Youll see Premingers name on several of the best noirs, from Laura (1944) to Whirpool (1950), lending his coolly dispassionate gaze to stories of murder and delirium. Timeless, big-hearted and disarmingly sincere, this film is one I defy you to have one cynical comment about. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. The minute Russells Lindy Johnson stalks into the newspaper office run by her ex-husband Walter Burns (Grant), you know its to tell him shes getting remarried and leaving journalism to raise a family, and you know thats not how its going to end. Chaos, stampedes, duels, shifting loyalties-and an unfortunately pat ending in which both men are basically chastened by a woman and forced to remember that they love each other.
This is one of the 1940s Westerns that portrayed the psychologically disturbing aspects of life, rather than the traditional Westerns that swung more optimistic, writes the Toronto Film Society. Stefan, the pianist (Louis Jourdan) is remarkably clueless, and, reading the letter as hes preparing to leave town to evade a duel, follows Lisa through a series of flashbacks starting when she was 14, progressing through an episode where theyd had a brief tryst, to her marrying someone else and giving birth to Stefans child, to him trying to seduce her at a chance encounter without realizing she was the same woman, to their childs death from typhus, which is threatening to carry her off as she writes the letter. Its a trajectory that will seem pretty traditional when it comes to stories like thisa clear progenitor is Citizen Kane, replete with Rossens dedicated eye to following the films god-like politician, Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), as he both attains and, especially, freefalls from gracebut with a contemporary sense of cynicism when it comes to the American political landscape, it helps to get a reminder, if melodramatic, that corruption and power have always been blasphemous bedfellows. Its savage and sexual, deeply unsettling in its nihilism and yet not utterly without hope; the final shot offers a respite of sorts from Tourneurs otherwise unblinking sobriety. J.V. The term film noirstuck. (Sadomasochism much?) In another example of how the repressive Production Codes of the time gave rise to a much more exciting scene than he might otherwise have made, Hitchcock got around the no kisses longer than three seconds by breaking the performers apart every three seconds for some kind of embrace and then resuming the kiss. ( You know how to whistle, dont you, Steve? Widely regarded as one of the finest ghost stories of the 40s, The Uninvited carries itself with a dignity not seen in most Universal monster movies or Poverty Row cheapies. Leave it toOrson Wellesto create the last cast-iron masterpiece of the original film noir era. Fantasia ran at New Yorks Broadway Theatre for 49 consecutive weeks, the longest film run ever at the time. It doesnt take much to do violence upon others. While the origin of the films concept was fairly mundane (Disney wanted a star vehicle for Mickey Mouse, whose ratings were flagging). Robert Mitchum dominates, whether in his tte--ttes with Kirk Douglas or his simmering flirtations with Jane Greer. Rather than writing storyboards and creating a soundtrack, the production team sat in meetings listening to Paganini and Stravinsky and Mussorgsky until Disney connected the sounds with images and built on it from there. Pulp fiction told with great economy and imagination, it hinges on a down-on-his-luck pianist hitch-hiking across America to rejoin his girlfriend in California. WebTitle Director Cast Genre Notes As Long as I Live: Jacques de Baroncelli: Edwige Feuillre, Jacques Berthier, Jean Debucourt: Drama: Co-production with Italy Back Streets of Paris: Marcel Blistne A.C.
