Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Faded silent screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) steadfastly believes she will regain her former glory and hires writer Joe Gillis (William Holden) to help with her planned comeback, but as the project drags on their relationship becomes dangerously complicated.
William Holden brings a weary everyman quality to Joe Gillis while Gloria Swanson’s history as a former silent movie star adds an emotional depth to her performance. Erich von Stroheim, himself a famed silent director, is perfectly cast in the subservient and humiliating role of Max von Mayerling, Norma’s butler.
The cameos by director Cecil B. DeMille (largely credited with making Swanson’s career) and silent film legends Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson blur the line between the fictional world created by Charles Brackett and Wilder and reality.
This cautionary fable is a near perfect film about identity and the fickleness of fame and one of the sharpest and most insightful examinations of the nature of Hollywood.
People Will Talk (1951)
This bizarre movie merges several seemingly incongruous narrative strands in a Seinfeldian way. There’s a man who survived an execution, an unmarried, pregnant woman whose fear of embarrassing her alcoholic father leads to a suicide attempt, a doctor who pretends he’s a butcher because the town doesn’t believe in medicine, and a jealous rival hellbent on sabotaging the career of his competition.
In a career full of funny, charming performances, Cary Grant’s work as Dr. Noah Praetorius is one of his most interesting roles.
Jeanne Crain is delightful as the pregnant Deborah Higgins who falls in love with Praetorius.
Hume Cronyn is ornery and spiteful as the jealous Professor Ewell and his inevitable comeuppance is immensely satisfying.
In a career which includes The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), All About Eve (1950), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Sleuth (1972), this is Joseph Mankiewicz’s funniest and most creative film.
It defies categorization: there’s melodrama, discussion of serious social issues, heroic self-sacrifice, romantic comedy, and courtroom drama. Like a great stew made of a hodgepodge of ingredients, its disparate components complement each other perfectly.
It’s difficult to imagine how a movie featuring a pregnant, unwed woman was made in 1952, but it was, it starred Cary Grant, and it’s a joyful miracle.
Ikiru (1952)
When widowed, mid-level bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) is diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, he tries to drown his miseries in a bottle. When this fails, a younger female colleague inspires him to find something he’s passionate about. Emboldened, he dedicates his remaining life to creating a park out of a cesspool and dies a happy man, content with what he has accomplished in his life.
Surprisingly, this film doesn’t end with Watanabe’s death, but continues with the reaction of his friends and family following his demise. As his coworkers marvel about the change in attitude and renewed dedication to his work in the months before his death, they realize he must have known he was dying. His unspoken courage in the face of mortality inspires them.
This unassuming movie about an unimportant, dying man is Akira Kurosawa’s best and most important film. It teaches us to appreciate and celebrate life, and the final thirty minutes serve as a beautiful reminder our story does not end with death, but begins as friends and family craft our legacy.
Tokyo Story (1953)
When retired couple Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama visit their son and daughter in Tokyo, their children are too busy to spend any time with them; the only person who pays them any attention is their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, and after Tomi’s death, Noriko is the only concerned about what will happen to Shukichi.
While Yasujiro Ozu’s quiet films are often compared to his contemporary Akira Kurosawa’s more action oriented work, both filmmakers provide invaluable insight into the psyche of the Japanese following their defeat in the second World War.
This loose remake of Leo McCarey’s 1937 film Make Way for Tomorrow asks important questions about balancing the demands of family with other responsibilities. As people continue to live longer lives, and dealing with elderly parents becomes a rite of passage; this film is a poignant reminder of how difficult it is to grow old and how marginalized the elderly feel when their children brush them aside to focus on their own lives.
Dial M for Murder (1954)
When Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) discovers his wife Margot (Grace Kelly) is having an affair, he plots to have her killed.
Because she retired at the tender age of 26, Grace Kelly’s public image was frozen as a young, beautiful woman. Her marriage into royalty created a mystique and allure unique among American celebrities. Add a tragic and unexpected death, and you have a recipe for a legendary career despite only appearing in eleven feature films.
Ray Milland won an Oscar for his work in The Lost Weekend (1945), but his career is best understood as a slightly more celebrated version of Ronald Regan.
