I'm a fan of all things film and TV I write for several websites mainly reviewing the latest shows while my new website, coming soon, will combine all my TV-related articles
One of the elements of 1937 winner The Great Ziegfeld that I enjoyed the most was the the interplay between male lead William Powell and final love interest Myrna Loy in the final third of the film. Little did I know that this was their third film together and they were actually married in a franchise of films known as The Thin Man series. In the film they play Nick and Nora Charles a married couple he a retired dective her a girl-about-town both trying to settle down when Nick is pulled back into action after an old friend of his disappears. His old friend Claude Wynant is the Thin Man of the series but he didn't really strike me as terribly thin. At the same time Claude's girlfriend and personal secretary is killed, possibly by him for taking money that didn't belong to her, so Nick has two cases to solve. Then follows a lot of scenes with Nick interviewing low lives, comic gangsters and almost being killed himself. The final scene sees Nick and Nora host a dinner party with all the suspects present before Nick reveals the culprit. This plot device has been used over and over again in Agatha Christie novels so its seems a bit passe here.
I have to say I wasn't much for The Thin Man, aside from William Powell's wise-cracking razor sharp performance there wasn't a lot to write home about. It wasn't a particularly bad film but the central mystery never grabbed me and one of the best characters, Natalie Moorhead's Julia Woolf, is murdered early on in the film. As well as Best Picture, Powell was nominated for Best Actor (he wasn't for Ziegfeld) and it was also nominated for direction and screenplay but rightfully didn't win any of those either. The film also spawned four sequels which may have been a lot better but I have to say this one left me feeling rather flat.
Obviously I was aware of A Star is Born, but have never seen the two well-known version starring Judy Garland and Barbara Streissand respectively. However I didn't know the format pre-dated Garland and the first version starred Janet Gaynor as the up-and-coming starlet and Frederic March as the leading man who helps her on her way. The film is also historic in its use of technicolour and won a special Oscar for its use of the technique, it is also the first film I've watched in this quest that has a scene at the Oscar ceremony itself. For those unfamiliar with the story it sees a young girl go to Hollywood to make her mark. After several unsuccesful attempts she meets Norman Maine a screen icon who's latest performances have been criticised, Maine introduces her to his agent who renames her Vicki Lester. Maine and Lester get married but soon she begins to flourish and he starts drinking heavily, goes into rehab and is almost sent to jail following a brawl. She gives up her career to look after him but eventually he decides to commit suicide leaving her heartbroken. With the help of her grandmother she decides to return to the screen with a tribute to her late husband.
I rather enjoyed A Star is Born, I believe the later versions are both musicals but this worked well being a straight piece of drama. In the lead roleJanet Gaynor is a triumph, and was nominated for Best Actress, she lets the audience see her journey from small-town North Dakota gal, to struggling actress to Hollywood star. However it is her fellow nominee Frederic March who steals the show as soon as he comes on the scene. You feel for him as his career leaves him and he becomes almost a secretary for his wife. There are also some nice supporting performances most notably from Lionel 'Max from Hart to Hart' Stander who, as he did in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, plays the wise-cracking aide. Aswell as the nominations I've mentioned and of course Best Picutre, the film did win Best Screenplay and was also nominated for Best Assistant Director an award that would disappear that year. A very good and compelling film, A Star is Born ultimately lost out to The Life of Emile Zola, but left more of a lasting legacy than most of the films up against it that year.
After starring in Captain Courageous, Spencer Tracy would get back to back Best Actor Oscars the second at the 1939 ceremony for his performancein Boys Town. Boys Town is one of those 'based on a true story about insparational mentor' films that seem to always crop up around awards season (Dead Poets Society for example). Boys Town looks at Tracy's Father Flanagan who decided to start a society for young boys who would otherwise be getting into fights and ending up in young offender's institutes. After several succesful years with the Father almost going bankrupt the society becomes a success but Flanagan gets a call from a gang boss asking him to look after his younger brother before he turns to the gang life. That boy is Mickey Rooney's Whitey the stereotypical badlad stirring up trouble by smoking and fighting in the peacful society. Although Whitey tries to escape something always keeps dragging him away and that get's him into more trouble finally getting in the way of one of his brother's mob hits but ultimately he is saved by the boys from boys town.
The thing that surprised me with Boys Town was how little impact Spencer Tracy had. Sure he was the inspirational figure but a lot of the time he sat back and watched the boys slug it out. Obviously this happened in real life but for a performance that won Tracy the Best Actor Oscar I really didn't think it was up to much. The film itself was much as you'd expect in a film where the majority of the performers are teenage boys. Mickey Rooney for his part wasn't as annoying as other films that I'd seen him in up to this point and was almost bearable in the other lead role. But I just felt this lacked something and especially in a year where La Grande Illusion and The Adventures of Robin Hood were both nominated and You Can't Take It With You won this almost feels a little stuck in the past compared to the modern feel of those other films.