There are disastrous miscommunications and something suspicious hidden in the wine cellar and a couple of Hitchcocks most iconic shots and a hell of a lot of drinking. Film production stopped completely during the summer of 1940; however, See also:M (Joseph Losey), On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray), Strangers on a Train (AlfredHitchcock). Hilariously acted and expertly filmed, His Girl Friday derives much of its comedic impact from the incredibly clever and lightning-fast banter of the characters. An act of genre deconstruction and muted political critique all in one. This Freudian melodrama a big favourite ofJean-Luc Godard finds him at fulltilt. Not infrequently dubbed the best French film of all time, this is the movie Truffaut said hed revoke his entire oeuvre to have directed. Brewster, an author of many tomes on the stupidity of marriage, gets married. Her performance as icy heiress Tracy Lord in this remarriage comedy is a force of nature. (You might even believe, given both the passage of time and enough viewings of The Third Man under your belt, that Welles himself is the architect of the piece, but of course youd be 100% wrong if you did.) The Return of Frank James (1940) - Director: Fritz Lang - IMDb user rating: 6.6 - Runtime: 92 minutes The effect of Kurosawas technique is dizzying, all the better to reinforce Stray Dogs central theme, in which the line between lawmen and criminals is irrevocably blurred. Huston uses a light hand to illuminate some pretty dark corners of human instinct, and Humphrey Bogart is marvelous as Fred Dobbs, a man destroyed by lust and paranoia as we watch. emerged from the ranks, including Jean Delannoy (b. So, yeah-come for the psychopathology lesson, but stay for the stunning Gods-eye style direction by Cuckor (no unreliable narrators here! As serial widow murderer Charlie, who comes west to hide out with his sisters unsuspecting family,Joseph Cottenoozes contempt, calling the world a foul sty. (19081980), Andr Cayatte (b. Regardless, Day of Wrath stands as a masterfully composed, exquisitely compelling glimpse at what happens when austerity is left to its own devices. Let us see what each decade of the 20 th century had to offer when it comes to the best of French movies. 1940: Taking over French Cinema online Watch online, Paris, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Gre. With a beauty for the ages as his star, Vidor doesnt have to do much, and his static, voyeuristic direction shows in fact he didnt. Regardless, Cat People was a populist hit in its day before being reevaluated decades later as a landmark of 40s horror. (19041990) and Louis Jouvet (18871951), took refuge in WebList of French films of 1944 View history Tools Cinema of France This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. As one might imagine, things dont go well for Anna. Nobody knew what to call film noirs when they first started coming out of Hollywood in the early 1940s. Pretty much everything about this movie is a pure delight, and the script is a masterpiece. Gilda taunts Johnny throughout the film, goading him with her sex appeal, and for his part, Vidor teases us, tooGilda, are you decent? Define decent. See also:Baby Face Nelson (Don Siegel), The Garment Jungle (Vincent Sherman), Sweet Smell of Success (AlexanderMackendrick). Its a story of the malignancy of lust for wealth, and if youre looking for a happy ending, this movies not your go-to; Davis ends up very, very alone. Critical opinion has settled pretty solidly on the best films of the cinematically prolific 1940s; look at ten lists and youll see a lot of overlap. came another disillusioned,noir taleof Hollywood, with a career-best turn from Humphrey Bogart as the dark-tempered screenwriter whose new wife (Gloria Grahame) comes to suspect his violent tendencies. woman, and it is one of the most brilliant soundtracks of its day.
A.G. In one of his darkest roles, 50-year-old Cagney is at his unhinged best, a powder keg of neuroses and sadistic impulses who can feign insanityas he does in the prison infirmaryfor only so long before his delusions overtake him completely. If youre a fan of the screwball niche of comedy filmmaking, you have to know Sullivans Travels, one of the best examples of its category; screwball movies arent simply about zaniness but energy, inertia, momentum, the snowballing power of a silly premise when backed by an intelligently designed madness. Note the Western clothing. That makes Miracle on 34th Street sound both drier and jaded than it actually is, of course, and more than 70 years on, its still one of the most effectively hokey pieces of holiday entertainment the industry has ever produced. Heres one key film from each of the influential cycles peakyears. Powells camerawork is mesmerizing and the film is steeped in supersaturated color, underlining the exoticism and confusion faced by the nuns. A.G. Beauty and the Devil (1950) Approved | 95 min | Comedy, Overall, the film is more a distance runner than a sprinter and a brilliant example of Disneys strange, maverick, expansive imagination. Ultimately, of course, his undoing is a clockliterally. (1930) 110 min | Crime, Drama 5.6 The film won an Academy Award for Best Sound Recording and is considered one of the best war films of the 1940s. A.G. It was always a fantastic film; a tale of sadistic psychological torture, murder and greed. Happily, her no-longer-drunken ex is played by Cary Grant, who is a fabulous foil. Whether in film or on television, MacMurray normally played the nice guy, but for Double Indemnity he turned his everyman decency into a maskperfect for a character who can barely conceal what a lustful, conniving bastard he is. But folded within the tale of Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu) and Noriko Somiya (Setsuko Hara) lie a handful of barbs aimed at censorship protocols imposed upon Ozu during Late Springs production, which is itself a nod to the kind of tension Japanese citizens had to live with every single day of the occupation. WebTOP 50 CLASSIC FRENCH FILMS (1923-1969) I have listed here my 50 favorite CLASSIC FRENCH FILMS (1923-1969) in increasing order of preference. What sets Laura apart is the music. The cumulative effect represents a primal deviationmake that devolutionfrom social conformity and civilization. A significant number of directors from (Committee for the Organization of the Film Industry) was established, as Three unlikely comrades pursue a cache of gold, and the resulting obsession turns them against each other with tragic results. place structures that both supported and regulated the industry. 11. The number of films that espoused
In Stray Dog, Kurosawa emulates the central feat of Jules Dassins The Naked City, the marriage between the stylized trappings of film noir and cinematic realism, but Stray Dog doesnt copy Dassins work; rather, it absorbs and applies lessons taught by The Naked City in ways that only a filmmaker like Kurosawa could. The storys simple enough: a poor man and his son search postwar Rome for the mans stolen bicycle, without which he cannot work. French films, and a few Italian films. A.G. See also:Caught (Max Ophuls), Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak), White Heat (RaoulWalsh).
