It's Not All Black and White: ILX's Top 75 Films of the 1940s

months of nominating and voting, some frenzied days of tallying, and it all comes down to this: the ballots are in and counted, crosschecked and audited by our crack team of calculators. there were 24 ballots, listing from 10 to 50 movies each. a total of 208 films showed up on at least one ballot. i'll be counting down the top 75, all of which received at least 90 points in the scoring. (and all but the 75th appeared on at least 3 ballots.) to heighten the drama, and also because it's probably as fast as i can do it, my aim is to unveil 15 a day over the course of this week, rolled out at relatively regular intervals during daylight hours (eastern standard time).

with each one i've included its total number of points and votes, along with whether it earned any #1 nods. i'm adding some commentary from ilxors as it's available via the search function, augmented by quips or quotes from whatever other sources strike my fancy. but of course the thread is open to discussion, derision, elucidation, digression and general mayhem.

as usual with these things, btw, the lower rungs are perhaps more interesting than the canon-heavy upper reaches. also, at the end, i'll provide the full list of everything that received any votes, with vote totals attached.

and so, to business:

75. Le Tempestaire (1947, dir. Jean Epstein)
93 points (2 votes)

http://uctv.tv/images//programs/11633.jpg

Epstein left Brittany for Paris in 1928 and began the third and last period of his career making films involving fishing village life and the sea. The films he made are perhaps closer to an ideal of ethnographic cinema than have ever been made, but that was not his concern. The last of these films made upon his return after the war is 'Le Tempestaire' (1947-48). It was his first to use slow-motion sound, and consistent with his early attention to magnification, it also employed slow and reverse motion. Recapitulating his enthusiasm for the camera close-up where one can see the minute gestures that language leaves silent, Epstein wrote of his new use of sound: “In drawing out the detail, in separating the sounds, in creating a sort of close-up of the sound, slow-motion can allow all beings, all objects to speak.”
-- Rachel O. Moore, Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic

Le dernier film de Jean Epstein, réalisé en 1947, Le Tempestaire (1), est une des œuvres majeures de son « cycle breton » ; en atteignant le cœur même de la réalité des êtres et des choses, ce court-métrage marque un aboutissement certain et constitue une synthèse de ses recherches.
-- Elodie Dulac, Cadrage.net

(personally i'm unfamiliar with epstein, but he's one of many things added to my check-it-out list on account of this poll.)

Argh, both top 10 votes for that one too (mine and Kev's)!

yup. you should have sent out review copies!

74. Portrait of Jennie (1949, dir. William Dieterle)
94 points (3 votes)

http://i.fanpix.net/images/orig/o/f/ofg0uc164xpbx4bc.jpg

it's like a curse of the cat people for adults! joseph cotten sees dead people!
― bird-person-person (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, November 6, 2005 4:12 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark

i love portrait of jennie, jennifer jones is swoonsome and the big wave-crashing finale with the weird green tinting is pretty heart-pounding.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, November 6, 2005 5:16 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark

Portrait of Jennie is a haunting evocation of one man's pained artistic process, and the genius of the film is how Dieterle delicately equates the creative impulse to an ever-evolving spiritual crisis. (Is it any coincidence then that the film was a favorite of atheist auteur Luis Buñuel?)
-- Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine, June 27 2001

Allowing for some lovely glimpses of New York and winter in Central Park and a fairly respectable performance of a picture dealer by Ethel Barrymore, the remaining aspects and actors, including Lillian Gish and David Wayne, are substantially the same as the whole thing, which is deficient and disappointing in the extreme.
-- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, March 30 1949

despite me quoting myself there, this actually wasn't on my ballot. it started in the 40s on my rough draft and kept getting pushed down til it fell off. probably ended up around #60. i like it a lot tho.

My ballot's batting a thousand so far.

73. The Bank Dick (1940, dir. Edward Cline)
98 points (3 votes)

http://blog.bearstrong.net/max256/uploaded_images/The-Bank-Dick---W-C-Fields---1940-772629.jpg

Awhile back I spent a half-hour looking for my original band-in-flames copy of Skynyrd's Street Survivors before remembering that I gave it to a friend. Which kinda reminds me of the W.c. Fields classic, "The Bank Dick":
Egbert Souse: Was I in here last night, and did I spend a $20 bill?
Bartender: Yeah, you were.
Egbert Souse: Oh, what a load off my mind - I thought I'd lost it!
― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Saturday, September 18, 2004 9:46 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

Edward Cline directed, and the studio tried to rewrite the script, even to honor the Breen Office's worry over the Black Pussy Saloon. But Fields wrote it all, and in a way it is Fields's masochistic glee that is energizing all the appalling women, children, and sober men who make his life so painful.
-- David Thomson, Have You Seen...

Story is credited to Mahatma Kane Jeeves, Fields' own humorous nom de plume. It's a deliberate rack on which to hang the varied Fieldsian comedic routines, many of them repeats from previous pictures but with enough new material inserted to overcome the antique gags. A wild auto ride down the mountainside for the climax is an old formula dating back to the Mack Sennett days, but director Edward Cline [and 'collaborating director' Ralph Ceder] has refurbished the episode with new twists that make it a thrill-laugh dash of top proportions.
-- Variety, Jan. 1, 1940

this was on my ballot. probably not high enough, really.

71.(Tie) 71. (tie) Whisky Galore! (1949, dir. Alexander Mackendrick)
99 points (3 votes)

http://www.bearotic.com/img/2008/07/james-robertson-justice-003.jpg

can't think of too many films about "booze culture" either tbh, unless you're counting 'whisky galore'. all in all it seems drug cultures are poorly represented in film.
― or something, Thursday, February 7, 2008 11:03 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

I guess it should be mentioned on this thread that the term "go-go" as in "go-go dancing" comes from a Parisian club called the Whisky à Go-Go (like the later, similarly named LA club) which is the French translation of Whisky Galore.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Sunday, September 16, 2007 1:23 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

The first ever Whisky Galore Festival takes place on the beautiful island of Barra in September, 2009. This Hebridean jewel is the very same island where Whisky Galore – the hilarious 1949 Ealing comedy, based on the book of the same name by Compton MacKenzie – was filmed.
In typical island fashion, Barra and Vatersay embrace the opportunity of yet another party. The Whisky Galore Festival is a unique chance to savour that renowned island hospitality and be part of history in the making.
-- www.whiskygalorefestival.com

between the bank dick, this one and a feature yet to come, the lower quintile of the poll is fairly heavy on the booze.

My ballot's batting a thousand so far.

― cough syrup in coke cans (Eric H.)

Fun while it lasted, eh?

all the appalling women, children, and sober men who make his life so painful.

Sissies in particular! Grady Sutton AND Franklin Pangborn.

