The Best Films of the 1950s (Part 2)

Añadido: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Hello all. Welcome back to the 1950s, Oscars for the Deckhead 50s edition part two. Let's get into it. Best adapted screenplay. As we go back in time, it would seem this category as a whole gets richer and richer. Here we have All About Eve, Rear Window, Some Like It Hot, Roman Holiday, and two of the most well-written Westerns we've ever had in High Noon and Rio Bravo. But it's 12 Angry Men. This is the greatest dialogue-driven film of all time. It's a perfect film. And of course, the blueprint is the screenplay. Quite possibly the best ever. Genuinely, I'm not even going to describe the actual film itself as on the off chance someone here is watching this and hasn't seen the film, I don't want to give anything away. It's as good as I've described so far and better, much better. In fact, for the deep deep film fans out there, I have a fun challenge for you to prove how insane the filmmaking is as well.

[00:00:54]Watch the first 15 minutes of this film on mute, and I promise you, you'll still understand exactly what's going on.

[00:01:00]That's how insane this thing is. Best adapted screenplay, 12 Angry Men. Best original screenplay. With a bigger collection of adapted screenplay options comes fewer in its original screenplay sibling. Three mentions in The 400 Blows, On the Waterfront, Ace in the Hole. And my very clear winner, Sunset Boulevard. A screenplay about a writer, a movie about movies written by a man many considered to be the greatest screenwriter of all time working in his absolute prime. The pace, the wit, the twists and turns, the dialogue.

[00:01:32]Ultimately, this being a two-hander is a gift to the actors and to the characters. It's funny, it's dark, it's tragic, and all the things you want in a great Hollywood 50s screenplay and so much more. It's perhaps the best work of the best screenwriter, Billy Wilder's masterpiece. Best original screenplay, Sunset Boulevard. Best supporting actor.

[00:01:53]Despite this being the era of the movie star, the era of the leading man, we have some great picks here. George Sanders in All About Eve, Karl Malden in A Streetcar Named Desire, and even Mr. Frank Sinatra himself in From Here to Eternity. But my Oscar goes to Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts. What I want to highlight here in Lemmon's performance is his comical body language, his pacing and timing and his line delivery, all so specific, all top tier. An actor using every facet of the acting form, understanding and mastering all of these technical elements to elevate the energy and tone of the film, to create a constant momentum in a film that is intrinsically already high in energy. To me, this is a brilliant example of big acting done right. Best supporting actor, Jack Lemmon. Best supporting actress. Here we have Kim Hunter from A Streetcar Named Desire, as well as Jo Van Fleet from East of Eden, but my choice here is Eva Marie Saint. I could opt for her performance as Eve Kendall in North by Northwest, one of my favorite female characters of all time, filled with charm and charisma and mystery. That's my personal pick. But my winner is for her role in On the Waterfront, where she gets to showcase something very real and very [music] raw. In an era where bigger, more theatrical performances were the ones being celebrated, Saint actually won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work here. A role that very much goes against the glitz and glam of the 50s.

[00:03:17]One where she goes toe-to-toe with Marlon Brando and absolutely [music] holds her own in every scene. I'm so glad I got to award her my Flick Fanatics fake Oscar in this series, Eva Marie Saint. Best actress. We've seen this happen a couple of times now, where we had so many great picks and yet an obvious choice presented itself. Because here we did have Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart and Alec Guinness and Henry Fonda. We also had James Dean and Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, my runner-up, as Kurosawa's most powerful and emotional character. But it's Marlon Brando on the Waterfront. This is his time to shine. And what's ironic is for someone known for his questionable antics on and off set, for his method acting and transformative roles, he wins here for basically his most normal performance. And that's kind of why it's amazing. There's no false jaw or aged makeup or Steadicam lighting to hide how much weight you've gained. Nothing fancy, no distractions, nowhere to hide.

[00:04:13]Giving, like Eva Marie Saint, a very real and raw and vulnerable performance in an era that celebrated big acting. I think the very best will always be transcendent and timeless in any walk of life and in any medium. And I would quite comfortably put Marlon Brando in my top three greatest actors of all time. So this Oscar win was a no-brainer and something as inevitable as a Daniel Day-Lewis or a Meryl Streep. Best actor, Marlon Brando. Best actress. These names you're about to see are basically the best of old Hollywood movie stars all in one category. Gloria Swanson, Vivien Leigh, Grace Kelly, and Ingrid Bergman.

[00:04:50]True legends, but my winner, it's her time, Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday.

[00:04:55]One of her earliest performances and she turns up here playing a princess of a fictional country and you fully buy it.

[00:05:01]In a film with a premise that on paper could and should have been completely ridiculous, Hepburn comes in with this timeless, ethereal presence, one that no actor has ever been able to even get close to since. And despite this aura [music] that feels too good to be true, she grounds it in a believable and empathetic reality. Across the history of cinema, there are a select few actors playing a select few roles that I would describe as irreplaceable, that if anyone else would have done it, the movie wouldn't have worked.

