Abe Lincoln in Illinois (USA: John Cromwell, 1940: 110 mins)
Tudor, Deborah. "The hysteric, the mother, the natural gal — male fantasies and male theories in films about Lincoln." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)
Fantasia (USA: Disney Studios, 1940: 124 mins)
Kutner, C. Jerry. "FANTASIA (1940) – The Varieties of Religious Experience." Bright Lights After Dark (October 25, 2011)
LoBrutto, Vincent. "Animation and Music: Fantasia." Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 136-143. [BCTC Library: PN1994 L595 2005]
Foreign Correspondent (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1940: 120 mins)
Harris, Mark. "Hitchcock During Wartime." The Current (February 19, 2014)
The Grapes of Wrath (USA: John Ford, 1940: 129 mins)
Sánchez-Escalonilla, Antonio. "From Hoover to Bush Jr.: Home and Crisis Scripts in U.S. Social Cinema." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)
His Girl Friday (USA: Howard Hawks, 1940: 92 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "Quilty Makes This World: 12 Tricksters (CinemArchetype #1)." Acidemic (January 23, 2012)
Ray, Robert B. "The Philadelphia Story." The ABCs of Classic Hollywood. NY: Oxford UP, 2008: 85-156.
Pinocchio (USA: Norman Ferguson, et al, 1940: 88 mins)
Hollowell, Jenny. "The End of the End: An Evolution of Faith, in Five Films." Bright Wall/Dark Room #9 (March 29, 2016)
The Westerner (USA: William Wyler, 1940: 100 mins)
McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.[Professor has copy]
1941
The Lady Eve (USA: Preston Sturges, 1941: 94 mins)
Reginald, Stephen. "Preston Sturges and The Lady Eve." Classic Movie Man (November 15, 2015)
The Maltese Falcon (USA: John Huston, 1941: 100 mins)
Naremore, James. "Film Acting and the Arts of Imitation." Cyncos 27.2 (2011) ["Louise Brooks once said that in order to become a star, an actor needs to combine a natural-looking behavior with personal “eccentricity.” My presentation will explore some of the analytical problems raised by this phenomenon: What constitutes eccentricity and how is it balanced by naturalness in specific cases? What happens when a movie star acts in a film in which he or she impersonates the eccentricities of another star (Larry Parks as Al Jolson, Clint Eastwood as John Huston, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, Meryl Streep as Julia Child, etc.)? How can we distinguish between impersonation as caricature and impersonation as dramatic illusion? What is the difference, if any, between impersonation and stylistic influence?"]
Man Hunt (USA: Fritz Lang, 1941: 105 mins)
Rivas, T.J. "Cinematic Responses to Fascism." Film History and Aesthetics Wiki (A Project of Film 110: Introduction to Film History and Aesthetics at Westminster College)
Meet John Doe (USA: Frank Capra, 1941: 122 mins)
Bateman, Conor. "The Secret Video Essays of Jenni Olson." Keyframe (Posted on Vimeo: April 2016)
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (USA: Edward Cline, 1941: 71 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #4: The Hanged Man." Acidemic (February 12, 2012)
Ornamental Hairpin (Japan: Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941: 70 mins)
Bugeja, Nicholas. "Romance, escapism and war in Ornamental Hairpin (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)." Senses of Cinema #94 (Spring 2020)
Sullivan's Travels (USA: Preston Sturges, 1941: 90 mins)
Longworth, Karina. "Veronica Lake (Dead Blondes Episode 4)." You Must Remember This (February 20, 2017) ["Veronica Lake had the most famous hairdo of the 1940s, if not the twentieth century. Her star turn in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels and her noir pairings with Alan Ladd made her Paramount’s biggest wartime draw behind Hope and Crosby, but behind the scenes, Lake was a loner with a drinking problem who didn’t give an F about Hollywood etiquette. Bankrupt and without a studio contract, in the early 1950s she consciously quit movies. She claimed she left Hollywood to save her own life -- so how did she end up dead at 50?"]
“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers at night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” It may not be the best film in the Universal Classic Monsters canon, but it’s hard to think of a better performance than that of Lon Chaney Jr as the titular Wolf Man. The initial attack sequence, taking place during a date in a fog-swept forest, is one of the most beautiful set-pieces of any monster movie. Like most werewolf films, it’s a romantic tragedy, albeit one lent a rare potency by Chaney’s tortured interiority, haunted by guilt as he wrestles with the beast within. – Matthew Thrift
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #7: The Shadow." Acidemic (March 8, 2012)
1942
Bambi (USA: David Hand, 1942: 70 mins)
Zipes, Jack. "Bambi Isn't About What You Think Its About." Ideas (December 15, 2021) ["Most of us think we know the story of Bambi—but do we? The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest (Princeton UP, 2022) is an all-new, illustrated translation of a literary classic that presents the story as it was meant to be told. For decades, readers’ images of Bambi have been shaped by the 1942 Walt Disney film—an idealized look at a fawn who represents nature’s innocence—which was based on a 1928 English translation of a novel by the Austrian Jewish writer Felix Salten. This masterful new translation gives contemporary readers a fresh perspective on this moving allegorical tale and provides important details about its creator. Originally published in 1923, Salten’s story is more somber than the adaptations that followed it. Life in the forest is dangerous and precarious, and Bambi learns important lessons about survival as he grows to become a strong, heroic stag. Jack Zipes’s introduction traces the history of the book’s reception and explores the tensions that Salten experienced in his own life—as a hunter who also loved animals, and as an Austrian Jew who sought acceptance in Viennese society even as he faced persecution. With captivating drawings by award-winning artist Alenka Sottler, The Original Bambi captures the emotional impact and rich meanings of a celebrated story."]
