TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE FIFTIES
Aug 24 '04 (Updated Dec 23 '04)
The Bottom Line Continuing my series of Top Non-English Language Films by decade, here's a Top-Ten for the Fifties as well as additional four- and five-star films.
The Fifties were an exciting decade for foreign films, with such giants as Kurosawa, Bergman, Buñuel, Ophüls, Fassbinder, Fellini, Chabrol, and Ray all hitting full stride and De Sica and Renoir experiencing continuing success. The tail-end of the decade witnessed the emergence of the French New Wave, ensuring that the Golden Age of the Fifties would continue full pace into the Sixties. This is a subjective list – i.e., my personal favorites. It is not intended to represent critical consensus. I hope you find something here that piques your interest and turns into a rewarding viewing experience.
TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE FIFTIES:
#1. The Seven Samurai (1954)___Country: Japan___Director: Akira Kurosawa
I’m not the only one who rates this film highly. According to the Internet Movie Database, it ranks as the 7th most popular film all-time from anywhere in the world! In the Japan of the 16th century, reduced to chaos by civil war, roving bands of outlaws prey upon the small rural communities, plundering, kidnapping, and murdering at will. One such village decides it will hire unemployed Sumarai to defend the village against the pillaging thieves. The first to agree is Kambei, a veteran leader, who then assembles a team of seven warriors. What follows is high adventure as the Samurai first train the villages and erect defenses and then, finally, confront the inevitable onslaught.
#2. Forbidden Games (1952)___Country: France___Director: René Clément
The magnetic five-year-old Brigitte Fossey delivers what might be the best performance by a child actor or actress ever. In one of the most convincing anti-war films ever made, little Paulette is rendered alone in the world in a crackle of gunfire on a road outside of Paris when her parents and her dog, Jock, are killed by a strafing plane. An eleven-year-old boy from a nearby farm takes pity on her circumstances and brings her home, where she is taken in. Left to themselves most of the time, the two children create their own version of reality out of snippets of their experiences with religion and ceremonial practices. Though the world they create is bizarre and creepy in some respects, the eye-opener for viewers comes from the realization that the real world in which they live is in many respects even more absurd.
#3. Pather Panchali (1955)___Country: India___Director: Satyajit Ray
This film is set in the Bengalese village of Nishchindipur in the 1920’s. It is the story of an impoverished rural family, including a father who is a scholarly dreamer, a wife whose focus is on the practical, and two children, daughter Durga and son Apu. The real story, however, is that, with this film, Satyajit Ray singlehandedly launched a distinctive national cinema in India. Ray created a film style that was both personal and intimate by focusing on the happenstances and the rhythm of the life of these people, so that we become part of their struggle.
#4. Black Orpheus (1959)___Country: Brazil___Director: Marcel Camus
This marvelous love story transposes the Orpheus myth to Rio during Carnival time. The lovely and innocent Eurydice arrives in Rio from her rural home to visit her cousin, Serafina and immediately encounters Orfeo, a handsome streetcar conductor. It is love-at-first-sight, though Orfeo is already engaged to the domineering and self-centered Mira. Also coming between Orfeo and Eurydice is the sinister stalker, Death, dressed in a black leotard with a skeleton overlay, who has been following Eurydice all the way from her home town. The plot, however, is mainly a pretext for a colorful and energetic film bursting with vitality amidst the lively Carnival atmosphere and the pulsating bongo rhythms of Latin American music.
#5. Los Olvidados (1950)___Country: Mexico___Director: Luis Buñuel
This film takes viewers directly into the struggle of poor slum children trying to survive in a world full of rejection, poverty, and crime. Pedro, a boy of eleven, wavers on the edge of socialization and delinquency, but receives neither love nor attention from his mother. Pedro comes under the influence of an older boy, Jaibo, who is tougher and more delinquent. Pedro is present, one day, when Jaibo kills another boy, making Pedro an accessory to murder. Pedro must struggle desperately to find a way to free himself from Jaibo’s web of destructive influence before it’s too late.
