BLACHEFAN
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Duck Amuck (1953)
One of the defining examples of Chuck Jones' irreverent creativity, "Duck Amuck" (a Warner Bros. "Merrie Melodies" animation) stars Daffy Duck, as brought to life by master voice artist Mel Blanc. Jones' gives the audience a convincingly fleshed-out character with true personality, regardless of plot or setting. Daffy begins the film as a Musketeer before his animators get the best of him by forgetting to draw in his backgrounds or supply him his voice. Extraordinarily self-reflexive, "Duck Amuck" does more than pierce film's fourth wall, it demolishes it, sending Daffy on a series of surreal misadventures.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/chuck_jones.pdf
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The Big Heat (1953)
One of the great post-war noir films, "The Big Heat" stars Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame. Set in a fictional American town, the film tells the story of a tough cop (Ford) who takes on a local crime syndicate, exposing tensions within his own corrupt police department as well as insecurities and hypocrisies of domestic life in the 1950s. Filled with atmosphere, fascinating female characters, and a jolting—yet not gratuitous—degree of violence, "The Big Heat," through its subtly expressive technique and resistance to formulaic denouement, manages to be both stylized and brutally realistic, a signature of its director Fritz Lang.
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The Band Wagon (1953)
Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray and Jack Buchanan star in this sophisticated backstage toe-tapper directed by Vincente Minnelli, widely considered one of the greatest movie musicals of all time. Astaire plays a washed-up movie star (in reality he'd been a succesful performer for nearly 30 years) who tries his luck on Broadway, under the direction of irrepressible mad genius Buchanan. Musical highlights include "Dancing in the Dark" and "That's Entertainment" (written for the film by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz) and Astaire's sexy Mickey Spillane spoof "The Girl Hunt" danced to perfection by Charisse. Fred Astaire would only make three more musicals after "The Band Wagon," before turning to a film and television career that included the occasional turn as a dramatic actor.
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All My Babies (1953)
Written and directed by George Stoney, this landmark educational film was used to educate midwives throughout the South. Produced by the Georgia Department of Public Health, profiles the life and work of "Miss Mary" Coley, an African-American midwife living in rural Georgia. In documenting the preparation for and delivery of healthy babies in rural conditions ranging from decent to deplorable, the filmmakers inadvertently captured a telling snapshot at the socioeconomic conditions of the era that would prove fascinating to future generations.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/all_babies.pdf
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Pickup on South Street (1953)
Courtesy of 20th Century-Fox
Samuel Fuller's films are sometimes compared to the pulp novels of Mickey Spillane, though Fuller's dynamic style dwarfs Spillane. With films often crass but always provocative, Fuller described his mantra of filmmaking: "Film is like a battleground, with love, hate, action, violence, death … in one word, emotion." Considered by some as the archetypal Sam Fuller film and a nice summary of the main themes in his work, "Pickup on South Street" is a taut, Cold War thriller. The fast-paced plot follows a professional pickpocket who accidently lifts some secret microfilm from his mark. Patriotism or profit? Soon, the thief is being pursued not only by the woman he stole from, but also by Communist spies and U.S. government agents. The film culminates in a landmark brutal subway-based fight scene. It is arguably the classic anti-Communist film of the 1950s and a dazzling display of the seedy New York underlife. In particular, Thelma Ritter's excellent tough-yet-nuanced performance as Moe Williams stands out and earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, which was highly unusual for what was considered at the time a lurid and violent B-movie.
