TEN BEST OF THE YEAR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 236, 31 December 1943, Page 9

TEN BEST OF THE YEAR

HE TEN Best Pictures of the . Year (or should it be the Best Ten)? But why. ten; why not twenty, or six, or thirty-nine? Because ten is for some reason the traditional mystic number for this purpose; and anyway, there just haven't been Twenty Best Pictures this year. . As it happens, my choice this time is comparatively easy, for on looking back thrqugh The Listeners of the past 12 months I find that on only 12 occasions has our little man (whose opinion I value as highly as my own), risen from his theatre seat to applaud. Obviously then, all that remains for me to do is to delete two titles, which leaves us with the following (mot necessarily in order of merit): "Mrs. Miniver’ (January 8). "The Talk of the Town" (February 19). "Moontide" (March 5). , "Tortilla Flat’? (July 9). "The Moon and Sixpence" (July 16). "Stand By For Action" (August 27). "Tennessee Johnson’’, (November 5). "Love on the Dole’? (December 24). "Keeper of the Flame’’ (December 24). "I Married a Witch’? (December 24). The dates refer to the issues of The Listener in which these films were reviewed, and although I was partly responsible for the traffic jam at the end through having taken time off from reviewing, it will be noticed that four out of the 10 films came in the last two months of the year, while another one, Mrs. Miniver, just squeezed in at the beginning. The two films which I had to delete from the little man’s total of 12 "standup claps" were Chaplin’s Gold Rush, and the war drama Wake Island. Anyway, The Gold Rush did not properly belong in a 1943 collection: it was a resurrection from the great silent past. And though Wake Island had considerable merit-it was almost documentary in its realism, and resisted the temptation to put a blonde in the bomb-rack-I can let it go with less reluctance than I would feel about any of the others. * * * SHALL not attempt here to justify in detail the choice of The Ten. If any reader has had the diligence to save 52 back issues of The Listener, he may also have the energy to turn up the dates mentioned and see exactly why the little man bounded from his seat with enthusiasm on those occasions. But briefly, here are the chief reasops why those pictures were specially applauded: Mrs. Miniver, for being a real and not a phoney story about the war, and for the acting of Greer Garson (she was subsequently announced ,as an Academy Award winner-and incidentally, we have not yet seen Yankee Doodle Dandy, which won James Cagney the corresponding award); The Talk of the Town, for being humorous as. well, asgexciting and, in spite of becoming tongue-tied at the finale, for having something to say; Moontide, for Jean Gabin, Thomas Mitchell and Ida Lupino, and for fine atmosphere; Tortila Flat, for Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan, good atmosphere and a cheerful philosophy; The Moon and Sixpence, for the performance by George Sanders and for being intelligent adult entertainment; Stand By For Action, (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) for Charles Laughton, and for being good fun; Tennessee Johnson, for Van Heflin, and for being the best sort of historical drama; Love on the Dole, for its acting, its humanity, its appeal to the heart as well as to the head; Keeper of the Flame, for its strong suspense and its much-better-than-average story; and I Married a Witch for its tonic qualities and Rene Clair’s direction. My research among the files reveals that, out of a total of 83 visits to the cinema during 1943, we-that is, the little man and I-showed our appreciation sitting down 27 times (as against the 12 stand-up claps); through 32 films we just sat and took notice; and on 11 occasions we were almost prone with boredom. But only once did we so far forget our responsibility as critics as to walk out. That, I imagine, would just about represent an average experience for a year’s picture-going-12 outstanding films, 27 pretty good ones, 32 just average, 11 duds, and one fair cow, %* * % F you ask me for my choice of The Most Outstanding Film of 1943, I hesitate momentarily between Mrs. Miniver and Love on the Dole, and then vote for the latter. Both were films of Britain at war-in the one case at war with the Nazis, in the other at war with poverty and an economic system that was out of joint. But whereas Mrs, Miniver was a warm-hearted and moving tribute by an American studio to a small section of the people of Britain (and within those limits I believe it was a true enough picture), Love on the Dole was an equally warm-hearted and I would imagine even truer picture, by a British producer, of a very much greater section. In fact, a story of The People, in the Ma Joad sense. Yet with, the exception of these two films, and a few others, 1943 has been a poor year in the cinema. Even some of those that have got into our list of the Ten Best would not have been accounted really outstanding by the standards of other years, and certainly the competition would have been keener and my choice correspondingly harder, I am afraid that four years of war are having their effect on the film industry; it has not re-adjusted itself to the situation. It looks back, rather than forward, and J] believe is losing touch with the mood of the people.