1951-1960

  • Douglas Sirk – Magnificent Obsession (1954)

    Drama1951-1960Douglas SirkRomanceUSA

    Quote:
    A wealthy young wastrel, Bob Merrick, cracks up his speedboat and almost dies, to be saved at the last minute by a resuscitator borrowed from the home of a famous surgeon who lives nearby. In the meantime the surgeon himself has suffered an attack, and, with his equipment out on loan, dies before he can be revived. The guilt-ridden Bob clumsily tries to make amends by romancing the surgeon’s young widow, Helen, but only causes further tragedy…Read More »

  • Frank Lloyd – The Shanghai Story (1954)

    1951-1960DramaFrank LloydThrillerUSA

    Gary Tooze writes:
    Produced and directed by the prestigious Frank Lloyd, The Shanghai Story was promoted as a “class” production by the bread-and-butter firm of Republic Pictures. The film takes place in the eponymous far-eastern metropolis (courtesy of the Republic backlot), where Communist police chief Colonel Zorek (Marvin Miller) hopes to trap an American spy. Zorek rounds up the usual suspects and sequesters them in a seedy hotel. Could the spy be Dan Maynard (Edmond O’Brien), a cynical doctor? Is it munitions profiteer Ricki Dolmine (Barry Kelley)? Perhaps it’s two-fisted mercenary seaman Knuckles Greer (Richard Jaeckel). Orrrrrrr, maybe it’s the mysterious Rita King (Ruth Roman), who is inexplicably given permission to come and go as she pleases by the otherwise intractable Zorek. True to form, this Republic A-picture resolves its problems with a final reel of good old B-flick action and violence.Read More »

  • Fritz Lang – The Big Heat (1953)

    1951-1960CrimeFilm NoirFritz LangUSA

    Quote:
    One of the later examples of American film noir, The Big Heat is also one of the genre’s most underrated films. Director Fritz Lang utilized many of the elements typical to his other films: unseen yet gruesome violence, relentless pacing, and a hardboiled view of justice and revenge. The sad, realist film has an oppressive feeling of malignity. Glenn Ford is a perfect everyman cop, out for revenge against criminals as well as other cops. In this way, The Big Heat marks a significant transition between the crime movies of two different eras. Read More »

  • Satsuo Yamamoto – Niguruma no uta AKA Song of the Cart-Pullers (1959)

    1951-1960ClassicsDramaJapanSatsuo Yamamoto

    Synopsis:
    In Song of the Cart-Pullers (Niguruma no uta, 1959) one of his most visually captivating works, Satsuo Yamamoto resurrected, through the struggles of three-generation family in rural Hiroshima Prefacture, an intimate history of Japanese peasant life, from the harsh late Meiji years to the Taisho Rice Riots and the tragedies of the pacific war.Read More »

  • Alberto Cavalcanti – O Canto do Mar (1952)

    1951-1960Alberto CavalcantiBrazilClassicsDrama

    IMDB:
    In the drought areas of Northeastern of Brazil, groups of migrants move trying to find better place to live, at least with water. Some of them go to Recife, to get a vessel to Santos expecting to have a better life in the Southern. In the poor area of Recife, an old washerwoman launders clothes to survive and support her family. Her husband Zé Luis, a former sailor, is crazy due to a hit of the boom of a mast on his head. Her older son Raimundo works in a grocery and selling mangoes on the street, trying to save money to move to the Southeastern with his girl-friend Aurora. Her daughter wants to be a prostitute to have a better quality of life. Her younger son is seriously sick.Read More »

  • Francisco Rovira Beleta – Expreso de Andalucía (1956)

    1951-1960CrimeFilm NoirFrancisco Rovira BeletaSpain

    A retired sportsman, a young law student and small-time crook team up in order to plan the robbery of some jewels in the Andalusian express train

    Based on real facts ocurred decades before, it’s an excellent spanish film noir, that mixed classical elements from noir, neorrrealism, existentialism and social literature of this moment. It’s a hard portrait of spanish society under Franco’s military dictatorship.Read More »

  • Konrad Wolf – Sterne AKA Stars (1959)

    1951-1960GermanyKonrad WolfPoliticsWar

    Synopsis:
    A detachment of Nazi soldiers escorting Greek Jews to the Oswiencim death camp stops at a small Bulgarian town in 1943. Walter, the non-commissioned officer from the Nazi army, a skeptical and disillusioned intellectual, falls most unexpectedly (even for himself) in love with the Jewish girl Rutt. This new feeling gradually makes him stop and reflect on the events taking place around him and comes face to face with the inhuman nature of fascism. He is tortured by anxious thought about the part he is called to play in the eternal struggle between evil and good. Helped by Bulgarian resistance fighters, Walter organizes Rutt’s escape. When the time arrives he realizes that he has been deceived about the exact departure hour of the prisoners.
    — Georgi Djulgerov.Read More »

  • Luchino Visconti – Senso (1954)

    1951-1960DramaItalyLuchino ViscontiRomance

    Quote:
    This lush, Technicolor tragic romance from Luchino Visconti stars Alida Valli as a nineteenth-century Italian countess who, during the Austrian occupation of her country, puts her marriage and political principles on the line by engaging in a torrid affair with a dashing Austrian lieutenant, played by Farley Granger. Gilded with ornate costumes and sets and a rich classical soundtrack, and featuring fearless performances, this operatic melodrama is an extraordinary evocation of reckless emotions and deranged lust, from one of the cinema’s great sensualists.Read More »

  • Roy Rowland & Buster Keaton & Edward Sedgwick – Excuse My Dust (1951)

    1951-1960Buster KeatonComedyEdward SedgwickMusicalRoy RowlandUSA

    SYNOPSIS: In 1895, amateur inventor Joe Belden, a resident of Willow Falls, Indiana, is scorned by almost everyone in town, except his mother, his best friend, Ben Parrot, and his sweetheart, Liz Bullitt. Joe’s latest, and most ambitious, invention is a gasoline-burning horseless carriage he is building in his mother’s barn. He is overjoyed when his “gasomobile” finally starts up, but his jubilation is short-lived as the barn soon catches fire. After the volunteer fire department, which is headed by Joe, finally puts out the fire, the worried pharmacist, Horace Antler, refuses to sell Joe more gasoline, and Harvey Bullitt, Liz’s gruff father, angrily tells him to stay away from her. Read More »

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