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This Is Cinerama (1952)
This full-length feature was designed to introduce audiences to the technologically revolutionary widescreen process of Cinerama. The film begins with narration by newscaster Lowell Thomas, shot in the usual 4:3 aspect ratio, then opens to a panoramic display of images projected simultaneously from three synchronized 35mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen. The images included scenes of a roller coaster, Niagara Falls, a bullfight, a water skiing show, and aerial shots from a low-flying plane. Cinerama's impact was felt throughout the 1950s as studios competed to develop their own widescreen formats, however, by the early 1960s its novelty had worn off. Cinerama can be viewed today as a prototype of the Imax format.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/cinerama.pdf
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Singin' in the Rain (1952)
This rollicking musical satire of Hollywood in the 1920s when film transitioned from silent to sound features outstanding performances by Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, and Gene Kelly who co-directed the film with Stanley Donen. Don Lockwood (Kelly) is the reigning king of silent movies and his regular co-star Lina Lamont (Hagen), while beautiful, is dumb but manipulative. When Don becomes interested in fresh-faced studio singer Kathy Selden (Reynolds), Lina has her fired. When talkies take off, Don and Lina's stardom appears to be over as audiences laugh at Lina's shrill voice for the first time. Don's friend and creative partner Cosmo (O'Connor) comes up with the brilliant idea of using Kathy to dub Lina's voice. Now considered one of the greatest musicals ever filmed, it's filled with memorable songs, lavish routines and Kelly's fabulous song-and-dance number performed in the rain.
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The Quiet Man (1952)
Never one to shy away from sentiment, director John Ford infused "The Quiet Man" with unadulterated adulation of his Irish heritage and the grandeur of the Emerald Isle. Red hair ablaze against lush landscapes, Maureen O'Hara embodies the mystique of Ireland, as John Wayne personifies the indefatigable American searching for his ancestral roots, with Victor Young's jovial score punctuating their escapades. The film and the locale are populated with characters bordering on caricature. Sly, whiskey-loving matchmaker Michaleen O'Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald), the burly town bully Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen) and the put-upon but patient Widow Tillane (Mildred Natwick) are the most vivid. Beautifully photographed in rich, saturated Technicolor by Winton C. Hoch, with picturesque art direction by Frank Hotaling, "The Quiet Man" has become a perennial St. Patrick's Day television favorite.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/quiet_man.pdf
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Magical Maestro (1952)
When snobby star the Great Poochini refuses to let Mysto the Magician conduct the opera, Mysto gets even with the help of his magic wand. Animator/director Tex Avery employed his wry sense of humor and sarcasm to give the cartoons he produced (this one for MGM Studios) greater appeal to adults.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/magical_maestro.pdf
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High Noon (1952)
Gary Cooper is a sheriff who's about to marry Quaker Grace Kelly and hang up his star, but is forced into a final gunfight alone when the townspeople refuse to help him. The film's 84 tense minutes are meant to correspond to the actual time in which the plot unfolds. Carl Foreman wrote the script and planned to direct until the Hollywood blacklist intervened and Fred Zinnemann was tapped to take over. Supporing actors include Thomas Mitchell, Lon Chaney Jr., Lloyd Bridges and Katy Jurado. Beside Cooper's taut Oscar-winning performance, the most unforgettable element of the film may be its theme song ("Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'") by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington.
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The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Vincente Minnelli directed this captivating Hollywood story of an ambitious producer (Kirk Douglas)as told in flashback by those whose lives he's impacted: an actress (Lana Turner), a writer (Dick Powell) and a director (Barry Sullivan). Insightful and liberally sprinkled with characters modeled after various Hollywood royalty from David O. Selznick to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, witty, with one of Turner's best performances. Five Oscars include Supporting Actress (Gloria Grahame), Screenplay (Charles Schnee). David Raksin's score is another asset.
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The Thing from Another World (1951)
Production credits cite Christian Nyby as the director of this science fiction classic, but the producer, Howard Hawks, is most responsible for the film's thrills, strong narrative and well-defined characters. At the Arctic research station where they're working, scientists Robert Cornthwaite, Kenneth Tobey, and Margaret Sheridan discover the frozen pilot of a spacecraft that's been buried in the ice. The researchers take the pilot back to their station, where he comes to life and terrorizes the crew. In the climactic scene, the monster (James Arness) is engulfed in flames.
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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Elia Kazan brought to the screen Tennessee Williams' classic play about fragile faded Southern belle Blanche Dubois (Vivien Leigh) who comes to visit her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) in New Orleans and is assaulted verbally and physically by her boorish brother-in-law Stanley (Marlon Brando). On the fringes of sanity, Blanche tries in vain to escape her checkered past and start life anew, but her history comes back to haunt her when she becomes attracted to Stanley's friend Mitch (Karl Malden), setting the stage for a final brutal confrontation with Stanley. Brando, Hunter, and Malden had all starred in "Streetcar," on Broadway, where Blanche had been portrayed by Jessica Tandy. Brando lost out to Humphrey Bogart for Best Actor, but Leigh, Hunter, and Malden all won Oscars.
