1951-1960

  • Mikio Naruse – Okasan aka Mother (1952)

    1951-1960AsianDramaJapanMikio Naruse

    Synopsis:
    Based on a girl’s prize-winning school essay on the subject of “My Mother”. Mizuki Yoko fashioned one of her most moving scripts. Upon the death of her husband the mother (Tanaka Kinuyo) runs the family laundry by herself. She is helped by her first daughter (Kagawa Kyoko) bust must send her second daughter to live with relatives because she cannot afford to keep her. A real shomingeki with lots of heart
    — Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film.Read More »

  • William Berke – Street of Sinners (1957)

    1951-1960CrimeUSAWilliam Berke

    This action-filled police drama chronicles the difficult first year of a rookie cop. The trouble begins on his very first day on the beat when he has a conflict with the criminally connected owner of the local tavern. Against the more moderate advice of his experienced partner, the rookie insists on strictly enforcing every law on the books. His unbending toughness creates hard feelings with the neighborhood toughs and soon he becomes their target.Read More »

  • Tomu Uchida – Mori to Mizuumi no Matsuri aka The Outsiders (1958)

    1951-1960AsianDramaJapanTomu Uchida

    Japanese Title: 森と湖のまつり

    quote:One of the major joys of writing about Japanese movies is that whenever you begin to get that tired, jaded feeling that you think you’ve seen it all and that there’s nothing left that’s ever going to set your pulse racing, you stumble across a whole previously hidden seam of movies that completely revolutionises any ideas of what Japanese cinema is. I remember getting this feeling watching the works of Hiroshi Shimizu at the 2003 Tokyo FILMeX, and I got it again at the same festival exactly one year later, during a 13-film retrospective of Tomu Uchida, which travelled to the Rotterdam Film Festival in a slimmed-down version a couple of months later.Read More »

  • David Friedkin – Hot Summer Night (1957)

    USA1951-1960CrimeDavid FriedkinFilm Noir

    Brief Synopsis:
    A hot-shot reporter risks his life to land an interview with a notorious crook.

    Quote:
    Hot Summer Night is an out-of-the-ordinary crime yarn from the TV/radio production team of Morton Fine and David Friedkin. Unemployed journalist William Joel Pertain (Leslie Nielsen) hopes to reestablish himself by capitalizing on a recent wave of bank robberies. Pertain has a “lead” to the gang’s leader Tom Ellis (Robert Wilke), and intends to parlay this into a hot news story. Instead, he places the lives of himself and his wife Irene (Colleen Miller) in dire peril. Of interest is the fact that the villain is portrayed with a modicum of sympathy, while the reporter comes off as a bit of a jerk. — Hal EricksonRead More »

  • William Spier – A Lady Possessed (1952)

    1951-1960MysteryThrillerUSAWilliam Spier

    Plot Synopsis by Sandra Brennan
    In this off-beat, tuneful psychological thriller, an ailing pregnant woman is in the hospital when she inadvertently eavesdrops on a conversation between a pianist and his wife. Later, after losing her baby, the woman’s husband convinces her to convalesce in a nice country house he has rented. Later she learns that the house is owned by the pianist whose wife died. The poor confused girl then begins believing that she has been possessed by the spirit of the musician’s late wife.Read More »

  • Tay Garnett – A Terrible Beauty (1960)

    1951-1960DramaTay GarnettUnited KingdomWar

    IMDB Reviewer:
    “The Night Fighters” is listed on IMDB under “A Terrible Beauty”, a deceiving title for a movie that has nothing to do with beauty. Considering it had been directed by the great Tay Garnett, and with a cast that included Robert Mitchum, Richard Harris, Ann Heywood, Cyril Cusak, and Dan O’Herlihy, among others, the early promise seemed to evaporate as we watched it.Read More »

  • Mario Zampi – The Naked Truth (1957)

    1951-1960ComedyMario ZampiUnited Kingdom

    Nigel Dennis publishes a scandal magazine. But for each story he writes, he first approaches the person whose scandalous behavior is described (or rather implied, to avoid any libel suit) and says he will suppress the story in return for money. Several of his victims first decide individually to kill him instead of paying, but fail in amusing ways. Then they find that to protect their various secrets they must now join forces for a rather different purpose…Read More »

  • Herbert Vesely – Nicht mehr fliehen AKA No More Fleeing (1955)

    1951-1960Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtDramaExperimentalGermanyHerbert Vesely

    In a desolate, destroyed landscape – bearing now irrelevant traces of technological society – a man and a boy try to find their way under a fierce sun.Read More »

  • Martin Ritt – The Long, Hot Summer (1958)

    1951-1960DramaMartin RittUSA

    Synopsis:
    Sixty-one year old widower Will Varner (Orson Welles), in ill health, owns many businesses and property in Frenchman’s Bend, Mississippi, including a plantation. To him, his children are a disappointment, who he sees as not being able to carry on the Varner name in the style to which he has built around it. Son Jody (Anthony Francoisa) has no ambition and does not work, spending much of his time fooling around with his seductive wife, Eula (Lee Remick). He finds twenty-three-year-old daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) clever, but he feels she also wastes her time on more contemplative pursuits. Read More »

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