Year by year: My faves of the 1950s

Eisenhower. The Red Scare. Suburbia. Shopping malls. McDonald’s. Television. Rock ‘n’ roll. Beatniks. Duck and cover.

Oh, and movies, especially the rise of world cinema.

1950:

10. Born Yesterday, director: George Cukor
9. Born to Be Bad, director: Nicholas Ray
8. Gun Crazy, Joseph H. Lewis
7. The Gunfighter, director: Henry King
6. Night and the City, director: Jules Dassin
5. Rashomon, director: Akira Kurosawa
4. In a Lonely Place, director: Nicholas Ray
3. The Asphalt Jungle, director: John Huston
2. All About Eve, director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1. Sunset Boulevard, director: Billy Wilder

When a movie opens with a dead man floating in a swimming pool, and he begins to narrate in voiceover, you know you’re in for a good, if twisted, time. And that’s before you get to the funeral for a monkey. Sunset Boulevard was Billy Wilder’s arsenic-dipped love letter to Hollywood. William Holden is a struggling screenwriter who essentially becomes a gigolo for Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a delusional, has-been silent film star secluded in a crumbling mansion off Sunset Boulevard. Swanson, who was a superstar of the silent screen, is extraordinary in a role that blurs her past with that of her character. To further such ambiguity, legendary silent-era director Erich von Stroheim plays Norma’s valet and ex-husband, while Wilder also makes use of memorable cameos by Cecil B. DeMille, Buster Keaton and others. The resulting pitch-black comedy skewers the movie industry and its penchant for discarding people. It’s not for nothing that movie critic Richard Corliss dubbed it “the definitive Hollywood horror movie.”

1951:

10. The African Queen, director: John Huston
9. An American in Paris, director: Vincente Minnelli
8. People Will Talk, director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still, director: Robert Wise
6. The Thing from Another World, director: Christian Nyby
5. The Steel Helmet, director: Samuel Fuller
4. A Place in the Sun, director: George Stevens
3. A Streetcar Named Desire, director: Elia Kazan
2. Ace in the Hole, director: Billy Wilder
1. Strangers on a Train, director: Alfred Hitchcock

Two men meet aboard a commuter train, chat, and discover that each is being driven miserable by someone else. One makes a suggestion: What could be more simple and mutually convenient than exchanging murders? At least that’s what Robert Walker, as Bruno, contends. He goes ahead and kills the ex-wife of his commuter acquaintance, Guy (Farley Ganger), and expects a quid pro quo homicide. Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, Strangers on a Train features some of Alfred Hitchcock’s finest set pieces. A strangulation reflected in the eyeglasses of the victim, a killer desperate to retrieve a cigarette lighter from a gutter, and an out-of-control merry-go-round are among the standouts. The movie is wicked fun throughout, thanks largely to Walker as the sophisticated and witty psychopath.

1952:

10. The White Sheik, director: Federico Fellini
9. High Noon, director: Fred Zinnemann
8. Casque d’Or, director: Jacques Becker
7. The Importance of Being Earnest, director: Anthony Asquith
6. The Bad and the Beautiful, director: Vincente Minnelli
5. The Life of Oharu, director: Kenji Mizoguchi
4. Scaramouche, director: George Sidney
3. Umberto D., director: Vittorio De Sica
2. Singin’ in the Rain, director: Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
1. Ikiru, director: Akira Kurosawa

While I love Akira Kurosawa’s samurai pictures, my personal favorite of his canon — or at least the one that wields the biggest emotional punch for me — is Ikiru. This bittersweet, wise and complicated drama concerns a nondescript Tokyo bureaucrat dying of cancer and facing the realization that he has not achieved anything he wanted in life. Alternately mournful and uplifting without (too much) audience manipulation, Ikiru has been told countless times in one fashion or another (most recently remade in 2022’s Living) but rarely with as much honesty and poignancy. You’ll always remember the sad-eyed Mr. Watanabe (Takashi Shimura in one of cinema’s all-time great performances) sitting on a swing in the snow and singing to himself.

