Wish I could get these posts done on time, but one does have a full-time job and a social life. Anyway, A few days later than I wanted, but here we go.
Anyway, here are the 77 films I watched for 1952:
Actor's and Sin
Affair in Trinidad
The Atomic City
The Bad and the Beautiful
Because You're Mine
Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
Bend of the River
Big Jim McLain
The Big Sky
The Black Castle
Breaking the Sound Barrier
Brighton Rock
The Browning Version
The Bushwhackers
The Card (aka The Promoter)
Caribbean
Carrie
Clash by Night
Come Back, Little Sheba
Cry, the Beloved Country
Deadline - U.S.A.
Five Fingers
Flat Top
A Girl in Every Port
The Greatest Show on Earth
Hans Christian Andersen
The Harlem Globetrotters
High Noon
Ivanhoe
Jack and the Beanstalk
Japanese War Bride
The Jazz Singer
Just for You
The Las Vegas Story
The Lavender Hill Mob
Lure of the Wilderness
The Lusty Men
Macao
Man Bait
The Man in the White Suit
The Medium
The Member of the Wedding
The Merry Widow
Million Dollar Mermaid
The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima
Monkey Business
Moulin Rouge
My Cousin Rachel
My Six Convicts
My Son John
Navajo
The Narrow Margin
O. Henry's Full House
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Park Row
Pat and Mike
Plymouth Adventure
The Pride of St. Louis
The Quiet Man
Rancho Notorious
Rashomon
Red Planet Mars
Road to Bali
Scandal Sheet
Singin' in the Rain
The Sniper
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Son of Paleface
The Star
Stars and Stripes Forever
Steel Town
Sudden Fear
The Thief
Viva Zapata!
Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie
What Price Glory
With a Song in My Heart
Ironically, given the delay, this was one of the quickest Top Tens I've ever made. With apologies to the briefly-considered The Bad and the Beautiful, The Black Castle, Brighton Rock, Million Dollar Mermaid, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Rashomon, and especially the two that did almost make it, My Cousin Rachel and Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie, here are my ten favorite films of 1952, in alphabetical order:
The Browning Version
He is a schoolteacher, but he is many of us, coming to work year after year, falling into routine until what he wanted to do, what this was intended to prepare him for, recedes into the background. He's technically good at what he does, but he is tired and he does not connect to the students, the parents, or his fellow faculty members. And here it is, his very last day of work at an institution he's devoted 18 years of his life to, and what has he to show for it? Not a legacy, certainly. It moved me, this film, more deeply than I expected it to. We all hope that we may look back on our lives, however humble, and feel that we have left some mark, even if it is just a fleeting memory. in someone else's story To think that one has not is frightening. To think life has passed by, your great work left unfinished because you couldn't believe in yourself, leaving you alone in self-imposed hermitage... It is a terrific, sobering drama of "is this all there is?", of personal and professional failure - and of perceived failure recontextualized. Yes, let me reassure you, it does not end on a down note; nevertheless, it will lay you out.
Cry, the Beloved Country
The Black man of faith finds himself tested by his sister's fall, his brother's greed, his son's act of violence, and Johannesburg's city of lost souls, where the ministers are cynics and the law acts swiftly while justice is set aside. No, that's not right; his faith is not tested, it is in shambles, and he, a peaceful man, becomes full of impotent anger, aimless rage, with no outlet for it. Has God abandoned him? Meanwhile, the white man of fortune has his worst fears realized when a Black man kills his activist son but, instead of pushing him further into hatred, it allows him to hear his son's "radical" views for the first time, appraise the society he's upheld and its destructive force, and bring him to a new peace. Has he finally understood God and His creation? The book's author (and this film's credited screenwriter) Alan Paton always intended a passionate rebuke of South Africa's racism while still emphasizing the power and importance of Christian principles - forgiveness, redemption, fellowship. It's a complex road to travel, emotionally, and even harder to describe, but suffice it to say, this a movie that captures the greatness of its source material. It fills me with a sense of spiritual peace, and I think everyone needs that now and then, don't they?
High Noon
I've written much about this one, so feel free to click the High Noon tag to get the full gist of my thoughts. For now, let me just briefly reiterate that I find it a compelling, effective drama about one man's fight for justice, about the perniciousness of time and how it forces us to face the fact of our mortality, and about how we as a society determine what is right over what is convenient - mob mentality, but for inaction rather than for action. The kind of movie that makes you sit up and take notice, so deliberate is it in its editing and shot compositions, so committed are the performances, so precise is the writing. There's nothing to dislike here!
The Member of the Wedding
A full-grown woman playing an adolescent tomboy, an eyepatch-wearing cook whose "subplot" contains more actual drama than the tomboy's existential crisis, and a child actor who gives his most layered, adult performance at ten years old. A stage-to-screen adaptation that doesn't even try to hide its origins, but sticks to the "safe space" kitchen of its central trio, making the rare excursions outside all the more jarring and effective in depicting outsiders in a "real" world. An ending that you can't feel happy or sad about because all it is is reflective of how we develop and change our minds as we grow and maybe it's for the best but maybe it's not who we really are or maybe it is but anyway here we are. Weird movie, in a good way: I think few movies about "outsiders" fully embrace the idea like this one does, in every respect.
