I have been going back and forth with this Top Ten for days. I miss deadlines constantly, but that's usually laziness; this one has been an actual struggle. How do I narrow my list of thirteen down to just ten - and what do I say about them?
I'm racking my brain between the two Best Picture nominees, Double Indemnity and Gaslight. The former focuses on two people who are impossible to root for, yet it's not the murder they conspire to commit that makes you queasy - that's fine, you hold your breath hoping they don't get caught - it's the aftermath, the manipulation of family and friends, the double-crossings and lies and desperation, that's what gets you, these slick talkers are just shallow excuses for people. The latter, meanwhile, focuses on a victim, you stand helplessly by as you watch her slowly driven to the brink of madness, you want to step into the movie and defend her from that awful husband, yet she manages to surprise you with her rallying of strength and defiance - she's inspiring! Both are gasp-and-clasp-the-mouth thrillers with strong, career-defining performances from their leading ladies. Double Indemnity boasts an iconic score which, alongside its femme fatale, moody cinematography, memorable dialogue (everything from "There's a speef limit in this state, Mr. Neff," through to "That tears it," honest to God sounds both ridiculous and sublime, like they're inventing screenwriting right then and there), and use of Los Angeles (the hills! the railroad! the grocer!) makes it the film noir standard. Gaslight sparingly uses music, and its effective when it finally does, though it's chilling when all we hear on the soundtrack are Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer playing their mind games, the camera getting closer to her face, the walls feeling like they are closing in, the Victorian setting making the relevance all the greater because you see present-day concerns reflected in the past. Worthy Best Picture nominees, definitely among the best of the year - but are they in my Top Ten?
I'm trying to decide between the lone Best Director nominees, Laura and Lifeboat, two classics from, respectively, an iconoclast and a Master. Laura is another noir (like Double Indemnity and Gaslight), one with a colorful cast of characters, a shockingly violent murder, a haunting score, and a mid-film twist so jarring there's no way the rest of the film can hope to sustain the superlative level of suspense and tragic romance it's maintained so far...and yet, it does, even managing to end on a complex note of sadness. Lifeboat is, technically, a war film, but it keeps us in the titular vessel in the middle of the Atlantic, a setting that is at once too small (eight people in a space not built to live in!) and too large (a vast ocean with no land in sight, enemy ships and submarines possibly surrounding them...possibly), a small microcosm of the paranoia and violence gripping the rest of the world, and without any score to relieve the tension or guide us through - no, we must live in it. Both films are superbly cast, expertly directed, wittily written, transcending their genres to become just, you know, good damn movies!
And I am trying to figure out what to say about the war and all the other war-related films I'm considering. There's Cry 'Havoc' with its all-female cast, willing to actually acknowledge that there are women risking their lives overseas, that being a nurse goes beyond playing a supporting part in the drama of a man's action flick, that their fight isn't just with Claudette Colbert and Jennifer Jones at home, but in their own barracks and trenches, fighting malaria, dragging maimed men to safety, trying, in their cramped quarters, to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the enemy is at the gates, threatening violence that may extend beyond the usual battle scars suffered by the male soldiers. There's The Eve of St. Mark with its poetic yet plainspoken sincerity about our boys leaving behind their small towns to face death in a foreign land, admittedly uneven until its last half-hour touches the sublime and the spiritual, with its talk of saints, spirits, and astral projection. There's Voice in the Wind with its absolutely bonkers look at refugees in purgatory, men, women, and children who have suffered indignities to the point of madness, some for little more than playing music written by a non-German, now finding themselves in a strange land and at the mercy of equally violent exploiters - its bursts of senseless violence, its love of classical music by characters both sophisticated and unrefined, its dreamlike cinematography and dialogue, all work to depict the nightmare of desperate strangers in a strange land.
Separately from those, there are the two Preston Sturges comedies about the mixing of soldiers and the folks "back home" to consider. Hail the Conquering Hero boasts an intriguing idea about cowardice passed off as courage, soldiers able to brag about their exploits by filtering them through the identity of a man who couldn't handle the pressure of being a hero, a worm made over into an idol because hometowns demand hometown heroes - an indictment of the overzealous patriots at home and of stolen valor, all while being screamingly funny. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek manages to take those same soldiers down a peg, remembering that the boys enlisting are just boys, prone to bad decisions like, oh, knocking up some local girl the night before he ships out, leaving her, her family, and the boy who loves her with a mess to deal with - and with the American audience with much to consider regarding our society's morals and mores and the effectiveness of them in such situations...while also being screamingly funny. Hero is deeper, Miracle is funnier, both boast Eddie Bracken and William Demarest in dynamite performances...how do I choose?
How, for that matter, do I choose (if it comes down to it) between Cover Girl and Meet Me in St. Louis to represent the great musicals of 1944? Meet Me in St. Louis is a classic of the genre for a reason: stunning sets and costumes, at least three original songs (plus "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie") that you find yourself humming weeks after viewing, a clever blend of the frivolous and the profound (genuinely feel like I'm part of the party when they sing "Skip to My Lou", just as I feel like someone finally understands whenever I watch Judy Garland sing, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas..."), and the greatest depiction of the Halloween season until 1978. Cover Girl is also a classic of the genre, with a score that also blends standards with originals to create a tale of love and class that crosses oceans of time, allowing Eve Arden and Phil Silvers to get off some good jokes, while Rita Hayworth's talents as dancer and actress get a worthy showcase, and Gene Kelly's creative genius as a performer and filmmaker is allowed to shine. They're both so watchable, so listenable!
And speaking of Gene Kelly...I simply must reserve space for the two films I saw that felt like they were made specifically for me, even if no one else ever spoke of them: Christmas Holiday and The Uninvited. Christmas Holiday juggles a lot, between establishing Deanne Durbin as a dramatic actress while still giving her three or four solos, its central noirish tale where Kelly plays a wrong'un and Durbin is bewitched and Gale Sondergaard is a creep, and its frame story about redemption and atonement in the holiday season - it also boasts the greatest final closeup of an actress I've seen - and it manages to do all of it perfectly. The Uninvited has more of a following (and a Criterion Collection edition!) but its winking approach to the standard haunted house genre makes for cheeky fun, its protagonists' bemused reactions to the ghostly happenings balanced just enough between irony and genuine fear to lend veracity to their actions; it helps that those ghostly happenings are often very spooky and, at least twice, heart-stopping - plus it's also a romantic-comedy, a brother-sister comedy, a family trauma drama...truly, the movie that has it all. How do I leave either of these off?
You see what I mean? Riches abound, and that's why I've been struggling so. But I do believe in killing your darlings and making tough calls, so I must submit a Top Ten...at least, alphabetically. And the Ten that make the cut are:
Christmas Holiday
Cover Girl
Cry 'Havoc'
Double Indemnity
The Eve of St. Mark
Gaslight
Meet Me in St. Louis
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
The Uninvited
Voice in the Wind
Next time, the nominees for the 1944 Retro Hollmann Awards!
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