Top 10 Films of 1951

1. "Alice In Wonderland" (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, USA)

2. "The Red Badge Of Courage" (John Huston, USA)

3. "Strangers On A Train" (Alfred Hitchcock, USA)

4. "The Lavender Hill Mob" (Charles Crichton, UK)

5. "An American In Paris" (Vincente Minnelli, USA)

6. "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (Robert Wise, USA)

7. "The Thing" (Howard Hawks, USA)

8. "Le Journal d'un cure de campagne" (Robert Bresson, France)

9. "A Streetcar Named Desire" (Elia Kazan, USA)

10. "L'Auberge rouge" (Claude Autant-Lara, France)

Other great films:

Ace In The Hole

The African Queen

Beautiful Summer (Soviet Union)

Caroline cherie (France)

Chained For Life
Detective Story

Die Sunderin (Germany)

Early Summer (Japan)
The Enforcer

Era Lui!... Si! Si! (Italy)
The Frogmen
The Great Caruso

The Idiot (Japan)

I'll See You In My Dreams
I Was A Communist For The FBI
Kon-Tiki (Norway)
Laughter In Paradise (UK)
The Man In The White Suit (UK)

Miracle In Milan (Italy)

Miss Oyu (Japan)

One Summer Of Happiness (Sweden)
La Poison (France)
The Prowler
The River (India)
Royal Wedding
Sensualidad (Mexico)
Show Boat
Tales Of Hoffman (UK)

Tukkijoella (Finland)
Warszawska premiera (Poland)

Short Top 3:

1. "Kierunek Nowa Huta" (Andrzej Munk, Poland)

2. "David" (Paul Dickson, UK)

3. "Nature's Half Acre" (James Algar, Disney, USA)

Other great shorts:

Ensemble For Somnambulists (Canada)

Smart Alec

Top Commercial:

"Princess" (Halo Shampoo)

Top TV:

"I Love Lucy: The Girls Want To Go To The Nightclub" (Marc Daniels, CBS)

Cartoon Top 10

1. "Symphony In Slang" (Tex Avery, MGM)

2. "Rabbit Fire" (Chuck Jones, Warner)

3. "Canned Feud" (Friz Freleng, Warner)

4. "Chow Hound" (Chuck Jones, Warner)

5. "Rooty Toot Toot" (John Hubley, Columbia)

6. "Room And Bird" (Friz Freleng, Warner)

7. "Scent-imental Romeo" (Chuck Jones, Warner)

8. "Two Mouseketeers" (William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, MGM)

9. "Lambert The Sheepish Lion" (Jack Hannah, Disney)

10. "The Story Of Time" (Robert G. Leffingwell, UK)

Other great cartoons:

Ballot Box Bunny
Cheese Chasers
Corn Chips
Drip-Along Daffy
Droopy's Double Trouble
The Fair-Haired Hare
A Fox In The Fix
French Rarebit
Fuddy Duddy Buddy
Georgie And The Dragon
A Hound For Trouble
Jerry And The Goldfish
Lion Down
Lovelorn Leghorn
The Merry Circus (Czechoslovakia)
Nit-Witty Kitty
Plutopia
The Prize Pest
Rabbit Every Monday
Slicked-Up Pup
The Wearing Of The Grin
Wonder Gloves
The Woody Woodpecker Polka

Weak films of 1951:

Decision Before Dawn
Fourteen Hours
Go For Broke
Here Comes The Groom
His Kind Of Woman
Lullaby Of Broadway
On Dangerous Ground
On The Riviera
A Place In The Sun
Quo Vadis
Storm Warning
When Worlds Collide

Weak shorts:

Family Portrait (UK)
Presentation ou Charlotte et son steak (France)
Romantic Riviera

Weak cartoons:

Barefaced Flatfoot
A Bear For Punishment
Bee On Guard
Big Top Bunny
A Bone For A Bone
Bunny Hugged
Car Of Tomorrow
Casanova Cat
Cat Napping
Chicken In The Rough
Cock-A-Doodle Dog
Cold Storage
Cold Turkey
Cold War
Corn Plastered
Daredevil Droopy
Dog Collared
Droopy's Good Deed
Dude Duck
Early To Bet
Family Circus
Fathers Are People
Get Rich Quick
Grizzly Golfer
Hare We Go
His Hare Raising Tale
His Mouse Friday
Home Made Home
Leghorn Swoogled
Lucky Number
No Smoking
Out Of Scale
Puddy Tat Twouble
Puny Express
R'coon Dawg
The Redwood Sap
Sleep Happy
Sleepy Time Possum
Sleepy Time Tom
Slingshot 6 7/8
Test Pilot Donald
Tomorrow We Diet
Tweet Tweet Tweety
Tweety's SOS
Wicket Wacky

Top 3 Musicals of 1951

1. "An American In Paris" (Vincente Minnelli, MGM)


2. "Royal Wedding" (Stanley Donen, MGM)

3. "Show Boat" (George Sidney, MGM)

Alice In Wonderland (1951) *****

Underrated Disney feature, unfairly panned when first released, but now considered a classic of surrealistic animation. Songs include:

"In A World Of My Own" ***
"I'M Late" **
"The Caucus Race" *
"The Walrus And The Carpenter" *
"All In A Golden Afternoon" **
"Very Good Advice"
"Painting The Roses Red" **

Tukkijoella (1951) ****

Excellent musical film from Finland. It's available here.

