The Top 10 Films of 1949

Our best-of-the-9s series continues with a look at Flickchart’s ten highest-ranked films of 1949. 1939, which we featured last month, is usually considered one of the greatest years in cinema history, whereas 1949 flies a bit under the radar. Key word, “usually” — Flickchart users, on average, put 1949’s top movie (see list below) well inside the global top 100, whereas 1939’s top movie (The Rules of the Game) is just outside it at the time of this writing. Nonetheless, this list is likely to contain titles you either haven’t seen or haven’t heard of, whether it’s a John Wayne Western, a Gene Kelly musical, a Kurosawa noir, or an Ozu family drama. Flickcharters think you should check them all out, so read about them below and let us know your personal favorite 1949 movies in the comments just below our bloggers’ picks.

10. The Set-Up

It might be hard to imagine in this day and age, when boxing movies are primarily redemption stories, that in the golden age of noir the boxing world was generally seen as a dark and gloomy place from which nothing good or uplifting ever emerged. This is especially true in movies like Body and Soul (1947), Champion (1949), and The Harder they Fall (1956), the latter of which actually ends by calling for boxing to be banned!

At the top of that pantheon of anti-boxing movies is the powerful The Set-Up. The pocket universe of Paradise City has the feel of a Twilight Zone episode ten years ahead of its time. Director Robert Wise, who helmed such science fiction classics as The Man who Fell to Earth and The Andromeda Strain, tells with unflinching commitment the story of Stocker Thompson (Robert Ryan), still hoping for his big chance at 35 years old. His own wife Julie (Audrey Totter) can hardly stand to watch his fights anymore, and his manager Tiny (George Tobias) arranges to fix his next fight without even telling him. The result is more than a little predictable, but the meaning of it is not. – Walter J. Montie

• Global rank: 1709
• 244 users have ranked it
• Wins 53% of matchups
• 1 user has it at #1
• 5 have it in their top 20

9. The Heiress

The Heiress won four Oscars in 1949, including one for Olivia de Havilland, who was still best-remembered for playing Melanie in Gone With the Wind ten years earlier. The Heiress taps into the Melanie persona — sweet, demure, innocent — to tell its heartrending tale of love, greed, and broken dreams. The title role is a young woman who stands to inherit a fortune from her emotionally-distant invalid father, but when she falls in love with a gold-digging suitor she soon learns how little anyone regards her as an individual. She is valuable to her father as a caretaker and to her fiancé as an income source, but neither of them really love her, and this realization threatens to chill her warm and selfless personality. The movie is part of a tradition of gothic melodrama that includes the likes of Rebecca (starring de Havilland’s sister Joan Fontaine) and Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (starring de Havilland herself), both of which also deal with themes of unresolved familial pain and romantic frustration. Director William Wyler proved in Dodsworth, Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and later Roman Holiday that he knew how to anchor melodramas in fleshed-out characters with real human psychology; his movies have a sense of truth that elevates their artificial- or exaggerated-seeming premises into enduring works of art. – David Conrad

• Global rank: 1457
• 270 users have ranked it
• Wins 56% of matchups
• 0 users have it at #1
• 2 have it in their top 20

8. On the Town

New York, New York is not, it should be noted, a “wonderful” town. That Hays Code bowdlerizing of “helluva” from the original Broadway song in many ways undercuts the complexities of the characters in this film and hides the movie’s overall sophistication. The bland, uni-tone word “wonderful,” forced into the opening song’s chorus, could give the casual viewer the impression that On the Town is a pollyannaish take on postwar urban society, that the antics of three sailors on a one-day pass and their quickly-acquired dates could only be a Technicolor gumdrop fantasy without nutritional value. This is untrue, though more true for the film than the play. Emotions run deep in this movie, and its highs and lows burn brighter and dig deeper due to the ticking-clock structure of the story. Romantic crushes metastasize into toxic obsessions within minutes. Attitudes towards trust and friendship swing wildly, driven by the opposing forces of military camaraderie and hormones. The very idea of “fun,” of “enjoying” something when all you have is until oh-six-hundred tomorrow, turns every simple question of logistics or preference into a sweaty, FOMO-fueled compulsion to just keep going, go, go, we’re running out of time! And, if you’ll permit me to allegorize, isn’t this just the human experience compressed into single diurnal cycle, complete with its hopes, fears, urges, and, ultimately, wisdom? – Douglas Van Hollen

