MC Yearly Consensus - 1947

[Qrazy]

If I found Lady From Shanghai to be more than just a decent movie, I'd submit a three movie list. As such, I don't and thus I would only be able to send in two flicks. I'll be using this thread for recommendations of course.

Yeah it's really just the last half hour that's a great film, the rest is fairly tedious.

[Grouchy]

1. The Lady from Shangai
2. Kiss of Death
3. Monsieur Verdoux

[Raiders]

1. Out of the Past
2. Pursued
3. Black Narcissus
4. The Lady from Shanghai
5. T-Men

Has nobody else seen the Raoul Walsh film? It is probably my favorite of his.

I do need to see Preminger's Daisy Kenyon.

[Mysterious Dude]

Has nobody else seen the Raoul Walsh film? It is probably my favorite of his.

It's my 16th favorite movie of 1947.

[Eleven]

1. Monsieur Verdoux
2. Black Narcissus
3. Out of the Past
4. Pursued
5. The Lady from Shanghai

HMs: Born to Kill, Fireworks, Desperate, Odd Man Out.

[origami_mustache]

not enough Monsieur Verdoux love

[Boner M]

Added Daisy Kenyon, my new #1. The blogosphere wasn't kidding, this really is a lost gem (or at least it was until recently), with the kind of intangible virtues that resist canonisation.

[Raiders]

Added Daisy Kenyon, my new #1. The blogosphere wasn't kidding, this really is a lost gem (or at least it was until recently), with the kind of intangible virtues that resist canonisation.

That's it. I'm viewing this before the week is out.

[Boner M]

That's it. I'm viewing this before the week is out.

I'd really be interested in hearing your thoughts. It's a fascinating tightrope act between self-conscious artifice and a weird kind of naturalism... the characterisation and performances are as vivid as anything I've seen in a Classic Hollywood melodrama.

[Llopin]

I'll pile this up.

Tomorrow is the last day for voting.

[Llopin]

Had some connection problems. I'll have the results up either today or later tomorrow.

[Grouchy]

For some reason I tabulated the results myself (saw there weren't too many voters overall) and

[

Show Spoiler

we got a tie at #1.

]

[Mysterious Dude]

::cough::

[Spinal]

Thanks. I'll count this one up sometime today if Llopin doesn't get to it.

[Spinal]

#8 (tie)



Brute Force

Director: Jules Dassin

Country: USA

At overcrowded Westgate Penitentiary, where violence and fear are the norm, the least contented prisoner is tough, single-minded Joe Collins. After Joe and his cell-mates are put on the dreaded drain pipe detail, they plot an escape scheme that has every chance of turning into a bloodbath.

Oliver Stone cites the film as an influence for his prison break climax in Natural Born Killers. Burt Lancaster had only appeared in one other film prior to this one, 1946's The Killers.

"The title says it all in Jules Dassin's bare-knuckle prison thriller, one of the most brutal films about caged men ever made ... The oppressive atmosphere of the prison, from the cavernous halls echoing with footsteps and clanking bars to the tiny, overcrowded cells to the claustrophobic courtyard hemmed in by guard towers, can be felt in every cramped, confined frame." -- Sean Axmaker

[Spinal]

#8 (tie)



Ride the Pink Horse

Director: Robert Montgomery

Country: USA

In the bordertown of San Pablo, preparing for an annual Mexican fiesta, arrives Gagin: tough, mysterious and laconic. His mission: to find the equally mysterious Frank Hugo, evidently for revenge ... or is it blackmail?

Thomas Gomez was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The antique Tio Vivo Carousel built in 1882 in Taos, New Mexico, was the model for the carousel in the novel Ride The Pink Horse. The same carousel was purchased and shipped from Taos to the set of Universal where it was reconstructed for use in the film.

"Nobody writing for movies likes more than ironic Ben Hecht to muse on the dizzy and eccentric rotations of the merry-go-round of life. And that is what he is doing, in a hard-boiled and often violent way, in the script which he and Charles Lederer wrote for Ride the Pink Horse. That is likewise what Robert Montgomery has intriguingly captured on the screen in this taut and macabre melodrama ..." -- Bosley Crowther (1947)

[Spinal]

#8 (tie)



Daisy Kenyon

Director: Otto Preminger

Country: USA

Commercial artist Daisy Kenyon is involved with married lawyer Dan O'Mara, and hopes someday to marry him, if he ever divorces his wife Lucille. She meets returning veteran Peter, a decent and caring man, whom she does not love, but who offers her love and a more hopeful relationship. She marries him... just as Dan gets a divorce.

Joan Crawford's contract stipulated that the set be kept at temperatures that Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews found too cold, so Crawford bought both of them long underwear. Otto Preminger told an interviewer in the 1970s that he had no memory of this film.

"With surprising candor, Daisy Kenyon deals not only with adultery and the tricky transmutations of desire and devotion, but also with class and the lingering aftershocks of combat ... In a happy accident, the casting of the too-old Crawford works in the film's favor by lending a sense of urgency and pathos to her search for love." -- Nathan Rabin

[Spinal]

#7



Fireworks

Director: Kenneth Anger

Country: USA

A young man goes to a bar where a sailor from his dream displays his muscular upper torso. A gang of sailors, swinging chains, enters menacingly. They surround him and an assault begins.

