1931 ADDENDUM
East Lynne Recently resurfaced after decades off the grid, this is far from a forgotten masterpiece-- but it's not as bad as some of Frank Lloyd's other work in this category, either. Unhappy trophy wife is accused of cheating on her husband and in return her life is summarily ruined several times over for the duration of the picture. Sounds like a grand ol' time at the movies, don't it folks! Typical of the studio prestige fare for this era, this is a blandly stilted collection of literate speech and phony melodramatic crises that is impossibly stuffy and laboriously unhip. Films like this are of course signs of the infancy of cinema, as those who wanted it taken as a serious medium used deadly serious junk to bolster their claims by removing entertainment and spectacle from the equation. How else to explain
Cavalcade's win two years later? (You can read the rest of my 1931 writeup
here)
1937
the Awful Truth Irene Dunne and me don't get along so well, but she's not too shabby in this light romantic fluff. Cary Grant sure enough is Cary Grant, but Ralph Bellamy steals the show and his hilarious archetype-setting Baxter cowboy should have won the Oscar, period, the end.
Captains Courageous Every so often the Oscars actually manage to nominate a film in this category that does represent the best Hollywood has to offer. This is top of the line entertainment-- well-made, cleverly written, handsomely filmed, and sharply realized. I haven't read the Kipling book this adapts but the filmed adaptation is one of the best coming of age films I've ever seen, with a truly spoiled little shit in Freddie Bartholomew who takes so long to come around that his inevitable transformation is all the more convincing for the time put into building what needs to be torn down. Spencer Tracy's Portuguese sailor is a little hammy at times, no doubt, but he's also filled with a fine comic spirit and sentiment that doesn't always register in some of Tracy's more workman like performances. It's easy to see why he walked away with the Oscar, even though it was no doubt yet another prize awarded for the character over the performance. Much easier to swallow than him winning again next year for
Boys Town at least!
Dead End A weird mess of four or five different films, none too well-realized by Wyler here. Claire Trevor's little three minute walk-on as Bogart's syphilitic ex (deservedly meriting an Oscar nom, no less) destroys everything else on screen, though the Dead End Kids have their moments. The big alley set is more obnoxious than impressive, and as a result this feels far more claustrophobic than other contemporary stage-bound films.
the Good Earth On paper this sounds like a nightmare: Hollywood adapting the Pearl S Buck novel and employing yellowface? But to my great surprise, this was fabulous entertainment and the lead performances by Paul Muni and Luise Rainer never became exploitative or cheap, and outside of Walter Connolly's comic relief most of the rest of the cast
is Asian. As all of the free world knows, Rainer most definitely did not deserve to win the previous year, but at least this year her win had some merit, even if again she was hardly the best of those nominated.
I know the narrative with this award favors the bloated and dull productions, but this is exactly the kind of feel-good epic Hollywood was also fully capable of producing. It also manages to keep all of the Depression-era social commentary in tact-- bolstering the bootstrap idea of individuals rising above their lot in life but then showing that money corrupts and only through socialism can the true happiness be found. It's a starkly progressive film. And a beautiful-looking one-- it's win for Best Cinematography was well-earned and the climactic locust attack is less dated over 75 years later than many CGI films from ten years ago!
In Old Chicago I was prepared for the worst after
Alexander's Ragtime Band, but this was quite nice for what it was. Glutton for punishment that I am, I actually watched the longer roadshow version, and yeah, it takes a while to get going, but I'm a sucker for corruption stories and even though this is basically a toothless gangster pic mashed up with a period film budget and then capped with twenty minutes of a disaster movie, it works.
the Life of Emile Zola It's dangerous to go into a Hollywood biopic like this knowing anything about what it's depicting, because then there's no way to dodge Screenplay 101 groaners like the prostitute revealing her name and other clumsy set-ups (Deciding to muse, "Hey, I think I might die someday" right before he dies is up there too, though). To the surprise of no one, the worst-written nominee not only won Best Picture, which is offensive enough, but Best Screenplay. Now if only there were a
forum to debate the
criterion with which this win was merited... (I'll take my Oscar now pls)
The film is transparently anti-French, and not in the ways you'd think based on the plot, where it'd be sort of warranted if restricted merely to the military. Dieterle's direction is nondescript. Paul Muni showboats beyond all human capacity and Joseph Schildkraut gets added to the list of ludicrous sympathy wins for a film's character, not the acting behind it. Also, rire aux éclats @ translating the title of the most famous open letter of all time into English. Easily among the worst films ever to take the top prize.
