Choice for 1947

Odd Man Out (British). Carol Reed's film bogged down in allegory, but its first half was excellent and its portrait of a night city was superb (TIME, March 3).

Boomerang! (American). A first-rate piece of journalistic, "locale" (Stamford, Conn.) moviemaking (TIME, March 10).

Ivan the Terrible (Russian). Sergei Eisenstein's strained but fascinating attempt to create a visual equivalent of grand opera (TIME, April 14).

Monsieur Verdoux (American). Charles Chaplin's subtle, furious, complex, highly polished satire, with a brilliant performance by Chaplin himself (TIME, May 5).

Great Expectations (British). David Lean's fine, bounteous transcription of the Dickens novel (TIME, May 26).

Crossfire (American). A lucky combination (talent, front-office permission, a low budget, a rushed shooting schedule, and a subject worth feeling strongly about --anti-Semitism) produced the year's most vivid melodrama (TIME, Aug. 4).

Shoeshine (Italian). A swift and deeply moving film which went far beyond most works of "social protest" in compassion, moral sensitiveness and tragic understanding (TIME, Sept. 8).

Gentleman's Agreement (American). Hollywood proficiency at its slickest, put at the service of the year's most searching discussion of anti-Semitism (TIME, Nov. 17)

Man About Town (French). Rene Clair's gentle genius, operating at the level of high talent, in an exquisitely finished comedy (TIME, Nov. 17).

To Live in Peace (Italian). Less detailed and less exciting to watch than Shoeshine, this film was even more striking in its pure exposition of human brotherhood (TIME, Dec. 1).

Several other films, both American and foreign, would, in any ordinary year, be on a ten-best list; there were also some unusually good tries, and some well-made minor pictures. The French Zero De Conduite, a weird, anarchic comedy about schoolboys, was made 14 years ago by the late, inspired Jean Vigo. First shown in the U.S. last summer, it was a box-office flop. But it was one of the most original movies ever made. Dudley Nichols' desire to make a great tragic film was as laudable as his idea of how to go about it (filming O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electro) was regrettable. John Ford's The Fugitive drowned in romantic beauty and in solemn unreality, but had majesty of ambition and continuous intensity of treatment. In The Macomber Affair, Zoltan Korda made movie sense out of a piece of Hemingway's fiction.

Body and Soul, distinguished by James Wong Howe's flaying ringside photography, was a boxing picture, close to perfect of its kind. Britain's Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger exported a casual, charming romantic comedy, I Know Where I'm Going. Nightmare Alley had a sardonic toughness which, to their detriment, U.S. films have almost lost. Jean Renoir made Woman on the Beach an artful blend of mood and melodrama. Delmer Daves enlarged his conspicuous promise as a writer-director with two melodramas, The Red House and The Dark Passage. Sweden's Torment was, in its first half, one of any good year's ten best.

The movies richest in spirit and vitality came from Italy. By comparison, even the best British films were academic and genteel (Britain's best was, significantly, an adaptation of a literary classic). French films in general were ultra-civilized but low in vigor. Russia had all but ceased to exist as a source of movie interest, except to Russophiles; Germany was just beginning to stir.

Hollywood's most encouraging tendency was to move out of the studios to actual locales (notably in The Fugitive, Boomerang.', Kiss of Death, 13 Rue Madeleine), and to start handling at least reasonably live social issues (Crossfire, Gentleman's Agreement).

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