Back from Portugal now, but way behind schedule so going to have to step it up a little bit. More Frank Capra for me first with Lady for A Day. This film contains a lot of firsts Oscar wise, its the first Capra film to be nominated for an Oscar, losing to Cavalcade, as well as the first film to win him an Oscar nod. It was also the first film to ever be nominated for an Oscar that was distributed by Columbia studios. Unlike Lost Horizon this is definite Capra material it deals with Annie an aging apple-selling woman who gave up a daughter at birth. Annie has been writing to her daughter, telling her that she is an aristrocratic lady and that she lives in a fancy hotel. When her daughter is to be married to the son of a Spanish count, Annie frets and is absent from her post, which angers gangster Dave the Dude who doesn't do a deal without buying an apple from Annie. With Dave's help Annie is able to get an apartment, a makeover courtesy of Dave's nightclub singer girlfriend and a 'husband' in Dave's pool hustler friend. Short-term they are able to fool the daughter, fiancee and count but when a party is suggested the police get suspicious as all of Dave's gang gathers together to pretend to be dignitaries. All of Dave's friends are arrested under suspicion of kidnapping some journalists but Dave tells the governer and the mayor the story and Annie doesn't have to reveal the truth to her daughter. All the Capra themes are there - the poor trying to get one over on the rich, the representation of common folk as salt of the earth and the large part that journalists play in the plot once again.
The film ticks along pretty nicely but is no classic and certainly isn't as groundbreaking or interesting as Cavalcade, that year's winner. The film was also nominated for screenplay and May Robinson's performance as Annie but also lost both of these. However the Annie plot-line gets eclipsed by the dealings of Dave The Dude and is underworld associates and there's just as fine a performance from Warren William as Dude. At the end of the day this was a good beginning for Capra and marked the style that he would perfect to win him three director Oscars in this decade.
The debut film from Brass Eye's Chris Morris had to be controversial and the material of Four Lions has definitely done that. The film looks at the world of suicide bombers but portrays most of them as bumbling brainwashed idiots or slightly psychotic guys who don't really understand the cause that they're fighting for. Riz Ahmed plays Omar the only one of a group of five extremists who actually knows what he's fighting for. The scenes featuring Omar's home life aren't often the most funny ones but are the ones with the most heart and poignancy. Friends Waj and Fessal aren't quite with it and therefore have been brainwashed by the only white member of the group and slightly psychotic Barry. It is Barry who possibly gets the most laughs in the film but at the same time is probably the most dillusional of the group. The film has plenty of laughs as the men struggle to even film a simple threatening video tape or transport explosives from one area to another. The final ache London Marathon is po men intned to blow up the London Marathon is possibly where the material gets a bit close to the bone as comparisons have been made to the 7/7 attacks however Morris and co-writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong always manage to keep the material light enough and show the bombs not inflicting much damage to the general public. The film is incredibly funny so when something horrible happens, it makes you sit back and think in shock and that's what Morris is good for.
Riz Ahmed is brilliant in the main role he kind of holds things together and shows that suicide bombers can be normal level-headed men with families and steady jobs. The scene in which he tries to explain 'the cause' to his young son by using the analogy of the Lion King is strangely touching. Nigel Lindsay is incredibly scary as Barry as he interjects humour and full on hatred into his performance. But Kayvan Novak as Waj is the star of the show, he is a loveable simpleton not quite sure what he's doing but trying to please those around him, you'll certainly never think about Alton Towers quite the same again after his speech. British comedy regulars such as Julia Davis, Kevin Eldon and The Thick of It's Alex McQueen round off the cast displaying the general ignorance towards the Muslim faith and the incomptence of both the police and MPs.
While its not ever as funny as it thinks it is, this is still a brave film about a bunch of bumbling guys who just happen to want to blow themselves up. Morris is an accomplished director and has created a story that will stick with you long after you leave the cinema.
After all the controversial allocations made about Roman Polanski over the last six months its easy to forget that he is at heart a film-maker. After making a version of Oliver Twist for some reason, Polanski is back at his storytelling best with a big screen version of Robet Harris' novel The Ghost. The plot sees Ewan McGregor's ghost writer hired to finish ghosting the memoirs of former prime minister Adam Lang after the previous ghost, and aide to Lang, died in mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile Lang has been accused of war crimes and McGregor starts to dig up clues that point to a secret past and may have been the reason that the former ghost writer perished. McGregor also starts to attract the attentions of Lang's neglected wife Ruth.
All the action takes place on a small island off Boston in which Lang has a reclusive property, and the island starts to take a characteristic of its own. Polanski is able to make the island central to the storytelling, the sea where the former ghost perished is forboding and the small houses and the scared villagers make it even more creepy. The score also plays a part in ramping up the tension and does it well. For what is essentially a noirish thriller, The Ghost is incredibly funny so when those shock moments come sometimes you are not really prepared for them. Although all the scenes do advance the plot in some way, I found some of them incredibly talky especially those involving The Ghost and Ruth Lang. I also found the final third of the film lacked a certain something and I felt the film lacked the adequate pay-off that had been set-up in the first two thirds of the film.
Ewan McGregor is great in the lead role, his London accent does falter at times but he does well portraying the outsider who doesn't really care about politics and just wants to get paid but gets sucked into the action once he gets to the island. Olivia Williams is actually used well in a film for once, as Ruth she flicks from ice cold to fairly warm and normal and at times incredibly sexy. Meanwhile despite being British, Kim Catrall struggles with a plummy accent there are also some good minor roles for Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach. However the big surprise is that Pierce Brosnan isnt' in that much. I got the impression that his character would have almost as much screen time as McGregor, but instead he spends a lot of the time away from where the action is. When he is on screen, however, he is a joy to watch as the sickly over-the-top former P.M.