Lost Horizon This unusual Capra film which nearly bankrupted Columbia begins as a rousing adventure fantasy, then turns into a slow, idyllic romp thru utopia before finally arriving on a final act that is head-scratchingly abrasive and frankly stupid-- why does one character continually respond so violently to perfection? I mean, I know why a character
might and how that would provide commentary on man's unwillingness to accept the reality of the ideal, but in this film it's just some maniac going on and on about how horrible his life is because he's surrounded by beautiful happy people who bend over backwards to be nice to him. I have a high tolerance for dumbness but this character and what he is able to convince others of broke my meter. Maybe some sense of nuance got lost in the transition from a six hour film to what was eventually released and reconstructed on DVD-- but based on the performance, I doubt it. Also, while we're here, how in the world did this film get away with Jane Wyatt's nude scene?!
One Hundred Men and a Girl While pondering Deanna Durbin's inexplicable popularity, I was reminded of Jacques Rivette's line about how
Titanic was so popular with young girls because Kate Winslet was so dumpy-looking. I just can't imagine any other reason for anyone to advance this "starlet" who is, quite frankly, too ugly to be a movie star, and not talented enough in any creative arena attempted to compensate for it. What's sad is, Koster's film is generally well-staged and directed, entertaining, and everyone else involved does the best they can when not saddled with Durbin's obnoxious, earnestly honest moppet.
Stage Door A fast moving, female-centric film that never panders to the fairer sex and indeed gifts them with all the charms and wiles Hollywood could throw their way. The resultant film is a joyful noise indeed.
A Star is Born First color film to be nominated for Best Picture! Coasts along as light comic fare until things turn sour in the final act, a move that the film never recovers from. Even with this detour, though, Wellman's take on the subject matter is more interesting than Cukor's in the remake. The film offers some slight bite with regards to the Hollywood media machine, and I liked the film's willingness to let Lionel Stander's press agent remain unreformed by the picture's end. Fredric March is quite good as the washed-up movie star, but Janet Gaynor has always struck me as an improbable movie star on even her best days, which makes her rising ingenue all the more unconvincing!
My Vote Stage Door
1943
Casablanca Yet another inexplicable favorite of people who don't really watch old movies. It's a very good film, I won't argue the point, but it is in no way an exceptional one, and half of the films nominated this year deserve at least some of the legacy that this one's somehow walked away with. Well, at least it gave us some interesting modernist pastiches in
Play It Again, Sam and
the Good German.
For Whom the Bell Tolls Unbelievably, this turgid roadshow wallpaper was the highest grossing film of 1943. Why is this Hemingway adaptation so talky and flaccid for 95% of the running time? Sam Wood is not a bad director, Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman are not bad actors, and Hemingway is not bad source material, so what happened here? Like the prestige pics that dominated the early years, I wonder if the dead cinema offered here was so joyless and inert that uneducated viewer thought it must be intellectual based on preconceived notions they already held on medicine cinema and the problem just expanded with every city it hit?
Heaven Can Wait One of my fondest memories of just getting into older films is renting this and absolutely and completely falling in love. It's remarkable how several of my long-held cinematic predilections can be traced back to my love of this film, particularly its co-stars Gene Tierney and Charles Coburn-- the film inspired me to track down so many subsequent films comparatively early in my film exploration, and looking back I couldn't have chosen better!
The whole film is of course a dream, but two sequences in particular bear special praise. First, the opening, which is so good that I often pop in the disc and say "I'll just watch the beginning" and end up watching the whole damn thing. I can't understand the cult of hate born on this forum from this film, because honestly, if I showed this to someone and they didn't laugh at the opening, I would genuinely question our relationship. Second, speaking of relationship, the extended sequence wherein Don Ameche steals Tierney from his cousin, from flashback to Coburn poetry recitation, is still my favorite extended section of any film ever.
the Human Comedy Effective homefront propaganda piece that packs a lot of emotional punches that either hit as sincere or maudlin depending on where you stand on such wartime tactics. Me? I think it's one of the better films of its ilk, exceptionally well-made and handsome with fine performances and a pleasant meandering tone of civility. It's an unusually humanistic film for what it is, and the respect bordering on affection shown for Frank Morgan's drunkard, with absolutely no attempt made to demonize or save him, is an unusual and admirable deviation amongst its jingoistic brethren, as is the depiction of Asian soldiers in one sequence.
