In the ‘40s there were three films which stand out to me. They all have what I call ”movie magic”. It is not special effects or a huge budget, but something akin to heart or whatever takes us out of ourselves for a little while and transports us to someplace else. The films I have mentioned earlier have that quality which continues with these four from the 1940s.
The first is the French classic fantasy, THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Yes, KING KONG was basically a re-telling of this tale but Malle told the old story with such verve and wonder that it would not be equaled until rendered as an animated feature years later..
The delightful Christmas classic, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE would be next . The storytelling which is superb rests upon the nature of uncertainty. Recall that this was a very uncertain era in history. The Second World War was over but it remained for people to pick up the pieces. The Atom……the mass revolts of colonial peoples, the Iron Curtain as well as rather dismal post-war housing and economic prospects . The “Post War Boom” had not yet happened, instead wartime factory jobs were evaporating, labor unrest was growing violent and what had been considered a war-time ally was now looking like ,if possible, an even worse enemy than The Axis. That’s what’s cooking underneath the plot of the story… which has a hopeful, warm ending.
MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, another fantasy has that same hopeful undercurrent and ending. The cynicism spawned by the War, is represented by the child’s refusal, a refusal fed by her mother, to believe in Santa Claus , is swept away by hope and hope fulfilled.
The fourth movie is an action-adventure with romantic overtones. Bogart and Hepburn going down the Congo River during WWI.. An odd couple ,if you will, or another form of Beauty and the Beast. Years later ,Miss Hepburn would reprise that role opposite John Wayne and set in the American West, but that was nothing compared to this grand effort. THE AFRICAN QUEEN rounds out our four post-war films .
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