Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (Nathan Juran, 1958)

6/10
Switching gears slightly, this was a pretty fun, pretty silly watch. Although inconsistencies abound and the special effects were, uh, less than good. For a movie made in 1958 it had some interesting things to say (unintentionally) about how others perceive us. The amount of people afraid to say something for fear of being thought of as a nutcase is still around today (arguably more than ever, with mental health becoming an increasingly hot topic), although it doesn't involve 50 foot women.

The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958)

8/10
I'd never seen a Satyajit Ray movie. I don't know if this was the best place to start but I still enjoyed it immensely. I liked the setting and the palace, but what I loved most was the music. Holy smokes! My knowledge of classical Indian music is limited to those who creep in to the fringes of the avantgarde music scene - Pandit Pran Nath, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ali Akbar Khan and Abdul Karim Khan. But now I feel a compulsion to track down something from every musician featured in this movie, especially the mind-blowing performance at the end. I always like it when a movie gives me other things to seek out and opens my mind to other arts. This one definitely did that, and told an interesting story as well (even if I think it lagged a teensy bit in the second half).

The Magician (Ingmar Bergman, 1958)

8/10
I haven't seen too much Bergman, just Through a Glass Darkly and Seventh Seal before this one. It's regarded as a minor entry in his filmography but I liked it quite a bit - it's very gothic with beautifully creepy black and white photography. Max von Sydow is the titular magician leading a mystical travelling medicine show, who get hauled before a skeptical medical doctor to prove their supernaturality. What follows is a meditation on the struggles of the artist as creator, questions of authenticity, and faith vs. fact. It actually reminded me a lot of Andrei Tarkovsky's works (thematically, not visually), which is no real surprise since Tarkovsky was a huge Bergman fan - kindred spirits might be a better way to put it. I didn't care much for the end of the movie - it felt rushed, tacked on, and a little bit of a cheap resolution. Everything else leading up to it was quite good though, so I recommend it.

Lake of the Dead (Kare Bergstrom, 1958)

7/10
1958 Norwegian "horror" movie, apparently counted among the best Norwegian movies ever. It's a story that still shows up in films today (I'm assuming the makers of Dead Snow were big fans) - a group of friends head up to an isolated cabin for some R&R, an urban legend about a jilted dead lover still haunting the area is told, one of the friends displays a seemingly supernatural connection with the lake, mysterious happenings occur. The film is sharply shot in black and white and contains a lot of beautiful, haunting gothic imagery, but (somewhat disappointingly) this is more of a whodunnit suspense/thriller than the creepy horror I was hoping for. A lot of time (and unnecessary plot exposition) is spent with the characters sitting around the cabin. In any event there was still a lot of interest here, and running not even an hour and a half in length, it's never a bore.

A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker, 1958)

8.5/10
Roy Ward Baker's 1958 film about the sinking of the Titanic achieves a depth of humanity that Cameron's 1997 film never did. A Night to Remember succeeds by focusing instead on the minutae of the lives of various passengers (a child's abandoned hobby horse, a passenger going back to get her lucky stuffed pig), and its close attention to historical accuracy, as best as possible with the knowledge of the times. In fact this movie inspired Cameron so much he lifted several scenes and characters wholesale from the film (the musicians who continue to play as the ship goes down, for instance) but lost something along the way. Of course the knee-jerk reaction is to insist anything is better than Cameron's version, especially something made almost 40 years prior, but in this case it's plainly true in my opinion.

Rusty Knife (Toshio Masuda, 1958)

5.5/10
2nd of the 5 movies in my Nikkatsu Noir set, this one starts pretty slow but eventually picks up steam culminating in a great truck vs. truck chase scene. Overall it's not terribly interesting but there is a pretty neat twist towards the end.