In Which We Serve Hollywood's yearly bone thrown at our British allies during wartime. Despite all the prominence of those involved in creating it, this is the dullest film nominated in this category throughout the entire war. I can't even be moved to elucidate its weaknesses or make fun of it beyond "Whatever." Whatever.
Madame Curie Studio-era Hollywood gets a bad rap for romanticizing and simplifying history for entertainment purposes, but sometimes that behavior results in a charming romance like this. Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon are reteamed yet again as the Curies and the first half is an utterly
adorable romantic courtship, with Pidgeon sheepishly pursuing Garson and a funny puppydog perf from a young Robert Walker. Then things switch to the scientific in the second half, and the scenes of experimentation are given a gracefully respectful pace and presentation. This is all around great entertainment.
the More the Merrier That this homefront screwball comedy stars two of the era's weakest personalities in the lead and is directed by George Stevens and is still the laugh-out-loud funniest film ever nominated in this category makes it some kind of deification-ready miracle. Charles Coburn deservedly won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for yet another variation of his always enjoyable screen persona, and he and Jean Arthur participate in some of the best physical comedy of the sound era in the first half-hour. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
the Ox-Bow Incident An okay film made worse by unrealistic expectations of its worth going in-- hyperbole has ruined as many films as it has saved, and I'm just as guilty as others. This is a small, inoffensive, but ultimately disposable run-through of familiar ideas.
the Song of Bernadette Among the greatest, if not the greatest, religious films ever made. Henry King treads the line between maudlin witnessing tool and clear-eyed reportage beautifully, and that's the one word review of the picture: beautiful. Jennifer Jones, before her husband made her career one long journey towards winning another Oscar, deserved her victory here for a performance made all the fresher when looked against her eventual career of Hollywoody overreaching.
Watch on the Rhine Stilted Lillian Hellman adaptation scripted by Dashiell Hammett, though you'd never know it. So much of what Hollywood put out in this period is fascinating, but this is one of their weaker products, a talky, self-important chamber piece that only briefly comes alive when we get to escape the mansion and sit in on a Nazi sympathizer poker game. Paul Lukas, in the proud tradition of that guy from
Disraeli, got an Oscar for reprising a stage role with little hint as to what power if any he showed in the original production. In the running for worst child performance of all time for whoever played Davis and Lukas' fat kid, though the highly mannered speechifying on the part of the tyke indicates he was directed to perform in this manner on purpose-- talk about little publicized war crimes!
Interesting skirting of the Hays Code in the finale-- I guess the murder of the villain was considered a war time casualty and thus didn't need direct punishment at the end? EDIT: Apparently the Hays Code
did object and wanted the perpetrator killed by Nazis but were overruled! A great example of how the Hays Office's twisted morality could manifest itself in offensive ways.
My Vote Heaven Can Wait
1965
A Thousand Clowns As evidenced as recently as
Beasts of the Southern Wild, there's nothing squarer than the Academy trying to prove they're hip, and this is one of the more egregious examples. TV director Fred Coe is competent in the film's many set-bound segments, but outside of those the film engages in amateurish, non-sensical editing that is quite frankly second-hand embarrassing to sit through. Jason Robards plays one of those characters like the next year's Alfie who is a total obnoxious piece of shit starring in a film that loves him. The movie actually makes a pretty good case against Robards retaining custody of his nephew, I thought, and Barbara Harris' comments that his behavior would only be cute if she were twelve are spot-on. But then again, she and everyone else eventually capitulates to his alleged charm, so whatever. Martin Balsam is usually a reliable character actor but he's on screen for maybe five minutes here and does nothing in particular of interest and yet somehow won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in one of the more inexplicable wins ever-- if any category ever consistently makes less sense than Best Picture, it's the supporting acting categories!
Darling This was the year of Julie Christie and her win was as inevitable as any, but both her perf and the film itself are pretty disposable relics and additional proof of the danger in the Academy trying to get its finger on the pulse of anything resembling hipness. Forgivable but forgettable.
