Best Movies of 1948
The Usual ChoicesHamlet (Laurence Olivier)
Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
Red River (Howard Hawks)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
But how about...
Scott of the Antarctic (Charles Frend)
How noble can you get? Like Burke & Wills before him, the seeds of Robert Falcon Scott's doom lie in his unalterable self-belief: he knew best, and actually didn't. This film doesn't set out to examine the man, only his sacrifice (and those of his blindly-loyal men). While it is all very Baden-Powellish, the sheer enormity of the ordeal and stunning courage of all involved are very moving and very sad. And the fact that Fate deemed to play a practical joke on the expedition at the very pinnacle of their achievement makes the whole viewing experience unforgettable.
...and what about...
Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
This film must be on Martin Scorcese's Instant Replay list. Crime & Punishment American-Style, FoE is one of the greatest of all gangster movies, mainly because it is so much more. The usual grittiness and violence is mixed in with Shakespearean tragedy. John Garfield plays his good-man-gone-bad persona who manages to retrieve his soul only after others have paid the price. Dread and entrapment are marbled throughout the story, which gathers suspense as it moves unerringly along. Support cast is superlative (hosannas to Thomas Gomez, whose large shouting style belongs here) and NYC is beautifully dank.
...not to mention...
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock)
It is the custom amongst critics to dismiss this as a mere technical exercise which was pretty much an artistic failure. Wotalotta crap. As spatially restricted as Rear Window and Lifeboat, this is minimalist Hitch, giving us a work of dark Art with the least amount of manipulation (well...for him, anyway). He keeps us tense for 80 minutes and his moving camera, maintenance of real time and the butting-in to conversations helps to make the viewer as much a part of the ensemble cast (and therefore, the dinner party) as the hidden corpse. No other Hitchcock film attempts to prolong suspense to this degree - he usually gave the audience a break with a little humour. No laughs in this one.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (H.C. Potter)
I have tried and tried with this thing because Leslie Halliwell rates it so very highly...and I have officially given up. While it's not a piece of absolute crap, it is disappointingly mild. Y'know...not funny. Melvyn Douglas does his damned annoying sidekick routine (ref. Theodora Goes Wild); Myrna Loy isn't allowed to be anything except present; and, most harmful, Cary Grant hits the polar opposite of his Arsenic & Old Lace persona: this time he's TOO subdued and TOO reined in, to the point of sheer blandness (surely his character's surname can't be a coincidence). After viewing it (three times now), all I ever seem to remember is Wham Ham.
My Top 10 Films of 1948
 |
| "Behind me? That's called a woman." |
#02 A+ The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston)
#03 A Force of Evil (Polonsky)
#04 A Cry of the City (Siodmak)
#05 A Rope (Hitchcock)
#06 A Key Largo (Huston)
#07 A- Raw Deal (Mann)
#08 A- Scott of the Antarctic (Frend)
#09 A- The Search (Zinnemann)
#10 A- An Act of Murder (Gordon)
Overflow: More A- / B+ Films
#11 A- He Walked By Night (Werker; Mann)
#12 A- Oliver Twist (Lean)
#13 A- The Winslow Boy (Asquith)
#14 A- Quartet (Annakin et. al.)
#15 A- Red River (Hawks)
#16 A- Act of Violence (Zinnemann)
#17 A- Easter Parade (Walters)
#18 A- State of the Union (Capra)
#19 B+ Unfaithfully Yours (Sturges)
#20 B+ Blood On the Moon (Wise)
#21 B+ The Fallen Idol (Reed)
#22 B+ Sleeping Car to Trieste (Carstairs)
#23 B+ Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton)
#24 B+ The Street With No Name (Keighley)
#25 B+ Pitfall (De Toth)
#26 B+ Escape (Mankiewicz)
#27 B+ Bodyguard (Fleischer)
#29 B+ London Belongs to Me (Gilliat)
#30 B+ The Big Clock (Farrow)
#31 B+ Berlin Express (Tourneur)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B Call Northside 777 [docu-drama which expects us to believe that Authority has our best interests at heart]
> B Good Sam [aka It's a Wonderful Life (Without Clarence)]
> B The Red Shoes [yes, this is great Art; I'm just not a ballet kinda guy]
> B The Boy With Green Hair [Good? Bad? Profound? Dumb? Worthy of Wondering?]
