Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

Singin’ In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

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The 1950s marked a more technologically advanced and fluid way of filmmaking, allowing studios to make movies quickly. Here are the best of the 50s.

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Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

Hollywood in the 1950s was a very successful industry. It was undeniable that Hollywood had become an immovable force, although movie studios at this time were facing tremendous pressures to stay financially viable. Added to this pressure was the introduction of television to homes across America. Movie studios were faced with the added dilemma of losing their audiences to television. How were they to portray the Booming 50s in such a way as to keep their audiences and attract younger audiences?

On the production side, movies were now easier to make. Technological innovations had rendered movie-making a more fluid process, allowing Hollywood to make more movies and to expand its genres. Directors like Hitchcock also continued to break film-making records, pioneering new ways to look through the camera.

10 Calamity Jane (1953)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

Western movies were still popular during the 1950s, but, at this time, directors were known to add elements from other genres, such as slapstick comedy, musicals and romance. The 50s were, on the surface, a prosperous time for the United States, but Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique peeled back the layer of shiny happiness to reveal a new blackness overtaking American women’s psyche. James Baldwin, in the 70s, would also write about the smiling falseness of 1950s America in I Am Not Your Negro, using Doris Day as an example of the forced conformity and eerily creepy happiness expected of Americans.

Loosely based on the life of American frontierswoman, Calamity Jane, the movie is a great exemplification of how Hollywood began to glamorize American identity, using all-American, sweet-as-apple-pie actors like Doris Day to do so.

9 Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

Singin’ In The Rain is an ode to Hollywood, A meta-movie about the industry’s transition from silent movies to talkies in the 1920s, Singin’ In The Rain illustrated Hollywood’s permanence in America, because it was now capable of glamorizing itself, reinforcing its status as an important marker of American identity.

Starring the musically-gifted Gene Kelly, Singin’ In The Rain is well-recognized today for Gene Kelly’s dance scene where he sings in the rain with umbrella in hand. Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, the movie is less well-known for its other musical and dance numbers that incorporate a lot of musical genres. The American Film Institute names it “the best musical of all time.”

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8 The Ten Commandments (1956)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

Directed by Hollywood’s best epic movie director, Cecil B. DeMille, The Ten Commandments was billed as “the greatest event in motion picture history” by Paramount Pictures. The movie followed the story of Moses as he headed the battle for Hebrew freedom from the hands of Pharaoh. For context, during the 1950s, most Americans identified as Christians, with America priding itself on its strong Evangelical Christian values, unlike foreign enemies, like Russia.

The movie, like Calamity Jane and Singin’ In The Rain, is an ode to America. Released during the Second Red Scare, The Ten Commandments glamorizes American’s Christian values and roots, subconsciously praising it as the best compared to other nationalistic traditions, like Communism.

7 Lady And The Tramp (1955)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

Lady And The Tramp was Disney’s tenth movie, following the success of Snow White And The Seven Dwarf’s, Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi. Famous for its romantic spaghetti scene where Lady and Tramp share a plate of spaghetti, Lady And The Tramp is a sweet adventure movie about an upper-class dog, Lady, who is forced to survive on the streets after two evil Siamese cats frame her.

She meets street-wise mutt, Tramp, who guides her through the city, taking care of her as he does other dogs. Soon, the two dogs fall in love and Lady is reunited with her human family.

6 Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

One of the last film noirs coming out of the 1940s film noir age, Sunset Blvd. is a classic Hollywood movie about Hollywood. Unlike Singin’ In The Rain, Sunset Blvd. focuses on the dark side of Hollywood. That is, how Hollywood abandons its screen stars once they age, or once Hollywood no longer needs them.

Norma Desmond, played by aging silent Hollywood star Gloria Swanson, cannot accept that her Hollywood career is over. She tries desperately to cling on to her past fame, her past youth, and her past life, ultimately leading to her destruction.

5 Rear Window (1955)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

In another James Stewart-Alfred Hitchcock partnership, Rear Window is a classic psychological mystery thriller, a genre for which Alfred Hitchcock is well-known. Also starring Grace Kelly and Raymond Burr, Rear Window tops many best movie lists because of its ingenuity. Like Sunset Blvd., Rear Window is obsessed with the camera and the power of the lens. In Sunset Blvd., Norma Desmond is lured into her final death in prison or a psych ward using the lure of the camera.

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In Rear Window, the lens’ is Jeff’s only vehicle for leaving his room. Trapped with a broken leg, his lens is powerful enough to capture a murder, and to prevent him from being murdered too.

4 12 Angry Men (1954)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

One of the most parodied movie plots in movie and television history, 12 Angry Men is a great drama movie about humanity. Set almost entirely in a New York county courthouse, the 12 jurors must decide if there is any reasonable doubt that an 18-year-old man murdered his father. If not, the man will be given the death penalty.

Starring Henry Fonda and directed by Sidney Lumet, the movie deals with the fallible nature of the court system, where a man can be pronounced guilty or not guilty, based on subjective human testimony and limited evidence.

3 Godzilla, King Of The Monsters! (1956)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

Recently remade in 2019, Godzilla, King Of The Monsters! was directed by Ishiro Honda and Terry O. Morse. A Japanese-American co-production, the movie starred a lot of Japanese movie stars, such as Takashi Shimura and Haruo Nakajima. The movie has been criticized for being too Americanized after it was re-edited for American audiences.

The new version was re-edited to include Raymond Burr interacting with body doubles. Despite very unethical editing and production practices, the movie further reinforced Godzilla’s global popularity as a kaiju.

2 Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Singin In The Rain & 9 Other Best Hollywood Movies Of The 1950s

For the first time in American history, there was a new classification of humans termed “teenagers.” They were a new generation of 13 to 20-year-old pre-adults who did not have to work for the first time ever. Even better, they enjoyed a new lifestyle that had never been seen before in America.

The 1950s boom brought with it a new middle-class that could afford leisure, cars, appliances, travel and so on. Yet, these teenagers were troubled and unhappy. The façade of 50s happiness missed them, just as it missed women and non-white people. Rebel Without A Cause explored the source of this teenage emotional anguish, blaming American society for its moral decay.

1 The Searchers (1956)

Well-known for its racist portrayal of Native Americans as brutal savages who enjoyed brutality for its sake, The Searchers is also a visually beautiful ode to the Wild West landscape. John Ford generates a love for America by displaying its wild and beautiful scenery. Unfortunately, he also generated a love for America by othering Native Americans as the enemy that brought white America closer and stronger.

Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter and Natalie Wood, the movie also stars Harry Brandon who dons brown face to portray Chief Cicatriz. Owing to its stunning visuals, the movie has topped many best movie lists, including Time magazine’s All-Time 100 Movies.

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