Mini reviews of the 100 greatest films (according to Robert the List)

18. Out of the Past 1947 USA Jacques Tourneur

“Out of the Past (billed in the United Kingdom as Build My Gallows High) is a 1947 American film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. …Its complex, fatalistic storyline, dark cinematography, and classic femme fatale garnered the film critical acclaim and cult status….
…
Reception
….
Decades later, in his 2004 assessment of the film for the Chicago Sun-Times, critic Roger Ebert noted:
“Out of the Past is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl. The film stars Robert Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before we've even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and now his old life reaches out and pulls him back.”
With regard to the production's stylish and moody cinematography, Ebert also dubbed the film "The greatest cigarette-smoking movie of all time" ”

For me this film is the ‘definition’ of film noir. Mitchum’s character is the perfect lead. The drop dead gorgeous Greer (who should have had a far greater career than she did) the perfect foil. The bad guy? Just, Kirk Douglas! Mitchum’s rain coat and trilby, the perfect noir outfit. I’m in love when Greer and Mitchum are, and broken hearted when they aren’t. There are so many gorgeous shots in this film. It’s as noir as noir. Love it.

Runtime: 97 minutes
Clip:

19. Bicycle Thieves 1948 Italy Vittorio De Sica

“Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette), also known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It follows the story of a poor father searching in post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.
…
Production
Bicycle Thieves is the best-known work of Italian neorealism, a movement that informally began with Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and brought a new degree of realism to Italian cinema. De Sica had just made Shoeshine (1946), but was unable to get financial backing from any major studio for the film, so he raised the money himself from friends.
…Following the precepts of neorealism, De Sica shot only on location (that is, no studio sets) and cast only untrained actors. (Lamberto Maggiorani, for example, was a factory worker.) That some actors' roles paralleled their lives off screen added realism to the film.
…
Title
The original Italian title is Ladri di biciclette. It literally translates into English as "thieves of bicycles"…When the film was screened in the United States in 1949, Bosley Crowther referred to it as The Bicycle Thief in his review in The New York Times, and this came to be the title by which the film was known in English.”

It’s tough, but it’s just a classic. As classic as classic gets. Some great scenes. You have to have seen The Bicycle Thief.

Runtime: 89 minutes
Full movie:

20. Kind Hearts and Coronets 1949 UK Robert Hamer

The film in which Alec Guinness plays 9 (nine) characters. I’m not a Guinness fan. Normally one of him is too much for me, let alone 9. But it’s just a very very funny film.

Wikipedia:
“Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 British crime black comedy film directed by Robert Hamer. It features Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson and Alec Guinness; Guinness plays eight characters. The plot…concerns Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini, the son of a woman disowned by her aristocratic family for marrying out of her social class. After her death, a vengeful Louis decides to take the family's dukedom by murdering the eight people ahead of him in the line of succession to the title.
…
Production
Pre-production
…According to the British Film Institute (BFI), the novel is "self-consciously in the tradition" of Oscar Wilde, which is reflected in the snobbery and dandyism portrayed in the film.
The head of Ealing Studios, Michael Balcon, was initially unconvinced by the idea of the film, stating that "I'm not going to make a comedy about eight murders"; the studio's creative staff persuaded him to reconsider.
…Hamer saw the potential of the story and later wrote: ‘What were the possibilities which thus presented themselves? Firstly, in that of making a film not noticeably similar to any previously made in the English language. Secondly, that of using this English language ... in a more varied and, to me, more interesting way than I had previously had the chance of doing in a film. Thirdly, that of making a picture which paid no regard whatever to established, although not practised, moral convention’
…
Alec Guinness was originally offered only four D'Ascoyne parts, recollecting "I read [the screenplay] on a beach in France, collapsed with laughter on the first page, and didn't even bother to get to the end of the script. I went straight back to the hotel and sent a telegram saying, 'Why four parts? Why not eight!?'"
Filming
…
The costumes were designed by Anthony Mendleson, who matched Louis's rise through the social ranks with his changing costumes. When employed as a shop assistant, Louis's suit was ill-fitting and drab; he is later seen in tailored suits with satin lapels, wearing a brocade dressing gown and waiting for his execution in a quilted-collar velvet jacket. Mendleson later recounted that to dress Guinness in his many roles, the costumes were of less importance than make-up and the actor's nuances.
In one shot Guinness appears as six of his characters at once in a single frame. This was accomplished by masking the lens. The film was re-exposed several times with Guinness in different positions over several days. Douglas Slocombe, the cinematographer in charge of the effect, recalled sleeping in the studio to make sure nobody touched the camera.”"

Runtime: 106 minutes
Trailer:

21. Stray Dog 1949 Japan Akira Kurosawa

Whilst I think Out of the Past is the archetypal noir, I would have to say that Stray Dog is the best noir film. It’s beautifully shot. The scene at the baseball stadium is just…amazing haha, love it. There’s some stunning camerawork. The seuence from 18minutes to 22 minutes in the link below as Mifune scours the neighbourhood for signs of his gun, including the double exposure with his eyes, and culminating with the shot of the prostitute through the gate, is cinematic genius.
Some great little plot ideas and details too. Toshiro Mifune is superb, and there’s a lovely performance by a young siren played by someone called Keiko Awaji (who apparently was only 16!). The tension keeps going throughout. It’s a great film.

Wikipedia:

“Stray Dog (野良犬, Nora inu) is a 1949 Japanese crime drama noir film directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura…
The film is also considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy cop film genres, based on its premise of pairing two cops with different personalities and motivations together on a difficult case.
Plot
The film takes place during a heatwave in the middle of summer in post-war Tokyo. Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), a newly-promoted homicide detective in the Tokyo police, has his Colt pistol stolen while riding on a crowded trolley. He chases the pickpocket, but loses him. A remorseful Murakami reports the theft to his superior, Nakajima, at police headquarters. After Nakajima encourages him to conduct an investigation into the theft, the inexperienced Murakami gets a lead from one of the ladies who traveled in the trolley and goes undercover in the city's backstreets for days, trying to infiltrate the illicit arms market…”

Run time 2 hours 2 minutes
Full movie:

Regarding The Third Man, blame the cat.

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22. The Third Man 1949 UK Carol Reed

I had to watch this several times, and only did so because I kept on seeing so much hype about it. I find the first third of the film nothing special at all. But by goodness does it improve. The last 45 minutes or so is just magnificent. The settings (a huge ferris-wheel, post-war Vienna’s crumbled streets and most magnificently the city sewers), the camera work and lighting, the pace, is just sublime. Reed had practised his street silhouettes in earlier films, but pulls it off as a feature to perfection here. The final chase is one of the great sequences in the movies. Welles is great; in fact I think he’s a better actor than director. Some find the repetitive musical refrain annoying, although personally I don’t mind it.