71. (Tie) Fantasia (1940, prod. Walt Disney)
99 points (5 votes)

http://www.wetcircuit.com/wp-content/myfotos/fantasiahours/Fantasia119.jpg

For the conservative family values that Disney films have since seen to come to embody, Fantasia is surprisingly the most overtly sexual of all Disney animated films. The fishes and fairies in The Nutcracker Suite cavort in mating dances and seem to take on male/female identities; while the The Pastoral Symphony features frolicking centaurs and bathing nudes (although this segment then proceeds to turn them into shrinking violets and stockily chiseled males as though not sure what to do with them next). For a time though Fantasia was the one Disney film that stretched up beyond fairy-tales, children’s fables and talking animals to show just what animators could do with the medium when they were given the chance.
-- Moria, the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Movie Review Site, April 2009

I must say.. I love Disney.. Its the kid in me... But what the fuck is this film about???
People call it a masterpiece? Sure it has a damn good classical score, but can that carry a film??? In my opinion (And thats all that counts here.. NO) 

I think this film is pretty enough, enjoyable in two minute sections spread out over a decade, and without and fucking dancing hippos in it.
-- K-Dog, efilmcritic.com

of the limited number of classic disney films that i actually saw in a theater as a kid, fantasia was by far my favorite. the sorcerer's apprentice segment, obvioiusly, but i also loved the dinosaurs and hippos, and "night on bald mountain" scared the bejeezus out of me. the maestro interludes are the only real misstep i think, because they make it all seem so broccoli -- "this is good for you."

I don't remember seeing any of the '40s Disney features til I was an adult.

I think I saw most of the canonical '40s Disney films as a kid, but none of them made my ballot. Maybe I'm just grumpy, because I'm sure that they are (most, if not) all very well made, but I honestly don't feel the need to watch any of them again, and can't seem to dredge up any affection for them really. I seem to recall that Fantasia was one of my least favourites, too.

for a while there, pre-vcr, they would rerelease one a year, and my parents would always take us. i remember seeing pinocchio, sleeping beauty and fantasia. maybe snow white too.

oh and i saw bambi, at a drive-in.

70. Fireworks (1947, dir. Kenneth Anger)
103 points (3 votes)

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews45/magick%20lantern%20cycle%20blu-ray/800%20fireworks1.jpg

It's really Fireworks and then everything else for me.
― Eric H., Thursday, December 18, 2008 5:35 AM (10 months ago) Bookmark

Me as well. I just showed my friend "Scorpio Rising" tonight and realized once again how nothing even comes close to "Fireworks"
― Are you there, God? It's Madonna, call me in Miami. (Stevie D), Thursday, December 18, 2008 5:40 AM (10 months ago) Bookmark

when they're at the pool in KIDS and the one kid does the happy slappy elephant trunk trick. barely beats the firecracker cock in Kenneth Anger's Fireworks.
― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, January 18, 2003 10:36 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark

"This flick is all I have to say about being 17, the United States Navy, Christmas and the Fourth of July."
- Kenneth Anger. 

one of the few films on the list that can be embedded here in its entirety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XZeY0ENQm8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNb9MY3kTl4

Oh, blah, I completely forgot to make time to watch this one. Love all the other Anger I've seen, so I'm glad to see it place.

possibly the best movie ever made by a teenager?

too gay.

Oooh very exciting. Thanks for all your hard work, tipsy. And I promise some comments soon after a dizzying week.

Hell of a pull image on the second part there.

Here's basically all I can say at the moment about Le tempestaire:

It's the closest I'm ever going to come to taking illegal drugs.

Not me, but definitely preferable.

69. The Palm Beach Story (1942, dir. Preston Sturges)
104 points (4 votes)

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2009/7/2/1246532430259/The-Palm-Beach-Story-001.jpg

preston sturges roolz:
the palm beach story may have
no errors in it
― Haikunym, Thursday, July 31, 2003 1:47 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark

If it's funny enough, the strained setup doesn't matter much.
― Your Favorite Saturday Night Thing (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, October 20, 2009 4:36 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

plus Mary Astor didn't get to be funny in many other films.
― Your Favorite Saturday Night Thing (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, October 20, 2009 4:38 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

whoops, left the bold formatting off the title.

The Palm Beach Story

THE WEENIE KING

Is this the other alcoholism title?

ha. no, tho i guess there's plenty of booze in it.

68. Spellbound (1945, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
105 points (5 votes)

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6421/spellbound11avi00510055ys7.jpg

I think the overrated Hitch is Spellbound - there's too much pseudo-Freudian gobbledegook in the dialogue, the leads are dull, and that famous dream sequence is severely underwhelming.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, January 8, 2004 8:14 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

it has some great scenes: the Dali dream sequences, the milk in the bottle, the slide down the handrail, the first-person view of the gun... I think it's a perfect example of Hitchcock getting some great things (though not a great movie) out of a not-so-good script.
― Tuomas, Sunday, February 15, 2009 11:04 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark

Spellbound interestingly anticipates aspects of several later Hitchcock works. Here are the roots of Marnie's paralyzing moments evoked by suffusions of patterns and colors, as well as that film's sexual repression. Here, too, is Psycho's stuttering misdirection and easy-answer-for-everything concluding analysis. And the film also anticipates Vertigo's tale of the dramatic make-over and playing a part.
-- D.K. Holm, The DVD Journal, 2002

i'm personally in the conventional-wisdom this-hasn't-aged-well camp.

otoh, i didn't have any hitchcock on my ballot, so what do i know/

67. They Live By Night (1948, dir. Nicholas Ray)
107 points (4 votes)

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews20/a%20Nicholas%20Ray%20They%20Live%20by%20Night%20DVD%20Review/a%20Nicholas%20Ray%20They%20Live%20by%20Night%20DVD%20Review%20PDVD_010.jpg

i must say, rebel w/o a cause is still my favorite nick ray movie, after only they live by night, which is powerful and unassailable i think.
― amateurist, Friday, July 24, 2009 5:09 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark

I saw They Live By Night on the big screen c/o of a Ray retrospective. Great.
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Wednesday, August 31, 2005 4:11 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

Though Ray never shirks from action and violence (indeed, Howard da Silva's crushing of Christmas baubles as he warns Granger against going straight is extremely menacing), he turns the film to focus upon his misfit innocents, continually contrasting their basically honourable ideals with the corrupt compromises of 'respectable society'.
-- Time Out Film Guide

66. The Letter (1940, dir. William Wyler)
111 points (4 votes)

http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/theletter.jpg

Not a big fan of this guy. Even coupled with a genius like Sturges, he tripped up something like The Good Fairy (whereas, by contrast, the underrated Mitchell Leisen soared with the Sturges-scripted Easy Living). I'm going with The Letter for arguably the greatest opening in classical Hollywood cinema. Great final line too.
― Kevin John Bozelka, Friday, May 16, 2008 8:18 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

I don't know whose fault it was but they really messed up Maugham's story in 'The Letter' with the ending, in this version at least. It's not to say I didn't like the film, but my loyalties were already with the short story.
― Michael White, Friday, May 16, 2008 8:35 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Didn't make my 50, though.

yeah i actually just watched this, too late to vote for it. don't know if i would have anyway, tho i liked it. the setting is interesting (despite/because of all the racial/colonial problematics), and bette is fun to watch. story is sort of so-so. (haven't read the original, so i don't know exactly what m.white is referring to above in terms of changing the ending.)

speaking of william wyler...

65. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, dir. William Wyler)
114 points (3 votes, 1 #1)

http://nighthawknews.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/bestyears.jpg

The Best Years Of Our Lives is absolutely magical :)
― Ludo, Saturday, May 17, 2008 9:28 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Club Havana calls TBYOOL the most overrated movie of 1946.
― Eric H., Tuesday, September 23, 2008 8:03 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Again, they're wrong.
― Eric H., Tuesday, September 23, 2008 8:05 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

In fact, it would be possible, I don't doubt, to call the whole picture just one long pious piece of deceit and self-deceit, embarrassed by hot flashes of talent, conscience, truthfulness and dignity. And it is anyhow more than possible, it is unhappily obligatory, to observe that a good deal which might have been very fine, even great, and which is handled mainly by people who could have done, and done perfectly, all the best that could have been developed out of the idea, is here either murdered in its cradle or reduced to manageable good citizenship in the early stages of grade school. Yet I feel a hundred times more liking and admiration for the film than distaste or disappointment.
-- James Agee, The Nation, 1946

#1 watch: TYOOL is the 2nd-lowest finisher to garner a #1 vote. the lowest is A Canterbury Tale, which finished just off this countdown at no. 76, with 89 points and 2 votes, including a #1.

sorry, left the B out of TBYOOL...

Poor P&P.

don't worry, they're well represented.

From comments I just sent:

TBYOOL:

One of the first films I can think of about the pain and loss and toll of war that isn't necessarily "anti-war," and also one of the first about a character who has a physical disability but is moving on with his life regardless.

cool, thanks for the comments pete. i'll incorporate them as i go.

64. Brighton Rock (1947, dir. John Boulting)
116 points (4 votes)

http://wondersinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/brock2.jpg

Brighton Rock was good. Great foot chase through Brighton and some nice performances. It Always Rains On Sunday OTOH is a real gem. Great acting/characters/mood/setting.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 10:01 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

(Incidentally I am going to have to start working on a children's book where young-Morrissey goes to the shore and winds up in a dingy seaside hotel having an emotionally scarring pseudo-sexual encounter with a tart straight out of Brighton Rock. Then the young Sundays come along and walk on the beach for a few minutes and go "It's a bit humid out here, let's go back in and have tapas.")
― nabiscothingy, Friday, August 20, 2004 6:52 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

If nothing else, 1947's Brighton Rock marked the first time Graham Greene was pleased by an on-screen rendition of his work—but it's much more than a Third Man dry run.
-- Vadim Rizov, Village Voice, June 2009

#1 watch: TYOOL is the 2nd-lowest finisher to garner a #1 vote. the lowest is A Canterbury Tale, which finished just off this countdown at no. 76, with 89 points and 2 votes, including a #1.

That was my number 1! I'm disappointed.

probably just not enough people have seen it (including me). but it's on my list.

63. The Naked City (1948, dir. Jules Dassin)
118 points (5 votes)

http://lunar-circuitry.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/naked-city2.jpg

Naked City was better than I'd expected.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, January 25, 2008 2:07 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Thanks to the actuality filming of much of its action in New York, a definite parochial fascination is liberally assured all the way and the seams in a none-too-good whodunnit are rather cleverly concealed. And thanks to a final, cops-and-robbers "chase" through East Side Manhattan and on the Williamsburg Bridge, a generally talkative mystery story is whipped up to a roaring "Hitchcock" end.
-- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, March 1948

enjoyed the countdown a bunch -- a matter of life and death is on tcm monday at 4 am or something, btw (have my dvr set)

and White Heat is on tomorrow, early.

(so is Saboteur, which I prefer to Rope)

ok, here's the total tally. at least, i hope so. films in order by number of points they received, with number of votes in parentheses. (if there are no vote numbers listed, that means the movie was only on one ballot.) only the top 75 are numbered, sorry.

there were 208 last time i counted. how many have you seen?

1. Citizen Kane 810 (19 votes, 2 #1)

2. The Third Man 770 (18 votes, 3 #1)

3. Double Indemnity 637 (16 votes, 1 #1)

4. The Big Sleep 634 (17 votes, 1 #1)

5. The Maltese Falcon 596 (17 votes, 1 #1)

6. Notorious 590 (16 votes)

7. Casablanca 569 (14 votes)

8. Out of the Past 536 (14 votes, 1 #1)

9. His Girl Friday 528 (14 votes, 1 #1)

10. The Magnificent Ambersons 513 (15 votes)

11. It’s a Wonderful Life 478 (14 votes, 2 #1)

12. Shadow of a Doubt 464 (12 votes, 1 #1)

13. The Bicycle Thief 449 (13 votes)

14. Black Narcissus 409 (12 votes)

15. The Philadelphia Story 399 (12 votes, 1 #1)

16. The Shop Around the Corner 367 (10 votes, 1 #1)

17. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 341 (10 votes)

18. The Lady Eve 338 (9 votes)

19. Late Spring 334 (9 votes)

20. Brief Encounter 316 (10 votes)

21. Kind Hearts and Coronets 301 (8 votes, 1 #1)

22. To Be or Not To Be 299 (8 votes)

23. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 297 (9 votes, 1 #1)

24. Red River 292 (8 votes)

25. Rebecca 287 (12 votes)

26. The Lady From Shanghai 283 (10 votes)

27. Meshes of the Afternoon 265 (7 votes, 1 #1)

28. Sullivan’s Travels 248 (8 votes)

29. (tie) La Belle et La Bete 246 (9 votes)

29. (tie) A Matter of Life and Death 246 (6 votes)

