The single best year of the 50s. My personal favorite is 1953, for sentimental reasons, but in terms of having the absolute strongest films, 1957 is your year. You’ll see what I mean below.

This top ten list goes 8 deep. The first 8 films on this list are generally considered among the greatest films ever made. And then the other two are just some great hidden gems that I love that generally aren’t very widely known among film buffs.

Really what makes me happy about this year is my #1 film, which is one of my twenty favorite films of all time. The rest is just icing on the cake.

Pay attention to this year in particular. It’s so deep that there are a larger number of true hidden gems out there for people to see and enjoy. Read the rest of this page »

What we need to talk about for 1956 is the biggest thing in popular culture — rock ‘n’ roll. Music changed forever in the 50s, and this feels like the signature year to bring it up. Elvis’s first movie — Love Me Tender — came out this year, and there was a proliferation of films with rock ‘n’ roll stars in them performing their hits. This goes back to what I brought up in a previous year — teenagers were now the target audience. So they put all their favorite stars in the films. It’s actually a great time capsule, watching those films. You actually get to see these stars perform their hits.

The other thing — at least for me — about 1956 is the amount of straight up hidden gems that are in it. Sure, the big films are represented, as they should be. But my top ten has at least two films that most people haven’t heard of and another film that most people haven’t seen. And there’s also amazing stuff below that as well.

This is one of those years where just about every single movie going down to tier two is something I really enjoy. Read the rest of this page »

Well, I guess there’s really only one thing to discuss for 1955 — James Dean.

Not necessarily Dean himself, though he did have an amazing, brief career, with three all-time classics as his only features in which he starred. We need to talk about both what he represents — method acting, the teen culture of the 50s — and also how it relates to the big cultural film of the year: Rebel Without a Cause.

The 50s started to represent a societal disconnect between adults and teenagers. This was the first time the term generational gap became a thing. Here you have adults that were raised on wholesomeness and here are these teens that are listening to rock ‘n’ roll, smoking cigarettes and all this other stuff. The disconnect between parents and children would be a major theme of the next few years. You can’t discuss 1955 without James Dean and the generational gap being front and center.

Outside of that, there are some real classics we’re gonna talk about here. There are heavy hitters all over the board, across every genre. Read the rest of this page »

1954 is notable for having three of the absolute greatest films ever made in it. Straight up, when people rank the best of the best — these movies will show up within the first 150.

Now’s also a good time to talk about the big elephant in the room as it relates to the 50s — television. The rise of television, coupled with studios having to give up ownership of their theaters meant they were increasingly nervous about the future of their product. (That’s right, this has been going on for years.) So they started making these gimmicks to get people into the theater. First, it was CinemaScope. And Cinerama. And all the different variants. Then it was 3D. There are a bunch of movies that were originally released in 3D spread around the 50s.

The other thing they did was find things TV couldn’t offer, like exotic locations. There was an increasing trend in the 50s of “runaway production,” which was essentially going off and shooting films entirely in other countries. The big one in this era was Italy. A lot of movies were shot on location in Italy in the 50s. Read the rest of this page »

My favorite year of the 50s. 1953 has such amazing movies that are so near and dear to my heart. It just makes me happy to think about it. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the strongest year of the 50s, though I think it does make a solid case for itself as such. There are some all-time great films in this year.

What I love about this top ten list in particular is how it’s full of great directors. The top ten has films from Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Sam Fuller, George Stevens, Vincente Minnelli, Fred Zinnemann and Howard Hawks. Not only that, but they’re all classic films of theirs. These are films that are among people’s favorite films of all time. And on top of that, there are two films on here that are such gems and films that I love so much that it makes me happy just to think that they’re here.

I really love 1953. Read the rest of this page »