Wikipedia:
“The Third Man is a 1949 film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. Set in post-World War II Allied-occupied Vienna, the film centres on American writer Holly Martins (Cotten), who arrives in the city to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime (Welles), only to learn that he has died. Martins stays in Vienna to investigate Lime's death…
The use of black-and-white German expressionist-influenced cinematography by Robert Krasker, with its harsh lighting and Dutch angles, is a major feature of The Third Man. Combined with the use of ruined locations in Vienna, the style evokes exhaustion and cynicism at the start of the Cold War.
…
Production
...In 1948, Greene met Elizabeth Montagu in Vienna; she gave him tours of the city, its sewers, and some of its less reputable nightclubs. She also introduced Greene to Peter Smolka, the central European correspondent for The Times, who gave Greene stories about the black market in Vienna.
…
Through the years there was occasional speculation that Welles was the de facto director of The Third Man rather than Reed. Jonathan Rosenbaum's 2007 book Discovering Orson Welles calls this a "popular misconception…(”and) in a 1967 interview…Welles said that his involvement was minimal: "It was Carol's picture".
…
Principal photography
Six weeks of principal photography were shot on location in Vienna…
The scenes of Harry Lime in the sewer were shot on location or on sets built at Shepperton; most of the location shots used doubles for Welles. However, Reed claimed that, despite initial reluctance, Welles quickly became enthusiastic and stayed in Vienna to finish the film.
…
Differences between releases
As the original British release begins, the voice of director Carol Reed (uncredited) describes post-war Vienna from a racketeer's point of view. The version shown in American cinemas cut eleven minutes of footage and replaced Reed's voice-over with narration by Cotten as Holly Martins. Selznick instituted the replacement narration because he did not think American audiences would relate to the seedy tone of the original.
…
Roger Ebert wrote that "…It was a rainy day in Paris in 1962, and I was visiting Europe for the first time. A little cinema on the Left Bank was showing The Third Man, and I went, into the humid cave of Gauloise smoke and perspiration, and saw the movie for the first time. When Welles made his entrance, I was lost to the movies." He added it to his canon of "Great Movies" and wrote, "Of all the movies that I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies." In a 1994 episode of Siskel & Ebert, Ebert named Lime as his favourite film villain. "


Runtime: 108 minutes
Trailer:
Mark Kermode review:

23. Late Spring 1949 Japan Yasujirō Ozu ESSENTIAL

Late Spring is the ultimate family feelgood movie. The upbeat score plays an important role in the mood as does the often beaming smile of the lead actress Setsuko Hara.
There are many wonderful scenes and moments in this film, which wraps you up like a bowl of warm porridge by the fireside after stepping in from a cold night. It also has a soft sense of humour, as a part of the warmth.
The imagery is masterful, beautiful and stunning. No director has achieved a sense of depth and perspective as Ozu did, and never more than in this film. I’ve seen it pointed out that in some scenes there are I think 5 layers from foreground to background. Some of the shots and images are amongst the greatest and most iconic in film history.
If there is a Kabuki/Japanese theatre performance to rival that in ‘Chrysanthemums’ then it’s the pivotal scene in this film.
The ending is a small slice of genius, the poignance of which suddenly becomes apparent in the final moment.
It’s a simply wonderful film.

