Friday Night at the Movies: Happy Days! Movies of the Fifties

Tonight I'm taking advantage of the privilege extended me by my fellow Movieteers to look back on the decade I was born, the 1950's.  The Fifties have an unenviable reputation among those born later as a time of rigid conformity, stultifying suburban sameness, and Cold War paranoia.  While that reputation is in many respects deserved, the movie scene was SPECTACULAR!

Perhaps no other decade offers such a varied menu of movie riches.  The Fifties are like a Grand Central Station for movie genres and trends.  It featured the emergence of some of the most beautiful women ever on film:  Bardot, Loren, Monroe, Grace Kelly.  It gave us some of the greatest directors ever -- Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut -- and others in their prime, like Kurosawa and Hitchcock.  It's a decade to see the last great flowering of the Hollywood studio system, a glimpse of newer styles, and one of the greatest emergences of foreign films ever.

Follow below the fold for a trip back to the Fifties.  You'll be amazed at what you find.

I'll begin with my favorite movie of the decade (a surprisingly hard choice):  All About Eve (1950).  It may be the perfect black-and-white movie.  A script that's among the best ever written, Bette Davis' iconic performance and George Sanders' letter-perfect Addison De Witt.  The ensemble cast is outstanding, aside from a wooden Hugh Marlowe and a comically overacting Anne Baxter.  Her overacting just adds to the sardonic wit of the story, though.

By contrast, occam's hatchet chose as a favorite North by Northwest (1959), which Ernest Lehman tried to make "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures."  Hitch himself wanted to make something light-hearted and fun, free of the symbolism of earlier efforts like Vertigo.  

Land of Enchantment and annetteboardman both offered several favorites (see below), but there was one they had in common: Some Like It Hot (59).  The Billy Wilder masterpiece often called the greatest comedy ever is well described by annetteboardman:  "... This is one of the great Hollywood films.  It is 'just' a delightful romp, more sophisticated in retrospect than it might have appeared to the general audience at the time.  'Nobody's perfect!'  One of the greatest last lines of any film, ever!"

The Fifties was dominated by the Hollywood studio system, which was showing some strain but was still in its prime.  Great efforts like Sunset Boulevard (50), The African Queen (51), From Here to Eternity (53), Witness for the Prosecution (57) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (58) show the versatility, quality, and health of old Hollywood.

Studio genre pictures were also in full flower.  Epics like The Ten Commandments (56), The Bridge on the River Kwai (57) and Ben-Hur (59) reached their greatest extent, though the number of epic clinkers was embarrassingly large.  Some of the iconic Westerns appeared in the decade, like High Noon (52),  Shane (53) and The Searchers (56).  The fifties came near the end of the golden age of musicals, offering An American in Paris (51), Singin' in the Rain (52), Oklahoma (55), The King and I (56), and Gigi (58).

The Fifties were also the golden years of Alfred Hitchcock, whom many connoisseurs consider the greatest movie director ever.  Aside from North by Northwest, in the fifties he also made Rear Window (54), Dial M for Murder (54), To Catch a Thief (55) and Vertigo (58).  Few directors anywhere at any time could claim such a decade.

Despite the predominance of the studio system in the Fifties intimations of a new kind of moviemaking began to appear, thanks mainly to two actors:  Marlon Brando and James Dean.  Brando changed moviemaking forever early in the decade with A Streetcar Named Desire (52) and On the Waterfront.  Brando, of course, had plenty of help with these two classics, but his acting style hit movies like Elvis' hips changed music a few years later.  Dean, of course, flashed bright and brief, mainly in Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden (both 55).  Dean's pouty youthful beauty and angst was perfectly pitched for the time, and his tragic death captured that persona in amber for the ages.  Even beyond Brando and Dean, a new style of personalized, intimate films had its first great example with Marty (55).

The real distinction of the Fifties in movies, though, was probably the reawakening of filmmaking in countries destroyed by the War.  Masters around the world appeared and gave us an embarrassment of riches.  Akira Kurosawa, whose first great films appeared in the Forties, did much of his best work in the Fifties, including Rashomon (50), Seven Samurai (54), and Throne of Blood (58).  Federico Fellini gave us his first great movies with La Strada (54) and Nights of Cabiria (57).  Ingmar Bergman appeared with Wild Strawberries (55) and The Seventh Seal (57).  Francois Truffaut even peeked in on the decade with The 400 Blows (59).  Other works of genius appeared throughout the world -- my favorite perhaps is Black Orpheus (59) from Brazil.

Some of our intrepid movieteers have contributed their own favorites from this decade:

Occams hatchet: "East of Eden, North by Northwest (my nominee for Best Movie of the Decade), The African Queen, The Bridge on the River Kwai."  His nominee for Best Worst Movie of the 50's:  The Blob with Steve McQueen.  (Mine is the 1959 classic I Want to Live! with Susan Hayward on Death Row.)

Land of Enchantment:

Without reflection or looking much of anything up, I'm thinking:
On the Waterfront
Rebel Without a Cause
Jailhouse Rock
Salt of the Earth
Some Like it Hot (can't leave Marilyn out of the 50s!!!)

Not a bad decade for musicals either.  I like Gigi and South Pacific, amongst others.  And there's gotta be some Hitchcock.  How 'bout North by Northwest or Vertigo?  Those would be my picks.

Annetteboardman, ever the academic and providing very useful explication:

My favourites from the decade:
Singin' in the Rain (the restored version shows the brilliant candy colour that was featured in the original production), 1952
      This was not even nominated for Best Picture (can you believe it?) but it is perhaps the most engaging portrayal of early Hollywood ever put to film.  The performances (Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor, and Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont -- the latter was at least nominated) were spectacular, and all of these performances were Oscar-worthy, as was that of the studio head played by Millard Mitchell.

The Lavender Hill Mob, 1952
      The best of the Ealing comedies, and featuring an Oscar-nominated performance by Alec Guinness.  He is brilliant, the film is brilliant (who doesn't love the spectacular comedy of this caper film), and the great twist ending!  I have an Eiffel tower model in memory of the film.

The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957
      This is the one that Alec Guinness won his Oscar for.  By this time he had moved from comedy to drama, and what a spectacular role this was for him.  The film featured other great performances, but it was the script, the scope, and the cinematography (and the music), as well as the performances, that make this one of the finest war films ever made.  Yes, there are moments of racism here, but it was a film made about a horrible event in WWII, released only 12 years after the war.  Stunning film.

Twelve Angry Men, 1957
      Twelve really fine performances and a great script.  Still a fine play, indeed.

Some Like it Hot, 1959
      Whee!  Funny that three of my five films are comedies.  I think the fact that many of the great films of the decade are westerns might have something to do with my love of comedies from this decade.  And this is one of the great Hollywood films.  It is "just" a delightful romp, more sophisticated in retrospect than it might have appeared to the general audience at the time.  "Nobody's perfect!"  One of the greatest last lines of any film, ever!

Looking back on the Fifties, the breadth of quality, the varied genres, the evolution of movie styles and the international contributions are almost unparalleled in movie history.  Looking back, the Fifties were about a lot more than Leave It to Beaver and the Fonz.

Give us your fond remembrances and your own favorites.  And if you have any hot drive-in stories, do tell!