31. Detour 237 (7 votes)

32. My Darling Clementine 236 (9 votes)

33. Les Enfants du Paradis 235 (7 votes)

34. The Red Shoes 230 (7 votes)

35. Ivan the Terrible 229 (6 votes, 1 #1)

36. Meet Me in St. Louis 222 (6 votes, 1 #1)

37. White Heat 211 (8 votes)

38. Arsenic and Old Lace 195 (7 votes)

39. Nightmare Alley 184 (6 votes)

40. The Seventh Victim 174 (5 votes)

41. I Know Where I'm Going! 170 (6 votes)

42. Laura 167 (7 votes)

43. Cat People 162 (5 votes)

44. Daisy Kenyon 161 (5 votes)

45. Mildred Pierce 160 (5 votes)

46. Gun Crazy 159 (5 votes)

47. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek 155 (5 votes)

48. The Grapes of Wrath 154 (6 votes)

49. Curse of the Cat People 153 (5 votes)

50. Great Expectations 152 (5 votes)

51. Letter From an Unknown Woman 146 (4 votes, 1 #1)

52. Rope 143 (6 votes)

53. Hellzapoppin' 142 (4 votes)

54. Diary of a Chambermaid 140 (4 votes, 1 #1)

55. Passport to Pimlico 135 (5 votes)

56. (tie) Dead of Night 134 (4 votes)

56. (tie) Bambi 134 (5 votes)

58. Pinocchio 132 (5 votes)

59. Dumbo 130 (5 votes)

60. Scarlet Street 128 (5 votes)

61. The Lost Weekend 123 (4 votes)

62. Odd Man Out 120 (4 votes)

63. The Naked City 118 (5 votes)

64. Brighton Rock 116 (4 votes)

65. The Best Years of Our Lives 114 (3 votes, 1 #1)

66. The Letter 111 (4 votes)

67. They Live By Night 107 (4 votes)

68. Spellbound 105 (5 votes)

69. The Palm Beach Story 104 (4 votes)

70. Fireworks 103 (3 votes)

71. (tie) Fantasia 99 (5 votes)

71. (tie) Whiskey Galore! 99 (3 votes)

73. The Bank Dick 98 (3 votes)

74. Portrait of Jennie 94 (3 votes)

75. Le Tempestaire 93 (2 votes)

A Canterbury Tale 89 (2 votes, 1 #1)

Oliver Twist 85 (3 votes)

Hamlet 81 (3 votes)

Henry V 80 (3 votes)

To Have and Have Not 79 (3 votes)

I Walked With a Zombie 79 (3 votes)

Monsieur Verdoux 77 (2 votes)

Force of Evil 76 (4 votes)

Day of Wrath 76 (4 votes)

Le Corbeau 74 (4 votes)

Open City 74 ( 2 votes)

Key Largo 73 (5 votes)

Brute Force 70 (3 votes)

On the Town 70 (3 votes)

Shoeshine 70 (2 votes)

Murder, My Sweet 69 (2 votes)

Unfaithfully Yours 68 (3 votes)

The Clock 67 (2 votes)

Der Fuehrer’s Face 60 (2 votes)

The Fallen Idol 58 (2 votes)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 57 (3 votes)

At Land 56 (2 votes)

Ossessione 55 (2 votes)

Went the Day Well? 52 (2 votes)

Puce Moment 52 (2 votes)

The Uninvited 51 (2 votes)

Gilda 51 (2 votes)

The Great Dictator 49 (2 votes)

Lumiere d'Ete 49

Cluny Brown 48

The Heiress 47 (2 votes)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 46

The Woman in the Window 45 (2 votes)

Stray Dog 45 (2 votes)

Thieves Highway 44 (2 votes)

The Thief of Baghdad 44 (3 votes)

Fallen Angel 44

Fort Apache 44

Mr. and Mrs. Smith 43

Long-Haired Hare 43

Germany Year Zero 43 (2 votes)

Roadhouse 43

Les Enfants Terribles 43 (2 votes)

Les Parents Terribles 42

The Small Back Room 42

Scott of the Antarctic 42 ( 2 votes)

La Silence de la Mer 42

It Always Rains on Sunday 41

The Shanghai Gesture 41

Now, Voyager 41 (3 votes)

Leave Her to Heaven 40 (2 votes)

Hail the Conquering Hero 40 (2 votes)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein 40

Sredni Vashtar 39 (2 votes)

The 47 Ronin 39

One Wonderful Sunday 38

A Run for Your Money 38

Stranger on the Third Floor 37 (2 votes)

The Stranger 37

The Pirate 37

How Green Was My Valley 36

The Mortal Storm 36

The Leopard Man 35

Christmas in July 35

Portrait of an Assassin 34

Adam's Rib 34 (3 votes)

Madame Bovary 34

The Fountainhead 34

Fast and Furry-ous 33

Moonrise 32

Listen to Britain 31

Miracle on 34th St. 31

Spring in a Small City 31

Phantom Lady 31

Red Hot Riding Hood 30

The Three Caballeros 30

Porky Pig's Feat 29

Green for Danger 29

La Terra Trema 28

State of the Union 27

Gaslight U.K. 26 (2 votes)

Yankee Doodle Daffy 26

Quai des Orfevres 25

The Postman Always Rings Twice 25

All the King's Men 24

The Reckless Moment 24

Foreign Correspondent 24

Jour de Fete 24

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne 24

Duel in the Sun 23 (2 votes)

The Fantastic Night 23

In Which We Serve 22

Gaslight (U.S.A.) 22

Crossfire 22

Paisa 22

Begone Dull Care 21

Dark Passage 20

Introspection Tower 20

Pride and Prejudice 19

The Big Clock 18

Radio Dynamics 18

Heaven Can Wait 17

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 17

Siren of Atlantis 17

Saboteur 16

Suspicion 15

A Hen in the Wind 15

Possessed 14

Beyond the Forest 12

The Killers 12

Meet John Doe 11

Les Visiteurs du Soir 11

Woman of the Year 11

High Sierra 10

The Woman on the Beach 10

The Seventh Veil 10

The Long Voyage Home 9

Louisiana Story 9

Uncle Silas 9

My Name Is Julia Ross 7

Fires Were Started 7

Road to Utopia 7

Good Sam 7

Wonder Man 6

Mighty Joe Young 6

Berlin Express 5

Ziegfeld Follies 5

I Was a Male War Bride 4

The Lodger 3

A Foreign Affair 2

The Little Foxes 2

Susan and God 2

Yolanda and the Thief 1

this might be the best decade for american movies -- actually, it probably is. of the stuff in the top 75 i've seen (43, counting ties), i can't say i actively dislike a single one.

for all that ppl go on about how daring and new the easy riders/raging bull era was, i can't think of many '70s american films with the depth and inventiveness of most of the top 20 here.

also, for ILXors who consigned John Garfield to oblivion (aside from his cameo sitting at the bar in Daisy Kenyon):

http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/images/1246evil.jpg

Feels very much like a Scorsese film.

More like if Richard Price had written a script in iambic pentameter.

