1958 poll

[rischka]

seen a few versions of 'it happened in broad daylight' but not the original (until today). quite gritty for 1958. i believe they caved on the ending though.



too dark for the 50s even in post-war europe i guess. michel simon plays the falsely accused killer and gert fröbe the murderer (yes goldfinger, v creepy). his wife is a shrew so he kills little girls....okay. maybe it's that 'toxic femininity' i've heard so much about this drawing made me think immediately of 'slenderman'

[brian d]

i have yet to see a film version of that novel that actually gets the ending. it's a great novel by dürrenmatt, and the last chapter tells you what a cop-out the ending is. the movies treat it at face value for some reason.

[arkheia]

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (Nathan Juran)
As fine as any a showcase for Harryhausen's effects. The plastic psychology of the performances fold neatly into the playful sense of scale, measured in both gigantic and miniature proportions, with a appreciative eye toward its Technicolor palette and Dynamation creatures - cyclops', giant birds, sword-wielding skeletons, and a dragon reminiscent of Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen. On a good rainy day and in the right mood, this would be fun enough and the Blu-ray does justice to the gorgeous production design but not one for my list.

[rischka]

absolutely loved this when i was a kid

[wigwam]

Ballots posted by people who do not participate in other parts of the forum will not be counted.

I'm new here so which other parts of the forum should I be participating in to qualify?

1 The Bravados

Brink of Life
Buchanan Rides Alone
The Big Country
Cattle Empire
Edge of Fury
Equinox Flower
From Hell to Texas
Giants and Toys
The Last Hurrah
The Last of the Fast Guns
A Lust to Kill
Man of the West
The Magician
The Music Room
Rock-a-Bye Baby
The Roots of Heaven
Summer Clouds
Ten Days to Tulara
The Vikings

[Lencho of the Apes]

other parts

You're good.

[rischka]

so many teapots! his interiors are so beautiful i don't even need the actors. then they come and inhabit the space as if it's all perfectly natural



equinox flower added to list. a great pleasure in the most ozu way possible ♥ three different shots of this chair at various times of day!~

[ofrene]

Montparnasse 19 is unbearably miserable that physically aches me. Modigliani would be angry in his tomb..

that ending.. cold hearted Lino Ventura ;(

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[rischka]

i need to watch this -- lino

[greennui]

Mädchen in Uniform (Géza von Radványi) - Adequate though slightly watered down remake. A lesbian educator is the role Lilli Palmer was born to play, she did a mighty fine job as one in this and in The House That Screamed (1970) as well.

[roujin]

Wanted to contribute to this one to highlight one of my favorite films ever.

1. Rock-A-Bye Baby (Tashlin)

Some Came Running (Minnelli)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)
The Reluctant Debutante (Minnelli)
Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger)

[greennui]

Mannequin in Red (Arne Mattsson) - Man, Bava really lifted A LOT from this into Blood and Black Lace. A fairly decent, lurid and stylish thriller let down a little by corny attempts at comic relief. It was a bit closer to Tashlin than Bava in that aspect.

[arkheia]

جميلة [Jamila, the Algerian] (يوسف شاهين [Youssef Chahine])

In both the same year as Cairo Station (1958) and the sentencing of Algerian revolutionary Djamila Bouhired, Youssef Chahine delivered this incendiary anti-colonial film dramatizing her journey from schoolgirl to freedom fighter. Pulling few stops, the film opens with a documentary-like prelude narrated by popular Egyptian radio host Ahmad Said that plays both an expository role as well as setting the film within a certain context of verisimilitude. Both this opening technique and the dangling ending position the film precisely within the midst of the ongoing political upheaval, as may be garnered by its widespread reception - “Jamila (Jamila, the Algerian) became an instant hit in Egypt and across the Arab world and contributed to galvanizing wide solidarity with the Algerian resistance to French colonialism… Furthermore, the film informed and was informed by postcolonial popular discourse that was emerging across the Arab World in response to chronic underdevelopment, social and class exploitation, political repression, and colonial subjugation” - Malek Khouri, The Arab National Project in Yousseff Chahine’s Cinema.

