In 1955:
Jim Henson built the first version of Kermit the Frog;
The first US advisors arrived in South Vietnam;
Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the UK;
The Salk polio vaccine received FDA approval;
Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s in Illinois;
Disneyland opened to the public;
Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The $64,000 Question premiered;
Vladimir Nabokov published Lolita;
Juan Peron was ousted in a military coup;
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus;
Rowan Atkinson, J.K. Simmons, Kevin Costner, Eddie Van Halen, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, John Grisham, Greg Norman, Kelsey Grammer, Jeff Daniels, Steve Jobs, Penn Jillette, Gary Sinise, Bruce Willis, Moses Malone, Reba McEntire, Earl Campbell, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Rooker, Barbara Kingsolver, Dodi Fayed, Judy Davis, Kate Mulgrew, Donatella Versace, Tom Bergeron, Chris Berman, Mark David Chapman, Jack Morris, Debra Winger, Bill Paxton, Chow Yun-Fat, Dana Carvey, Sandra Bernhard, Tim Berners-Lee, Laurie Metcalf, Jimmy Smits, Willem Dafoe, Iman, Billy Bob Thornton, Wayne Knight, Peter Gallagher, Mike Huckabee, Yo-Yo Ma, Darrell Hammond, Bill Gates, Maria Shriver, Roland Emmerich, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Nye, Howie Mandel, Billy Idol, and Jane Kaczmarek were born,
While John Mott, Sir Alexander Fleming, Charlie Parker, Albert Einstein, Cordell Hull, Wallace Stevens, Carmen Miranda, Cy Young, Dale Carnegie, Shemp Howard, and Honus Wagner died.
The following is a list of my ten favorite films released in 1955.
10) Richard III
In this adaptation of the last chapter in Shakespeare’s War of the Roses Tetralogy, Laurence Olivier stars as the evil Richard III, a deformed power-hungry despot who kills his brothers, his nephews, and any other rivals who challenge him.
Taken alongside his earlier adaptations of Henry V (1944), and Hamlet (1948), Oliver’s work is the definitive twentieth century adaptation of Shakespeare and popularized the bard with audiences not previously associated with his work.
This regal film famously features four actors knighted for service to the theater arts: Olivier, Sir John Gielgud (George, Duke of Clarence), Sir Ralph Richardson (Duke of Buckingham), and Sir Cedric Hardwicke (King Edward VI).
Four centuries later, Richard’s unrelenting will for power echoes in characters like Frank Underwood (complete with a penchant for asides to the audience), proving the Bard’s value as a chronicler of the human condition.
Injured World War II veteran John MaCready (Spencer Tracy) travels to Black Rock to personally thank the father of the Japanese American soldier who died saving his life, but his arrival highlights uncomfortable questions regarding the disappearance of the boy’s father, Kokomo.
Tracy’s work as the well-intentioned one-armed veteran is superb, and the supporting cast, featuring Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, Lee Marvin, and Robert Ryan, is uniformly outstanding.
In the mid twentieth century, African-Americans were organizing protests against systemic racism, while reprehensible problems faced by Asian Americans were largely ignored. Even today, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is reduced to a footnote as we transform the diversity of the racial experience in America into a black vs. white affair. This small, pseudo western reminds us the ugliness of racism is larger and more complex than we pretend.
8) East of Eden
In the years just before World War I, Cal Trask (James Dean) and his brother Aron vie for the approval of their domineering father. Years earlier, their mother, Kate (Jo Van Fleet in an Oscar-winning performance), abandoned them and now works as a prostitute, although the boys have been told she died.
The only major film featuring James Dean released during his lifetime was an adaptation of half of the John Steinbeck novel of the same name, which was in turn an adaptation of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel.
Forty years before “family values” and the importance of fathers became a political issue, James Dean’s performances as Jim Stark and Cal Trask demonstrate the need for a strong, caring father figure.
Director Elia Kazan introduced audiences to The Method through his collaborations with Marlon Brando and James Dea; together they revolutionized acting with their raw, unmannered performances.
I prefer this to Rebel simply because it’s larger in scope and a more complex portrait of a struggling American family.
Michel Delassalle runs a small boarding school with his wife Christina (Vera Clouzot, real life wife of the film’s director, Henri-Georges Clouzot). Fed up with her husband’s cruelty, Christina teams with his mistress, Nicole (Simone Signoret) to plot his demise.
They drown him in a bathtub, but after disposing the body in the school’s dilapidated swimming pool, are convinced Michel is haunting them.