The Eternal Jew (Germany: Fritz Hippler, 1942: 62 mins)
Presner, Todd. German 59: Holocaust in Film and Literature (2010 UCLA course posted on Youtube: February 10, 2010)
The Glass Key (USA: Stuart Heisler, 1942: 85 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "The Veronica Lake Effect." Acidemic #7 (2012)
The Great Love (Germany: Rolf Hansen, 1942: 102 mins)
Brockmann, Stephen. "Die grofse Liebe (1942) or Love and War." A Critical History of German Film Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010: 167-179. [Professor has copy of the book]
I Married a Witch (USA: René Clair, 1942: 77 mins)
Japanese Relocation (USA: Milton S. Eisenhower, 1942: 10 mins)
Jungle Book (USA/UK: Zoltan Korda, 1942: 108 mins)
Harvey, Dennis. "Sabu’s Enduring Star Power." Keyframe (January 5, 2014)
The Magnificent Ambersons (USA: Orson Welles, 1942: 88 mins)
White, Mike, et al. "The Magnificent Ambersons Production History." (Posted on Vimeo: 2014) ["Orson Welles's follow-up to Citizen Kane adapted Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer prize-winning novel about industrial progress and the loss of innocence set against a tumultuous family, the Ambersons. Welles infamously lost control of The Magnificent Ambersons before its final release. We'll examine its production, its destruction, and attempts to restore what many consider Welles's forgotten masterpiece."]
Saboteur (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1942: 109 mins)
Rappoport, Mark. "The Empty Screen." Talkhouse (Posted on Youtube: February 7, 2017) ["The screen is a neutral element in the film-going experience. Or is it? It projects dreams but is also the receptacle of our dreams. It’s the vehicle for delivering the image to an audience — but does it also watch the audience at the same time? Is it a complicitous membrane which audience members can penetrate and which interacts with the spectators, despite its seeming passivity? Maybe — to all of the above …"]
This Gun For Hire (USA: Frank Tuttle, 1942: 81 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "The Veronica Lake Effect." Acidemic #7 (2012)
To Be or Not to Be (USA: Ernst Lubitsch, 1942: 99 mins)
Marsh, Calum. "Can Humor Be Weaponized? We speak of satire as ‘venomous’ and ‘acerbic,’ but it isn’t the damage it deals that makes it significant." Keyframe (April 10, 2016)
Rivas, T.J. "Cinematic Responses to Fascism." Film History and Aesthetics Wiki (A Project of Film 110: Introduction to Film History and Aesthetics at Westminster College)
1943
Above Suspicion (USA: Richard Thorpe, 1943: 90 mins)
Rivas, T.J. "Cinematic Responses to Fascism." Film History and Aesthetics Wiki (A Project of Film 110: Introduction to Film History and Aesthetics at Westminster College)
Day of Wrath (Denmark: Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943: 97 mins
Dreyer, Carl Theodor. "Thoughts on My Metier." The Current (August 20, 2001)
Wilkins, Budd. "Birthing Bad: Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist Through the Lens of “Nordic Horror." Acidemic #7 (2012)
Hangmen Also Die! (USA: Fritz Lang, 1943: 134 mins)
Rivas, T.J. "Cinematic Responses to Fascism." Film History and Aesthetics Wiki (A Project of Film 110: Introduction to Film History and Aesthetics at Westminster College)
I Walked with a Zombie (USA: Jacques Tourneur, 1943: 69 mins)
Perhaps the greatest of director Jacques Tourneur’s films for Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie is a loose retelling of Jane Eyre, transposed to the Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian. Not a zombie film in the Romero sense, but one drawn from the rituals of vodou, its metaphors are disquietingly potent. A film about enslavement and the legacies of colonialism, the suggestiveness of the duo’s earlier Cat People is taken to oblique heights. In constant, critical dialogue with its own exoticism, Tourneur’s astonishingly expressive direction often edges towards abstraction in its uncanny diagnoses of its tropical maladies. – Matthew Thrift
Le Corbeau (France: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943: 92 mins)
Hancock, James and Mikhail Karadimov. "Exploring the Dark Side with Henri-Georges Clouzot." The Wrong Reel #274 (June 1, 2017)
Shadow of a Doubt (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1943: 108 mins)
"Director Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ – ‘Psycho’ – ‘The Birds’." Sound on Sight #309 (February 29, 2012)
Starr, Elana Rose. "Alfred Hitchcock: Auteur Filmmaker." Villanova University (ND)
1944
Cobra Woman (USA: Robert Siodmak, 1944: 71 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #7: The Shadow." Acidemic (March 8, 2012)
Gaslight (USA: George Cukor, 1944: 114 mins)
Dahl, Nel. "The Handmaiden by Gaslight: Park Chan-wook’s gothic female-vengeance drama owes a debt to George Cukor." Keyframe (October 19, 2016)
To Have and Have Not (USA: Howard Hawks, 1944: 100 mins)
Hudson, David. "Sex in the Movies." Green Cine (2005)
Laura (USA: Otto Preminger, 1944: 88 mins)
Meet Me in St Louis (USA: Vincent Minelli, 1944: 113 mins)
Collier, Stuart, Brian Risselada and Tom Sutpen. "Vincente Minnelli: The Beginning (1943-1948)." Illusion Travels by Streetcar #18 (June 12, 2014)
Ray, Robert B. "Meet Me in St Louis." The ABCs of Classic Hollywood. NY: Oxford UP, 2008: 245-328.
