The searchers 1956 - Ford's masterpiece, Wayne's definitive role

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IMDB Rating: 8,0

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, John Qualen

"If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) and a film about one man's troubling moral codes, a big-screen adventure of the 1950s that anticipated the complex themes and characters that would dominate the 1970s.
Described by the director as a 'psychological epic', The Searchers (1956) is John Ford's most revered Western, for its visual richness and profoundly ambiguous critique of the genre's (and America's) racism. Ford pushed John Wayne's archetypal Westerner into the realm of antiheroism, as Ethan's five-year quest to rescue his niece from Comanche chief Scar mutates into killing her when he discovers her living placidly as Scar's bride. While Ethan's lethal racism signals his insanity, Wayne's charismatic presence and Ethan's desire to salvage the family unit of 'civilized' settlers carries its own sheen of Western heroism. Still, the famous final image of Ethan's departure into the desert reveals that 'civilization' has no place for such an uncompromising figure.
Shot on location in Colorado and Monument Valley, Ford's vividly arid Technicolor vistas render Ethan a man of the magnificent and punishing landscape, unable to reconcile his inner savagery with domestic constraints. Greeted in America as just another quality Ford oater, the film was first reclaimed by French critics for the unresolved tensions and evocative style of Ford's narrative, elevating it to the status of cinematic art.
John Wayne gives perhaps his finest performance in a role that predated screen antiheroes of the 1970s; by the film's conclusion, his single-minded obsession seems less like heroism and more like madness. Wayne bravely refuses to soft-pedal Ethan's ugly side, and the result is a remarkable portrait of a man incapable of answering to anyone but himself, who ultimately has more in common with his despised Indians than with his more 'civilized' brethren. Natalie Wood is striking in her brief role as the 16-year-old Debbie, lost between two worlds, and Winton C. Hoch's Technicolor photography captures Monument Valley's savage beauty with subtle grace.
The Searchers paved the way for such revisionist Westerns as The Wild Bunch (1969) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and its influence on movies from Taxi Driver (1976) to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Wars (1977) testifies to its lasting importance." - www.allmovie.com

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Rebel without a cause 1955 - "You're tearing me apart!"

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IMDB Rating: 7,8

Director: Nicholas Ray
Main Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran, Corey Allen, William Hopper, Dennis Hopper, Rochelle Hudson

"A clenched fist of teenage alienation and cultural disillusion, Rebel Without a Cause questioned the complacent state of 1950s American society with the subtlety of a blow to the jaw. A truly landmark film, Rebel went where almost no Hollywood film had dared, exposing the anger and discontent beneath the prosperity and confidence of post-war America, picking at family values that dictated that happiness was best found in the nuclear family's well-appointed suburban home. The alienated kids in Rebel were part and parcel of these homes - angry, wounded animals who rejected the very comforts that were supposed to make America superior to the rest of the world. If the notion that comfortable, middle-class white kids could harbor such feelings of anger and nameless yearning wasn't discomforting enough, even more so was the notion that their parents were ill-equipped to understand or help them. From Plato's neglectful mother and father to Jim's ineffectual parents to Judy's pathologically repressed father, all of the film's parents are seen as people whose conformity to the values of 1950s society masks their own discontent and - in the case of Judy's father and Plato's parents - underlying deviance. Thus, the teenagers are not so much the problem themselves as heirs to the problems created by the older and supposedly wiser generation.
Rebel without a Cause began as a case history, written in 1944 by Dr. Robert Lindner. Originally intended as a vehicle for Marlon Brando, the property was shelved until Brando's The Wild One (1953) opened floodgates for films about crazy mixed-up teens. Director Nicholas Ray, then working on a similar project, was brought in to helm the film version. His star was James Dean, fresh from Warners' East of Eden. Ray's low budget dictated that the new film be lensed in black-and-white, but when East of Eden really took off at the box office, the existing footage was scrapped and reshot in color. This was great, so far as Ray was concerned, inasmuch as he had a predilection for symbolic color schemes. James Dean's hot red jacket, for example, indicated rebellion, while his very blue blue jeans created a near luminescent effect (Ray had previously used the same vivid color combination on Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar). As part of an overall bid for authenticity, real-life gang member Frank Mazzola was hired as technical advisor for the fight scenes. To extract as natural a performance as possible from Dean, Ray redesigned the Stark family's living room set to resemble Ray's own home, where Dean did most of his rehearsing. Speaking of interior sets, the mansion where the three troubled teens hide out had previously been seen as the home of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
Released right after James Dean's untimely death, Rebel without a Cause netted an enormous profit. The film almost seems like a eulogy when seen today, since so many of its cast members - James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Nick Adams - died young. Mineo, sad and touching as the lost boy infatuated with Dean's Jim Stark, was murdered near his Hollywood home, while Wood, who brought female sexual yearning to the screen in ways that had never before been seen, drowned in a mysterious boating accident. And, of course, Dean died in a car accident before the film was even released. That Rebel Without a Cause remains a classic is in no small part due to Dean's raw, soulful performance, made more timeless by his mortality." - www.allmovie.com

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Miracle on 34th Street 1947 - Modern story of Jesus Christ with a happy ending

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IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: George Seaton
Main Cast: Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Gene Lockhart, Natalie Wood

"Miracle on 34th Street has been a favorite holiday movie since its release in 1947, that retells the New Testament's story of the life of Jesus Christ. It was done so subtly - as opposed to, say, Frank Capra's more obvious retelling in Meet John Doe - that it was scarcely noticed by most viewers. The movie was set in New York City in 1947 and utilized a large amount of location shooting (courtesy of Fox's Movietone News Studios, located in Manhattan) to give it a realistic texture; while screenwriter Valentine Davies' original story seems, superficially, to be the height of whimsy, about Santa Claus's appearance in the midst of that realistic setting, it becomes clear on closer examination that Davies borrowed liberally from the New Testament. Edmund Gwenn's Kris Kringle is almost more a substitute for Jesus than a screen-bound Santa. He enters a big city with his message of generosity and foresaking commercialism; he meets some doubters and some interested onlookers, and soon they're listening to him and starting to believe in him. Then he's betrayed and put on trial, not for his life but for his identity: he must prove he is who he says he is, or be imprisoned and labeled a madman and a pretender. However, the film adds a happy ending, reflecting a postwar feeling of confidence and helping to ensure its endurance across the decades. 72-year-old Edmund Gwenn won an Oscar for his portrayal of the 'jolly old elf' Kringle; the rest of the cast is populated by such never-fail pros as Gene Lockhart (as the beleaguered sanity-hearing judge), William Frawley (as a crafty political boss), and an unbilled Thelma Ritter and Jack Albertson. Based on the novel by Valentine Davies, Miracle on 34th Street was remade twice: once for TV in 1973, and a second time for a 1994 theatrical release, with Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle. " - www.allmovie.com

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