The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions (Decade Project Vol. 4)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#576 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 04, 2019 11:14 pm

Interesting thoughts, knives! I'm looking forward to revisiting Rossellini's 50s works soon, as I think the Bergman collaborations especially will grow on me with time, and I admittedly have some gaps in his filmography.

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knives
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#577 Post by knives » Mon Nov 04, 2019 11:21 pm

The Bergman collabs are definitely the key piece of the decade, though arguably Assisi is the bigger star! I highly recommend The Machine that Kills People as an off brand film that is both great and informative of Rossellini's evolution into an empathetic artist. I mentioned this years ago when Open City's homophobia was a discussion on the board, but the thing I like most about him is how he started off a pretty terrible person through his art, but slowly developed into an empathetic one which strikes me as a more interesting development than someone who started off essentially good like Renoir. I think that's what makes me appreciate Ozu as well where his evolution is like a successful version of George Stevens being a comic filmmaker trending toward drama just as the war hit causing him to much more radically change his style. It's also why I see Hen in the Wind as the keystone to understanding Ozu.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#578 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 04, 2019 11:45 pm

I'll seek it out! Assessing a director's patterns of change, including but not limited to growth, is a more recent obsession of mine, so I'll definitely pick your brain on those Rossellini analyses as I make my way through.

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knives
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#579 Post by knives » Tue Nov 05, 2019 10:41 am

Please do. He's one of the few prolific directors who I've seen a comfortable amount of films of and certainly the one I'm most passionate about. That's always struck me as a bit bizarre actually given the importance of Catholicism to his cinema and how foreign Christianity is to me on the whole. Most other Christian directors actually gross me out (I find Scorsese's more religious films like Silence and Raging Bull to be total non-starters) and the Assisi character in particular I gravely dislike, but his conception of both fascinate me to no end.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#580 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Nov 05, 2019 11:20 am

Funny, I have a similar response that's been sobering in the last five or so years, in that my relationship with Christianity specifically (but could be stretched to a focus on religion in general, I suppose) can be disruptive to my engagement when it's displayed in its most rigidly defined form leaving little room for flexibility. However, when religion in cinema, especially Christianity (and I say this because let's face it, the majority of these films happen to be Christian vs other faiths) reveals itself as a facade of strict convictions and actually serves as a jumping off point to the exploration of spirituality, an entirely different concept and one that most anyone who takes the time to understand its elasticity all the way to atheists can get behind. It's humbling to find that with age has come an ability to challenge preconceived knee-jerk impulses to write off these works and have them completely consume me with their adaptable power to the point of becoming some of my favorite films, and the ones that affect me the most. Diary of a Country Priest and The Flowers of St. Francis (from what I've seen, Rossellini's most spiritually versatile film) will likely take the top two spots of my 50s list.

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knives
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#581 Post by knives » Tue Nov 05, 2019 11:35 am

The majority only when applied to Christian areas. You're not seeing much Nazarene philosophy out of Iran.

I think part of what makes Flowers work in the sense you are saying is that, as the titles Italian and American suggest, Francis is not the point of view which allows him to take on a dramatically different role then he traditionally does. He's a little sarcastic and distantly bemused by his jester who's constantly making mistakes. It splits the difference in a way that I don't think other portrayals appreciate. It allows for the focus to be on the themes that Francis represents for Rossellini. I think that's what makes Europa '51 work as well. It's a much more traditional biography if not for the fact that Francis is portrayed by Ingrid Bergman and the film is set in the then modern day. It then becomes about how the methods of the past aren't translatable to the present so therefore we must adapt. A potent message for Rossellini in a trying time for sure.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#582 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Nov 05, 2019 1:29 pm