National Velvet (USA: Clarence Brown, 1944: 123 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #3: The Animus." Acidemic (February 1, 2012)
1945
I Know Where I Am Going (United Kingdom: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945: 91 mins)
Smith, Imogen Sara. "The Music of Words: Storytelling in Two Powell & Pressburger Films." Bright Lights Film Journal #79 (February 2013)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (Japan: Akira Kurosawa, 1945: 59 mins)
Vahdani, Alireza. "The effects of Kabuki on Akira Kurosawa’s Auteurism, Pt 1." and Part 2 Offscreen (October 31, 2010)
Mildred Pierce (USA: Michael Curtiz, 1945: 111 mins)
D., Margo and Margo P. "Mildred Pierce by J.M. Cain and Starring Joan Crawford." Book vs Movie (April 14, 2017)
Longworth, Karina. "Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: The Middle Years (Mildred Pierce to Johnny Guitar)." You Must Remember This (August 29, 2016) ["Joan Crawford struggled through what she called her “middle years,” the period during her 40s before she remade herself from aging, slumping MGM deadweight into a fleet, journeywoman powerhouse who starred in some of the most interesting films about adult womanhood of the 1940s and 1950s. That revival began with Mildred Pierce (for which Crawford won her only Oscar), and included a number of films, such as Daisy Kenyon and Johnny Guitar, directed by men who would later be upheld as auteurs, subversively making personal art within the commercial industry of Hollywood."]
Rome Open City (Italy: Roberto Rossellini, 1945: 103 mins)
Rossellini, Isabella. "Rome Open City." Film Forum (September 17, 2014) ["(1945) Rome, winter 1943: as screeching-tired Gestapo dragnets blanket the “open city,” Resistance leader Marcello Pagliero escapes from his apartment by running across the rooftops (as did co-screenwriter Sergio Amidei in real life), as pregnant widow Anna Magnani prepares for her wedding, parish priest Aldo Fabrizi uses the “frying pan method” to hide the local boys’ bomb brigade’s hardware, and effete Major Harry Feist riffles through his collection of incriminating ID photos – but betrayal, a broad-daylight machine-gunning, a Partisan ambush, blowtorch torture, and death by firing squad loom… Based on actual people and all-too-recent incidents (Magnani’s electrifying final scene was inspired by her enraged pursuit of her boyfriends’s escape by truck); written in a week in Federico Fellini’s kitchen (the only place with heat); shot on a number of the real locations, and cast mainly with non-pros (Fabrizi and second-choice Magnani were already famous, albeit for comedy), Open City’s documentary look and still hair-raising violence rocked audiences and critics around the world, making Neo-Realism, Rossellini, and Magnani world-famous, sharing the top prize at Cannes, and running twenty-one consecutive months at a single New York cinema. For years seen only in beat-up copies with hopelessly inadequate subtitles, this new restoration conveys the full meaning (and even the humor) of the dialogue for the very first time."]
1946
The Best Years of Our Lives (USA: William Wyler, 1946: 172 mins)
Kinder, Bill. "When Soldiers Come Home in the Movies: The post-war experience as told in tropes." Keyframe (November 11, 2015)
Duel in the Sun (USA: King Vidor, 1946: 144 mins)
McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.[Professor has copy]
Gilda (USA: Charles Vidor, 1946: 110 mins)
Hudson, David. "Sex in the Movies." Green Cine (2005)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #2: The Anima." Acidemic (January 29, 2012)
The Jolson Story (USA: Alfred E. Green, 1946: 128 mins)
Naremore, James. "Film Acting and the Arts of Imitation." Cyncos 27.2 (2011) ["Louise Brooks once said that in order to become a star, an actor needs to combine a natural-looking behavior with personal “eccentricity.” My presentation will explore some of the analytical problems raised by this phenomenon: What constitutes eccentricity and how is it balanced by naturalness in specific cases? What happens when a movie star acts in a film in which he or she impersonates the eccentricities of another star (Larry Parks as Al Jolson, Clint Eastwood as John Huston, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, Meryl Streep as Julia Child, etc.)? How can we distinguish between impersonation as caricature and impersonation as dramatic illusion? What is the difference, if any, between impersonation and stylistic influence?"]
Let There Be Light (USA: John Huston, 1946: 58 mins)
Jones, Kent. "To Tell the Truth: Let There Be Light." Reverse Shot (June 22, 2003)
The Murderers are Among Us (Germany: Wolfgang Staudte, 1946: 85 mins)
Brockmann, Stephen. "Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946): The Rubble Film." A Critical History of German Film Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010: 196-210. [Professor has copy of the book]
The Living Dead (BBC: Adam Curtis, 1995: three 60 minute episodes) ["The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past is a series of films that investigate the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been manipulated and distorted by politicians and others for various means of control."]
My Darling Clementine (USA: John Ford, 1946: 97 mins)
McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.[Professor has copy]
Night and Day (USA: Michael Curtiz, 1946: 128 mins)
Heldt, Guido. Music and Levels of Narration in Film. Intellect, 2013. ["This is the first book-length study of the narratology of film music, and an indispensable resource for anyone researching or studying film music or film narratology. It surveys the so far piecemeal discussion of narratological concepts in film music studies, and tries to (cautiously) systematize them, and to expand and refine them with reference to ideas from general narratology and film narratology (including contributions from German-language literature less widely known in Anglophone scholarship). The book goes beyond the current focus of film music studies on the distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic music (music understood to be or not to be part of the storyworld of a film), and takes into account different levels of narration: from the extrafictional to ‘focalizations’ of subjectivity, and music’s many and complex movements between them."]
