MC Yearly Consensus - 1941

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the voting is closed, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Spinal]

1. The Lady Eve
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Devil and Daniel Webster

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Dumbo
4. 49th Parallel
5. Suspicion

[Derek]

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
2. The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi)
3. Wabbit Twouble (Robert Clampett)
4. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
5. That Uncertain Feeling (Ernst Lubitsch)

HMs: Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges), Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen), The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)

[Raiders]

1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. The Devil & Daniel Webster (Dieterle)
3. The Lady Eve (Sturges)
4. Dumbo (Sharpsteen)
5. 49th Parallel (Powell)

-----------------------------------

6. The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
7. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Cline)
8. Sullivan's Travels (Sturges)
9. The 47 Ronin (Mizoguchi)

[The Mike]

1. The Wolf Man
2. Sullivan's Travels
3. Citizen Kane
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
5. Invisible Ghost

HM: The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Maltese Falcon, Suspicion, Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Need to see The Lady Eve badly.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Hopefully I'll get around to seeing The Devil and Daniel Webster this week.

1. Sullivan’s Travels
2. Citizen Kane
3. How Green was my Valley
4. That Uncertain Feeling
5. The Maltese Falcon

-----
6. 49th Parallel
7. Ball of Fire
8. The Lady Eve
9. Sergeant York
10. Here Comes Mr. Jordan

[Pop Trash]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Sullivan's Travels
4. The Lady Eve
5. Dumbo

One of the better years of the 40s.

[soitgoes...]

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
2. Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges)
3. The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood)
4. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
5. The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Yasujiro Ozu)
---------------------------------------------------------------
6. The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle)
7. 49th Parallel (Michael Powell)
8. Hideko the Bus Conductress (Mikio Naruse)

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. Sullivan's Travels
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Maltese Falcon
4. The Lady Eve
5. Ball of Fire

[Russ]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Lady Eve
3. Dumbo
4. The Devil and Miss Jones
5. In the Sweet Pie and Pie

HMs: The Maltese Falcon, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, Sergeant York

Film I'm most wanting to see: Hellzapoppin'

[Ezee E]

Never Give a Sucker...

Awesome title.

[Boner M]

1. The Lady Eve
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Maltese Falcon
4. Sullivan's Travels
5. Dumbo

[Derek]

1. The Lady Eve
2. Citizen Kane

Et tu, Boner?

[ledfloyd]

1. Citizen Kane
2. Sullivan's Travels
3. The Maltese Falcon
4. Ball of Fire
5. High Sierra

[Boner M]

Et tu, Boner?
If 'Rosebud' was a nickname for Barbara Stanwyck's vag, maybe I'd reverse that order. But it isn't, so I won't.

[Yxklyx]

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
2. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
3. The Flame of New Orleans (René Clair)
4. Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges)
5. 49th Parallel (Michael Powell)

6. They Died with Their Boots On (Raoul Walsh)
7. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)
8. The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle)
9. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (Alexander Hall)
10. Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks)

[origami_mustache]

1. Sullivan's Travels
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Lady Eve
4. The Maltese Falcon
5. Dumbo

HM: The Wolf Man

[Grouchy]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Sullivan's Travels
4. The Wolf Man
5. The Little Foxes

[dreamdead]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Lady Eve
3. Dumbo
4. Ball of Fire
5. Maltese Falcon

Need to see more Mizoguchi when it becomes available.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Lady Eve
3. The Maltese Falcon
4. The Devil and Daniel Webster
5. Suspicion

[Lazlo]

1. The Maltese Falcon
2. Citizen Kane
3. Sergeant York
4. Sullivan’s Travels

[baby doll]

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
2. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)
3. The Little Foxes (William Wyler)
4. Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock)
5. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)

Need to re-see: The Loyal 47 Ronin of the Genroku Era (Kenji Mizoguchi); Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges).

[monolith94]

1. Citizen Kane
2. Dumbo
3. Sergeant York

[Melville]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Devil and Daniel Webster
3. The Lady Eve
4. Sullivan's Travels
5. Suspicion

[Spinal]

More?