Overall a well-crafted and carefully put together film from one of the best directors of all time which has some fine acting and cinematography but struggles to maintain its plot flow in the final act.
Originally Ridley Scott had planned to make a film starring Russell Crowe as The Sherrif of Nottingham who would be a sympathetic figure and he would portray Robin Hood as the villain of the piece. But when Scott revealled that he would call the film Nottingham, the studios realised that they would have to spend a lot of money explaining to everyone that it was a Robin Hood film. So in the end we are left with Crowe as Robin the soldier and the good guy of the piece and The Sherif of Nottingham reduced to being a sidenote as the main villians become King John and Mark Strong's French baddie Godfrey. But Scott still wants to tell an alternative tale so kind of gives us Robin Hood: Before he was an Outlaw. The tale sees Robin as a soldier who fights alongside King Richard and Robert of Loxley during The Crusades however when Richard and Loxley are killed Robin returns to Nottingham to give the news to Robert's father and his wife Marian. Meanwhile Godfrey, aide to Prince John, is secretly plotting a French invasion and these plots inevitably intertwined throughout the film.
The main problem with Scott's vision for Robin Hood is that it just seems a bit bogged down with trying to tell a story and has sacrificed entertainment in the process. There's only so many times you can watch Robin Hood riding round forrests with Dr Morris from ER and Martin Kimi from Lost before you start to drift off. For a film that aims to be a summer blockbuster it is incredibly talky and has little action to offer. The final battle scenes are fairly entertaining but eventually even they outstay their welcome. The main problem however is that the whole things just feels quite cold. The fact that it always seems to be bitterly cold in the forrest makes the film seem unengaging and quite stand offish. There are a few entertaining moments the banter between the Merry Men is always quite light and Mark Strong's villainous ramblings are always worth a look
Of the performances Russell Crowe doesn't really make for a likeable Hood. In Gladiator his character displayed heart and the performance was full of emotion and rightfully got him a Best Actor Oscar. Here he's gruff and just fairly uninspriing till his final scenes where he has to rally everyone into action. Another problem, that has been well reported in the press, is that of his accent a kind of cross breed between his native antipodean tongue and Michael Parkinson via Liverpool, Dublin and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Another problem is that most of the parts are not filled by English actors instead you have Cate Blanchett as Marian, Danny Huston as King Richard, William Hurt as the King's advisor and Max Von Sydow as Walter Loxley. Blanchett actually fairs pretty well as Marian playing her as an incredibly strong character and an equal to Robin. As already mentioned Mark Strong once again steals the show and proves that the bad guys in Robin Hood are always worth watching. There are also some good performances from the other Brits notably Oscar Isaac as King John, Eileen Atkins as his mother and Mark Addy providing the comic relief as Friar Tuck.
Overall though this incredibly flawed, if Crowe and Scott were planning to make another Gladiator then they failed. This has none of the excitement or heart that that film had instead this is a very plodding historical tale with little action or decent central performances.
As a massive John Cuesack fan I was one hand looking forward to seeing a new film starring the man however Hot Tub Time Machine didn't seem to promise much. Cusack is joined by three men who have had minor success on the big screen but are more known for their small screen roles Rob Cordrry on The Daily Show, Craig Robinson in The Office and Clark Duke in Greek. The premise sees the four journey to the mountains where Cusack, Cordrry and Robinson went as teenagers after Cordrry's Lou is thought to have tried to commit suicide. However everything changes when the four men get into the afformentied Hot Tub suddenly they are transported into a world which resembles Cusack's 1985 film Better Off Dead. From there they must do everything that happened to them that weekend so Cusack must break-up with 'the one that got away', the married Robinson has to sleep with a groupie and Cordrry has to get beaten up twice. However each man's life hasn't turned out how they thought Cusack has just seperated from his partner, Robinson's wife has cheated on him, Duke is addicted to Second Life gaming and Cordrry is a loser so all four have a reason to try and change the course of their lives.
I went into Hot Tub Time Machine with quite low expectations but was rather pleasantly surprised. The three central characters have all got great chemistry and its easy to believe that they were all friends. There are also a lot of laugh-out-loud moments some clever but mostly stupid. There is a bit of a problem with the plotting mainly in terms of the reason that the characters were transported back to the 1980s in the first place. Although Chevy Chase's repair man is at the heart of the mystery we never really discover what that mystery is, there are also several issues with the time travelling element of the plot. There is also a big chunk of the film that has been taken from the Back To The Future films from Robinson singing a Black Eyed Peas song to Cordrry betting on sports events he knows the results to its kind of all been done before. BTF's Crispin Glover also pops up from time to time as a doorman who only has one arm in the present but in the 1980s has two and thre is a running gag which sees him almost lose his arm several times. The ending is especially sentimental but at the same time also has enough gags not to make you barf.
