These films were released during the 1950s

Mister Roberts

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Despite having two directors with somewhat clashing styles, being noticeably dated in places, and a little too obviously based on a stage play, Mister Roberts still works as a classic comedy and a war movie in which the only violence is committed upon a pair of hapless palm trees.

The Tony-winning play by Joshua Logan and Frank L. Nugent had already run for seven years on Broadway when the film was made and Henry Fonda had played the role of Lt. (jg) Doug Roberts 1,300 times before a frame of film had been shot. It’s safe to say that he didn’t need reheasal.

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Stalag 17

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★★★★★[/types]]

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Stalag 17 would have been a tight little World War II adventure if the writers had show more restraint in using their poor man’s version of Martin and Lewis (Harvey Lembeck and Robert Strauss).

Never having seen the play, I can’t say for certain if they’re hijinks are faithful to the original material, but I’d guess that they are. However, one part of adapting material from another medium to film is removing or changing the things that don’t work on screen. The antics of Shapiro and “Animal” should have been cut or sharply curtailed. Unfortunately, I think producer/director Billy Wilder probably felt some obligation to carry over Strauss and Lembeck from the original Broadway production of the play.

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The War of the Worlds

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If you include the original H. G. Wells novel, there have been four major versions of The War of the Worlds, and each one was an accurate reflection of the fears of the time in which it was made. The recent Steven Spielberg film is clearly influenced by the events of September 11, 2001. The Orson Welles radio broadcast of 1938 reflected the gathering clouds of a war in Europe that was less than a year away. Likewise, the 1898 novel portrayed the author’s concern about the rising militarism that would sweep the continent into World War I.

The 1953 version is equally a product of the Cold War, reflecting the concerns of its producer, George Pal, whose native Hungary had been swept up in the postwar annexation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. Anyone who can’t see this film’s implacable Martians as stand-ins for Communism, well, that person probably hasn’t actually seen the movie.

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North By Northwest

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North By Northwest is one of Alfred Hitchcock‘s glossiest, most strictly entertaining films of his career. After the brooding study of obsession that was Vertigo, this film doesn’t seek to probe the depths of the human psyche. It’s content to be a superbly-crafted roller coaster and better for it.

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Sunset Boulevard

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Billy Wilder‘s poison-pen valentine to Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, could easily be made today without much modification. There’s always another generation of former stars clinging to their lost fame and a new generation on the make. Instead of simply pining her years away awash in faded glory, Norma Desmond might be doing info-mercials at two in the morning, but the basic story could be reused today.

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Vertigo

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Vertigo is the archetype for the later Hitchcock films through the mid-60s. The cool, aloof blonde at the center of the story is as dangerous as she is alluring. It is simultaneously Hitchcock’s most romantic film while being primarily concerned with self-destructive obsession. I don’t think any film more accurately summed up the director’s cynical attitude toward male-female relationships. Hitchcock did not believe in happily-ever-after, at least not as this stage of his career.

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The Wrong Man

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Almost every Alfred Hitchcock film has something that makes it stand out from the rest of his work. In the case of The Wrong Man, it’s the simple fact that the director has elected to tackle a true story. A movie like Rope was inspired by an actual murder but doesn’t claim to tell the story of Leopold and Loeb. While Hitchcock’s assertion in his opening monologue that it’s completely true, “every word of it,” is a bit of a stretch, the film does conform to the basic facts of the real case.

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The Man Who Knew Too Much

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The Man Who Knew Too Much was the movie Alfred Hitchcock liked so much he made it twice. Well, not quite. Hitchcock had never been happy with the 1934 version, so it was the only one among his films that he had any desire to remake. Twenty years later, with one more project left on a contract with Paramount Pictures, it seemed like as good a time as any.

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The Trouble With Harry

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The Trouble With Harry is a like a picturesque photo essay of a New England autumn, with a dead body just happening to spoil most of the shots. It was also such a change of pace for Alfred Hitchcock that a lot of audiences seem to strip their gears at the time. Being known for his suspense thrillers, directing such a lightweight and cheerfully dark comedy was like a high curveball sailing past the moviegoer’s head.

As a result, Harry is not usually remembered with the classics among Hitchcock’s body of work, and that’s a shame. It’s a genuinely funny film populated with an appealing cast of eccentrics (or, as they are known in New England, “just normal folk”).

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Rear Window

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Three of Alfred Hitchcock‘s most famous films, Rope, Lifeboat and Rear Window, work around a very restricted geography, two New York apartments and a lifeboat. Of the three, Rear Window is the most successful as a film. It takes place almost entirely with the Greenwich apartment of globetrotting photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart), marooned for the last six weeks with a broken leg suffered on his last assignment.

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Cinderella

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Cinderella no doubt deserves to listed among the Walt Disney Company’s classic animated features. It is lushly and handsomely drawn and genuinely heartwarming. Songs like “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” are not the most famous to emerge from the Disney canon, but they are worthy of being called minor classics.

None of that disguises the simple fact that Cinderella is in many ways two shorter films shoehorned into one. Continue reading →

Run Silent Run Deep

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Day five of my own little Robert Wise Film Festival

Run Silent Run Deep is a crackerjack sub picture that gets a lot of the specific details of life on a WWII U.S. fleet submarine right while the general events of the plot are pure Hollywood. The dialog and procedures aboard the submarine are spot on, thanks to generous cooperation from the U.S. Navy.

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