knives wrote:
Tue Nov 05, 2019 11:35 am
I think part of what makes Flowers work in the sense you are saying is that, as the titles Italian and American suggest, Francis is not the point of view which allows him to take on a dramatically different role then he traditionally does. He's a little sarcastic and distantly bemused by his jester who's constantly making mistakes. It splits the difference in a way that I don't think other portrayals appreciate. It allows for the focus to be on the themes that Francis represents for Rossellini.
Right, so by dismantling Francis' fixed role, and playfully humanizing his personality from a distance, the stories and characters' actions within them serve as mirrors for the audience to relate as they so please, and also identify with the very spiritual plain on which Rossellini allows his milieu to sit. Inherent human flaws in making mistakes often through trust without damning the connective importance of trust, audience alignment with Francis as a spectator of unexplainable beauty like the bird-watching scene just as lost and entranced by it as we are, the powerlessness to provide absolutist intervention with the leper at night, etc. There is a gratitude in this work that arises from the humility from the joining with, via our own reflection, rather than joining through, which would place us following Francis rather than ourselves.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#583 Post by knives » Tue Nov 05, 2019 2:20 pm

I think so. Over the years mum favorite story has become the taking of food without permission because of how it balances a love for folly with an honest assessment of its problems. Again you see how one philosophy, one ideology, does not suffice. This mirrors Rossellini's own unrest from any one identity as he ran into trouble after trouble.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#584 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Nov 05, 2019 3:42 pm

Exactly, which is probably why I subscribe to its wisdom so intensely. By presenting the complexities inherent in a multi-faceted, relative world in the simplest of approaches, Rossellini is all show and no tell, and modest enough to not claim a solution to the mysteries of life or one's own identity formation. The spirituality is most potent in the idea that there is a direction to move in to achieve harmony, but that direction is not fixed for all mankind, nor is it unidimensional or clear, but variable and subject to change. There is hope and gratitude for the curiosities of the mystical and problems we encounter on Earth, and morality and one's sense of self seem to be determined by a neverending series of these life puzzles, in each instance a learning opportunity, not a pathological route that a religious -rather than spiritual- film may have taken.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#585 Post by movielocke » Wed Nov 06, 2019 5:15 am

submitted my list, and I might be the only person not including Red Shoes and Third man , somewhat/mostly because it's been an enormously long time since I saw the former (and several other similarly high profile films I didn't include), and the latter because while I like it fine enough to include it in the 35-50 range, it doesn't need any help from me. :-p

For the most part, a lot of films I have rated very high on letterboxd I left out simply because it's been so long since I saw them, so that's limited the list to mostly ones I've seen or rewatched in the last decade, except for Late Spring and Bicycle Thieves, which I remember well enough to feel good about including them.

I'd wanted to include more shorts, and dashed off the following preliminary list of ones I wanted to include, but I wound up only going with the famed and incomparable 'nutzi land' short we all know and love. I'd easily include probably another dozen Looney Tunes, but that Pepe LePew film is the only title I pulled out of my brain without looking up my rankings of the LT shorts!


the plastics inventor
the art of skiing
education for death
donald's snow fight
for scentimental reasons
pantry panic

I'd planned to have Native Land in as a doc rep, but eventually decided it was another film I didn't remember it quite well enough to slate it in.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#586 Post by dustybooks » Wed Nov 06, 2019 11:33 am

I submitted my list, and by my count it includes 17 films I've seen in the past few years as a direct result of the discussions and lists projects on this forum, so thanks all.

As usual I remembered at the last minute that shorts were eligible and conversely there were certain features it hurt to leave off, but I have faith that The Maltese Falcon and Out of the Past have plenty of other champions, that Vacation from Marriage probably isn't quite as lovely as I remember (it's been almost a decade since I saw it), and that my gleeful affinity for the FBI propaganda The House on 92nd Street doesn't really translate to being able to defend it as a film.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#587 Post by nitin » Fri Nov 08, 2019 2:29 am

Rewatched Hitchcock’s Lifeboat after about 10 years. I had dismissed it previously as minor Hitchcock but upon rewatching it, I am happy to admit it is absolutely not. It’s probably mid-tier Hitchcock but that just means it’s still very very good.

The script is excellent, I obviously missed a lot of nuanced character moments last time around as I was caught by surprise on a number of occasions with what are effectively throwaway character moments but which would be underscored by music and zoom ins/closeups in today’s movies as ‘significant moments you need to appreciate’. I was also surprised by how bleak it is in some of its worldview, which is very interesting for a film out out whilst WWII was still ongoing. Visually, Hitchcock keeps it way more interesting than it would be in lesser hands, without resorting to flashy camerawork that calls attention to itself.