Think I've seen about 55 of the top 75, but I can't really remember about 20 of those. I really need to see I Know Where I'm Going, plus about 50 others on the list.

Only vote for The Fountainhead from me, a socialist, makes me laugh. Thanks for the full list, I'll watch all those too eventually...

btw, if we do a '30s poll I could make 40 of my 50 picks Hollywood comedy features or shorts. To compensate for YOU KNOW WHO.

I hadn't (haven't) seen enough to properly vote here, but I'd like to register some props for Brute Force.

Kevin, hopefully you will be happy to know that because of this thread I cracked open the essential Ford to watch My Darling Clementine and Drums Along The Mohawk (1939) and intend to watch The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley this week.

I'm amazed that a film as UNAVAILABLE as Ambersons finished so high. (Not to mention one so compromised and mutilated.)

> UNAVAILABLE

£2.48 on amazon.co.uk...

It's hard to know a movie is compromised if you've never seen the non-compromised version.

all those P&P joints and nobody repped for the 49th parallel? huh.

Kevin, hopefully you will be happy to know that because of this thread I cracked open the essential Ford to watch My Darling Clementine and Drums Along The Mohawk (1939) and intend to watch The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley this week.

Very happy! Drums Along The Mohawk is my favorite eastern. And bring hankies to the latter two.

I'm amazed that a film as UNAVAILABLE as Ambersons finished so high. (Not to mention one so compromised and mutilated.)

Once again, unavailable to whom??? It's been available on VHS for decades, it's shown frequently on TV/cable (in fact, caught some of it while I was home recently), and I know for a fact that DVD copies are available for rent in Austin, Seattle, um, NYC, and no doubt other cities. Plus it's a hoary staple in film schools. Is it really so amazing that people have seen the thing? We're not talking The Other Side of the Wind or The Dreamers here.

As for the parenthetical matter, we all should have made our peace with that by now (unless you're rummaging through film archives in South America for the original cut/a chimera).

I was parodying Lord Sotosyn... Also, WHAT video stores in NYC? Kim's is gone.

It's hard to know a movie is compromised if you've never seen the non-compromised version.

I would make an exception if the last scene was not written or directed by the writer-director. And if other cuts have been well chronicled in bios.

Also, WHAT video stores in NYC? Kim's is gone.

was parodying Lord Sotosyn.

thought you would have chosen one of my anti-Wilder bon mots.

how the fukk could yall niggas leave off rome open city too

yall make me sick

omg, cankles right once a decade.

re Children of Paradise -- I rewatched this weekend, recognize its merits, and really don't give a damn about Garance and Baptiste.

i love baptiste! i think jean-louis barrault is hugely entertaining to watch. garance is sort of frustrating as a character, but deliberately right? mostly i love the milieu of the movie, the intimate story with big, rowdy, colorful backdrop. i think i love it in sort of the same way i love farewell, my concubine -- the whole overheated shakespearean vibe. and i guess i'm sort of a sucker for backstage dramas. (see also my enthusiasm for topsy-turvy, the band wagon, all about eve, etc.)

also, last night i watched dark passage (which got one vote above). wouldn't put it on any best-of ballots, but its whole p.o.v. gimmick for the first half-hour was fun, the story was enjoyably ridiculous, and the sanfran location shooting was nice.

Ugh I totally haven't even finished writing blurbs. Who knew 50 of them would take so long? Should I even bother finishing?

I have still never seen Dark Passage.

KJB, I always relish whatever you have to say about anything, but do with your time what you will.

Ok done! xoxo

tipsy otm about Dark Passage and even more especially otm than usual about Les enfants du paradis

but he's a MIME.

(casting Arletty in her mid-late 40s took some stones, tho)

Exactly. For which his father gives him a hard time. And furthermore, when it's time to make his move, he mimes out and lets the girl slip away. The tears of a mime, a heartbreaking story to which everyone can relate.

(Ha. I picture the speakerphone guy from Real Life chiming in with his opinion)

Seriously though, as someone who is old enough to have watched Schoolhouse Rock in its original airing, I saw enough summer replacement mime to last a lifetime. But the way that character is introduced is brilliantly handled- he's not just a mime imitating/bugging people as they go about their business- he's a mime who solves crimes!

So really it was kind of like a black and white Scooby Doo episode. With collaborationist bathing.

Oh wait, I've lost Kevin again.

all those P&P joints and nobody repped for the 49th parallel? huh.

Yeah, not even "Got To Get Your Love!" But at least you can write off Cloud One's absence to vote-splitting.

just watched Portrait of Jennie for the first time in years... really a masterful mood piece by Dieterle.

Oh hai.

1. Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli 1944) – Film critics/scholars have taken took much delight in the fact that Minnelli (or, really, Arthur Freed) retained the rather gruesome, subconscious-excavating Halloween sequence in the final cut and left out a simple, post-trolley love song Judy Garland sings to beau Tom Drake at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair grounds (a Rodgers and Hammerstein number no less). Indeed the Halloween sequence is one of many that prevents this musical year in the life of an archetypal middle class family from slipping into cheap nostalgia. But the same can be said of the corny social activities and warm rituals of home life which are all acutely realized and deeply felt. In the end, the film functions equally well as a critique and a celebration of the nuclear family, each mode energizing and enriching the other. And so Minnelli did something of the impossible here. He created one of those lived-in organic communities John Ford excelled at but infused it with, on one hand, flaming Technicolor and some of the most world historic spontaneous outbursts of song and, on the other, a sense of dread associated with the film noirs yet to come. Warm and despairing. Plastic and organic. Florid and subtle (watch what mom does when Rose is shouting on the phone; check out who’s in the frame with the family at the Fair; etc.). Linear and episodic. Meet Me in St. Louis powers all these antinomies and more, epitomizing classical Hollywood’s gift to the world – the illusion of being all things to all peoples.
2. Lumière d'été (Jean Grémillon 1943) – From the opening warning trumpet and a sign that reads “Danger de mort” to the unconvincing happy ending, this singular, Jacques Prévert-scripted masterpiece creates a more hostile environment than any noir I know. Grémillon achieves this effect through the genius conceit of juxtaposing three distinct spaces in close proximity to one another in a remote mountain region of France: an evil, gun-loving aristocrat’s vacuously spacious chalet; a construction site with frequent explosions to clear land for a dam; and a hotel with copious large windows called The Guardian Angel that glows like a lone, vulnerable firefly in the night. The inhabitants of The Guardian Angel know no peace as the aristocrat manipulates their lives (an obvious stand-in for the Vichy regime which quickly pulled the film from circulation) with the same frequency as the bombs going off (of which the inhabitants have an unforgiving panoramic view). Grémillon seizes the resulting melodrama as an opportunity to indulge in his characteristic eclecticism with the film veering between disparate styles. But it’s all put in the service of maintaining an inescapable and suffocating sense of doom. I wasn’t there and you weren’t either. But this is how I imagine it felt to live unwillingly under Vichy. A milestone in miserablism.
3. The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges 1942) – Give or take The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis 1961), this is the greatest classical Hollywood comedy ever made and it’s been criticized for ignoring the realities of WWII in favor of a screwball update on Lubitschian glamour and wit. But I can’t think of a more pungent reminder that people were being shoved into ovens overseas at the time (or rounded up in internment camps around the corner). Because this is a film about who can get away with murder, sometimes with the help of good looks but usually via money. Which is why its most hilarious scene is also its most terrifying – the millionaire Ale & Quail Club shooting up a passenger train because, well, they can. They’ll never live like common people and Sturges shoves those brute inequities in your face, lending the madcap antics their enormously sad heft.
4. The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson 1943) – See above. I’m exhausted.
5. Le Tempestaire (Jean Epstein 1947) – The closest I’m ever going to get to taking illegal drugs.
6. The Curse of the Cat People (Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise 1944) – Young Amy sees a woman that her father cannot and for this transgression, she is roundly punished. So if this is a horror film, it’s the horror of Fathers having to reorient their vision around that of a six-year-old girl. The rest of us can sit in dumbfounded wonder at the most magical female Oedipal narrative ever produced in Hollywood and scratch our heads at the greater praise showered on its predecessor. But we’re rewarded for our admiration at the end when dad finally comes around and sees what Amy sees. In an art form so centered around the gaze, that’s about as miraculously proto-feminist as a 1940s film can get.
7. Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger 1945) – “You drive me nuts with that quiet way of yours,” Dana Andrews barks at Alice Faye and a more perfect summation of Preminger’s style cannot be imagined. With a jaw-dropping average shot length of 33 seconds (probably a record for classical Hollywood cinema), the film is constructed in calm, ever-shifting long takes which Preminger uses to build an almost unbearable intensity. And I need to learn more about Alice Faye’s stint in Rudy Vallee’s band. They must have had some sort of mind meld going on because Vallee’s performance in The Palm Beach Story and Faye’s here are my two very favorites by any actors ever. Who could have predicated from their moon-June-spoon musical origins that they’d both wind up conveying unfathomable depths of character with a brutally simple economy of expression?
8. Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu 1949) – I like the idea that Noriko’s (played by the great, non-Ozu-funeral-attending Setsuko Hara) avoidance of the pressure to get married and her attendant devotion to her father reflect Ozu’s bi(homo?)sexuality (and maybe even Noriko’s own). But even more oppressive than the social imperative of marriage is the need for viewers to explain (away) that reluctance in the first place (check out the IMDb message boards where people are still debating the whys and the wherefores). This is the kind of life Noriko’s moving into at the end of the film when she at last gives in to convention - one of dreary rationalization, of all things “scientifically” accounted for. And the ensuing tragedy renders the final scene with her father particularly heartbreaking to witness. Added attraction: the greatest, most purposeful toenail cutting scene in cinema history.
9. Les parents terribles (Jean Cocteau 1948) – I’ve never quite understood what André Bazin was on about when he claimed that this film’s cinematic qualities were paradoxically heightened because Cocteau refused to suppress its origin in theater. Actually, they were heightened because Cocteau’s direction was as unprincipled and naïve as it had always been. I’m not yet sure why the particular story of Les parents terribles inspired him to cut into it at such deeply, deeply peculiar vectors. But it seems the stuff of a new film language. Seriously. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
10. Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock 1940) – In many ways, Hitchcock’s best film. Even in its faults only serve to stir up the female Oedipal whirlpool at the palatial country house Manderley, a respite from The Law, from naming, from the visual, and from Laurence Olivier’s Maxim, fine though his visuals may be. I can barely contain myself when it happens: Mrs. Danvers fingering Rebecca’s see-through underwear.
11. The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles 1942) – Even the end credits, read in Welles’ resigned baritone and featuring images of the technology that made this such a precious masterpiece, are pure genius, as thematically appropriate as anything that’s come before. As such, might not Welles’ narration here be his greatest performance ever? Or is that just an effect of the unnatural attention given to the soundtrack overall? The incantatory, overlapping dialogue, for instance, is so visceral that Morgan’s virtuosic variations on “There aren’t any times but new times” once woke me up out of a sound sleep (which isn’t to mention the devastating, equally virtuosic tracking shot that goes along with it and leaves behind my beloved Georgie with his yachtsman aspirations).
12. The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi 1942) – Mizoguchi’s art of the reestablishing shot in fullest force.
13. Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger 1947) – “I’ve got to be going somewhere…even if it’s to the movies,” cries Joan Crawford’s Daisy Kenyon and with that astoundingly flippant statement, she summarizes the enervated climate of moviegoing in the USA just as cinema attendance was starting to slip from its all-time 1946 high. Populated with equally enervated, south-by-north characters, Daisy Kenyon is a perfect barometer of a culture that had no clue what it wanted to see at the movies or even if it wanted to see movies in the first place. And Preminger’s unnervingly distanced camera provides no answers.
14. The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli 1948) – Judy Garland initially played Esther in Meet Me in St. Louis with tongue planted firmly in cheek. But Minnelli forced her to show more respect for the role and rightfully so. Still, had he let her run with all her winks and nods, it all might have turned out as over-the-top and extreme as The Pirate. This is camp as a structuring language essential to life and its time is yet to come.
15. How Green Was My Valley (John Ford 1941) – As a film-loving tyke, I had deep feelings of resentment towards this film for stealing the Best Picture Oscar from Citizen Kane. Here was yet another instance of the Academy getting it horribly wrong – grrr, ugh, and eventually, ho hum. But history is never so neat (nor so fair to Orson Welles) and when I, um, actually saw How Green Was My Valley, it turned out to be quite possibly the greatest film to ever take the statue. One of the all-time great Ford communities and the billowing wedding veil still takes my breath away.
16. Christmas in July (Preston Sturges 1940) – Preston Sturges would have been the perfect replacement for Simon on next season’s American Idol. Better than any of Hamlet’s soliloquies, it is: Ellen Drew’s climactic speech.
17. Portrait of an Assassin (Bernard-Rolan 1949) - Pierre Brasseur (of Lumière d'été and Les enfants du paradis fame) plays a sort of Evel Knievel who wants to shoot his wife, Arletty. Instead, he accidentally clips Maria Montez. Neither woman sees fazed all that much when they discover what happened. Indeed, Montez becomes his manager, pushing him to performing more dangerous stunts. Erich Von Stroheim is in there somewhere too playing against type a wounded survivor of Montez’s bloodlust. It all ends on a blasé note. A French film.
18. Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 and 2 (1944-1946) – In a class by itself. Or at least in a class with Last Year at Marienbad, both of which were lambasted in the prescient 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Proof that some sort of God exists lies in the fact that the entire thing was not shot in glorious Agfacolor for such a vision could not be received by mortal eye.
19. Moonrise (Frank Borzage 1948) – It’s a shame in a way that this is such a great film. Borzage’s genius is much more obvious here and more in line with boyish tastes in cinema that run counter to what the man did best – compassionate melodrama. But what can I say? It’s still genius, outdoing any noir director in neurotic expressionism. And he wasn’t done as most people seem to believe. A decade later, he went back to his roots with the lovely China Doll.
20. Spring in a Small City (Fei Mu 1948) – Kinda like Beyond The Forest (see below) but with scratchy interior monologues on the soundtrack to momentary snap the heroine out of her small city boredom.
21. Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné 1945) – France’s Gone With The Wind and you can tell the difference via each film’s respective treatment of children. And via Jacques Prévert’s speed-rapping dialogue.
22. Hellzapoppin’ (H.C. Potter 1941) – More postmodernism avant la lettre.