Amidst this structuring device and Chahine’s ability to imbue the narrative with a certain iconographic power (the subversive Joan of Arc finale and an earlier nod to Battleship Potemkin), what’s perhaps less apparent but equally worth noting is the emphasis lent to the gestural capacity of his characters as we see them secretly communicate to one another across their neighborhood through various signals - brushing ones hair, reflecting sunlight off a mirror, flicking flashlights on and off, etc. Within these gestures, Chahine finds the physical antithesis to the authoritarian gestures of conformity enforced by the foreign legion - standing at attention, raising ones hands up, handing over ones possessions, etc. While dramatizing both the respective suspense and injustice in these mannerisms, the film also uncovers an underlying sense of normality through which these gestures operate - perhaps a realism within the film's 'realism' - that's evident whether they're used as indoctrination or communication. Their appearance as part of everyday life, and thus their ability to raise neither suspicion nor protest, are what lend these intensified pockets of concentrated montage as much power as the film's greater dramatic cruxes directed in wide swaths.

With all of that said though, there were certain stretches of the film where I found my interest waning and wasn't sure if either the narrative or my perception of it had become streamlined. This aspect, as well as an issue with the faulty timecoding on my subtitles, somewhat compromised my viewing experience so I’ll file it under my 'Very-Good-But-Not-Best' list for now while I continue to reflect on it.

[pabs]

.
Is Véronique et son cancre allowed here? It's a short.
.

[flip]

shorts have always been allowed, i list them all the time!

[rischka]

my seventh bergman ever. it's a horror/comedy?



extremely clever. tbf i've actually liked all the bergmans i remember seeing. this fellow isn't so bad

[karl]

Yeah, Bergman's stock has fallen very much in recent decades but I agree with you: his movies are usually great - and often funny too, if you like your humor dark. I don't care what Jonathan Rosenbaum and them other fashionable-with-the-champs critics think.

I too have seen a pair of "classic" '58s that live up to their reputation: Cairo Station and Big Deal on Madonna Street. Cairo Station in particular is just a wonder of taking things to excess. Terrific!

Two movies that aren't as well known:

The Eighth Day of the Week (Aleksander Ford), starring the great Zbigniew Cybulski - who, along with Ashes and Diamonds, had a heck of a year, though his performance here is much more subdued and he takes a back seat to Sonja Zeimann. Made in '58 but banned by Polish censors and only released there in '83 because of its bleak picture of postwar Polish youth and their prospects (: nil). Handsomely shot, would like to see a better copy than the currently available TV rip. Here's Zeimann, who later married troubled, hard-living author of the book on which Eighth Day is based Marek Hlasko (who, like Cybulski, was compared to James Dean in his day and died young under mysterious circumstances), in her cups:





But best of all, my "find" of '58 so far, Károly Makk's House under the Rocks.



Chap returns from Soviet POW camp nearly dead, finds his wife has died while he was away, is nursed back to health by his hunchback sister-in-law who's always been in love with him, and, strength recovered, decides to find himself a wife. It all ends badly. What I liked about the movie, aside from the striking b/w cinematography, is that none of the three main characters is a villain, they're all decent folk thwarted by circumstances, which makes how things play out much more effective. I only realized while watching this that even though several of them are available subtitled, this is only the second Makk movie I've seen after Love (1971) - which I love! So certainly ought to see a few more.

[greennui]

My recollection of The Magician is a little too hazy and it's too much in need of a new appraisal (same story for most Bergman films I've seen) for me to include it in this poll but I do remember enjoying the Phantom Carriage homage, Ingrid Thulin's crossdressing and Max Von Sydow looking like a German Expressionist rendering of Julian from Trailer Park Boys.