Notorious (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1946: 101 mins)
"Notorious: Hitchcock's Mature and Intricate Espionage Masterpiece." Cinephilia and Beyond (August 2016)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (USA: Lewis Milestone, 1946: 114 mins)
Bastién, Angelica Jade. "The Feminine Grotesque #5: Lilith’s Heir – On The Strange Love of Martha Ivers." Vague Visages (March 18, 2016)
The Stranger (USA: Orson Welles, 1946: 115 mins)
Barker, Jennifer Lynne. The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection. Routledge, 2013. [Get through interlibrary loan]
Callow, Simon. "Orson Welles." The Cinema Show (July 15, 2016) [Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane and respected police captain Hank Quinlan, both were men tempted by darkness and both were played by Orson Welles at opposite ends of his career. Actor, writer and director Simon Callow joins Ben Rylan for an extended interview in which they unpick the many myths surrounding one of cinema’s greatest talents.]
Damisch, Hubert. "Montage of Disaster." Cahiers du Cinema #599 (March 2005): 72-78.
Three Strangers (USA: Jean Negulesco, 1946: 92 mins)
Labuza, Peter and Farran Smith Nehme. "Three Strangers." The Cinephiliacs #6 (October 21, 2012)
1947
Black Narcissus (UK: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947: 100 mins)
Harvey, Dennis. "Sabu’s Enduring Star Power." Keyframe (January 5, 2014)
Jones, Kent. "Black Narcissus: Empire of the Senses." The Current (July 19, 2010) ["It is always tempting to uncouple the unearthly visual beauty and formal control of a Powell and Pressburger film from its psychological exactitude—and that urge is built into the films themselves. The characters (and the audience) are always on the brink of being overwhelmed by beauty, the beauty of the world on the one hand and of art on the other, which holds the impossible but ever present promise of a permanently heightened state. At the same time, however, the action is always firmly anchored in the fallacies and disturbances and longings of being human. We get the lure of beauty and its potentially dangerous effect at the same time. For instance, Powell’s remarkable precision with distances and angles of perception is as elegant and ingenious here as it is in all his great work, particularly the continued refrain of looking down—Kerr’s Sister Clodagh surveying the sisters gathered at the dinner table or, in a reverie, fixating on her grandmother’s footstool back in Ireland; Sabu’s Young General gazing down at Simmons’s Kanchi; Byron’s Sister Ruth spying from a series of heights within the open corridors of the newly christened convent on Sister Clodagh and her interactions with Mr. Dean; each of the sisters in turn contemplating the distant valley below. This insistence on up-down relationships (a constant in Powell’s work) gives the film a musical development akin to a slowly evolving theme or pattern and results in “mental images” as lasting as Hitchcock’s point-of-view shots. The moment when the screen goes red, as Sister Ruth passes out, is a startling reiteration of a powerful visual idea, but it may also be a representation of a genuine neurological phenomenon known as a “redout,” as Diane Broadbent Friedman postulates in her fascinating book on A Matter of Life and Death and its probable origins in real neuroscience."]
Daisy Kenyon (USA: Otto Preminger, 1947: 99 mins)
Longworth, Karina. "Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: The Middle Years (Mildred Pierce to Johnny Guitar)." You Must Remember This (August 29, 2016) ["Joan Crawford struggled through what she called her “middle years,” the period during her 40s before she remade herself from aging, slumping MGM deadweight into a fleet, journeywoman powerhouse who starred in some of the most interesting films about adult womanhood of the 1940s and 1950s. That revival began with Mildred Pierce (for which Crawford won her only Oscar), and included a number of films, such as Daisy Kenyon and Johnny Guitar, directed by men who would later be upheld as auteurs, subversively making personal art within the commercial industry of Hollywood."]
Miracle on 34th Street (USA: George Seaton, 1947: 96 mins)
El Goro. "It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Miracle on 34th Street (1947)." Talk Without Rhythm #397 (December 6, 2017)
Out of the Past (USA: Jacques Tourneur, 1947: 97 mins)
Doherty, Thomas. "Out of the Past." The Cinephiliacs #79 (May 15, 2016)
Quai des Orfèvres (France: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947: 106 mins)
Hancock, James and Mikhail Karadimov. "Exploring the Dark Side with Henri-Georges Clouzot." The Wrong Reel #274 (June 1, 2017)
1948
3 Godfathers (USA: John Ford, 1948: 106 mins)
Freedman, Carl. "Post-Hetrosexuality: John Wayne and the Construction of American
Masculinity." Film International 5.1 (2007) [Professor has a copy]
A Foreign Affair (USA: Billy Wilder, 1948: 116 mins)
Carr, Jeremy. "Rubble Romance: A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948)." Senses of Cinema #94 (Spring 2020)
Riley, Christina. "Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair: Marlene Dietrich's Star Persona and American Interventionist Strategies in Postwar Berlin." Bright Lights Film Journal #76 (May 2012)
Bicycle Thieves (Italy: Vittorio De Sica, 1948: 93 mins)
LoBrutto, Vincent. "Italian Neorealism: The Bicycle Thief." Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 33-38. [BCTC Library: PN1994 L595 2005]
Mooney, James. "Bicycle Thieves." Film and Philosophy (March 8, 2013)
Drunken Angel (Japan: Akira Kurosawa, 1948: 98 mins)
Hogg, Trevor. "Epic Dreamer: An Akira Kurosawa Profile." Flickering Myth (March 24, 2010)
Fort Apache (USA: John Ford, 1948: 125 mins)
Freedman, Carl. "Post-Hetrosexuality: John Wayne and the Construction of American Masculinity." Film International 5.1 (2007) [Professor has a copy]
Kehr, Dave. "How the West Was Filled With Loss." The New York Times (March 25, 2012)
Oliver Twist (UK: David Lean, 1948: 105 mins)
Ferguson, Susan. "Capitalist Childhood in Film: Modes of Critique." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)
Portrait of Jennie (USA: William Dieterle, 1948: 86 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #2: The Anima." Acidemic (January 29, 2012)
The Red Shoes (UK: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948: 134 mins)
Bird, Daniel, Maitland McDonagh and Mike White. "The Red Shoes (1948)." The Projection Booth #319 (April 20, 2017) ["The film centers on the tumultuous world of dance, namely ballet. We follow Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) through triumphs and misfortunes. A favorite of Martin Scorsese, the film is a triumph of melodrama and includes several breathtaking dance sequences, most notably an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes."]