1953:

10. Pickup on South Street, director: Samuel Fuller
9. Roman Holiday, director: William Wyler
8. I Vitelloni, director: Federico Fellini
7. The Wages of Fear, director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
6. The Band Wagon, director: Vincente Minnelli
5. Peter Pan, director: Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson & Clyde Geronimi
4. The Big Heat, director: Fritz Lang
3. Ugetsu, director: Kenji Mizoguchi
2. The Earrings of Madame de…, director: Max Ophüls
1. Tokyo Story, director: Yasujirō Ozu

I dare you not to cry. Elderly parents (played by Chishu Riu and Chieko Higashiyama) are shafted by their kids when they come to the big city for the first time to visit their adult children. Tokyo Story is quietly devastating and brilliant in its straightforward austerity, a domestic drama that conveys compassion through Yasujirō Ozu’s minimalist approach. Richard Schickel captured its mysterious pull thusly: “I remain in thrall to Tokyo Story, but it is ineffably sad. Everyone somehow means so well and fails so miserably to connect in any but the most routine and frustrating ways. I think it is one of the most poignant films I know. And also one of the most haunting. I wish I could come more firmly to grips with it.”

1954:

10. Track of the Cat, director: William A. Wellman
9. Them!, director: Gordon Douglas
8. The Far Country, director: Anthony Mann
7. Magnificent Obsession, director: Douglas Sirk
6. Sansho the Bailiff, director: Kenji Mizoguchi
5. A Star Is Born, director: George Cukor
4. La Strada, director: Federico Fellini
3. Seven Samurai, director: Akira Kurosawa
2. On the Waterfront, director: Elia Kazan
1. Rear Window, director: Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was at the height of his cinematic skills here. Hitch wanted to challenge himself, crafting suspense within the confined space of a New York City apartment where a wheelchair-bound man thinks he has witnessed a murder. James Stewart and Grace Kelly have great chemistry; Kelly is particularly sensational, regal before she became a literal princess. Thelma Ritter is excellent as the requisite comic relief and Raymond Burr turns in a surprisingly sympathetic performance as the villain. John Michael Hayes’ screenplay doesn’t have an ounce of fat on it. In the end, Rear Window’s exploration of voyeurism also makes it a fascinating examination of the medium itself. That’s called subtext, kids.

1955:

10. Lady and the Tramp, director: Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson & Clyde Geronimi
9. The Ladykillers, director: Alexander Mackendrick
8. Diabolique, director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
7. East of Eden, director: Elia Kazan
6. All That Heaven Allows, director: Douglas Sirk
5. Rebel Without a Cause, director: Nicholas Ray
4. Smiles of a Summer Night, director: Ingmar Bergman
3. Pather Panchali, director: Satyajit Ray
2. Kiss Me Deadly, director: Robert Aldrich
1. The Night of the Hunter, director: Charles Laughton

In his sole directorial outing, Charles Laughton demonstrated he was more than a great actor. Alas, The Night of the Hunter proved too dark and off-putting to connect with Eisenhower-era audiences. Despondent, Laughton never directed again. Based on Davis Grubb’s novel, the picture features a never-better Robert Mitchum in a decidedly non-Mitchum-like role. Here he is an evil “preacher” who marries the widow of his dead ex-cellmate in order to uncover a stolen fortune. The movie is atmospheric and evocative of quiet dread, leading Roger Ebert to correctly note that “Laughton made a film like no other before or since, and with such confidence it seemed to draw on a lifetime of work.”

1956:

10. A Kiss Before Dying, director: Gerd Oswald
9. The Ten Commandments, director: Cecil B. DeMille
8. Written on the Wind, director: Douglas Sirk
7. Moby Dick, director: John Huston
6. The Girl Can’t Help It, director: Frank Tashlin
5. Tea and Sympathy, director: Vincente Minnelli
4. A Man Escaped, director: Robert Bresson
3. The Killing, director: Stanley Kubrick
2. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, director: Don Siegel
1. The Searchers, director: John Ford

The Searchers is no standard John Wayne western. His Ethan Edwards, a Confederate veteran returned to visit his brother’s family, is a ruthless racist. When his niece is abducted by Comanches, Ethan, a dedicated American Indian hater, vows to track down and kill the girl. And this is the protagonist we’re talking about. Jeffrey Hunter’s Martin is a decent sidekick/foil to Ethan, but Martin’s abuse of his Native bride, played for laughs, is one of the movie’s sour notes. John Ford shot nine films in his beloved Monument Valley, but it was never more dazzling than here. While this isn’t my favorite of his westerns (that would be My Darling Clementine, Stagecoach and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance for those keeping score), it remains riveting storytelling. And that final shot of Wayne? This is what film scholar David Thomson had to say about it: “That last image of him in the breeze in the doorway, contemplating civilization and fury, and the door closing, is the greatest thing that Ford ever does, and it is a tremendous moment in American film.”