Doctor Zhivago As evidenced by my posts in this thread and elsewhere, I'm hardly a David Lean acolyte but this is the first of his films to come out ahead to my eyes, even though it suffers through the regular myriad of flaws. The grandeur afforded what is yet again a smaller story than expected is for once well-placed and the film offered some competent entertainments in its first half. I think the film's biggest issue outside of the unnecessary bloat is that Julie Christie and Omar Sharif have zero chemistry together and the film never bothers to give either a reason to fall in love with each other unless bein' hott just writes its own ticket. Their "big reveal" midway through the pic is out of nowhere and is a bit like some poorly written soap opera--
- "Nurse, I'm in love with you"
"Gasp!"
"Yes, it's true. My love for you burns as hot as the iron on that blouse!"
"But your wife isn't going away any more than this scorch mark is"
"Whatever baby, it's Russia or something!"
"--Stay tuned for scenes from next week's episode of As the World Revolutions…"
Ship of Fools Exactly as subtle as you'd expect a Stanley Kramer film about… wait, what is this mess supposed to be about? Set aboard a German ocean liner circa 1933, the picture opens promisingly with a fun title sequence, so I briefly held out hope that this might not be as self-important as Kramer's other films. Then the film proper begins as Michael Dunn's dwarf rests his arms on the ship's railing and informs the audience that he's aboard a literal ship of fools and we should look for ourself amongst the travelers shown. Well, I tried, but I don't think I really fit any of these:
+ The aging American woman, disgracefully portrayed by Vivien Leigh, who is so despondent at the passage of time on her once youthful looks that she explodes with fury only when Lee Marvin's drunk lech
stops raping her. This character has earlier been introduced as a victim of spousal abuse and spent the moments immediately preceding the rape dolling herself up in the mirror in deliberate clown pantomime. No, that's not me. Or anyone. Who would knowingly concoct a character arc like that on purpose?
+ The oafish Nazi sympathizer, played by the usually reliable Jose Ferrer, who hates Jews on principle and proposes killing everyone over the age of sixty while at the exclusive Captain's Table surrounded by mostly old women, because, like, the Nazis were just so clueless as to how ridiculous they sounded!!! If you are worried that as a member of the audience for a Stanley Kramer film you might be too dumb to know which are the good guys and which the bad, Kramer even makes it easy for you to visually decode the suuuuuuper complex subtext:
+ The bickering young lovers who can't make it work because dammit, he's a socially conscious bohemian who wants his wife to devote herself selflessly to his endeavors. Wait, what? That doesn't make sense. Maybe this is me. Am I lazy fucking filmmaking?
+ How about the blindly optimistic Jewish man who's segregated from others on board but is still cheerful, since he's a proud German. This leads to the single worst shot-reverse shot in film history, a moment so cheap and nonsensical in any context other than its function in feeding a condescending superiority on the part of the viewer that it is beyond contempt. I have captured the exchange below because otherwise I think no one would believe it really happened. It did:
+ There's also the pimp, the prostitute, the man with the Jewish wife who gets kicked out of the inner circle and pitches a tanty, the aryan sexpot, the thieving virgin who threatens his wheelchair-bound father for money to pay the whore, the perfectly attractive "ugly duckling" young girl, the revolutionary socialite, the good doctor, the woman who values her dog more than the life of an anonymous day laborer, &c &c &c. Wait, I've figured it out. I know which one's me: I'm the guy who jumped overboard rather than be stuck with all these morose caricatures!
This is a film that wallows in the overly simplified miseries of the figures it depicts and feeds into the darkest, most regrettable aspects of liberalness. It may or may not be the worst Stanley Kramer film of all time, but it's most definitely the worst to be nominated for Best Picture. The best thing about finishing this whole viewing exercise is the sweet knowledge that I will never ever have to intentionally watch a Stanley Kramer film ever again. Now there's the happiest of endings a film lover could hope for!
the Sound of Music One of those films everyone saw as a child, and I'm no different, though I see I was right to not remember anything after the Intermission. This might be the most front-loaded popular musical ever, as the second half is populated by either forgettable new numbers or the fourth or fifth reprisal of the catchier songs from the first half. I bet every VHS copy of this in the world has more wear and tear to the first tape than the second! Since it's well-established that I don't like R+H, I won't dwell but I will concede that this one offers more material for the poor filmmaker saddled with it than most (though Robert Wise does nothing here remotely as fresh or keen as what Fred Zinnemman managed with
Oklahoma!) and many of the songs are pleasant and familiar to anyone. Julie Andrews is safely sexless in the lead, Christopher Plummer's embarrassment is as prominent as rumored, and it's always nice to see Eleanor Parker. It surely would not have taken much additional effort to give the Von Trapp kids some sense of individual personalities, though!
