5 Favorite Films of the 1950s Blogathon

In celebration of National Classic Movie Day, we join the 5 Favorite Films of the 1950s Blogathon hosted by Classic Film & TV Café.

To pick five favorite films is akin to limiting oneself to only a few items on a buffet when you really want to eat everything.  So I won't suggest these are my only favorites, but I chose them because they represent something about that "mid-century" decade known for conformity and perhaps complacency, when really a lot more was going on under the surface, even though two of them are musicals, and two feature the loveliest new faces of the decade who would come to be icons--Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

Even in a delightful romantic comedy, Roman Holiday (1953) here, we get a glimpse of post-war Europe, of Rome, "The Eternal City" that had suffered under a fascist dictator, had endured the chaos and destruction of war in its villages, and yet mustered that, now tired, elegance of its monarchal past (and called out some real-life royals to play bit parts and wear their jewels).  To the mix, we add a spritely modern princess who must balance her "untouchable" grace with a mission to "improve trade relations," and an American journalist whose cynicism takes a dive when his mission turns from exposing her to protecting her.

We linger on the post-war world again, this time in the U.S., with our next two films.  First, White Christmas (1954) here, and then It's Always Fair Weather (1955) here.  White Christmas, a lighthearted musical, still conveys home truths about the postwar world and the adjustment of veterans--even after a decade--to fit in with civilian life.  This, and in It's Always Fair Weather show the comradeship of service buddies who find themselves husbands and fathers, trudging toward a new battle of finding fulfillment and success in an ever-stranger new world.  They are no longer the young, innocent, and carefree recruits who gambled their lives on a better world.  They won--the war and their own survival in it--but are they in a better world?

The theme is carried further with No Down Payment (1957) here, where the ex-servicemen grapple with suburbia and new frontiers of corporate opportunity and enslavement, of fitting in and never fitting in, and losing precious time.

Rear Window (1954) here shows another ex-vet whose once exciting life (as James Stewart and former Air Corps buddy Wendell Corey reminisce) has been reduced to four walls and a peek at his neighbors--and the sinister world he discovers there.  I also like it because it's glamorous, sexy, and has one of the best sets in the movies.

Have a look at the other great blogs participating in 5 Favorite Films of the 1950s Blogathon celebrating National Classic Movie Day.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.

Witness to Murder (1954)

“Witness to Murder” (1954) presents Barbara Stanwyck in the role of an intelligent woman no one believes.

Unlike the adventure in “Rear Window”, also made in the same year, where James Stewart slowly comes to the suspicion of a murder committed and must puzzle out the proof, “Witness to Murder” begins in all film noir garish glory, with a clap of thunder, a dark and stormy night, and the sight of a woman being strangled just as soon as we get the main titles out of the way. There is no doubt about the murder being committed or that George Sanders is the murderer. The story is about how Stanwyck cannot convince the police about what she saw.

Her role is a bit of a departure from the typical 1950s hysterical woman roles (though she does have a brief fling at raising her voice at the cops which puts her in a hospital psychiatric ward for observation). Her character is a single professional woman, an artist and interior decorator. She is sensible, intelligent, has a fetching wardrobe of flattering full skirts and tailored jackets, which like her character are not ostentatious in any way but both chic and reserved. She is a quiet person, contained, who though she dines alone at drugstore counters, seems content in her quiet life. She listens to classical music when she putters alone at home. We are told a man she loved died in the war, but she gives no indication that she is looking for a replacement.

We see her at work, comfortable at her drawing table. She has a drawing table in her apartment as well, and her expressionistic paintings hang on the wall, passionate and somewhat dark. The doctor who later interrogates her will infer that they reflect psychosis. People watching this film in 1954 must have been deterred by it from ever seeking help from either the police or from mental health professionals, so callously is she treated.

Her world turns upside down when she sees the murder. World weary Gary Merrill is the responding police lieutenant who investigates, and finding nothing, writes Miss Stanwyck off as a woman who had a bad dream. Her indignation spurs her to do a little of her own investigating, and with each new call to Merrill to report more information, she is told in pleasant, but always condescending tones that she is obsessed over nothing. He spends much of movie telling her to just take it easy.

George Sanders plays the villain with such suave and clever and contrived innocence that perhaps if we had not seen him commit the crime at the beginning of the movie, we would not believe her either. As an ingenious former Nazi who was “de-nazified in court” and emigrated to the US after the war, we might look for some explanation as to why his speech sounds more Oxford than Leipzig. Nevertheless, he is so quick and crafty baiting Miss Stanwyck, reveling that no one believes her, and paints her as a looney before the police.

