This is especially true of films because it attracts far too many fans – people who can’t tell the difference between what they love - a word that has no place in any critical discussion – and what is objectively and demonstrably good. Yes, I use the word objectively because there are such things as aesthetic standards, a common ground where subjective tastes can agree based on the assumption that a work of art has a value that is not absolute but that is separate from anyone’s judgement. This concept has become rather important now that cancel culture is on the prowl, which applies irrelevant standards of morality on things that are, that must be, beyond such standards. Unless everyone can agree on this, critical appreciation is impossible.
There is an almost insatiable demand for assessments. Every year lists are compiled and published that try to satisfy the demand for the impossible – indisputable greatness, the final settlement of argument over the finest, the biggest, and the best. Why this must be so is a study – the subject of a dissertation – unto itself. But a friend submitted one such list: “75 Years of Movies: The Defining Film of Each Year From 1945-2019”.
My first quibble with the list is – its author is never identified. But as I went down the list, I began to see why. “Through the power of filmmaking,” the anonymous author wrote, “Hollywood has created some of our most powerful memories, social trends, and pure entertainment. All of these classic films — and those soon to be known as — defined the year in which they were released, creating a decades long filmography of triumphant artistry.” I would first correct the author’s misperception of Hollywood. It is the world’s foremost manufacturer of film entertainment. That’s all it ever wanted to be. Even at their best, Hollywood films stay well within the boundaries of genres: Westerns, Musicals, Gangsters films, Suspense, Horror, Comedies. When they are good, they are incomparable. But they are also, despite numerous attempts, unrepeatable. Hollywood never seemed to figure out the formula for making a successful entertainment – which explains why 95 % of their attempts are failures. It isn’t easy to make a truly entertaining film.
So it isn’t that difficult, looking down the lists of Hollywood films year by year, to separate the hits from the misses. The list my friend sent me isn’t authoritative – it’s arbitrary. What follows is my corrected list, based on the same criteria. I’ll start with the first decade.
1945 Anonymous’s choice: The Long Weekend. Allowing for some unintended allegorical subtext, how does the recovery of a man from alcoholism “define” 1945?
My choice: The Clock. Directed by Vincent Minnelli, starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker. A soldier on a two-day pass meets a secretary in Pennsylvania Station. At the end of those two days they are in love and she sees him off on the train that’s taking him off to war. (Though released seventeen days after VE Day, the war in the Pacific lasted another three months.)
1946 Anonymous’s choice: It’s a Wonderful Life. A fantasy. Just what Frank Capra thought – mistakenly – America wanted. A box office failure, it was forgotten for decades and the film’s copyright was allowed to lapse to the public domain. This is why there are so many execrable prints floating around. It was rediscovered in the 1970s and is now inescapable at Christmas time.
My choice: The Best Years of Our Lives. The war’s aftermath. Three men return to the same town after demobilization experience the joys and frustrations of coming home. Powerful and moving.
1947 Anonymous’s choice: Gentleman’s Agreement. An investigative journalist goes undercover posing as a Jew to find out if there’s any anti-Semitism going on. The inadvertent moral of the story, after the reporter comes out from undercover, is “thank God I’m not a Jew!”
My Choice: The Lady from Shanghai. Orson Welles only six years since Citizen Kane trying to convince producers that he could be obedient and make money for them. Despite bringing the film in on time and under budget, Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, didn’t like Welles’s rough cut and ordered changes. Cohn’s changes didn’t improve the film, and it flopped at the box office. One can still see greatness in it, even if the script was based on a pulp novel.
1948 Anonymous’s choice: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I agree with Anonymous this once. Honorable mention to Max Ophuls’s Letter from an Unknown Woman and William Dieterle’s Portrait of Jennie.
1949 Anonymous’s choice: The Third Man. An excellent film, but it’s 95% British.
My Choice: Adam’s Rib. George Cukor’s courtroom drama/comedy starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Sparklingly fine.
1950 Anonymous’s choice: Sunset Boulevard. Billy Wilder’s film is good clean fun, but it doesn’t explain the motivation behind the central relationship. Wonderful to see Stroheim and Buster Keaton playing silent film relics living out their last days with a batty former starlet.
My choice: The Gunfighter. The real anti-Western, since it goes against type and shows us people behaving realistically. A middle-aged gunfighter, who cannot escape his legendary reputation, wants to be done with guns and shootouts, but finds there is no way out for him. Dwight Macdonald used Henry King, the film’s veteran director, to illustrate why film is the medium most unsuited to the auteur theory.
1951 Anonymous’s choice: The Day the Earth Stood Still. The robot, Gort, is the film’s best creation. Patricia Neal is always a pleasure. But it’s horrifically dated, as all science fiction gets when it tries to imagine futuristic technology. Bernard Herrman’s music is interesting.
My choice: The African Queen. With a script by James Agee, and real African locations, two aging Hollywood stars, under John Huston’s direction, become real before our eyes.
1952 Anonymous’s choice: Singin’ in the Rain. One of the best Hollywood musicals. Despite her obvious skills, however, Debbie Reynolds never overcomes her insufferable cuteness.
My choice: High Noon. The Western reduced to its minimal elements. Also an allegory of Hollywood blacklisting, the song “Do not forsake me, oh my darlin” emphatically repeated. A meta-Western almost like Agnes DeMille’s ballet “Billy the Kid.”
1953 Anonymous’s choice: From Here to Eternity. How America was finally roused from its sleep and realized there was a world war on. The Japanese attack is a kind of deus ex machina in the dream setting of Hawaii. But censorship couldn’t quite tell us the truth about Donna Reed’s profession (she’s a whore working in a whore house), which is glamorized beyond belief.
My choice: Roman Holiday. Audrey Hepburn at the beginning of her career, basically playing herself. A perfect romance.
1954 Anonymous’s choice: On the Waterfront. The subject would’ve been courageous had it not been in the hands of Elia Kazan who, two years before, named names to the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee. It stinks of Bad Faith.
My choice: A Star Is Born. The first remake, and also the best, thanks to George Cukor. James Mason is almost as good as Frederic March in the original. And by shifting away from movies to music, the film isn’t self-fascinated. And Judy Garland can sing.
1955 Anonymous’s choice: Rebel Without a Cause. James Dean and Natalie Wood playing high schoolers. Teen angst in a booming America is utterly unconvincing, more emblematic than real.
My choice: The Night of the Hunter. A strange, fascinating thriller, directed by Charles Laughton and written by James Agee, who died the year it was released. Robert Mitchum is riveting as an unhinged killer pursuing two children after he has murdered their mother. Lillian Gish is surprisingly strong.
To be continued . . .