With apologies to The Body Snatcher, Lady on a Train, Murder He Says, A Royal Scandal, and Story of G.I. Joe, these are my Top Ten Films of 1945:
Beloved by me since middle school, even more than 20 years later, it’s still a favorite. More a sense of mischief than of danger, with most of the deaths occurring off-screen, it’s still one of the great Agatha Christie adaptations: a dynamite ensemble, playful score, spooky sound design, detailed and claustrophobic set design, all under the direction of René Clair, who despite some tonal diversions makes it all seem as one with the original work. And this can’t be overstated: he actually gets much of the cast in the frame together as often as possible, making use of the windows and landings and cliffs to maintain a ten-wide game of cat-and-mouse - who’s the prey, and his the predator, who can say when everyone’s watching each other like this? Giddy good time. Middle school me had great taste.
The complexity of the setup, the simplicity of the gags, the magic of Christmas. Barbara Stanwyck could do any genre, as she proved here when she has to both seriously fall in love with a young soldier who believes her to be someone she’s not, and pull off the comic frustrations of cooking, child-rearing, and general deceit to maintain the illusion. In there is a message about the uncertainty of post-War life, our desire to create an illusory “back to basics” Americana our soldiers have earned vs. the messy reality of, well, of life - just look at the mothers of the babies Stanwyck is borrowing, they’re all working, all exhausted, yes we won a war, but life for us all goes on, it cannot suddenly become Thomas Kinkade. Learn to love reality, even if she can’t cook.
This is the 1945 film that best captures the sweaty, stubbly, morning-after queasiness following a long, regretful binge. That goes for our protagonist’s narrative, too: sure, I can see how bad luck led him to a path of seemingly no return, but is he entirely innocent of all his misdeeds, especially the “accident” with the phone cord? Each new turn - and, indeed, every moment with crude femme fatale Ann Savage - shocked and thrilled me. A scuzzy movie of scuzzy people, who couldn’t like this?
I am not a religious person, but I grew up one, so I try not to be dismissive of the community of faith and its practitioners. This film is a moving character study of a man with enough religion to make it his vocation, but whose actual faith needs some work. Well, so it is for many of us, be they priest or congregant, we are all human, and we all fall short of our own standards, much less God’s. It’s a beautiful epic of a man who never seems to feel he’s getting anywhere, who spends 50 years trying to mold a culture to his ways and is frustrated to find that you can’t convert millennia of tradition over two or three generations. And yet we see - and so does he, at the end - that if part of mission work is to better the community, than he has succeeded, we see a village transformed by a sense of community - and access to healthcare - that was not there before. In the blend of their tradition and his religion, we are also witness to how new understandings (and new denominations) are formed. You don’t have to be a priest to have this experience, you just have to be part of your community.
A colorful noir that uses the old Deadly Spouse framework to tell a story of the dangers of untreated mental illness and “dignified” silence. The whispers of incest and grooming, all swept quietly away while the target of these actions has not moved on, is still the temperamental child who won’t share, whose violent solutions are calculated in execution but with an impossibly shallow, unrealistic idea of what consequences could follow. It’s the only such film I can think of - maybe What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 17 years later - that wants us to understand and sympathize, not outright condemn, though of course it doesn’t endorse her actions, either. The “hero” is intentionally less sympathetic, a writer dazzled by Tierney’s beauty but who makes one stupid mistake after another, from surprise visits (multiple! She hates surprises, how does he not get that?) to openly flirting with her adopted sister (the selfishness of this man!). It’s a genius subversion of the Newlywed In Danger narrative.
Colonel Blimp is a comic character symbolic of British soldiery; so, too, is this the tale of the symbols of British soldiery, honorable, not excessive, real gentlemen, as understood and personified by Clive Candy. “Understanding” is big here, for Candy is not a man who will analyze why, during peacetime, he is so eager to shoot and mount as trophies animals from conquered lands now under the thumb of the British Empire. He turns his back and leaves the scene just before (though we can see) a subordinate in charge of POWs demonstrates that he is less willing to use kid-gloves. He bases his approach to warfare and foreign policy on one friend he made from “the enemy” a while ago, admirable to see the humanity, yes, but it blinds him to the reality of the totalitarian forces threatening the world - though of course, as a representative of England, he wouldn’t see expansion as barbaric, would he? A courageous film, I think, one that manages to feel proud of its nation while also questioning whether career soldiers can even exist if we were serious about peace.
There’s so much to chew on with this movie, I never know where to begin. I started writing about Veda and her place as parasitic offspring, symbolic of what children take for granted, the ultimate incarnation of youthful entitlement, never seeing her mother as more than the pathetic waitress even as Mildred builds an empire. But I thought also of the men in Mildred’s life, how they always wants something from her, how they consider romance and/or marriage with her to be owed, how even the business she built rightfully belongs to them, with the best of them being an ex-husband who seemed to take parenting as an option, not his responsibility. And Mildred herself, telling herself every action she takes is as a Mother, not allowing herself to recognize and realize her own ambitions as Mildred, who could be an icon of American female individuality were it not for the role of Wife & Mother that we say are the ultimate in female accomplishment. Veda has the ultimate role model, but until Mildred has the strength to embrace it, Veda will return to putting on her cabaret impression of womanhood.
I am enchanted by the color photography, the sets, the costumes (especially those jockey uniforms), but it is the story of Velvet’s determination to realize a dream while she is still young enough to believe in them that moves me. It is the story of the disgraced jockey’s redemption because Velvet has blind faith in him, too, that moves me. It is the way her parents adopt her faith and optimism and determination, seeing not naïveté, but their own values put into practice, that moves me. And then its conclusion, hinging not just on the results of the race but how Velvet and family, blood and chosen, react to the aftermath, surprised and moved me - and reassured me of similar (well, similar enough) decisions in my own life. Isn’t that what we love about cinema and literature and the arts, its ability to make us see ourselves in the story of an adolescent horse girl?
Rightfully depicts a state fair as a magical wonderland of opportunity and appetites, where every night is a grand night for singing, and romance arrives in unexpected forms. This is about That One Iconic Summer, and embraces the idea that such summers are not the exclusive domain of youth: parents, too, have their dreams, their unrealized goals, their secret joys, and the state fair allows them to indulge in ambition and fantasy. It is not all escape, of course: son and daughter experience whirlwind romances, but eventually, the fair must end, reality must set in, and actual decisions about What To Do Next must be made…or not. Honestly, with its regional-specific setting, fine handling of multiple arcs and characters, staging of original musical numbers, and just the overall “Only In America!” feel, its a proto-Nashville. In my eyes.
Story wise, built on the same framework as Casablanca: exotic setting overrun by Vichy officials, reluctant hero of resistance, narratively significant cafe and pianist, etc. - indeed, it feels like if Rick’s romance was with Yvonne instead of Ilsa. Overall, built on the once-in-a-lifetime chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, the latter shifting the Earth’s gravity just by crossing a crowded cafe, the former with a rare effortlessness that speaks to the confidence and comfort he feels with his screen partner. Casual sensuality, if you will, and their credibility together makes them more compelling individually. What a thrill to watch!
Next time, we get into the Retro Hollmann Awards of 1945...
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