Shane 1953 - A simple Western elevated to mythical status

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IMDB Rating: 7,7

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon De Wilde, Jack Palance, Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan

"Despite being burdened with grand pretensions, George Steven's Shane stands securely as one of the most intelligent westerns of its era. The story, underscored by potent historical conflicts between cattle ranchers and homesteaders, and broad philosophical issues contrasting the rugged individualist of American lore with the value of belonging to a community, is mythic in scope. The massive, imposing and ragged landscape of Wyoming's Grand Tetons, captured capably by Oscar winner Loyal Griggs, provides an appropriately awe-inspiring backdrop to the action. Stevens rarely passes up a chance to offer up attention-seeking directorial flourishes (long takes capped by extended fades), but in the end his faithfulness to the characters and their stories preserves the movie's greatness. Jack Palance, whose sneering charisma is palpable, is the embodiment of evil as the ranchers' hired assassin. Alan Ladd, who is enigmatic and mysterious as the neo-pacifist ex-gunslinger titular character, is quietly imposing (despite his lack of physical stature) in the role. As a man with a dark past, Shane willingly martyrs himself in order to atone for past sins and to save his newly adopted family. Therefore, it is appropriate that his son-by-proxy Joey provides the predominant point-of-view, since it is his coming-of-age that reflects the maturation of the American west.
Cinematographer Loyal Griggs imbues this no-frills tale with the outer trappings of an epic, forever framing the action in relation to the unspoiled land surrounding it. A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s screenplay, adapted from the Jack Schaefer novel, avoids the standard good guy/bad guy clichés: both homesteaders and cattlemen are shown as three-dimensional human beings, flaws and all
Nominated for 5 Oscars, winner of one for its stunning color cinematography." - www.allmovie.com

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From here to eternity 1953 - Pearl Harbor, Schofield Barracks, aspirations & frustrations

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IMDB Rating: 7,8

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Main Cast: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine

"There were few movies greeted with more anticipation than Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity when it opened in 1953. Adapted from one of the best-selling novels of the previous ten years, it was a film for which everyone had high expectations. It lived up to all of them and then some, adding a new level of violence and frankness to popular dramatic films just when the public was ready to accept these elements. (However, the movie couldn't even hint at an aspect that James Jones' novel mentioned almost at its outset: the homosexual advances that Prewitt parried from his former sergeant, resulting in his transfer to a rifle company.)
Burt Lancaster, who'd previously established himself as a hero-victim in a series of film noirs made under the auspices of Universal and as a costume hero in a pair of Warner Bros. period adventure films (The Flame and the Arrow, The Crimson Pirate), transformed himself into the quintessential macho leading man with his performance; Montgomery Clift gave the performance of his life as Robert E. Lee Prewitt, unwilling boxer and trumpet player; ex-navy enlisted man Ernest Borgnine dominated every scene he was in as Sgt. Judson, the most vicious enlisted man seen onscreen in a mainstream American movie up to that time; Deborah Kerr, previously known for her plucky, lady-like roles, got to play an unabashedly sexual woman, and a married one at that; Donna Reed, cast against type as the prostitute with delusions of her own, gave the most honest and wrenching performance of her career; and Frank Sinatra, cast against all prevailing wisdom in Hollywood (and beating out Eli Wallach for the choicest supporting role in Hollywood that year), became a great actor overnight as the doomed Maggio.
No words could do justice to the film's most famous scene: the nocturnal romantic rendezvous on the beach, with Burt Lancaster's and Deborah Kerr's bodies intertwining as the waves crash over them. If you're able to take your eyes off the principals for a moment or two, keep an eye out for George Reeves; his supporting role was shaved down when, during previews, audiences yelled 'There's Superman!' and began to laugh.
From Here to Eternity raised the bar for realism (and the genuine, jagged, if ugly side of life) in war movies, and in movies in general; winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and supporting awards to Sinatra and Reed." - www.allmovie.com

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The big heat 1953 - Intense and powerful film noir classic

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IMDB Rating: 8,0

Director: Fritz Lang
Main Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin, Jeanette Nolan

