1950’s Sci-Fi at its best.

It came from Outer Space set the standard in the early days of American cinema for serious and intelligent Sci-Fi by placing a reasonable amount of care in the writing, acting and directing of this film about a man who is rejected by his community after claiming to have seen a spaceship land in the desert where he lives.
The theme of ‘The Other’ is properly explored, as is that of the lone liberal man against a blind, unreasonable and conservative community.
It is regrettable that Universal, the studio behind many Sci-Fi flicks from that period and thus, probably the most open-minded studio in its acceptance of liberal themes, decided to nevertheless add the ‘creature’ after it concluded that the audience would not enjoy watching a 90 minutes film without ever seeing some kind of alien representation. Had they not chosen to do so, and consequently, had they not decided to incorporate this gigantic eye thingie as the terrifying monster, It Came from Outer Space would have been even more so sober and powerful, a pioneering film in ‘what you can’t see is even more creepy’ type horror and suspense cinema.

Shame i can’t find my 3D glasses…

Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astair, in one of the bleakest films produced by Hollywood during that period.

With the exception of Australia, the entire planet has been decimated by nuclear war, the origin and details of which are adroitly never explained, and simply blamed on the absurdity and stupidity of humankind. A US submarine escaped the devastation and makes its way towards Melbourne where the locals have only a few months to live until the radiation reaches their country.

Tightly directed by Stanley Kramer, the director of Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), On the Beach maintains its serious and dark premise until the end, never letting cheap and easy sentimentalism take over and never trying to provide a false sense of hope or of a greater moral truth. In addition, and that is commendable for a film from that period, it does not choose sides and refuses to engage in ‘we are better than them’ or ‘it’s all their fault’ type messages.

Instead, the film focuses on a handful of people and how they choose to spend their last months of life and the decisions they face during that time. While the overall emotional intensity feels a bit subdued at times, a feeling reinforced by the decision to avoid showing scenes of madness, folly or desperation (unlike, for example, in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), another serious film from that period that deals with somewhat similar themes, where various scenes of chaos and rioting are shown, or in The Day After (1983), the made for TV film that shocked America with its realistic and disturbing scenes of apocalypse, or even in Peter Watkins’s groundbreaking docu-drama The War Game (1965)), the narrative nonetheless works effectively by keeping it all fairly understated, and, well, bleak.

Gardner and Peck are quite a charismatic couple to watch and I can only admire their liberal willingness to play in such a film.

As Peter Biskind pointed out in Seeing is Believing: how Hollywood taught us to stop worrying and love the fifties (1983), it is naïve to think that the ideology of Hollywood in the 50s was a fixed and uniform set of political beliefs and values. While many films did reflect common themes with a strong push towards consensus and the need to stick together in the face of adversity (and the enemy, whatever that enemy may be), many also betrayed underlying disagreements within the established and traditional dominant view of society.

It is commonly assumed that most films from the 50s are issued from the same mould, that of conformity and right-wing bourgeois suburban ideology. Yet, High Noon, which received two Oscars in 1953, is usually understood to be a left wing film, one that goes against the norm and the mainstream. After all, John Wayne and Howard Hawks, dismayed by this straying aside in a genre that they believed to be the casket of American family values, remade High Noon a few years later, as Rio Bravo.

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A decent 1950’s Sci-Fi effort. The film has its share of silly moments but it tries very hard to deal seriously with a potential invasion of earth by UFOs.

Imagine Independence Day 40 years earlier, with some nasty aliens in foam suits trying to destroy earth and most of its recognizable monuments. Only the ingenuity of a human scientist keeps the invaders from succeeding with their not-very-well-thought-through plan.
The ‘special effects’ were produced by the father of stop motion in cinema, Ray Harryhausen, who would later work on the visual effects for Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years BC and Clash of the Titans. The UFO’s and their laser beams are particularly well done. The rest is, well, it’s 50’s sci-fi. So let’s not beat a dead horse.

