1946 Ten Best Movies

James Stewart, on the possibility of shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet.

I began giving over my Sunday mornings to this project in the first week of 2009, and now we’ve run out the string: ten-best lists for every year going back to 1919, beyond which I will need to do much more movie-watching to assemble something remotely respectable. After taking next Sunday off (the Port Townsend Film Festival looms, although “looms” isn’t quite the right word), I will begin writing Sunday Crop Duster entries on a “movie of the week,” the definition of which has yet to be, ah, defined.

The #1 for 1946 is a well-known picture that was once not well-known. When I began seeing It’s a Wonderful Life on late-night TV it was actually something of a cult movie, not having been re-discovered yet, which made it seem all the more unusual and unexpected and privileged: a cautionary note about the American Dream, despite the happy ending. Frank Capra’s fable is a painstakingly thorough and well-constructed picture (that newel post!) but almost seems out of his control at times. It’s a complicated movie, all about dreams and disappointments and seeing the here and now, and it shifts itself in interesting ways the older you get.

For the best of the rest, Hitchcock and John Ford merely contribute a couple of their finest pictures, and the Powell-Pressburger A Matter of Life and Death stands with the Capra film as a fantasy that uses a supernatural device to deliver a philosophical look at existence. Notorious is one of the most perfectly-realized movies ever made, but this time the riches of Capra and P&P rule the year. The ten best movies of 1946:

1. It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)

2. A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)

3. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)

4. My Darling Clementine (John Ford)

5. The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)

6. The Stranger (Orson Welles)

7. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)

8. Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau)

9. Let There Be Light (John Huston)

10. The Murderers Are Among Us (Wolfgang Staude) and Paisa (Roberto Rossellini)

Let There Be Light is the war documentary, shot at a psychiatric hospital for returning WWII vets, that was banned for decades and is still difficult to see now. Shot to convey uplift about the success stories of soldiers getting treatment for psychological wounds, the film nevertheless gives an unflinching and unsettling look at the toll of combat (it is unforgettably narrated by Walter Huston: “Here are men who tremble…”). The Best Years of Our Lives also looks at returning veterans, and is one of those rare big Hollywood films that aims to capture its moment and succeeds.

The #10 slot are “rubble films,” shot in the remnants of real places: Staudte’s film is the fountainhead of East German cinema, Rossellini’s is a collection of war stories. (Apologies to Shoeshine, which I can’t really “place,” not having seen it since an adolescent viewing.) Just missing the cut is David Lean’s Great Expectations, an impeccable Dickens adaptation.

There are some noir films in the next rung of titles, including Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, George Marshall’s The Blue Dahlia, and Roy William Neill’s Black Angel. Not quite as keen on Charles Vidor’s Gilda as everybody else is, but it’s in there. And enjoyable works by a couple of continental sophisticates: Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown and Douglas Sirk’s A Scandal in Paris.

There must be a place for King Vidor’s (and Selznick’s) Duel in the Sun, as well as a much less heated western, Jacques Tourneur’s Canyon Passage. Mark Robson’s Bedlam holds up the Val Lewton quality horror run, and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Utamaro and His Five Women points the way to subsequent classics from this director. A pair of delicious British mysteries from the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, Green for Danger and I See a Dark Stranger, indicate a rich period for Brit-film.

That’s that. Enough with the list-making for a while. I can hear the bells of St. Mark’s Cathedral from my window, so I suppose an angel just got his wings. Thanks for reading these things – now if I can figure out a way to make them browsable in chronological order….

The Bitter Tea of General Yen

The Bitter Tea of General Yen

by Robert Horton

It was 1932, and Frank Capra was frustrated. True, he’d had some measure of success: nearly single-handedly, his movies were pulling punk Columbia Pictures out of the second (or maybe third) tier of Hollywood studios. The legendarily boorish mogul Harry Cohn trusted him with Columbia’s A-list productions, such as they were. And Capra was connecting with audiences through his gutsy films, which stuck to bread-and-butter box-office topics: rowdy adventures, populist comedies, and a series of socko women’s flicks with Barbara Stanwyck.

But the tough little Sicilian immigrant wanted more. He wasn’t yet “Frank Capra,” that name above the title from film history; in fact, he was Frank R. Capra (which never did look quite right), with the middle initial to class things up. He wanted attention. He wanted respect. He wanted an Oscar, dammit, but they didn’t give you Oscars for making delightful, crowd-pleasing comedies. They gave you Oscars for putting out that arty crap. Capra tried a socially-conscious story, torn from the Great Depression’s headlines—it was American Madness, a terrific movie and a warm-up for It’s a Wonderful Life. But the Academy voters didn’t bite, and neither did audiences. So Capra went further.

The movie was The Bitter Tea of General Yen, and Capra had never made anything—would never again make anything—quite like it. The story is set entirely in China, and in outline form it sounds like a romance novel, suitable for a wet-eyed magazine serial: American woman goes to the Mysterious East, is kidnapped by a powerful Chinese war lord, and falls in love with him. Yet the film is complex where the outline is simple, and Capra repeatedly surprises with his evocative direction—over seventy-five years after its making, General Yen still looks fresh.

The American woman is Megan Davis, about to join her missionary husband-to-be, the saintly and dull Dr. Robert Strike (Gavin Gordon), in China. Caught in an uprising, Megan is rescued by the elegant General Yen, who whisks her away to safety in his private train car. As Megan goes to sleep on the train, the general watches over her, in a silent and heavily erotic exchange that is observed by the general’s mistress, Mah-Li (Toshia Mori); Capra plays the moment without dialogue, which is exactly right.

Most of the remainder of the film is set in General Yen’s palatial estate, where the cherry blossoms drop their petals, lovers gambol in the moonlight, and prisoners are executed outside Megan’s bedroom window. It’s clear that Megan is attracted to the general, because Capra inserts a dream sequence into the movie that is absolutely the wildest thing he ever shot: Megan is menaced in her lavish bedroom by a sharp-toothed Chinese, the personification of the racist ideas spouted by the white missionaries in the opening scenes. Then, a dashing man with a mask enters, subdues the intruder, and removes his mask as he embraces Megan. Whoops! It isn’t heroic Dr. Strike—it’s General Yen. Not only is the punch line a surprise, but the sequence looks like something out a French surrealist movie, not a Hollywood studio picture.

Movie Diary 9/20/2008

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939). Like an alternate-universe version of the Sarah Palin story, Capra’s crackling yarn tracks the progress of an actual innocent in the political works. The film’s fierceness in defending its ideological stance is echoed in the buzz of  Capra’s brisk staging and forward motion.

The Corporal’s Diary (Patricia Boiko, Laurel Spellman Smith, 2008). Yes, the words “another Iraq documentary” are difficult to face, but this is another excellent one–Jonathan Santos took his diary and a video camera to Iraq and documented his last 38 days on earth, a saga that comes quietly yet furiously to life and ranges afield to include his mother, brothers, and buddies. (full review 10/3)

Desiree (Henry Koster, 1954). The Napoleon movies are about to end, but I had to take a look at Brando as the Emperor, surrounded by very tall actors (Michael Rennie among them). He looks pretty unhappy in the role.

And for those in the Seattle area, on Sunday at 2 I’ll be joined by Napoleon scholar J. David Markham at the Frye Art Museum for some talk and clips about movie visions of the Big N.

Some editorial reviews of Capra at Amazon.com: State of the Union, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Hole in the Head, Lost Horizon.