Wikipedia:
“Late Spring (晩春, Banshun) is a 1949 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and written by Ozu and Kogo Noda, based on the short novel Father and Daughter (Chichi to musume) by the 20th-century novelist and critic Kazuo Hirotsu. The film was written and shot during the Allied Powers' Occupation of Japan and was subject to the Occupation's official censorship requirements. Starring Chishū Ryū, who was featured in almost all of the director's films, and Setsuko Hara, marking her first of six appearances in Ozu's work, it is the first installment of Ozu’s so-called "Noriko trilogy", succeeded by Early Summer (Bakushu, 1951) and Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, 1953); in each of which Hara portrays a young woman named Noriko, though the three Norikos are distinct, unrelated characters, linked primarily by their status as single women in postwar Japan.
Late Spring belongs to the type of Japanese cinema known as shomin-geki, a genre that deals with the ordinary daily lives of working class and middle class people of modern times.
…
Production
The Occupation censorship
Censorship problems with Late Spring
The central event of Late Spring is the marriage of the heroine to a man she has met only once through a single arranged meeting. This immediately presented a problem for the censors of the American Occupation. According to film scholar Kyoko Hirano, these officials "considered feudalistic the Japanese custom of arranged meetings for prospective marriage partners, miai, because the custom seemed to them to downgrade the importance of the individual." Hirano notes that, had this policy against showing arranged marriages onscreen been rigidly enforced, Late Spring could never have been made. In the original synopsis (which the filmmakers were required to submit to the censorship before production could be approved), Noriko’s decision to marry was presented as a collective family decision, not an individual choice, and the censors apparently rejected this.
The synopsis explained that the trip to Kyoto by father and daughter, just prior to Noriko’s marriage, occurs so she can visit her dead mother’s grave. This motivation is absent from the finished film, possibly because the censors would have interpreted such a visit as “ancestor worship,” a practice they frowned upon.
Any reference in the script to the devastation caused by the American bombings was removed.
The censors at first automatically deleted a reference in the script to the Hollywood star Gary Cooper, but then reinstated it when they realized that the comparison was to Noriko’s (unseen) suitor Satake, who is described by the female characters as attractive, and was thus flattering to the American actor.
At the script phase of the censorship process, the censors demanded that the character of Aunt Masa, who at one point finds a lost change purse on the ground and keeps it as a kind of good-luck charm, should be shown handing over the purse to the police. Ozu responded by turning the situation, in the finished film, into a kind of running gag in which Shukichi repeatedly (and futilely) urges his sister to turn the purse in to the police. This change has been called "a mocking kind of partial compliance with the censorship."
Ozu's alleged "subversion" of censorship
One scholar, Lars-Martin Sorensen, has claimed that Ozu's partial aim in making the film was to present an ideal of Japan at odds with that which the Occupation wanted to promote, and that he successfully subverted the censorship in order to accomplish this…
…
On the other hand, Late Spring, more than any other film Ozu made, is suffused with the symbols of Japanese tradition: the tea ceremony that opens the film, the temples at Kamakura, the Noh performance that Noriko and Shukichi witness, and the landscape and Zen gardens of Kyoto.
Sorensen argues that these images of historical landmarks "were intended to inspire awe and respect for the treasures of ancient Japan in contrast to the impurity of the present."
…Sorensen concludes that such censorship may not necessarily be a bad thing. "One of the positive side effects of being prohibited from airing one's views openly and directly is that it forces artists to be creative and subtle in their ways of expression."
…
Narrative, themes and characterization
Narrative strategies
The films of Yasujirō Ozu are well known for their unusual approach to film narrative. Scenes that most filmmakers would consider obligatory (e.g., the wedding of Noriko) are often not shown at all, while apparently extraneous incidents (e.g., the concert attended by Hattori but not Noriko) are given seemingly inordinate prominence. Sometimes important narrative information is withheld not only from a major character, but from the viewer, such as the news of Hattori’s engagement, about which neither Noriko’s father nor the audience has any knowledge until Noriko, laughing, informs him. And at times, the filmmaker proceeds, within a scene, to jump from one time frame to another without transition, as when two establishing shots of some travellers waiting for a train on a platform lead to a third shot of the same train already on its way to Tokyo.
…
Major themes
The following represents what some critics regard as important themes in this film.
Marriage
The main theme of Late Spring is marriage: specifically, the persistent attempts by several characters in the film to get Noriko married. The marriage theme was a topical one for Japanese of the late 1940s. On January 1, 1948, a new law had been issued which allowed young people over twenty to marry consensually without parental permission for the first time…
Marriage in this film, as well as many of Ozu’s late films, is strongly associated with death… The comparison between weddings and funerals is not merely a clever device on Ozu’s part, but is so fundamental a concept in Japanese culture that these ceremonies as well as those surrounding births have built-in similarities… The sadness arises because the marriage of the younger generation inevitably reflects on the mortality of the older generation."
…
Tradition vs. modernity
The tension between tradition and modern pressures in relation to marriage—and, by extension, within Japanese culture as a whole—is one of the major conflicts Ozu portrays in the film. Sorensen indicates by several examples that what foods a character eats or even how he or she sits down…reveals the relationship of that character to tradition…Throughout most of the film, Noriko wears Western clothing rather than a kimono, and outwardly behaves in up-to-date ways. However, Bordwell asserts that "Noriko is more old-fashioned than her father, insisting that he could not get along without her and resenting the idea that a widower might remarry… she clings to an outmoded notion of propriety."
The other two important female characters in the film are also defined in terms of their relation to tradition. Noriko’s Aunt Masa appears in scenes in which she is associated with traditional Japan, such as the tea ceremony in one of the ancient temples of Kamakura. Noriko’s friend Aya, on the other hand, seems to reject tradition entirely. Aya had taken advantage of the new liberal divorce laws to end her recent marriage. Thus, she is presented as a new, Westernized phenomenon: the divorcee. She "takes English tea with milk from teacups with handles, [and] also bakes shortcake (shaato keeki)," a very un-Japanese type of food.
…
Sorensen has summed up the ambiguous position of both father and daughter in relation to tradition as follows: "Noriko and [Professor] Somiya interpolate between the two extremes, between shortcake and Nara-pickles, between ritually prepared green tea and tea with milk, between love marriage/divorce and arranged marriage, between Tokyo and Nara. And this interpolation is what makes them complex characters, wonderfully human in all their internal inconsistencies, very Ozu-like and likable indeed."
The home
…
The season and sexuality
Late Spring is the first of several extant Ozu films with a "seasonal" title… The "late spring" of the title refers on the most obvious level to Noriko who, at 27, is in the "late spring" of her life, and approaching the age at which she would no longer be considered marriageable.
…However, there may be another meaning to Ozu's title derived from ancient Japanese culture. When Noriko and Shukichi attend the Noh play, the work performed is called Kakitsubata or "The Water Iris." (The water iris in Japan is a plant which blooms, usually in marshland or other moist soil, in mid-to-late-spring.) In this play, a traveling monk arrives at a place called Yatsuhashi, famous for its water irises, when a woman appears….The monk stays the night at the humble hut of the woman, who then appears in an elaborate kimono and headdress and reveals herself to be the spirit of the water iris. …
As Norman Holland explains in an essay on the film, "the iris is associated with late spring, the movie’s title", and the play contains a great deal of sexual and religious symbolism. The iris' leaves and flower are traditionally seen as representing the male and female genitalia, respectively. The play itself is traditionally seen, according to Holland, as "a tribute to the union of man and woman leading to enlightenment."
…
Major characters
Late Spring has been particularly praised for its focus on character, having been cited as "one of the most perfect, most complete, and most successful studies of character ever achieved in Japanese cinema."…
…Robin Wood…states that "Noriko" "has managed to retain and develop the finest humane values which the modern capitalist world… tramples underfoot—consideration, emotional generosity, the ability to care and empathize, and above all, awareness."
…
Ozu's use of the camera
Low angle
…
There has been no critical consensus as to why Ozu consistently employed the low camera angle. Bordwell suggests that his motive was primarily visual, because the angle allowed him to create distinctive compositions within the frame and "make every image sharp, stable and striking."… Another critic believes that the ultimate purpose of the low camera position was to allow the audience to assume "a viewpoint of reverence" towards the ordinary people in his films, such as Noriko and her father.
Static camera
Ozu was widely noted for a style characterized by a frequent avoidance of the kinds of camera movements—such as panning shots, tracking shots or crane shots—employed by most film directors.
… Bordwell notes that, of all the common technical practices that Ozu refused to emulate, he was "most absolute" in refusing to reframe (for example, by panning slightly) the moving human figure in order to keep it in view; this critic claims that there is not a single reframing in all of Ozu's films from 1930 on. In the late films (that is, those from Late Spring on), the director "will use walls, screens, or doors to block off the sides of the frame so that people walk into a central depth," thus maintaining focus on the human figure without any motion of the camera.
The filmmaker would paradoxically retain his static compositions even when a character was shown walking or riding, by moving the camera with a dolly at the precise speed at which the actor or actors moved. He would drive his devoted cameraman, Yuharu Atsuta, to tears by insisting that actors and technicians count their steps precisely during a tracking shot so that the movements of actors and camera could be synchronized.
Speaking of the bicycle ride to the beach early in the story, Peña notes: "It’s almost as if Noriko [on her bicycle] doesn’t seem to be moving, or Hattori’s not moving because his place within the frame remains constant… These are the sort of visual idiosyncrasies that make Ozu’s style so interesting and so unique in a way, to give us movement and at the same time to undercut movement."

Ozu's use of actors
Virtually all actors who worked with Ozu—including Chishu Ryu, who collaborated with the director on almost all his films—agree that he was an extremely demanding taskmaster. He would direct very simple actions by the performer "to the centimeter." As opposed to those of both Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, Ozu's characters, according to Sato, are "usually calm... they not only move at the same pace but also speak at the same measured rate."
He insisted that his actors express emotions through action, even rote action, rather than by directly expressing their innermost feelings. Once, when the distinguished character actress ...
Editing
…overriding tempo even determined how the sets were constructed…he would measure the number of seconds it took someone to walk upstairs and so the set had to be constructed accordingly…Sato says about this tempo that "it is a creation in which time is beautifully apprehended in conformity with the physiology of daily occurrences."
A striking fact about Ozu's late films (of which Late Spring is the first instance) is that transitions between scenes are accomplished exclusively through simple cuts. According to one commentator, the lost work, The Life of an Office Worker (Kaishain seikatsu, 1929), contained a dissolve, and several extant Ozu films of the 1930s (e.g., Tokyo Chorus and The Only Son) contain some fades. But by the time of Late Spring, these were completely eliminated, with only music cues to signal scene changes.
…”

Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes
Full movie:

24. Little Fugitive 1953 USA Morris Engel

Wikipedia says it all really, and I’m especially taken by the fact that the film is cited as the inspiration for the French New Wave. I’d also observe that the fact that Engel was a photographer is apparent from some of the gorgeously framed and lit shots in the movie.