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the preacher
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#588 Post by the preacher » Fri Nov 08, 2019 11:55 am

Ballot sent. 33 titles repeat from the last time and 17 are new. Country breakdown:
Argentina - 1
China - 1
France - 5
Germany - 3
Hungary - 1
Italy - 7
Japan - 3
Mexico - 1
Norway - 1
Poland - 1
Portugal - 1
Soviet Union - 1
Spain - 1
Sweden - 1
Switzerland - 1
United Kingdom - 3
USA - 18

So many great films have been left out... :oops:

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ando
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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#589 Post by ando » Sat Nov 09, 2019 7:49 pm

movielocke wrote:
Wed Nov 06, 2019 5:15 am
submitted my list, and I might be the only person not including Red Shoes and Third man...
Not in my list either. No Casablaca, Citizen Kane... nor three or four others repudedly so wonderful you shouldn't die without viewing. But I did have a few repeats in my initial submission that I had to fill in with runner ups. :oops: Be fascinating to see everyone's No. 1 film as it's likely to tell you more about the member than the movie. Ha

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#590 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Nov 09, 2019 7:55 pm

The Woman on the Beach is a strange noir because nobody is fully projecting their pain (psychological for Ryan, emotional for Bennett, and existential for Bickford) onto dissonant harmful acts or to achieve selfish goals. Instead the pain is turned inward and as the characters interact, harm may be done in small doses as is the nature of hurting people coexisting but the greatest victims are each isolated party to themselves as they remain trapped in their ennui. The weary hopes each has to overcome this malaise result in tests that may provoke - such as the ‘blind’ cliff test- or ones that are simply vying for some form of connection. There is no typical seduction between Bennett and Ryan (and she is no femme fatale either, devoid of ulterior motive or trickery- within a plot that seems like a setup for some familiar recent noirs) but they are equally lost, approaching the possibility of a connection with trepidation, and any impulse to direct their actions towards those of a classic noir are treated as complex and sad, futile external half-measures to resolve internal conflict, and with instability not confidence. This is a noir that shatters any glamour of the noir genre, but embodies its themes to uncomfortably lonely places. The ending deserts them, with the most hope placed on the last character you’d expect to be afforded it simply because of their sense and courage to actually tackle the right issue, their own inner dysphoria; by the right means, humility and acceptance; in the right way, alone. It should be no surprise that Renoir would make a noir without bad people, but his vulnerable depth here - while possibly more optimistic- is probably more painful to sit with than the average entertaining entry this decade.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#591 Post by barryconvex » Sat Nov 09, 2019 11:02 pm

I stumbled across this thread too late and while I tried to catch up I only managed to squeeze in Scarlet Street, They Made Me A Fugitive and Battleground. I've ordered at least ten titles based on write ups from this thread but I won't receive them until after the ballots are counted. A very sincere thank you to my fellow forum members who put in a lot of time, really a staggering amount of time, viewing and writing about their faves and not so faves.

And I'm glad I voted for The Red Shoes as my number one and The Third Man at number seven to help counterbalance locke and ando's baffling snubs.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#592 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Nov 10, 2019 12:42 am

I voted for those last two films too, but they're pretty down in my list. It just turned out that way but my top three are British though.

I didn't speak when twbb and knives had that interesting exchange about Rossellini, but he's one of my top 5-6 directors and the whole trilogy makes my list, although not in the top ten.

---

More commentary viewings.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. (Fox BR: 2nd of 2: Jeanine Basinger & Kenneth Geist). As director of her archives, Basinger brings Tierney to the fore here, and also has words of appreciation for editor Dorothy Spencer’s work. I’ve experienced this with her before in that her slow and very deliberate manner of speaking sometimes caused my attention to wander, especially when she went off occasionally to speak in more general terms, and sometimes a little more obviously and platitudinously, about a subject or another, but most of the time she does a lot of very nice close reading of the film’s scenes – her technique often being to start with just the description of the action but then teasing out the meaning for the larger scene and film. Both Basinger and Geist bring a more interpretative angle to their commentary, focusing on the relationships and themes in the film, often in relation to the woman’s film genre. Geist is a Mankiewicz biographer but he didn’t go on that much about him except to say the director didn’t really care about the project that much and rewrote a lot of the Sanders dialogue parts, and it’s Basinger who says some really eloquent things about his direction at one point. All in all a worthy addition to the first commentary on the disc, without much in the way of repetition.