#6. The Seventh Seal (1957)___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
A Swedish knight, Antonius Block, has returned with his squire to his native land after an absence of ten years fighting in the Crusades. It is 1348, and the plague is sweeping across Western Europe. On the rocky shore where they have landed, Block see a darkly clothed figure standing a short distance away. Death has come, a hooded reaper with scythe and ghostly white countenance, wearing a black shroud. Block knows that death cannot be evaded but, to buy time, he challenges Death to a chess match, appealing to Death’s vanity as a master tactician. Death agrees to postpone Block inevitable call to death as long as he is able to hold out in the contest. This provides Block with a brief reprieve, during which he (and Bergman) will search desperately for the meaning of life.
#7. Umberto D. (1952)___Country: Italy___Director: Vittorio De Sica
Umberto Domenico Ferrari is a retired civil servant living on a fixed income in a sparsely furnished room with a few meager possessions but his landlady will evict him at the end of the month for nonpayment. Umberto is at risk of that final descent from grinding poverty into shame and humiliation. His only friends in the world are his dog, Flike, and the fifteen year-old housekeeper, Maria, who is unmarried but three months pregnant. De Sica uses classic neo-realistic style to expose poverty and indifference in post-War Italy, this time taking on the shabby treatment of the elderly.
#8. The World of Apu (1959)___Country: India___Director: Satyajit Ray
The concluding segment of the great “Apu Trilogy” finds Apu having to leave the university with just an intermediate degree when his funds run out. Living in an apartment in Calcutta, he struggles to survive as a writer, unable to find a steady job. An old friend from college invites Apu to his cousin’s wedding in the remote village. When the prospective groom turns out to be mentally unstable, Apu is enlisted to “fill in” and suddenly finds himself married to a woman he has never met. Back in Calcutta, the pair coyly learn to live with one another and bit by bit fall madly in love. When Aparna becomes pregnant, she returns to her parents' home to have the child, but dies in childbirth. The final part of the film deals with Apu’s protracted despair and ultimate emergence.
#9. French Cancan (1955)___Country: France___Director: Jean Renoir
This film tells the story of the origin of the great Moulin Rouge theater. Henri Danglard is a lustful but visionary impresario. While “slumming” in a Bohemian neighborhood, Danglard spots the vivacious Nini dancing up a storm with her boyfriend. The dances include the lively cancan and chahut. Danglard reasons that upper class Parisians would likely flock to see a chorus of charming young women performing the spirited and naughty cancan in a safe and respectable setting. As he sets out to make his dream a reality, he encounters obstacles in the form of the jealous Lola and his own precarious finances. All of the intrigues are designed to lead up to the grand finale of the film, a magnificent closing set piece – the ravenous cancan replete with gloriously up-lifted legs and frilly pantaloons.
#10. Wild Strawberries (1957)___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
Professor Isak Borg, an elderly, melancholy Swedish gentleman, retired after practicing medicine for 50 years, is due to receive an honorary degree for his distinguished career. He awakens from a troubling dream. He decides he’ll visit a favorite place of his childhood and his mother on the way to the college, hoping to find some resolution to his anxieties. His daughter-in-law asks if she may come along. Along the way, the old man confronts demons of his past and present, ultimately arriving home a better man than when he departed, learning that life is too short not to express love for those nearest and dearest.
OTHER FOUR- AND FIVE-STAR FILMS FROM THE FIFTIES (CHRONOLOGICALLY):
Diary of a Country Priest (1950)___Country: France___Director: Robert Bresson
Rashômon (1950)___Country: Japan___Director: Akira Kurosawa
La Ronde (1950)___Country: France___Director: Max Ophüls
Effi Briest (1952)___Country: Germany___Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Ikiru (1952)___Country: Japan___Director: Akira Kurosawa
The Earrings of Madame de . . . (1953)___Country: French___Director: Max Ophüls
Gate of Hell (1953)___Country: Japan___Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa
Tokyo Story (1953)___Country: Japan___Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Ugetsu (1953)___Country: Japan___Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Sanshô, the Baliff (1954)___Country: Japan___Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Samurai 1, 2 & 3 (1954/5/6)___Country: Japan___Director: Kazuo Takimura
Rififi (1956)___Country: France___Director: Jules Dassin
Aparajito (1957)___Country: India___Director: Satyajit Ray
Nights of Cabiria (1957)___Country: Italy___Director: Federico Fellini
Les Cousins (1959)___Country: French___Director: Claude Chabrol
Floating Weeds (1959)___Country: Japan___Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)___Country: France/Japan___Director: Alain Resnais
Please check out my other decade lists:
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Thirties and Forties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Sixties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Seventies
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Eighties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Nineties
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