[thoxans]

ing berg certainly made more ok movies than most other prominent dirs. the problem is that they're mostly just ok. idk if i've outright hated any of his flicks (though i def dislike some), but i also don't think i've outright loved any. the xmas part of fanny and alexander is good, but then the rest of it devolves into typical exaggerated ing berg dramaturgy. summer with monika was nice, but i have to wonder was it just cuz of harriet andersson? the seventh seal was pretty good, but i also saw that as a youngster, and don't know if i'd feel the same way about it now. with all that being said, i continue to revisit him. i don't even much care for the dude, and yet i've seen eighteen (and counting) of his films. in fact, i'm watching the passion of anna right now. in that sense, he's better than dirs i've completely given up on; but at the same time, he's not a dir i really look forward to seeing more work from (i just feel like i need to, so i can have some understanding of why others might enjoy him (others being champs like kool karl))

[rischka]

if you're in the mood for an old fashioned gothic melodrama, you could do a lot worse than une vie/end of desire



spooky old house



maria schell he's not that into you



from a de maupassant story, really well done. i'll add these two to my list... somehow

[Lencho of the Apes]

I've been making some wonky choices, watching stuff that can't possibly be years-best; I hope to get with the program soon... but peripheral non-U stuff is worthwhile too. Right, Greg?

First Love Of Okon/- Kunio Watanabe

"I married a fox spirit," kiddie-style. The Fox Girls are naughty! Mischiefs!

3 1958 2.JPG (101.75 KiB) Viewed 4271 times

Sergeant Hassan - Lamberto Avellana

Malay gurrillas vs. Japanese Occupation in WWII. Starring... P RAMBO!

3 1958 1.JPG (28.14 KiB) Viewed 4271 times

Up next:

The Tale Of The White Serpent
Shadows - Cassavetes
Chalti Naam Ka Gadir
A Time To Love And A Time To Die - Sirk
China Doll - Borzage
Moi, Un Noir - Rouch

[...]

For me, '58's actually a really good year on the periphery, so to speak. There's a spate of genre films that aren't great art but still pretty fascinating and "good" in their way. Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, The Snorkel, The Crawling Eye, tom thumb, Corridors of Blood, She Gods of Shark Reef, The Colossus of New York, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, High School Confidential, The Space Children, From Earth to the Moon, The H-Man, and at the top The Blob and The Fly. Torneur's two films are both interesting, though lower quality, some of the westerns, war movies, and other action adventure stuff is worth seeing for how genre films are in a moment of change as they take on new tones and themes as the era transitions away from the immediate post war concerns to wider societal issues and attitudes towards sex and violence shift.

The "goodness" of the movies comes more from the approach then the themes in many cases, where something like I Married a Monster from Outer Space can be seen as having a gay panic theme as one reading, which obviously in itself is not great, but the manner in which it presents itself to seeing subtext is fascinating. Gordon Douglas' Fort Dobbs is another with some mix of troubling and compelling. Japan was also having a boom of genre films, which are mostly taken pretty seriously now just like some of the others I mentioned about, but in context should be seen as existing on the fringe along with the ones that don't get the same attention.

Some of the interest also comes from more independent filmmakers being able to release movies that get enough audience support to change something of the aesthetics of film. She Gods of Shark Reef isn't a good movie in most ways, but there is something in Corman's approach to it that I find pretty interesting for its bare bones approach and how he films the dopey story making it seem almost elevate the empty to something meaningful seeming for its rejection of convention, (with added emphasis on the "almost" there). The Fiend Who Walked the West likewise kinda works because it has a conflict of style more than a smoothness to it, while Space Children kinda works because there is some interesting ideas being kicked around even if they aren't entirely realized. High School Confidential might be the best example of that kind of stripped down yet exaggerated style/story match at work.

For more serious film aficionados who take genre seriously but mainstream stuff less so, there's also some interesting stuff to check out like I Want to Live!, South Pacific, Marjorie Morningstar, The Matchmaker, The Long Hot Summer and the bizarre Tunnel of Love, some of which are good, some like the last one maybe aren't but the story is convoluted enough to also show how the era was heading towards the break down that would come in the sixties as they mined the old conventions so thoroughly that they've almost depleted the veins and are resorting to ever more baroque strategies to maintain them.

[pabs]

.
I know it's not a very good film by any measure or from any angle, but I love The Long Hot Summer. Woodward and Newman literally had the hots for each other during production, and you can sense electricity between them at times. They married soon afterwards and they stayed married to the end, which is amazing for celebrities.
.