[Spinal]

All right then. Counting is happening.

[Spinal]

Well, I have a top 7 or so. Going to leave this open one more day in the hopes of getting more votes.

[Gizmo]

1. Citizen Kane
2. Dumbo
3. Tortoise Beats Hare

[Spinal]

4. The Big Store

If you're rating this a 5 out of 10 in the other thread, then I would suggest that you probably don't need to be listing it here just to fill out your ballot. Just a thought.

[Torgo]

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Sergeant York
4. Dumbo

[Spinal]

This will be a top 9. Results coming up.

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/vg_balloffire41.jpg

Ball of Fire

Director: Howard Hawks

Country: USA

Eight professors are in the 9th year of an encyclopedia writing project. When Professor Potts discovers that his section on slang is outdated, he sets out to research the topic and ends up helping a nightclub singer escape from the Mob.

Nominated for four Oscars including Best Actress (Barbara Stanwyck) and Best Writing, Original Story. Kathleen Howard was left with a fractured jaw when the punch that Barbara Stanwyck threw accidentally made contact. While filming the scene in which Potts declares his love for Sugarpuss in a dark hotel bungalow, Gregg Toland put Stanwyck in blackface to make sure that her eyes were shining through the darkness.

"After the rush of His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire is a more sedate ride, full of such marvelous passages as the conga line Stanwyck's delectable Sugarpuss teaches the professors; ultimately, the film's optimistic integration of intellectual and physical impulses lends it a feeling of wholeness (greatly aided by Gregg Toland's deep-focus cinematography) closer to Hawks's later, more serene films than to his breathless early comedies." - Fernando F. Croce

[Spinal]

#7 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/SuspicionJoanFontaineHitchcock pic2.jpg

Suspicion

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Country: USA

Johnny is a handsome playboy who lives by borrrowing money from his friends. He meets and marries shy Lina, but after their honeymoon, she finds out Johnny's true character and becomes suspicious of his behavior. Lina starts believing her husband is a murderer and she fears that she could be his next victim.

Won the Academy Award for Best Actress (Joan Fontaine). Nominated for two other awards, including Best Picture. Hitchcock said that an RKO executive ordered that all scenes in which Cary Grant appeared menacing be excised from the film. When the cutting was completed, the film ran only fifty-five minutes. The scenes were later restored, Hitchcock said, because he shot each piece of film so that there was only one way to edit them together properly.

"The beauty of Suspicion is that it starts off light and charming, just as Johnny does, and darkens so gradually you won’t even notice what point it shifted from light romance into a psychological thriller." - Brian Webster

[Spinal]

#7 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/sergeant-york.jpg

Sergeant York

Director: Howard Hawks

Country: USA

A hillbilly sharpshooter becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI when he single-handedly attacks and captures a German position using the same strategy as in a turkey shoot.

Won two Oscars including Best Actor (Gary Cooper) and Best Editing. Nominated for nine others, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Walter Brennan) and Best Supporting Actress (Margaret Wycherly). According to the daily production reports included in the film's file at USC, Vincent Sherman directed some scenes while Howard Hawks went to a racetrack.

"A morality play disguised as a biopic, Sergeant York is structured around two conversions - from Satan to Christ, and from conscientious objection to military decoration; that is, from the Christian Bible to the American Bible ..." - Billy Stevenson

[Spinal]

#6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Walter_Houston.jpg

The Devil and Daniel Webster

Director: William Dieterle

Country: USA

A down-on-his-luck farmer makes a deal with the devil for seven years of prosperity. When Mr. Scratch comes to collect, orator and hero of the common man Daniel Webster comes to the rescue.

Won the Oscar for Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture. Also nominated for Best Actor (Walter Huston). Bernard Herrmann's score included recordings of the humming of telephone wires and four violin solos of "Pop Goes The Weasel" recorded separately and laid over each other on the soundtrack to form a 'single' violin solo. The 'blizzard' consisted of 1200 pounds of shredded white onions, 2500 pounds of mothballs and a large amount of uncooked tapioca.