My Vote Doctor Zhivago
1968
Funny Girl I wasn't watching the time too closely but I'd wager you could measure the length from Barbra Streisand first appearance on screen to her being recognized as a star by the audience in seconds. This may be a biopic of Fanny Brice but let's not kid ourselves, this is the Streisand Show and she earned every bit of praise and fame she garnered from this fine comic performance. In fact, it's unfathomable that she tied for Best Actress with Hepburn, because that means the exact same number of people thought the two performances were equal, which just shows how close the Oscars came to getting it wrong: one vote! Outside of the central performance this is a good, not great musical, with numbers that work best when they just get out of the way of the starlet. And yes, as everyone mentions, the film chokes a bit in the end run as the plot turns towards Omar Sharif and makes the Streisand's previously unstoppable bantering trickle off into less successful stabs at mopeyness. Who thought it was a good idea to have the titular figure mute her broad humor in the end-run?
the Lion in Winter Play adaptation that suffers from being too opened up and stuffed with costuming and dead space between lines. But they're often pretty good lines, though Katharine Hepburn is the only one who seems to play this at the level of detachment it requires. Everyone else is a little too invested in what should be a lightweight collection of double-double crossings, with the resulting film unfortunately offering little more than any other costume drama of the period.
Oliver! I think someone else here described this along the lines of "Not as bad as I feared, not as good as I hoped," which is spot-on. Like the same year's
Finian's Rainbow, this is a traditional movie musical in conflict with the changing tides of production, and the tonal shifts, especially in the final act, are jarring. Outside of the rather inconsequential perf of the title role, the film has some wonderfully game performers. Everyone mentions Ron Moody's Fagin for praise, and for good reason, but Jack Wild gives a tremendous child performance as the Artful Dodger and I'm surprised Shani Wallis' Nancy isn't praised more, as she brings a brassy exuberance to the role that was most welcome and entertaining. "Pick a Pocket or Two" is one of those damned perfectly catchy numbers that pops into your head and refuses to leave, and I was shocked upon watching the film to discover
Jacki Bond's "Reviewing the Situation", which I'd loved for a while from one of those Dream Girls singles comps, was an improbable cover of Fagin's signature song!
Rachel, Rachel Joanne Woodward gives one of her very best performances as the sexually stunted central figure in husband Paul Newman's assured directorial debut. Woodward takes what could be a cliche role, the spinsterly schoolmarm, and infuses it with warmth and a great lived-in patheticism. Newman's reliance of fantasy sequences are a poor choice and unneeded, but it'd take a lot worse to derail something as wonderful as this. Looking at it now it's hard to believe the Academy could have ever been so keen as to nom this for the top spot, a small and observant film far removed from the flashiness this award often leans towards, but as espoused upthread, this was apparently Warners' second-highest grossing film of 1968-- turns out the congrats are due to the American public at large. Boy, that happens even less frequently!
Romeo and Juliet Since adapting Shakespeare for the silver screen is a fool's errand, the best a film like this can offer is either novel or adept acting choices. Luckily the film has two good performances in Olivia Hussey's Juliet and John McEnery's Mercutio. McEnery nails the ribald wag quite well and highlights how as in the play Romeo is so dull that Shakespeare is forced to crowd him with more colorful characters to distract the audience from noticing! Hussey is particularly well suited for Juliet in that she's clearly barely acting, but her juvenile mannerisms and exasperations are perfectly suited for the role-- I suspect a great deal of the continued relevance this film maintains is due to her giving such a reference-level Juliet portrayal. Or is it just memories of teachers in high school screening this and forgetting there's a nude scene?
My Vote Rachel, Rachel
Almost five years since I started and I only have to finish 1935 and 1936 and I'm done!