Man With A Movie List

Director: Marcel Carné Year: 1945 - It's impossible to imagine what it would be like to be in France, bruised and battered, at the eve of its liberation from the Nazis, and to see this impossibly beautiful and poetic film celebrate life and love. There is so much that could be said about this excellent film, but for me this goes to show how so many directors, including Renoir no less, make their best films when they break out of the strong but "comfortable" film-making modes they had been accustomed to. This is almost certainly untrue, but I could so easily imagine Carné, observing how his genre of "poetic realism" had been adapted by America to tell mastercrafted but relatively empty stories about moral failings, and decided that he needed to show the world a little pure beauty. This film succeeds at that, and in our modern times it shines even more brightly.

Director: John M. Stahl Year: 1945 - The first thing that struck me about this film is its stark beauty - it's really the first color film on the list to make good use of natural sets. The various wilderness settings (New Mexico, Maine) serve a function as well, highlighting the lead woman's "wildness", and later on, her increasing desperation to have her husband to herself. This film noir, more than most, highlights the sexism inherent in the genre, but for a moment early on, it's easy to be sympathetic towards her, and it's not to the film's credit that we abandon any sympathy for her by the end of the film.

Director: Michael Curtiz Year: 1945 - Putting aside from a moment the context surrounding this film, and Crawford's own (possible) parenting methods, I thought Mildred Pierce  was a solid and well-acted drama that was let down by its potboiler twists. The awful, greedy daughter was too exaggerated and out of the realm of possibility. In a better movie, the character of Mildred Pierce is such a cool, strong female role, but it's let down by the movie she's in. Curtiz' directing does the film quite a few favors, and it has the excellent pacing that we're starting to expect from Hollywood in its fascination with noir, but this one veers too far from verisimilitude to be one of the best.