"[Edward] Arnold and Huston explicitly represent the angel and devil hovering just over Craig's brawny shoulders, but on a more metaphorical level, they represent the egalitarian promise of American Democracy and the greed that serves as its downside. A textbook example of New Deal populism, the film depicts the Devil as just another loan shark, albeit one whose terms are more draconian than most." - Nathan Rabin

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Dumbocel7.jpg

Dumbo

Director: Ben Sharpsteen

Country: USA

The stork delivers a baby elephant to Mrs Jumbo, but the newborn is ridiculed because of his truly enormous ears. It is up to his only friend, a mouse, to assist Dumbo to achieve his full potential.

Won the Oscar for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. Also nominated for Best Song ("Baby Mine"). Won an award at Cannes for Best Animation Design. The only Disney animated feature film that has a title character who doesn't speak. When the drunken Timothy is sliding down the staircase-shaped bubble Dumbo has blown, his laugh is actually that of Mickey Mouse.

"The modern day promotional material for Dumbo trumpets: 'The perfect film for every family!' I'll drink whatever the clown brigade's pouring in support of that endorsement. Dumbo remains the one Disney film that doesn't reduce life's lessons down to Kindergarten Cop's infantile mantra of 'Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina' and expect the heteronormative indoctrination to take root in impressionable minds dazzled by big-screen paint-by-numbers. I know right now you're probably singing along with the crows: 'I thought I'd seen most everything, 'til I seen a critic call a cartoon toddler elephant gay.' But, as far as my empathetic tears as an adult viewer are concerned, it's the perfect Disney film for every definition of family." - Eric Henderson (possibly intoxicated)

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/150588607_132f9a835d_o1.jpg

The Lady Eve

Director: Preston Sturges

Country: USA

Returning from a year up the Amazon studying snakes, the rich but unsophisticated Charles meets con-artist Jean on a ship. They fall in love, but a misunderstanding causes them to split on bad terms. To get back at him, Jean disguises herself as an English lady and comes back to tease and torment him.

Earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Original Story. Sturges wrote the script in Reno, Nevada, while awaiting his third divorce. When Muggsy places a brush over his face and imitates Hitler, he is really speaking Swedish. Directly translated he is saying: 'Bad boy I'm going to hit you on the jaw.'

"Although the movie would be inconceivable without Fonda, The Lady Eve is all Stanwyck's; the love, the hurt and the anger of her character provide the motivation for nearly every scene, and what is surprising is how much genuine feeling she finds in the comedy. Watch her eyes as she regards Fonda, in all of their quiet scenes together, and you will see a woman who is amused by a man's boyish shyness and yet aroused by his physical presence." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/noh0thrq.jpg

Sullivan's Travels

Director: Preston Sturges

Country: USA

Sullivan is a successful, spoiled and naive director of fluff films who decides he wants to make a film about the troubles of the downtrodden poor. Much to the chagrin of his producers, he sets off in tramp's clothing with a single dime in his pocket to experience poverty first-hand, and gets some reality shock.

Veronica Lake made this movie while pregnant. Sullivan plans to make a movie entitled O Brother, Where Art Thou? - a title borrowed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for their 2000 film. Sturges had originally intended to use a clip from a Charles Chaplin film for the church sequence, but Chaplin wouldn't give permission.

"Perhaps more than any other Sturges movie, Sullivan's Travels commits itself to extreme changes in mood and tone. The chase scene, and Lake's sped-up sprint through a backlot in hoop skirt and bloomers, are pure slapstick. At the other extreme is a chain-gang sequence of shocking realism for 1941 Hollywood." - Matthew Kennedy

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/sjff_03_img0965.jpg

The Maltese Falcon

Director: John Huston

Country: USA

While Sam Spade is investigating the murder of his partner, he finds himself surrounded by a host of strange characters all after one thing - a statue of a falcon reputed to contain priceless jewels.

Nominated for three Oscars including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Sydney Greenstreet). The William Shakespeare reference that ends the film was suggested by Humphrey Bogart. Contrary to popular opinion, 'It's the stuff that dreams are made of,' spoken by Humphrey Bogart, is not the last line in the picture. Immediately after Bogart says that, Ward Bond, playing a detective, says, 'Huh?' making that the last line in the picture.

