Fifties American Sleepers
On my century-spanning big list of favorite movies, there are more titles from the fifties than from any other decade.
Author: Ray Olson
Ray Goes to the Movies at Home: Introduction to the Fifties
The 1950s are often called the American decade, a time when the United States ruled the roost militarily, economically, and culturally. Hence, the title of this list of my favorite movies.
Ray Olson at the Movies: The 1940s: Everything Changes, Introduction
The world is always at war, but twice the fact was admitted. And though war has a well-recorded effect of changing everything, that was particularly true of World War II.
Ray Olson at the Movies
In the 1930s, MGM’s top directors were Clarence Brown (a favorite of Garbo’s), the prolific W. S. Van Dyke, of whom I’ve written for FF, and Victor Fleming. In 1939, MGM observed its silver anniversary. Since it was the biggest American movie studio, it launched a campaign to make 1939 known as Hollywood’s greatest year
From Golding’s Ovid
I’ve just finished reading what is sometimes called Shakespeare’s Ovid because the playwright borrowed from it extensively. The passage below comes in the twelfth of the poem’s fifteen books.
The Movies: Getting It Right
On the supposition that lightning strikes twice, the movie industry loves remaking box office bonanzas. There are six Hollywood versions (and one Japanese) of Peter B. Kyne’s short novel, The Three Godfathers (1913). In 1929, when the talkies were taking, if not baby, then toddler, steps, everything clicked.
At the Movies: Frank Capra–The Really Good Stuff
Frank Capra never made a bad movie (unless some of the lost or unavailable silents are clinkers). His particular brand of sentimental, ordinary-joe appeal and content came to be dubbed Capracorn…
Fred Zinneman
Few other first features involved so many future luminaries as the documentary-style German silent, People on Sunday (1930). Not the actors, but directors Edgar G. Ulmer and Robert Siodmak and writers Billy Wilder and Curt Siodmak, all of whom had long careers in Hollywood.
The Talkies: One-offs
Four of these movies are genuine anomalies for their makers. The fifth is the best film by a very famous and successful director-writer whose other movies—and I’ve seen nearly all of them—reliably disappoint me.
