1954 CHECKLIST FOR 2024

A trio of American adventurers marooned in rural Mexico are recruited by a beautiful woman to rescue her husband from Apaches.

What's the only feature film in Hollywood history ever to be narrated by an Academy Award? You guessed it - Susan Slept Here. After introducing itself, the handsome statuette invites us into the apartment of its owner, screenwriter Mark Christopher (Dick Powell). Knowing that Powell is working on a script about juvenile delinquency, a couple of policemen on the night beat deposit teenaged troublemaker Susan Landis (Debbie) on Powell's doorstep - just as he's about to go out on the town. Somewhat terrified by Debbie's erratic behavior after having tried an escape from the two cops, Powell vows to keep their relationship platonic as the kid spends Christmas week in his bachelor pad, but his beautiful fiancée Anne Francis comes to suspect the worst.
It soon becomes apparent that Susan is more fun than the stuffy fiancée and its easy to see why Dick Powell falls in love. Though their age difference initially poses a problem - Susan at 17, Mark at 35 - they fall happily in love - after a bevy of misunderstandings and bumps along the way.
Susan Slept Here was Dick Powell's last starring feature film after more than two decades of stardom - he continued his career behind the scenes from this film on. During production, Powell at age 50 was a full 28 years older than his leading lady Reynolds, who clocked in at 22 - the same age as 'the older woman' - Anne Francis. Though the age gap is glaringly obvious and somewhat troublesome, the charm and talent of these great stars shines through and makes Susan a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Don Gregor, the son of famous plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor, begins to hang around with young criminal Vic Brady and carry a gun. The pair attempt an armed holdup, and when things start to go wrong Gregor accidentally kills a night watchman. Fearing that Gregor plans to turn himself in, Brady kills him and blackmails Dr. Gregor into giving him a new face.

1954 short film by Éric Rohmer

Daffy Duck is a Wild West outlaw named "The Masked Avenger", righter of wrongs and doer of heroic deeds. Porky Pig is his sidekick. Together, they seek to arrest Nasty Canasta, a villain whose crimes include gag-stealing and square dancing in a round house.

Based on Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman, this is the story of the romantic adventures of Christians and Muslims during the battle for the Holy Land in the time of King Richard the Lionheart.

Parajanov's diploma film for the VGIK, based on the Moldavian fairy tale by Emilian Bukov.
A young shepherd is given a magical instrument from a giant.

The poor, elderly—and the wily, when it comes to parting those who can afford it from their money—Scottish skipper of a broken-down old 'puffer' boat tricks an American tycoon into paying him to transport his personal cargo. When the tycoon learns of the trick, he attempts to track down the boat and remove his possessions.

Sierra Nevada Jones must fight a villainous rancher to regain the land that is rightfully hers.

I had contrived a scenario in which she ran mindlessly by cages of various animals paying them no heed while they, subject to edited inserts, would appear as excited Stacy observers. I had not fully mastered the tripod and suddenly in the middle of a jerky pan from a drinking fountain the entire tripod is sent flying and never reappears. In fact it has yet to be replaced. Stacy, bored with animals sets out to explore some noises she hears and ends up discovering a merry-go-round. When I finally catch up and help get her up on one of those huge horses for the first time, I see the look on her face, and I know. There’s the film. I should be watching not directing. The unplanned seems to me more interesting always, or at least more possible than the planned. That’s really the film I’ve been trying to make ever since. - D.A. Pennebaker

A year after a violent train robbery, the Pinkerton detective agency hires a bounty hunter to find the three remaining killers. He tracks them to Twin Forks but has no clue to their identity. Tensions surface as just his presence in town acts as a catalyst.

This short has Heckle & Jeckle running a diner.

When a stagecoach guard tries to warn a town of an imminent raid by a band of outlaws, the people mistake him for one of the gang.

Gone several years, the brooding Alejandro returns to the hacienda of his foster sister, Catalina, whom he loves, to find her married to the wealthy and effete Eduardo.

Robert and Nina Tracey resolve to live separate lives when their eight-year marriage dissolves into disagreements and divorce. But their separate attempts to get back out on the dating scene have a funny way of bringing them together.

A stranger in town becomes the target of a lynch mob in Allan Dwan's feverish Western noir, made at the height of the nation's "Red Scare" witch hunts and now acclaimed as one of the most concise anti-McCarthy parables ever made by Hollywood. About to marry the lovely Rose (Lizabeth Scott) on the 4th of July, straight-ahead Dan Ballard (John Payne) finds his nuptials interrupted by "marshal" Ned McCarty (a sneering Dan Duryea) who claims he’s wanted for murder. Innuendo and suspicion soon turn the townsfolk from caring neighbors to a braying mob and it is up to Rose and one of Dan's ex-lovers to keep our hero from the gallows. Famed noir cinematographer John Alton shrinks the West's expansive plains into a claustrophobic nightmare of disorienting camera angles and harsh high-contrast lighting, the better to match the film's rapidly escalating sense of utter paranoia. With SILVER LODE, Dwan turns the American frontier into an American prison, with a madman named "McCarty" ready to destroy anyone who stands against him. - Jason Sanders

1954 film by Alf Sjöberg

A Tokyo family running a liquor store overcome impotence and dysfunction as they induce an understanding through each other of how to deal with their individual problems.

The Leiningen South American cocoa plantation is threatened by a 2-mile-wide, 20-mile-long column of army ants.

When young and attractive Lina Stroppiani, a thief like the rest of her family, tries to steal the taxi of Paolo, together with two accomplices, she can't possibly know that this will have far reaching consequences.