Years & Movies: 1944

The first in the list of the best films of world cinema of 1944, according to FilmGourmand, is Billy Wilder’s film noir “Double Indemnity”.

The premiere of the film "Double Indemnity" took place on July 3, 1944 in Baltimore, Maryland (USA).

The plot of the film is based on a novel written by journalist James Mallahan Cain. As the basis of the Cain's novel were used the circumstances of the crime, which was committed in 1927 by a housewife from Queens, New York, USA, Ruth Snyder with the support of her lover - insurance agent Henry Judd Gray.

The motive that pushed Ruth to the crime was the fact that her husband, Albert Snyder, hung in the bedroom a portrait of his bride, who died 10 years before marriage to Ruth, and also named his former yacht after his former bride. (Men, do not commemorate your ex in the presence of your present! Even if they have already died.)

At trial, it turned out that Ruth had made 8 attempts to kill her husband, and only the last one, committed with the participation of her lover, was successful.

The film "Double Indemnity" was nominated for an Oscar in 7 nominations, but did not win a single one. In all cases, preference was given to films with a much lower audience rating. For example, in the Best Film nomination, American film academics preferred Leo McCarey's movie "Going My Way".

Overall, the film was enthusiastically received by critics. According to the site Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of reviews of professional film critics were positive. Roger Ebert rated this movie 4 out of 4 stars.

Although the eternal critic of Billy Wilder, The New York Times columnist Bosley Crowther, in his endeavors to quibble, called the movie: "attraction designed plainly to freeze the marrow in an audience's bones....toughness of the picture is also weakness of its core, and the academic nature of its plotting limits its general appeal." (The New York Times, Sept 7, 1944).

But Alfred Hitchcock, whose opinion is so authoritative that it can outweigh the opinion of the entire assembly, called the American Film Academy, wrote: "Since Double Indemnity, the two most important words in motion pictures are 'Billy' and 'Wilder'".

I found curious the assessment of Russian film critic Evgeny Nefyodov, who is able to discern the political motive even in the most seemingly apolitical works. So, about “Double Indemnity”, he writes: “no matter how many times I watched the brilliant Wilder noir masterpiece, I could not get rid of the underlying feeling that the authors managed to express something allegorically that was invisibly present in the very atmosphere of American society of that period. Something sly, impeccable plan suspiciously resembles the very policy of the United States in World War II (although the action is prudently attributed to a still peaceful time), when the elite repeatedly relied on reliable and promising at least double the benefits are the options. And, let's say delicately, far from always won the upper hand."

And - yes - the film was not shown in the USSR.

The financial successes of this picture can be judged, in particular, by the following figures: with a budget of less than $ 1 million, box office revenues amounted to $ 5 million.

The modern cinema viewer also praised the merits of this film: 73% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10.

Based on these success indicators, the rating of the film “Double Indemnity” according to the version of FilmGourmand was 8.261, thanks to which the picture takes 438th place in the Golden Thousand.

In addition to the film “Double Indemnity” the "top ten" of the best films of 1944 included the following films:

• Иван Грозный (Ivan the Terrible, Part I), by Sergei Eisenstein, USSR. Movie's Rating - 8,044; 665th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
• Свадьба (Marriage), by Isidor Annensky, USSR. Movie's Rating - 7,969; 756th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
• Жила-была девочка (Once There Was a Girl), by Viktor Eysymont, USSR. Movie's Rating - 7,961; 770th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
• Gaslight, by George Cukor, USA. Movie's Rating - 7,808; 979th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
• Laura, by Otto Preminger, USA
• The Woman in the Window, by Fritz Lang, USA
• Lifeboat, by Alfred Hitchcock, USA
• I bambini ci guardano (The Children Are Watching Us), by Vittorio De Sica, Italy
• To Have and Have Not, by Howard Hawks, USA
  

10 most "cinegenic"*, in our opinion, events of 1944:

- Break of the blockade of Leningrad. The blockade of Leningrad was liquidated. For 872 days the city was besieged by German, Finnish, Spanish, Italian troops with volunteers from other European countries and North Africa. According to the American philosopher Michael Walzer, during the blockade in Leningrad from hunger and cold "more civilians were killed than in the hell of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined", more precisely - about 1.5 million people.