The Picture of Dorian Gray. (WB Archive BR: Steve Haberman & Angela Lansbury). Haberman doesn’t do any of the tiresome filmography-enumeration he sometimes did on Dragonwyck, perhaps because of the presence of Lansbury and the spontaneity of their exchange. Lansbury provides a lot of information on making the film, for instance on how this was really Lewin’s project and how controlling he was on the actors as a director (130 takes for one scene, she says at one point). She also got to know Hurd Hatfield well in life and gives a portrait of him and how he found acting under these constraints. They occasionally go off into tangents because of the freestyle nature of the recording, but they always come back to the film. Haberman really appears to esteem and know this film, and points out specifics in the photography and the sets you don’t necessarily notice, and the symbolism they create, like those little child’s building blocks with the victims’ initials piling up. Really enjoyable.

T-Men. (Classic Flix BR: Alan K. Rode). Watching the film again with only the visuals and the commentary, and not getting engrossed in the story, it struck me that much more forcefully how potent and distinctive are almost all of the shots in this film. Fittingly, Rode spends about half of the commentary’s time on this very point, discussing Mann & Alton’s staging, composition and lighting, and detailing a lot of specific shots. He discusses competently a lot of other things besides, including the development of both of their careers, various facts about the production history, locales used, Eagle-Lion Films and Edward Small, thankfully short career wrap-ups in the different actors, but that’s really the highlight.

The Black Swan. (Fox BR: Rudy Behlmer & Maureen O’Hara). Fairly weak, especially when you compare it to another commentary with a star like the Dorian Gray commentary. Behlmer occasionally takes a bit of time out to give information about the film’s production and such, but a lot of this is just him asking O’Hara questions that only partially relate to the film at hand and often relate to her career and making movies in general. Very little of the time addresses the film’s scenes as they occur. Some interesting bits but overall a letdown.

Stray Dog. (Criterion DVD: Stephen Prince). Really an exemplary commentary. Obviously steeped in the director’s work, Prince faultlessly examines Kurosawa’s technique (staging, composition, editing, etc.) and themes, and their interrelatedness, all the while foregrounding the centrality to the film’s meaning of the historical time-and-place depicted, and doing so while continuously sticking to every scene as it’s playing out onscreen throughout the 2+ hours. He also points out continuities and differences between this and the director’s other films. You’re left with an even greater appreciation of the film, which is always a sign of a good commentary, and if you didn’t know the director just by this piece you’d feel you have a good grasp of the filmmaker’s artistic/philosophical vision and style.

Hold Back the Dawn. (Arrow BR: Adrian Martin). Martin’s style here is partially here a bit like Basinger’s on the Mankiewicz disc, getting and staying inside the narrative as it flows and articulating and elaborating further what you might only unconsciously or superficially pick up on from there. The other aspect that makes up the main thrust, and intermingled with the previous, is studying the narrative structure and the script mechanics. Occasionally he’ll wander off into other areas, like getting a bit into the two lead actors’ screen personas or Leisen’s recurrent themes, like his particular take on gender dynamics (the latter often through referring to other scholars’ work), and leave what’s happening in the film at that point, but not for too long, and he pretty much stays away from anything like going into contributors’ biographies and careers. If I had to nitpick, I’d say there is relatively little that addresses scene-specific direction choices like staging and framing and so on, those more visual aspects of form.