Of the actors Cusack is his usual laid back self although kissing a teenager seems a little bit wrong, its all part of the plotting. Cusack also seems to be reliving the films he starred in in his youth and his plot, down to the kooky love interest, seems to be taken largely from that. Craig Robinson also proves what a star he is, after being the only good thing in Zack and Miri Make a Porno and often stealing the show in The Office, his character provides a lot of the film's dry humour and he delivers the killer line about the Hot Tub Time Machine. Clark Duke continues to put in another journeyman performance that we saw in both Sex Drive and Kick Ass. However this is Cordrry's show, he steals the film from Cusack with his role as loser Lou who as Robinson describes him, 'he's an asshole but he's our asshole.' He manages to mix in a string of potty-mouth gags with a pretty decent performance of a man who's realised he has got nothing to show for his life.
Overall if you can get over the Back to The Future rip-off vibe from the film, then this is a very funny film sometimes a little too crude but always warm. It mixes fine performances, with quick wit and for me is one of the comedies of the year.
Omid Djalili has carved out quite a large career in films starring in The Mummy, Gladiator and the third Pirates of The Caribbean film to name just a few. However he has never taken the lead role before but that all changes with the new British comedy The Infidel. Djalili plays Mahmud Nasir a cab driver who finds out he was born a Jew and in order to see his birth father has to learn what it is to be a Jew. He join forces with his former nemesis a Jewish black cab driver, Lenny Goldberg, as Lenny teaches Mahmud about Judaism at the same time Mahmud also has to deal with the fact that his son is marrying the stepdaughter of an extremist Muslim. Of course these two plots collide as the film goes on as Mahmud learns about identity and family.
An interesting combination of British humour and religious satire, The Infidel is incredibly funny and warm. David Baddiel is easily able to write about his own Jewish faith and the scenes in which Lenny teaches Mahmud about Jewish cultureare some of the funniest in the film, as is an arkward scene at a Bar Mitzvah. While the scenes depicting the Muslim families are more generic they are still as funny. Where the film falls down is the overall plot, Baddiel has trouble tying all the lose ends together and presenting a situation where Mahmud and his family end up on top. Djalili is an easily likeable presence in the lead he plays the everyman very well and that's what Mahmud basically is. He shares a chemistry with everyone on screen especially The West Wing's Richard Schiff as Lenny. Schiff and Djalili might seem like an odd pair but they bounce off each other easily and it seems like a stroke of genius to put them together. There are also some nice cameos from British comedy stars such as Matt Lucas, Miranda Hart and David Schneider while there are not one but two ex-Eastenders stars.
Overall a very funny and warm film but one that suffers from a clumsy plot structure and too much of a conventional ending.
Jared Hess is a film-maker who is known for his unorthodox style, his debut Napoleon Dynamite was full of quirky characters and a charming spirit. In Nacho Libre he got his first big name as Jack Black played the monk turned mask wrester, although I for one didn't enjoy the film. Now in his third feature, Hess takes on the world of sci-fi fiction as well as satirising low budget film-makers and home school kids. Michael Anganaro is the downbeat Hessian hero, the home-schooled boy who journeys to a sci-fi convention to meet his idol Ronald Chevalier. Cheavlier then ends up stealing and modifying, Anganaro's story while a local film-maker also decides to comission the story as a film. Both versions anger the central character who believes that his work is sacred. The film is very succesful in parodying the nonsensical world of the sci-fi writers and the incredibly inflated egos they have. There is also some humour to be had from the film that is made of The Yeast Lords with its old-school computer graphics and horrible performances.
Where the film falls down is in its lack of likeable, feesible characters and the overuse of facecal matter. The film also has an odd structure, as every so often parts of The Yeast Lords are acted with Sam Rockwell as the lead. There are some nice performances mainly from Anganaro as the likeable hero and Jennifer Coolidge as his overbearing but loving mother. But the star of the show is Flight of The Conchords' Jermaine Clement as the preening and poncy Cheavlier, it proves that he does have a life after the T.V. show. There is a good film in here somewhere but it gets muddled by some sloppy plotting and vile toilet humour.
Frank Capra is a director who keeps popping up in this decade, two of his films - It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It With You both won best picture and best director while Mr Deeds Goes to Town won Capra Best Director also. But Capra directed two more films that also were nominated for Best Picture but didn't win him any director nominations and one of those is Lost Horizon. The previous Capra films all seem to have several running themes about money being the root of all evil and culture clash romances they're all quite light in tone. However Lost Horizon deviates from this pattern as it sees a plane crash and its five passengers lead to a mysterious place called Shangri-La located in the Himalayan Mountains. The 'leader' is Robert Conway who is leaving with the others, including his brother, from China after rescuing them from the country's rebels. The other passengers are a paleontologist, a plumber who conned shareholders out of their money and a terminally ill woman. They are eventually rescued by a man named Chang who takes them all back to Shangri-La, Conway learns that he has been picked to take over running Shangri-La by the old leader who dies soonafter. However Conway is convinced by his brother to leave Shangri-La, his brother also takes a girl who he has fallen in love with only to find out that she is an old woman because people don't age on Shangri-La. The end of the film sees Conway rescued and taken back to Britain only to return to Shangri-La, without his brother who has commited suicide.
