When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1954, it gave its Best Picture award to On the Waterfront. You will find that one below, but not at number one:
1. Rear Window
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by John Michael Hayes, from a story by Cornell Woolrich
The first time I saw this, I thought it was a comedy. The second time, I thought it was a thriller. The third time, I mostly thought the Jimmy Stewart character was kind of creepy. I was right each time.
2. Seven Samurai
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni
"Since it's impossible to kill them all, I usually run away."
3. Johnny Guitar
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Written by Ben Maddow, from a novel by Roy Chanslor
I think the films of the '50s tend to be step down from the films of the '40s, but I do like how the westerns got weirder.
4. Wuthering Heights
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Buñuel, Julio Alejandro, Dino Maiuri, and Pierre Unik, from a novel by Emily Brontë
I would not be unhappy if every adaptation of a highbrow literary classic was made by a surrealist slumming in the Mexican melodrama market.
5. The Age of Swordfish
Directed by Vittorio De Seta
Here is where the boundary between documentary and neorealism breaks down entirely.
6. Sansho the Bailiff
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Written by Fuji Yahiro and Yoshikata Yoda, from a story by Mori Ōgai
"Humans have little sympathy for things that don't directly concern them. They're ruthless."
7. On the Waterfront
Directed by Elia Kazan
Written by Budd Schulberg
My friend Shawn once asked if I'd ever heard "Noam Chomsky's analysis of A Streetcar Named Desire." I did a double take and said, "What? No, I haven't. What does Noam Chomsky have to say about A Streetcar Named Desire?" Shawn then realized that he'd had a brain fart and that he'd meant to say "Noam Chomsky's analysis of On the Waterfront," which further discussion revealed to be exactly what you'd expect Chomsky's take on On the Waterfront to be. But I still sometimes wonder what ol' Noam thinks of A Streetcar Named Desire.
8. Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Written and directed by Kenneth Anger
Aleister Crowley's home movies.
9. Journey to Italy
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Written by Rossellini and Vitaliano Brancati, from a novel by Colette
More or less the opposite of a love story.
10. Track of the Cat
Directed by William Wellman
Written by A.I. Bezzerides, from a novel by William Van Tilburg Clark
Beulah Bondi steals every scene she's in.
Honorable mentions:
11. Illusion Travels by Streetcar (Luis Buñuel)
12. Corral (Colin Low)
13. The Far Country (Anthony Mann)
14. Closed Vision (Marc-Gilbert Guillaumin)
15. Islands of Fire (Vittorio De Seta)
16. Late Chrysanthemums (Mikio Naruse)
17. Father Brown (Robert Hamer)
18. Jazz Dance (Roger Tilton)
19. La Strada (Federico Fellini)
20. Senso (Luchino Visconti)
Finally, a shout-out to A Lesson in Love. It may be just a mid-tier movie in the grand scheme of Ingmar Bergman's filmography, but how many of his pictures climax with two girls having a catfight in a seedy jazz club?
Of the films of 1954 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Musashi Miyamoto.