"To describe the plot in a linear and logical fashion is almost impossible. That doesn't matter. The movie is essentially a series of conversations punctuated by brief, violent interludes. It's all style. It isn't violence or chases, but the way the actors look, move, speak and embody their characters. Under the style is attitude: Hard men, in a hard season, in a society emerging from Depression and heading for war, are motivated by greed and capable of murder. For an hourly fee, Sam Spade will negotiate this terrain." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/citizen_kane_4.jpg

Citizen Kane

Director: Orson Welles

Country: USA

Multimillionaire newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane dies alone in his extravagant mansion, Xanadu, speaking a single word: Rosebud. In an attempt to figure out the meaning of this word, a reporter tracks down the people who worked and lived with Kane. They tell their stories in a series of flashbacks that reveal much about Kane's life but is it enough to unlock the riddle of his dying breath?

Won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Nominated for eight other Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Welles). William Randolph Hearst was infuriated by this movie, obviously based on his life. According to an essay written for the New York Review of Books by Gore Vidal, Rosebud was Hearst's name for long-time mistress Marion Davies' clitoris.

Dave: Oh, I saw a great movie last night. It was on the late show. It was-- um, uh, what was it called? It's a classic. It's uh . . . oh, I hate this. I hate it when this happens.
Kevin: Well, what was it about?
Dave: It's about this newspaper tycoon and he's dead, and everybody is telling stories about him, and--
Kevin: It's Citizen Kane.
Dave: Nnnno, that's not it. No, no - but something like that. It's uh . . .
Kevin: Okay, who was in it?
Dave: Orson Welles is in it. It's called . . .
Kevin: Then this is Citizen Kane. It's Citizen Kane.
Dave: Nnnno, that isn't it, but you're not far from it. It's uh . . .
Kevin: Well who else was in it?
Dave: Oh, um, I dunno.
Kevin: Was Joseph Cotten in it?
Dave: What else has he been in?
Kevin: The Third Man, The Magnificent Ambersons . . .
Dave: Oh, The Magnificent Ambersons. Yes, yes, yes, he was in it, yes. That's one of my favourite Orson Welles movies.
Kevin: Well this is definitely Citizen Kane then. You're talking about Citizen Kane.
Dave: Nnnno, no, no. But it's something like that. It's ci . . . ci, ci . . . Si. Si . . . sy . . .
Kevin: No, not sy. It's ci. Ci, ci.
Dave: Sy . . . sy . . . sy . . .
Kevin: It's ci, Citizen Kane.
Dave: Sy . . . sy . . . Psycho!
Kevin: No it's not Psycho.
Dave: It's Psycho.

[Spinal]

1. Citizen Kane 107.5
2. The Maltese Falcon 55.5
3. Sullivan’s Travels 46
4. The Lady Eve 42.5
5. Dumbo 32
6. The Devil and Daniel Webster 14.5
7t. Suspicion 10.5
7t. Sergeant York 10.5
9. Ball of Fire 8.5

[Mysterious Dude]

"The modern day promotional material for Dumbo trumpets: 'The perfect film for every family!' I'll drink whatever the clown brigade's pouring in support of that endorsement. Dumbo remains the one Disney film that doesn't reduce life's lessons down to Kindergarten Cop's infantile mantra of 'Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina' and expect the heteronormative indoctrination to take root in impressionable minds dazzled by big-screen paint-by-numbers. I know right now you're probably singing along with the crows: 'I thought I'd seen most everything, 'til I seen a critic call a cartoon toddler elephant gay.' But, as far as my empathetic tears as an adult viewer are concerned, it's the perfect Disney film for every definition of family." - Eric Henderson (possibly intoxicated)We need more reviews like this.

[The Mike]

Excellent list, even if I still need to see The Lady Eve.

Too bad the studio pushed the ending on Suspicion, coulda been so much higher, both in the year and in Hitchcock's canon.....