Lost Horizon is a lot different from Capra's films mainly because of the scale of the filming, it is beautifully photographed and there are some elboarte exterior shots. Ronald Colman as Conway is the dashing lead he performance is both measured and multi-layered while all the supporting cast give good turns notably Isabel Jewell as the terminally ill Gloria. However it is H.B. Warner as Chang who is the star of the show, he makes us intrigued by his character and Shangri-La as a place and is his the most interesting performance. In fact Warner was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost out in the end, however the film did win two awards for Best Editing and a much deserved Best Art Direction award. This film definitely proved Capra could do something different however after this, the next film on the list directed by him is You Can't Take It With You which returned to his old style.
Various computer issues have stopped me from having a fruitful week of watching and now I'm desperately trying to get up to at least forty films before I go to Portugal on Thursday. Last time I watched my first film starring the iconic Bette Davis and this time was no different as I watched the first film in the list starring another icon - Spencer Tracy. Of the early screen men (Bogart, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda) I was less familiar with Tracy's work than I was any others. I'm not sure how good it was to start off with Captain Courageous while, although this won Tracy his first of two consecutive Best Actor Oscars, he is also given second billing as child-star Freddie Bartholemew's name is top on the poster. In fact Tracy doesn't appear for at least the first twenty minutes of the film as first we follow Barthelomew's Harvey a very spoilt and obnoxious child whose father is incredibly rich and Harvey uses this to try and bribe his way through life. When his father finally wises up to this fact he takes Harvey away with him to Europe, to try and introduce him to the world of work however Harvey starts messing around and ends up falling out of the ship but is soon rescued by Tracy's Portugese fisherman Manuel. Manuel is part of the crew on a fishing ship and Harvey has to quickly learn how to be productive and how he has to work for his money. He becomes less spoilt and looks to Manuel as a father figure as he spends more time with him than his father normally does (Harvey's mother never features in the film and we assume she died in his childhood). The film is mainly about fathers and sons and growing up and its those two films that are seen throughout the film. There is quite an emotional scene towards the end of the film where things change up but at the end Harvey's father learns to appreciate his son and vice versa.
While I thought Tracy did a good job as Manuel, I'm not sure whether it was an Oscar winning performance. I think mainly its due to the kind of family-adventure nature of the film because while it is a naval adventure movie it never kind of explores any adult themes in the way something like Mutiny on The Bounty did although as you can see from the poster it is just as good. But I think Tracy is only that good because he is backed up by a very good almost all-male cast, at the beginning of the film I did want to dropkick Bartholemew but at the end of the film I'd warmed to him, it must've been so hard as a child actor in the early days of cinema to know how to pitch yourself between cutsie and annoying. Another child star on board is Mickey Rooney who has a supporting role as the Captain's son while Lionel Barrymore again steals every scene as the ship's Captain. Very well made and well paced I wish a lot more non-animated family films were as good as this these days, but I don't think we'll ever seen Brendan Fraser or Steve Martin nominated for their roles in their PG friendly films.
Okay so this isn't really about any film in particular but just kind of an update on the challenge.
So far way behind schedule but am already halfway through the decade of the ceremonies from 1929 to 1939 with the films watched being made between 1927 and 1938.
Today I had a bit of a disaster as I had to reboot my computer and completely lost all of my files so had to restart my database on finding the films and getting all the links back to the ones online however some seem to have been taken down now.
I found out that I won't be able to fully complete my challenge as one film - The Patriot from the first 1930 ceremony that was made in 1929 isn't available anywhere as only part of the original filmstrip remains and it is apparently the only film nominated for Best Picture that a copy of doesn't exist therefore it has been crossed off my list.
And if anyone is actually reading this and can find me a copy of any of these films to finish of the first decade search it would be most appreciated:
East Lynn (1930) Trader Horn (1930) Five Star Final (1931) Smilin' Through (1933) State Fair (1933) The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) Flirtation Walk (1934) One Night of Love (1934) The White Parade (1934) The Broadway Melody of 1936 (1936) Anthony Adverse (1936) Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) The Citadel (1938) Four Daughters (1938)
It would be brilliant if anyone could find these and I will perserve to do my best on this hunt, this is definitely going to be the hardest decade.
One good thing about this project is that it is getting me watching a lot of the older stars of the screen that I'm not really aware of for example I have become enamoured with both Charles Laughton and Lionel Barrymore's acting skills and the beauty of Claudette Colbert. Here though for the first time is Bette Davis, the main thing I know about her is that are eyes are somewhat worthy of a song, and to be fair they are quite startling. In 1939 the film Jezebel was nominated for Best Picture but it lost to You Can't Take It With You. However it also saw Davis win back-to-back Best Actress statuettes, her first win was for the film Dangerous which wasn't nominated for Best Picture so won't be watched by me in the near future. In Jezebel she plays Julie a strong-willed Southern Belle living in New Orleans who is to be married to Henry Fonda's banker Pres. Julie likes to be different riding around on a horse that Pres doesn't want her to and wearing red to a ball that she should wear white to. The scene at the ball is very effective indeed as Pres forces Julie to dance in the dress and we can see how uncomfortable she feels. Pres and Julie seperate and he goes up North returning a year later with a new wife. Julie then tries to egg on new admirer Buck to quarrel with Pres but he has to leave to help his Doctor friend deal with the outbreak of yellow fever and Pres' brother ends up duelling with Buck and fatally shooting him. Pres eventually has to go to an island when he himself is diagnosed with yellow fever and Julie convinces Pres' wife that it should be Julie that goes with him and not her. The end of the film sees Pres and Julie leaving for what is essentialy a leper colony.