Ruthless (USA: Edgar G. Ulmer, 1948: 104 mins)
Act of Violence (USA: Fred Zinnemann, 1949: 82 mins)
Anthony, West, David Blakeslee and Robert Nishimura. "The First Films of Samuel Fuller." The Eclipse Viewer #4 (October 24, 2012)
Clarko, Clarko and Daniel Tiger. "Kind Hearts and Coronets." Cinema Gadfly (August 2015)
1942
Bambi (USA: David Hand, 1942: 70 mins)
Zipes, Jack. "Bambi Isn't About What You Think Its About." Ideas (December 15, 2021) ["Most of us think we know the story of Bambi—but do we? The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest (Princeton UP, 2022) is an all-new, illustrated translation of a literary classic that presents the story as it was meant to be told. For decades, readers’ images of Bambi have been shaped by the 1942 Walt Disney film—an idealized look at a fawn who represents nature’s innocence—which was based on a 1928 English translation of a novel by the Austrian Jewish writer Felix Salten. This masterful new translation gives contemporary readers a fresh perspective on this moving allegorical tale and provides important details about its creator. Originally published in 1923, Salten’s story is more somber than the adaptations that followed it. Life in the forest is dangerous and precarious, and Bambi learns important lessons about survival as he grows to become a strong, heroic stag. Jack Zipes’s introduction traces the history of the book’s reception and explores the tensions that Salten experienced in his own life—as a hunter who also loved animals, and as an Austrian Jew who sought acceptance in Viennese society even as he faced persecution. With captivating drawings by award-winning artist Alenka Sottler, The Original Bambi captures the emotional impact and rich meanings of a celebrated story."]
The Eternal Jew (Germany: Fritz Hippler, 1942: 62 mins)
Presner, Todd. German 59: Holocaust in Film and Literature (2010 UCLA course posted on Youtube: February 10, 2010)
The Glass Key (USA: Stuart Heisler, 1942: 85 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "The Veronica Lake Effect." Acidemic #7 (2012)
The Great Love (Germany: Rolf Hansen, 1942: 102 mins)
Brockmann, Stephen. "Die grofse Liebe (1942) or Love and War." A Critical History of German Film Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010: 167-179. [Professor has copy of the book]
I Married a Witch (USA: René Clair, 1942: 77 mins)
Longworth, Karina. "Veronica Lake (Dead Blondes Episode 4)." You Must Remember This (February 20, 2017) ["Veronica Lake had the most famous hairdo of the 1940s, if not the twentieth century. Her star turn in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels and her noir pairings with Alan Ladd made her Paramount’s biggest wartime draw behind Hope and Crosby, but behind the scenes, Lake was a loner with a drinking problem who didn’t give an F about Hollywood etiquette. Bankrupt and without a studio contract, in the early 1950s she consciously quit movies. She claimed she left Hollywood to save her own life -- so how did she end up dead at 50?"]
Japanese Relocation (USA: Milton S. Eisenhower, 1942: 10 mins)
Vimercati, Giovanni. "State of Denial: Japanese Relocation." Reverse Shot (May 16, 2017)
Harvey, Dennis. "Sabu’s Enduring Star Power." Keyframe (January 5, 2014)
The Magnificent Ambersons (USA: Orson Welles, 1942: 88 mins)
White, Mike, et al. "The Magnificent Ambersons Production History." (Posted on Vimeo: 2014) ["Orson Welles's follow-up to Citizen Kane adapted Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer prize-winning novel about industrial progress and the loss of innocence set against a tumultuous family, the Ambersons. Welles infamously lost control of The Magnificent Ambersons before its final release. We'll examine its production, its destruction, and attempts to restore what many consider Welles's forgotten masterpiece."]