• Global rank: 1370
• 594 users have ranked it
• Wins 51% of matchups
• 0 users have it at #1
• 14 have it in their top 20

7. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

This film fills in a row of your John Wayne bingo card. Directed by John Ford? Yep. Filmed in Monument Valley? You bet. Wayne is in uniform? He sure is. He’s fighting Indians? Of course. He wins in the end? Bingo, pilgrim. But She Wore a Yellow Ribbon has one or two elements that help it stand out from the pack of similar movies that Wayne and Ford made over their decades of collaboration. For one thing, the lead Indian role is played by a real Native American actor, Chief John Big Tree in his second to last role, rather than some paleface in redface as seen in movies like The Searchers. That makes the film ever-so-slightly less problematic than usual for Wayne movies. For another thing, this is the middle entry in Ford’s thematic “cavalry trilogy” that features some of the tightest storytelling in his long career. There’s nothing unpredictable or innovative about this, which makes it a useful example of what Flickchart calls a “Traditional Western.” Because it belongs to a peak period for its auteur, though, it has the subtle virtue of being like the others, only more so. – David

• Global rank: 1348
• 648 users have ranked it
• Wins 51% of matchups
• 1 user has it at #1
• 10 have it in their top 20

6. Adam’s Rib

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn each had long and impressive careers outside of their collaborations, but the nine movies they made together made them a comedy duo to rival Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, and May and Nichols. Tracy and Hepburn were at their best when fighting the gender wars, pretty much the same ones we’ve been fighting for a hundred years and more. While their movies do deal in dated ideas, like the notion that men can’t cook or women deep down all want to be wives and mothers, what’s striking about them is how considerate their responses to these ideas can be. In Adam’s Rib, married couple Tracy and Hepburn are two lawyers on opposite sides of a criminal case. Hepburn is defending a woman who shot her abusive husband, whereas Tracy is prosecuting the woman on the grounds that circumstances cannot justify attempted murder. The movie errs slightly on Tracy’s side, but it is open-minded enough not to give him the final word; at the end, he runs for judge as a Republican, and Hepburn announces her intention to run against him as a Democrat. Neither of them abandon their principals after of the outcome of the case, and they remain married despite their passionate disagreements. In today’s political climate this could be interpreted as cowardly “both sides”ism, but the attempt to explore all facets of a controversial issue, to embrace uncertainty, and to validate at least some progressive ideas is a bold move for a studio-produced, Hays Code-era film. – David

• Global rank: 834
• 1060 users have ranked it
• Wins 51% of matchups
• 0 users have it at #1
• 27 have it in their top 20

5. Stray Dog

Stray Dog is not about a dog, but it opens with a shot of a dog resting his head on asphalt, panting in the heat. It was controversial from its very first frame. Shortly after its release, director Akira Kurosawa received a visit from an irate American woman claiming to belong to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) who was convinced that Kurosawa had injected the dog with rabies. In fact, the dog’s haggard appearance was the result of a little makeup and a lot of exercise, but Kurosawa had to submit written testimony to Japan’s American occupiers that he had not mistreated the animal. Doing this while many Japanese humans were still suffering from agonizing economic conditions under American rule irritated him severely, and he later said that he “never at any other moment experienced a stronger sense of regret over Japan’s losing the war.” Anger and confusion about Japan’s new reality are front and center in Stray Dog, which has none of the optimism that Kurosawa’s first postwar film, No Regrets For Our Youth (1946), displayed, and none of the wistful acceptance of change that Ozu’s Late Spring conveys (see below on this list). Stray Dog is an angry, paranoid, sometimes horrifying noir that sees gangsters around every corner, crushing poverty on every street, and violence in every seemingly quiet house. Even the scenes at a baseball game, a Japanese pastime whose popularity dated back to before the war, are defined by their ominous nature; for the detectives in attendance, every smiling face in the crowd is suspicious. Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, icons of world cinema who starred together in a dozen Kurosawa movies, give two of their most searching, desperate, and human performances this high-concept crime epic. – David