Wikipedia:
“Little Fugitive is a 1953 American independent drama film co-written and co-directed by Raymond Abrashkin (credited as Ray Ashley), Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin, which tells the story of a child alone on Coney Island. It stars Richie Andrusco as the title character, and Richard Brewster as his older brother. …
An acknowledged influence on the French New Wave, the film is considered by modern-day critics to be a landmark film because of its naturalistic style and groundbreaking use of nonprofessional actors in lead roles. …
…Production notes
The film was filmed on location at Coney Island and in Brooklyn using a unique concealed strap-on camera, which made it possible for Engel to work without a tripod or a large crew and allowed him to have thousands of beach-going New Yorkers as extras without their knowing it…The camera could be seen as a prototype for the Steadicam and was designed by Engel and his friend the inventor Charlie Woodruff, a fellow World War II combat photographer who Engel called a "mechanical and engineering genius." Over the years, filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard reportedly were eager to borrow this unique camera.
…
Film teacher Joel Schlemowitz says, "The film’s storyline, about a young boy gone on the lam among the boardwalk, beach, and amusements of Coney Island, provided the opportunity to film in situations well matched to this unobtrusive camera's virtues. The Rolleiflex-inspired chest-level configuration also assisted in giving the film its sense of visual rapport with the film's child actor, placing the camera at eye level with the youngster's view of the world."

...Critical response
…François Truffaut was inspired by its spontaneous production style when making The 400 Blows (1959), and he said years later that "Our New Wave would never have come into being if it hadn't been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with [this] fine movie."
Modern critics have also praised the film. Dennis Schwartz called it "A remarkable indy classic, made on a shoestring budget by a group of still photographers. It's an affecting lyrical comedy-drama that fully captures the flavor of urban childhood innocence of the 1950s. [...] The dialogue was sparse, the story was unambitious, the film lacked drama, the children were very ordinary and their problem was only a minor one, nevertheless this beautifully realized film caught the world through the innocent eyes of a curious and scared child and left an impression that was hard to shake. It was uplifting to watch because the effort was so genuine."

…
When the film was screened in New York after Engel's death in 2005, film critic Joshua Land wrote: "Little Fugitive shines as a beautifully shot document of a bygone Brooklyn—any drama here resides in the grainy black-and-white cinematography, with its careful attention to the changes in light brought on by the inexorably advancing sun [...] Filled with 'Aw, fellas!' period ambience and the mythic imagery of cowboys and horses, comics and baseball, it's a key proto-vérité slice of urban America.""

Runtime 1 hour 20 minutes
Full movie

25. On the Waterfront 1954 USA Elia Kazan

It’s a riveting drama. The cinematography/camerawork is often stunning. Lauded for introducing an American version of neo-realism to Hollywood, it provides a gritty realism that American filmgoers weren’t used to. I find some of the acting of some of the smaller parts to be not all that great, but Brando and Saint are both excellent.

Wikipedia:
“On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. The musical score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. The black-and-white film was inspired by "Crime on the Waterfront" by Malcolm Johnson, a series of articles published in November–December 1948 in the New York Sun which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting…The film focuses on union violence and corruption among longshoremen, while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey.,,,
Plot
New York prizefighter Terry Malloy's career was cut short when he purposely lost a fight at the request of mob boss Johnny Friendly. Terry now works for Friendly's labor union as a longshoreman while his older, more educated brother Charley is Friendly's right-hand man. Terry is coerced into luring fellow worker Joey Doyle onto a rooftop, where he believes Friendly's henchmen want to talk Joey out of testifying to the Waterfront Crime Commission. When they instead murder Joey by throwing him off the roof, Terry confronts Friendly, but is threatened and bribed into acquiescence.
Joey's sister Edie and priest Father Barry try to inspire the dockworkers to stand up to Friendly. Terry attends the meeting as a snitch, but when it is violently broken up by Friendly's men, he helps Edie escape and misses Father Barry convincing one worker to testify. After the testimony, the worker is killed in a staged workplace accident.
Terry's unwillingness to testify is softened by his growing feelings for Edie, and her and Father Barry’s pursuit of justice. He confesses his role in Joey's death to both. Shocked by this, Edie distances herself from him.
Friendly sends Charley with a job offer to keep Terry quiet. Knowing refusal will get Terry killed, Charley urges him to comply. When Terry expresses regret about throwing his best fight and blames Charley for setting up the fix, Charley hands him a gun and tells him to run. Terry finds Edie and they kiss. After hearing someone in the street, they find Charley murdered.
Determined to kill Friendly, Terry is convinced by Father Barry to instead testify in court. Following the hearing, Friendly loses his powerful connections and faces indictment.
When he is excluded from the next hiring call at the harbor, Terry confronts Friendly together with the other workers, saying that he is proud of testifying and no longer betraying himself. After seeing Terry get beaten severely by Friendly’s thugs, the longshoremen refuse to work without him and renounce Friendly, wishing to run the union "on the up-and-up". Encouraged by Edie and Father Barry, Terry stumbles to the warehouse. The men follow him inside and the door closes, leaving Friendly outside, ignored by the workers and shippers.
Production
…The film is widely considered to be Elia Kazan's answer to those who criticized him for identifying eight Communists in the film industry before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952. One of Kazan's critics was his friend and collaborator, the noted playwright Arthur Miller, who had earlier written the first version of the script, originally titled The Hook. Kazan had agreed to direct it, and in 1951 they met with Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures about making the picture. Cohn agreed in principle to make The Hook, but there were concerns about the portrayal of corrupt union officials. When Cohn asked that the antagonists be changed to Communists, Miller refused. Cohn sent a letter telling Miller it was interesting he had resisted Columbia's desire to make the movie "pro-American". Kazan asked Miller to rewrite the script; Miller declined due to his disenchantment with Kazan's friendly testimony before the HUAC. Kazan then replaced Miller with Budd Schulberg. The screenwriter later recalled how he had researched the story on the docks: "I spent two years down there. I sat in on meetings the rebels held and roamed about the waterfront bars. I saw what a shapeup was like. I would report back to Kazan on what I had seen. Kazan made many suggestions in the course of my writing."
Cobb's character of Johnny Friendly was partly modeled on Johnny Dio, a real-life mobster known for involvement in labor racketeering.
Casting
According to Richard Schickel in his biography of Kazan, Marlon Brando initially declined the role of Terry Malloy, and Frank Sinatra (a native of Hoboken, where the film was being made) then had "a handshake deal" – but no formally signed contract – to play the part, even attending an initial costume fitting. But Kazan still favored Brando for the role, partly because casting Brando would assure a larger budget for the picture…. Brando's agent, Jay Kanter… convinced Brando to reconsider his refusal. Within a week, Brando signed a contract to perform in the film. At that point, a furious Sinatra demanded to be cast in the role of Father Barry, the waterfront priest. It was left to Spiegel to break the news to Sinatra that Malden had been signed for this role.
Filming locations
On the Waterfront was filmed over 36 days on location in various places in Hoboken, New Jersey, including the docks, workers' slum dwellings, bars, littered alleys, and rooftops. The church used for exterior scenes in the film was the historic Our Lady of Grace, built in 1874, while the interiors were shot at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul at 400 Hudson Street.
Reception
…Praising Brando in 2004, director Martin Scorsese noted: "Everything that we know about the power of great screen acting relates back to him: when you watch his work in On the Waterfront ... you're watching the purest poetry imaginable, in dynamic motion". Kazan, the director of the film, would later write in his book, "If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is."
Al Pacino, recounting his own memories on first seeing On the Waterfront, told Playboy in a 1979 interview that he concentrated more on the lead actor than the film itself, "I couldn't move. I couldn't leave the theatre. I'd never seen the like of it."…In a eulogy for Brando, Jack Nicholson described his display "probably the height of any age", and added that, "You just couldn't take your eyes off the guy. He was spellbinding."