More polished examples of noir exist than this poverty row production from the B-movie pumphouse Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), but here in 68 minutes and shot in six days is a perfect distillation of the genres essence. Adapted from Maxwell Andersons hit Broadway play, the resulting chamber piece swaps the Spanish Civil War for the second World War. As one would expect from any Western of the mid-20th century, there are a lot of violent Indians to fend off; Dunsons love interest is slaughtered along with most of a California-bound wagon train, and in one scene where Dunson and his codger-companion Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan) are in retaliatory combat, Dunson finds one of the Indians is wearing a silver bracelet that had belonged to his own mother. Peter Lorre plays the surgeon, who has altered Jonathans face to make him look like Boris Karloff (naturally). Hard-talking men fall for duplicitous dames, as cigarette smoke wreaths around them on dark street corners or in rooms with the slatted blinds pulleddown. A prototypical war of the sexes comedy in which each side represents the status quo for his or her respective gender, Adams Rib transcends its dumbest Mars-vs-Venus trappings by portraying Tracys Bonner as a stuffy turd too caught up in his derision of women to do anything about the fact that a famous musician lothario (David Wayne) is getting mighty close to cuckolding him, were Amanda Bonner a dunce susceptible to shameless advances. He painstakingly storyboarded the drama to include complex camerawork and lighting schemes, evocative POVs, and an uninterrupted seven-minute take whose logistics boggle the mind.
You can spot them by their shadowy visuals and shady morals. ), butthe firstof these is an acorn from which the great oak of film noir would grow. By the time you read this letter, I might be dead. This haunting romance by Max Ophls is one of those star-crossed love stories that, if it doesnt tug at your heart, you might want to check to make sure you have one. Amanda Schurr. Directed by: TETSUO LUMIERE Written by: TETSUO LUMIERE Genres: Silent Film / Comedy Cast: ANA LIVINGSTON, TETSUO LUMIERE Producers: MARIANO TORRES, LISANDRO LEIVA, TETSUO LUMIERE Director of photography: MARIANO TORRES, LISANDRO LEIVA Assistant Director: FAVIO LOPEZ Assistant Producer: Kindler has has moved to a small New England town and married the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice, teaches at a prep schoolessentially has erased every possible trace of his former identity, save one: a longtime obsession with clocks. It was restored partially in 1946 and to its original condition in 1990. 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Jet-fuelled by directorRobert Aldrichs disdain for Mickey Spillanes tawdry pulp fiction detective Mike Hammer,Kiss Me Deadlyis film noir at its most cynical and apocalyptic. Rope is notable for its extremely long takes and for taking place in real time, making it one of Hitchcocks more experimental movies. D.S. Good satire can be powerful, and this film was: Released while the United States was still formally at peace with Germany, it stirred greater public attention and condemnation of the Nazis and Mussolini, anti-Semitism and fascism. When that didnt work he had Welles thoroughly libeled in all his papers.) A.G.
