BEST FILMS OF 1944

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 290, 12 January 1945, Page 10

BEST FILMS OF 1944

HE time has come round again (in fact it is a week or two overdue) to make a selection of the Ten Best Films of the Year. The number is entirely arbitrary, and so is the choice itself. It is also, of course, an entirely personal selection and cannot be regarded as reflecting public taste as demonstrated at the box-office. All it does perhaps is to suggest what I think public taste ought to be! There were 14 occasions during the past year on which our little man was sufficiently enthusiastic to rise from his seat to applaud. The following is a list of our A-grade pictures for 1944, together with the dates on which they were reviewed in The Listener, and it should be made clear that they are in alphabetical order, not order of preference: Casablanca (December 1). In Which We Serve (March 24). Journey Into Fear (April 28). Lifeboat (September 29). Lost Angel (September 1). The Magnificent Ambersons (April 28). The Moon is Down (July 14). The Ox-Bow Incident (November 3). Phantom Lady (August 4). San Demetrio, London (July 28). Seventh Victim (August 11). Shadow of a Doubt (March 31). Squadron-Leader X (July 28). World of Plenty (December 15). beg * ® N the previous year, if I remember rightly, there were altogether 12 stand-up claps, and it was necessary only to delete two of them to arrive at the Ten Best. This time, four have to be discarded, It is not particularly easy, for although there were one or two particularly outstanding films in 1944, the A-grade group were of a fairly general quality. However, I have not much hesitation about removing Phantom Lady: it was a good thriller, but in my opinion not up to the standard of Shadow of a Doubt, The Seventh Victim, or Journey Into Fear. The thriller class was, in fact, more strongly represented than any other. This may mean that more good thrillers were made in 1944 than any other type of picture; on the other hand it may simply indicate my personal preference for this kind of entertainment. Because the latter may be the case, I am prepared to delete Orson Welles’s exciting melodrama Journey Into Fear. This still leaves Welles represented by The Magnificent Ambersons, and retains two outstanding thrillers among the Ten Best-Shadow of a Doubt and The Seventh Victim. Squadron-Leader X was a jolly good British spy melodrama, something on the lines of 49th Parallel, but avoiding the propagandist back-fire of’ that picture. However, it was not absolutely first-class-so out it goes. I am reluctant to discard Lost Angel, because it contained that delightful. performance by little Margaret O’Brien and was such a charmingly sentimental piece, but I would rather remove it from my list than any of the remainder. So that leaves the following as my final choice for the First Ten of 1944 (again not in order of aepeapes San Demetrio, London. Casablanca In Which We Serve. Lifeboat, Shadow of a Doubt. |

Seventh Victim. The Moon is Down. The Ox-Bow Incident. The Magnificent Ambersons World of Plenty. * * * DO not propose to elaborate on my reasons for selecting those ten pictures. If anyone is really interested he may perhaps turn up the issues for the dates given and read the whys and wherefores in detail. But briefly, San Demetrio, London is there as the best picture of the war to date and one of the best sea stories we have ever seen -a completely successful demonstration of what the cinema can do when it deals honestly with real life. Casablanca is there for the acting of Ingrid Bergman and the performance of Claude Rains as the rascally but charming Vichy policeofficer, and because the story, although conventional, was treated in such a way that it was a perfect example of screen journalese, slick and fascinating. In Which We Serve is there for Noel Coward’s acting and direction in a production that ranks next to San Demetrio as a story of war at sea; Lifeboat is there because it was provocative and grown-up entertainment; Shadow of a Doubt because it was as neat a thriller as Alfred Hitchcock has ever handled, with the emphasis on psychology rather than on incident; Seventh Victim because it was a little gem of a thriller with a genuine literary flavour, a classic among shockers; The Moon Is Down because, in spite of some faults, it was one of the very few films dealing intelligently with Occupied Europe; The Ox-Bow Incident because, although it passed unnoticed and almost unsung, it revealed Hollywood in one of its rare moods of courage and was the kind of picture that makes cinema tory; The Magnificent Ambersons because it gave us another taste of Orson Welles and particularly his extraordinary photographic ingenuity and his remarkable sense of "period"; and World of Plenty because it was a fine example of the straight documentary technique, which has been seen all too seldom in this country: in other words, because it had a high scarcity value. x * = EXT comes the task of selecting from among the Ten Best the picture that was, in my opinion, the very best of all during 1944. It is not quite such a difficult task as in some previous years. There are, I think, only two films in the run-ning-San Demetrio, London and The Ox-Bow Incident. But when all things are considered, I doubt if it would be proper to give the vote to the latter. For one thing, it was much too narrow in its appeal. So San Demetrio it is. And I have a feeling that, for once, this is a decision likely to be endorsed by a en large body of average picturegoers well as by a good many of the intelli« gentsia."

As a glance at the dates will show, the good pictures of 1944 were pretty evenly distributed over the whole period. It is impossible now to discuss the gen(continued on next page)

' (continued from previous page) eral trends that became apparent, but on the whole it was just about an average year: a small cluster of really good films embedded in a doughy mass of comparatively mediocre ones. However, the one really significant feature was the continued emergence of the British side of the industry. San Demetrio, London was British; so were two others in my list of the Ten Best-In Which We Serve and World of Plenty-and there were also a number which just failed to reach the top class. When one considers that the Quota Act requires only 20 per cent of the total films screened in this country to be British (though that percentage may of course be exceeded) it becomes clear that, so far as quality goes, the British industry is now more than holding its own against Hollywood.