1949: The Year that I Was Into Before Everyone Else Thought It Was Cool

I'm hipster-ing it up in Starbucks right now so I thought I'd stick in a hipster title. Also: it's getting increasingly difficult to come up with clever titles when basically everything is about World War II. This was a pretty solid year actually. I knew I'd enjoy the winner and it exceeded expectations. But on top of that: there was a melodrama I actually enjoyed (gasp!) and the World War II movies actually resembled something different. Not bad!

We begin with Battleground. At first I was like, "oh look another movie about how war is bad and stuff. Or about how war is good and stuff." I actually thought it played out quite well though. It reminded me of the tones set in the excellent Band of Brothers and somewhat-less-excellent-but-still-good The Pacific. It portrays the soldiers as human beings without explicitly manipulating you into caring about them. No monologues about "my girl Jenny back home" or "my little brother died when I was 9 and that scarred me." Just soldiers on the battlefield, involved in one of the most influential and famous battles in WWII history: The Battle of Bastogne. They might be playing imaginary baseball one second and ripping a German's throat out with their teeth the next second. Which brings me to another upshot: it was pretty freaking explicit for 1949. The throat-ripping occurred off-screen of course, but that makes it even more effective (something a lot of filmmakers today don't seem to understand). All you see is the American jumping on the German and then you see the German's feet go limp. Then the American stands up and wipes blood from his mouth. There was also an American soldier hiding in the snow and dying because he stayed too long and a German being brutally stabbed to death. We're talking about some pretty intense crap. That's what gave it some extra oomph. I might have mentioned this in my 1998 write-up (who remembers? No, seriously, does someone remember?) but my favorite Saving Private Ryan scene is when we find out that Tom Hanks is a high school teacher. It really brings home that point that the fate of the world rested not on a bunch of Batmen and Jason Bournes but instead on the soldiers of everyday people. So all of that mixed with the fact that this particular movie was a good length at about 2 hours, made it a pretty unexpectedly great film.

Something I totally expected to hate but ended up enjoying is The Heiress. Just from the title you can tell that I would be apprehensive. I'm thinking: "right then, here's another melodrama that will try to tug at my heartstrings before it ultimately ends up happy and stuff." Not the case at all. Everyone ended up miserable in the end. Just like all of my favorites! It's about a rich heiress (predictably) who is supposed to be quite plain-looking (they made up Olivia de Havilland to look ordinary) and how an attractive younger man is attempting to woo her. Her oppressive father thinks it's just because of her money but she thinks he legit cares about her. Cue the cheesy music and the womanly swoon as it's revealed that he really does care. Nope! He pretty much was just interested in her money...maybe. They leave it somewhat ambiguous. But he definitely does leave her on the eve of their elopement (eloping? Elopage?) and she becomes Mrs. Freeze. In the end, her father is dead and she doesn't care. And when her former lover returns, she pretty much tells him to get lost. Her housekeeper tells her she's become quite cruel, to which she responds: "I have been taught by masters." Chilly! They also kept it to an appropriate 115 minutes. This meant that almost every scene was important and moving along the story in some way. So this proves that a drama that takes place mostly on one set and with only 3 or 4 main actors actually can be compelling. On a side note about happy endings: too often they feel like the end of a whodunit. As though the whole thing was leading up to that one revelation and there's no point in the rest of the story existing, except for the purposes of stalling. That's why sad endings are better. Or: powerful endings that are happy but required some sacrifice or hardship first. The people involved with this film knew what was up. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering William Wyler was the director. Look him up, you'll be shocked at how many famous movies one man can direct.

A movie that I actually own (somewhat knownst to me) is A Letter to Three Wives. When I graduated from high school, my dad's best friend hand-picked about 6 or 7 DVDs for me that he considered classics. This was one of two that for some reason I hadn't watched yet. And I can't disagree with a single choice of his. Side note: one of them was Out of the Past, a truly fantastic noir with a really rotten femme fatale. Love that stuff. Anyway, this movie I thought was quite good aside from the setup. I thought that was a little thin. Basically, it's about a woman who sends a letter to her three ladyfriends that says: "I'm stealing one of your husbands, best of luck over the next hour and forty-five minutes figuring out who." Well, something like that anyway. The rest of the movie is told in flashback though. And the backstories are fascinating little vignettes that are well-acted and compelling. I think vignette-y stories can be a waste or a cheat sometimes. But when they're done well, like this one, they're very effective. Because you're getting several complete stories that intertwine in interesting ways. In fact, I found myself thinking that a lot of the other relationship dramas I've viewed were basically one of the backstories stretched out into a full movie. Whereas this film wisely keeps each individual story to no more than 30 minutes or so. Over the course of the film, they leave you with an odd feeling because none of the marriages are particularly sound. So not only could any one of them be splitting up with their husband, you're not entirely sure how you feel about it. They might be better off. Or perhaps the overall point is to work it out. It has a predictably happy ending, that the book apparently didn't exactly share, but even so: the overall ambiguity through most of the film was quite compelling. See? There's two examples of borderline-melodrama that I've enjoyed. Maybe something is just wrong with my brain. Don't worry, soon my 2011 entry will be up (after the Oscars air later this month) and that is sure to get me all ranty.

