Many agreat movie was made in the decade of the 1950s, but some great films have fallen through the cracks of history, becoming forgotten, hidden gems of cinema.
A quick survey of these unappreciated films turns up a few works that were praised in their day, but later fell out of favor for whatever reason. A few were not loved enough when they came out, and despite gaining a more positive critical reputation over the years, are still not as well-known as they should be.
Some of thesignature movie genres of the 1950sare represented here:atmospheric film noirs, sprawling Westerns, intense thrillers, searing dramas.
Actors like the versatile Glenn Ford, the shape-shifting Alec Guinness and theiconic Gary Coopermake appearances in these unheralded movies, directed by the likes of Luis Bunuel, Sam Fuller and Anthony Mann.
Naked Alibi
Cast
Naked Alibi is a 1954 noir film centered on Al Willis, a murder suspect pursued relentlessly by Police Chief Conroy despite insufficient evidence. The intense conflict escalates when Willis flees to a seedy Mexican border town, leading to questions about the true nature of each man’s obsession.
10 years before playing deranged general Jack D. Ripper inDr. Strangelove, Sterling Hayden played a seemingly deranged police chief in the noir thrillerNaked Alibi. Hayden’s character goes off the rails when three cops are murdered, and he becomes convinced that an apparently meek and law-abiding local baker (Gene Barry) is the killer.
Kicked off the force for brutality, Hayden goes rogue. He then meets Gloria Grahame, the suspected killer’s Tijuana mol. The baker, it turns out, is not so mild-mannered, or so law-abiding, as everyone thought.
Naked Alibidirector Jerry Hopper is not what you would call a revered filmmaker, but he has a fun, roller-coaster ride of a script to work with, and good actors, and does a workmanlike job in delivering an entertaining film noir that deserves to be better-known.
Patterns
Patterns is a 1956 film centered around Fred Staples, who relocates from Ohio to New York to assume an executive role at Ramsey & Co. Fred becomes friends with the vice president, Bill Briggs, as he navigates the corporate machinations orchestrated by CEO Walter Ramsey, who seeks to replace Briggs with Staples.
Rod Serling’s 1955Kraft Television TheaterpresentationPatternshad none of the supernatural, sci-fi or thriller trappings that would later make hisTwilight Zonethe perfect Trojan Horse. All it needed was a boardroom set, a handful of actors, and a story that detailed with razor-sharp precision why capitalism always wins.
Patternswas made into a feature film in 1956, with more sets, most of the same actors (Van Heflin replaced Richard Kiley in the lead, presumably because of his bigger name), and Serling’s same expertly-constructed tale of corporate ruthlessness.
Many aTwilight Zonecharacter would sell their soul to the devil, failing to read the fine print in the process, butPatternsshows how soul-selling works in the real world.
This beautifully-crafted and compelling WW2 suspense film was appreciated in its time, receiving a critics’ prize at the Berlin Film Festival. It’s also a favorite of Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright, who have both included it in lists of thebest British films of all time. But it’s still not nearly as celebrated as it deserves to be.
Tarantino, Wright and Martin Scorsese famously exchanged lists of great British films during the pandemic lockdown.
The titleIce Cold in Alexrefers to the glass of lager a character promises himself, if he and his companions only manage to succeed in escaping the besieged Tobruk, crossing the desert in a dodgy ambulance and arriving safely in Alexandria. Obstacles include the German Army, a shady South African, quicksand, and a busted suspension.
The group’s hardships take on a Werner Herzog-like dimension when they must go over a towering sand dune by hand-cranking the ambulance up its intimidating slope – in reverse. Anyone who has seen the more-famousWages of Fearwill appreciateIce Cold in Alexand its grueling tale of survival.
Glenn Ford brings seething convictionto his portrayal of a father forced to make a terrible decision after his son is kidnapped. Yes, Mel Gibson’sRansomis based on the same source material. No, Ford does not bellow “Give me back my son!” when he goes on TV to deliver a message to the kidnappers.
Ford does give a searing performance in the scene, going from beseeching to wrathful. 1956’sRansom!may not be as violent as the Gibson version made 40 years later, but it’s just as harrowing.
Set mostly within Ford and wife Donna Reed’s near-opulent 1950s home, the film betrays its roots as a TV movie, but no opening out is needed. Director Alex Segal, who mostly did television, adds a flourish here and there to keep things from getting dull, but mostly just lets his actors cook, and cook they do.
Legendary surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel made his English-language debut with this adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s classic novel. Though the film was a box office hit in America, and a hit with critics worldwide, it’s seldom brought up today in discussions of Bunuel’s works.
