Outcast of the Islands

Carol Reed, 1951, bw (9.0*)
One of the best adaptations of any Joseph Conrad novel, this is from his Almayer series, about a British merchant (Robert Morley) on a Malayan island paradise. In this tale, an unscrupulous white trader, Trevor Howard, falls in love with a beautiful native islander and basically sells his soul for money so he can entire her away. I and many others think that Howard gave his best performance here, as a weak anti-hero, but really as a typical, self-serving individual.

A terrific cast of veteran British actors includes (along with Morley and Howard), Ralph Richardson, Wilfred Hyde-White, and Wendy Hiller. Conrad had a way of using real action to explore and reveal the depths of one’s character (or a group), such as in this, Heart of Darkness, and The Nigger of the Narcissus. This was one of my favorite novels of his and Reed has done it justice.

There are some haunting images in this that one will never forget, especially some shot in a torrential tropical rainstorm. I would say this is a a must-see, overlooked classic, perhaps Reed’s best film. It received two BAFTA nominations, for best film and best British film.

This is an unjustly overlooked film, and has only been rated by 300 people at IMDB, while dumb, sophmoric comedies have over a hundred thousand. It's due to be released on DVD in 2012. Look for it.

Mostly noted for the noirish The Third man (1949, bw), Reed also directed the Oscar®-winning best picture Oliver! (1967), the musical based on Dickens’ novel, which was a birarre concept but it worked, except for a lead actor who couldn’t sing a lick, but Oscar-nominee Jack Wild was super as Artful Dodger, which led to his own tv show for kids, appropriately named H. R. Puff-n-Stuff. I recently reviewed Reed’s suspense thriller Odd Man Out (1947), with IRA gunman James Mason on the lam.

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The Lavender Hill Mob

Charles Crichton, 1951, bw (8.5*)
This is one of a line of wonderful Ealing Studios British comedies in classic b&w, the best of which starred Alec Guinness, such as the futuristic spoof of capitalism, The Man in the White Suit, in which a scientist invents an indestructible cloth; and The Ladykillers, remade with Tom Hanks, in which a scholarly gang of bank robbers rents a room in a boarding house from which to tunnel into a bank. Also, my favorite, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), a hilarious spoof of tontines in which one member becomes a serial killer in order to hasten his collecting the booty.

In The Lavender Hill Mob, Guinness heads a small group of criminals who plot to steal a truckload of gold buillion (he works on the shipments, so he's the inside man), then smuggle it in a very unique way, which of course, cannot be foolproof, this being a crime comedy.
The cast is one of those typically talented veteran British casts, headed by Stanley Holloway, a later Oscar®-winner for My Fair Lady; Guinness would later win for actor in The Bridge On the River Kwai. The only time they still make comedies like these is when they remake one of these. These each had something unique for their time and became archetypal spoof of whatever they tackled. The general theme with most of these is 'greedy people, even if well off, will even resort to murder to gain even more wealth, and they aren't always the sharpest tacks in the toolbox either'.

If you like the crime spoof comedies, be sure to check out the late Italian master Mario Monicelli's hilarious take on heist films Big Deal on Madonna St (1959) Italy, bw with a gang that severely lacked a mastermind, or really any type of mind. Monicelli died last year at 95, after working on over 100 films as either director or writer.

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Ace in the Hole

Billy Wilder, 1951, bw (8.2*)
Just another notch in the genius belt of director-screenwriter Billy Wilder. Though not one of his important films, it's still a small gem of a story, and based on the media saturation of the recent Chilean mining story, the journalism techniques it condemns are still in practice today, namely "maximize the story for ratings".

Washed up big city reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) ends up in Albuquerque with no real stories, when by chance he stumbles onto one, as local Leo Minosa gets trapped in a cave behind some ruins of cliff dwellings in a town of seven people in the desert. Douglas and his photographer are passing by on their way to a rattlesnake hunt, and Douglas sees a chance to milk a story all the way back to the big time.

Wilder accurately shows how just any human interest story becomes a literal circus in America, as hordes descend on the area when the story hits the press, including circus tents, rides, vendors, anyone out to make a buck, and of course the national media. Admittance to the ruins starts out free, and doubles each time they show the sign! Jan Sterling, as Leo's bored wife at the end of her patience, won a National Board award for actress, while Wilder received one of his 20 Oscar® nominations for the screenplay (he won six, 3 for screenplay, 2 for directing), and a directing award at Venice. This is another must see for his fans.

Here is our own article on the films of Billy Wilder, posted in 2008. He's one of my favorite directors, perhaps the favorite.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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The River

Jean Renoir, 1951 (7.5*)
The French master Jean Renoir discovered Ms. Rumer Godden's 1946 novel about living in India, The River, but couldn't find anyone to back the film as the story lacked the usual action elements of most western films about Asia. Eventually Kenneth McEldowney, a florist tycoon, who also loved the book, backed the film but they didn't have enough capital to hire big Hollywood actors (Renoir wanted Brando as the lead, but ended up with a non-actor war veteran who had actually lost a leg). The cast is actually part professional, part amateur. The book and film are really not about a strong plot (it centers on a young teenage girl's awkward coming of age), but are more like a documentary film on life along the Ganges, the river culture and lives along its banks; that and colonialist Britons trying to co-exist while basically occupying a foreign nation.