[00:05:31]This is so very clearly one of them, because what Hepburn had at that time that no one else did was presence. That feeling of warmth and magic in every glance and every line delivered. This is someone who has more aura when she's asleep than most actors delivering their career-defining monologue would today.

[00:05:49]Best actress, Audrey Hepburn. Best director. For this one, I really tossed and turned thinking about what would actually be the right choice. Because we have Billy Wilder, already established here as a goat writer, but also someone of absolutely incredible taste and skill as a director, too. We have the real founding father of the Western genre in John Ford, who by the way has the perfect name for a Western director. We then had Charles Laughton, an actor first of numerous roles in legendary films who only ever got to direct one film, The Night of the Hunter, but what a film that was. And then my top three, Sidney Lumet for 12 Angry Men. As said, this is the greatest dialogue-driven movie ever, but also the best example of how even a film set entirely in one room has no excuses when it comes to great visual storytelling, because this film does it all.

[00:06:35]And then we had Akira Kurosawa, who I was seriously considering awarding for Seven Samurai or even Ikiru, two of his most polar opposite films in the 50s.

[00:06:44]That would have made him the only person in this series to receive the Best Director award twice. But I'm actually going to give it to Alfred Hitchcock for North by Northwest. Let me explain. It's no question that the 50s was a decade of Hitchcock in his prime, banger after banger after banger. And he did North by Northwest right at the rear end of the decade, his biggest, most adventurous, and out there film. A film I've actually made a video about, link in the description. And by the end of it, he felt as if he had stretched his directing muscles so far in one direction that he decided to go in the opposite direction and make Psycho as his next film. And so what we had was the 60s being his decade of experimenting and the 50s being his decade of top craftsmanship, making Hitchcock movies that feel like Hitchcock movies. And here we have the ultimate one with North by Northwest. He has here what I believe to be his greatest set of characters and his best conceit with his most important and impressive sequence. His ability to direct dialogue, to block, to create great charm and playfulness and humor in this cross-country spy thriller is the template for every spy film since, the greatest Bond film that never was. But ultimately, the reason I chose him here is because I think without realizing, he sort of pioneered the idea of the auteur director in a time when directors in Hollywood weren't really seen in that way just yet. He was basically the ultimate studio director, and back in these times, directors didn't have the same kind of autonomy or creative power that they would go on to have, especially come the 70s. Here's Mr. Tarantino to further explain the point.

[00:08:12]I think he was held back by the times that he worked. If he was the age he was in the 50s in the 70s, I think his his I would I would appreciate his films more.

[00:08:23]Uh uh I think that he's held back by the Hays Code. So as a result, you have a filmmaker with so much to give, but some of that power being dampened by this, that, and the other. And yet despite that, he's remembered in this historical, legendary fashion, because he still was able to push past it as much as he could. So like every great director, this was someone making films uphill. And to still end up with a top-tier masterpiece of grand precision shows just how exceptional he really was. The greatest director in the wrong time. Best director, Alfred Hitchcock.

[00:08:55]Best picture. So here we have a few films all important in one way or another. Sunset Boulevard and 12 Angry Men, the smaller, more theatrical legends of the 50s. North by Northwest and Vertigo, two of Hitchcock's most important in the decade. The Searchers, the greatest American-made Western. And then when we look to the 50s, what cinema of the 50s really was, as evidenced by so much of the winners in these two videos, this was a decade of beauty and craft, a decade where color properly started to be the standard in Hollywood, which meant more vibrance and more visual energy than ever, a decade where everything felt larger than life.

[00:09:30]So with all that said, the winner surely must be the film that encompasses all of this, Singin' in the Rain. But wait, it's not.

[00:09:38]Because as much as I believe everything I've just said, this was also the decade where we really started to know something else, an idea, an idea that films weren't just Hollywood, that there was this emerging power growing elsewhere, growing all across the world. But more specifically, Japan.

[00:09:57]But against the power that has risen in the east, there is no victory. This was the decade Hollywood realized they weren't alone, and that all their films would ultimately pale in comparison to my winner, Seven Samurai. This film I would easily put in the top five greatest and most important of all time.

[00:10:17]I do think it is the most important non-English language movie ever made, as well as what may well be the most influential movie ever for cinema.

[00:10:25]If I listed every movie in existence that was influenced by Seven Samurai, we would be here all day. This is among the greatest stories ever told by one of the greatest storytellers of all time, and remains [music] comfortable at the top of that hill with everyone looking up to it with the utmost respect. Best picture, Seven Samurai. And there you go, guys. My Oscars for the '50s. Let me know your picks, and I'll see you very soon.