my favorite movies of 1949:
(1) Gun Crazy
(3) Thieves’ Highway
(4) The Heiress
(5) Bitter Rice
(6) Obsession
favorite of 1949:
Gun Crazy(John Dall, Peggy Cummins, Berry Kroeger, Russ Tamblyn [credited as Rusty Tamblyn], Anabel Shaw. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis.)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and many other “lovers on the run from the law” movies are deeply indebted to Gun Crazy.
Eddie Muller, who wrote a whole book on Gun Crazy, has called it “a film so singular, so weirdly ahead of its time, that it really isn’t representative of anything, other than how unexpected and extraordinary a film can be when it’s produced outside the mainstream and the industry’s radar.” He says Gun Crazy “barely caused a ripple upon its general release … but is now recognized as one of the most dynamic and subversive movies of its day.”
A New Yorker piece describes this film noir:
It’s a strangely inward, muted depiction of a pair of criminals who take little pleasure in their crimes. Bart Tare and Annie Laurie Starr are sharpshooters who meet at a carnival. Bart is sketched out with psychological depth; his backstory — as an orphan for whom guns play a symbolic role that diverges from his aversion to violence — takes the first ten minutes of the film … The director, Joseph H. Lewis, is a masterful stylist as well as a daring innovator. For instance, he films one bank robbery from inside a car, on location, with portable sound equipment, in a single take that runs three and a half minutes. (He discusses it in detail in a superb interview in Peter Bogdanovich’s book “Who the Devil Made It.”) His artistic inventions extend to the direction of actors: his stars, John Dall and Peggy Cummins, aren’t the last word in charisma, but, by directing them to speak in virtual whispers, he conjures an ambivalent intimacy that draws viewers uneasily close to a world of depravity. Lewis ingeniously plays down the violence but, by playing up Bart’s sensitivity to violence, brings the world of cinematic crime menacingly close to most viewers’ real-world aversions. In short, it’s a strikingly modern, complex, disturbing, and yet sad, touching, and romantic film.
That article makes Gun Crazy sound like it’s all about how the two main characters feel about violence. But what’s just as important is how they feel about each other.
The scene in this video is from a little later — by now they’ve frittered their money away on gambling during their honeymoon, and their tone has changed:
The screenplay of Gun Crazy was co-written by Dalton Trumbo, using a pseudonym because he was blacklisted by Hollywood. Sadly, that didn’t become publicly known until the 1990s, after he died. A note on the year: Gun Crazy is often referred to as a 1950 movie, but I’m listing it under 1949 based on the Encyclopedia of Film Noir (2007), which says the movie was originally released in 1949 under a different title (Deadly Is the Female) before being re-released as Gun Crazy in 1950.You stream Gun Crazy on these sites. If you’d like to own it on disc, you might miss this when searching on Amazon: here’s a reasonably priced noir collection on blu-ray that includes both Gun Crazy and one of my favorite movies of 1947: Out of the Past.
2nd favorite of 1949:
(Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Thelma Ritter [uncredited], Celeste Holm [uncredited]. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.)
That video is the scene that sets up the premise of this multi-layered romantic comedy, when the three wives receive a letter from their friend Addie Ross right after realizing that she’s left town for good:
So then the three wives have to figure out which one of their husbands has left them for Addie. An IMDb reviewer says: “Although the construction is artificial, the script is wickedly knowing, painting a truly subversive vision of American marriage and mores of the late 1940s.”
Stream A Letter to Three Wives on the Criterion Channel (try a free trial if you don’t subscribe) or these sites.
3rd favorite of 1949:
(Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Millard Mitchell, Barbara Lawrence, Jack Oakie. Directed by Jules Dassin.)
A World War II veteran, Nick Garcos (Richard Conte), is delighted to come home and see his girlfriend (Barbara Lawrence) and parents near Fresno, California, only to be horrified to learn that his father’s legs were chopped off by a ruthless businessman named Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb), who sells fruits and vegetables in San Francisco.
In an attempt to beat Mike at his own game, Nick teams up with an underhanded apple seller, Ed (Millard Mitchell, better known as the studio exec in Singin’ in the Rain, one of my favorite movies of 1952), to go on a dangerous trip to San Francisco to sell apples in Mike’s territory.
Later on, watch for an iconic and meaningful shot involving apples.
Thieves’ Highway has been described as a critique of free-market capitalism, though whether it really works on that level is something you could think about while watching it.
Directed by Jules Dassin (who also directed Brute Force, my favorite of 1947, and Rififi, one of my favorites of 1955), Thieves’ Highway defies noir cliches and turns out to be surprisingly subversive for 1949.
For reasons that aren’t clear at first but become essential to the story, Nick, who seems to be practically engaged to his girlfriend, encounters an alluring woman who comes on strong, Rica (Valentina Cortese, an Italian actress who didn’t speak English and had to sound out her lines). As Eddie Muller’s book on noir (Dark City) points out, the sexual dynamic between Rica and Nick (I deliberately put her name first!) is drawn out and accentuated as much as it is only because the heavy censorship of the 1940s prevented things from getting more explicit.
The useful website TV Tropes has summed up the “femme fatale” trope as: “First, she turns you on. Then, she turns on you.” Rica seems almost too knowing about that trope when Nick compliments her “soft hands,” and she responds by displaying her fingernails and warning him: “sharp nails.”
I’ve seen a lot of noirs, so I thought I could see where this one was going … but I underestimated Rica. While Nick is this movie’s protagonist, Rica is its soul.
I don’t know anywhere to stream Thieves’ Highway, but it’s on Criterion DVD.
4th favorite of 1949:
The Heiress(Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins. Directed by William Wyler.)
5th favorite of 1949:
[Italian: Riso Amaro] (Silvana Mangano, Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Raf Vallone. Directed by Giuseppe De Santis.)
From an AV Club review:
screenwriter Carlo Lizzani says [in an interview on the Criterion blu-ray] that ‘no neorealist film belongs to any one genre,’ and this film is a clear case in point. It has the grim fatalism of other neorealist-noir hybrids … but at times it also recalls female-focused Hollywood melodramas in the way it explores the complicated relationships among women. … [Director Giuseppe De Santis] and his producer Dino De Laurentiis had a dual purpose in making a film noir with two femmes fatale. Their intention was partly noble: to record the lives of these hard-working women, who form a sisterhood and a society even while being exploited by bosses and unions. But it’s pointless to deny that Bitter Rice is also meant to be heart-stoppingly sexy. …
Stream Bitter Rice on the Criterion Channel (with extras). If you don’t subscribe, try a free trial. Or stream it on these sites.
6th favorite of 1949:
(Robert Newton, Phil Brown, Sally Gray. Directed by Edward Dmytryk.)
This British movie was called The Hidden Room in the US. You can stream it on the Criterion Channel, which includes an intro by Imogen Sara Smith. She says:
What I love most about this movie is the way it balances suspense and black comedy in perfect proportion. It’s a witty take on the idea of the perfect crime, and it’s full of sly commentary about the British love of murder stories and their ability to be terribly polite and diabolically macabre at the same time. … While Obsession is not exactly a film noir, it certainly has elements of that style and mood, especially in scenes that are set in one of the many bombed-out ruins that were still common in London in the late 1940s. [Director Edward Dmytryk] creates wonderful contrasts between a very comfortable world and the savagery literally under the surface, evoking the madness of the Cold War era through the intimate battle of wits and war of nerves among the characters. …
One more thing: if you love dogs, you’re in for a special treat with Obsession.
Again, you can stream Obsession on the Criterion Channel (try a free 14-day trial if you don’t subscribe). Or stream it on Tubi (free with ads).
Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.
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