1949 poll

[rischka]

ohara shôsuke-san/mr shosuke ohara (shimizu)
the reckless moment (ophuls)
on the town (donen)
intruder in the dust (brown)
wuya yu maque/crows and sparrows (zheng jun-li)
beyond the forest (vidor)
nora inu/stray dog (kurosawa)
banshun/late spring (ozu)
white heat (walsh)
the third man (reed)
death is a caress (carlmar)
le silence de la mer (melville)
whiskey galore (mackendrick)
pattes blanches (gremillon)
queen of spades (dickinson)
in nome della legge/in the name of the law (germi)
i shot jesse james (fuller)
salón méxico (fernández)
maeumui gohyang/a hometown in heart (yoon yong-kyu)
kind hearts and coronets (hamer)

there's a forest fire and i might need to evacuate so

[Joks Trois]

Late Spring

[pabs]

Damn that Ozu for having so many similar-sounding titles! I started to play Late Spring just to re-familiarize, only to realise I'd never seen it before! I confused Late for Early. I'm still unsure where I am exactly with his Season-titled films and I'm not confident to say which ones I've seen. Woe is me, and damn those titles!

[rischka]

Its all good -- late spring is worth a watch!

[Lencho of the Apes]

San Mao Liu lang Ji/An Orphan Of The Street - Gong Yan, Ming Zhao

There's probably no good reason for me to love this as much as I did, but it gives me something I didn't know I wanted; it's probably my most exciting discovery of the 1949 game so far. Silent-comedy tropes repurposed as pre-Mao/post-Mao critique of class structure... at a level of discourse appropriate for first-graders. And how can you not love that freakish W C Fields nose

3 san.jpg (31.46 KiB) Viewed 5911 times

Brief write-up on a film-festival's home page:
https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/e ... iulang-ji/

[rischka]

San Mao was the source of sammo's nickname. He was said to resemble the hero when he was a boy



Fire lines are holding so I may get a few more in

[greennui]

Final list, most likely:

1. Such a Pretty Little Beach (Yves Allegret)

Death is a Caress (Edith Carlmar)
Maya (Raymond Bernard)
Hellfire (R.G. Springsteen)
Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger)
Inspiration (Karel Zeman)
The Sinners (Julien Duvivier)
Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis)
Wicked City (Francois Villiers)
The Small Back Room (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)
On the Town (Stanley Donen)
Christmas U.S.A. (Gregory J. Markopoulos)
Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown)
Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin)
Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak)
Easy Living (Jacques Tourneur)
The Heiress (William Wyler)

[---]

i watched UNDERTOW by william castle. decent b-noir, but falls just short of making my list

[rischka]

will watch death is a caress as i adored carlmar's fjols til fjels

[St. Gloede]

Le mura di Malapaga / The Walls of Malapaga (1949, René Clément)

Best Foreign Picture Winner, by René Clément and starring Jean Gabin? I honestly have no idea why it took me this long to get around to this film - though, if I recall correctly it was impossible to find in good condition for the longest time(?).

Worn out antiheroes, a destroyed post-WW2 Italian city-scape and a hint of a last chance: The Walls of Malapaga could almost feel like a somber, humanist European noir, but one flat out ignoring most genre conventions. The story is extremely simple - a French murderer on the run meets a working mum, and forms a connection. It is neither sexy, nor slick, instead it feels mellow, and with an unusual focus on characters. Plotting could have been tightened, but it hits all the notes it should, is well acted and shot, and while it is clearly not remembered as a key classic of the 40s it is easy to see why it caught a lot of attention at the time.

I must also commend the fact that it is a multi-lingual film, where characters who should speak French speak French, and characters who should speak Italian speak Italian.

It made my list and I would strongly recommend it.

8.5

[liquidnature]

Yeah it's excellent, as is the rest of early Clément.

[rischka]

death is a caress is really interesting! it's unrelentingly straightforward noir. bit shocking to see a sexual obsession treated so frankly in 1949





naughty scandinavians! second great carlmar i've seen. *adds to list*

[greennui]

^ also released four years before The Hitchhiker which is often considered as the first film noir directed by a woman.

