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The decade of the 1950s in film involved many significant films.
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| 19th century |
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The decade of the 1950s in film involved many significant films.
Films of the 1950s were of a wide variety. As a result of the introduction of television, the studios and companies sought to put audiences back in theaters. They used more techniques in presenting their films through widescreen and big-approach methods, such as Cinemascope, VistaVision, and Cinerama, as well as gimmicks like 3-D film. Big production and spectacle films were perfect for this gained popularity, with the many historic and fantasy epics like The Robe (1953), The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), The Ten Commandments (1956), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and Ben-Hur (1959). Other big-scoped films thrived internationally, too, such as Soviet fantasy director Aleksandr Ptushko's mythological epics Sadko , Ilya Muromets , and Sampo , and Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's historic Seven Samurai , Throne of Blood , and Rashomon . Toshiro Mifune, who starred in those Kurosawa films, also starred in the color spectacle Samurai Trilogy .
This spectacle approach, coupled with Cold War paranoia, a renewed interest in science from the atomic bomb, as well as increased interest in the mysteries of outer space and other forteana, lent itself well to what this film decade is best known for, science fiction. The science fiction genre began its golden age during this decade with such notable films as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Them! (1954), This Island Earth (1955), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), and Forbidden Planet (1956), as well as Japanese science fiction tokusatsu films. There were also Earth-based "sci-fi" subjects, including kaiju films such as the Godzilla series as well as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and When Worlds Collide (1951). Companies such as American International Pictures, Japan's Toho, and Britain's Hammer Film Productions were created to solely produce films of the fantastique genres.
The decade was equally adept at both character and realistic films. The highly noted actors James Stewart, John Wayne, and Marlon Brando were at the peak of their popularity. Stewart, starring in Winchester '73 , and Wayne, starring in John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy and The Searchers , revitalized the western. Brando mastered versatile roles in films such as A Streetcar Named Desire , The Wild One (1953), Julius Caesar , On the Waterfront (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), and Sayonara (1957).
Director Alfred Hitchcock was at the peak of his craft, with films such as Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), and North by Northwest (1959), with James Stewart and Grace Kelly starring in three each. The Bengali Indian director Satyajit Ray, who began his career in the 1950s, was also at the peak of his career during this decade, with films such as The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), Jalsaghar (1958), and Parash Pathar (1958).
Richard Burton Matheson was an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres.
Takashi Shimura was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 200 films between 1934 and 1981. He appeared in 21 of Akira Kurosawa's 30 films, including as a lead actor in Drunken Angel (1948), Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952) and Seven Samurai (1954). He played Professor Kyohei Yamane in Ishirō Honda's original Godzilla (1954). For his contributions to the arts, the Japanese government decorated Shimura with the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1974 and the Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette in 1980.
Machiko Kyō was a Japanese actress who was active primarily in the 1950s.
Eiichi Ono, better known by his stage name Kōji Tsuruta, was a Japanese actor and singer. He appeared in almost 260 feature films and had a unique style of singing. His daughter, Sayaka Tsuruta, is an actress.
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company primarily known for publishing many science fiction classics. Gnome was one of the most eminent of the fan publishers of SF, producing 86 titles in its lifespan — many considered classic works of SF and Fantasy today. Gnome was important in the transitional period between Genre SF as a magazine phenomenon and its arrival in mass-market book publishing, but proved too underfunded to make the leap from fan-based publishing to the professional level. The company existed for just over a decade, ultimately failing due to inability to compete with major publishers who also started to publish science fiction. In its heyday, Gnome published many of the major SF authors, and in some cases, as with Robert E. Howard's Conan series and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, was responsible for the manner in which their stories were collected into book form.
East Asian cinema is cinema produced in East Asia or by people from this region. It is part of Asian cinema, which in turn is part of world cinema.
Daisuke Katō was a Japanese actor. He appeared in over 200 films, including Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo, and Ikiru. He also worked repeatedly for noted directors such as Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi.
Isao Kimura, sometimes credited as Kō Kimura, was a Japanese stage and film actor who appeared in more than one hundred films of directors such as Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, Tadashi Imai and Yoshishige Yoshida.
Eijirō Tōno was a Japanese actor who, in a career lasting more than 50 years, appeared in over 400 television shows, nearly 250 films and numerous stage productions. He is best known in the West for his roles in films by Akira Kurosawa, such as Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961), and films by Yasujirō Ozu, such as Tokyo Story (1953) and An Autumn Afternoon (1962). He also appeared in Kill! by Kihachi Okamoto and Tora! Tora! Tora!, a depiction of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His final film was Juzo Itami's A-ge-man in 1990. Tōno also starred as the title character in the long-running television jidaigeki series Mito Kōmon from 1969 to 1983. In the early years of his career he acted under the name of Katsuji Honjo (本庄克二).
Minoru Chiaki was a Japanese actor who appeared in eleven of Akira Kurosawa's films, including Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and The Hidden Fortress. He was also one of Kon Ichikawa's favorite actors.
Susumu Fujita was a Japanese film and television actor. He played the lead role in Akira Kurosawa's first feature, Sanshiro Sugata, and appeared in other Kurosawa films including The Men Who Tread On the Tiger's Tail and The Hidden Fortress. Later, he was a supporting actor in Ishirō Honda's Mothra vs. Godzilla, among many other films.
Yoshio Tsuchiya was a Japanese actor who appeared in such films as Toshio Matsumoto's surreal Bara No Soretsu and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Red Beard, and Kihachi Okamoto's Kill!. He had a long-standing interest in UFOs and wrote several books on the subject. He preferred starring in science fiction films, usually as aliens, or people possessed by them, in such films as Battle in Outer Space, Monster Zero, and Destroy All Monsters.
Mary Murphy was an American film and television actress of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Michiyo Kogure was a Japanese film actress. She appeared in nearly 200 films in a career which spanned 45 years, starring in works by Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and others. Film historian Donald Richie once called her "[o]ne of Japan's most versatile actresses, and perhaps the most intellectual of all in her approach to acting."
Noriko Honma was a Japanese actress whose film work occurred primarily during the 1950s. She was born in Hokkaido. She worked in many of Akira Kurosawa's films, first appearing in Kurosawa's Stray Dog, then in Rashomon as the Miko, also in Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, Akahige, and Dreams. Noriko died in April 2009 at the age of 97.
Paul Dunlap was an American composer. He wrote music for over 200 films during his 30-year career. He is best known for his work with Western movies.
Harry Paul Capon was a British author who wrote fiction in various genres. He also worked as an editor in three films for Maurice Elvey (1887–1967), as an administrator in film and TV productions and was the head of the Film Department of Independent Television News (1963–1967). He began writing science fiction in the early 1950s with the Antigeos trilogy, dealing with the discovery of a Counter-Earth, usually hidden behind the Sun. He also wrote about utopias, time travel, lost civilizations, alien invasion and Martians.
Keiko Tsushima was a Japanese actress, whose real name was Naoko Mori. She was notable for her prominent role in Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai. She also starred in Japanese television series such as Sakura and Kimi ga Jinsei no Toki.
Jun Tazaki, born Minoru Tanaka, was a Japanese actor best known for his various roles in kaiju films produced by Toho, often portraying scientists or military personnel.
Nacho Galindo was a Mexican-American film and television actor who lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for most of his life. Between 1941 and 1970 he had small, often unbilled roles in 71 feature films and at least 60 TV episodes. His most prominent film role was that of the Cisco Kid's third-billed sidekick, "Baby", in 1946's The Gay Cavalier, the first of poverty row studio Monogram's entries in the series, which starred Gilbert Roland as The Cisco Kid.