Kenneth Anger shot the film over the course of one weekend, while his parents were out of town. It is the earliest of his works to survive. Anger was arrested on obscenity charges following the film's release. The case went to the California Supreme Court which declared the film to be art.

"[Fireworks] inaugurates not merely Anger's own private mythology but also the subversive expression of gay sensuality in American film, a torch carried into the early days of the New Queer Cinema. A veritable dictionary of homoerotic iconography ... and a transfixing view of the violence and seditious rapture of being 'different' in the '40s." -- Fernando F. Croce

[Spinal]

#6



Monsieur Verdoux

Director: Charles Chaplin

Country: USA

A suave but cynical man supports his family by marrying and murdering rich women for their money, but the job has some occupational hazards.

Earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Named Best Film of the Year by the National Board of Review. Chaplin called it "the cleverest and most brilliant film of my career". Based on real-life French murderer Desire Landru, who was guillotined in 1922.

"While the descriptive phrase 'ahead of its time' is all too often dragged out and tacked on to one marginalized film work after another, in the case of Monsieur Verdoux it is perhaps quite appropriate ... The film's quite hilarious sense of humor, one part slapstick, one part steely wit, works in fluid conjunction with Chaplin's bleaker ruminations, and both are still quite contemporary and relevant ..." -- Josh Vasquez

[Spinal]

#5



Odd Man Out

Director: Carol Reed

Country: UK

The leader of a clandestine Irish organization plans a hold-up that will provide his group with the funds needed to continue its activities. Things go sour: he is wounded, cannot make it back to the hideout, and disappears in the back-alleys of Belfast. A large-scale man-hunt is launched.

Earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Editing. James Mason called this his best performance of his career, and his favorite Carol Reed film. The film is referenced several times in the Harold Pinter play, Old Times.

"As well as an enthralling drama, Odd Man Out showed that Carol Reed was prepared to push the limits in terms of theme and style, using film language in a confronting, strongly expressive way. The story is not that remarkable. A fugitive is shot and we share his last hours. But Carol Reed turns this into much, much more; a passionate search for the meaning of life and the nature of compassion." -- Peter Thompson

[Spinal]

#4



Quai des Orfèvres

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Country: France

Jenny wants to succeed in the music hall. When her jealous husband (and accompanist) finds out she is making eyes at an old businessman in order to get some engagements, he loses his temper and threatens him with death.

Won Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. The title translates literally to "quay of the goldsmiths", but actually refers to a famous police station in Paris at 36 Quai des Orfèvres.

"At once a murder mystery, a comedy of manners, and an unforgettable character piece, Quai Des Orfèvres is the rare genre film that shrugs off the plot as a driving force and instead examines the latter part of 'crimes of passion.' In spite of Clouzot's reputation as a bully and a cynic, the film evolves into a surprisingly humane and moving portrait of friendship and marriage, bursting with revelations about loyalty, trust, fidelity, and the things people do for love." -- Scott Tobias

[dreamdead]

Well, the pic to Clouzot's film now guarantees that I'll be seeing this one.

[Spinal]

#3



The Lady from Shanghai

Director: Orson Welles

Country: USA

Michael O'Hara, against his better judgement, hires on as a crew member of Arthur Bannister's yacht, sailing to San Francisco. They pick up Grisby, Bannister's law partner, en route. After they dock in Sausalito, Michael goes along with Grisby's weird plan to fake his own murder so he can disappear untailed.

Orson Welles' decision to have Rita Hayworth cut her hair and bleach it caused a storm of controversy, and many in Hollywood believed it contributed to the film's poor box-office returns. When Harry Cohn, Columbia Pictures President, saw the rushes, he detested the picture. He couldn't figure out what it was about and offered $1000 to anyone who could explain it to him. Even Welles himself could not explain the plot to him.

"... Shanghai was taken out of Welles' hands after completion and cut from more than two and a half hours to less than 90 minutes ... In some respects, the loss of control lets Welles off the hook, making it easy to credit him with Shanghai's virtues and forgive him its faults. But its virtues—acidic, politically relevant dialogue and daring camerawork, in particular—are unmistakably his." -- Keith Phipps

[Derek]

Well, the pic to Clouzot's film now guarantees that I'll be seeing this one.

It's my favorite Clouzot FWIW. I'm very surprised and pleased to see it place so high!

[Spinal]

#2



Black Narcissus

Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Country: UK

Anglican nuns, led by the stern Sister Clodagh, attempt to establish a religious community in the Himalayas, and must battle not only suspicious locals and the elements, but their own demons as well.

Won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction (Color) and Best Cinematography (Color). Deborah Kerr was named Best Actress by the New York Film Critics Circle. The much admired Himalayan scenery was all created in the studio. The backdrops were blown-up black and white photographs. The art department then gave them their colors by using pastel chalks on top of them.

"Black Narcissus is a cinematic masterpiece ... at once strikingly beautiful and hauntingly compelling, creating a sensual world almost beyond comprehension and placing a small convent of nuns right in the middle of it. A metaphysical war breaks out between body and soul... and in such a world, how can spirituality possibly win out?" -- Michael Jacobson