Ok, so... Here comes the second and final part of the definitive list of the best American Movies of 1947 (look in my previous post for number 10 to 6)... But first, I'd like to point out some things I've learned through the hard, painful - sometimes even perilous - journey (this is like my Golden Boy diary):
- The best job you can get is in a music store (Guys and Girls): selling LP's or something, and the guys usually know how to play piano, and they all sing with pretty voices (in their charm, they are quite annoying!)
- Is not a Noir unless you got a crooked woman. Rule number One. This could be: The Femme Fatale; The double edge lady (a moral character but hiding something or working two sides) or just plainly The Whore
- There's always a happy ending, and when there's not is always that kind of unhappiness that brings some sort of dignity to the characters, like they get a redemption through pain or something.
- Rule Number 2! Is not a Noir, unless you got the Noir aesthetic. Let's call it Gothic! The shadows have meaning!
- Everybody smokes in the Classical Hollywood. As Nick Naylor well puts it "directors need to give their actors something to do while they're talking" Doctors give their patients cigarettes, parents let the Kids smoke, Old people smoke, pretty girls smoke, ugly chicks chew tobacco; if there's a fucking monkey in the movie they would make him puff.
- All Enterprise Studios movies are excellent
- At least once they say "Swell", or even multiple times, Guys and girls say it. "Was the coffee any good? Swell. How's the Missu? Swell. At that fancy party the girls sure were swell" (and then they light a cigarette, yeah smoking and swelling!)
-There's almost no horror movies in 1947 :(
- All these fuckers (actors/ crew) married and divorced at least 4 times.
- They never gonna make movies like these again, movies with heart, movies that looked and felt like movies.
5. Desert Fury (1947, Lewis Allen) Slightly Erotic Thriller / Film Noir
Paula (Lizabeth Scott), the young daughter of casino owner Fritzy Haller (Mary Astor) fells for middle age gambler Eddie Bendix (Burt Lancaster)... Soon she finds he had some sort of involvement in the past with her own mother...
Is the most shocking movie I've found in 1947, because like I said is slightly erotic, but I should have said HOMO erotic... is not overtly gay, old people won't notice that's for sure... (I don't know how though? with lines like, Burt Lancasters: "I wanna feel all that Desert Fury in my ass...mmmm Swell")
From this year there's a well-known homo erotic mainstream short called Fireworks (1947, Kenneth Anger), very scandalous at the time (the director was put in jail. Shame on you and your ignorant communist round table witch hunt, senator McArthur!!!)
But that movie was just a short, and a gigantic piece of experimental shit. This is a AAA produced by Hal Wallis (the man behind Casablanca), distributed by Paramount, shot in technicolor (Every frame of it, screams: Expensive!) and it's good!!!
It's a Noir Melodrama, but the love triangle here seems to be established between the girl and two boys... Wait that's what usually happens in a Noir... yeah well, here the boys are fucking each other!!!
And if that's not enough there's something between the mother and the daughter too: holy shit!... In any case for many reasons is definitely a unique Film Noir.
Lewis Allen had like a great timing; this movie is so fast paced that feels like a 90's thriller, but with all the elegance of classic Hollywood (the photography by Charles Lang as always flawless, and the music by Miklós Rózsa... I mean what else do you want?)
4. Golden Earrings (1947, Mitchell Leisen) Romantic Spy: Marlene Deitrich, Ray Milland
A British colonel (Ray Milland) escapes from the Gestapo to the Black Forest (south-west Germany); here he'll find the help of a gypsy, Lydia (Marlene Deitrich), and end up posing as her gypsy mate.
I think more people would mention this one on their lists of best classical movies ever, if it wasn't so politically incorrect... Cause this movie could be understood as sort of racist, sort of... Gypsy's are depicted as filthy, ignorant human beings; devoted to commit thievery and other hideous crimes... But at the same time there is a certain Cervantine quality to it (if you ever read La Gitanilla you know what I mean) Romani people here are a symbol of freedom, liberal kindness and unconditional friendship against oppressive states. And that's what our colonel Ray Milland discovers while posing as one. And Marlene Deitrich's Lydia is really good (I mean, could this woman act or what?) You LOVE her. You'll end up loving her so much: in her filthiness, with all the racist jokes... She's so cute! She'll warm your cold selfish heart.