Runtime 1 hour 48 minutes
Trailer

26. Rear Window 1954 USA Alfred Hitchcock

It’s a classic. It looks great. The tension builds fantastically. It’s a tough ask getting sexual tension out of James Stewart, but by got Grace Kelly nearly manages it.

Wikipedia:
“Rear Window is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder”
…
Analysis
Rear Window is filmed almost entirely within Jeff's apartment and from his near-static point-of-view at his window. ...
Voyeurism
John Fawell notes in Dennis Perry's book Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of Delight and Terror that Hitchcock "recognized that the darkest aspect of voyeurism ... is our desire for awful things to happen to people ... to make ourselves feel better, and to relieve ourselves of the burden of examining our own lives."
Hitchcock challenges the audience, forcing them to peer through his rear window and become exposed to, as Donald Spoto calls it…the "social contagion" of acting as voyeur.
…
Filming
The film was shot entirely at stage 17 at Paramount Studios which included an enormous indoor set to replicate a Greenwich Village courtyard, with the set stretching from the bottom of the basement storeroom to the top of the lighting grid in the ceiling. The lighting was rigged with four interchangeable scene lighting arrangements: morning, afternoon, evening, and night-time. Set designers Hal Pereira and Joseph MacMillan Johnson spent six weeks building the extremely detailed and complex set, which ended up being the largest of its kind at Paramount. One of the unique features of the set was its massive drainage system, constructed to accommodate the rain sequence in the film…
In addition to the meticulous care and detail put into the set, careful attention was also given to sound, including the use of natural sounds and music that would drift across the courtyard and into Jefferies' apartment. …”

Runtime 1 hour 51 minutes
Clip

27. Journey to Italy 1954 Italy Roberto Rossellini

I find it visually beautiful. The overall appearance seems somehow exceptional, and there are many gorgeous shots.
I enjoy the atmosphere of it, which seems to be a step towards slow cinema. It has a clean and pleasant simplicity about it. Bergman is fabulous as always. The study of the failing relationship and their feelings of boredom yet emotional dependency on one another is interesting and contemplative. It's difficult to identify, but it is somehow one of my favourites.

Wikipedia:
"Journey to Italy, also known as Voyage to Italy, is a 1954 drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play Katherine and Alex Joyce, a childless English married couple on a trip to Italy whose marriage is on the point of collapse… Although the film was an Italian production, its dialogue was in English. The first theatrical release was in Italy under the title Viaggio in Italia; the dialogue had been dubbed into Italian.
Journey to Italy is considered by many to be Rossellini's masterpiece, as well as a seminal work of modernist cinema due to its loose storytelling.
…
Production
…
Rossellini's directorial style was very unusual. The actors did not receive their lines until shortly before filming of a particular scene, which left them little if any chance to prepare or rehearse…

Theatrical releases
…The receipts and critical reception were poor. The film had been dubbed into Italian, and now is used as an example of "monstrous" difficulties with dubbing. In April 1955, an 88-minute version of the film, in English, was released in France as L'Amour est le plus fort. There was little interest in the film in the U.S. and Britain despite the fact that the film had been made in English with noted actors in the leads. An American version, with an 80-minute running time, had a limited release in 1955 with the title Strangers. In Britain, a cut version (70 minutes) was released in 1958 under the title The Lonely Woman.

Reception and significance
….It had a profound influence, however, on New Wave filmmakers working in the 1950s and 1960s. As described six decades later by film critic John Patterson: "French critics at the Cahiers du Cinéma – the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol – all saw it as the moment when poetic cinema grew up and became indisputably modern. Journey to Italy is thus one wellspring of the French New Wave. A film convulsed by themes of sterility, petrification, pregnancy and eternity, it finds its echo in such death-haunted Nouvelle Vague masterpieces as Chabrol's Le Boucher and Truffaut's La Chambre Verte."
…Today, Journey to Italy generally is regarded as a landmark film. Critic Geoff Andrew referred to it as "a key stepping stone on the path to modern cinema" in its shift away from neorealism, and A.O. Scott notes Rossellini's "way of dissolving narrative into atmosphere, of locating drama in the unspoken inner lives of his characters"; because Alex and Katherine are not developed through a conventional plot but instead spend lengthy amounts of time in boredom and dejection, the film frequently is cited as a major influence on the dramas of Michelangelo Antonioni and later works about modern malaise.”

Runtime 1 hour 25 minutes
Full movie

28. La Pointe Courte 1955 France Agnès Varda

Experimental, imaginative, influential and beautiful. All on a shoe string.

Wikipedia:
“La Pointe Courte is a 1955 French drama film directed by Agnès Varda (in her feature film directorial debut). It has been cited by many critics as a forerunner of the French New Wave, with the historian Georges Sadoul calling it "truly the first film of the nouvelle vague". The film takes place in Sète in the south of France. The Pointe Courte ("short point") is a tiny quarter of the town known as the fisherman's village.

Plot
A young woman arrives on the Paris train at the port of Sète, where she is met by her husband who grew up there. Not sure whether she wants to continue their marriage, she has come to talk it through. As the couple wander around the fishermen's quarter, the film shows the life of its inhabitants..
Themes
...In the magazine Cineaste, movie journalist Jonathan Kirshner pointed out themes in La Pointe Courte that Varda would revisit in later films, namely "a blend of documentary and fiction, detailed attentiveness to the economic conditions of the working class, subtle observations about the gender dynamics of social and familial relations, and, of course, the notable presence of cats."

Production
Varda originally visited La Pointe Courte to take pictures for a friend who could no longer visit her home. After seeing the footage she took there, she rented a camera to shoot a film about a couple from Paris who were visiting La Pointe Courte, the husband's home town. Varda set up her own co-op and began production. The budget for the film was $14,000; roughly one quarter the budget of other feature films of the era including The 400 Blows and Breathless. No members of the cast or crew were paid during the production. Varda left the artistic direction of the film in the hands of her friend and artist Valentine Schlegel. "


Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes
Full movie (en francais)
Trailer/preview (en anglaise)

29. Pather Panchali 1955 India Satyijat Ray

I like the simplicity, the rhythm, the imagery, and the sounds. And it's a great achievement to create a masterpiece of cinema on a very low budget.