- Opening of the Second Front. The leaders of the United States and Great Britain, alarmed by the successes of the Red Army in the fight against the Wehrmacht and the potential spread of Soviet influence throughout Europe, finally decided to open a Second Front, which the leaders of the Soviet Union had been asking for over the years. On the coast of Normandy in France an allied force of 155 thousand people landed. However, the allied forces did not initially achieve serious success, since the most combat-ready military units of the Wehrmacht were thrown against them. Then Roosevelt and Churchill turned to Stalin for support. Stalin, meeting the request of the Allies, gave the order to launch an offensive a week ahead of schedule. The consequence of the incomplete readiness of the offensive was the death of several hundred thousand Soviet soldiers. But the desired result was achieved: the most combat-ready military units were transferred to the Eastern Front, and units formed from reservist-veterans and Hitler Youth were sent to their place in Western Europe. Well, the Allies could beat these troops.

- An assassination attempt on Hitler. In Germany, a number of senior Wehrmacht officers interested in concluding a separate peace with Britain and the United States and focusing their efforts on the struggle against the Soviet Union organized a conspiracy aimed at the physical elimination of Hitler. Wehrmacht lieutenant colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, who was entrusted with the murder of the Fuhrer, made an unsuccessful attempt on Hitler.

- Massacre in Oradour-Saint-Glan (France). In response to the capture of SS Sturmbannführer SS Helmut Kempfe, commander of a tank battalion, by a detachment of French resistance, the Nazis shot and burned residents of the town of Oradour-Saint-Glan. In total, 642 people were killed with brutal cruelty.

- Warsaw Uprising. An uprising against the Third Reich took place in Warsaw, which was brutally suppressed by the Nazis. According to various estimates, from 100 to 130 thousand Polish citizens were killed. There are two versions of the reason for the defeat of the uprising. Western historians believe that the fault lies with Stalin, who deliberately delayed the advance of Soviet troops. At the same time, they absolutely do not take into account that an insufficiently prepared offensive would lead to the loss of tens of thousands of lives of Soviet soldiers. The version of Soviet historians is that, striving to get ahead of the Red Army and prevent the spread of Soviet influence in Poland, the Polish government in exile, located in Great Britain, gave the command to force the uprising, and it was the unpreparedness of the uprising that caused significant casualties.

- Deportation of the southern peoples of the USSR. In the USSR Chechens, Ingush, and also Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Bulgarians and Greeks were deported from Crimea.

- The beginning of the civil war in Greece. In Greece, fighting began between resistance organizations, which played a major role in the victory over the Italian-German-Bulgarian invaders, and a wide range of promonarchical organizations, including collaborationists with the Nazis supported by the UK.

- San Juan earthquake. In Argentina, in the province of San Juan, an earthquake struck, which became the greatest tragedy of Argentina in the twentieth century. More than 10 thousand people died, or every tenth inhabitant of the province of San Juan.

- Koniuchy (Kaniūkai) shooting. In Lithuania, a Soviet partisan detachment, mainly composed of Lithuanians, together with a Jewish partisan detachment, shot 38 residents of the village of Kaniūkai (out of a total of 374 inhabitants of the village). The reason was the active cooperation of the villagers, mainly Poles, with the Nazi occupation authorities. Cooperation was manifested in the destruction of Jews and the supply of food to German soldiers.

- Operation "Ichi-Go". The Japanese command carried out a major offensive operation "Ichi-Go" in China. During the operation, the Kuomintang troops lost about 1 million soldiers, 10 large air bases, 46 airfields, up to 2 million km² with a population of 60 million people. 45 cities and several American airfields were captured. However, the successes of the allied forces in Burma, the Philippines and other Pacific Islands forced the Japanese command to transfer a significant part of the troops to defend the Japanese metropolis itself.

- Anastasia Vertinskaya, Jacqueline Bisset were born.

* -With "cinematic" in the present context, we mean events that either have already found their reflection in world cinema, or deserve to become the basis of the plot of a future film.