The Steel Helmet (1951)

Dir.: Sam Fuller
Plot: In war-ravaged Korea, a ragtag group of US Marines and their orphan mascot try to stay alive whilst holding an important observation post in enemy territory.

I've been waiting to see The Steel Helmet for a long time now, being a fan of Fuller (my display pic is from his whacked-out western Forty Guns), and on the whole I was not disappointed with his characteristically unflinching portrayal of a war which at the time was still in its infancy. Made over ten days in late 1950 with a handful of UCLA students as extras, this is guerilla filmmaking at its rawest; and yet, it managed to make an astonishing $6 million at the box office on a budget of $104,000. Called right-wing fantasy by the left and Communist propaganda by the right, The Steel Helmet was incredibly polarising and hugely influential.

Home of the Brave (1949)

Dir.: Mark Robson
Plot: An army psychologist tries to help his patient, a mentally unstable black soldier, by digging into the memories of racism and deadly combat which caused him to suffer a breakdown.

One of the lovely things about liking classic cinema is that sometimes you stumble on a significant actor, an actress or even a whole genre you never even knew existed. How many of us, if it weren't for references in Barton Fink and the remake of The Champ, would even be aware of the 'wrestling picture' phenomenon that doubtless made heaps more money than half the artistic dramas we associate with that era? This was one of those moments for me. I knew that the late Forties saw a clash of two films exposing anti-Semitism (the good but rather overrated Crossfire and the appallingly underrated Gentlemen's Agreement), but I never knew that these years, in particular 1949, were notable for a sudden rush of 'tolerance movies' and 'Negro problem pictures'. Coming after Truman's 1948 integration of the armed forces, suddenly black issues were all the rage. Movies like Pinky and Lost Boudaries (both 1949) dealt with the anguish of blacks 'passing', sometimes their whole adult lives, for white. Films began to realise that black people existed as people rather than as porters or maids, and began at last to go some way to answer Myrna Loy's challenge "How about a black person walking up the steps of a court house carrying a briefcase?".