BEST FILMS OF 1949
by Mike Lorefice

Border Incident
Anthony Mann

***

Criss Cross
Jules Dassin

***

Deadly Is the Female
Joseph H. Lewis

***1/2

Jour De Fete
Jacques Tati

****

Kind Hearts and Coronets
Robert Hamer

***

A Letter To Three Wives
Joseph L. Mankiewicz

***

Orpheus
Jean Cocteau

***

Passport to Pimlico
Henry Cornelius

***

Pinky
Elia Kazan

***

The Set Up
Robert Wise

***

She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
John Ford

***1/2

Stray Dog
Akira Kurosawa

***

The Third Man
Carol Reed

****

Twelve O'Clock High
Henry King

****

Whirlpool
Otto Preminger

Preminger was able to get away with making films without any real good guys long before it was en vogue. Whirlpool is also one of the first films to take shots at the facade of perfect materialist happiness that began sweeping the country after WWII and became a staple of 50's television. Gene Tierney is the supposed heroine, spoiled rich and stuck as a housewife. Her main problem is she always felt forced to hide things, and believing she had to be dishonest to get what he wanted even though she could easily have afforded the goods made her a kleptomaniac and ate her up inside. Richard Conte plays the supposed good doctor, Tierney's caring psychiatrist husband. He attends to his client's needs, but is incredibly naive about his wife and has created or added to many of her problems by being insensitive and inattentive. Tierney's issues leave her prone to the greasy charm of bad doctor Jose Ferrer, a con artist hypnotist (Preminger seems inspired by Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse) who specializes in taking advantage of wealthy women. An interesting aspect of the film is how Conte and Ferrer are compared and contrasted, in the end both of their sciences seem to be about preying on and exploiting human weakness. After Tierney is accused of murder, Charles Bickford plays another variation of his detective who does things his own way. The results are much different than in Fallen Angel, but the similarity is Preminger switches to one character largely as a way to reveal surprising characteristics and traits in another. Rather than imposing a certain brand of morality, Preminger shows us how the actions of one character dictate those of another, for better or worse. Preminger's examinations of psychosis and neurosis work better when they are less direct, but this exploration of conscious vs. subconscious has a certain brand of maturity despite the out and out silliness of Ben Hecht's screenplay. The dialogue is so obviously scripted it squeezes some of the life out of the picture, but the film works much better in its quite moments, allowing us to observe the shadiness and deficiencies of the characters with a sense of anticipation and amazement. [8/19/06] ***

White Heat
Raoul Walsh

***

The Window
Ted Tetzlaff

***