1941-1950

  • Carol Reed – The Young Mr. Pitt (1942)

    1941-1950Carol ReedDramaPoliticsUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    William Pitt the Younger, son of a famous politician father, becomes the youngest Prime Minister England has ever known, wins an election on the promise of peace and prosperity, yet ironically ends up as the presiding spirit of an interminable war with Revolutionary France. Both his health and his private life suffer from the strain.Read More »

  • Ivan Pyryev – Skazanie o zemle sibirskoy AKA The Tale of Siberian Land (1947)

    1941-1950DramaIvan PyryevMusicalUSSR

    From Mosfilm:
    Andrey Balashov, a pianist, had to quit music after being wounded during the Great Patriotic War. Having failed to say goodbye to his friends and Natasha whom he loved he left for Siberia. He worked at the construction of an industrial complex and sang in a teahouse. An accidental meeting with his friends and Natasha changed his life. Andrey left for the Arctic region where being inspired by heroic labor of the builders he wrote a symphonic oratorio «Tale of Siberian Land» that won everybody’s recognition and made him popular in Moscow where Natasha was looking forward to see her true-love.Read More »

  • Bodil Ipsen & Lau Lauritzen – Café Paradis (1950)

    Drama1941-1950Bodil IpsenDenmarkFilm NoirLau Lauritzen

    From: Wikipedia:
    Café Paradis (English Title: Paradise Cafe) is an award-winning Danish film made in 1950, directed by Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen Jr., and written by Johannes Allen. The film received the Bodil Award for Film of the Year, and Ib Schønberg, for what is regarded his finest performance, received the Bodil Award for Best Supporting Actor.
    The story illuminates the problems of alcoholism as it follows the lives of two people: one is a common workman (played by Poul Reichhardt) who drinks too much beer, and the other is a company director (played by Ib Schønberg), who believes he just needs “a little one every now and then.” They both come to face the consequences of their addictions.Read More »

  • Riccardo Freda – Il cavaliere misterioso AKA The Mysterious Rider (1948)

    1941-1950ActionAdventureItalyRiccardo Freda

    Quote:
    However trivial – or downright ridiculous – the plot may become, Freda shows a mastery of sheer cinematic style that puts most of the more highly-touted Italian directors to shame. Like Minnelli or Sirk, Mizoguchi or Ophuls, Visconti or Fellini, he is in love with the visual and sensuous possibilities of the camera itself. The breathtaking decor and costumes (by Vittorio Nino Novarese, who went on to dress the most elephantine of Hollywood epics) are as strong a dramatic presence as the actors themselves. That’s no slight against the cast: Gassman was as great an actor as Marcello Mastroianni; Sanson and Canale are as strong as they are sensual, as gutsy as they are glamorous – a world away from the insipid sex objects that decorate most action movies!Read More »

  • Edgar G. Ulmer – Detour (1945)

    1941-1950CrimeEdgar G. UlmerFilm NoirUSA

    Review
    “Detour” is a movie so filled with imperfections that it would not earn the director a passing grade in film school. This movie from Hollywood’s poverty row, shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it.Read More »

  • Hans Richter – Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)

    USA1941-1950Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseExperimentalHans Richter

    Quote:
    Berlin-born Hans Richter – Dadaist, painter, film theorist and filmmaker – was for four decades one of the most influential members of the cinematic avant-garde. Richter assembled some of the century’s liveliest artists as co-creators of Dreams That Money Can Buy, his most ambitious attempt to bring the work of the European avant-garde to a wider cinema audience. Among its admirers is film director David Lynch.Read More »

  • Allan Dwan – Driftwood (1947)

    1941-1950Allan DwanDramaUSA

    Six-year-old Jenny rescues a collie dog, the only survivor of a plane wreck. A tag on the dog’s neck states that it is en route to a medical laboratory where its blood will be used for spotted fever vaccine. Dr. Steven Webster meets both Jenny and the dog and “adopts” them both. His fiancée Susan isn’t too fond of either the girl or the dog. Webster wants to get a hospital for the town but he is suppressed by the town mayor. In the arguments that follow, Webster’s lab is wrecked and ticks infected with spotted fever escape. The town is in a panic and all want to be vaccinated. Jenny is infected and is about to die. Written by Les AdamsRead More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Hamnstad AKA Port of Call (1948)

    Drama1941-1950Ingmar BergmanSweden

    Quote:
    Strongly influenced by the neorealist films of Roberto Rossellini, Port of Call is Ingmar Bergman’s most naturalistic work. Shot on location in the port of Göteborg by Gunnar Fischer (who would become one of the director’s key collaborators), the film focuses on the tentative relationship between Gösta (Bengt Eklund), a sincere, easygoing seaman, and Berit (NineChristine Jönsson), a suicidal young woman from a broken home. As Berit reveals more about her troubled past, and the couple confront many harsh realities in the present, a meaningful bond begins to form between them. With this confident and disciplined feature, his fifth, Bergman tackled moral and social issues head-on.Read More »

  • Mikhail Kalatozov – Nepobedimye aka The Invincible (1943)

    1941-1950DramaMikhail KalatozovUSSRWar


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    Summary:
    The autumn of 1941. Leningrad is besieged by the Nazis. A new model of tank is being developed at a large defense plant. Built in the shortest possible time combat vehicles are tested directly on battlefields, fighting with fascists in the outskirts of the city.
    The first feature film about the heroic everyday life of city defenders was shot directly in assembly shops of plants and in the streets of Leningrad when the city was fighting against the enemyRead More »

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