"One of the later examples of American film noir, The Big Heat is also one of the genre's most underrated films. Director Fritz Lang utilized many of the elements typical to his other films: unseen yet gruesome violence, relentless pacing, and a hardboiled view of justice and revenge. The sad, realist film has an oppressive feeling of malignity. Glenn Ford is a perfect everyman cop, out for revenge against criminals as well as other cops. In this way, The Big Heat marks a significant transition between the crime movies of two different eras. Prior to the early 1970s, police dramas tended to pit police in very clear opposition to the men in the black hats, with the notable exceptions of On Dangerous Ground or The Big Combo. After the culture shock of the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, films like Dirty Harry, The French Connection and Serpico began an obsession with the ambivalent emotions that make a policeman and his department tick. In many ways, The Big Heat was a precursor for these films, both in theme and tone." - www.allmovie.com

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Roman holiday 1953 - An enchanting fairy tale that catapulted Audrey into stardom

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IMDB Rating: 8,1

Director: William Wyler
Main Cast: Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Eddie Albert

"With Audrey Hepburn at her most appealing, Gregory Peck at his most charismatic, and Rome at its most photogenic, Roman Holiday remains one of the most popular romances that has ever skipped across the screen. Aside from being an enormously enjoyable romp, the film is most notable for two reasons. The first is Hepburn, featured here in her first starring role in a Hollywood film. Her performance won her an Academy Award and established her as an actress whose waifish, delicate beauty presented a viable alternative to the amply proportioned bombshells of the day. With her wide-eyed but cultivated portrayal of Princess Anne, Hepburn kicked off a trend defined by the Audrey Hepburn 'look' - simple, sophisticated, and streamlined. The second reason for the film's importance is its location. Whereas modern-day filmmakers may think nothing of jetting off to remote and exotic locales, in 1953 the idea of traveling beyond a Hollywood soundstage was fairly novel. Director William Wyler's use of Rome is one of the best examples of how a location can become a leading character in a film: without the city's twisted alleyways, bustling crowds, and hulking ruins, Roman Holiday would have had the visual impact of a museum diorama. The effect of using the actual city in the film was eye-popping: audiences saw not just a romance between the two lead characters but a love affair between the camera and the city. In this respect, Roman Holiday goes beyond its status as one of the screen's most enduring romances to become one of history's most thumbed-through travel brochures.
Oscar also went to the screenplay, credited to Ian McLellan Hunter and John Dighton but actually co-written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo." - www.allmovie.com

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Stalag 17 1953 - POW classic with William Holden's strong performance

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IMDB Rating: 8,1

Director: Billy Wilder
Main Cast: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Neville Brand

"Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 was a new kind of war movie in 1953, a more realistic look at POW camp life than earlier POW movies (often British) had offered, featuring vivid depictions of larceny, betrayal, sadism, gallows humor, and a near-lynching of an innocent (though hardly guiltless) man. Wilder and his actors -- even though several are trapped in stock war-movie characterizations -- create a level of tension that forces the viewer to suspend disbelief, even as the movie seldom moves outside the confines of a single barrack. Stalag 17 helped William Holden establish his cynical, macho persona, a more hard-bitten descendant of the characters that Humphrey Bogart played in such 1940s movies as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon; (ironically, Holden and Bogart would play brothers in Wilder's next movie, Sabrina).
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Stalag 17 is as much comedy as wartime melodrama, with most of the laughs provided by Robert Strauss as the Betty Grable-obsessed "Animal" and Harvey Lembeck as Stosh's best buddy Harry. Other standouts in the all-male cast include Richard Erdman as prisoner spokesman Hoffy, Neville Brand as the scruffy Duke, Peter Graves as blonde-haired, blue-eyed "all American boy" Price, Gil Stratton as Sefton's sidekick Cookie (who also narrates the film) and Robinson Stone as the catatonic, shell-shocked Joey. Writer/producer/director Billy Wilder and coscenarist Edmund Blum remained faithful to the plot and mood the Donald Bevan/Edmund Trzcinski stage play Stalag 17, while changing virtually every line of dialogue.
William Holden won an Academy Award for his hard-bitten portrayal of Sefton." - www.allmovie.com

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Updates on the following posts

New Download and DVD links were added -

The 47 Ronin 1941
To be or not to be 1942
The Devil's envoys 1942
Day of wrath 1943
Night and the city 1950
A Christmas carol 1951