• Global rank: 404
• 717 users have ranked it
• Wins 57% of matchups
• 2 users have it at #1
• 22 have it in their top 20

4. Kind Hearts and Coronets

Black comedies often treat death as an absurdity, a laughable end to an absurd existence. That’s nowhere more the case than in the British comedies produced by Ealing studies in the 1940s and 1950s, and even more true than usual of Kind Hearts and Coronets. Death is the way the protagonist, young Louis, attempts to secure a dukedom for himself; he’s a distant heir who was born in poverty to a disgraced mother (because she married the wrong guy, natch), but there are only nine people between him and the title, and they should be easy enough to dispatch untraceably, right? If this setup isn’t enough to pique your interest, all nine of those noble folks are played by Alec Guinness, including Lady Agatha (pictured above). He’s brilliant in every role, but Dennis Price as the unflappable Louis manages to hold his own, and the plotting keeps him on his toes right to the very end. It’s a delicate balancing act to keep the audience on Louis’ side enough to laugh at his increasingly bold murder attempts and yet also feel triumph when it seems that justice will be done, and the film never falters. – Jandy Hardesty

• Global rank: 385
• 845 users have ranked it
• Wins 58% of matchups
• 2 users have it at #1
• 30 have it in their top 20

3. Late Spring

With all due respect to Tokyo Story, which tends to rank higher on critical lists, Late Spring is probably the most representative work by cinematic poet Yasujiro Ozu. It was the first time he had the benefit of his muse Setsuko Hara, one of the most charismatic and expressive actors of her generation, and it was the first time in his already long career that he used the title template Late/Early Spring/Summer/Autumn (usually fairly accurate English translations of the Japanese originals) that we associate with his celluloid portraits. These titles always give hints about the meaning of his movies, and in this case the phrase “late spring” (banshun) is a reference to the end of childhood. The movie works independently of its historical context, because the transitions that Hara’s character has to make as she moves out of her father’s house, and that her father has to face as he adjusts to an empty nest, are still familiar today. But knowing a little about Japan’s situation in 1949 adds another fascinating dimension to Late Spring‘s seemingly simple story. An American military government had ruled Japan since the country’s surrender in 1945, and for the first few years it closely monitored the Japanese movie industry for any sign of seditious or retrograde content. The censors objected to the film’s supposedly “traditionalist” message and pushed Ozu to make Hara’s character, Noriko, more independent and modern — that is, more like an American woman. Luckily, by 1949 the censors were relinquishing their grip, and the finished film still conveys Ozu’s worldview. Watch for yourself and consider how it balances (supposedly) Asian tradition with (supposedly) Western modernity. – David

• Global rank: 353
• 429 users have ranked it
• Wins 61% of matchups
• 3 users have it at #1
• 45 have it in their top 20

2. White Heat

For whatever reason, “Top of the world!” has been latched onto by popular culture as a seminal and iconic moment in cinema history. I can’t quite tell whether this is because of the fact that it is the final, lunatic raving of a suicidal and mentally-ill man dancing on on a burning gasoline silo, or in spite of it. This moment, like all of the peak moments of White Heat, is rich not only in violence and well-plotted action, but in a particular brand of late-noir sadism, a unique postwar acknowledgement of the essential madness of the human condition. No one was more aware of the strange and sometimes cruel twists that fate can take than star James Cagney, who had sworn off “gangster” pictures for a decade as he tried to make it on his own outside the studio system, putting himself in against-type roles in patriotic films and oddball thrillers. But he was forced to take this particular gig with Warner Brothers because he needed the money, and he brings to it layers upon layers of bitter experience, wounded emotion, and relentless, burning passion. Just the right artistic and logistical forces happened to come together in 1949 to elevate a fairly conventional, oft-repeated crime-spree concept into a unique gem of a film, an ode to the nearly inevitable forces of order and chaos and the second-order complexities of romance and tragedy that they create when they collide. – Doug

