We just watched The Bride of Frankenstein and I very much enjoyed it - does that count?
**Stagecoach **might be too westerny.
Spencer’s Mountain looks good.
Both Sullivan’s Travels (which I love) and The Lady Eve are now on the list.
mmm
Here’s another one that no one’s mentioned: A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945). It was released on DVD as part of an Elia Kazan collection and hasn’t been issued on its own, but Netflix may carry it.
It’s a wonderful (and at times, terribly sad) look at growing up in Brooklyn in the early 20th century. The action is mostly seen through the eyes of young Francie Nolan (played by Peggy Ann Garner), and Kazan seems to take her P.O.V. seriously and never condescends to her. We’re utterly sympathetic to her when she encounters a librarian reluctant to let her check out a “grown-up” book and one of her teachers who has no patience for Francie’s intelligence.
You won’t quickly forget the other happy, tragic characters who make their way as best they can: Francie’s mother Katie Nolan (Dorothy McGuire) who keeps the family together, Aunt Sissy (Joan Blondell) who cheerfully defies social convention and keeps getting married, and most of all Johnny Nolan (James Dunn), Francie’s ne’er-do-well, dreamy father who inspires her and who is her closest friend. In spite of his alcoholism, their relationship is one of the finest depictions of unconditional love between parent and child that has ever been on the screen.
You won’t be disappointed.
But “The African Queen” might be.
As it turns out, I am disappointed.
It’s not Netflixable.
mmm
I agree with the suggestion of To Be or Not To Be. I Remember Mama and Born Yesterday are good ones, too.
Probably OT, but the 1940’s and 1950’s were the golden age for many other countries’ film industries, as they caught up with Hollywood and Western Europe.
This was when Fellini, Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray were active, and on a less arty level, the best soap-operatic Egyptian movies, Mexican masked wrestler movies, Soviet Mosfilm, etc. for exotic and downright weird fare.
Out of the Past (1947) Mitchum and Douglas
I Remember Mama – love that movie. Also Mrs. Miniver, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Little Foxes, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
On the Town (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and the line “The Floradora Girls!” which is a hoot, in context) and The Band Wagon (Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and the lyric "MGM has got a leo/But Mama has got a trio!) The Fifties was the Golden Age of the Hollywood Musical.