Were the 1950s the Greatest Decade for American Moviemaking?

“The greatest decade in American moviemaking” is how a Brooklyn College professor of film, Foster Hirsch, describes the 1950s. That Mr. Hirsch has a new book on the market titled, take a deep breath, “Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties: The Collapse of the Studio, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Bodysnatcher—Television” might give pause to the cynical among us as to the author’s critical objectivity. The real clue regarding Mr. Hirsch’s enthusiasm may be found in his brief for “50 From the 50s,” a four-week run of pictures at Film Forum starting this Friday: “I saw all of the films in the series when they were first released.” Even those whose math skills aren’t strong can intuit that Mr. Hirsch was a young man when he first sat down at the local theater, popcorn in hand and soda at the ready, to watch, say, “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955). However much our tastes deepen as we mature — or, at least, we should hope they deepen — the bedrock of our sensibilities was put in motion by discoveries made during our formative years. They can be hard to shake, or acknowledge.Having said that, a quick once-over of the films included in “50 From the 50s” is enough to weaken the most skeptical of souls. Here’s a partial line-up: “Sunset Blvd.” (1950), “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), “Touch of Evil” (1958), “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), “The Searchers” (1956), “Carmen Jones” (1954), “All About Eve” (1950), “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953), “3:10 to Yuma,” (1957) and the touched-by-grace “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952). “The greatest decade?” Give the professor a high-five: He may be right.The 1950s were a significant moment in the development of American movies. The advent of television sent the studios into a panic and scrambling after new technologies like Cinema-Scope and 3-D. A booming post-war economy made for teenagers with cash in their pockets ready to spend it not only on popular music, but on a raft of actors and genres that suited their interests. The dominion of the major studios started to crack. Politics, too, helped shape the culture, particularly the stress put on the body politic by the Atomic Age. It wasn’t the heyday of bug-eyed monsters for nothing.So, yes, “50 From the 50s” includes big ants (“Them!”), small men (“The Incredible Shrinking Man”), gill men (“The Creature from the Black Lagoon”), and plants, both ravenous (“The Thing From Another World”) and insidious (“The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”). Before Robert Wise showed us how the hills were alive with the sound of music, he directed “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” in which Michael Rennie plays an ambassador from beyond the stars who attempts to do right by a bull-headed humankind. The upshot — or one of them, anyway — is that the planet goes without milkshakes for 30 minutes. Unconscionable.Joan Crawford in ‘Sudden Fear.’ Via Film ForumThe program at Film Forum includes lesser-known films by eminent directors including Howard Hawks (“Land of the Pharaohs”), Douglas Sirk (“Taza, Son of Cochise”), and the man who helmed “Casablanca,” Michael Curtiz (“The Egyptian”). Rather than hearing complaints about personal faves gone missing, Mr. Hirsch and the theater’s repertory programmer, Bruce Goldstein, should be commended for including two exemplary films starring Joan Crawford, “Sudden Fear” (1952) and “Johnny Guitar” (1954). The former is an overly neat but gripping thriller, the latter a bizarre psychosexual oater. Both bubble over with an eroticism that is no less convincing for being overripe. Thanks to tell-all books and endless caricatures seen on the small screen, Crawford comes to us here in 2023 as something of an ogre, but in both these films she proves her mettle as a movie star and — please, I insist — a middle-aged sex symbol. In the aforementioned films, Crawford is paired with, respectively, the forever menacing Jack Palance and the forever world-weary Sterling Hayden. Try to tell yourself that Crawford isn’t deeply and indelibly in love with both of these less than ideal catches. You can’t; it’s impossible. That, my friends, is acting. “Sudden Fear” and “Johnny Guitar” are two good reasons out of, let’s say, 50 to make a New Yorker haunt the corridors of Film Forum over the coming weeks.

Were the 1950s the Greatest Decade for American Moviemaking?

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