[rischka]

and it's better than the hitchhiker. that must be the opinion of those that only consider american films 'true noir.' also the tone couldn't be more different than near-perfect screwball comedy fjols til fjels. i'll need to check out some more carlmars

i like how it echoes the 'postman always rings twice' but with an older woman who is no lana turner.

also the ending is a little too disturbingly relevant

[---]

A HOMETOWN IN HEART by yoon yong-kyu

thumbs up from me, great final 25 minutes or so, i'll add this to my list

[rischka]

Yay I love that movie

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

Intruder in the Dust (Brown)

Battleground (Wellman)
Beyond the Forest (Vidor)
The Big Steal (Siegel)
The Black Book (Mann)
Caught (Ophuls)
Criss Cross (Siodmak)
Edward, My Son (Cukor)
Flamingo Road (Curtiz)
The Great Sinner (Siodmak)
The Heiress (Wyler)
I Shot Jesse James (Fuller)
Late Spring (Ozu)
Madame Bovary (Minnelli)
The Reckless Moment (Ophuls)
The Set-Up (Wise)
The Small Back Room (Powell)
Stray Dog (Kurosawa)
Under Capricorn (Hitchcock)
Thieves' Highway (Dassin)

[---]

watched I MARRIED A COMMUNIST by robert stevenson. it's fucking stupid, but if you can look past that, it has some really great acting and beautiful cinematography

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Just watched Hellfire and I simply loved it. Thanks so much for the recommendation, greennui, it's one of my favourite discoveries of the poll!




Second R.G. Springsteen film I watched for this poll, and both were above-par well-made. (The other was Red Menace, which I preferred to I Married a Communist of the two Red Scare flicks I watched.) A subject for further research, that guy!

Never thought I'd say this, but I think I'm all 1949-ind out. Final ballot en route, then, but glad to have ended with a bang!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Final list

1. Hellfire (R.G. Springsteen)
— Adam's Rib (George Cukor)
— Begone Dull Care (Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren)
— The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (Preston Sturges)
— A Capital Plan (Bernard Devlin)
— Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh)
— Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak)
— Follow Me Quietly (Richard Fleischer)
— Jour de fête / The Big Day (Jacques Tati)
— It's a Great Feeling (David Butler)
— Mighty Joe Young (Ernest B. Schoedsack)
— Miss Grant Takes Richmond (Lloyd Bacon)
— My Dream Is Yours (Michael Curtiz)
— Never Fear (Ida Lupino)
— Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius)
— Riso amaro / Bitter Rice (Guiseppe De Santis)
— Le sang des bêtes / Blood of the Beasts (Georges Franju)
— The Third Man (Carol Reed)
— Tômei ningen arawaru / Invisible Man Appears (Nobuo Adachi)
— Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock)

[flip]

Second R.G. Springsteen film I watched for this poll, and both were above-par well-made. (The other was Red Menace, which I preferred to I Married a Communist of the two Red Scare flicks I watched.) A subject for further research, that guy!

i watched a springsteen triple-bill a couple of months ago -- i got interested after watching his audie murphy western showdown, a very distinctive film rhythmically and tonally, totally unexpected. the other two i saw were less substantial, but his singing guns was a lot more fun than the premise promised. i didn't think well of when gangland strikes though. i'm intrigued enough to watch more, so i'll seek out hellfire when i start watching movies again!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Right, I recall noting Springsteen's Showdown on your top 100 ballot and was interested to hear thoughts about him ! I'm planning to explore more of his films soon, too, and I'll definitely prioritize Showdown and try to check out Singing Guns as well.

[wba]

Second R.G. Springsteen film I watched for this poll, and both were above-par well-made. (The other was Red Menace, which I preferred to I Married a Communist of the two Red Scare flicks I watched.) A subject for further research, that guy!

i watched a springsteen triple-bill a couple of months ago -- i got interested after watching his audie murphy western showdown, a very distinctive film rhythmically and tonally, totally unexpected. the other two i saw were less substantial, but his singing guns was a lot more fun than the premise promised. i didn't think well of when gangland strikes though. i'm intrigued enough to watch more, so i'll seek out hellfire when i start watching movies again!