Saboteur (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1942: 109 mins)
Rappoport, Mark. "The Empty Screen." Talkhouse (Posted on Youtube: February 7, 2017) ["The screen is a neutral element in the film-going experience. Or is it? It projects dreams but is also the receptacle of our dreams. It’s the vehicle for delivering the image to an audience — but does it also watch the audience at the same time? Is it a complicitous membrane which audience members can penetrate and which interacts with the spectators, despite its seeming passivity? Maybe — to all of the above …"]
Kuersten, Erich. "The Veronica Lake Effect." Acidemic #7 (2012)
To Be or Not to Be (USA: Ernst Lubitsch, 1942: 99 mins)
Marsh, Calum. "Can Humor Be Weaponized? We speak of satire as ‘venomous’ and ‘acerbic,’ but it isn’t the damage it deals that makes it significant." Keyframe (April 10, 2016)
Rivas, T.J. "Cinematic Responses to Fascism." Film History and Aesthetics Wiki (A Project of Film 110: Introduction to Film History and Aesthetics at Westminster College)
1943
Above Suspicion (USA: Richard Thorpe, 1943: 90 mins)
Rivas, T.J. "Cinematic Responses to Fascism." Film History and Aesthetics Wiki (A Project of Film 110: Introduction to Film History and Aesthetics at Westminster College)
Day of Wrath (Denmark: Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943: 97 mins
Dreyer, Carl Theodor. "Thoughts on My Metier." The Current (August 20, 2001)
Wilkins, Budd. "Birthing Bad: Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist Through the Lens of “Nordic Horror." Acidemic #7 (2012)
Hangmen Also Die! (USA: Fritz Lang, 1943: 134 mins)
Rivas, T.J. "Cinematic Responses to Fascism." Film History and Aesthetics Wiki (A Project of Film 110: Introduction to Film History and Aesthetics at Westminster College)
I Walked with a Zombie (USA: Jacques Tourneur, 1943: 69 mins)
Perhaps the greatest of director Jacques Tourneur’s films for Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie is a loose retelling of Jane Eyre, transposed to the Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian. Not a zombie film in the Romero sense, but one drawn from the rituals of vodou, its metaphors are disquietingly potent. A film about enslavement and the legacies of colonialism, the suggestiveness of the duo’s earlier Cat People is taken to oblique heights. In constant, critical dialogue with its own exoticism, Tourneur’s astonishingly expressive direction often edges towards abstraction in its uncanny diagnoses of its tropical maladies. – Matthew Thrift
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #2: The Anima." Acidemic (January 29, 2012)
Le Corbeau (France: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943: 92 mins)
Hancock, James and Mikhail Karadimov. "Exploring the Dark Side with Henri-Georges Clouzot." The Wrong Reel #274 (June 1, 2017)
Shadow of a Doubt (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1943: 108 mins)
"Director Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ – ‘Psycho’ – ‘The Birds’." Sound on Sight #309 (February 29, 2012)
Starr, Elana Rose. "Alfred Hitchcock: Auteur Filmmaker." Villanova University (ND)
1944
Cobra Woman (USA: Robert Siodmak, 1944: 71 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #7: The Shadow." Acidemic (March 8, 2012)
Gaslight (USA: George Cukor, 1944: 114 mins)
Dahl, Nel. "The Handmaiden by Gaslight: Park Chan-wook’s gothic female-vengeance drama owes a debt to George Cukor." Keyframe (October 19, 2016)
Hudson, David. "Sex in the Movies." Green Cine (2005)
Laura (USA: Otto Preminger, 1944: 88 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #2: The Anima." Acidemic (January 29, 2012)
Meet Me in St Louis (USA: Vincent Minelli, 1944: 113 mins)
Collier, Stuart, Brian Risselada and Tom Sutpen. "Vincente Minnelli: The Beginning (1943-1948)." Illusion Travels by Streetcar #18 (June 12, 2014)
Ray, Robert B. "Meet Me in St Louis." The ABCs of Classic Hollywood. NY: Oxford UP, 2008: 245-328.
National Velvet (USA: Clarence Brown, 1944: 123 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #3: The Animus." Acidemic (February 1, 2012)
1945
I Know Where I Am Going (United Kingdom: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945: 91 mins)
Smith, Imogen Sara. "The Music of Words: Storytelling in Two Powell & Pressburger Films." Bright Lights Film Journal #79 (February 2013)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (Japan: Akira Kurosawa, 1945: 59 mins)
Vahdani, Alireza. "The effects of Kabuki on Akira Kurosawa’s Auteurism, Pt 1." and Part 2 Offscreen (October 31, 2010)
Mildred Pierce (USA: Michael Curtiz, 1945: 111 mins)
D., Margo and Margo P. "Mildred Pierce by J.M. Cain and Starring Joan Crawford." Book vs Movie (April 14, 2017)
Longworth, Karina. "Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: The Middle Years (Mildred Pierce to Johnny Guitar)." You Must Remember This (August 29, 2016) ["Joan Crawford struggled through what she called her “middle years,” the period during her 40s before she remade herself from aging, slumping MGM deadweight into a fleet, journeywoman powerhouse who starred in some of the most interesting films about adult womanhood of the 1940s and 1950s. That revival began with Mildred Pierce (for which Crawford won her only Oscar), and included a number of films, such as Daisy Kenyon and Johnny Guitar, directed by men who would later be upheld as auteurs, subversively making personal art within the commercial industry of Hollywood."]
Rome Open City (Italy: Roberto Rossellini, 1945: 103 mins)
Rossellini, Isabella. "Rome Open City." Film Forum (September 17, 2014) ["(1945) Rome, winter 1943: as screeching-tired Gestapo dragnets blanket the “open city,” Resistance leader Marcello Pagliero escapes from his apartment by running across the rooftops (as did co-screenwriter Sergio Amidei in real life), as pregnant widow Anna Magnani prepares for her wedding, parish priest Aldo Fabrizi uses the “frying pan method” to hide the local boys’ bomb brigade’s hardware, and effete Major Harry Feist riffles through his collection of incriminating ID photos – but betrayal, a broad-daylight machine-gunning, a Partisan ambush, blowtorch torture, and death by firing squad loom… Based on actual people and all-too-recent incidents (Magnani’s electrifying final scene was inspired by her enraged pursuit of her boyfriends’s escape by truck); written in a week in Federico Fellini’s kitchen (the only place with heat); shot on a number of the real locations, and cast mainly with non-pros (Fabrizi and second-choice Magnani were already famous, albeit for comedy), Open City’s documentary look and still hair-raising violence rocked audiences and critics around the world, making Neo-Realism, Rossellini, and Magnani world-famous, sharing the top prize at Cannes, and running twenty-one consecutive months at a single New York cinema. For years seen only in beat-up copies with hopelessly inadequate subtitles, this new restoration conveys the full meaning (and even the humor) of the dialogue for the very first time."]
