[10] James Dean received the first posthumous acting nomination from the Academy Awards for his performance as the troubled Cal in East of Eden, his first major film role. (He would die tragically just a few months after the film was released.) It’s a riveting performance, one of the most vulnerable and moving I’ve ever seen. The film, directed with style and elegance by Elia …
[9] It could just be my hillbilly roots, but I get a kick out of this corny but highly entertaining romp from the director of Singin’ in the Rain. A kind-hearted woman (Jane Powell) impulsively marries a mountain man (the booming Howard Keel) but gets more than she bargained for when he introduces his six brothers in the squalor of their remote farm house. Powell …
[9] Montgomery Clift (Red River, The Heiress) stars as a poor young man who takes a job at his rich uncle’s garment factory where he falls in love with a coworker played by Shelley Winters. Things become complicated when Clift is introduced to an alluring young socialite played by Elizabeth Taylor in her first ‘adult’ role. Just as Clift is ready to commit to Taylor …
[9] Charm can take a movie a long, long way. With Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in their only film together, The African Queen goes the distance. She’s Rosie, the prudish widow of a missionary, and he’s Charlie, the rough-around-the-edges steamboat captain. Director John Huston puts them in a small boat together and lets the sparks fly. We need only a simple plot to drive …
[10] In this darkly comic noir masterpiece from Billy Wilder, a struggling Hollywood screenwriter (William Holden) moves in with a delusional silent film star named Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) who wants him to write the script for her big comeback. But when the writer strikes up a relationship with a younger woman (Nancy Olson), the eccentric diva goes dangerously insane with envy. Sunset Boulevard is …
[10] Bette Davis revived her sagging career and writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz continued an Oscar streak with All About Eve. Davis stars as Margo Channing, an aging broadway star who takes a sympathetic, aspiring ingenue under her wing. Anne Baxter plays the ingenue and title character, Eve Harrigton. Over the course of the film, Eve ingratiates herself to Margo’s friends and acquaintances, who include a …
[9] Three desperate men scrape together everything they can muster to go prospecting for gold and discover not just riches, but the destructive greed that comes with them. This is one of John Huston’s finest works, a male bonding adventure that doubles as a dark morality tale. Humphrey Bogart is terrific in the leading role, especially when his character begins turning into the monster of …
[9] Everybody comes to Rick’s, and everyone loves Casablanca. What’s not to like? Humphrey Bogart turns in a commanding performance as Rick, the reluctant American exile who runs a popular nightclub in North Africa during early World War II. He says he sticks his neck out for no one, but he’s really just a softy who had his heart broken by Ingrid Bergman several years …
[10] William Wyler’s portrait of an English family weathering the darkest hours of World War II is a moving drama about hope and persistence. There’s a quiet strength and noble resolve about the characters in this movie that I find utterly disarming. Wyler shows admirable restraint in the direction and storytelling, sidestepping any opportunity to sensationalize the material. One of the greatest scenes in the …
[10] William Dieterle’s adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benet’s The Devil and Daniel Webster is a winning combination of rustic Americana and dark fantasy. A cautionary tale of greed and power, the narrative centers around the character of Jabez Stone (James Craig), a down-on-his-luck farmer who is barely able to support his family in 1840s New Hampshire. When the nefarious Mr. Scratch (Walter Houston) appears during …
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