Bunuel’s 1950s output is by-and-large overlooked, relative to the endless praise heaped upon his 1960s and 1970s films.Robinson Crusoemay seem pedestrian compared to the likes ofViridianaandBelle de Jour, being devoid of those movies’ chic, arthouse trappings, but it shouldn’t be dismissed as a mere work of competent adaptation.
Bunuel’sCrusoeis indeed a superior work of adaptation, and if one considers it as such, leaving aside its lack of “surrealism,” it’s incredibly entertaining, and ranks as one of the best literary adaptations of the 50s. In the role of marooned sailor Crusoe,Dan O’Herlihy gives a career-best performance, one that earned him an Oscar nomination.
Dark melodramas exposing the truth behind the glitz and glamour of Hollywood became fashionable with the release ofBilly Wilder’s immortalSunset Blvd. Five years into the cycle, Robert Aldrich adapted Clifford Odets’ playThe Big Knife, about a corrupted movie star, into a film almost as pungently weird as Wilder’s.
Jack Palance shreds scenery as Charlie Castle, a star with a sordid past. Riveting as Palance’s performance may be, Aldrich thought the star hurt the film’s box office, as audiences didn’t find him likable.
The Big Knifemay have been a financial failure, but it succeeded with European critics, scoring a runner-up prize at the 1955 Venice Film Festival. The film is unsparing in its view of Hollywood immorality, and delivers noir-tinged, psychologically intense drama laced with venom.
The Horse’s Mouthsees Alec Guinness pulling double-duty as star and screenwriter. The film’s single Oscar nomination went to Guinness, for his adaptation of Joyce Cary’s novel, and not for his performance as mercurial, gravel-throated painter Gulley Jimson.
Guinness won Best Actor forBridge On the River Kwaia year before being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay forThe Horse’s Mouth.
Guinness gave so many memorable performances in the 1950s and 1960s, it’s understandable that his work inThe Horse’s Mouthis relatively unappreciated. Understandable but still unforgivable.
Guinness must have wrecked his voice entirely in order to play Gulley Jimson, an oddball painter with no sense of boundaries, whose grandiose personality sees him seeking bigger-and-bigger canvasses on which to execute his artworks, and whose self-sabotaging nature makes him as much an agent of destruction as creation.
It’s easy to see why Guinness pushed to make this movie, and play this character. His efforts should have been rewarded with more accolades.
Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell teamed up on screen just two times. They co-starred in the ill-fated Howard Hughes productionMacao, released in 1952. Their other collaboration came in the Hughes-producedHis Kind of Woman, a film Russell later slammed,claiming it was ruined when Hughes fired original director John Farrow and brought in Richard Fleischer for re-shoots.
His Kind of Womanmay not have been the film Russell hoped it would be, but it’s nevertheless a hugely entertaining film noir, fueled by the undeniable chemistry between its two stars. Vincent Price leads the supporting cast, having a good time playing a hammy actor.
Film noir may not actually be the right genre box in which to placeHis Kind of Woman. It has a noirish plot to be sure, but its tone is relatively light, and noir actors are not supposed to enjoy themselves as much as Russell and Mitchum do here.
A disillusioned Civil War soldier heads west, finding a new home among Native Americans of the plains. It’s notDances With Wolves, it’s Samuel Fuller’s shockingly bloody Western dramaRun of the Arrow, starring Rod Steiger as a man who declares himself without a nation.
Fuller’s film may or may not have directly influenced Kevin Costner’s later Oscar-winning epic. If either film deserves to be remembered, it’s the fierce and vitalRun of the Arrow, not the languid, pretentiousDances With Wolves. Costner can’t hold a candle to Fuller either as a storyteller, or as a designer of memorable images.
Fuller’s approach is utterly unsentimental, and incredibly violent for 1957 (Run of the Arrowpurportedly was one of the first movies to use blood squibs). The able supporting cast includes Charles Bronson, unfortunately playing a native warrior (not for the last time).
Following his long run of noirish Westerns starring Jimmy Stewart,director Anthony Mann made arguably his greatest movie with a new leading man, Gary Cooper. American critics had little good to say aboutMan of the Westwhen it came out, but it was a favorite of Jean-Luc Godard, who raved:
With Anthony Mann, one rediscovers the Western, as one discovers arithmetic in an elementary maths class. Which is to say that Man of the West is the most intelligent of films, and at the same time the most simple.
Critical consensus eventually swung around to Godard’s side, and the film now sits at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Working from a script by Reginald Rose, Mann puts an almost operatic spin on some classic Western tropes. Cooper is the former criminal who has tried to go straight, but likeUnforgiven’s William Muny, he’s doomed to revisit his despised past.
Cooper is in fine late-career form, despite being too old for his role, but the movie is stolen by Lee J. Cobb as his uncle, a frontier Fagin leading a gang of violent young outlaws. Never mind that Cobb was ten years younger than his “nephew” Cooper.
