Charlie Chaplin - A King in New York - 1957

Click on "Watch on YouTube" to see the film.

Joseph McCarthy was censured by the US Senate in 1954, and this brought to end the bizarre and vindictive witch hunt called McCarthyism, which had terrorized Hollywood and destroyed numerous careers of folks in government and entertainment who had dabbled a bit in socialist politics (and those who were thought to have dabbled). 

The film has a rambling plot and does not seem to have a coherent theme, but ends with a tacit denunciation of McCarthyism three years after the fact. 

The film also stars Chaplin's son, Michael, who became a Cambridge grad and who would publish the tell-all book I Couldn't Smoke the Grass on My Father's Lawn: Pot, Girls and Swingers in London's Ultra Mod Set. 

The book apparently exposed a less than pleasant aspect of Charlie Chaplin as a father, although I have not read the book yet. But it looks like a fun read! 

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City - 1927 - Walther Ruttman (1887 - 1941)

 

This film was made in 1927, two years before the Wall Street Crash adversely affected the global economy and 5 years before Hitler gained a foothold in legitimate German politics. We who watch this film today can see much more in it, and impute much more to it, than the folks who saw it back then.

While watching the film, perhaps we wonder how a society like this, which seemed so benign, could shift so quickly to embrace a malevolent ideology of genocide and conquest. We see flashes of anger and conflict: a man slaps a horse, two men shove each other on the street, kids jostle and shove each other on the way to school, but these surely can't be a foreshadowing of the horrors to come. In the meantime, in a city to the South of Berlin, a maniac was slowly but surely conspiring to highjack the great city and turn its inhabitants into workers and soldiers toward an utterly insane vision.  

So we watch the film and wonder how many of these children died 10 to 20 years later in the war and how these folks could have been so thoroughly influenced ideologically by the Nazis. The film has taken on a meaning for posterity Walther Ruttman could never have imagined.

The orchestral score was composed by the pioneer in film music Edmund Meisel.

See the film here, free on youtube: Berlin Symphony of a Great City

On the Beach, Stanley Kramer, 1959

In this film there has been a nuclear war and people are dead on every continent except Australia. But the folks in Australia know that the radioactive winds are slowly but surely pushing toward their country.

The film presents this nightmare scenario of a nation waiting for its extermination while also examining the types of political situations and arguments that can lead to this situation. An excellent and moving film.

See the film here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXnRHxI9Lvg

The Caretaker - 1963 - Clive Donner

A Harold Pinter screenplay.

A well-dressed man helps a homeless man and goes so far as to invite him to stay at his house. The well-dressed guy seems a bit peculiar, not especially warm or sympathetic even though he engages in a selfless gesture. About half way through the film some of the ambiguity concerning the character of the well-dressed guy is resolved. But there are many other bizarre aspects of the film that may leave you scratching your head.

As a side note, all of the actors in the film participated without pay, as did the director, since funding such an out of the ordinary film became difficult.

See the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e6x5j_JKWA

Paths of Glory - 1958 - Stanley Kubrick

French soldiers refuse to leave their trenches to attack the "Ant Hill", a heavily fortified German defensive emplacement. To do so would be suicide, as everybody knows...except the French general who has ordered the attack. When the French soldiers ordered to attack simply refuse to do so, some are chosen to be executed as a message to any French soldiers in the future who might consider disobeying an order. Can these soldiers be saved from execution? You can watch the film and see here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ8mNy4pmJg&t=202s

The Magnificent Seven - 1960 - John Sturges

This film was based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. In this western the premise is that even the most reprobate can be reformed if given the chance to do something good or engage in a beneficent mission. It's as if goodness is lying dormant in everyone, waiting for an invitation to flourish. WE should start inviting each other, as much as possible.

Click the link below to see the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a159xGKsDvg&t=170s

Morituri - 1965 - Bernhard Wicki

This film received luke-warm reviews in 1965 but it works. Yul Brenner plays a German captain who is blackmailed by the Nazis into taking a dangerous mission: he is to transport 7,000 tons of rubber to a secret location. Marlon Brando plays a German pacifist who is blackmailed by the English to use his engineering skills to infiltrate the ship as a fake SS official in order to defuse bombs that could blow up the ship and the rubber if the Allies can isolate and capture the ship (which they intend to do).

The film is about coercion, whether it be from government agents or one's own sense of morality. The sense of moral coercion both characters tend to feel toward the end of the film mirrors, to a great extent, the external coercion they initially faced. Both characters resist their assignments but exercise their own forms of moral agency at different times during this story but are never satisfied with their decisions. Neither wants to be a part of an ugly war, neither wants to do ugly things, but both are compelled to act against their natures due to the horrors of Nazism and the consequences of not taking action against those horrors.

Funny thing - Brando affects a German accent in this film. Why not Yul Brenner? Why not Wally Cox? In fact, Brando is the only person in the film with a German accent but most of the characters represent Germans. Shouldn't the director have said, "Hey, Marlon, look....nice accent but...I mean, seriously...you need to drop it."?

See the film here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2BGHatqGTw