What's Streaming from 1944?
Wednesday, October 18, 2017 at 10:00PM Not too damn much, that's what!
Whenever we prep for a Smackdown The Film Experience becomes newly alarmed at how scarce the availability of 20th century film titles actually is online. Streaming culture has somehow convinced people that everything you might ever want to see is easier to access than it's ever been. Alas, the further back in time you go, the less there is for your eyeballs as we move away from analog. Of course streaming is more convenient so we hope Hollywood will magically decide to make all their vaults available. We can dream!
Laura dear, I cannot stand these morons any longer. If you don't come with me this instant, I shall run amok.
But if you want to steep yourself in 1944 beyond the 5 films featured in the next Smackdown, here's what you can stream should you have any of these memberships...
Filmstruck/Criterion
Laura
Otto Preminger's mystery noir has a cast that's absolutely to die for: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Prince, Judith Anderson. I mean, my god. Five Oscar nominations and a win for Best Cinematography
[Young Sir Larry is quietly taking a knee. He's about to monologue, watch out!]
Henry V
Speaking of Oscars... you could say this was Laurence Olivier's warm-up for his Hamlet triumph four years later. With the exception of Orson Welles, Hollywood wasn't really used to the Do-It-Yourself Director/Actor/Star/Producer titans. They were so impressed they gave Sir Laurence an Honorary Oscar for doing so much on one movie and also gave the movie four nominations. 55 years later, Kenneth Branagh repeated Laurence Olivier's trick directing himself in another adaptation of this play and walking away with two Oscar nominations for his trouble. I personally prefer the Branagh version by a lot but Sir Larry wins the Hamlet (previously discussed) wars, doesn't he?
Looks like this isn't the first time this place has seen a battle.
A Canterbury Tale
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were such brilliant color filmmakers (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus) that sometimes it's hard to imagine that they even existed in black and white. And yet, apparently they did. Has anyone seen this one? This scene I randomly landed on to feels like an join the army commercial, like so many films of the time.
Go and pray for us sinners
Ivan the Terrible Pt 1
That's quite a lewk there, Ivan. (Sergei Eisenstein didn't make Pt 2 for over a decade afterwards!) Lately when Sergei Eisenstein comes up I keep thinking about Peter Greenaway's Eisenstein in Guatanamo. Have you seen that?
Also on Film Struck / Criterion:
Army (Keisuke Kinoshita)
Champagne Charlie (Alberto Cavalcante)
The Children Are Watching Us (Vittorio de Sica)
Le ciel est a vous (Jean Gremilton)
The Curse of the Cat People (Robert Wise)
Jubilation Street (Keisuke Kinoshita)
The Most Beautiful (Akira Kurosawa)
This Happy Breed (David Lean)
Torment (Alf Sjoberg)
Amazon Prime
- C'mon Mildred, it isn't going to be that bad. We're lucky.
- Maybe you think so. I don't!
The Hairy Ape
A Eugene O'Neill adaptation. This is during Susan Hayward's young pre-superstardom 'beautiful manipulative young bitch' phase which we discussed during her Centennial.
Gee, Roy, I'm sorry I bopped you!
The Cowboy and the Senorita
I don't think I have ever seen a Roy Rogers movie. Have you?
Ariel Heath: Oh it's a play, Would you like me to read it to you? 'But there is a tomorrow, and the dawn will come, pause, bringing with it the blue eyed goddess of fortune, double pause. Oh at last opportunity was here.'
Do you think I give it the proper interpretation?Miss Francis Langford: It's very expressive.
Career Girl
Hee! She reads the "pause" like it were dialogue. Miss Frances Langford, the unimpressed woman on the bed, is the star of this picture but I have to admit I've never heard of either actress before this moment. Langford was a radio star at the time and co-starred in minor musicals like this one.
Also on Prime:
Gangster of the Frontier
Leave it to the Irish
Swing Hostess
Timber Queen
When the Lights Go Out Again
....and various military training films and documentaries
Hulu
no titles from 1944
Netflix
They're climbing higher now, 300 feet a minute, the strain on the plane and men is mounting.