Under Capricorn. (Kino BR: Kat Ellinger). A really mixed experience. This was pretty good for a while. Ellinger considers this an enjoyable, underrated film and obviously knows her Hitchcock. She examines it mostly in the light of the Gothic melodrama genre, and she highlights the class conflict angle and how this is unique to Hitchcock’s British films. There’s also some attention paid to style, principally the long takes that carried over from the Rope experiment. Thankfully again here there are none of those annoying little mini-bios. But near the half-way mark she starts going off on these really long asides that don’t have that much to do with the film specifically and ends up leaving what we’re watching entirely. That gets especially frustrating in the last half-hour, where what’s on screen gets ignored until the last few minutes, and what she chooses to riff on for most of that time is Bergman’s leaving her husband for Rossellini and the scandal it created during the film’s production and release. This is a film rife with content and potential symbolism waiting to be interpreted but there was none of that. The end result was that the commentary ended up feeling a bit superficial and, other than Ellinger having a thing for Gothic melodramas and that Bergman is good in the film despite the toughness of the shoot, didn’t really explain why this specific instance needs a critical re-evaluation.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#593 Post by domino harvey » Sun Nov 10, 2019 1:24 am

The only commentaries from this period I listened to during the run of the project were:

Double Indemnity (RA Universal, Lem Dobbs and Nick Redman) - Obviously I went nowhere near the Schickel track also on-disc. I don't remember much about this other than one of the commentators (I think it was Dobbs) sharing some stories about trying to work with Wilder and giving some first-hand remembrances.

the Killers (RB Arrow, Frank Krutnik) - Okay, this technically isn't a commentary, but it runs almost an hour and functions as a select scene commentary. Like Eddie Muller on the Asphalt Jungle, I found the effusiveness of the praise here a little suffocating in comparison to my own estimation of the film's worth. Nothing Krutnik contributed here seemed too convincing to anyone not already in love with the film.

Laura (Fox RA, Rudy Behlmer) - Behlmer more or less just presents a slightly altered chapter from one of his books, but it's highly informative, with lots of fun Preminger stories and details of the troubled production. Behlmer truly knows the film and did his research, so this is a great track. I tried listening to the Raskin/Basinger track and didn't make it very far.

This Gun For Hire (Shout RA, Alan K Rode and Steve Mitchell) - A conversational piece from two critics who find this a far better film than it probably is. Some good details here and there but interspersed with a lot of fluff and one deeeeeply second-hand embarrassing tic: one of the commentators (I can't recall which) finds it necessary to repeatedly comment on how cute they find Veronica Lake in a given scene. I get it, she's Veronica Lake, but can't we set the bar a little higher for a scholarly commentary track?

I didn't listen to the commentary track but did see and greatly enjoy the Portrait of Dorian Gray a few weeks back. George Sanders and Oscar Wilde are a match made in Heaven, of course, but it really is a strikingly well-made film. Whatever it took to get what was on screen seems worth it in the end

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#594 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 10, 2019 3:58 am

Rayon Vert wrote:
Sun Nov 10, 2019 12:42 am
I didn't speak when twbb and knives had that interesting exchange about Rossellini, but he's one of my top 5-6 directors and the whole trilogy makes my list, although not in the top ten.
I’m in the middle of going through his 50s works and boy am I guilty of dismissing the degree of hype his reputation (rightly) holds. Once he developed his spiritual condition more fully, his work took on a new attitude observing problems not as political but through the lens of obstacles barring one from realising that spiritual condition. I used to see his talent as inconsistent by missing the tools in how to even go about examining his work (the Bergman films did nothing for me years ago, but I hadn’t seen Flowers to contextualize them, and now I find myself watching Stomboli twice in one sitting). I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts next decade, and recommendations are most welcome.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#595 Post by nitin » Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:30 am

Journey to Italy is the obvious one if you haven’t yet seen it. I saw it around August last year for the first time and I am not fully convinced that the ending works but was stunned up until then.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#596 Post by Lowry_Sam » Mon Nov 11, 2019 12:24 am

I hadn't really paid attention to the list projects until a month or so ago when I had a bit more free time. So I put together a list by going through my IMDB ratings. I didn't have many 10's from the 40's & the 9's just about filled up to #20. But then came the 8's, which I had enough of to fill out a list of 100. So after hours of revisiting from stills & summaries, I finally came up with a list, I then started skimming the pages of discussion here & realized I had forgotten to rate quite a few titles, especially noirs, on IMDB, so I spent more time tweaking. I made the decision to delete all shorts but one (hopefully there will be separate lists for shorts - animated, fiction & documentary in the future) since I really didn't want to revisit all the Looney Tunes discs I had as I had only rated a handful I had seen).

