Postwar Disney (1953) and not quite up to snuff. Disney's depersonalizing habit of putting different teams in charge of different sections of the story really shows up here, with work ranging from the flat and cloying (the animation of Peter himself) to the full-bodied and funny (Captain Hook and his alligator).

An action director, Hathaway isn’t quite at home with this claustrophobic, motel-bound story of adultery and murder, but he gives it his all, most famously in the Freudian rampage that climaxes the film.

Under Minnelli’s direction it becomes a fascinating study of a man destroyed by the 50s success ethic, left broke, alone, and slightly insane in the end.

I loved this at the age of nine and suspect that some of it’s still pretty funny when it isn’t being self-congratulatory; the Technicolor and guest-star appearances undoubtedly help.

Another audacious MGM aquacade, this 1952 Mervyn LeRoy extravaganza stars Esther Williams as the famed Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman and Victor Mature as the man who discovers first her and then Rin Tin Tin. But the real star is, as always, Busby Berkeley, who contributes more of his Ken Russell-ish wet dreams.

Charles Chaplin’s 1952 film is overlong, visually flat, episodically constructed, and a masterpiece—it isn’t “cinema” on any terms but Chaplin’s own, but those are high terms indeed.

There is some exquisite Technicolor photography by Leon Shamroy, but director Henry King never moves the action beyond respectful superficiality.

John Ford’s 1952 Oscar winner is a tribute to an Ireland that exists only in the imaginations of songwriters and poets like Ford, a fairy green place where people really do say “faith and begorrah.”

Daniel Taradash’s script is contrived in spots, and the main virtue of Roy Ward Baker’s direction is its low-key plainness, yet Monroe—appearing here just before she became typecast as a gold-plated sex object—is frighteningly real as the confused babysitter, and the deglamorized setting is no less persuasive.

Some of the results ring false, but the memorable theme song and some equally memorable character acting (by Thomas Mitchell and Lon Chaney Jr. more than Lloyd Bridges and Katy Jurado) help things along.

One of the better Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn comedies—not so much for the screenplay by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, which lacks the bite and sophistication of Adam's Rib, as for the relaxed and graceful interplay of the stars.

Powell had made The Red Shoes five years earlier; here he was clearly hoping to expand the style of the final ballet segment into feature length. But without dramatic grounding Powell’s voluptuous visuals seem empty, and his manic inventiveness operates in a void.

Cecil B. De Mille in anachronistic decline, though a few critics insist it’s his most personal film.

One of the shining glories of the American musical, this 1952 feature was fabricated (by screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green) around a collection of old songs written by producer Arthur Freed and brought to bright, brash, and exuberant life by directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. The setting is Hollywood's troubled transition to sound, and there is just enough self-reflexive content (on the eternal battle between illusion and reality in the movies) to structure the film's superb selection of numbers.

The direction is often questionable, but the screenplay (by James Agee, John Collier, Huston, and Peter Viertel from C.S. Forester's novel) is a model of tight construction.

Film is still an impressive piece of work, visually and rhythmically masterful.

MGM’s opulent version of ancient Rome circa 1951, with Peter Ustinov at his most whimsical doing honors as the mad Nero...Directed with some pizzazz by Mervyn LeRoy.

One of the loveliest of Nick Ray's movies: this 1952 feature begins as a harsh film noir and gradually shifts to an ethereal romanticism reminiscent of Frank Borzage.

Rudolph Mate directed, and Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, and John Hoyt all make a game try at sounding like real people—which is not always easy, given Sidney Boehm’s script.

While not nearly the musical it's cracked up to be, this 1951 film is absolutely required viewing for anyone who wants to see the studio system (MGM style) at its gaudiest, most Byzantine height. Art and technology have never been in closer harmony than in this Vincente Minnelli-directed rendition of George Gershwin's concert masterpiece.

Sidney Kingsley's Broadway hit, modeled a little too clearly on Greek tragedy, becomes a solid film d'art under William Wyler's supple, impersonal direction.

Max Ophuls’s witty version (1950) of Arthur Schnitzler’s play showing love as a bitterly comic merry-go-round.

They are also great performances, and Hawks could have taken heart from Kim Hunter's work, which provides superb, understated balance to the famous fireworks of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. Kazan's direction is often questionably, distractingly baroque, swelling up the considerable subtlety of the Tennessee Williams play, but if the hothouse style was ever justified, this is the occasion.

The Disney version (1951) lightens and sweetens Lewis Carroll's tale, but what's really disappointing is the undistinguished animation: the film looks and plays more like the Disney shorts than the Disney features, though the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Sterling Holloway) is a small masterpiece of elusive menace.

Hopelessly inadequate as a reading of Dreiser's great novel, and as usual Stevens seems too preoccupied with the story's monumentality to have much curiosity about its characters.

Mann understands that mood is more important than plausibility in a thriller, and you could cut the mood here with a knife.

Alec Guinness as the master pickpocket Fagin is the high point of David Lean's 1948 version of the Dickens classic.

Perhaps Strangers on a Train still hasn't yielded all its secrets.