This was Renoir's first film in English, and first color film, released in 1951. As the son of the famous French impressionist painter, Auguste, he really laid on some beautiful, rich early Technicolor. Martin Scorsese was moved by this film at age 9 in the theater, and led the restoration effort, completed in 2004. The Criterion dvd edition is gorgeous. This is really the film's star, the glorious cinematography of a beautiful and colorful slice of Hindu culture. There are things westerners may learn about Indian culture from this film, such as the beautiful Festival of Lights. Renoir's own son Claude was director of cinematography, and though some of the techniques look a little dated, and the acting a little forced at times, this was the first color film shot in India, and as such, the movie takes on a more important societal role than mere entertainment.

For me the highlight of the Criterion dvd is the documentary done by the BBC, An Indian Affair, in which they returned to India with an 88 year old Rumer Godden to visit the locales where she grew up and that she hadn't seen in over half a century. Her own story is an amazing one, and she understood India better than any other western author. She apparently had an influence on Indian author Ruth Prawar Jhabvala as well, as it appears that a variation of Godden's own story was written by Jvabvala into her prize-winning novel Heat and Dust. This documentary is as well filmed as the Renoir movie (which is not as engrossing), and the dvd also features interfiews with Scorsese, Renoir, and producer McEldowney.

Part travelogue, part novel of a British girl's growing pains in a foreign land, The River remains an important early western look at the beauty and culture of India.

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The Red Badge of Courage

John Huston, 1951, bw (8.4*)
The master director once said this was his best film, but that was about 1951 and long before his illustrious career was done (he was yet to make The Man Who Would Be King as well), also perhaps before it was cut by the studio. There are some amazing Civil War battle sequences in this filming of the Stephen Crane classic novel, written when he was just 22, about a youth having a hard time adjusting to battle. A young looking Audie Murphy was a good choice, he was a decorated WW2 hero.

This is really some of Huston’s best black and white work, almost expressionistic at times with so much dust and smoke from battle that you can barely see what’s happening; soldiers appear like ghosts from the dust in front. Unfortunately, there was a major dispute at MGM internally over the making of this film, and it was whittled down from Huston’s 120 minutes to just 69 (and released as 2nd film on a double-bill!) and the studio later claimed to have destroyed the expurged footage when Huston wanted the complete cut. This is what happens when capitalists have control of art…

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An American in Paris

Dir: Vincente Minnelli, 1951 (8.5*)
Best Picture (AA, GG)

One of the best of the technicolor era musicals, making gorgeous and artistic use of the richness of color, finally available in a range allowing more artistic use of art direction, which works very well with Gene Kelly’s choreography in this film. Kelly plays an artist in Paris (not a dancer for once), but one who can obviously dance, or we might have seen Kirk Douglas (Van Gogh, get it?). Leslie Caron makes a very impressive screen debut as a terrific dancer at just age nineteen, it’s hard to believe she didn’t receive an Oscar nomination. Cyd (short for "sister") Charisse makes another star-making dance appearance in the title musical number, danced to the tone poem "American in Paris" by George Gershwin. This is the height of Minnelli’s creative direction, though he lost the directing Oscar. Six Oscars

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A Streetcar Named Desire

Dir: Elia Kazan, 1951, bw (8.9*)
AFI and Time Mag Top 100

Not for all tastes, but a terrifically acted version of the Tennessee Williams Pulitzer-winning play about aberrant, abusive relationships. Marlon Brando is searing as Stanley Kowalski, ironically the only main actor to not win an Oscar for his role in this. Janet Leigh as Blanche du Bois (Best Actress), moves in with sister Stella, Kowalski's wife played by Kim Hunter (Supp. Actress), and dates hopeful, and naive beau Karl Malden (Supp. Actor). This was a field day for the new school of 'method actors', while Leigh proved her Oscar® for Gone With the Wind was not a one-trick fluke. One of Kazan’s best, along with A Face in the Crowd, and On the Waterfront which won Marlon his first, and belated Oscar®. 4 Oscars®

Quote: "They told me to take the streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemetaries, go six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields." - Blanche

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The African Queen

John Huston, 1951 (7.6*)

AFI Top 100

Part adventure, part romance, this was a fun (but lightweight) jaunt through Africa on a steamboat run by drunkard Humphrey Bogart (his only Oscar® for acting), who rescues stranded and moralistic missionary Katherine Hepburn, who has better ideas for his steamboat: use it to blow up a German patrol boat on Lake Victoria.

This preposterous plot occurs during World War I. Apparently the whole cast and crew were struck with dysentary on location in Africa, but not Huston or Bogart, because, Hepburn claimed, "they were so loaded with alcohol that it killed all the bugs". 4 nominations, One Oscar®, Bogart's

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