1946
The Best Years of Our Lives (USA: William Wyler, 1946: 172 mins)
Kinder, Bill. "When Soldiers Come Home in the Movies: The post-war experience as told in tropes." Keyframe (November 11, 2015)
Duel in the Sun (USA: King Vidor, 1946: 144 mins)
McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.[Professor has copy]
Gilda (USA: Charles Vidor, 1946: 110 mins)
Hudson, David. "Sex in the Movies." Green Cine (2005)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #2: The Anima." Acidemic (January 29, 2012)
The Jolson Story (USA: Alfred E. Green, 1946: 128 mins)
Naremore, James. "Film Acting and the Arts of Imitation." Cyncos 27.2 (2011) ["Louise Brooks once said that in order to become a star, an actor needs to combine a natural-looking behavior with personal “eccentricity.” My presentation will explore some of the analytical problems raised by this phenomenon: What constitutes eccentricity and how is it balanced by naturalness in specific cases? What happens when a movie star acts in a film in which he or she impersonates the eccentricities of another star (Larry Parks as Al Jolson, Clint Eastwood as John Huston, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, Meryl Streep as Julia Child, etc.)? How can we distinguish between impersonation as caricature and impersonation as dramatic illusion? What is the difference, if any, between impersonation and stylistic influence?"]
Jones, Kent. "To Tell the Truth: Let There Be Light." Reverse Shot (June 22, 2003)
The Murderers are Among Us (Germany: Wolfgang Staudte, 1946: 85 mins)
Brockmann, Stephen. "Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946): The Rubble Film." A Critical History of German Film Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010: 196-210. [Professor has copy of the book]
The Living Dead (BBC: Adam Curtis, 1995: three 60 minute episodes) ["The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past is a series of films that investigate the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been manipulated and distorted by politicians and others for various means of control."]
My Darling Clementine (USA: John Ford, 1946: 97 mins)
McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.[Professor has copy]
Night and Day (USA: Michael Curtiz, 1946: 128 mins)
Heldt, Guido. Music and Levels of Narration in Film. Intellect, 2013. ["This is the first book-length study of the narratology of film music, and an indispensable resource for anyone researching or studying film music or film narratology. It surveys the so far piecemeal discussion of narratological concepts in film music studies, and tries to (cautiously) systematize them, and to expand and refine them with reference to ideas from general narratology and film narratology (including contributions from German-language literature less widely known in Anglophone scholarship). The book goes beyond the current focus of film music studies on the distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic music (music understood to be or not to be part of the storyworld of a film), and takes into account different levels of narration: from the extrafictional to ‘focalizations’ of subjectivity, and music’s many and complex movements between them."]
"Notorious: Hitchcock's Mature and Intricate Espionage Masterpiece." Cinephilia and Beyond (August 2016)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (USA: Lewis Milestone, 1946: 114 mins)
Bastién, Angelica Jade. "The Feminine Grotesque #5: Lilith’s Heir – On The Strange Love of Martha Ivers." Vague Visages (March 18, 2016)
The Stranger (USA: Orson Welles, 1946: 115 mins)
Barker, Jennifer Lynne. The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection. Routledge, 2013. [Get through interlibrary loan]
Callow, Simon. "Orson Welles." The Cinema Show (July 15, 2016) [Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane and respected police captain Hank Quinlan, both were men tempted by darkness and both were played by Orson Welles at opposite ends of his career. Actor, writer and director Simon Callow joins Ben Rylan for an extended interview in which they unpick the many myths surrounding one of cinema’s greatest talents.]
Pattison, Michael. "Gestures: Orson Welles’ The Stranger." Keyframe (February 14, 2014) ["What we can learn from Orson Welles and Edward G. Robinson about the art of keeping up appearances."]
Three Strangers (USA: Jean Negulesco, 1946: 92 mins)
Labuza, Peter and Farran Smith Nehme. "Three Strangers." The Cinephiliacs #6 (October 21, 2012)
1947
Black Narcissus (UK: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947: 100 mins)
Harvey, Dennis. "Sabu’s Enduring Star Power." Keyframe (January 5, 2014)
Jones, Kent. "Black Narcissus: Empire of the Senses." The Current (July 19, 2010) ["It is always tempting to uncouple the unearthly visual beauty and formal control of a Powell and Pressburger film from its psychological exactitude—and that urge is built into the films themselves. The characters (and the audience) are always on the brink of being overwhelmed by beauty, the beauty of the world on the one hand and of art on the other, which holds the impossible but ever present promise of a permanently heightened state. At the same time, however, the action is always firmly anchored in the fallacies and disturbances and longings of being human. We get the lure of beauty and its potentially dangerous effect at the same time. For instance, Powell’s remarkable precision with distances and angles of perception is as elegant and ingenious here as it is in all his great work, particularly the continued refrain of looking down—Kerr’s Sister Clodagh surveying the sisters gathered at the dinner table or, in a reverie, fixating on her grandmother’s footstool back in Ireland; Sabu’s Young General gazing down at Simmons’s Kanchi; Byron’s Sister Ruth spying from a series of heights within the open corridors of the newly christened convent on Sister Clodagh and her interactions with Mr. Dean; each of the sisters in turn contemplating the distant valley below. This insistence on up-down relationships (a constant in Powell’s work) gives the film a musical development akin to a slowly evolving theme or pattern and results in “mental images” as lasting as Hitchcock’s point-of-view shots. The moment when the screen goes red, as Sister Ruth passes out, is a startling reiteration of a powerful visual idea, but it may also be a representation of a genuine neurological phenomenon known as a “redout,” as Diane Broadbent Friedman postulates in her fascinating book on A Matter of Life and Death and its probable origins in real neuroscience."]
