1950s

  • Mario Soldati – La provinciale AKA The Wayward Wife (1953)

    Mario Soldati1951-1960DramaItaly

    Synopsis:
    Gemma, daughter of a lodger, is in love with her half-brother, but since she cannot marry him she ends up marrying a teacher. She doesn’t love him and betrays him but is blackmailed by a Romanian countess who forces her to become a prostitute. She’s desperate but in the end she asks her husband for help. She has learned to love him in the meantime.Read More »

  • Falk Harnack – Unruhige Nacht AKA The Restless Night (1958)

    Falk Harnack1951-1960DramaGermanyWar

    Synopsis: During the Russian campaign, a military pastor was to assist Private Baranowski, who was sentenced to death for his desertion, on his last night. It is also the last night before the departure for Stalingrad that the soldiers know that it means certain death. The pastor leaves his room to a captain so that he can meet his fiancé again. He himself remains in Baranowski’s cell and struggles with his conscience and emotion – even more than when he learns that the young doomed man fled for love. But the execution is carried out, and a member of the firing squad finds only cynical words for the fate of the soldier.Read More »

  • Yasujirô Ozu – Bakushû aka Early summer (1951) (HD)

    Yasujiro Ozu1951-1960DramaJapan

    Quote:
    Noriko, 28, is a secretary in a small company in Tokyo. She is a modern young woman but she still lives with her parents, just like her brother, his wife and their two children. She is under great pressure from her family; in fact, it is not reasonable at this age not to have yet married. But the young girl rejoices in her independence. Her boss offers her a good deal of his knowledge but Noriko hesitates until a sort of illumination solves the problem for her, at least…Read More »

  • Hasse Ekman – Flicka och hyacinter AKA Girl with Hyacinths (1950) (HD)

    Hasse Ekman1941-1950DramaMysterySweden

    Ekman’s favorite of his own films, and an enduring classic in Scandinavia, “Girl with Hyacinths” examines the mysterious suicide of a young woman (Eva Henning, Ekman’s wife at the time) through a Wellesian multiplicity of points of view. Visually striking, with extreme long takes and images that drift into a dreamlike surrealism, the film reveals its secrets with grace and sympathy, moving toward a final revelation that seems at least a generation ahead of its time.Read More »

  • Irving Pichel – Santa Fe (1951)

    Irving Pichel1951-1960USAWestern

    After the Civil War four brothers who fought for the South head west. Yanks are building the Santa Fe Railroad and one of the brothers joins them. The other three still hold their hatred of the North and join up with those trying to stop the railroad’s completion. The one brother unsuccessfully tries to keep the other brothers out of trouble but eventually has to join the posse that is after them.Read More »

  • Wolf Rilla – The End of the Road (1954)

    Wolf Rilla1951-1960DramaUnited Kingdom

    Plot summary:
    Known as Mick to some and Mack to others, because he is half Scottish and half Irish, a veteran electro plater has retirement forced upon him, but his bullheaded refusal to take it causes ructions.Read More »

  • Fred Zinnemann – The Member of the Wedding (1952)

    Fred Zinnemann1951-1960DramaUSA
    The Member of the Wedding (1952)
    The Member of the Wedding (1952)

    A film version of the Carson McCullers play. Frankie Addams, a very boyish articulate 12-year-old girl, is going through an unhappy stage of her life, having been spurned by the neighborhood girls. She spends most of her time in the kitchen talking to her black maid, Bernice, and the younger next door boy, John Henry. Her brother Jarvis is about to marry Janice, and Frankie imagines that she will leave town with them. However she eventually begins to grow up into a young woman.Read More »

  • Teinosuke Kinugasa – Naruto hichô AKA Secret of Naruto (1957)

    Teinosuke Kinugasa1951-1960ActionDramaJapan
    Naruto hichô (1957)
    Naruto hichô (1957)

    Quote:
    From the pen of Yoshikawa Eiji comes this exciting story. The Naruto Strait separates Tokushima from the islands of Awaji and Honshu. On Tokushima the mad lord dreams of conquest and forges a bloody revolt against the Tokugawa shogunate. A mysterious swordsman named Noriyuki Gennojo has crossed Naruto’s waters to uncover the Awa clan’s secrets. He puts his life on the line after finding a testament of Awa’s secrets, written in blood by a dying man. Joining Noriyuki are a female ninja who loves him, and the beautiful daughter of an enemy who’s sworn to kill him. Awa’s defenders willl stop at nothing to prevent the blood-soaked letter from reaching the shogun.Read More »

  • Arthur Crabtree – Morning Call AKA The Strange Case of Dr. Manning (1957)

    Arthur Crabtree1951-1960CrimeThrillerUnited Kingdom
    The Strange Case of Dr. Manning (1957)
    The Strange Case of Dr. Manning (1957)

    Plot Synopsis by Sandra Brennan
    In this mystery, the wife of the recently kidnapped Dr. Manning enlists the assistance of a Scotland Yard detective and a private eye to find him.Read More »

Back to top button