Wikipedia:

"Pather Panchali (Bengali…transl. Song of the Little Road) is a 1955 Indian Bengali-language drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray in his directoral debut and produced by the Government of West Bengal….The first film in The Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali depicts the childhood travails of the protagonist Apu and his elder sister Durga amid the harsh village life of their poor family.
The film was shot mainly on location, had a limited budget, featured mostly amateur actors, and was made by an inexperienced crew. Lack of funds led to frequent interruptions in production, which took nearly three years, but the West Bengal government pulled Ray out of debt by buying the film for the equivalent of $60,000, which it turned into a profit of $700,000 by 1980.
The sitar player Ravi Shankar composed the film's soundtrack and score using classical Indian ragas. Subrata Mitra was in charge of the cinematography while editing was handled by Dulal Dutta. Following its premiere on 3 May 1955 during an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Pather Panchali was released in Calcutta the same year to an enthusiastic reception. A special screening was attended by the Chief Minister of West Bengal and the Prime Minister of India.
Critics have praised its realism, humanity, and soul-stirring qualities, while others have called its slow pace a drawback, and some have condemned it for romanticising poverty. Scholars have commented on the film's lyrical quality and realism (influenced by Italian neorealism), its portrayal of the poverty and small delights of daily life...
...Pather Panchali is described as a turning point in Indian cinema, as it was among the films that pioneered the Parallel cinema movement, which espoused authenticity and social realism. The first film from independent India to attract major international critical attention...

Production
…The Bengali word path literally means path, and pather means "of the path". Panchali is a type of narrative folk song that used to be performed in Bengal…

Filming
….The technical team included several first-timers, including Ray himself and cinematographer Subrata Mitra, who had never operated a film camera….
…As the 21-year-old Mitra had no prior filmmaking experience, the choice was met with scepticism by those who knew of the production. Mitra himself later speculated that Ray was nervous about working with an established crew.
Funding was a problem from the outset. No producer was willing to finance the film, as it lacked stars, songs and action scenes….Ray thus had to borrow money to shoot enough footage to persuade prospective producers to finance the whole film. To raise funds, he continued to work as a graphic designer, pawned his life insurance policy and sold his collection of gramophone records.
Production manager Anil Chowdhury convinced Ray's wife, Bijoya, to pawn her jewels. Ray still ran out of money partway through filming, which had to be suspended for nearly a year. Thereafter shooting was done only in intermittent bursts. Ray later admitted that the delays had made him tense and that three miracles saved the film: "One, Apu's voice did not break. Two, Durga did not grow up. Three, Indir Thakrun did not die".
Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, was requested by an influential friend of Ray's mother to help the production. The Chief Minister obliged, and government officials saw the footage. The Home Publicity Department of the West Bengal government assessed the cost of backing the film and sanctioned a loan, given in instalments, allowing Ray to finish production. The government misunderstood the nature of the film, believing it to be a documentary for rural uplift, and recorded the loan as being for "roads improvement", a reference to the film's title.
Monroe Wheeler, head of the department of exhibitions and publications at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), who was in Calcutta in 1954, heard about the project and met Ray. He considered the incomplete footage to be of very high quality and encouraged Ray to finish the film so that it could be shown at a MoMA exhibition the following year. Six months later, American director John Huston visited India for some early location scouting for The Man Who Would Be King (eventually made in 1975). Wheeler had asked Huston to check the progress of Ray's project. Huston saw excerpts of the unfinished film and recognised "the work of a great film-maker". Because of Huston's positive feedback, MoMA helped Ray with additional money….

Soundtrack
…The soundtrack of the film was composed by the sitar player Ravi Shankar, who was at an early stage of his career, having debuted in 1939. The background scores feature pieces based on several ragas of Indian classical music, played mostly on the sitar…

Release and reception
…Ray and his crew worked long hours on post-production, managing to submit it just in time for Museum of Modern Art's Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India exhibition of May 1955. The film, billed as The Story of Apu and Durga, lacked subtitles…
…On 4 May 2015, the restored Pather Panchali premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, a little more than 60 years to the day after the film's world premiere at the same venue.
…
Themes
Author Andrew Robinson, in the book The Apu Trilogy: Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic (2010), notes that it is challenging to narrate the plot of Pather Panchali and the "essence of the film lies in the ebb and flow of its human relationships and in its everyday details and cannot be reduced to a tale of events". …”

Runtime: 2 hours 5 minutes
Full movie:

Bob Le Flambeur (1956) France Jean Pierre Melville

30. The Bridge On The River Kwai 1957 UK David Lean

It’s 99% baloney. The British say it insults them, the Japanese say it insults them. But as it’s Lean it’s very nice to look at. And in spite of the British stiff upper lip stuff which I find gets more annoying and embarrassing on each watch, it ratchets up the tension masterfully to an iconic climax. By the end we care about these individuals as we do about their mission, and it really hits with a punch. Edge of the seat stuff.

Wikipedia:
“
The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the novel The Bridge over the River Kwai, written by Pierre Boulle. Boulle's novel and the film's screenplay are almost entirely fictional, but use the construction of the Burma Railway, in 1942–1943, as their historical setting. The cast includes William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa.
…
Production
Screenplay
The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and, even though living in exile in England, could only work on the film in secret. The two did not collaborate on the script; Wilson took over after Lean was dissatisfied with Foreman's work. The official credit was given to Pierre Boulle (who did not speak English), and the resulting Oscar for Best Screenplay (Adaptation) was awarded to him. Only in 1984 did the Academy rectify the situation by retroactively awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson, posthumously in both cases….
…
Casting
Although Lean later denied it, Charles Laughton was his first choice for the role of Nicholson. Laughton was in his habitually overweight state, and was either denied insurance coverage or was simply not keen on filming in a tropical location…

Filming
…Many directors were considered for the project, among them John Ford, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, Fred Zinnemann, and Orson Welles (who was also offered a starring role).

…Director David Lean clashed repeatedly with his cast members, particularly Guinness and James Donald, who thought the novel was anti-British.
…
The film was made in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)…
…The filming of the bridge explosion was to be done on 10 March 1957, in the presence of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, then Prime Minister of Ceylon, and a team of government dignitaries. However, cameraman Freddy Ford was unable to get out of the way of the explosion in time, and Lean had to stop filming. The train crashed into a generator on the other side of the bridge and was wrecked. It was repaired in time to be blown up the next morning, with Bandaranaike and his entourage present.
…
Historical accuracy
The River Kwai railway bridge in 2017. The arched sections are original (constructed for the Empire of Japan during the Second World War); the two sections with trapezoidal trusses were built by Japan after the war as war reparations, replacing sections destroyed by Allied aircraft.
The plot and characters of Boulle's novel and the screenplay were almost entirely fictional….The conditions to which POW and civilian labourers were subjected were far worse than the film depicted....
Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey of the British Army was the real senior Allied officer at the bridge in question….Toosey strove to delay construction. While Nicholson disapproves of acts of sabotage and other deliberate attempts to delay progress, Toosey encouraged this: termites were collected in large numbers to eat the wooden structures, and the concrete was badly mixed.
…Julie Summers, in her book The Colonel of Tamarkan, writes that Boulle, who had been a prisoner of war in Thailand, created the fictional Nicholson character as an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers…
…
Some Japanese viewers resented the movie's depiction of their engineers' capabilities as inferior and less advanced than they were in reality. Japanese engineers had been surveying and planning the route of the railway since 1937, and they had demonstrated considerable skill during their construction efforts across South-East Asia….
The major railway bridge described in the novel and film did not actually cross the river known at the time as the Kwai. However, in 1943 a railway bridge was built by Allied POWs over the Mae Klong river—renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s as a result of the film—at Tha Ma Kham, five kilometres from Kanchanaburi, Thailand.
Boulle had never been to the bridge. He knew that the railway ran parallel to the Kwae for many miles, and he therefore assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north of Kanchanaburi. This was an incorrect assumption. The destruction of the bridge as depicted in the film is also entirely fictional. In fact, two bridges were built: a temporary wooden bridge and a permanent steel/concrete bridge a few months later. Both bridges were used for two years, until they were destroyed by Allied bombing. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today...” "


Runtime: 2 hours 41 minutes
Trailer:

31. Elevator to the Gallows 1958 France Louis Malle

Maybe best known for its groundbreaking jazz score by Miles Davis, but the film itself is also very worthwhile. There’s some beautiful images (my favourite of the abandoned sports car with the bridge in the background, is an awesome shot), and some shots with unusual camera angles which could be seen as a pre-cursor to New Wave (for example looking down from the top of the telephone box on the callers). The sequences of Jeannie Moreau scouring the town at night looking for her man, are iconic. It’s also an engaging suspense.