This atmospheric film is one of the best psychological horror films of all time and its deliciously clever twist ending has been enormously influential.
Selling nostalgia, café owner Henry (Jean Gabin) revives the can-can at his establishment.
Jean Renoir’s film is a love letter to a France already fading from memory: before the great wars of the twentieth century changed everything. The world in which his father, the famed painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir thrived.
This film asks important questions about the past: what can our knowledge of who we were teach us about who we are? Is the art of the past destined to become a relic or can it be repurposed, reused, and remade into something which might speak to a modern audience?
Ashamed of his own inaction, Lieutenant Jr. Grade Douglas Roberts (Henry Fonda), requests a transfer to the front in World War II, but unpleasant, tyrannical Lieutenant Commander Morton (James Cagney) repeatedly denies the request, convinced keeping Roberts on his ship will ensure a promotion.
Roberts, his good friend “Doc” (William Powell) and his reluctant bunkmate, the lazy and unambitious Ensign Pulver (Jack Lemmon) work to keep morale on the ship high as they combat Morton’s despotism.
Thwarted at every turn, a frustrated Roberts eventually throws the Commander’s cherished palm tree overboard in an act of defiance.
William Powell is magnificent in his final role, Lemon won a much deserved Oscar for his work as the slimy ensign, while Cagney and Fonda conduct a master class in film acting in this excellent film about the humdrum struggles of the average enlisted man.
An unnamed man finds an extraordinary singing frog in the cornerstone of a demolished building. Seeing an opportunity to make money, he books the talented amphibian to sing in a packed theater, but the stubborn beast refuses to perform for anyone else.
The debut of Michigan J. Frog is easily my favorite of the many legendary cartoons to come from the mind of Chuck Jones and the image of the frog singing “Hello, Ma Baby!” is one of the most iconic of the twentieth century.
After he kills two people in his latest heist, bank robber Ben Harper (Peter Graves) hides the stolen money in his daughter’s doll and instructs his two children to keep the location a secret when he’s taken to prison.
Ben briefly shares a cell with car thief Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), and before his execution, confides about the money, but does not reveal where it’s hidden. Unbeknownst to Ben or the police, Harry is a serial killer drifter who poses as an itinerant pastor.
After his release, Harry finds, woos, and marries Ben’s widow, Willa (Shelley Winters). When she discovers his motives, he kills her and threatens the children until they inadvertently reveal the location of the money.
The fleeing children take refuge with a local recluse, Rachel Cooper (Lilian Gish). After a tense standoff, Harry is arrested for his numerous crimes.
The only film directed by the great Charles Laughton, featuring first class performances from Mitchum, Winters, and Gish, was not a hit on its initial release, but has proven to be immensely influential. Harry Powell’s competing knuckle tattoos have been much parodied and become a cultural touchstone for a certain brand of nihilism.
Mitchum was in numerous other films, many of them very good, but none compare to the heights of genius he reached here. I’m pretty sure Shelley Winters invented the trope of the dowdy, feisty, somewhat unlikable yet sympathetic woman who dies just as we get to know her (see A Place in the Sun, Lolita, and The Poseidon Adventure). One of the most celebrated silent stars, Lilian Gish did the unthinkable and rebounded significantly thirty years after the introduction of sound, proving her immense talent and burnishing her reputation.
This is an intelligent, well-made film, infused with a sensibility years ahead of its release; one of the greatest sadnesses in film history is Laughton’s failure to establish a career behind the camera.
While at his New York apartment to retrieve his son’s kayak paddle, Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) meets a Girl (Marilyn Monroe) who lives in the apartment above. During their brief interactions, he fantasizes about a sexual relationship with the beautiful young woman.
Marilyn Monroe reeks of sex appeal and the scene where her dress billows up around her has seeped into our collective consciousness. Some Like it Hot (also directed by Billy Wilder) is a better movie, but, in this film, she’s more than a piece of the puzzle, she is the puzzle, and her enduring status as a sex symbol is due, in large part, to the success of this film.
Wilder lamented the Hays Code and conventional attitudes prevented him from making a proper adaptation of the George Axelrod play, where Richard and The Girl consummate their relationship. Despite relying on innuendo and keeping the main relationship chaste, this remains one of the sexiest films, demonstrating playful suggestion is often more evocative than reality. When The Girl tells Richard she keeps her underwear in the icebox to keep it cool, every man watching the film shivers with titillation.
1) Ordet
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.