> B The Dark Past [aka The Desperate Hours of Sigmund Freud]
> B Night Has a Thousand Eyes [a serviceable supernatural thriller which is a little creaky in the joints]
> B Letter from an Unknown Woman [Joan emotes beautifully and manages to keep this lifted above total schmaltz]
> B Johnny Belinda [Jane emotes beautifully and manages to keep this lifted above total schmaltz]
> B Portrait of Jennie [mystic fantasy / romantic ghost story / classy mush]
> B The Naked City [I know this is the granddaddy of modern detective shows, but the old grey mare...]
> B Sitting Pretty [Clifton as Mr Belvedere + a baby wearing a bowl of oatmeal, and it's nearly enough]
> B Another Part of the Forest [war profiteering, blackmail, lust and the KKK...so how come I kept nodding off?]
> B- Sleep, My Love [thriller which can't recover from the double wet-blanket of its two male leads]
> B- Road House [gritty and soapy and unimpressive; except for Richard Widmark of course]
> B- The Guinea Pig / The Outsider [starts off as a class commentary but becomes sentimental slop]
> B- Moonrise [WOW! first 10 minutes, then meh; protagonist needs to be John Garfield but very isn't]
> B- Apartment for Peggy [well-meaning twaddle with an incongruous suicide subplot]
> B- The Paleface [Bob Hope was better when he just stood up and told Nixon jokes written by other people]
> B- The Snake Pit [apparently, the road to mental health is subservience... but first be a woman]
> B- A Foreign Affair [well regarded, I expected more, but kept seeing and hearing less]
> C Miss Tatlock's Millions [a screwball comedy with no screwball comedians]
> C Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House [A Personal Unmentionable]
> C Elizabeth of Ladymead [the same plot repeated 4 times, losing more & more interest with each rerun]
> D Enchantment [over-ripe sentimental slop]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1948 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Against the Wind (Crichton); Blanche Fury (Allegret); Broken Journey (Annakin); Daybreak (Bennett); Hollow Triumph / The Scar (Sekely); I Walk Alone (Haskin); June Bride (Windust); Miranda (Annakin); No Room at the Inn (Birt); The Paradine Case (Hitchcock); The Pirate (Minnelli); Ruthless (Ulmer); Secret Beyond the Door (Lang); ; So Dear to My Heart (Schuster); So Evil My Love (Allen); Sorry, Wrong Number (Litvak); Spring in Park Lane (Wilcox); Summer Holiday (Mamoulian); This was a Woman (Whelan); The Three Musketeers (Sidney); The Three Weird Sisters (Birt); The Time of Your Life (Potter); To the Ends of the Earth (Stevenson); Wake of the Red Witch (Ludwig); A Woman’s Vengeance (Korda); Yellow Sky (Wellman)
Best Performances of 1948
Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Montgomery Clift in The Search
Joan Fontaine in Letter From an Unknown Woman
Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit
Walter Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Laurence Olivier in Hamlet
Clifton Webb in Sitting Pretty
Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda
But how about...
Cathy O'Donnell in They Live By Night
Usually cast as the wholly-adoring girl of a troubled man (The Best Years of Our Lives; Side Street; Detective Story), TLbN was the first chance for Cathy to be the one in charge. And does she eat it up! Unlike Shelley Duvall playing the same role in the 1974 remake Thieves Like Us, Cathy manages her man from beginning to tragic end. Luring him with fake indifference, nailing him with a steel-eyed stare and directing him with clipped comebacks, she is the one holding the strings. Sure, Farley Granger was born to be manipulated, but the power of Cathy's performance never gives him a break. Even her tears at the end may only be for the opportunity lost. Greatly underrated.
...and what about...
Sonia Dresdel in The Fallen Idol
Harridan. Harpy. Hag. Haggard and hard, Sonia is quartz on legs, replacing affection with domination. One of the great villains (from a child's point of view, which is how Carol Reed has filmed this), she is constantly at the little boy, venting her anguish through her supervision of him. So much glee beams across her face when she catches the kid in a lie, that it's obviously her version of fulfillment. Reed's angled camera means that we are regularly looking up at her as she spits out her latest command. While the adult knows that she is emotionally disturbed, the child in us sees only her love of control and cruelty. A masterfully frightening performance.