The truest mark of the films brilliance is its accessibility: Even if you know zip about postwar history, youll be dazzled by Ozus unparalleled discipline as a filmmaker, charmed by Haras wonderful performance, and moved by the themes present in the fabric of the narrative, especially its painful depiction of what it means to let go of the ones we love most. In fact, try to blink as little as possible. And thats just the setup. Weird, beautiful, orgiastic, abstracted, wildly colored and meticulously recorded, the film was a critical darling and considered to be an incredibly bold move on Disneys part, though many in the classical music community nitpicked Stokowskis arrangements. D.S. A.G. handicapped; nonetheless, the Vichy period proved to be a prosperous time Its both a classic and a somewhat unconventional Western, and its a killer drama. linked by any specific style or topic. Dreyers first film in more than a decade, a tense and measured reaction to the overwhelming forces oppressing him and his country, filtered through the systemic corruption that has both plagued and defined civilization since its Edenic Fall. creative, periods of French cinema. See also:The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis), The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton), The Phenix City Story (PhilKarlson). Special effects have become so sophisticated that many of us have probably forgotten how much pure amazement you can wreak with a great story and a script that doesnt let up for one second. Notes. By showing its audience the positive side of capitalism in action, the film reminds us of its negative side, too, posturing about Christmass true meaning and capturing New York City at the peak of its bustling consumerist culture. Creeping in stark contrast to Universals monster movies of the same era, it leans on suspense and carefully constructed shots rather than Jack Pierce makeup to make an impression. WebFilm Movement - French Surrealism (1924-1941) "Surrealism was an avant-garde art movement in Paris from 1924 to 1941, consisting of a small group of writers, artists, and filmmakers, including Andr Breton (18961966), Salvador Dali (19041989), and Luis Buuel (19001983). The story of a young Russian immigrant with a dark family past, it combines aspects of film noir and mystery movies with Hitchcockian suspense, while pioneering several staple tropes of horror cinema that have been used hundreds if not thousands of times since. Though only the films opening scenes were shot on location (the rest on the Warner Bros. lot), the exotic setting and meteorological fate render isolation to an extreme degree. That this cherubic plebian finds public success only through discarding his teetotaling tendencies and becoming a much-loved, bloviating alcoholic is about as clear as the film can get with its fatalistic feelings toward American politics: Theyve always been this polluted, and that will never change. Orson Welles was only 24 when he made this cinematic masterpiece-his first feature, and considered by many to be the greatest film of all time-a rather chilling portrait of an enigmatic, narcissistic newspaper tycoon. Because its not possible. ( Together they pop, but no matter how brightly they might shine, Out of the Past remains a masterwork coated in darkness from page to screen. the 1930s continued working through the 1940s, including Guitry, Pagnol, Adult, adventure. A free trial, then 4.99/month or 49/year. Mark Rozeman. Wolf Man Larry Talbot, along with Frankensteins Monster, represents the more sympathetic side of the Universal monster movie canon, although some viewers would doubtlessly substitute the word whiny in its place. Thistaut thrillertakes place on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles, as an LAPD detective (Charles McGraw) escorts a mob bosss widow to court to testify before a grand jury. What holds up beautifully is Waynes fascinating slow fade from strapping man in the prime of life to defeated old guy, placed against Matts ascendancy. Epic, lavish, tragic and enchanting, this film has enormous style and a kind of poetry to it. Cocteau was a poet as well as a filmmaker, and this is a strong example of how the two crafts inform one another, in the way it harnesses imagery to create metaphorical connections. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, derived almost wholesale from the outsize life of Louisiana governor Huey Long, Robert Rossens All the Kings Men, despite its expansive scope, wastes no time in plunging its seemingly idealistic characters into the deep morass of moral gray. (And its pretty brilliant now, for that matter.) His second, a period drama based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1918 novel The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, was destroyed (in Welles view) when he lost control of the editing to RKO. In modern times, the types of films that most resemble the earliest films are The Black Maria by Thomas Edison Which of the following does NOT characterize the American film business in the 1910s and 1920s? established at the small spa town of Vichy, in the unoccupied zone of In the end its a two-and-a-half-minute kiss and probably much more intimate and entrancing than it would have been without the constraints he was fighting. The Children of Paradise Light of Summer Cinemas were a popular haven from the cold and A.S. Casablanca (1942) PG | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War 8.5 Rate 100 Metascore A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not Doomed love, self-sacrifice, Bogie one-liners galore, and one of the most quintessential cinematic moments of its age (both of my kids were born after 9/11 and even they cheered when that chorus of La Marseillaise drowned out the Nazis). An amazing collection of experts and performers were assembled to consult on science, animal movement and different types of dance. French migr directorJacques Tourneurwas a master of shadowy gothic horror, but his firsttrue noirmight be the ultimate example of the cycle, ticking off all its hallmarks from flashbacks to femme fatales into a concoction thats nothing short of intoxicating. (BillyWilder). (Hint: It weaponizes.) Cast. The Grapes of Wrath endures for good reason: Its the truth, an authentic dramatization of how American industry chews up working families and spits them out, leaving them to die in the soil they once tilled, which means that as long as agents of commerce go about the grim business of screwing people out of their livelihood, offering no apology but rather a shrug and an excuse, the film will stay relevant. Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) (1945). co-production. In 1960, the release of Jean-Luc GodardsBreathlessand Franois TruffautsShoot the Pianist, which lovingly parodied and reinvented old crime movie tropes, heralded a new self-awareness about genre that slowly bled back across the Atlantic to Hollywood. 1908), Louis Daquin The scene with a young woman walking home on a dark night, stalked by an unseen presence, builds to an unexpected conclusion that must have made audiences in 1942 come jumping out of their seats. But sandwiched in between this probing whodunit lies one of noirs most sympathetic and purely humanist tales. 2023 Paste Media Group. This amazing, dizzyingly paced screwball comedy by Howard Hawks stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, and takes us back into two of the decades hallmark preoccupations: The remarriage comedy and the intrigue and obsessiveness of the newspaper world. Late Spring isnt about American control of Japanese territories in the 1940s; rather, its about a father and daughter going about their business within that world, a film that honors minutiae and celebrates the mundane with superlative grace. Erotically supercharged hijinks ensue. The story is direct and crisply toldwhat makes this film a must-see classic is that it might be the ultimate in dazzling on-screen chemistry. Inspired by Niezsches Ubermensch concept and the idea of the perfect murder, two college students kill a classmate simply to prove they can and then host a dinner party for their victims friends and family to see if theyll catch on. His first feature, Citizen Kane earned him the ire of the influential media mogul William Randolph Hearst. ), but the first of these is an acorn from which the great oak of film noir would grow. See also:High Sierra (Raoul Walsh), I Wake Up Screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone), The Shanghai Gesture (Josef vonSternberg). To this day, it doesnt seem entirely fair that so much credit for Cat People is almost universally given to producer Val Lewton, rather than director Jacques Tourneur or writer DeWitt Bodeen, but its true of the entire run of low-budget horror films that Lewton produced at RKO. Humphrey Bogart(previously known for playing hoodlums) was cast against type as private eye Sam Spade, who becomes embroiled in the hunt for a precious statuette alongside such colourful neer-do-wells asSidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and in an early example of film noirs preoccupation with treacherous women MaryAstor. active during the nine months of French-German hostility in 1939 and 1940. Film production was at a low due to the height of the Second World War. WebFrench Cinema: A Critical Filmography (1940-1958) 1. A.G. 1900s A Trip To The Moon/Le Voyage Dans La Lune big-budget productions, such as Likewise, this is the adaptation to which vastly inferior attempts, including a 1931 version of the same name and 1936s Satan Met a Lady, could only aspire. But when the businessmannow Johnnys bossseems to meet an untimely end, the guilt-stricken employee is determined to cruelly punish both himself and Gilda for their deceit. Before there were Jerry Orbach and Angela Lansbury voicing animated, animate household items, there was Jean Cocteau. This postwar psychic landscape is subversive as helland suburban too, no longer confined to metro limits. (Disney scrapped a portion of the Rite of Spring sequence that showed the discovery of fire out of concern that it would provoke angry Creationists; but biologists, paleontologists and astronomers, for example, were consulted.) A.G. Critics called its stylised lighting pretentious, but this heady combination was here tostay. While his plot is the stuff of soap opera pulp, Clouzot masterfully mounts paranoia on top of tension on top of existential guilt, winding his players so tightly that when the film inevitably erupts into violence, the viewer is left with nothing but a bleak sense that nobody ever gets what they deserve.
J.V. Registered charity 287780, Buy Odds against Tomorrow on BFI dual format edition (Blu-ray/DVD), 1 great film noir for every year (1940-59). Its possible that Welles inventiveness was partially forged by the constraints under which he found himself working on all of his early films. A single national market encouraged 1920). - Film (1944) - SensCritique", "Review of the film l'Aventure est au coin de la rue (1944)", "La vie de plaisir - Film (1944) - SensCritique", "Review of the film le Carrefour des enfants perdus (1944)", "MCDXXIX-MCMXLII (De Jeanne d'Arc Philippe Ptain) (1944)", French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Awards, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_French_films_of_1944&oldid=1108669220, Lists of 1944 films by country or language, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 5 September 2022, at 17:32. Cinmatographie (National Center for Cinematography), the CNC, in ), Bergmans Dr. Petersen isnt as emotionless as she seems, and justice is served in the end-all good. Although autocratic and reactionary, the (