A film I found fairly "meh" but not necessarily bad is Twelve O'Clock High. It's got Gregory Peck, who looks exactly the same in 1949 as he did in 1962 (insult? Compliment?), and it's about dogfighters during World War II. Now here's an important note on grammar and pronunciation kids. "Dogfighters" means people who channel the Red Baron and get all retro badass in their old-timey planes (or "now-timey" planes, as they were known back then). Dogfights are cool. "Dog fights" are not cool. That's when certain NFL quarterbacks decide that croquet has gotten a bit old and decide to instead be incredibly cruel to animals that are awesome. And then they get less time in prison than someone under SOPA would get for posting a video of their kid singing Frank Sinatra. Oops...didn't mean to get all political on you there. Nawwwwwww but...SOPA is dumb. I feel quite certain that the people who wrote it don't know what the difference is between what the Internet actually is and Tron. Anyway...back to World War II stuff. This movie was about 20 minutes too long but I found it to be overall interesting. It's mostly people talking in a room but there are also some thrilling flying sequences, which were apparently made up of actual footage from World War II pilots on both sides. That was probably a super awkward conversation when whichever producer asked the Germans for some Luftwaffe footage. Like: "oh hey, so you guys have been decimated twice in about 30 years by us and our allies but can we get some footage of you sucking horribly? Kthanks." The finest parts of the film, however, are the beginning and the end. Very contemplative stuff. It begins and ends with a former soldier visiting a location that was once a key battle spot during the war. It was overgrown with foliage and peaceful. No one would be able to inherently tell that such horrific bloodshed once took place on that very spot. A message of peace? That the toils of war have been buried by beauty? Or perhaps a message of the futility of war? Both? That's why I'd call it contemplative, there's no inherent definite meaning or "right answer." It just makes you think. Whereas a lot of movies like this would have a guy stop and be like, "what was the point of it all? Gahhhhhhhh!" That's a little much. This was intelligently done and well-acted throughout. So even though it wasn't great, I can't really fault them for any of it.

This year's winner is one of my favorites from the whole escapade and is perhaps more relevant today than it was back then: All the King's Men. What a fantastic film, through and through. Truly an incredible performance by Broderick Crawford as underdog-turned-corrupt-politician Willie Stark. I'm going a little hyphen crazy (hypen-crazy?) today. Apologies. This film is based on a true story about a politician from a small town who rises to great power, only to have it Caesar-ed away from him. Isn't that always the way? He begins by getting the people all riled up and angry, without actually saying what he stood for. I LOVED this because you see it every day now that the election is in full swing. Anybody starts laying out policy thoughts and I'm like "hmm interesting" but 95% of people are like, "booooooooring!" Not to get all political on you again, but then somebody like Gingrich gets up and says "I say we shoot America's enemies in the face!" What does that even mean? And to be fair, Obama did a similar thing in 2008 when he was like, "hope! Whatever that means!" Most popular politicians essentially get up and say non-specific stuff and people get all excited. So it's either incredibly depressing or highly enlightening to think about how little things have changed since that time. Willie Stark rises to power in just this way, by calling the crowd a bunch of bums and saying that he's one of them. He promises to burn the fat cats, all while becoming a fat cat. The film is also filled out with a great ensemble cast who have the unfortunate task of being what I call "Karl Malden" roles. This is in reference to Karl Malden's excellent performance in Patton which is completely overshadowed by George C. Scott. You could say the same thing about Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight. He did an incredible job as Two-Face but not as many people noticed. What's weird is that the only other person who won for this movie was the one I thought to be the weakest performance. Everyone else did a low-key and realistic performance (or over-the-top and realistic one in the case of Crawford). But what she did was kind of a classic 40s-50s bit of stage acting. She delivers her one-liners with such an implied "zing!" that I thought I was watching a CBS sitcom. Thankfully she's not in it a whole lot...but still. On an interesting side note: they originally offered the lead role to John Wayne but he sent it back in disgust because he was actually optimistic about American politics for some reason. No offense meant, but this movie would have SUCKED if he was the politician. Seriously. That would have been one of the biggest miscasts in film history. So it's a good thing John Wayne was more patriotic than vitriolic. Thankfully they ended up casting a pessimist (0r someone willing to act like one) and the movie turned out great. I would definitely recommend anyone and everyone to watch this film, especially people like me who are cynical about the whole political process.

Well that's it for 1949, way too positive if you ask me. Where ya' bad movies at? Probably in 2011, which might be my next entry. I think I'll make it through 1948 before the Oscar telecast later this month though. So for now let's assume that my next entry will include: melancholy Danes, melancholy treasure hunters, and melancholy amnesiacs.