...not to mention...
John Wayne & Montgomery Clift in Red River
John Ford is reported to have said that he didn't realise that John Wayne could act until he saw his performance in Red River. Pairing up Wayne with newbie Monty (who was the first of the modern "method" movie actors) must have been considered questionable, but somehow it was a mutually-beneficial partnership. Ford was right: this was the first time that Wayne was more than just presence (look and listen when he says the ultimate cliched line, "I'm gonna kill you"), and for only the second time (first: Angel and the Badman with Gail Russell), his performance is dependent upon another actor. Monty combines sensitivity with toughness (he was usually just sensitive), challenging / daring Wayne to let go and do exactly the same thing. Ignoring the silly, mocking finale, this John & Monty pairing is a great movie bromance. And kudos to Howard Hawks who obviously fanned the flames.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Lauren Bacall in Key Largo
She is WRETCHED in this, and I have never understood how her director or her husband allowed it to pass. Too much hand-wringing and gutless kowtowing to the men. And when Lauren is given a showy scene (like scratching into Edward G Robinson's face) she goes at it like she's dusting ornaments. Her performance is so bad that it threatens to sink the movie on a couple of occasions, but is salvaged (partially obliterated) by Huston's build-up of the biggies (hurricane; ocean shoot-out) and quirky little one-offs that stick in your mind (Edward G. in the bath; mummified lady smoking). Genuinely ghastly, and Bacall's last with Bogie.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1948
 |
| "Yes, my midget twin brother has overdone the solarium again." |
#02 Cathy O'Donnell (They Live By Night)
#03 Edward G. Robinson (Key Largo)
#04 Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
#05 John Garfield (Force of Evil)
#06 Ann Sheridan (Good Sam)
#07 Fredric March (An Act of Murder)
#08 Montgomery Clift (The Search)
#09 Mary Astor (Act of Violence)
#10 John Wayne & Montgomery Clift (Red River)
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Sonia Dresdel (The Fallen Idol)
#12 Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)
#13 Alec Guinness (Oliver Twist)
#14 Clifton Webb (Sitting Pretty)
#15 Henry Fonda (Fort Apache)
#16 Robert Newton (Oliver Twist)
#17 Rex Harrison (Unfaithfully Yours)
#18 Robert Mitchum (Blood On the Moon)
#19 Ralph Richardson (The Fallen Idol)
#20 Joan Fontaine (Letter from an Unknown Woman)
#21 Anton Walbrook (The Red Shoes)
#22 Robert Donat (The Winslow Boy)
#23 Richard Widmark (Road House)
#24 Nina Foch (The Dark Past)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit [how come she's the only mental patient who knows how to apply makeup?]
> Laurence Olivier in Hamlet [well-enunciated; nice leaping; I vote for 'To Be']
> Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number [pretty good, but from Barbara I expect pretty great]
> Charles Laughton in The Big Clock [Ham Alert...and please, Charlie, leave your moustache alone]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1948 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray)
SILVER: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
BRONZE: Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: John Garfield (Force of Evil)
SILVER: Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
BRONZE: Fredric March (An Act of Murder)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Cathy O'Donnell (They Live By Night)
SILVER: Ann Sheridan (Good Sam)
BRONZE: Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
SILVER: Edward G. Robinson (Key Largo)
BRONZE: Robert Newton (Oliver Twist)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Mary Astor (Act of Violence)
SILVER: Sonia Dresdel (The Fallen Idol)
BRONZE: Nina Foch (The Dark Past)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: John Wayne & Montgomery Clift (Red River)
SILVER: Abbott & Costello (Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein)
BRONZE: Dennis O'Keefe & Claire Trevor & Marsha Hunt (Raw Deal)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Ivan Jandl (The Search)
SILVER: John Howard Davies (Oliver Twist)
BRONZE: Bobby Henrey (The Fallen Idol)
The Alternate Razzies for 1948 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Enchantment (Irving Reis)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
John Lund (Miss Tatlock's Millions)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Lauren Bacall (Key Largo)