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A Place in the Sun (1951)
Loosely based on the 1925 novel (and subsequent stage play) "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser, the film tells the story of a working-class young man (Montgomery Clift) who becomes involved with two women: one who works in his wealthy uncle's factory (Shelley Winters ) and the other a beautiful socialite (Elizabeth Taylor), with eventually tragic consequences. Directed by George Stevens from a screenplay by Harry Brown and Michael Wilson, it was a critical and commercial success, winning six Academy Awards. Modern audiences have not been as impressed with the production, aside from the performances of the lead actors, finding it slow-paced and lacking in depth or social relevance.
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Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951)
When Frank Stauffacher introduced the Art in Cinema film series at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1947, he was on his way to becoming a significant influence on a generation of West Coast filmmakers. "Notes on the Port of St. Francis" is the natural progression of Stauffacher's appreciation for the abstract synthesis of film and place. Impressionistic and evocative, the film is shaped by the director's organization of iconic imagery, such as seascapes and city scenes, and by the juxtaposition of these visuals and the soundtrack featuring Vincent Price narrating excerpts from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1882 essay on San Francisco.
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/notes_port.pdf
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Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951)
Based on a story by Dr. Seuss, the seven-minute "Gerald McBoing-Boing" is representative of the work and artistry of United Productions of America (UPA), an independent animation house active in the mid-century. Comprised mainly of animators who had defected from Disney, UPA drawing style and story-telling differed greatly from other studios (namely Disney and Warner Bros.) by not copying live-action film techniques. In other words, cartoons were allowed to look like cartoons by incorporation thick outlines and swatches of color, instead of "realistic" sets used for backdrops. "Gerald" tells the story of a misfit little boy who can only communicate via sound effects, mainly the sound "boing!" Though it has changed hands several times over the years, UPA is still in business today.
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Duck and Cover (1951)
This landmark civil defense film was seen by millions of schoolchildren in the 1950s. As explained by Bert the Turtle, to survive an atomic attack you must "duck and cover."
The expanded essay is below this description.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/duck_cover.pdf
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Working from Edmund H. North's adaptation of Harry Bates's short story "Farewell to the Master," Robert Wise created a classic science fiction film with a strong pacifist message that many have found to be allegorical in its theme of persecution, death and resurrection. Sent by a federation of planets to warn the people of Earth to stop nuclear testing before the planet is destroyed, federation emissary Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and companion robot Gort land their spacecraft in Washington, D.C. to deliver their warning to the world's leaders, but are forced to take refuge in a boarding house run by (Patricia Neal) and her son (Billy Gray). The film's memorable score by Bernard Herrmann, which features the otherworldly-sounding theremin, was reused in other science fiction productions.
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An American in Paris (1951)
Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Georges Guetary, (The film was supposed to make Guetary into "the New Chevalier." It didn't.) The thinnish plot is held together by the superlative production numbers and by the recycling of several vintage George Gershwin tunes, including "I Got Rhythm," "'S Wonderful," and "Our Love Is Here to Stay." Highlights include Guetary's rendition of "Stairway to Paradise"; Oscar Levant's fantasy of conducting and performing Gershwin's "Concerto in F" (Levant also appears as every member of the orchestra). "An American in Paris," directed by Vincente Minnelli, cleaned up at the Academy Awards, with Oscars for best picture, screenplay, score, cinematography, art direction, set design, and even a special award for the choreography of its 18-minute closing ballet in which Kelly and Caron dance before lavish backgrounds resembling French masterpieces.