This film is pure Hitchcock: a betrayal, an intricate plan, a murder, and a beautiful blonde. It’s a modest movie with very specific goals, but it more than achieves them.
Ordet (1955)
Morten Bergen is a widower with three sons. His oldest, Mikkel, is married to Inger, a devout believer, but has lost his faith. The middle child, Johannes, is obsessed with Søren Kierkegaard and believes he’s Christ incarnate sent to reinvigorate the faith of the community. His youngest son, Anders, is in love with the daughter of a local religious leader.
When Inger dies, everyone dismisses Johannes’s claim she’ll rise from the dead if the family has faith as the ranting of a madman. However, when Inger’s young child innocently asks Johannes to bring her back, she revives, and everyone’s faith is renewed.
Carl Th. Dreyer’s films illuminate the practical ways philosophical theories impact the lives of individuals and give us a blueprint for the role of spirituality in the 20th century. This film doesn’t quiet reach the heights of his earlier film, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1924), but it’s a wonderful examination of faith in the modern world.
Night and Fog (1956)
Alain Resnais’s short documentary about the Holocaust, filmed on the site of the atrocities, is a mini version of Claude Lanzman’s later masterpiece Shoah. Both are important reminders of the evils of war and the dark side of humanity, but because it was filmed so soon after the actual events, this is a little more raw and emotional, while Lanzman’s film is more cerebral and detached.
Resnais was plumbing the depth of depravity responsible for this nightmare, asking himself and audiences why such a horror took place. Thirty years later, Lanzman was not interested in why so much as documenting its existence to prevent the events from fading into the historical record.
Wild Strawberries (1957)
This film follows seventy-eight year old Professor Isak Borg (played by Bergman’s idol and mentor Victor Sjolstrom) as he travels to accept an award from his alma mater. Through a series of dreams, visions, and flashbacks, we learn how the unfulfilled promise of his childhood and adolescence caused him to become the bitter individual he is today.
The film doesn’t break new ground; many films focus on the elderly coming to terms with their mortality. But in Bergman’s hands, an ordinary film becomes profound, and this is the definitive film dirge, following Professor Borg as he prepares his mind and soul for his own imminent demise.
Vertigo (1958)
Retired police detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is asked by an old friend, Gavin Elster, to spy on his wife, Madeline (Kim Novak), whom Elster believes is possessed by the spirit of a deceased relative.
During the course of this investigation, Scottie and Madeline begin a brief relationship which ends when she inexplicably runs to the top of a bell tower and jumps, killing herself.
Scottie is despondent until he meets Judy Barton who looks exactly like Madeline. They, too, begin a relationship, with Scottie vaguely suspecting the resemblance is more than coincidence. In order to uncover the truth, he is forced to confront his own past and fears.
Critical reception at the time of its release was tepid, but fifty years later, this dark, twisting tale of obsession is universally recognized as one of the greatest films from one of the greatest directors and one of Jimmy Stewart’s best performances.
Some Like it Hot (1959)
When jazz musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) witness the St. Valentine’ Day Massacre, they go on the run by pretending to be women and joining an all girl jazz band where Joe falls in love with bandmate Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe).
Tony Curtis is fantastic here, and in Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958) and Spartacus (1960). But in the 1960s, his career stalled, while costar Jack Lemmon’s soared. The divergent paths of their careers can be partially traced to their respective roles in this film. Curtis is great as Joe, but the role is not as flashy as Jerry. Lemmon got the laughs, while Curtis played it straight. Lemmon had already won an Oscar for Mister Roberts (1955), but the goodwill from this film made him a star.
Marilyn Monroe is so closely identified with the role of Sugar Kane, it’s easy to pretend she was playing herself. This melding of her private life and public persona makes her performance riveting.
While Billy Wilder’s earlier film, Sunset Boulevard (1950), was a dark, cynical satire, this film was focused solely on being as funny as possible, and it worked: in 2000, the American Film Institute named it the greatest comedy of all time.
With its foundation in cross-dressing, gender-bending comedy, this film serves as an important marker in understanding how attitudes about homosexuality and transgender issues have evolved in the last half-century.