It is interesting that Merrill’s character, in relating Sanders’ Nazi history to Stanwyck, does it in such a ho-hum manner. This is, I think, not a reflection on Merrill’s abilities as an actor as much as it reflects society of the early 1950s. We see this even in the brilliant “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961) where the post-war years shifted from the righteous calls for revenge of the war years to the let’s just move on with our lives attitudes that let so many Nazis escape. It was impossible to punish them all, anyway. Even by 1954, the war was old news.

When Merrill bluntly comments on Stanwyck’s fiancé never making it back from his last bomber mission and she seems to slightly flinch in distress, he remarks laconically, “Sorry. I didn’t know it still hurt.” Apparently, she was supposed have gotten over that a long time ago.

When Sanders at the end of the film reveals his vitriolic, hate-filled ubermenschen philosophy in a soapbox rant, it is almost comic. How frightening his rage would have appeared in a 1940s film. Now only ten years later it seems archaic and quaint. We have a short attention span. We have left the lessons of war far behind us. Don’t believe a Nazi is dangerous because he writes books which map out evil intentions. Don’t believe a woman crying murder. Neither is plausible.

The role is a good one for Barbara Stanwyck, but it is unfortunate that more was not made of her character’s sensibilities and her artistic talents. In one scene we see her absentmindedly sketching the murder at her drawing board as if to come to terms with the horrible act. In another scene she remarks to Merrill about Sanders’ face, “The smile and the eyes don’t go together. They look at you, but they don’t see you.” It’s something an artist would notice. Instead of playing up her character’s approach to the crime as an observant artist, the script merely emphasizes that all her suspicions are based only on women’s intuition, which of course the police scoff at, and Sanders abuses.

We might expect an eventual romance between Merrill and Stanwyck, because they begin to see each other socially, but there doesn’t appear to be much chemistry between them. More than his disbelief in her accusations, which is pardonable without concrete proof, is the almost overbearing condescension of his attitude towards her emotional and mental state. Finally, this is culminated in her being sent to a psychiatric ward for observation, where the film takes a bizarre turn, suddenly becoming “Ladies They Talk About” (1933). (One of her fellow inmates, played by Adeline De Walt Reynolds, will be discussed on Thursday.)

Another odd twist is the chase scene at the end, prompted by a severe policewoman who calls for onlookers to stop Stanwyck from running away because she is insane. She knows that Stanwyck is insane because George Sanders told her so. Everybody believes George Sanders.

Miss Stanwyck attempts to escape up a construction site with Sanders hot on her heels, along with a street crowd. Eventually Merrill shows up to help lift her off a ledge. Since Stanwyck enjoyed performing her own stunts, perhaps for her this fun bit made up for the weaknesses of the story.

Very much a film of its day, it accurately sloughs off the last of the World War II sense of urgency and commitment to seek justice. It makes reference to television (and perhaps radio) when Merrill’s partner playfully hums the well-known opening notes to the “Dragnet” theme. The African-American actress Juanita Moore, who would win an Academy Award nomination for her role in “Imitation of Life” (1959), appearing here as one of the psychiatric ward patients, is referred in the credits only as “Negress.”

Sometimes it actually is better to just move on and away from such as this. But first you have to look back.

James Stewart 100th Anniversary

Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Stewart. TCM will be showing several of his films. Though the stammering Boy Scout of his earlier films like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) etched out for Stewart a career persona like none other at the time, one of the most interesting aspects to his career is how he aged.

When Mr. Stewart came to Hollywood it might have been clear what he was not, but not so clear on what he was. His all-American lanky “aw shucks” personality was unlike that of perennial hero Gary Cooper, even if Cooper wore that mantle first. Stewart lacked the sexuality of Clark Gable, and Errol Flynn. And though his friend Henry Fonda may have given him a run for his money in the slapstick department, and in the serious-young-man-fighting-against-the-odds department, Stewart was still different.

Though he could appear cynical and witty, such as in the role which won him his Academy Award, “The Philadelphia Story” (1940) it was ultimately his vulnerability that may have given him a career longer and more productive than most.

Consider how James Stewart’s films of the 1950s stand out from his earlier movies. What may have begun in the post-war “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946), a heartwarming movie that actually spent most of the film showing a man becoming completely unhinged, ultimately led to “Rear Window” (1954), and the penultimate, “Vertigo” (1958).

In a decade when matinee idols Gable, Cooper, Flynn, and Tyrone Power were becoming puffy, flabby, and aging beyond their years, James Stewart, though possessed of a hairpiece and a hearing aid, appeared more vital. His appearance was not of a young man, yet he had reached a stage where his maturity suited him and gave him an authority he did not possess as a lanky 30-year old. By the time he did “Vertigo”, Mr. Stewart was 50 years old and still playing a romantic lead, unusual for the time. By the 1960s he may have been relegated to character parts, but even these were still lead roles, such as “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962) and “This Rare Breed” (1966).