• Global rank: 272
• 1120 users have ranked it
• Wins 58% of matchups
• 3 users have it at #1
• 29 have it in their top 20

1. The Third Man

Film noir may be defined by the work of American directors copying German Expressionism, but arguably Carol Reed, a British director, perfected the style with The Third Man. Co-starring Orson Welles in one of the better roles of his storied career, the film is a masterwork of mystery and intrigue. While the casting may spoil certain plot points, the way the mystery unravels is far from predictable, and it sustains tension and drama due to masterful cinematography from Robert Krasker and a haunting score by Anton Karas that soak the postwar Austrian landscape in a wash of carnival madness. The buildings themselves seem to leak black shadows into the universe and draw the audience into a world of mental and physical exhaustion. Joseph Cotten proves a suitable protagonist, a chiseled and lean American searching bullheadedly for meaning in the haunted city of Vienna. It is so complex in its questions — who are the new fascists? what should be done about stateless refugees fleeing Soviet zones? what responsibilities do Americans have to a war-torn Europe they barely understand? – and rewards subsequent viewings so well that it feels underrated, somehow, despite its great reputation. Flickcharters agree that even after 70 years it stands as one of the best films of all time. – Connor Adamson

• Global rank: 34
• 9235 users have ranked it
• Wins 59% of matchups
• 87 users have it at #1
• 1001 have it in their top 20

BLOGGERS’ PICKS

Little Rural Riding Hood

This is on my personal top ten for 1949, but really, let’s highlight the whole Tex Avery fairy tale cycle, which includes 1943’s Red Hot Riding Hood and 1945’s Swing Shift Cinderella. These are all basically the same idea. Red Riding Hood (or Cinderella) is reimagined as a pin-up girl singing in a nightclub and the wolf is reimagined as, well, a wolf in the trying-to-get-a-hot-girl sense. These films are NOT politically correct, so don’t @ me, but they ARE some of the most visually-inventive animated films ever made. I mean, on the one hand you’re spending minutes at a time watching a wolf’s eyes pop out of his head as he howls at a girl on a nightclub stage, but on the other hand, the WAY the wolf’s eyes pop out of his head is endlessly varied. It’s a male gaze, sure, but a parodic one. And Avery did this three times, with different gags in each cartoon! The two wartime ones also have wartime themes (that’s why Cinderella is working the swing shift), while this one has more of the actual Red Riding Hood story in it, but with a twist. “Fractured Fairy Tales” have become a staple genre since Rocky and Bullwinkle took a crack at them, but Avery did it earlier. – Jandy

Thieves’ Highway

The theatrical form known as “farce” is defined as a central, relatively minor conflict in which the protagonist, by the very act of trying to solve the problem, makes it worse. And then they try to solve that problem, which makes everything worse still, et cetera. Crime fiction, especially film noir, perfected the non-comedic version of this form: the cascading snowball of misfortune and misery where best-laid plans go astray with every turn of the road and each flip of the coin leads our hero deeper into debt with the fortunes of the universe. That is what happens in Thieves’ Highway, involving what is at first a fairly benign scheme involving the legal, if cutthroat, wholesale apple trade (I’m serious) and somehow escalating into prostitution, extortion, murder, and rampant violation of the laws and norms of the noble business of selling produce in San Francisco. What makes this movie so much fun is that very little attempt is made to (explicitly) make the fruit trade some sort of metaphor for capitalism or America or the human spirit. Everyone is just a dirty bum doing their best to try to get by, and the fact that so much evil and duplicitous human refuse can be found in this usually-hidden corner of the world must mean that it can be found anywhere. The everyman-everywhere-ness of the plot automatically and effortlessly makes its themes applicable to all corners of modern life. If you look closely enough, the entire world is noir. – Doug

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