Many scenes reminded me of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks. It is likely that Earth vs the Flying Saucers is one of the many films that inspired Burton to make his homage.

Roger Corman is one of Hollywood’s most amazing personalities and a producer’s favourite case study.

Throughout the 60’s and 70’s, he was churning out films by the dozens, drawing on an ability to discern and understand public taste, trends and fears. His films cost very little to make but generated fairly high returns. He can easily be considered the father of the B movie and continues to influence a large group of filmmakers, producers, and studio execs. He also happens to have given Coppola, Scorcese, Bogdanovich and many others, at the dawn of their careers, a chance to practice, experiment and direct by using his cameras or left-over film stock from his productions.
The Day the World Ended is one of his better films, meaning that it must have taken him 2 weeks to shoot instead of 2 days. The film depicts a post nuclear world where, in addition to struggling to find non-contaminated goods and resources, survivors must also deal with some annoying and incredibly cheap looking mutated animals…

This is all terribly and poorly done and it is hard to think of Corman in a good light when watching this pile of nonsense….

A winner on several occasions of various ‘worst film ever’ competitions, this film does indeed live up to its reputation.

No efforts were spared for this extravagant science fiction saga in which aliens from space decide to exterminate the human race by turning its dead into zombies…

The costumes are ravishing, the acting of the highest calibre and the production design surely must have had an influence on Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick…

Or maybe not…it’s all bad and cheap but, perhaps because I have seen Tim Burton’s film Ed Wood, i couldn’t help but smile at the naivety of it all…

And if one watches long enough, it almost becomes…cute.

A classic French film noir with the great Jean Gabin. Shot mostly at night on the streets of Paris, Grisbi is not quite as poignant and grabbing as Rififi which would come out a year later, but nevertheless offers a captivating story of rivalry between gangsters trying to steal each other’s money.

This film has been so discussed, so praised, and it holds such a special place in the history of cinema that hardly anything new can be said about it. It is a truly wonderful film…

Led by their master, a small group of traveling performing artists stops by a small coastal village, bringing their nightly Kabuki performance to the locals.

Unbeknownst to the troupe, the master has a son on the island and ensures that the group makes a yearly stop by the village so that he can see him.

A proud man, the master made a decision a long time ago that his son should not know that he is his father and thus has been introducing himself as his uncle every since the earliest years of the boy’s life. Eager to ensure that the boy will succeed in life and will not be negatively influenced by the knowledge that his father is a struggling actor, the master and his ex-wife have thus been hiding the truth from the boy during his entire life.

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Beautiful film noir set first in New York city then in the New York state country side, it tells the story of a violent and lonely (played wonderfully by Robert Ryan) cop’s journey towards self discovery and redemption. The crime story only serves to support the more introspective, psychological, ‘man on a quest’ angle. Stunning cinematography.

Melodrama has rarely been so beautiful to look at. Sirk took the genre (if it is a genre) to a new level, using irony and social criticism as a way to express opinions which could other otherwise not have been said in 1950 America. Yet this film, about a character (played by Rock Hudson) who becomes a better person through love, is remarkably positive and optimistic for Sirk. It is Sirk’s craft and genius that keeps this soapy and thrashy film from ever going overboard…

As a film lover, i can’t deny that Fellini is one of the masters. Yet, i was never able to fully engage with his films, which often left me spinning and in need of an aspirin. His post-1960 films that is. His more ‘neo-realist’ work is a different story. Nights of Cabiria is the beautiful tale of a prostitute trying to find happiness.

Winner of an academy award for best special effects in 1954, this film is a precursor to the modern day blockbuster and a brave attempt at bringing Wells’ classic novel to the screen.
As with many Sci-Fi films from the 50’s, one has to alter one’s field of judgment and critical sphere to account for the passing of time.
Yet, other films from that time such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World or Invasion of the Body Snatchers have endured much better and continue to appeal to modern audiences.