Before we dive into all the fine (and not so fine) films released in 1946, let’s take a moment to appreciate some of the best offerings of 1945. This list is limited to the films from 1945 I was able to see, and like all top 10 lists, it’s completely subjective.
1. Detour
Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour is one of the most brilliant film noirs ever made. It’s phenomenal that such a finely crafted film was produced in just six days, and mostly in two locations. Shot through with a nightmarish sense of uncertainty and doom, it has an eerie and hypnotic power that can’t be fully explained.
I have to side with the Academy on this one. Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend is one of the most powerful tales of addiction ever put on the screen, and Ray Milland’s performance is still one of the most realistic and maddening portraits of alcoholism I’ve ever seen. Its Oscar wins (for best picture, actor, and director) were well-deserved.
3. Spellbound
Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound is a finely crafted and enjoyably loony psychological thriller anchored by fine performances from Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, as well as George Barnes’s gorgeous cinematography and Miklós Rózsa’s memorable score. Hitchcock was reportedly less than thrilled with the final product, but I thought it was a top-notch mix of romance and suspense.
Michael Curtiz’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel Mildred Pierce is a fantastic mixture of film noir and melodrama. Joan Crawford brings not only her finely controlled histrionics to the role of Mildred, but her own life history as a woman who crawled up from nothing.
I don’t generally like musicals, but I loved Anchors Aweigh. Clocking in at two hours and 20 minutes, it’s the kind of Technicolor fantasy that Hollywood just doesn’t make anymore. Gene Kelly’s dancing and Frank Sinatra’s crooning are both wonderful, and Frank Sinatra’s dancing and Gene Kelly’s crooning aren’t bad, either.
A moving romantic drama starring Joseph Cotten as a shell-shocked serviceman on leave and Ginger Rogers as a prisoner on a furlough. It beautifully depicts a fragile, growing romance between two likable people who each have something they try to hide from the other.
The full title of this film, directed by William A. Wellman, is Ernie Pyle’s “Story of G.I. Joe.” A well-acted, emotional war movie, it focuses on newspaperman Pyle (Burgess Meredith) as much as it does its cast of ragged but determined infantrymen, in particular Robert Mitchum as Lt. (later Capt.) Bill Walker and Freddie Steele as Sgt. Steve Warnicki.
Written, produced, and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I Know Where I’m Going is a playful film with touches of magical realism. “The Archers” (Powell and Pressburger) show remarkable attention to detail in their depiction of an island in Scotland, and the lead performances by Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey are warm and nuanced.
Director Mark Robson’s film, which was produced by legendary horror filmmaker Val Lewton, is a meditation on the abuse of power. Boris Karloff’s performance as a cold and brutal general in the Greek army who quarantines an island with the use of military force is fascinating and terrifying in equal measures.
10. Cornered
There’s a scene in Edward Dmytryk’s Murder My Sweet (1944) in which Dick Powell’s drug-induced confusion is telegraphed to the audience by a web of gauze superimposed over the frame. Dmytryk uses no tricks like that to aid his star’s performance in his second outing with Powell, who delivers a hard-boiled and grim performance in Cornered, which is a really solid little thriller.
Honorable Mentions:
The Body Snatcher, Dead of Night, Dillinger, Hangover Square, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Scarlet Street, The True Glory, A Walk in the Sun.
French film director Robert Bresson is famous for his use of non-professional actors. Prior to watching Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, I had only seen one Bresson film, Pickpocket (1959), whose protagonist was most certainly not a professional actor. He shambled through the proceedings like a man on a heavy dose of tranquilizers, his movements slow, his eyes haunted. It was an interesting film, and one I may watch again some day, but it didn’t move me.
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