Old Yeller 1957 - An influential tear-jerker family movie

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IMDB Rating: 7,3

Director: Robert Stevenson
Main Cast: Dorothy McGuire, Fess Parker, Tommy Kirk, Beverly Washburn

"Old Yeller is one of the best-loved live-action features ever made by the Walt Disney Company. Unabashedly weepy, the film is genuine enough to have become a family classic. Director Robert Stevenson coaxes some fine performances from his cast and does an admirable job recreating farm life in the mid-1800s. The film inspired a number of copycats, and its influence can still be felt in almost any movie that prominently features an animal. Disney began to move away from animation after the success of 1950's Treasure Island; Yeller was one of many live-action hits directed by Stevenson, including Kidnapped, The Absent-Minded Professor, and, most notably, Mary Poppins. Yeller spawned an inferior sequel, Savage Sam, featuring much of the same cast but a different director." - www.allmovie.com

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Night of the demon/Curse of the demon 1957 - The significant horror classic

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IMDB Rating: 7,6

Director: Jacques Tourneur
Main Cast: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham

"One of the finest horror films ever made, Curse of the Demon is a frightening, fast-paced, and unrelenting chiller that only gets better with passing years and repeated viewings. Directed by Jacques Tourneur from the M.R. James story Casting the Runes, Curse stars Dana Andrews as a psychologist out to disprove the black magic of co-star Niall MacGinnis. Peggy Cummings also stars as the daughter of a scientist killed by the title creature during the shocking opening. Tourneur was a master at scaring an audience by the power of suggestion, and Curse accomplished this with one exception: the producer insisted the 'demon' had to make its appearance at the beginning and ending of the film. That aside, the film is a masterful collage of fine filmmaking from its sharply written story, characters, and dialogue to Clifton Parker's spine-tingling score and the spectacular special effects, highlighted by production designer Ken Adams' terrifying demon. The performances are excellent across the board, with Andrews solid as the boorish non-believer who refuses to become convinced of the curse placed on him. MacGinnis' character is the real gem, a devilish trickster whose devious delight in the black arts hides a surprisingly bratty and less-than-sinister bad guy. This character was loosely based on the famed occultist, Aleister Crowley." - www.allmovie.com

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The incredible shrinking man 1957 - A strange adventure into the unknown

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IMDB Rating: 7,7

Director: Jack Arnold
Main Cast: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton, Raymond Bailey

"The notion of a man who shrinks to the size of a ChapStick and finds himself hunted by his own pet cat would seem to be the height of comic absurdity, but screenwriter Richard Matheson and director Jack Arnold had the good sense not to play it as a traditional horror/sci-fi story. Instead, The Incredible Shrinking Man emphasizes the psychological side of the character's dilemma alongside his obvious physical problems; Scott Carey (Grant Williams, in the best and best-known performance of a sadly misbegotten career) finds his view of himself and the world radically challenged by his extreme reaction to a radioactive cloud. As Scott slowly begins to shrink, he first loses touch with his masculinity as he begins to look more like his wife's son than her husband, and then begins to question his humanity, as his home turns into a horrific netherworld and he's eventually reduced to the size of a molecule. Director Arnold and his special effects crew do fine work, making Scott's situation look as realistic as possible given the circumstances, and they turn his struggle to emerge from the basement into an adventure to reckon with. But it's Matheson's perceptive script that sets the film apart; plenty of monster movies had an ordinary guy turn into an unrecognizable creature, but few faced the psychological and even theological implications of a man transformed into something unknowable. The result was the most intelligent movie of the 1950s 'atomic mutation' cycle, and, along with Them!, the one that has best stood the test of time." - www.allmovie.com

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Sweet smell of success 1957 - A sharp and bitter urban masterpiece

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IMDB Rating: 8,2

Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Main Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Barbara Nichols

"Ernest Lehman drew upon his experiences as a Broadway press agent to write the devastating a clef short story 'Tell Me About Tomorrow'. This in turn was adapted by Lehman and Clifford Odets into the sharp-edged, penetrating feature film Sweet Smell of Success. Burt Lancaster stars as J. J. Hunsecker, a Walter Winchell-style columnist who wields his power like a club, steamrolling friends and enemies alike. Tony Curtis co-stars as Sidney Falco, a sycophantic press agent who'd sell his grandmother to get an item into Hunsecker's popular newspaper column. Hunsecker enlists Falco's aid in ruining the reputation of jazz guitarist Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), who has had the temerity to court Hunsecker's sister Susan (Susan Harrison). Falco contrives to plant marijuana on Dallas, then summons corrupt, sadistic NYPD officer Harry Kello (Emile Meyer), who owes Hunsecker several favors, to arrest the innocent singer.
The real Walter Winchell, no longer as powerful as he'd been in the 1940s but still a man to be reckoned with, went after Ernest Lehman with both barrels upon the release of Sweet Smell of Success. Winchell was not so much offended by the unflattering portrait of himself as by the dredging up of an unpleasant domestic incident from his past.
While Success was not a success at the box office, it is now regarded as a model of street-smart cinematic cynicism. The electric performances of the stars are matched by the taut direction of Alex MacKendrick, the driving jazz score of Elmer Bernstein, and the evocative nocturnal camerawork of James Wong Howe, setting the nocturnal mood of New York's lost theaters and nightclubs.
Though a de facto N.Y.C. companion to Billy Wilder's equally superb and mordant West Coast showbiz exposé Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sweet Smell suffered an ignominious contemporary fate more akin to Wilder's acid press satire Ace in the Hole (1951). Since then, Sweet Smell of Success has aged gracefully into a masterwork; it was adapted not so gracefully as a Broadway musical in 2002." - www.allmovie.com

