my favorite movies of 1944:

(1) Double Indemnity

(2) Laura

(3) Gaslight

favorite of 1944:

Double Indemnity

(Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Directed by Billy Wilder.)

This seminal film noir seems to spoil its own plot in the first scene, but we’re still riveted from the dark beginning to the oddly moving ending.

The video below starts out by saying:

Film noir presents us with something of a paradox. It is at once instantly recognizable … and yet, it’s hard to pin down exactly what noir is. …

Well, whatever noir is, we can learn everything that we need to know about it from Billy Wilder’s 1944 masterpiece Double Indemnity.

The first half of this video gives a historical overview of the classic noir era. Then it talks more specifically about Double Indemnity starting around 7:30.

How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?

If you’re not very familiar with film noir, Double Indemnity would be a perfect starting point.

Stream Double Indemnity on the Criterion Channel (try a free trial) or these sites.

2nd favorite of 1944:

Laura

(Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson. Directed by Otto Preminger.)

Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting man she’d ever met. I was in complete accord with her on that point. She thought me also the kindest, the gentlest, the most sympathetic man in the world.

Did you agree with her there, too? …

You won’t understand this, but I tried to become the kindest, the gentlest, the most sympathetic man in the world.

Have any luck?

Let me put it this way: I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbors’ children devoured by wolves.

I’m hesitant to say anything about this classic noir for anyone who hasn’t seen it, as it’s best to go into the mystery completely cold. Here’s a video of Mia Tiffany reacting to seeing it for the first time:

Stream Laura on the Criterion Channel (try a free trial) or these sites.

3rd favorite of 1944:

Gaslight

(Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Angela Lansbury. Directed by George Cukor.)

From a 2019 New York Times article on how this “1940s thriller enjoys an afterlife as a classic movie and as a buzzy word in political and psychoanalytic discourse”:

The verb “to gaslight,” voted by the American Dialect Society in 2016 as the word most useful/likely to succeed, and defined as “to psychologically manipulate a person into questioning their own sanity,” derives from MGM’s 1944 movie, directed by George Cukor.

“Gaslight,” in which a diabolical husband plans to drive his wife mad through a campaign of false accusations, fabricated memories and bland denials of his previous statements, had two successful iterations before the Cukor film. … Although featuring a major star as the villain, Charles Boyer, cast against type, Cukor’s film differed from previous productions [a 1938 play and a 1940 British movie]. It strengthened the part of the abused wife — largely overshadowed by actors playing the abusive husband — by giving the role to a great actress: Ingrid Bergman.

Traumatized by the murder of her aunt, a well-known opera singer, Paula Alquist (Bergman) is inveigled by her new husband, Gregory Anton (Boyer), a fortune seeker, to taking up residence in the abandoned house where the killing occurred. There, for reasons that become obvious to the audience long before Paula is able to grasp them, he convinces her that, as she puts it, she does “senseless, meaningless things.” He also proceeds to frighten her out of her wits, in part by dimming the gaslights in the house and blaming it on her imagination.

Reviewing “Gaslight” in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther equated the husband’s mind games with the director’s. The movie, he wrote, “has pulled such a ticklish assortment of melodramatic camera tricks that the audience was giggling with anxiety.” Among the many tactics used to unnerve Paula was the hiring of an insolent Cockney housemaid (18-year-old Angela Lansbury in her first movie role). …

Mainly, however, the movie gives Bergman full rein. Girlishly trusting, passionately in love, tragically confused, hysterically terrified and implacably vengeful by turns, she runs a strenuous gamut of emotions to play her final scene as though it were a Shakespearean tragedy. … It’s remarkable that, as robust a presence as she is, she convincingly plays a timorous victim.

Ingrid Bergman won her first of three Oscars for that role.

Stream Gaslight on these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.