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The African Queen (1951)
Adapted from a novel by C.S. Forester, the film stars Humphrey Bogart in an Oscar-winning portrayal of a slovenly, gin-swilling captain of the African Queen, a tramp steamer carrying supplies to small African villages during World War I. Katharine Hepburn plays a prim spinster missionary stranded when the Germans invade her settlement. Bogart agrees to transport Hepburn back to civilization despite their opposite temperaments. Before long, their tense animosity turns to love, and together they navigate treacherous rapids and devise an ingenious way to destroy a German gunboat. The difficulties inherent in filming on location in Africa are documented in numerous books, including one by Hepburn.
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Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Based on the infamous 1925 case of Kentucky cave explorer Floyd Collins, who became trapped underground and whose gripping saga created a national sensation lasting two weeks before Collins died. A deeply cynical look at journalism, "Ace in the Hole" features Kirk Douglas as a once-famous New York reporter, now a down-and-out has-been in Albuquerque. Douglas plots a return to national prominence by milking the story of a man trapped in a Native American cave dwelling as a riveting human-interest story, complete with a tourist-laden, carnival atmosphere outside the rescue scene. The callously indifferent wife of the stricken miner is no more sympathetic: "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." Providing a rare moral contrast is Porter Hall, who plays Douglas' ethical editor appalled at his reporter's actions. Such a scathing tale of media manipulation might have helped turn this brilliant film into a critical and commercial failure, which later led Paramount to reissue the film under a new title, "The Big Carnival."
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Winchester '73 (1950)
James Stewart roughs up Dan Duryea, a vital link to finding his father's killer. Library of Congress Collection.
Actor Jimmy Stewart collaborated with director Anthony Mann on eight films during the 1950s. Most renowned was an influential series of five taut, psychological Westerns from 1950-55 revolving around themes of hidden secrets, vengeance, shifting personal morals and concepts of heroism. The movie "Winchester '73" launched their partnership. Film historian Scott Simmon calls "Winchester ‘73" "the La Ronde of Death, as opposed to the love that keeps the Schnitzler play in motion," and "the film where a gun is more of an object of worship than in any other American film." Ironically, in light of current debates about gun-carry rights, it's fascinating that even in this most gun-obsessed of movies, nobody is allowed to carry a gun in town. But for a man caught out in the desert without ammo, he has not "felt so naked since the last time I took a bath." Stewart's obsessive quests are to avenge the death of his father and pursue a Winchester rifle as it moves from one owner to the next, changing everyone into whose hands the gun briefly passes, and culminating in a justly-famous shootout amidst steep, rocky terrain.
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Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Arguably the greatest movie about Hollywood, director Billy Wilder's masterpiece is a combination of noir, black comedy, and character study. Aging silent-film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) persuades down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) to polish the behemoth of a script she's been laboring over for decades, and in the process he becomes her paid companion. One-time titan of the silent screen director-actor Erich von Stroheim adds to the gothic creepiness as butler Max. The film's often been parodied but its brilliant dialog, decadent production design and wide-ranging acting styles have never been topped.
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In a Lonely Place (1950)
Director Nicholas Ray scathing Hollywood satire, "In a Lonely Place," may well rate that honor. Screenwriter Humphrey Bogart, brilliant at his craft yet prone to living with his fists, undergoes scrutiny as a murder suspect while romancing insouciant starlet Gloria Grahame. Their tempestuous on-screen romance mirrors the real-life deteriorating marriage of Grahame and director Ray, who divorced shortly after the film was completed. With jaded passion and paranoid force of character, Bogart perfectly plays the talented but psychologically unstable artist who will not accept his society, proving it with periodic violent, self-destructive confrontations. The film's cynical, fatalistic script marries film-noir themes and doomed romance: "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."
In a Lonely Place: The Restoration Story, an in-depth look at the preservation process behind Sony Pictures Entertainment's complete restoration of this film (2002).
National Film Registry Year by Year
in General Discussions
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Eaux d'artifice (1953)
Shot in black-and-white through red filters, Kenneth Anger's short avant-garde work was filmed in the Garden of the Villa D'Este in Tivoli, Italy, a water garden of fountains and classical statuary. A woman dressed in 18th century period costume strolls through the park -- her movements gradually becoming more frenetic until she seems to become one with the water. One of Anger's more elemental though highly stylized films, it focuses on the interplay of water, light and stone.