitfield Cook from a novel by Patricia Highsmith
1951/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/My DVD Collection
#244 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Bruno Anthony: I have a theory that you should do everything before you die.

The bravura direction and Robert Walker’s fantastic performance are enough to overcome the very bland Farley Granger and Ruth Roman acting and make this one of my favorite Hitchcock films.

Tennis player Guy Haines (Granger) has the misfortune to meet fan Bruno Antony (Walker) on a train journey to talk to his wife about speeding up their divorce proceedings.  Bruno  already knows all about Guy’s marital woes and about his romance with a U.S. Senator’s pretty daughter (Roman).  Bruno has a unique plan for the perfect murder.  He volunteers to murder Guy’s wife Miriam in exchange for Guy killing his much hated father.

Guy, of course, rebuffs this proposition, but Bruno continues to go on and on about it. When he leaves the train, Guy sort of nods at Bruno more to humor him than anything else.  He then visits his wife who informs him that she now has no intention of divorcing him, despite the fact she is carrying another man’s child.  She is looking forward to living the high life in Washington.

Bruno catches up with Miriam at a carnival she is attending with a couple of male admirers.  Guy’s problem has been solved.  Now Bruno wants him to fulfill his side of the “bargain”.  As time goes on Bruno becomes more insistent and it is ever more clear that he is completely insane.  When it is clear Guy has no intention of murdering the father, Bruno sets out to frame him for the murder of his wife.  Since Guy was the party with the motive, this shouldn’t be too difficult, no?  With Leo J. Carroll as the Senator and Patricia Hitchcock as the Senator’s other daughter.

I just love the set pieces from this movie.   The meeting of the two strangers, Miriam’s murder, and the tennis game are masterfully done.  Walker is wonderfully effective as an effeminate psychopath in a role very different from the juveniles he previously specialized in.  It’s really sad we lost him the year of this film’s release.  Roman and Granger are pretty bad and the concluding merry-go-round scene might go a bit over the top but, for me, the movie’s other pleasures make it something I can watch again and again.  Recommended.

Strangers on a Train was nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White.

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Ace in the Hole (AKA The Big Carnival)
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman
1951/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#243 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Lorraine: I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.[/box]

Billy Wilder concocts the original media circus and Kirk Douglas gives us perhaps his most vile heel ever.

Chuck Tatum (Douglas) is a hard-drinking wise-guy newspaper reporter who has been fired by several big city newspapers.  He shows up at an Albuquerque paper and offers his services as a “$200 a day” reporter who will work for cheap.  Despite rubbing the editor (Porter Hall) the wrong way, he gets the job.  After a year, he is still being sent to cover rattlesnake festivals.

On the way to one such event,  he and his photographer stop to get gas at a roadside cafe and souvenir shop.  They learn from the owner’s wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) that her husband has been trapped in an old Indian tomb where he was searching for artifacts.  Chuck goes to investigate and discovers that the trapped man, Leo, believes that he may be the victim of an Indian curse punishing those who desecrate their grave sites.  Chuck smells a good story and a possible Pulitzer prize.

When Chuck learns that the contractors he brought in to rescue the man believe they can get him out in 24 hours he encourages them to do it the hard way by drilling down from the top.  He wants to milk the story for at least a week and is supported in this aim by the crooked local sheriff who is looking for publicity for his re-election campaign. Meanwhile the trapped man and his parents believe Chuck is actually his friend.  Lorraine knows differently but is all cooperation when she sees how much money can be made by the gawkers who now flood the site.

Chuck wangles an exclusive deal for the coverage and alienates all his fellow journalists in the process.  He even manages to get his job back at a New York paper.  Will Chuck get the comeuppance he so richly deserves?

This movie is powerful and well-made in every respect.  It is also the most cynical and misanthropic of all Wilder’s films.  There is an uncharacteristic meanness and lack of leavening humor that makes it hard for me to really love.  It really should be seen though.

Ace in the Hole was nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay.

Trailer

Orpheus (Orphee)
Directed by Jean Cocteau
Written by Jean Cocteau
1950/France
Andre Paulve Film/Films du Palais Royal
First viewing/Criterion Collection DVD
234 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Heurtebise: I am letting you into the secret of all secrets, mirrors are gates through which death comes and goes. Moreover if you see your whole life in a mirror you will see death at work as you see bees behind the glass in a hive.[/box]

I’m the wrong person to review this critically acclaimed classic.  It didn’t grab me and I can’t claim to have understood it.

The Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridyce is moved to a modern dreamscape.  Orpheus (Jean Marais) is a famous poet.  He is married to Euridyce who is pregnant with their first child.  While Orpheus is sitting in a cafe one day, his friend points out his eighteen-year-old rival poet.  The rival is killed, but Orpheus is not aware of this.  Death (Maria Casares) orders Orpheus to accompany her and the boy in her car.  The car starts spouting bad poetry at Orpheus.  He becomes obsessed with Death and the bad poetry.

His obsession causes him to neglect Euridyce.  Orpheus and Death fall in love.  Euridyce dies.  One of Death’s assistants show Orpheus how to reunite with Euridyce.  The price for this is that he cannot look at her or touch her.  Orpheus tries hard to obey these commands but a rear-view mirror trips him up so Euridyce is returned to the underworld.  In an uncharacteristic act of self-sacrifice, Death saves the day.

This is ravishing to look at and I’m sure would reward careful viewing and reviewing.  I’m not up to that at the moment and got nothing out of this film.  Beauty and the Beast is the only Cocteau film I have liked.  I think that is because that film has a straightforward narrative to accompany the surrealist imagery.