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The bridge on the River Kwai 1957 - One of the greatest war films ever made

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: David Lean
Main Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald

"The Bridge on the River Kwai ranks as one of the greatest films of all time and arguably director David Lean's best film. At the heart of the film is the performance of Alec Guinness as the obsessively principled Colonel Nicholson. In a lesser film, his character might be simplified into a heroic martyr, but The Bridge on the River Kwai revels in its moral ambiguity: no significant character is either purely a hero or purely a villain. Filmed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the film features brutal prisoner-of-war work camps that are nonetheless considerably nicer than their historical counterparts, a good decision since it frees the audience to focus on the battle of wills, at first between Nicholson and Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), later between Shears (William Holden) and Warden (Jack Hawkins). The film's closing line ('Madness... Madness') is among the best-known and most enigmatic closings in screen history.
Bridge on the River Kwai won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for the legendary British filmmaker David Lean, and Best Actor for Guinness. It also won Best Screenplay for Pierre Boulle, the author of the novel on which the film was based, even though the actual writers were blacklisted writers Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, who were given their Oscars under the table." - www.allmovie.com

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Witness for the prosecution 1957 - A courtroom drama with suprise twists and shocking climax

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IMDB Rating: 8,5

Director: Billy Wilder
Main Cast: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester

"Witness for the Prosecution is multi-faceted director Billy Wilder's stab at the courtroom genre, and he handles it with aplomb. Reworking Agatha Christie's stage play, based on Christie's own short story, Wilder retools the play in order to develop a humorous subtext in the interplay between the physically fragile defense attorney (Charles Laughton) and his overbearing but well-meaning nurse (real-life wife Elsa Lanchester). Laughton and Lanchaster have great chemistry and give fully realized performances that transcend the limitations of the genre. Wilder also jiggers Marlene Dietrich's role, wife of the accused, to make use of moments from her personal life, particularly the wonderful "Berlin cabaret" flashback sequence. The twists and turns of the plot are allowed to emerge unobtrusively in this methodically paced drama, and while the finale stretches credulity in order to circumvent the inevitable Production Code restrictions, Wilder's film is a completely satisfying experience anchored by a handful of memorable performances, including the last in Tyrone Power's illustrious career.
A delicious Billy Wilder mixture of humor, intrigue and melodrama, Witness for the Prosecution is distinguished by its hand-picked supporting cast: John Williams as the police inspector, Henry Daniell as Robards' law partner, Una O'Connor as the murder victim's stone-deaf maid, Torin Thatcher as the prosecutor, Ruta Lee as a sobbing courtroom spectator, and Elsa Lanchester as Robards' ever-chipper nurse (a role especially written for the film, so that Lanchester could look after Laughton on the set).
The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards, but ran up against David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai juggernaut, and was shut out." - www.allmovie.com

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Paths of glory 1957 - Kubrick's breakthrough war masterpiece

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IMDB Rating: 8,5

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Main Cast: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou

"Paths of Glory is a remarkable anti-war film that retains its impact decades after its release. The story's horrifying, tragic inevitability combines with Stanley Kubrick's forthright documentary style to create a film of rare power, a stinging, pre-Vietnam indictment of the inflexibility of war-time decision-making. Kirk Douglas, who produced the film, seems an odd choice to play a French colonel in World War I, yet he fills the screen with his righteous indignation. Kubrick's indictment of a military elite out of touch with - even openly antagonistic towards - its own men is brilliantly vicious. Filmed in pristine black-and-white that mirrors the thematic emphasis on the battle between good (enlisted men) and evil (the officers), with Kubrick's keen eye toward detail, Paths of Glory is both an intellectual and a visual treat. The film touched many raw nerves, and it was banned in several European countries, with France the last to lift the ban in the late 1970s. The conclusion features the soon-to-be Mrs. Kubrick in a sentimental and melodramatic scene that has been criticized as out-of-step with the rest of the somber and gritty film." - www.allmovie.com

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12 angry men 1957 - The finest courtroom drama

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IMDB rating: 8,9

Director: Sidney Lumet
Main Cast: Henry Fonda, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec, Robert Webber

"Twelve Angry Men is a tightly wound top of a movie. Each scene ratchets up the tension another notch as Henry Fonda's character tries desperately to open the minds of his fellow jurors. The setting - a claustrophobic jury room in the dog days of summer - superbly augments the suspense. Operating within the constraints of a small budget, first-time director Sidney Lumet tightens the noose by accentuating the throbbing pulse of the ceiling fan and slowly narrowing his shots on his characters as the film approaches its climax. Based on Reginald Rose's well-known play, which had been adapted to the television screen three years earlier, Twelve Angry Men boasts a series of excellent performances by young actors who would soon become household names, including Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, and Martin Balsam. However, it is the film's established stars - Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall and most importantly Fonda - who play the leads, delivering the goods like seasoned pros. The film has instructional value as a study of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the jury system, but its real value is how it allows each member of the cultural mosaic of a jury to develop into distinct, damaged, and interesting characters. In a well-crafted metaphor for the broader outline of society, the jury members must confront their prejudices in order to see that justice prevails.
A pet project of Henry Fonda's, Twelve Angry Men was his only foray into film production; the actor's partner in this venture was Reginald Rose. A flop when it first came out (surprisingly, since it cost almost nothing to make), Twelve Angry Men holds up beautifully when seen today.
Nominated for three Oscars, Twelve Angry Men ran into the juggernaut of Bridge on the River Kwai and came up empty handed.
It was remade for television in 1997 by director William Friedkin with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott." - www.allmovie.com

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