Singing Guns was my first Springsteen, and it's one of my favorite westerns. 5 star film in my book. After that I also wanted to see more of his work, but haven't come far, so far.

[wba]

As for my 1949 list: I haven't seen much (merely some 35 films), so it is a short one

as always, I list masterpieces only

Final List

01. Verspieltes Leben (Kurt Meisel, West Germany)
02. Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot, France)
03. Pacific 231 (Jean Mitry, France)
04. Der Ruf "The Calling" (Josef von Baky, West Germany)
05. The Great Sinner (Robert Siodmak, USA)
06. Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock, UK)
07. Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, USA)
08. Hallo Fräulein "Hello Fraulein" (Rudolf Jugert, West Germany)
09. Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin, USA)
10. Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann, USA)

[wba]

Too bad all the thousands of marvelous German films aren't available with English subs. Worse yet, many aren't available in any form, besides 35mm copies.

It's not just the Kautners and Grafs, there are so many fantastic German films that would blow the minds of cinephiles all over the world, yet almost no one in Germany seems interested to make them available for an international audience. The 1949 till 1963 West German retrospective curated by Olaf Möller which has been touring the cinematheques around the world for the last 2 years will hopefully ignite some interest, but even Möller can only show a tiny amount of films.

If more people would know of it, German cinema of the 20th century would be mentioned in one breath with the likes of India, USA, Japan, France, Italy and the Soviet Union.

[wba]

And I wholeheartedly agree that UNDER CAPRICORN is one of Hitchcock's best films! Def Top5 Hitch for me!
In my opinion it's also one of his essential films, as I personally consider Hitchcock to be one of the great melodramatists of the big screen (on par with Sirk, Harlan, Ophüls, etc.) and not at all the supposed thriller and "suspense" filmmaker many tried to make out of him.

But the even better Hitch of the year is Manon by Clouzot.

[kanafani]

I would like to state for the record that I watched one movie for this poll: Grémillon's Pattes blanches, which I quite liked. I prefer some of his better-known movies, but this was fine. Is it good enough to make my top 20? Not sure... It was such a strong year.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Too bad all the thousands of marvelous German films aren't available with English subs... If more people would know of it, German cinema of the 20th century would be mentioned in one breath with the likes of India, USA, Japan, France, Italy and the Soviet Union.

Lots of interesting info here, wba, thanks ! For what it's worth, I've always thought of German cinema as one of the most storied and artistically notable of the world's national cinemas. But, then, that's mostly with respect to Weimar-era cinema, and you're talking more about mid-century film here, which I definitely am less familiar with.

Was able to watch a couple 1949 German films with subs for this poll: Rotation (Wolfgang Staudte) and Liebe 47 (Wolfgang Liebeneiner). Both good and interesting, though I didn't love either one. Not sure if there are others out there with subs.

Starting to think, though, that it could be worthwhile to start watching movies without English subtitles, when they're not available, and see if I can follow the plot through reading plot descriptions etc. There are so many notable films not available with subs and I'd probably learn a lot through watching the films irrespective of the subs situation. (Might even help me pick up the language too!)

[wba]

Who knows? Watching without subs can be an experience. Haven't tried it often myself.

Yeah, I was speaking of German film roughly from 1915 till 2000. That means pre-Weimar, Weimar, Nazi Germany, East germany, West Germany, and Germany post 1990. Haven't seen the Staudte, but enjoyed Liebe 47. Interesting and enjoyable, but nothing special.

I don't think much is available with subs at all. It's obviously easier subtitling silent films (merely translating the intertitles), so that's where most is available.

[brian d]

final list:

life in the shadows (llorenç llobet-gràcia)
the rapids of hell (teuvo tulio)
mahal (kamal amrohi)
pueblerina (emilio fernández)
fast and furry-ous (chuck jones)
the third man (carol reed)
bitter rice (giuseppe di santis)
intruder in the dust (clarence brown)*
mr. shosuke ohara (hiroshi shimizu)
salón méxico (emilio fernández)
thieves' highway (jules dassin)
under capricorn (alfred hitchcock)*
pattes blanche (jean grémillon)*
we were strangers (john huston)
mr. frenhofer and the minotaur (sidney peterson)