Glad to see that I didn't need to join the discussion as most of the 100 titles I was working with got a mention. In particular, I was surprised to see Apartment For Peggy get a full discussion, as this was among the titles around the 50 mark that I thought might be a wasted vote & was contemplating pre-emptively deleting it. I am lucky enough to live within driving distance of The Stanford Theatre (It's Palo Alto, so yes they do use the British spelling) which shows nothing but double features of Hollywood classics in 35mm (in a 1920s sparsely decorated not-exactly-Art-Deco-rather-more-faux-Egyptian/Persion style movie house) & this was one of a number of 2nd bills that caught me by surprise. If you're ever in the SF/SJ area it is worth seeking out. The current program is all films that they showed during 1939 (except for their annual Christmas classics: The Shop Around The Corner & It's A Wonderful Life - which sell out every year).

It's too late at this point to recruit anyone as probably all lists are submitted, but the 2 titles I haven't seen mentioned I would have tried to rally support for would have been my favorite Mizoguchi from the 40s Women Of The Night, one of those woman & child left behind by husband during war dramas that, unlike Hollywood's take on the formula during the 40s, delves into drug addiction & prostitution while also advancing the material beyond Hollywood's sensationalistic pre-code presentation of such matters.

I'd also give a shout out to Ulmer's The Strange Woman which I caught on Filmstruck before it died. I almost passed on it because I had not particularly enjoyed any of the other Ulmer films I had seen & found Detour to be just ok. While The Strange Woman has some flaws (most notably in pacing & editing, but this could be due in part to the fact that some of the film seems to be missing, & the jumps in edits seem to indicate that maybe some of the film has been censored). It is also a strange film as it seems to jump around genres: melodrama, noir...and ends in high camp. Hedy Lamarr plays a working class girl who loses her father & is teased by the other children and so revenge becomes her modus operandi. First she is given to an older man (George Sanders) by her mother (as daughter or future bride, it's a bit vague...and creepy, but adds to the film's weirdness). After taking residence, she also takes much more notice of her husband/new father's son than her husband, but still plays the ice queen to both (the son is one of the boys who teased her as a child). Hedy Lamarr actually plays the character with more sympathy than Joan Crawford would have, so even though the material would have been right up her alley, I don't think it would have been as interesting a film, it is quite an oddity as a sort of proto-feminist take on the story of a woman trying to take control by controlling the men around her. The film though ends in high drama, which might detract for some, but which ranks with Joan Crawford's campiest best. Definitely the strongest effort I've seen by either Ulmer or Lamarr.

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#597 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 11, 2019 12:35 am

You'll have another two weeks after tonight to rally support for anything you feel has been neglected, or to revise your list as you see fit. (That's what Round 2 is for.)

Also, there are no current plans to do a separate shorts list. If you feel like a particular short is among the best of the decade, now is the time to vote for it. I've got 8 on my list (and 3 in my top 10!)

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#598 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 11, 2019 2:23 am

I didn't vote for any of them, but I did somehow watch all 25 (!) eligible Crime Does Not Pay two-reelers, which were a remarkably consistent series: none of them were even very good, but nearly all of them were okay. They were fun to watch in chronological order, though, as you could see the series turn from brightly-lit gangster film-type docudramas to war time warnings and then finally to noir. Also, I don't remember which one, but one of these had Mrs Johnson's Blonde Boy Van wearing a jet black wig, which made my monocle pop right the fuck out. A lot of them run together, but favorite was def the last one made, the Luckiest Guy in the World, which is a very EC Comics-anticipating noir tale in miniature

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#599 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 11, 2019 2:29 am

Looks like I already own that one, in Warner's Noir Vol. 3 set

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Re: The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#600 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 11, 2019 2:38 am

Yeah, I have the Warner Archives set but a lot of these pop up as bonus shorts on WB discs. I know Phantoms, Inc is on some movie I saw recently because I'd seen it already, but that one's pretty fun too, all about fake seers milking rich rubes. Women in Hiding, about pregnant women being abused by manipulative baby brokers, is crazy and has a finale involving fire that looks like the only time MGM spent money on this series-- not sure if it's a bonus on any film or not, but could see it being paired with a melodrama of the period

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