Cinema's Darkest Hour

1950 makes a case as Hollywood's greatest year with a host of dark and difficult masterpieces.

1939 is often heralded as the greatest year in cinema, having given us The Wizard Of Oz, Stagecoach and Gone With The Wind. That year also gave us the brilliant Garbo comedy, Ninotchka. There were legendary performances by Bette Davis, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and more. Hollywood was churning out classics on a weekly basis.

By the end of World War Two, the flash and blown out style of those big Hollywood epics felt hollow. Americans, and the rest of the world, had endured years of horror and chaos. Filmmakers and audiences both eschewed the escapism favored at the tail end of the depression for a more honest, and accurate portrayal of the human condition onscreen.

Gone were lurid technicolor spectacles, and fantastical tales of heroism. In its place were dimly lit, black and white mood pieces that seemed to peer into the corners of our collective conscience. The cinema of the immediate post-war years was paranoid, distant, shellshocked, and stunned.