Davis more than justifies her Best Actress win in this picture playing a character that no man dare get involved with. From the minute she rides in on her horse we know that she means trouble and she is a free-thinking woman especially for the time the film is set (1850). She owns every scene she's in and even makes Henry Fonda look inferior which is a hard task. By the end of the film you wonder why anyone would want Julie as one of her men is shot dead and the other is on his death bed. Apart from Davis' performance the most striking thing about Jezebel is the score which is always seems to imply some kind of danger or some scheming of Julie's. The supporting cast are all adequate but there is no standout this is almost a one woman show and a very effecting film however I think audiences at the time preferred the light-hearted You Can't Take It With You to this very dark and ultimately depressing tale, another great character study from William Wyler.
So we're going right back to the second Oscars ceremony and the first held in 1930. The Best Picture was won by The Broadway Melody, a film I am yet to watch, but the most historic film in that list has to be In Old Arizona. The film was the first ever Western to be filmed using sound or as it says in the picture 100% all-tallking and also the first ever sound film to use exterior locations. As it was concentrated on the production you can imagine the plot wasn't up to much. It basically deals with The Cisco Kid and Mickey Dunn, the man who's mission it was to track The Kid down and bring him to justice. The whole thing was complicated, or as complicated as it gets in this film, when The Kid's girl Tonia Maria gets involved. Tonia is in love with The Kid mainly because he brings her nice things from his hijacking escapades but when Dunn offers her a split of the reward he will get from bringing The Kid in she decides to side with and romance him as well. As she is the most manipulative character in the piece it is her, and not one of the two men, who gets shot and killed at the end.
Although the film didn't win Best Picture, or cinematography, direction and writing, it did pick up a Best Actor Oscar. Warner Baxter became only the second recipient of the award for his portrayal of The Kid and I have to say he deserved it. I'm guessing Baxter was a star of the silent era judging from his over-enthusastic body movements but he bought a likeable side to a character who is essentially the villain of the piece and who was almost more likeable than the hero, Dunn. While The Cisco Kid is charming and principled all the other characters are a little more brusque and manipulative. I'm guessing the moral of the tale is that we shouldn't always judge a person on their crimes but what they are like as a person. Or maybe I'm just reading a bit too much into it.
Its been a while since I've watched a winner and the Mutiny on The Bounty DVD has been lingering on the side since it was delivered from LoveFilm several weeks ago. Mutiny on The Bounty one the Best Picture Award at the 1936 ceremony beating off competition from films I've watched already including a Midsummer's Nights Dream, Captain Blood, Ruggles of Red Gap and Top Hat. Another film that I've already watched, The Informer, was nominated alongside Mutiny on The Bounty and was the big winner that year. In fact Victor McLaglen won Best Actor over three actors in Mutiny on The Bounty - Charles Laughton, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone. Having previously bigged up McLaglen's performance I'm now not entirely convinced that he deserved the award mainly because Charles Laughton's performance as the monsterous Captain Bligh was completely mesmerising. If the award for Best Supporting Actor was around then (it didn't come in till the year after) I think Laughton would've fit that role better. As you can probably guess from the title the plot revolves around the ship The Bounty and the mutiny that eventually occurs on it. That is mainly due to the way that Bligh tortures the sailors under his command and eventually Clark Gable's Officer Fletcher Christian decides enough is enough and sets Bligh adrift with a number of his supporters. Meanwhile Franchot Tone plays the man in the middle who is forced into mutiny and goes back to England to face his penalties at the end of the film.
For me the film was at its best in the scens on the ship with Laughton lashing the disobedient sailors and depriving them of food. He was absolutely brilliant in the role and I feel the film lags when he's not in it. Most of these scenes are off the ship in 'Tahiti' where both Christian and Tone's Byam fall in love with local girls. I found a lot of the portrayal of the natives insulting and their native ways were sneered upon. It is Tone rather than Gable who is the dashing male lead and is the more reasonable of the three men, meanwhile Gable gets to play the rebel and probably changes the most throughout the film. While The Informer was the big movie at that year's Oscars, the grand scale of Mutiny on The Bounty obviously shined over the gloomy 'Irish' scenery in John Ford's film. I certainly think this film was better but I don't know if I want to watch it again, however I have to watch the remake which was also nominated for the Oscar in the 1970s.
In the main Best Picture category it is very rare that a film that is completely in another lanuage, features in it. This is especially true since the academy intorduced the Best Picture not in the English Language award in the late 1940s. However from time to time there is a Cries and Whispers or a Crouching,Tigerr, Hidden Dragon that make it in and the first to do just this was Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion making the list in the 1939 category which was won by You Can't Take It With You. I am a little familiar with Renoir's work having studied early French cinema but I'd never seen this film. It concerns what life was like for French Prisoners-of-War during the First World War Jean Gabin's Marechal and Pierre Frenay's de Boeldieu both of whom get captured and along with other former officers plan to escape. The first half of the film sees the escape attempt foiled as they are moved to another POW camp which is claimed to be an unpenterable fortress. De Boldieu, Marechal and a third Rosenthal all plan an escape but De Boldieu decides to be the decoy and ends up getting shot by the remorseful German Captain. The final part of the film careers off and sees Marechal and Rosenthal's attempted escape which sees them living with a widowed farm-mistress and Marechal starts to fall for her. The end of the film sees the two men escaping into Switzerland as the Germans decide not to shoot them as they are no longer in Germany.