James Stewart aged well, and more importantly, continued to grow emotionally. He was able to tap into sick fear and animal rage, and poignant tenderness far better than he could at 30, and far better than those other actors mentioned ever could. He played comedy and drama with equal skill. He was believable in westerns, which not all actors plunked into them were. More than most actors of the day, he made growing up and growing old something to admire.

Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window (1954) is shot on one of the most intricate sets ever created for film, and is so much fun I’m surprised someone hasn’t re-created it as a theme park. The set itself, a courtyard showing the backs of several multi-level apartment buildings, is its own character in the film. It has moods and secrets.

Director Alfred Hitchcock allows the audience to become, much as L.B. Jeffries, played by James Stewart has become, a voyeur sneaking glances into the private worlds of his neighbors. Their private worlds are not just the tangle of fire escapes and studio apartments and kitchenettes, but the rejection and disappointment, the loneliness and troubles they face.

In a swift opening shot we see the backdrop of apartments out Jeffries’ windows, his wheelchair and leg cast, his smashed cameras and photographs, and a stack of Life magazines which tell us he is a man of action, and already a sort of voyeur as a professional photographer. The first shot we see of Grace Kelly, who plays his girlfriend Lisa, is stunning, with an almost slow-motion feeling of her leaning over the camera and leaning over him for a kiss while he is sleeping. We soon learn, despite this sensual encounter, that there is trouble between them. She is trying to change him into something he is not; and he does not want to be tied down in marriage.

The dialogue in the film, written by John Michael Hayes is reflective, sometimes overlapping, deceptively simple and spare. There is as much conveyed in a camera glance into one of the apartments, or a facial expression from James Stewart as is revealed through the spoken word, though the insurance company nurse, played by Thelma Ritter, gets some good lines.

“We’ve become a race of peeping Toms,” she says, and one wonders what her character would think of today’s camera cell phones.

She senses impending trouble for Stewart, disapproving of his spying on his neighbors, including the nubile dancer dubbed “Miss Torso,” with his telephoto lens, and when he scoffs at her foreboding, she tells him she also predicted the stock market crash of 1929 based on her observations of her patient, an executive at General Motors.

“Kidney ailment they said. Nerves, I said. And I asked myself, what’s General Motors got to be nervous about? Over production, I says. Collapse. When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go.”

When the lonely woman who lives by herself, dubbed Miss Lonelyhearts, pretends to entertain in a candlelight dinner for two, she raises her glass of wine, as Stewart, wryly and condescendingly observing her, raises his own glass and toasts her, playing her imaginary partner from a distance. We hear street sounds, car horns and sirens, the distant muffled voices of the neighbors, and music as if from a distant radio.

When he begins to suspect his neighbor Thorwald, played by Raymond Burr, of killing his invalid wife, Jeffries’ boredom with his neighbors and his sarcasm toward them changes. He becomes fascinated, and with the help of Kelly and Ritter, tries to prove to his detective friend that a murder even happened. His relationship with Kelly changes as well, and his face lights up with admiration as she reports back on her spying attempt to get information. The audience becomes conspirators, as if, like children, excitedly ringing doorbells and then running away, in an attempt to get the goods on the murderer from a safe distance. In the end, however, his apartment is not Stewart’s haven anymore than his neighbors’ apartments are theirs. Thorwald comes to get him, and Stewart’s only protection is the flash device on his camera, where he pops in the bulbs one at a time into the enormous flash reflector, like a long-ago soldier using a percussion musket that can be fired only once before it must be reloaded each time.

For a guy who spends the entire film in his jammies in a wheelchair, James Stewart has one of the most interesting roles of his career, in part due to his reactions displaying his changing attitudes towards his neighbors. He and Thelma Ritter disgustedly watch a distasteful scene of Miss Lonelyhearts fending off an aggressive date, and later fear her attempted suicide. His attitude towards this neighbor, and the others, has moved from bored disinterest, to fascination, to compassion. Her suicide attempt is stopped suddenly by the rapture she feels at the music coming from the bachelor composer’s apartment (played by Ross Bagdasarian, who later gave us Alvin and the Chipmunks).

Lisa, sneaking into Thorwald’s apartment is also transfixed by the music, but the music that saved Miss Lonelyhearts is Lisa’s doom. Thorwald catches her, and Stewart is trapped by his helplessness, in a black hole of panic when Lisa screams and the lights are turned out. After she is rescued by the police, Stewart broods on his own danger when he knows Thorwald knows he has been watching, and we see the eerie glow of a cigarette in Thorwald’s darkened apartment.

The magnificent set, so intricate despite appearing so ordinary, gives us all these moments. Rear Window is perhaps one of Hitchcock’s best-told stories of murder and suspense because it is played out in such an ordinary setting, and at times with ironic humor. That a grisly murder could happen under such every day circumstances and missed by all the neighbors is creepy. The aura of normality is deceptive, which is a creepy thought by itself.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.