Le Journal d'un cure de campagne (1951) ****

An ascetic country priest has troubles with his parishioners.

The Red Badge Of Courage (1951) ****

Realistic Civil War drama about courage under fire.

L'Auberge rouge (1951) ****

Black comedy starring Fernandel.

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) ****

Almost four decades before directing the classic British farce "A Fish Called Wanda" in 1988, Charles Crichton made his first masterpiece, "The Lavender Hill Mob", a superlative heist comedy starring Alec Guinness.

Beautiful Summer (1951) ***

Another "happy Soviet peasants" musical comedy from the Stalin era, this one directed by Boris Barnet.

Detective Story (1951) ***

Memorable drama set in a police precinct during a single afternoon.

One Summer Of Happiness (1951) ***

Miss Oyu (1951) ***

The Frogmen (1951) ***

Low-key, but effective war movie about Navy Seals during WWII in the Pacific.

Caroline cherie (1951) ***

The Idiot (1951) ***

Probably the best film adaptation of a Fjodor Dostoevsky's novel.

Miracle In Milan (1951) ***

The African Queen (1951) ***

I Was A Communist For The FBI (1951) ***

Although nominated for an Oscar as Best Documentary Feature, it's actually a film noir drama, though based on a true story of an FBI agent posing as a Communist in order to expose the Party as a criminal spy organization working for Moscow.

I'll See You In My Dreams (1951) ***

Excellent musical starring Doris Day.

Sensualidad (1951) ***

High-octane Mexican melodrama starring the fabulous Ninon Sevilla as an unscrupulous cabaret singer who seduces and ruins the judge who has send her to prison for two years. Watch Sevilla's unique facial expressions, especially her bulging (when in fear) and ironic eyes, and admire a real force of melodramatic nature. Everything she does - loving, hating, singing, screaming and seducing - she does with more energy and determination than any other actress.

Era Lui!... Si! Si! (1951) ***

Die Sunderin (1951) ***

La Poison (1951) ***

Warszawska premiera (1951) ***

An opera musical, set in 1840's Warsaw, and made in Stalinist Poland.

The Prowler (1951) ***

Directed by Joseph Losey, an uneven, but quite original (and peculiar) film noir about a cop who sleeps with a married woman and kills her husband.

Kon-Tiki (1951) ***

Oscar-winning documentary feature about the famous voyage from Peru to Polynesia on a wooden raft.

A Place In The Sun (1951) **

Dated and moralistic melodrama about ambition and murder.

Quo Vadis (1951) **

Peter Ustinov is absolutely great as Nero, but this adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel is hopelessly conventional.

On The Riviera (1951) **

A remake of 1935's "Folies Bergere", with Danny Kaye instead of Maurice Chevalier.

Fourteen Hours (1951) **

A young man wants to jump from a hotel window. A policeman tries to talk him out of it.

Go For Broke (1951) *

Hard to believe that a war drama about the famous Japanese-American battalion that fought in Italy and France during World War II could be so boring, but it is.

Storm Warning (1951) *

Ronald Raegan plays a liberal DA in a small Southern town trying to convict the Ku Klux Klan for murdering a white journalist. A pre-Civil Rights drama that tries to have it both ways: to condemn KKK as a terrorist organization, but refusing to identify the precise reasons the KKK deserved to be condemned. A Martian watching the film would have no idea that the KKK was a racist, white suprematist organization that lynched black people. He would have thought that the KKK was just out there killing white liberal intellectuals for no reason whatsoever.

On Dangerous Ground (1951) *

Nicholas Ray's rather bizarre urban drama about police brutality that inexplicably turns into a rural love story between a cop and a blind sister of a murderer.

Here Comes The Groom (1951) *

Bing Crosby in a boring, saccharine musical.

Nature's Half Acre (1951) ***

Oscar-nominated Disney's True-Life Adventure short. Mostly about bees, toads, butterflies and other critters.

Kierunek Nowa Huta (1951) ***

A socialist realist documentary about Stakhanovite workers in Communist Poland. This film inspired Andrzej Wajda's "Czlowiek z marmuru" ("Man Of Marble").