There's no denying that Renoir is a masterful director and every frame is artfully put together, the scenes which show the horrors of the camp are certainly the stand-out. However I found at times that the narrative was comprised in favour of the films aestethics. Parts of the film were the POWS were plotting early on were long and meandering and the romantic plot between Marechal and the Germa woman dragged towards its final stages. However these are minor niggles and overall the film was absolutely brilliant the acting was particularly masterful while Gabin was a standout Erich Von Stroheim as the German Captain was absolutely terrifying. Von Stroheim is probably most famous for his role as Max in Sunset Boulevard but he was just as captivating in this yet I'm guessing Oscar couldn't look past the subtitles. I'm surprised this was nominated to start off with so I don't think it had a chance of winning. But it obviously proves that Oscar was starting to become forward thinking at the end of its first decade.
A third Maurice Chevalier film and the earliest one to feature in the Best Picture category. It also saw Chevalier pick up a Best Actor nomination. Chevalier is directed by long time collaborator Ernst Lubitch, who also picked up a Best Director Oscar nomination, as well as Jeanette MacDonald his leading lady in One Hour With You. The plot, if there really is one, sees Cheavlier's Parisian count being exiled to a fictional country and start a relationship with MacDonald's Queen Louise. For some reason Maruice Cheavlier is irrestible to any woman and they are soon married, but hilariously Chevalier then has to be an obedient husband, he soon realises that as prince consort he has no power and it is the Queen who makes all the decisions. This gender role reversal is the main basis of the second half of the film as Maurice becomes more and more disenchanted with the whole marriage as he feels it belittles his masculinity to have to run everything past his wife. However, Maurice is cleverer than he seems and his able to sort out all of Louise's financial wows and come up with a whole budget for the country, which is odd seeing as most of the time he is singing he doesn't seem to have a lot of time to do any maths. The end of the film sees Louise come around and let Maurice do whatever he wants which seems to be a lot more singing.
I think when sound first came into cinema people were impressed by just about everything but by today's standards these Maurice Chevalier films seem incredibly dated. Saying that The Love Parade has some good set pieces and is a lot more solidly directed than the other Chevalier films that I watched (which were made after this). The film has some brilliant set pieces and was rightfully nominated some technical awards for cinematography, sound recording and art direction. The plot maybe flimsy, the songs may drive you crazy but there's no denying that some of the musical numbers are well choreographed and well shot.
And we're into the 30th day of the challenge with the film that garnered the most nominations at the 1937 ceremony, Dodsworth. I actually had never heard of this film before but it is one of the best rated films of the 1930s on imdb and also has a higher rating than that year's winner - The Great Ziegfeld. While Ziegfeld is a sprawling epic chronicling thirty years of one man trying to survive the changing face of the entertainment industry, Dodsworth is a much more personal piece about one man trying to rediscover himself following early retirement and losing his wife. In terms of Oscar history this was also a landmark film as it gave William Wyler, the most nominated director in Oscar history, his first nod. Wyler would later go onto direct three Best Picture Winners but arguably Dodsworth should've won as well. Walter Huston, nominated for Best Actor, played Sam Dodsworth an industrialist who made his fortune in motors but is convinced by his wife Fran not to take a promotion and instead travel around Europe with her. Once on their travels Dodsworth tries to become a new man learning the languages and getting excited by seeeing new sights. But early one we learn that Fran has ideas above her station and starts to become bored with Sam instead finding solace in a number of men including Capt. Lockheart (an early role for David Niven) and a man named Arnold. Her relationship with Arnold makes her seperate with Sam for a time as he goes back to America and she is forced to finish her relationship with Arnold when her and Sam become grandparents. Sam and Fran are briefly reunited but Fran falls in love again this time with a German nobleman and makes plans to divorce Sam. Sam has to stay in Europe to finalise his divorce and ends up in Italy where he encounters Edith who he and Fran met while travelling to Europe. When Fran's new marriage falls through she tries to reconcile with Sam but Sam decides that Fran isn't the woman for him and he would be much happier with the uncomplicated Edith and the last reel of the film sees them together in Italy.
Dodsworth is a multi-layered film, well-written and often subtely acted film it doesn't feature melodrama or big musical numbers or massive set pieces, instead it is a character study about a very simple man and a woman who is worried about getting old and just wanting to have fun elsewhere. The relationship between Sam and Fran is never quite concrete but it is clear he is more in love with her than she is with him, she mainly loves his money and what it can do for her. In my opinion Walter Huston's performance is what holds the film together and he was a lot more deserving of a Best Actor Oscar than Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur other performances that are noteable are that of former silent movie star Mary Astor, in her first major sound role as the divorcee Edith, her first scene in which she meets Sam for the first time is absolutely brilliant and also Maria Ouspenskaya as Fran's perspective mother-in-law the almost monsterous Baroness Von Obersdorf a role that got her a nomination in the first ever Best Supporting Actress category, although I believe Astor should've been in there as well. The film did win one award, Best Art Direction, but deserved so much more. Although Wyler would go onto find larger success directing such classics as Roman Holiday and Ben Hur, Dodsworth has to be put in that category as it is truly a great film.