Criterion Promo

All About Eve
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1950/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/My DVD collection
#237 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Birdie: What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end.

Writer/director Mankiewicz had a special gift for creating memorable women.  His actresses’ performances take his characters up another notch.

The film is bookended with scenes at an awards banquet honoring Eve Harrington for her acting.  The opening is narrated in voice over by critic Addison De Witt (George Sanders) who informs us that the story will tell us all about Eve and how she got to this point.

Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is a big Broadway star.  She will soon turn 40.  She is currently playing the role of a much younger woman in a play written by Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlow) and directed by her lover Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill) who is eight years her junior.  These circumstances cause her to have a gigantic chip on her shoulder with regard to her age.  This and Margo’s outsized personality mean she is not the easiest person in the world to get along with.  This can be attested to by her best friend Karen Richards (Celeste Holm) and her dresser and best friend Birdie (Thelma Ritter).

As the story starts, Karen stops to chat with the bedraggled Eve (Anne Baxter) whom she has seen standing by the stage door after every night’s performance.  Karen admires Eve’s devotion and takes her back stage.  All our characters are gathered in Margo’s dressing room.  They are moved by Eve’s tale of woe and flattered by her starstruck adoration of Margo and the theater in general.  Margo is so touched that she takes Eve in as a sort of second companion and dog’s body.

Eve proves to be quite an efficient and devoted worker.  Before long, she seems too efficient, setting up romantic surprises for Bill before Margo can think to do these things herself.  Things come to a head at the birthday party Eve has arranged for Bill.  Margo gets drunk and acts like a haridan.  Everyone’s sympathy is with Eve.

It turns out Eve as a special knack at bringing out the worst in other women in order to garner sympathy for herself.  Before long she has wangled a job as Margo’s understudy. Then, with help from Addison, she aims for higher things.

This is a superbly written look at the peccadillos of the theatrical crowd. The only minor complaint that could be made would be the dated sexual politics behind the resolution of Margo’s character arc.  The film is a great classic and earned all those Oscars for a good reason.  It is truly a must-see.

All About Eve won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Supporting Actor (Saunders); Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Costume Design, Black-and-White; and Best Sound, Recording.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Actress (Davis); Best Actress (Baxter); Best Supporting Actress (Holm); Best Supporting Actress (Ritter); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

It was the first of only two films to ever be nominated for so many awards.  The only other film with 14 nominations is Titanic (1997).  It also holds the record for the number of female acting nominations in one film.

Trailer

Adam’s Rib
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin
1949/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant
#228 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Kip Lurie: Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called in-breeding; from this comes idiot children… and other lawyers.[/box]

This may be the best picture to recommend for anyone who wants to understand the magic that was Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.  I am also very fond of the supporting performances.

Adam Bonner (Tracy) and his wife Amanda (Hepburn) are criminal trial attorneys.  He works for the prosecution and she for the defense.  He is assigned to prosecute dizzy housewife Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) who shot at her husband (Tom Ewell) and his mistress (Jean Hagen) when she caught them together.  Amanda gets a bee in her bonnet about the double standard applied to women in these situations and determines to defend Doris.  At no time does anyone in the film point out the egregious conflict of interest that this entails on the part of both attorneys. Well, it’s a comedy so OK.

The film follows the Bonners at home and in court as they spar and exchange repartee about women’s rights and the law.  A bit of conflict is thrown in due to their neighbor Kip Lurie’s (David Wayne) interest in Amanda.  With Hope Emerson as a lady wrestler.

This is a funny film and features several tour de force performances.  I especially like Tracy’s crocodile tears and, of course, the scene on the massage table.  Holliday and Hagen make a delightful pair of ditzy broads.  I have an irrational fondness for Tom Ewell and he is perfect here as always.  A classic.

This marked Hagen’s film debut.

Adam’s Rib was nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay.

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On the Town
Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly
Written by Adolph Green and Betty Comden from their Broadway musical
1949/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#233 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Gabey, Chip, Ozzie: [singing] New York, New York, a wonderful town / The Bronx is up and the Battery down / The people ride in a hole in the ground / New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town![/box]

The cast is great and so are a lot of the musical numbers.  I feel like I can tolerate a lot of silliness but somehow this one manages to be a little too corny for me to love it.

Three sailors are on 24-hour leave in New York City, where none has ever been.  Gabey (Gene Kelly) and Ozzie (Jules Munchen) are looking for a little female attention but Chip (Frank Sinatra) is determined to see all the sights.  Gabey falls in love with the photo of MissTurnstiles Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), who he is convinced is a big celebrity.  He talks the other men into searching for her.

Early on, Chip is picked up by randy taxi cab driver Hildie (Betty Garrett) and she hauls them around town while plotting how to lure Chip to her apartment.  They look every place mentioned in Ivy’s high-toned biography.  One of the first stops is the Museum of Natural History.  There they meet up with Claire (Ann Miller) who has been advised by her psychiatrist to study prehistoric man so she can get over her boy-craziness.  She thinks Ozzie looks exactly like a cave man statue at the museum and is off to the races.  Before they leave, the boys manage to topple a dinosaur statue and are chased by the museum director and cops throughout the rest of the film.

Gabey finally catches up with Ivy at her dance class.  She pretends to be exactly as described in her bio.  In reality, she has been forced to work as a hooch dancer at Coney Island to pay for her lessons.  The romance has its ups and downs until love conquers all.

I love the opening “New York, New York” number, Ann Miller’s dancing, and of course Gene Kelly.  But the story, revolving on the adventures of sex-hungry girls and their counterparts, leaves me cold.  The dialogue strikes me as totally banal.  I may have been having a bad day.

Clip – Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen sing and dance