23. La terra trema (Luchino Visconti 1948) – The purest distillation of Italian neorealism, an achievement which, in the wake of Warhol and decades of international art cinema, no longer seems as extreme as Bazin claimed at the time.
24. Rope (Alfred Hitchcock 1948) – Here’s one for all the evidence queens. The imperfections of Hitch’s “single shot” experiment lay bare the operations of the historical researcher homophobically requiring visual evidence of homosexuality in the pre-Stonewall past and thus preventing it from ever existing (or at least from ever having to see it). For more on this and other matters such as what Rupert actually sees in the cassone and why he sits down at the end of the film, check out D. A. Miller’s brilliant, hilarious essay “Anal/Rope” in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, edited by Diana Fuss (Routledge, 1991), pp. 118-142.
25. Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica 1946) – One of Italian neorealism’s inaugural films and somehow it’s already getting meta, underlining the supremacy of vision and pumping cinema for its incendiary potential, quite literally in the climax.
26. Fireworks (Kenneth Anger 1947) – This is what happens when parents leave their gay sons home alone for a weekend. (At least according to the ever-mythmaking Anger. His brother maintains the film was shot at another residence.) And a fine Christmas movie to boot.
27. The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls 1949) – We know the ending is a sad one because Joan Bennett is crying. And because she’s shot through a prison-like staircase. And because she doesn’t get to walk around shirtless like her son. And because she’s lost James Mason, at the time the most swoon-worthy star in the English-speaking world (although he wound up dismissing the film).
28. The Clock (Vincente Minnelli 1945) – Minnelli in a realist stylee. Except…not real, ya know?
29. Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz 1945) – Todd Haynes’ version, currently in production, will stick closer to the episodic novel and bring the film to television where it belongs. But I hope he retains what’s most compelling about the classic original: the last vestiges of Old Money (in the form of slimy, effete Zachary Scott) abrading against the nouveau riche (in the form of Joan Crawford, part of the new American aristocracy of movie stars and desperately trying to hold on to her nouveau riches in this much-deserved, Oscar-validated comeback). All of which is epitomized in one eternal bit of dialogue: “I don't notice you shrinking away from a $50 dollar bill because it happens to smell of grease.” Double feature option: The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006).
30. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges 1942) – Until Pink Flamingos, the loudest English-speaking (and shouting and sobbing and sputtering and…) film ever made.
31. Introspection Tower (Hiroshi Shimizu 1941) – Shimizu’s films are possessed by an almost mystical curiosity about the operations of various institutions and communities – a resort in Ornamental Hairpin or a boarding school here. On paper, I could scarcely share the same curiosity. But somehow, I was so sucked into the woes of the students, their families, and the teachers that I got choked up by the final sequence in which each student testifies to the camera about what they’ve learned at school and then recites a poem of inspiration in front of the title tower that watched over their development all along.
32. Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle 1948) – Upon another viewing, I see now that I overrated this. Dieterle’s films always skirt but never go over the edge of ridiculousness, lacking the artistic courage to sustain a truly crazed vision. Still, there are few purer (and creepier) tales of l’amour fou in cinema, particularly notable for its mad flashes of color.
33. Radio Dynamics (Oskar Fischinger 1942) - The loudest silent film ever made.
34. Siren of Atlantis (Gregg C. Tallas 1949) – Given how few films give women any narrative drive, sometimes it’s best for them to just disappear. So Maria Montez as the evil queen Antinea does exactly that and, from her perch in The Beyond, lords over poor Jean-Pierre Aumont stumbling around in the desert in search of her lost image. And then at the end the film starts all over again with another poor sap doomed to succumb to Montez’s allure, sacrificing narrative linearity for a proto-avant-garde circularity. It’s very easy to see how it captivated a young gay boy like Jack Smith who made something similarly captivating of departures in his own art-life.
35. Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer 1943) – And quite the opposite of Siren of Atlantis. I’ve never seen (or heard) much of the controversial “Is Anne really a witch?” ambiguities in this film. The sexual definitely (even absolutely) supercedes the supernatural here. Moral: it’s not the dead we should fear.
36. A Hen in the Wind (Yasujiro Ozu 1948) – A woman in post-war Japan must prostitute herself in order to pay for her son’s medical bills. When her husband returns after a four-year absence, he reacts with physical and sexual violence. Ozu’s ugliest film, natch, and his most atypical. Upon first viewing. Watch it again and take in his characteristic staggered editing and near-animistic attention to objects (here a bottle and a row of chairs, in particular). And the way he splits the story in two, first focusing on the wife and then the husband, has the same purity of construction of his finest films.
37. Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt 1947) – Soto in a rare inelegant moment from the C/D Bette Davis thread: “Joan Crawford made several good movies, but lumping her with Davis as if she's in Davis' league as an actress = faggot nonsense.” And yet here we have an Oscar-nominated, straight-up actorly performance that is the match of anything by Davis and, after Rain (1932), Crawford’s best ever. Be thankful “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” because this tale of a woman’s obsessive love is a heavy-going, unpleasant affair. From the moment Crawford utters “’I love you’ is such an inadequate way of saying ‘I love you,’” you just want to escape it.
38. Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls 1948) – I couldn’t possibly better Tania Modleski’s “Time and Desire in The Woman’s Film,” the sharpest analysis that I know of Ophuls’ most beloved American film. So allow me to quote it: “Letter from an Unknown Woman…shows that though women are hysterics with respect to male desire, men may be hysterics with respect to feminine ‘emotion.’” (331) In Home Is Where The Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman's Film. Christine Gledhill, ed. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 326-338.
39. Beyond the Forest (King Vidor 1949) – I overrated this one too probably in thrall to Bette Davis’ long, jet-black hair and all-time one-liners. It’s far from the trashfest so many (including Davis herself) claim it as. If it were, it would have deserved its spot here. Still, small town America has rarely been skewered so thoroughly. Classic exchange: Dull doctor husband Joseph Cotten: I just saved a woman’s life [who just gave birth to her eighth child]. Davis: Saved her for what??
40. Les visiteurs du soir (Marcel Carné 1942) – In fourteenth-century France, The Devil sends two envoys to create suffering amidst two already mismatched medieval court members. But then one of the envoys falls in love. So The Devil himself must finish the job. Of course, it’s an allegory about the Nazi occupation. But a sense of loss has permeated French culture for centuries and this could have been made at any time in cinema’s feature-length existence. I guess you could call it “timeless” then if only the film could stomach such corny universals.
41. The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles 1947) – Welles treated everything like a giant Erector Set, including narrative, and until Jerry Lewis ran amok, this was probably the most virtuosically nonsensical film ever released by a major Hollywood studio. As such, this is the one Welles film I wouldn’t feel guilty about working infinite recombinations on in Final Cut Pro.
42. The Long Voyage Home (John Ford 1940) – Ford at his most Ozu-like mainly in his fadeouts and transition shots which have a poetry in them undreamt of in Bosley Crowther’s philosophy.
43. At Land (Maya Deren 1944) – I know she had some individual vs. community tensions to work out here. But what gives this 15-minute silent the slight edge over Meshes of the Afternoon for me are the glimpses into a shadowy community of well-wishers who would appear in a Maya Deren film in 1944. And for all the film’s celebration of the individual artistic will, it’s the unguarded, gushy images of sisterly camaraderie that remain the most indelible.
44. Good Sam (Leo McCarey 1948) – Basically a series of scenes of freeloaders abusing the kindness of Good Samaritan Gary Cooper until he snaps. As with The Long, Long Trailer, another putative comedy, I don’t recall laughing once. Wincing and covering my eyes in horror, that I remember.
45. Leave Her To Heaven (John M. Stahl 1945) – A perfect sister film to Siren of Atlantis. Dead and more likely in Hell than Heaven, Gene Tierney still manages to wreck havoc on the entire cast of this torrid melodrama about loving too intensely (see also Possessed above). The great cinematographer Leon Shamroy won a well-deserved Oscar for the most plangent use of Technicolor ever. Everything has an eerie frontality to it. As Dave Kehr remarked, “the actors seem enameled against the backgrounds.” And for that special person in your life who keeps telling you that the films of yesteryear were so much sweeter and less violent than today’s, show them the lake scene where evil seems enameled against a quiet, idyllic day.
46. Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini 1947) – Reserving comment until I can figure out what precisely the character of the school teacher meant to Rossellini. And if Adriano Apra’s homophobic commentary on the new Criterion DVD holds any authority, I’m not going to like the answer.
47. I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks 1949) – More so than even the disturbing Monkey Business (1952), this was an early glimpse into Hawks’ genius for the chaotic and the discursive culminating in his 1960s masterpieces Hatari!, Man’s Favorite Sport?, and my beloved Red Line 7000 (!!!). Who greenlit these things?
48. “Sredni Vashtar” By Saki (David Bradley 1940-1943) – I dig it more for its home movie feel than for its literary pretensions, such as they are. Maybe that’s because it came straight outta Winnetka not too far from where I was born and raised. Plus I love the sway of Bradley’s career, starting out with independent productions of Peer Gynt and Julius Caesar (both starring a young Charlton Heston hubba hubba) in the Northern suburbs of Chicago and ending up in Hollywood directing trash like Dragstrip Riot and The Madmen of Mandoras, the latter of which had something to do with the creation of the stream-of-consciouness catasterpiece They Saved Hitler’s Brain.
49. Susan and God (George Cukor 1940) – More “faggot nonsense.” The second half drags but Crawford gives an absolutely fantastic and utterly uncharacteristic comedic performance in this story of a flighty society woman who’s taken up with a new agey religion. Funniest line: “I thought that was a Renoir!” And check out the MGM short subject Romance of Celluloid - Hollywood: Style of the World (included as an extra on The Women DVD) which fosters the dangerous illusion that middle-class Midwestern girls can afford Susan’s gorgeous Adrian-designed fashions.
50. Yolanda and the Thief (Vincente Minnelli 1945) – Now here’s one I underrated. Initially I thought that this was the quintessential case of “throw out the story/keep the musical numbers.” But a second viewing revealed that Minnelli vented his Technicolor eccentricities all throughout with blatantly unrealistic sets and hilariously unmotivated lighting upping the insanity. And then the musical numbers…If none of the above is convincing, then you owe it to yourself to at least take in the nearly fifteen-minute (!) dream ballet which excavates the psychosexual lunacy at the heart of middle-class art with upper-class pretensions. Every adjective I can think to describe it ends in –id. Please. Watch it now.