In today's world that has lost its innocence if a film was released today called 100 Men and a Girl and the poster says of its leading lady, 'she thrills you again', you'd immediately think that it was a dodgy top shelf release. Although in the more innocent times of the mid-1930s, 100 Men and a Girl was another film in the cannon of Deanna Durbin who I previously became aware of when I watched Three Smart Girls. As Durbin had a constant stream of films released I'm guessing most of them had a similar theme in which adults got in trouble and Durbin saved the day. In Three Smart Girls she had help from her on-screen sisters here she is all on her own. The film sees Durbin's Patricia help out her father, an out-of-work trombonist by helping to organise an orchestra for unemployed musicians with the help of a rich old lady named Mrs. Frost. However, the day the orchestra is about to begin Mrs. Frost goes away and it is Mr. Frost, who is unaware of the situation, who Patricia turns to but he turns her away thinking that it is also some kind of pratical joke set-up by one of his rich friends. The film has many cases of mistaken identity and Patricia generally saving the day eventually getting famous conductor Leopold Stowtski (playing himself) to postpone a European tour so Mr. Frost will be appeased and the orchestra can go on. So Durbin saves the day and everybody is happy
Just as with Three Smart Girls, there are several opportunities for Durbin to break out into song and because this film is all about music she sings quite a fair bit. There's no denying that Durbin has a fine pair of lungs on her but it just seems that it splits up the narrative structure a little bit. There is also a taxi driver who keeps popping up throughout the film and just keeps driving Patricia around and singing to himself. Although I wasn't much for Three Smart Girls I at least found it bearable but 100 Men and A Girl is shorter and has less of a plot. But for some reason it was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture. The others were for Editing and script (both underseved) and. for a film all about music, it was nominated for sound recording and won best score for Charles Previn a composer who had almost 400 credits to his name between 1936 and 1966. I also wasn't aware at the time I watched the film, that Stowtski was actually a composer and famously conducted most of the music in Disney's Fantasia. Durbin was one of those stars who stopped working after her childhood was behind her, so thankfully I won't have to watch any more of her singing and generally saving the day.
In 1934, Charles Laughton won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Private Life of Henry VIII which cemented his career and made him a big name in Hollywood. Fast forward two years and Laughton stars in two films both nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. One was eventual winner Mutiny on The Bounty which got him a Best Actor Nomination, the other was culture clash comedy Ruggles of Red Gap, a film that gives us very old school humour and presents us with several sterotypes in order to give us the desired comic effect. Laughton plays Ruggles, a man servant to an English lord who is lost in a card game to a ghastly American couple who have come into money and have ideas above their station. While the wife wants their money to improve their lifestyle, the husband would rather stay grounded and be a rich cowboy wearing completely checked suits and sporting a giant moustache. The first half of the film takes place in Paris in which Ruggles is encouraged to relax by the husband and he gets him to start drinking which doesn't sit well. Ruggles is certainly taken back to Red Gap in Washington where he meets the wife's brother-in-law who also has aspirations above his station. While the wife and brother-in-law expect Ruggles to stay true to his manservant roots the rest of the population of Red Gap are quite happy for him to become a new man. The comedy takes an unexpected turn when Ruggles falls for a local girl and also gets mistaken for an English colonel an event which leads to him being sacked by the brother-in-law. Ruggles then finally finds himself becoming more independent and, in probably the film's finest scene, is the only one in a bar full of Americans to be able to remember Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Adress. This inspires him to open his own restaurant and at the end he is congratulated by his old boss for making a success of his life.
Ruggles of Red Gap is a very simple film and one that would never be nominated for an Oscar today although the high standard of the acting puts it ahead of any modern culture clash comedies. The Americans are either a little bit stupid or a little bit stuck-up, the French are all very randy and the British are incredibly reserved. Laughton's performance is brilliant and his transformation from obedient manservant to someone who is able to embrace Red Gap as his new home is just fantastic. Mary Boland and Charles Ruggles are also very good as the tiresome Floods, Boland especially excels as the nouveau-riche monster. Overall very enjoyable and charming comedy but one, it seems, that was used to bump the Best Pictue category up to ten as it was not nominated for any other awards.
ck is pulled back into action after an old friend of his disappears. His old friend Claude Wynant is the Thin Man of the series but he didn't really strike me as terribly thin. At the same time Claude's girlfriend and personal secretary is killed, possibly by him for taking money that didn't belong to her, so Nick has two cases to solve. Then follows a lot of scenes with Nick interviewing low lives, comic gangsters and almost being killed himself. The final scene sees Nick and Nora host a dinner party with all the suspects present before Nick reveals the culprit. This plot device has been used over and over again in Agatha Christie novels so its seems a bit passe here.
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