Two more LoveFilm DVDS for today one a Best Picture Nominee from the 1932 ceremony and the other from the 1939 ceremony.
As we know Grand Hotel won the Best Picture prize at the 1932 ceremony, this was a film about a seemingly disparate group of people all connected by their surroundings, Shanghai Express. The surroundings are that of the Shanghai Express train which is travelling from Beiping to Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War. The passengers include an elderly English boarding house keeper, a missionary, an opium dealer, a gambler and a French soldier. Also on board is British war hero Doc Harvey who encounters his old girlfriend Magdalen who has now become a courtesan known as Shanghai Lily. The train is soon stopped by government soldiers who arrest a man and then by rebels loyal to fellow passenger Chang who turns out to be a powerful Chinese Warlord and uses Harvey as a hostage to exchange with the kidnapped passenger who is one of Chang's men. Just as Harvey is about to be blinded by Chang he is killed by Lily's courtesan companion and at the end Lily and Harvey are united. The film is impressively shot for a 1931 picture, the material is quite frank and honest about what the courtesans do for a living and it also looks at the issue of religion in terms of sex and love. I found it a very powerful picture and it also depicted the Chinese Civil War in a unique way by involving a group of outsiders in the conflict. This is also the first film on the list that features Marlene Dietrich and, as Lily, she holds the screen whenever she features while Clive Brook is a more than adequate male lead as Harvey. Thankfully the film did win cinematography and was also nominated for direction as well as picture. I don't think it was as tightly plotted and accomplished as Grand Hotel but it certainly more than deserved its place on the Best Picture contender list.
In the 1960s My Fair Lady won the award for Best Picture, this was around a time when musicals dominated the Best Picture category but the story on which the film was based, Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, was first nominated for Best Picture in the 1930s. This version starred Wendy Hiller as the eponymous heroine - Eliza Dolittle and Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins. Most are aware of the story, Higgins bets fellow dialect expert Colonel Pickering that he can pass Dolittle off as a lady at a society ball and in the meantime they start to fall for each other. Having seen My Fair Lady I thought both of the leads were charming and portrayed the story fairly favourably. However I found this first version fairly jarring and most of the reason for this can lie at the feet of Howard whose Henry Higgins seemed to be overly harsh and instead of stern and bookish he came off as quite monstrous . I previously watched Howard in Romeo and Juliet and wasn't impressed by him there and that perception didn't change with Pygmalion despite this he was nominated for Best Actor. In its defence I thought Hillier, a Best Actress nominee, was fairly likeable and portrayed Eliza fairly well while the film was also shot and plotted fairly well and was rewarded with the Best Adapted Screenplay award. A fairly decent film this does seem fairly dated when compared with its fellow nominees like The Adventures of Robin Hood and La Grand Illusion.
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