Wikipedia:
“[i]Elevator to the Gallows (French: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud), also known as Frantic in the US and Lift to the Scaffold in the UK, is a 1958 French crime thriller film directed by Louis Malle. The film stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as illicit lovers whose murder plot starts to unravel after one of them becomes trapped in an elevator.
Associated by some critics with film noir and introducing new narrative, cinematographic, and editing techniques, the film is considered an important work in establishing the French New Wave and the New Modern Cinema. The improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis and the relationship the film establishes among music, image, and emotion were considered groundbreaking.
…
Production
This low-budget black-and-white production was 24-year-old Louis Malle's first feature film…
Malle cast Jeanne Moreau after seeing her in the Paris stage production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She had already been in a number of films, but her role in this film is often considered her breakthrough. Malle filmed her without the heavy makeup and extreme lighting that previous directors had demanded. Scenes of Moreau wandering down the Champs Elysees at night were shot on fast film from a baby carriage using only available light from the street and shop windows.
…Miles Davis's score for the film is considered by many to be groundbreaking, with jazz critic Phil Johnson describing it as "the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear, and the model for sad-core music ever since. Hear it and weep."
Richard Brody, film critic and writer for The New Yorker, wrote that the score itself is "better than the film, by far".
Organising the recording
In 1957, Davis, an already well known and highly regarded jazz performer and composer, received an invitation to perform in a three-week tour of Europe as a solo artist. Davis had just abandoned his first great quintet of 1955–56, including saxophone player John Coltrane, due to their addiction to heroin. He was beginning to try and live a healthier life, although he was still using cocaine. Additionally, Davis, during his time performing, had been experiencing an immense amount of racism and enjoyed the chance to leave the United States for a while.
Marcel Romano, promoter and jazz enthusiast, picked Davis up from the airport in November 1957 with the initial intention of telling him he would feature in a film about jazz. However, this plan fell through before Davis even arrived. Instead, film technician Jean-Claude Rappeneau…mentioned that he had been working on a feature film with young director Louis Malle who had an interest in jazz music. Romano told Davis about the film and said Davis seemed interested in the project, so they organised a private screening for him. Davis took notes, asking questions about the relationships between the characters and explanations of the plot. He later wrote in his autobiography that he agreed to the job because he had never written music for a film before and it would be "a great learning experience"
While touring Europe, Davis asked that a piano be brought to his hotel room. Over the next two weeks, he began to improvise some themes that would be used in the film. Davis chose to use musicians he had been performing with on his European tour…

On 4 December 1957 at 10 p.m., Davis and his band went to the Le Poste Parisien studios to record the score. The band drank together for an hour, played for four hours, then took two hours of editing, and left the studio by 5 a.m. the next day having finished the film score.
…
Legacy of the score
…This style of music would influence not only future jazz musicians but the sound of film noir itself. Richard Brody highlights this in his article, writing, "The use of jazz and jazz-derived soundtracks became so predominant, that jazz came to seem like the natural backdrop for high-speed chases, mass mayhem, and cold-blooded murder, because the films for which jazz players were enlisted were uniformly violent.""

Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes
Trailer:
Clip:

32. The Music Room 1958 India Satyajit Ray

The film is set in the fading palace of a Prince who is descended from several generations of nobility, who are accustomed to great wealth and taking opulence for granted. The film opens with the Prince being told by his loyal manservant that the bank has declined to offer additional credit, leaving him to finance his affairs by selling off the remaining items of the family’s valuable jewellery. A potential opportunity of salvation arrives in the form of a neighbour whose business activities have brought him ‘new money’ and who is eager to win favour with the Prince whose heritage he greatly admires. The Prince however squanders the chance, preferring to compete with the neighbour over which of them can host the parties with the most expensive musical performers. Various family tragedies also occur.
It's a tale of morality, spliced with performances of traditional Indian music and dance.
The lead actor is perfectly cast as the arrogant Prince, in fact all play their parts excellently, down to the dancers and various extras at the parties, and the film is rich with striking visuals.

Wikipedia:
“Jalsaghar[1] (Bengali: জলসাঘর Jalsāghar, lit. 'The Music Room') is a 1958 Indian Bengali drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray, based on a popular short story by Bengali writer Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, and starring Chhabi Biswas. The fourth of Ray's feature films…
…
Production
…Ray desperately needed a hit, and he decided to make a film that both was based on a popular piece of literature and would incorporate Indian music. It was his first film to extensively incorporate classical Indian music and dancing…”

Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Trailer:
Clip:

Touch of Evil 1958 USA Orson Welles

I have never really ‘got’ Welles as a director. I respect Citizen Kane, but I don’t see it as the greatest film ever made as many do, or even the greatest black and white talkie made before 1942. I don’t get the fuss about Ambersons. I rate The Third Man very highly, but he didn’t direct that. I like parts of The Lady From Shanghai, and the final scene in the fairground is sensational, but there are some very weak parts to the film as well I find. I’ve rated him as an actor, apart from that appalling Irish accent in Shanghai, and also recognised that his performance in Touch of Evil was excellent (quite aside from the astonishing amount of weight he put on for it), and that it is an excellent film.
But it’s only watching it on the big screen that I’ve realised how excellent it is.

Nobody else barely clapped. I clapped above my head and even appreciating the pointlessness of doing so nearly 70 years after it was made and all involved long gone, I still wanted to give it a standing ovation.

Touch of Evil is a masterpiece without question.
In fact right now I think that Touch of Evil is probably the greatest American movie ever made.
I have it as a viable candidate amongst a very small number of films, for the greatest film ever made.

It was very close to making my 100 list (which is going to require some amendments), but I ruled it out because of the receptionist guy in the hotel which I thought was so hammed up to be laughable. But as I'll mention below I recognise now that the film is part caricature, and I can just about accept that role now as its played within that part of the style.