The Memphis Belle
William Wyler's documentary about the last bombing mission of a B17, the "Memphis Belle". The footage is pretty great and identifying each crew member in this scene (along with their backgrounds and jobs before the war) makes it so immediate.
People of the world have risen in one great mass, to bring to justice the ringleaders responsible for these crimes. In America's army, in every branch fo the service: artillery, tank, auto, master engineer...
The Negro Soldier
This documentary was made to highlight African American contributions to World War II and to promote enlisting in the army.
Two days later the Germans invaded unoccupied France...
Tunisian Victory
Another war doc, this one by Frank Capra, Hugh Stewart, and John Huston.
All these docs are streaming now as augmentary viewing for Netflix's adaptation of Mark Harris's book "Five Came Back" about Hollywood directors during World War II.
Reader Comments (14)
I adore Laura. It's moody, tense, and well-shaded. Clifton Webb's dialogue, narration and delivery are delicious.
Great post, Nathaniel. Looking forward to the Smackdown!
Please note that, despite the 1944 release of Henry V in the UK, it was released in the United States in 1946. Its Oscar nominations came in the year of The Best Years of Our Lives, two years before Hamlet.
I can't recommend A Canterbury Tale enough. It's much smaller than the more famous Powell and Pressburger films, but has just as much depth. The propaganda goal was simply to encourage understanding between British and American troops; thus it has little time for the war and soldiering, and more for luxuriating in country life and the pleasures of (almost) peace after the trauma of war. The scene capped above is actually a GI redirecting children from war games to solving a local mystery-- a mystery that's ever so quaintly perverse (someone is throwing sticky stuff on women's hair).
The other B/W Archers masterpiece is I Know Where I'm Going. 49th Parallel is an uneven Nazi manhunt across Canada, but it does have a) Anton Walbrook delivering one of the best anti-Nazi speeches of an era of great anti-Nazi speeches, and b) Laurence Olivier hamming it the fuck up as a French-Canadian trapper.
Well, Actually Sergei Eisenstein did make Part II for release 1945, but it was stopped for one reason or another. Eisenstein died in 1948. Part II was released in 1950s ultimately
So if it weren't for Five Came Back, there would be no 1944 titles on Netflix? Sad.
What Chris said. I love Black Narcissus and Stairway to Heaven and a colonel Blimp. Some days, A Canterbury Tale is my favourite.
Gene Tierney is so amazingly beautiful. Ideas about beauty and attractiveness change. In the same movie, "Laura", I look at Dana Andrews and think how weird he looks, but that must have been considered normal at the time.
But Gene! In every movie she does, she is so lovely, the air seems to shimmer around her, as if the camera is capturing something other-worldly.
I second Chris about A Canterbury Tale. Such a humane and warmhearted movie. Definitely worth seeking out.
The wonderful Jennifer Jones was originally asked to do Laura, but Selznick rejected the idea. I love Gene Tierney in the movie, but thinking of Jennifer in this role is so intriguing. It would have made a different movie, but still a quite terrific one, I'm certain.
Career Girl is a throwaway flick but its a great example of the sort of B films the studios were churning out to fill the demand during the war years. Frances Langford while not much of an actress had a very beautiful singing voice plus she was a tireless entertainer of the troops often going into war zones for the boys.
The Hairy Ape isn't a masterpiece, and the copy I saw was in kind of rough shape, but both Susan Hayward and William Bendix give it all they've got.
Laura is a great film that is deservedly considered an essential.
It is appalling how sparse the pickings are though if you go the YouTube route it's much better with wonderful stuff like Summer Storm, Madonna of the Seven Moons, And the Angels Sing, The Lodger and The Woman in the Window residing there...at least for the moment.
Love Laura! Tierney and Webb are both delicious in it in their own ways.
Is there a way to look up movies by year on Amazon or any of the streaming services? I've only searched by title.
"Laura" is classic film noir great witty script- the timeless beauty of Gene Tierney and nasty Clifton Webb- a must watch
Biggest travesty ever: Laura didn't win SCORE???????
i remember seeing "Laura" for the first time in Film Class. A masterpiece all around. Absorbing.
I think I've seen one or two Roy Rogers movies. They were movies Annie Wilkes might have complained about.