[Lencho of the Apes]

ever more baroque strategies

II love that last sentence, it's a perfect description of what I find compelling about movies from the end stage of that process, your Lady In A Cages and your Shock Corridors... but that's a few years down the road yet.

'58 certainly is a banner year for the "peripheral" movies you're describing; as I was mining HmB for downloads, I noticed how those titles popped out of the list, one after another.

[arkheia]

I've been making some wonky choices, watching stuff that can't possibly be years-best; I hope to get with the program soon... but peripheral non-U stuff is worthwhile too. Right, Greg?

I've taken a somewhat similar approach to this year as well. I've held off on classics I assume will make my list (Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse, Brakhage's Anticipation of the Night, etc.) and sought out more unknown stuff (for me at least) in the hopes of unexpectedly striking gold.



Just saw my first Salah Abouseif film, Ana hurra/I Am Free, which was quite good. The film follows a young woman Amina in her constant journey to attain 'freedom', only to be faced with a different idea of what 'freedom' entails at each juncture in her life. There's an almost episodic structure to the narrative which makes for an interesting yet also somewhat flattened way of depicting 'progression' as her character is constantly pushing forward against whatever social restrictions are imposed on her. In the film's constant search for a stable definition of ‘freedom’, Salah Abouseif builds a strongly realized subjectivity out of Lobna Abdel Aziz’s charged performance, grounded on a sturdy bedrock of full frames that grant her exploration of selfhood a visual definition if ultimately delaying its narrative one. As Amina grows, so too does her understanding of the larger constraints previously invisible to her; repressive households, traditions, governments, and economic systems incrementally enter into her realm of experience yet remain visibly acknowledged from the opening frames of her looking from her balcony at the street down below.

[rischka]

i love black cat mansion and fiend without a face!! sadly i don't have room for all these. maybe i'll have an honorable mentions section

nakagawa has another '58 called, 'a wicked woman' i will check it out

[Angel]

Rosaura a las 10 (Rosaura at 10 O'Clock)

A Time to Love and a Time to Die
Es geschah am hellichten Tag (It Happened in Broad Daylight)
Fanfare
From Hell to Texas
Harikomi (The Chase)
Ház a sziklák alatt (The House Under the Rocks)
Iwashigumo (Summer Clouds)
La strada lunga un anno (The Year Long Road)
La tempesta (Tempest)
L'uomo di paglia (A Man of Straw)
Maigret tend un piège (Inspector Maigret)
Party Girl
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
The Defiant Ones
The Vikings
To teleftaio psema (A Matter of Dignity)
Üç arkadas (Three Friends)
Una golfa (A Floozy)
Wir Wunderkinder (Aren't We Wonderful?)

Deliberately excluded (IMDb/TSPDT/S&S top 500)
Bab el hadid
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Jalsaghar
Kakushi-toride no san-akunin
Mon oncle
Popiól i diament
Some Came Running
Touch of Evil
Vertigo

To see before the deadline
I love the fifties more than Greg does, but that doubling thing is keeping me busy

Wanted
Na malkiya ostrov
O Grande Momento
Shirasagi

[rischka]

watched edes anna and i'm really getting tired of the female martyr theme at this point but mari torocsik (the beautiful girl from korhinta) is wonderful (and still alive at 83) and fabri has an amazingly light touch with this material



extraordinary horror/dream sequence. strange to think the story was the experience of perhaps millions of girls. not many got this ending

[...]

I love the fifties more than Greg does, but that doubling thing is keeping me busy

Whoa there buddy! I don't know about that! Maybe the fifties as a whole if you are only comparing it to other decades, since I love me some thirties, but on a year to year basis I've got some real fondness for some years of the fifties that I'm not gonna easily concede to appreciating less than anyone. I can't deny though that your range of sources may be broader than mine, so maybe, just maybe, there's an argument to be made. Heh.

[Senor Arkadin]

I gotta watch some of these films you're all posting stills from (Especially the Maupassant adaptation). '58 is a light year for me. But a few indisputable masterpieces... So currently my list would be:
Mon Oncle
Touch of Evil
The Magician
Vertigo
Elevator to the Gallows

I've seen A Night to Remember, which I didn't care for very much.