In fact in that context, I can recognise it as a well played part. And that's about the lowest praise I would have for any of the cast. If you put these performances together I'd struggle to think of a film to compare with it for acting prowess. Heston I don't think is anything special, I'd put him down as OK. But Dietrich is excellent and Leigh is fantastic; she could have had so much more of a career in acting if she’d prioritised it. Harry Shannon as Welles’ sidekick Chief Gould is superb. Akim Tamiroff as Uncle Joe is sensational. But its still not the best performance in the film, because Orson Welles - whilst directing it too - delivers one of the most iconic and one of the greatest acting performances in the history of the movies. Outstanding doesn't cover it.

In terms of styles, I’d say masters at least 3 individually, and also as a combination, so we could call that 4. There’s the On the Waterfrontesque ‘documentary-like realism’, for example in the scene when Heston and Shannon are in the records office, where I’m thinking of something like Mississippi Burning. There’s the pop art like caricatures. And there’s the technical artistry; the tracking camera shots, the long take in the industrial mill or whatever it is at the end, which reminds of both the big wheel/fairground scene and also the sewers scene in The Third Man. I’m also reminded of of Kalatozov’s Soy Cuba, which I’m sure it influenced. There huge variety in techniques, from the close ups kind of in the style of A Passion of Joan of Arc, to the continuous take traipsing through the mill, to finding ourselves squashed in the elevator with Welles looking through a shaky hand held camera.
All of it works individually, and it works as a whole as well. Like he’s chucked everything he can think of into the cooking pot, given it a stir, and delivered a 5 star Michelin meal.

It’s not just a movie for people who study film making either, it’s a brilliant thriller, building up the tension, with jump out of the seat moments like looking up to see Uncle Joe’s tongue sticking out.

The poignant sign off with Dietrich having the final line bidding adieu, is the last second beautiful garnish or dressing applied to the side of one of the most wonderful tasting dishes ever cooked. Orson Welles was indeed, an arch-genius of film making.

33. Anatomy of a Murder 1959 USA Otto Preminger

Its attitudes to women are at times cringeworthily dated to the 2020s viewer, but if you can get passed that it’s a dynamite courtroom drama, that rollocks along at a cracking pace throughout.

Wikipedia:
“Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American legal drama film produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Wendell Mayes was based on the 1958 novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker…Voelker based the novel on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defense attorney.
The film stars James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Eve Arden, George C. Scott, …It has a musical score by Duke Ellington, who also appears in the film. It has been described by Michael Asimow, UCLA law professor and co-author of Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies (2006), as "probably the finest pure trial movie ever made".
…
Legal aspects
…
The film examines the apparent fallibility of the human factor in jurisprudence. In various ways all of the human components—the counsel for defense and prosecution, the defendant and his wife, and the witnesses—have their own differing positions on what is right or wrong, and varying perspectives on integrity, justice, morality and ethics. The reliance on credibility of witnesses, and the "finding of facts" based upon those determinations, is the "Achilles heel" of the judicial process.
One controversial legal issue in this film is possible witness coaching, a violation of legal canons...

Reception and legacy
….Variety claimed that the film contained words never before heard in American films with the Motion Picture Production Code seal such as "contraceptive", (sexual) "climax" and "spermatogenesis".
…Anatomy of a Murder has been well received by members of the legal and educational professions. In 1989, the American Bar Association rated this as one of the 12 best trial films of all time. In addition to its plot and musical score, the article noted: "The film's real highlight is its ability to demonstrate how a legal defense is developed in a difficult case. How many trial films would dare spend so much time watching lawyers do what many lawyers do most (and enjoy least) – research?" The film has also been used as a teaching tool in law schools, as it encompasses (from the defense standpoint) all of the basic stages in the U.S. criminal justice system from client interview and arraignment through trial.

…Film critics have noted the moral ambiguity, where a small town lawyer triumphs by guile, stealth and trickery. The film is frank and direct. Language and sexual themes are explicit, at variance with the times (and other films) when it was produced….
…The jazz score of Anatomy of a Murder was composed by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn and played by Ellington's orchestra…”

Running time: 2 hour 40 minutes
Trailer:

34. North by Northwest 1959 USA Alfred Hitchcock

There are times where it probably pays not to overthink the plot but to just go with the flow, but it's a gorgeous looking film famed for the best gentlemens' suits in the movies. It's also a ripping yarn and adventure, which ends with a chase across the giant heads of Mount Rushmore. Contains a memorable scene in which Cary Grant is divebombed by a crop dusting aeroplane.

Wikipedia:
“North by Northwest is a 1959 American spy thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason. The original screenplay written by Ernest Lehman was intended to be the basis for "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures".
North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity: an innocent man is pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization that aims to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle microfilm containing government secrets out of the country…
Costuming
A panel of fashion experts convened by GQ in 2006 said the gray suit worn by Cary Grant throughout almost the entire film was the best suit in film history, and the most influential on men's style, stating that it has since been copied for Tom Cruise's character in Collateral and Ben Affleck's character in Paycheck. This sentiment has been echoed by writer Todd McEwen, who called it "gorgeous" and wrote a short story, "Cary Grant's Suit", that recounts the film's plot, featuring the suit.
There is some disagreement as to who tailored the suit; Vanity Fair magazine claimed it was Norton & Sons of London, although according to The Independent, it was Quintino of Beverly Hills. Another article states that Grant used his Savile Row tailor, Kilgour French and Stanbury for the suit. A label reading "Quintino" is visible on one of the suits in the film, but this is because Quintino made duplicate suits for scenes involving more activity or stunts.

Editing and post-production
In François Truffaut's book-length interview, Hitchcock/Truffaut (1967), Hitchcock said that MGM wanted North by Northwest cut by 15 minutes so the film's length would run under two hours. Hitchcock had his agent check his contract, learned that he had absolute control over the final cut, and refused.
One of Eva Marie Saint's lines in the dining-car seduction scene was redubbed. She originally said, "I never make love on an empty stomach", but it was changed in post-production to "I never discuss love on an empty stomach", as the censors considered the original version too risqué.
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Sign near Mount Rushmore
Hitchcock planned the film as a change of pace after his dark romantic thriller Vertigo a year earlier. In his book-length interview Hitchcock/Truffaut (1967) with François Truffaut, Hitchcock said that he wanted to do "something fun, light-hearted, and generally free of the symbolism permeating his other movies." Writer Ernest Lehman has also mocked those who look for symbolism in the film. Despite its popular appeal, the film is considered to be a masterpiece for its themes of deception, mistaken identity, and moral relativism in the Cold War era.
…Hitchcock explained in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich in 1963: "It's a fantasy. The whole film is epitomized in the title—there is no such thing as north-by-northwest on the compass." (The similar "northwest by north" is indeed one of 32 points of the compass.)
Lehman states that he used a working title for the film of In a Northwesterly Direction because the film's action was to begin in New York and climax in Alaska. Then the head of the story department at MGM suggested North by Northwest, but this was still to be a working title. Other titles were considered, including The Man on Lincoln's Nose, but North by Northwest was kept because, according to Lehman, "We never did find a [better] title."
…North by Northwest has been referred to as "the first James Bond film" because of its splashily colorful settings, secret agents, and an elegant, daring, wisecracking leading man opposite a sinister yet strangely charming villain. The crop-duster scene inspired the helicopter chase in From Russia with Love…”

Running time: 2 hour 16 minutes
Trailer: