Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Fifteen: It's all a bit Mental

A while ago I did a course about the use of instutions, such as prisons and hospitals, in films which focused mainly on mental hospitals. One film that didn't feature was The Snake Pit which was nominated at the 1949 ceremony featuring a top notch performance by Olivia De Havilland. We are plunged straight into the action as De Havilland's Virginia wonders about her surroundings and what she's doing in what she believes in a prison. It turns out that Virginia has been commited into a mental instution and her story is told in flashback firstly by her husband Robert and then by Virginia herself. We find out about how Robert and Virginia met and then about Virginia's past engagement and her relationship with her parents. These flashbacks are transposed by Virginia's journey through the mental instution at different times she is in the most extreme ward and at other times she is in the low security ward with its strict nursing. Again we are never given all the information and don't often find why Viriginia is shifted around to various cells although we can usually guess due to watch leads up to it. All the time you are wondering about the other characters most notably Dr. Kik, Virginia's original doctor who at some times is asked not to treat her hinting at something darker in his past. Overall Virginia seemingly recovers but there is still something lurking in the background that you're not 100% sure.

Most of what works about The Snake Pit can be attributed to Olivia de Havilland who is absolutely brilliant in this film. Virginia is paranoid at some points, normal at others and she guides as through all the gaps in between and really makes us relate to her plight. De Havilland was nominated for Best Actress but lost out to the brilliant Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda. De Havilland had previously put in a great performance in Hold Back the Dawn but this was much better however it would only be a year in which she triumphed in the same category. The story is also fairly clever cutting between time periods and different wards in the insitution, Virginia's realistaion and ultimate conclusion are both fairly neat and I felt the need for a neat wrap up after an interesting and thought-provoking film. The male characters also don't get a good rap although Robert seems nice enough and Dr Kik is seemingly a nice guy there's always the sense that they are manipulating Virginia. But overall this was a fantastic film that I'd never previously heard of but I'm so glad that I've seen and it would certainly suit the nature of the course I was on very well.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Fourteen: Sail Away

The 1940s era are an odd mix of films it seems that going into the future we'll have a lot of big budget musicals that have won or have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. But back at the 1946 ceremony Hollywood was still in its infacy there were a few musicals around but on the whole they weren't as grandiose as they'd become in the next couple of decades. However that's not true of our next nominee - Anchors Aweigh which features two of the best song and dance men of all time in Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. The scant plot sees Kelly and Sinatra's two able seamen get granted four days leave from their naval duties and go off to Hollywood. Kelly's Joe wants to see his girl Lola but at the same time wants to help Sinatra's Clarence find love. Together they find a lost boy, Donald and when Clarence locks eyes on Donald's aunt Susan he falls for her and the pair make up a false appointment with a music producer so they can see her again. However through the course of events it is Joe who falls for Susan meanwhile Clarence meets a girl from his hometown of Brooklyn and starts to fall for her. As you can imagine there are lots of misunderstood glances, big musical numbers along the way and everything sort of working itself out by the final number.

I had already heard of Anchors Aweigh as it is the film that includes the iconic scene in which Gene Kelly dances with Jerry of Tom and Jerry fame. The reason why he does this still really didn't become apparent on watching the film however it seemd to be some sort of fantasy sequence that Joe was making up to impress a class of kids. Obviously I recognised the films titular track and the song 'I Know Susie' was also familiar but the film is packed with songs which in my opinion outweigh the plot and I found myself almost predicting when the next song would come along from the lines that were being spoken. Gene Kelly sort of holds the film together at the time Sinatra was still a nervous screen presence and Clarence doesn't really have a lot of oomph to him and Kathryn Grayson and Pamela Britton's love interests are both fairly thinly drawn and are just there to sing and fall in love with their respective partners. Its quite a jolly film and there's nothing particularly bad about it but personally I need a bit of meat in my musicals and I think I will get that as the Oscar Challenge goes into the next decade.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Thirteen: Moors, Moors, Moors, How do you Like it?

So far we've seen Laurence Olivier as Shakesperian figureheads Henry V and Hamlet as well as the lead in an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and in the next film on the list he plays another literary antihero in Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff. For those unfamiliar with the tale, who unlike me didn't do it as part of their A-Level English Literature course, the story involves a love story on the Yorkshire Moors between Heathcliff a gypsy orphan bought to live at the large establishment of the title and Cathy the daughter of the family he's bought into. However many things come between them including the death of Cathy's father, the hatred towards Heathcliff from Cathy's brother Hindley and Cathy's love of the finer things in life when she meets the nice but dull Edgar Linton of the neighbouring house The Grange who Cathy ends up marrying. Heathcliff goes and returns later on to exact revenge on all that have wronged him by buying Wuthering Heights from a drunken Hindley and marrying Edgar's sister Isabella to get back at both Edgar and Cathy. However the book and film differ from there on out, in Emily Bronte's novel there is whole other section involving the children of Hindley, Heathcliff and Cathy but the film ends abruptly with Cathy's death and Heathcliff haunted by Kathy's ghost. The whole story is narrated by Wuthering Heights housekeeper Nelly to The Grange's new occupant Mr. Lockwood but I found that the voiceover technique was lacking and Nelly's voice was often drowned out by the score or by other character's voices. The film ends, not with the uniting between Cathy and Hindley's children, but with the ghosts of Cathy and Heathcliff walking off hand in hand together. In fact it wasn't Olivier or Merle Oberon who played Cathy in this scene as both had moved on to other projects so body doubles had to be used in this final scene.

And this wasn't the only thing that went wrong with the film as nobody seemed to get on. Producer Samuel Goldwyn wanted the final scene while director William Wyler thought it would seem a bit tacky this is why the body doubles had to be used. Goldwyn claimed that this was his project and Wyler was simply the director however Wyler didn't really seem to get on with his cast. Wyler and Olivier constantly clashed because Wyler wanted Olivier to retake scenes again and again while Olivier and Oberon didn't get on either especially during their love scenes together as Olivier wanted his new love Vivien Leigh to star alongside him. Goldwyn hoped that this would be the vehicle to launch the then unknown Oberon but at that year's Oscars it was Leigh who would win Best Actress for Gone with the Wind while Oberon didn't even get a nomination. Personally I thought the best scenes in the film were the ones in which Cathy and Heathcliff clash as you can actually see the hatred between Oberon and Olivier in these scenes. Like in Hamlet, I felt Olivier was miscast here I just didn't feel the pain that Heathcliff is meant to have over never probably having Cathy. My two favourite performances came from Flora Robson as Nelly and again from David Niven as the put upon Edgar. As someone who knows the story fairly well I think I was put off by the fact that there were so many omissions in this film that it was disturbing to see the book dealt with in this way. I just hope that the people who watch this actually read the book as well or they may well think that Wuthering Heights as a happy ending, which Spoiler Alert: it doesn't.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Twelve: Heaven is Missing an Angel

I remember when I was still at school and pulling a sicky I was allowed to rent a couple of videos from the local shop and one I chose was The Preacher's Wife starring Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington. As a 12 year old I didn't really get it and of course at the time I wasn't aware that it was a remake of a film nominated at the 1948 Oscars starring Cary Grant and David Niven. The Bishop's Wife tells the story of Henry Brougham a Bishop with a lot of things on his mind. He needs money to renovate the cathedral, he fears he is losing his parishoners and he is worried that his wife and child no longer love him. Loretta Young's Julia the titular wife is also having problems and seems to look glum wherever she goes. So Henry prays for divine intervention and gets it in the form of Dudley the Angel played by Cary Grant. Dudley is a hit with all around him, he convinces the wealthy Mrs. Hamilton to donate the cathedral funds to the poor, he gets the aethist Professor Wutherington to open up about how he lost his faith and he also puts a smile on Julia's face but he gets a bit too close to her for comfort. The only person who isn't happy when Dudley is around is Henry who feels that Dudley is trying to outplay him and trying to steal his wife and child from him. Obviously everybody learns lessons before the film ends and the film does tackle some interesting themes about faith, love and how much we take life for granted sometimes. The end of the film sees Henry and his family reunited with Dudley wiping all the memories of him away before leaving.

For me the one fatal flaw of The Bishop's Wife was that I really didn't sympathise or like Cary Grant's Dudley. I found at times he was abusing his positon for his own good at one point stopping Henry from attending a carol concert with his wife and then taking her skating. Although he does end up putting things right I just did find him a little bit slimy for an angel and someone who had too much charm. David Niven was first choice to play the angel but when Grant came on board he was the bigger star so got his choice of roles and demanded to play Dudley. However that plays to Niven's advantage as I felt sympathy towards Henry and his lot in life trying to juggle family with the ferociuos women of the parish. I found one scene between him and the always excellent Monty Wooley's Professor Wutherington to be fairly compelling where they talk about outer world beings and what they need to be happy in fact if one character changes the most for me it was Wutherington. Overall the ensemble cast, with the exception of Grant, probably make the film what it is with Young also doing what is needed of her which is mainly smiling and looking beautiful. It is nice to look at as well seeing the city all done up for Christmas but the finish is almost too neat as Dudley heads off once again. I really can't cast my mind back that far to remember if Whitney and Denzel did a better job but I can't imagine they did, they certainly didn't get an Oscar nomination that's for sure.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Eleven: One for the Kids

There are some films on this list that I read the plot of and I instantly want to watch others I have to force myself and Blossoms in the Dust does definitely fall into the latter category. The film is based around the true story of Greer Garson's Edna and how she overcomes tragedy after tragedy to set up a succesful home for orphans until they are rehoused into loving families. The story starts with Edna due to be married to the boorish Damon only for Walter Pidgeon's bank clerk Sam to whisk her off her feet. Meanwhile Edna's adopted sister Charlotte is due to marry her fiancee Allen but is stopped when it turns out that Charlotte was adopted by Edna's parents. Unable to marry the man of her dreams Charlotte commits suicide but that's not the end of Edna's worrries. She barely survives giving birth to her daughter only for that daughter to wind up dying about five years later on. After finding out she can no longer have children Edna and Walter set up a home for rehousing orphans which is shut down after Edna upsets one of the more important ladies of the town and the couple up roots and move. Soon Walter takes ill and dies leaving Edna to fight her own battles including one with a lowlife man who wants to get some money from the wealthy couple who adopted his son and Edna also battles to remove the stigma from those children who get adopted so they can live a normal life and not end up like Charlotte. The film ends with Edna succesful in her quest but still feeling lonely in life unable to form attachments to any of the children as she knows she won't be around all their lives. Her only constant throughout the film is Max, a doctor who befriends the couple and who is Edna's confedent after Sam dies.

There's really only so much one woman can go through and blimey did Edna go through it all - the death of her friend, her child and her husband not to mention not being able to have children again and being chased out of town. This was one hell of a woman and its nice for her to be recognised but at the same time I feel like the film was just too overly melodramatic for my liking. I do like Greer Garson as an actress, especially in Random Harvest a film she was not Oscar nominated for, but here she fights an uphill battle portraying a character who demands sympathy in every scene and can't seem to catch a break. Walter Pidgeon is fine as the charming caddish Sam but once he starts to get ill he also turns into a bit of wimp and starts talking in wistful terms. In fact my favourite characters in the film were Max the doctor and Zeke the couple's loveable servant who follows them all over the country. Unfortunately if this were released today I still reckon it would get its Oscar nomination because its one of those dreary heartfelt dramas that Oscar love to acknowledge.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Ten: Canadian Hideout

Of all the films they worked on together only two of the works from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were nominated for an Oscar. The first, which I watched much earlier, was the classic The Red Shoes which has come to the forefront of the public knowledge after the recent release of Black Swan. However the second film is the lesser known 49th Parallel, a film that Powell made to try and convince the USA to join the war. 49th Parallel sees a German U-Boat crash on the Canadian shore and tracks the adventures of the six Nazi officers as they try to traverse the land and find a way back home. On the way they come across various stereotypical Canadian characters including a French Canadian trapper bizzarley depicted by Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard's reclusive British intellectual and Raymond Massey's soldier who has gone AWOL and in the film's final scene stops Eric Portman's Hirth, the leader of the group, from entering the partisan USA and they both travel back towards Canada where Hirth will be arrested. There also a very long scene in a commune with East German farmers who are pacifistic and live together as a family. The Nazi gang don't understand how they don't have a leader or a secret handshake and instead live in harmony without having strict rules. One of their number even decides to stay only to be found guilty of desertion and killed by his so-called friends.

I'd never thought I'd compare a Powell and Pressburger film to an episode of South Park but that's before I'd seen 49th Parralel a film which resembles 'Christmas in Canada' where the four boys travel round Canada trying to find Kyle's brother Ike and during that time they run into a French Canadian, a mountie and a New Foundlander. All of these can be found in this film as can the Scottish Hudson Bayer played by Whisky Galore narrator Finlay Currie who enjoys playing chess over the radio. There are plenty of stereotypes in this film for example having Olivier playing a French Canadian was a mistake and I think the classical Brit actors who play the Nazis were a little too over the top. But it also an interesting film that Powell and Pressberger spent a lot of time working on and thinking about the motivations of the Nazi party. Having the Nazis as the main characters is almost a reverse road movie as they drop off one by one, some dying and others being handed into the police. But notably none of them are credited on the poster instead it is Olivier, Massey and Howard who have been given the lead roles of the three Howard impressed me the most as the character who outwits the Nazis who believe they have a superior intellect. I feel this may've been hailed as a classic if it had got the casting a bit better but as it is it feels a bit dated unlike some of the other P and P works  such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death, neither of which were nominated which is a great shame.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Nine: Nun of Your Business

If you ever find yourself in a tie-break at a quiz and the question is what is the first ever film sequel to be nominated for an Oscar, I have the answer - The Bells of St. Mary's. Never heard of it? Well it is the sequel to Going My Way, the winning film at the 1945 Oscar ceremony. A year later we meet Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley continuing improving the church system by moving to a flagging catholic school run by a bunch of nuns which is in dire need of repair. O'Malley clashes with the unrealistic views of the nuns who hope to convince local business owner Mr. Borgadus to give them the new complex he is building to house the school. O'Malley's unconvential techniques also incur the wrath of the lead nun Sister Mary Benedict convincingly portrayed by Ingrid Bergman. We also follow the story of Patsy Gallagher whose daughter appeals to the Father to allow her to start the school as she doesn't know what to do with her. Obviously Patsy reforms her way and starts to improve her grades but Mary and O'Malley clash again when she fails her final exam and can't graduate. The ending involving Mary Benedict's removal from the nunnery is odd as it is really neither happy or sad but maybe the message just is that life goes on. Although they did succeed in moving St. Mary's after appealing to the good nature of Borgadus who was suffering from various illnesses and the next year would become an iconic figure as Clarence the Angel in It's a Wonderful Life.

Back to the Bell's of St. Mary's a sequel to a film that I felt did not deserve to win the Best Picture Oscar over the tremendous Double Indemnity. But St. Mary's is only a sequel in the fact that it continues the adventures of the same characters, it doesn't really reference O'Malley's work in Going My Way and instead presents this as an entirely new story. Although it is very similar, Bing Crosby arrives at a Catholic instution the locals are suspicious but then won round and he ends up getting what he wants. After winning a Best Actor Oscar the year before, Crosby's performance really hasn't changed but that really doesn't matter. As an actor Crosby can instantly put me at ease as his style is very relaxed and that works well for the character. Ingrid Bergman was also nominated after a win for Gaslight the year previous, her sister Mary Benedict could be a cliched stuck-up character but she can go toe-to-toe with Bing and they spark off each other with their very asexual chemistry. The film does suffer from being very overlong and also there are entire sequences that I felt could've been cut out but it is decent entertainment and if you like a good nun-based film you could do a lot worse.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Eight: Go to Hell?

Going into the future films in 1978 there is a film called Heaven Can Wait starring Warren Beatty which is a remake of a nominated film from the 1940s. Confusingly it isn't my next film, Heaven Can Wait, instead it is Here Comes Mr. Jordan which I am yet to watch. This version of Heaven Can Wait sees Don Ameche as wealthy Henry Van Cleve a man who has recently passed away and has come to the 'down below', we're assuming it is hell and that Laird Creagar's character simply referred to as 'His Excellency' is Satan. Creagar doesn't believe that Van Cleve should be there so Van Cleve narrates his life story to 'His Excellency'. At first we the audience believe him to be a rogue, or a cad or a bounder from a young age he is corrupted by his young French governess Mademoiselle and given wine. He then steals the fiancee of his boorish cousin and elopes with her before cheating on her towards their tenth anniversary. But then things turn around and Van Cleve becomes both a loving husband and a good father, at one point trying to pay off the woman who is out to ruin his son's reputation. He loses his wife on the eve of their 25th anniversary and although he is swayed briefly by other women he never gives up loving her. It turns out the reason he doesn't think he belongs upstairs is that he doesn't want to run into his wife and other relatives as he thinks he's let them down therefore truly becoming a good person. 'His Excellency' points out that it won't be easy and he may have to stay on the outskirts in a small apartment but one day Van Cleve will be allowed entry.

Heaven Can Wait had a very promising start with Van Cleve's meeting with 'His Excellency' and his subsquent retelling of his adolesence. 'His Excellency's' office is very well designed almost in an advant garde style and the first scene does promise almost a black comedy. But then after the Van Cleve character starts becoming a good person things start to lag and the whole segment after he loses his wife is very boring indeed. Despite that there are some good performances notably from Charles Coburn as Van Cleve's Grandfather the only person in his family with any sense, Alyn Joslyn as the horrible cousin and Ameche himself. It is also a very clever story a reversal of the pleading with St. Peter to be let into heaven by trying to convince satan why you belong in hell. But overall I felt a little bit deflated and that the film didn't have enough faith in its darkly comic premise to follow through. Maybe this is the sort of film that could be remade, but then would the title have to be changed to avoid confusion?

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Seven: Not Watching this for my GCSE Coursework

So if you've been following this haphazard adventure up to this point you do know that I have being using a YouTube channel to watch some of these films and one of my guilty pleasures is reading the comments that othrs have left under the video. Before starting the viewing of the latest film, the adaptation of Of Mice and Men that was nominated at the 1940 ceremony, I read the comments most of them seemed to be from teenagers copping out from reading the book and watching this movie instead but from what I could garner this adaptation was rather tame and left out some of the more risque elements of the text. I have to say I have heard of the book and was aware of some elements of the plot but have never seen the story told in any form up to this point. For those of you like me that aren't aware of the plot it sees two friends - the smart and quick-witted George and the somewhat slow and bulking Lenny, go to work on a ranch in Southwest California after being chased out of their previous town thanks to an incident involving Lenny (something that is never fully explained in the film but in the book he has been accused of rape after stroking a girl's hair). George keeps Lenny happy by reciting the story of the ranch that they're going to own together one day in which Lenny can keep an eye on their rabbits and this dream almost becomes a reality when fellow ranch hand  Candy agrees to pitch in some money to help with the project. However Lenny gets them in trouble once again first by punching the boss' son Curly and then for accidentally killing Curly's wife while trying to stroke her hair. I won't spoil the ending but it things don't end well for the twosome and lets just say their dream never quite becomes a reality.

Of Mice and Men is a strange one to review as in the back of my mind I can see it more as a text than a film even though I've never read it and maybe that's because I've been influenced by those YouTube commenters. The story really never sags and there is some good interplay between the ranchands with moments of joy juxtaposed with some really sad moments including one with Candy's dog. Of the acting Lon Chaney Jr. does a magnificent job with Lenny coming across a simple man who is picked upon because of his size and his lack of brain power. A pre-Batman pre-Rocky Burgess Meredith gives George a sympathetic edge and a very real quality to him as well and Betty Field as Curly's wife Mae plays the vampy bitch with an air of style. But this is very much a re-telling of a story, there isn't much to say in terms of camera-work or sets which are fairly basic. I wasn't particularly moved by the ending but still thought there was some solid storyteling within the film overall a decent literary adpatation but not really a film that left a major impression on me.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Six: This Town is Our Town it is so Glamourous

After the Human Comedy set in the small town of Ithaca we return to small town life on the Oscar Challenge with Sam Wood's 1940 adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town set in Grover's Corner, New Hampshire. In the early 1940s it seems that adapting plays to the screen still meant almost a scene for scene reconstruction of how they first played in the theatre. Like on the stage Our Town begins with the character of Stage Manager, here played by Frank Craven, who adresses the audience directly and introduces them to the characters and day-to-day activities in the small town. The film concentrates on two families - the Gibbs and the Webbs and in particular their two eldest children George Gibbs and Emily Webb played by William Holden and Martha Scott. You can kind of sense the film was a play to begin with as it seems to be devided into three acts the first with George and Emily's schooldays and their first attraction to each other, the second with them getting together properly and getting married and the final with Emily's death during childbirth and her appearing as a ghost looking back at her life. However some changes were made from the play when it became a film most notably is that Emily's death is just a dream in the film, something that didn't happen in Wilder's original work, presumably because Wood wanted the wartime audience to have a happy ending leaving the cinema on a high with Emily's words about really living still ringing in their heads.

Although as I previously stated there are some issues over the adaptation of the play in that it still feels quite stagy there are some nice touches most of them in the film's final act. Emily's presence as a ghost looking at her funeral is done very well she is shot with a bright light surrounding her wearing only white and as she is taken up to heaven, before waking up, the screen closes in around her so she is in black adressing the audience with her final speech. There are also some good scenes elsewhere the funeral itself with the camera focused on a lot of umbrellas at the grave is a nice touch and the wedding scene is also well done. But there are a few dodgy bits as well a scene at an ice cream parlour goes on far too long and also a scene during a choir rehearsal at a church seems misplaced. In terms of the acting I was surprised that the names that I recognised - Holden, Thomas Mitchell and Fay Bainter, didn't give memorable performances but instead it was Craven's Stage Manager and Scott's Emily who really made an impact during the film and Scott was rightly given a Best Actress nomination for her role losing out to Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle, another film directed by Wood. Overall a quaint adaptation which suffers from filmic limitations but is given life by a great central performance from its lead actress.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Five: More from Charlie and Bill

Next up we have adaptations of two classic works of British literature from two classic British directors. First of all Charles Dickens' Great Expectations directed by David Lean and then Laurence Olivier's adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry V. When writing about any of these films its always tempting to go into plot detail but with works of classic literature it feels like retreading old ground a lot of the time so instead I shall simply discuss the style and acting.

First up then Lean's Great Expecations which goes straight into the story as young Pip first encounters the convict Abel Magwitch and is forced to steel food and a file so that the convict can get away and have something to eat. These scenes between the startled Pip and the terrifying Magwitch are some of the film's best and the way they are shot and edited and the music that accompanies them all adds to the haunting mood and rightfully the film did win the Oscars that year for Art Direction and Cinematography. The Art Direction is also prevalent in the later scenes when Pip is invited to play at the house of Miss Havisham and her ward Estella whom Pip falls in love with. Lean again gets it just right showing this house as a large daunting place full of cobwebs and dust where the clocks are stopped to the time when Miss Havisham was stood up at the altar. About an hour into the film the action switches and Pip is now an adult played by John Mills, it is in these scenes that Pip goes to London to live with Alec Guiness' adorable Herbert Pocket and also romances the grown Estella. For me I felt that Mills was miscast as Pip, I felt that he seemed almost too old to be playing a 21 year old and also didn't really convey the fact that he'd made the transition from blacksmith's mate to gentleman in training. But Mills' performance is the exception rather than the rule as there are some fine performances in the supporting cast from Francis L Sullivan as the beligerant lawyer Mr Jaggers to Bernard Miles as the kindly Mr. Joe and Finlay Curire as the terrifying Magwitch all these roles are played as they should be my only criticism is that I feel that Martita Hunt went a little overboard as Miss Havisham almost making her performance lapse into pantomime. As the final scenes come on and Pip finds out who it was that paid for him to become a gentleman and also of Estella's true parentage the film comes together with the final scenes playing out as they should. Lean abridges the book rightfully chopping out the bits that don't really contribute to the overall narrative and at the end producing a great piece of British cinema which was ahead of its time in many ways and was certainly deserving of the two techinical Oscars that it won.

Similarly Olivier's Henry V was deserving of the Special Oscar it won for Laurence Olivier in his achievement of bringing this unique retelling of one of the Bard's most famous works to the screen, he was honoured as a director, producer and actor and excels in all three. This film was shot in technicolour which, in 1944 when it was being shot, was still quite rare and the way the colour is used in this film also feels ahead of its time creating almost like a seperate world as Henry V and his charges head to France. However the film actually starts as a performance in The Globe theatre as we see the audiences take their seats and Leslie Banks, as the chorus, welcomes us to the performance as the actors deliver the first couple of scenes from the stage before Henry and the English hit the sea to France to fight in the Battle of Agincourt. The Agincourt scenes themselves are spectacular, the exterior shots are obviously done in interior studios but at some times I had to sort of take a double back as they are so realistic but at the same time quite obviously fake. This contrast creates almost a surrealist feel and when two soldiers are surrounded by what is meant to be snow covering the French castle it feels out of the ordinary. Olivier makes a brilliant Henry V and his performance and the film as a whole are a lot better than Hamlet the film that won him the Oscar and took home the same prize. Henry V was seen as a morale-booster for the British army and therefore this techincolour marvel was funded by the British Government and some of Olivier's speeches do have a certain morale-boosting resonance to them. This is getting away from just a filmed version of a Shakespeare play and using the medium of film to try and play around with the audience's expecations. I have to say my favourite parts are when the camera goes backstage to see the actors getting ready before taking the stage again at The Globe. As Henry and Katherine get married at the end of the film we return to the theatre with the audience clapping and I'd like to think that the post-war audience was doing the same thing.

O.K. that's your lot for this little update hopefully be back with more Oscar-ness soon.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Four: Not a Lot of Laughs

Today if you watched a film with the word comedy in it you would expect a laugh out loud romp, not so in 1944 and that year's Best Story Winner - The Human Comedy. The film deals with the adventures of the Macaulay family during World War II primarily focusing on the middle son Homer played by Mickey Rooney. I wasn't so sure about this film because of Rooney's previous performances in the two Spencer Tracey movies I'd seen him in, Captains Courageous and Boys Town, in which he'd either failed to make an impression or he'd gone over the top. However in The Human Comedy, in which he was nominated for Lead Actor, his wide-eyed innocence and over the top spirit were used well in the character of Homer. Despite the war raging and his brother fighting in battle he keeps a bright expression as he helps out his mother and goes to work at the telegram station. His relationship with the two other men he works with, Frank Morgan's Willie Grogan and James Craig's Tom Spangler, form some of the film's better scenes forming almost a surrogate family as the two men take the place of the father Homer has lost and the brother who is away. We also see the older brother, Marcus, at war conversing with a friend Tobey and reminicing about how much he misses his hometown of Ithaca. While the youngest brother Ulyesses is always seemingly getting into mischief but then he only seems to be about four. The whole thing is narrated by the deceased father of the Macauley clan as he looks over to see that his family are alright.

Obviously shot and shown during the war this film would've been seen by people who were missing their loved ones while they were away fighting and it obviously gave them hope. There are some nice little scenes here including Spangler finding love and Rooney gaining the approval of his stern school mistress. However there are also some misteps for one part there is far too much singing and there is also a segment that leasts about ten minutes in which Ulyesses and other boys from the town go to steal some apricots from an apricot tree, I'm sure this is what happened regularly in that neighbourhood but we still really don't need to see a blow by blow account of fruit theft. The end of the film is quite sad, but I suppose that's the point, things never go exactly as we plan them and if this set out to portray an accurate account of what life was like for families in the early 1940s in smalltown America then I think it did a good job and Rooney's performance in the last couple of scenes were deserving of his nomination, the film itself lost out to the far superior Casablanca but I think it was more than deserving of a place in that year's top 10 list.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Three: Bergman Goes Bonkers

So we're back with a few updates from my recent delvings into the archive for the Big Oscar Challenge. Now when you ask most people which film did Ingrid Bergman win her Best Actress Oscar for they would answer Casablanca. However she was not succesful in her quest to be crowned Best Actress that year, Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette triumphed, but one year later she got the prize for the film Gaslight. That film was also nominated for Best Picture and sees Bergman's Paula being sent to Italy following the death of her opera-singing aunt. She returns to the place of the murder years later accompanied by her new husband Gregory Anton. Soon Paula begins to think she is going mad, she hears sounds above her and when she goes out she ends up getting hysterical and mistakenly mislaying items to find them later on. Of course as the audience we know that it is Anton sending her barmy so he can go off and do whatever it is he is doing. Anton also employs a new maid Nancy, an incredibly young and sort of sexy Angela Lansbury, who is very stand offish towards her new mistress and her stuborn nature sends Paula even more nutty. Unbeknowst to Paula help is on its way in the form of Joseph Cotten's Cameron, a policeman who recognises Paula and links her to the crime at the house years before. Cameron enlists the help of Paula's nosy neighbour to try and gain access to the house and also uses junior policeman to try and get information out of Nancy during nightly fumblings. Things come to a head when Anton finds out what Cameron has been trying to do and Paula discovers the truth about her new love. But, I won't spoil it for you if you haven't guessed.

Gaslight builds very strongly with the first half an hour getting the audience member hooked into the mystery surrounding Paula's aunt's death. Paula's meeting with her soon-to-be neighbour Miss Thwaites, played by the glorious Dame May Robson, is both comic and sinister in tone and sets up the central mystery of the film. However once Paula starts to go mad things feel a bit repetivie with Anton, played by the over-the-top Charles Boyer, blatantly making her feel more ill at ease than she alreay is. The best parts of the film's second half mainly come from Lansbury, nominated here for Best Supporting Actress, her turn as the young, flirty and obstinant Nancy are very fun to watch. Joseph Cotten also plays his part well even if he once again is playing the gallant hero trying to help the vulnerable Paula out of her life. For her part Bergman is very good but not as strong as she was playing in Ilsa in Casablanca and its a shame that she won the Oscar here beating Claudette Colbert in Since You Went Away which was arguably a much better performance but Bergman still deserved the Oscar she didn't win the year before. Overall this is an interesting mystery thriller which gets a bit repetitive but is saved by some interesting performances.