1957:

10. The Incredible Shrinking Man, director: Jack Arnold
9. The Seventh Seal, director: Ingmar Bergman
8. The Tall T, director: Budd Boetticher
7. Wild Strawberries, director: Ingmar Bergman
6. A Face in the Crowd, director: Elia Kazan
5. 12 Angry Men, director: Sidney Lumet
4.. Nights of Cabiria, director: Federico Fellini
7. The Bridge on the River Kwai, director: David Lean
2. Paths of Glory, director: Stanley Kubrick
1. Sweet Smell of Success, director: Alexander Mackendrick

A thinly veiled kick in the nuts to infamously cruel gossip columnist Walter Winchell, Sweet Smell of Success boasts a screenplay that is an embarrassment of riches. The dialogue is sharp as a stiletto and endlessly quotable — “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river,” “You’re a cookie full of arsenic,” “You’re dead, son; get yourself buried —due largely to Clifford Odets’ barbed rewrite of Ernest Lehman’s script. Alexander Mackendrick, ace cinematographer James Wong Howe and Elmer Bernstein’s jazzy music score capture the nasty allure of 1950s’ New York (“I love this dirty town”), all the better to showcase the nasty allure of Burt Lancaster as the cold-hearted columnist with an unhealthy attachment to his sister, and Tony Curtis as a desperate press agent toadie. I can watch this over and over.

1958:

10. Run Silent, Run Deep, director: Robert Wise
9. Elevator to the Gallows, director: Louis Malle
8. The Last Hurrah, director: John Ford
7. Murder by Contract, director: Irving Lerner
6. Some Came Running, director: Vincente Minnelli
5. Separate Tables, director: Delbert Mann
4. The Music Room, director: Satyajit Ray
3. A Night to Remember, director: Roy Ward Baker
2. Vertigo, director: Alfred Hitchcock
1. Touch of Evil, director: Orson Welles

From its celebrated opening tracking shot to Marlene Dietrich’s ambivalent final assessment of Orson Welles’ corrupt police detective, Touch of Evil is a testament to Welles’ singular visual greatness. In fact, there are a couple of less-showy long takes here nearly as impressive as that knockout opening. That doesn’t mean Russell Metty’s cinematography is anything high-minded. This is pulpy, lurid noir that would be home in a Mickey Spillane paperback. Welles is damned good (and ego-free) as Capt. Hank Quinlan, the literal and figurative heavy locked in a test of wills with Charlton Heston’s Mexican narcotics agent in a border town. Heston is marginally more convincing than a block of wood, but that’s no reason to quibble when the rest of the cast — namely Akim Tamiroff, Joseph Calleia, Dennis Weaver, Mercedes McCambridge and a sexy Janet Leigh — are so delightfully over the top. Composer Henry Mancini also deserves big props.

1959:

10. The 400 Blows, director: François Truffaut
9. Ben-Hur, director: William Wyler
8. Day of the Outlaw, director: André de Toth
7. Imitation of Life, director: Douglas Sirk
6. Compulsion, director: Richard Fleischer
5. Floating Weeds, director: Yasujirō Ozu
4. North by Northwest, director: Alfred Hitchcock
3. Anatomy of a Murder, director: Otto Preminger
2. Some Like It Hot, director: Billy Wilder
1. Rio Bravo, director: Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks wound up remaking Rio Bravo a couple times — as did John Carpenter and other acolytes of the director — but there’s no topping this warm, engaging, and often funny movie. Hawks and John Wayne were so pissed off by Gary Cooper’s nervous Nellie sheriff in 1952’s High Noon, they conceived of a rebuttal western that would present an idealized lawman. Their motive might have been sorta petty, but the final product is tremendous. Wayne is Sheriff John T Chance, our stalwart hero under siege by a bunch of baddies led by Ward Bond. Chance’s ragtag team includes Dean Martin as drunk guy, William Brennan as crusty codger guy, and Ricky Nelson (!) as, um, teen heartthrob guy? All this, and (a very leggy) Angie Dickinson! The leisurely pace allows its appealing characters to interact and show greater depth than perhaps is typical for a genre flick. No wonder Quentin Tarantino calls it his favorite “hangout movie.”