Daisy Kenyon (USA: Otto Preminger, 1947: 99 mins)
Longworth, Karina. "Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: The Middle Years (Mildred Pierce to Johnny Guitar)." You Must Remember This (August 29, 2016) ["Joan Crawford struggled through what she called her “middle years,” the period during her 40s before she remade herself from aging, slumping MGM deadweight into a fleet, journeywoman powerhouse who starred in some of the most interesting films about adult womanhood of the 1940s and 1950s. That revival began with Mildred Pierce (for which Crawford won her only Oscar), and included a number of films, such as Daisy Kenyon and Johnny Guitar, directed by men who would later be upheld as auteurs, subversively making personal art within the commercial industry of Hollywood."]
Miracle on 34th Street (USA: George Seaton, 1947: 96 mins)
El Goro. "It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Miracle on 34th Street (1947)." Talk Without Rhythm #397 (December 6, 2017)
Doherty, Thomas. "Out of the Past." The Cinephiliacs #79 (May 15, 2016)
Quai des Orfèvres (France: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947: 106 mins)
Hancock, James and Mikhail Karadimov. "Exploring the Dark Side with Henri-Georges Clouzot." The Wrong Reel #274 (June 1, 2017)
1948
3 Godfathers (USA: John Ford, 1948: 106 mins)
Freedman, Carl. "Post-Hetrosexuality: John Wayne and the Construction of American
Masculinity." Film International 5.1 (2007) [Professor has a copy]
A Foreign Affair (USA: Billy Wilder, 1948: 116 mins)
Carr, Jeremy. "Rubble Romance: A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948)." Senses of Cinema #94 (Spring 2020)
Riley, Christina. "Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair: Marlene Dietrich's Star Persona and American Interventionist Strategies in Postwar Berlin." Bright Lights Film Journal #76 (May 2012)
Bicycle Thieves (Italy: Vittorio De Sica, 1948: 93 mins)
LoBrutto, Vincent. "Italian Neorealism: The Bicycle Thief." Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 33-38. [BCTC Library: PN1994 L595 2005]
Mooney, James. "Bicycle Thieves." Film and Philosophy (March 8, 2013)
Drunken Angel (Japan: Akira Kurosawa, 1948: 98 mins)
Hogg, Trevor. "Epic Dreamer: An Akira Kurosawa Profile." Flickering Myth (March 24, 2010)
Fort Apache (USA: John Ford, 1948: 125 mins)
Freedman, Carl. "Post-Hetrosexuality: John Wayne and the Construction of American Masculinity." Film International 5.1 (2007) [Professor has a copy]
Kehr, Dave. "How the West Was Filled With Loss." The New York Times (March 25, 2012)
Oliver Twist (UK: David Lean, 1948: 105 mins)
Ferguson, Susan. "Capitalist Childhood in Film: Modes of Critique." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)
Portrait of Jennie (USA: William Dieterle, 1948: 86 mins)
Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #2: The Anima." Acidemic (January 29, 2012)
The Red Shoes (UK: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948: 134 mins)
Bird, Daniel, Maitland McDonagh and Mike White. "The Red Shoes (1948)." The Projection Booth #319 (April 20, 2017) ["The film centers on the tumultuous world of dance, namely ballet. We follow Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) through triumphs and misfortunes. A favorite of Martin Scorsese, the film is a triumph of melodrama and includes several breathtaking dance sequences, most notably an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes."]
Ruthless (USA: Edgar G. Ulmer, 1948: 104 mins)
Isenberg, Noah. "Ruthless." The Cinephiliacs #31 (January 19, 2014)
Van Gogh (France: Alain Resnais, 1948: 20 mins)
Cook, Adam. "Vincent Van Gogh In Cinema: A multilayered portrait emerges." Keyframe (May 22, 2016)
1949
Biesen, Sheri Chinen. "Flags à la Noir: Reframing Patriotism in the Post-War Films of Fred Zinnemann." Film Criticism 44.3 (2019)
The Heiress (USA: William Wyler, 1949: 115 mins)
Donegan, Moira. "Does That Humiliate You?: The Heiress" N + 1 (February 12, 2014)
I Shot Jesse James (USA: Samuel Fuller, 1949: 81 mins)
Anthony, West, David Blakeslee and Robert Nishimura. "The First Films of Samuel Fuller." The Eclipse Viewer #4 (October 24, 2012)
Jour de Fete." (France: Jacques Tati, 1949: 70 mins)
Ross, Kristin. "Jacques Tati, Historian." Current (October 30, 2014)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (UK: Robert Hamer, 1949: 106 mins)
Clarko, Clarko and Daniel Tiger. "Kind Hearts and Coronets." Cinema Gadfly (August 2015)
Le Silence de la Mer (France: Jean-Pierre Melville, 1949: 87 mins)
Lane, Anthony. "Jean-Pierre Melville's Cinema of Resistance." The New Yorker (May 1, 2017) ["His films are illuminated by what he saw when France was ruled by oppression and ordinary people had to decide what, or whom, they would obey."]
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (USA: John Ford, 1949: 103 mins)
Freedman, Carl. "Post-Hetrosexuality: John Wayne and the Construction of American Masculinity." Film International 5.1 (2007) [Professor has a copy]
Stray Dog (Japan: Akira Kurosawa, 1949: 122 mins)
Hogg, Trevor. "Epic Dreamer: An Akira Kurosawa Profile." Flickering Myth (March 24, 2010)
Under Capricorn (UK: Alfred Hitchcock, 1949: 117 mins)
Anderson, Barry, et al. "The Unedited Commentary Track: Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock; 1949)." Illusion Travels by Streetcar #101 (April 24, 2016)
Whiskey Galore (UK: Alexander Mackendrick, 1949: 80 mins)
Hancock, James and Steven Saunders. "The Cinema of Alexander Mackendrick." Wrong Reel #314 (September 2017)
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