I just saw Max Ophuls' Caught over the weekend. (I'd seen it ages ago, but remembered virtually nothing.) Should definitely be in the Top 75; would likely be in my Top 20.

jeezus Kev! for starters, I haven't seen #2, 5, 12 and 17.

5, 12, and 17 are findable. Sadly, my copy of 2 is horrendous!

Signed,

A dude who just saw Frownland and absolutely adored every frame of it and is sad Morbs didn't (then again, you're not a big Cassavetes fan, are you, Morbs?).

no, aside from Chinese Bookie and maybe Faces (and Elaine May's if that counts)

Elaine May's = ?

^Mikey and Nicky!

Sorry KJB, my first viewing of Shoeshine in at least 20 years reveals there's way too much showbiz in it.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/shoeshine/2017

Bordwell essay on '40s suspense:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/murder.php

^^ read this today/last night, good stuff. lots of things i want to watch

btw morbs i am watching a jerry lewis movie right now.

a solo?

yeah, one of the ones i could find easily on netflix.
"it's only money."

seems okay so far.

Bordwell has a new book on '40s Hollywood filmmaking. Great cover.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/03/15/my-cover-is-blown/

oh well, i didn't notice til now it doesn't publish til fall.

Seeing that MoMA is officially playing a DCP of HELLZAPOPPIN' next month. Does that mean a DCP has been made? Are rights being worked out?? Any info @dave_kehr we must know!!!!

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) February 22, 2018

very surprised at how low 'dead of night' polled

I rewatched. Michael Redgrave is still magnificent, but the only other segments that are *somewhat* creepy I sthe Googie Withers mirror episode and some of the linking story.