GO TO 1949

1950

GO TO 1951
GUN CRAZY (dir: Joseph H. Lewis, Not Rated) - Bart says, "GUN CRAZY is easily the best film noir you've never heard of. It's got no real stars, but Peggy Cummings is unforgettable as immoral sharp-shooter Annie Laurie Starr. She gets hooked up with a schlub named Bart, who's also a gun enthusiast, and the way the two of them get turned on by shooting stuff is fun for the audience - but not so fun for doomed lovers on the lam in a film noir. The low budget really works in this film's favor - the big bank heist scene that's all shot from the back seat of their convertible is one of the coolest long takes in cinema."
SUNSET BLVD. (dir: Billy Wilder, Not Rated) - Michelle says, "Here’s another titanic film that I’m not the first to write about. But being one of those readers who must look at the last page of a book before finishing it, I love a movie that starts with a voice-over from a dead protagonist floating in a huge in-ground pool. In lesser films, this approach might set us up for disappointment, but not so with this classic which still manages to twist and startle, as we find out how Joe (William Holden) became intimate with the real tragic hero of the story: Norma Desmond, an insane Hollywood royal played by Gloria Swanson in one of her final screen roles late in her career. Not only is she practiced at popping crazy eyes from under her made up heavy brows (a talent that’s used to its full potential in the final, shocking scene), but she’s got that awesome old-time vibrato to her voice, making you wish you had an excuse to say stuff like, 'I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small!'"
THE FURIES (dir: Anthony Mann, Not Rated) - Michelle says, "Watch this movie with your dad! When a headstrong ranch girl, played by Barbara Stanwyck, has her creepy status as daddy's little girl challenged by the arrival of her father's marmish fiancée, a revenge scheme hatches that's as fun to watch as it is ultimately sexist and disturbing. This soapy Western might seem a long way off from Mann's gritty gunslinging epics of the 50s, but Stanwyck's morally questionable heroine foreshadows the dark, vengeance-fueled characters played by Jimmy Stewart in WINCHESTER '73, et. al."
LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES (dir: Jean-Pierre Melville, Not Rated) - Bart says, "Before he started making masterpieces about criminals and underworld types like LE SAMOURAI and ARMY OF SHADOWS, Melville adapted this Jean Cocteau novel about a girl and her bedridden brother who live without adult supervision in a cavernous apartment. When Elisabeth brings her friend Agathe home to live them them, all sorts of gleefully unwholesome combinations of vaguely suggested couplings occur. Please watch this dream-like fable; you'll like it."
ALL ABOUT EVE (dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Not Rated)
BORN YESTERDAY (dir: George Cukor, Not Rated)
HARVEY (dir: Henry Koster, Not Rated)
IN A LONELY PLACE (dir: Nicholas Ray, Not Rated)
LOS OLVIDADOS (dir: Luis Buñuel, Not Rated)
NIGHT AND THE CITY (dir: Jules Dassin, Not Rated)
ORPHEUS (dir: Jean Cocteau, Not Rated)
RASHÔMON (dir: Akira Kurosawa, Not Rated)
WINCHESTER '73 (dir: Anthony Mann, Not Rated)
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