The Narrow Margin
Might be the coolest movie of the year, a taut, cat-and-mouse thriller on board a train. No need for a score or A-list stars, this movie gives you cops and thugs that look and sound like they just came in off the street, their fighting and intrigue set to the clackety-clack that brings them closer and closer to their goal. The action is brutal and indiscriminate: from the get-go, the most unexpected characters are knocked off, upping the stakes and increasing the atmosphere of danger. Every twist made me genuinely gasp, so I dare not post even a hint of them here - suffice it to say, if you've seen a thriller before, you know every character has their own scheme...and nothing goes according to plan. An interesting year, clearly, for Just One Man standing up for justice while on a deadline, though I guess in the post-War era, people would find themselves drawn to stories about our tenuous grasp on life and ability to do what's right.
Park Row
In the subgenre of Newspaper Flicks, I guarantee you've never seen one like this. Mixing fact - yes, the erection of the Statue of Liberty was accomplished thanks to public funding for the pedestal, and yes, Ottmar Mergenthaler was a real man who invented the Linotype machine, and yes, Steve Brodie did gain notoriety by leaping off the Brooklyn Bridge - with fiction, Samuel Fuller offers a valentine to the dedicated journalists, editors, printers, publishers, typesetters, and salespeople who made journalism into the fourth estate. It is funny to watch a film from 1952 set in the 1880s basically saying that, yes, it is the responsibility of a free press to not just report, but to advocate, to take sides, to right injustices, and do what is right for the good of the country! It's also a sobering look at how competitive and cutthroat that business was and can be: the centerpiece of the film is a tracking shot across Park Row, our hero editor running out of his office and physically fighting thugs hired by the competition, delivery horses stampeding out of control, stands torched, a streetfight between newspapermen. Well, the truth's worth fighting for, isn't it?
The Quiet Man
I've written much about this one, so feel free to click the The Quiet Man tag to get the full gist of my thoughts. For now, let me just briefly reiterate that this movie...you get it. When John Wayne leaves America to live in this small Irish village and looks with contentment upon the land, you get it. You want to live here, too, not because it's an escape, but because by the end of the film, this town has become your town. I love the people, I love their ways, I love this movie.
Singin' in the Rain
It is impossible to watch this movie and not feel joyous, just lightning in a bottle, pure, nonstop delight in under two hours. It accomplishes this without being cloying, without trying to be a nonstop delight, just allowing its talents to thrive: Donald O'Connor's acrobatics in "Make 'Em Laugh," Gene Kelly's "Broadway Melody" ballet, Jean Hagen's voice, even Millard Mitchell's comic confusion, all are examples of trusting the performers to know just how to play a line, a scene, a dance to utmost perfection. The songs are so seamlessly incorporated into the action that it is a genuine shock to discover that none of them were written for the film, but are, instead, all past hits from the 1930s! Sets and costumes and makeup...compare it to its contemporaries, and you'll see Singin' in the Rain is the rare period piece that actually pays attention to the specificities of the limited period on which its focused: the materials, the silhouettes, the variety within the era's style. Every single element of Singin' in the Rain works, and it works because it's not frivolous with the details of the period or the truth of its characters.
Stars and Stripes Forever
Less a biopic than a comedy about a man named John Philip Sousa, partly getting by thanks to the charisma and chemistry of its core four cast members: Clifton Webb as Sousa, Ruth Hussey as his wife, Robert Wagner as his protégé, and Debra Paget as the protégé's love interest. Their cozy, cross-generational friendship has a feeling of genuine camaraderie, their joy in each other's company is infectious. The selling point, however, is the music of John Philip Sousa, aka The March King, and how that music took him on the unlikely road from military bandleader to world-famous touring conductor-composer. It does a wonderful job of showing the relationship between music and audiences, each impacting the other, the conductor's ability to react to the audience as important a collaboration as the band playing together. It is music as the only way to properly express pride and joy in one's life, country, and fellow man. I'm still not over the scene where he lures in an audience of Confederate veterans by boisterously playing "Dixie," only to cede the stage to a Black choir singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" - and healing the nation in the process! It's easy, sure; it's corny, yes; but it's effective!
Viva Zapata!
Listen, I don't know enough world history, so yes, I do depend on the movies to give me a crash course on historical events and people. Am I getting the full picture? I know I'm not, but, at least I'm getting somewhat of an introduction, and at least this introduction is a thrilling one. In under two hours, we witness an uprising of Indigenous and mixed-race peoples rise up against a dictator, reclaim their lands, lead a genuine people's revolution, only to see power immediately back in the hands of the same vampires and exploiters who worked behind-the-scenes in the last administration. Here is a most effective portrayal of leaders as figureheads: just as Porfirio Diaz's ousting does little to change the fortunes of the Mexican people overall, the revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata becomes more symbol than man, his exploits rendered legend, his subsequent efforts to keep promises to the people shooed away by the new powers even as they continue giving him titles and honors - he cannot even die! The importance of revolution, the corruption of power, the deification of our leaders, and - because it is about a man, a human being - even tense romance and social comedy: Viva Zapata! leaves nothing unexplored.
Tomorrow (and I do mean tomorrow), the nominees for the 1952 Hollmann Awards!
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