3. The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Romantic "sort of" / Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, Natalie Wood MUS: Bernard Hermann
Young widow Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) moves away with her daughter to a secluded seaside cottage. The ghost of the former owner, sea captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison), is haunting the house, but Lucy gathers the courage to stand up to him, and then woman and ghost become friends.
At first, you don't feel it... This is one of the very best movies I've watched. Because is so silly right? A Lady and a ghost fell in love, not only that: he's a sea captain, and a grumpy one, like: Graaaaaar!
But you end up feeling the wind in this movie, and the sea, and you end up loving both characters... and the one thing that makes all REALLY work: Bernand Hermann's score. Of course, he's a legend, but he's always remembered for the Hitchcock movies or Cape Fear, or The Twilight zone... but I honestly believe this is one of his best ever, you will forever remember the music in this movie, it will haunt you, and you'll long for it like a sailor needs the sea... (puns! puns!) The movie is simple, but the score just elevates it. You can listen to it, here:
Gene Tierney is just fantastic. She plays a single mom that has invested all her money on this seaside cottage, and then she discovers there's a ghost in the house! But you know what? Fuck you! I'm not allowed to be scared: I'm a single mom. So we're gonna stay here and fuck you if you don't like it ghost!
And Rex Harrison is just... shocked! And amazed by this tiny woman.
I said is a romantic movie, but we don't have any romantic scenes, like kisses, or declarations of eternal love... everything is more subtle: like looks and smiles... But it's a tragic love really, cause they can't even let themselves fall in love. Not even that... I love this movie.
2. Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding) Film Noir / Tyrone Power, Coleen Gray, Joan Blondell, Helen Walker / FOX
Traveling carnival Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power) cheats his way to learn an ingenious "act" code that let him pretend to have mental powers.
Not much to say, other than it's a great movie about the rise and fall of a con-man. A perfect example of a non detective noir, all the characters -except perhaps the accomplice played by Coleen Gray (but even her) are twisted and fucked... There's no morality, no fear of God, no nothing: there's no God in this world...
But the thing that really gives you the creeps in the film is... destiny similarities, the effect is just spell bounding: like a mirror house in a fair... And essentially this is a horror movie: Stan Carlisle is like one of the monsters from Freaks (1932) that escaped from the fair into the world.
(I'd love to see the uncensored version... Supposedly - like the things are said in myths - supposedly, originally there was a scene of the Geek actually biting the chicken's head off... like... Daaamn!)
And the Number One goes to...
1. Body and Soul (1947, Robert Rossen) Drama / John Garfield, Lili Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad / The Enterprise Studios
Amateur boxer Charley Davis fights in order to save himself from poverty... but discovers that winning has cost him way more than he bargained for.
Old tale: a dream that becomes a nightmare or how success can corrupt a man's spirit. The irony when the attainment of our dreams brings out our perdition... It works, why fix it?
There're many reasons why this is one the greatest boxing movies of all time and the very best of 1947, but I will only mention two: the Soul of this movie, which is, of course, John Garfield, one of the most talented actors of his generation in his best performance ever. This is the first in the Holy Trinity of Boxing movies, the other two being: On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan) and Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese); but I would argue that both Brando and De Niro took things from John Garfield's performance... Quite a bold statement...
That's the soul. And the body of the film: the cinematographer James Wong Howe. Any movie made by this guy is worth to be watched, but here... you can feel all the freedom and the savagery of an experimental movie (It was an Enterprise Studios movie so...); the final fight sequence is just mind-blowing, the guy put himself on a fucking pair of skaters and shoot from below the ring... and the effect is just amazing!!!
Talking about the best DPs of all time people mention Greg Toland or John Alton, or whatever, but everyone forgets about Wong...
and this is probably his very best.
Well there you have it. One last thing, if you are curious Here is the list of the best one hundred 1947 movies, maybe you can find your favorite in it... maybe not... Anyway: God Bless Movies
(by pelida77)
No comments:
Post a Comment