Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 137: Oh What a Circus!

Some critics are so harsh because I recently came over several lists which ranked the worst Oscar winners of all time and in the Top 5 of most of these lists was the latest film I watched - The Greatest Show on Earth. To give you a little background the film is Cecile B De Mille's cirucs-set extravaganza and is based around the Bingling Bros., Barnum and Bailey Circus. Charlton Heston plays circus manager Brad Braden who is trying to convince his bosses to give the circus another full season and to entice them he has hired famous acrobat and well known lothario The Great Sebastian. After agreeing to hiring Sebastian and getting a full season Brad has to deal with the fact that his acrobat girlfriend Holly will be bumped from the centre stage although she claims she will one-up Sebastian so the audience focuses on them. Throughout the film  a love triangle develops with Sebastian enchanting Holly with his risky attitude and his competitive spirit while Brad is more focused on getting the circus working. After Sebastian and Holly get together another performer Ginger goes after Brad but this infuriates her lover Klauss who vows to get revenge. James Stewart also appears in the film as Buttons the Clown, Buttons has an intriguing story where he never takes off his make-up clues throughout the story lead us to believe that he was a surgeon who mercy killed his own lover and is on the run from the police. During one of the journeys on the cirucs train a disgraced former employee along with the jealous Klauss plan to rob the train but Klauss has a change of heart when he realises he may hurt Ginger and there is a massive train crash. Brad is injured and with the Doctor unconcious Buttons operates on him but is caught by an FBI investiagtor who knows his suspect is somewhere in the circus after saving Brad's live Buttons is carted off to jail while Holly realises she loves Brad and Ginger and Sebastian decide to be together.

I have to say of the Best Pictures I have watched so far The Greatest Show on Earth is definitely not the worst but at the same time not the best. It does have some good points for one it is incredibly realistic with 1,400 members of the actual circus troupe starring alongside the actors accompanied by the whole ring set-up crew and a menagrie of animals. The film also lapses into documentary at times with De Mille providing a voiceover at various points to illustrate how hard it is to deconstruct and erect the tent each day and how hard the travel is on the performers. Heston provides a great leading man while the James Stewart story is very compelling and I wish I'd seen more of it while the camerawork for the most part is done well especially when focusing on the audience reactions. However at the same time it is far too long and there is no reason at all that we needed to see entire parts of some of the acts. While the acrobatics acts are pivotal to the plot everything elese could be just viewed in clip form and this is one of De Mille's main problems. In addition Betty Hutton is a bit of a damp squib as Holly and Cornel Wilde is almost too much as the exotic lover Sebastian. I also didn't really get the motivation for Klaus' momentary change of heart which caused the train crash. The theory is that this film won the Oscar because of De Mille's Hollywood pull and the fact that this would be his last chance to win a Best Picture Statuette. Overall the film is spectacular but it needs about 45 minutes cut from it to make it truly memorable film.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 134-136: Mostly Marlon

So after my Elizabeth Taylor retrospective we have four films from Marlon Brando an actor who was considered to have changed the way actors were percieved on films. Once upon a time you had the classic 'film star' such as Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney or Cary Grant but then Brando was a new breed of actor who really got into the character and developed the phrase method acting. Over these four Oscar nominated films I will look at Brando's performances and the films as a whole.

We finished the last installment of the Oscar blog with a Tennesse Williams adaptation and we start our Marlon Brando retrospective with another Williams story - A Streetcar Named Desire. For those of you unaware with the story it sees the demure but emotionally fragile Blanche Dubouis journey to New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella and Stella's husband the brutish Stanley played by Brando. As time goes on Brando continues to resent Blanche's domination of Stella's time and her relationship with his friend Mitch so he starts to dig dirt on why she had to leave her old home. The final confrontation with ends in Stanley raping Blanche before she is carted off to a mental instution is very well done by director Elia Kazan by taking the camera around the expressions of all the characters and using the strong score to play the emotions of the two sisters with Stella finally seeing the light and leaving her husband with their new baby. As someone who read the play as part of my English literature A-Level I have to say that everybody involved did their best to recreate what this story should be. The set direction was rightfully given an Oscar for providing the claustrophobic atmosphere of both Stanley and Stella's apartment to the small area in which the characters inhabit. Vivien Leigh had previously played Blanche on the stage in London and bought both star power and incredible timing as a character who slowly loses her mind throughout the film. Kim Hunter is great as the tortured Stella while Karl Malden also stole the show in his couple of scenes as the hapless Mitch who wants to tame Blanche but realises that is impossible. Leigh, Malden and Hunter all won Oscars for their performances indeed the only person who didn't win an acting Oscar was Marlon Brando. However Brando won something else a new found fame for his great turn as Stanley he plays a man who was raised to behave a certain way and is almost tortured every time he hurts Stella and she leaves him briefly. He is brutish but at the same time doesn't go over-the-top and most importantly he becomes the character this isn't Marlon Brando as Stanley this is Stanley and you can really believe it. One more thing about the film is Alex North's great score who went against type composing short pieces of music to reflect the trauma of the characters but unfortunately he didn't win the Oscar but he did set a precadent in terms of film music as maybe Brando did with character development.

After his Oscar nomination for Streetcar, Brando was nominated for Viva Zapata at the next Oscar ceremony and then again at the Oscar ceremony held in 1954. However nobody quite expected that role to be in an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The film saw a lot of Shakespeare pros take the parts that they'd already taken on stage for example British theatrical legend John Gielgud played Cassius and James Mason who also had Shakesperian experience was Brutus here. Even producer John Houseman had Caesar experience having been involved in the classic Orson Welles Mercury Theatre production but by this time Welles and Houseman had fallen out and Welles wanted nothing to do with this production. However Brando's casting as Marc Anthony was met with scepticism to the point of Paul Scofield being on standby if Brando's screen test bombed however Brando was so good that Gielgud offered him the lead in the production of Hamlet he was directing, Brando turned this offer down. I'm really not going to retype the plot of Caesar as we all know the first half sees many of his followers conspire his demise and the second half sees Anthony's rise. While we're on Anthony Brando was brilliant even though he had very little to do in the first half of the film from the 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen' speech onwards he captures the imagination being able to deliver Shakespeare's lines with all the precision of a pro and the doubts that the 'mumbler' wouldn't be able to perform were cast aside here. I'm not sure if it was good enough to be Oscar nominated but maybe the Academy were so surprised by Brando's performance that he got the nod just for doing something different. Aside from Brando the ensemble cast are all terrific especially Mason's Brutus and Louis Calhern's Caesar. I also have to applaud the set design for giving us something grandiose and recreating ancient Rome brilliantly and also for handling the crowd scenes very well.

After three years of striking out in the Best Actor category Brando finally came up trumps at the 1955 ceremony with the film that also won the Best Picture award that year - On the Waterfront. For this picture Brando reteamed with both Streetcar writer Elia Kazan and co-star Karl Malden to make a story based on real experiences that long shoremen had dealing with their mob-run environment. As the film starts Brando's Terry Malloy is instrumental in the death of long shoreman Joey Doyle who's death is interlinked with him testifying against gangster Johnny Friendly who runs the docks and trades illegally. Malloy's brother Charley works as Friendly's accountant and gets Terry to do some of the easier jobs through his guilt of making Terry throwing fights when he was a prize fighter. Events get complicated when Terry falls for Doyle's sister Evie who, along with Malden's priest Father Barry, tries to convince Terry to testify against Friendly. Worried that Terry is being swayed Friendly sends Charley out to set Terry straight where Terry delivers the still famous 'I Coulda Been a Contender' speech. Eventually Terry testifies and Friendly turns the rest of the dockworkers against him and has him beaten up but Friendly is then discredited with all the longshoremen turning their backs on him. There's so much to praise about On The Waterfront and thankfully for once a great film gets recognised by the Academy winning Best Picture, Actor, Director, Screenplay and Supporting Actress for Eva Marie Saint as Evie. Saint is great in the film so much so I think this was almost a Lead performance which would've seen the film scoop the much-touted 'Big Five'. If Streetcar was Brando's breakout then this was definitely his star-making turn playing a conflicting character wanting to do what's right but not wanting to test his loyalty against his brother and the men who have been giving him the job. There are also so many great filmic moments from the already mentioned speech, to the ending where a beaten Malloy makes his way to work despite being light on his feet and having blurred sight but my favourite scene is probably Terry telling Evie about his involvement in Joey's death which we don't hear as a big steamship comes past making their conversation inaudible. Of the supporting performances Karl Malden is probably my favourite as the priest, but Lee J Cobb also makes a convincing gangster and Rod Steiger as Charley also is strong in a couple of scenes all were nominated as Supporting Actors but to Edmond O'Brien in The Barefoot Contessa both a role and film that aren't best remembered. I also feel that the score is brilliant it stuck in my head afterwards and added to the atmospheric tone. The Oscar winning set direction and cinematography were both brilliantly handled with the shoot taking place over 36 days in Hoboken, New Jersey making all the shore scenes seem very real and the workers' silence over how badly their work is run and even some of Friendly's goons are played by real-life prize fighters. Just a brilliant film and a worthy Best Picture winner and definitely the film that made Marlon Brando.

The final Best Picture nominee that Brando starred in during the 1950s, and again he got a Best Actor nomination, was Sayonara which I feel was a bit of a departure from the roles he played in contemporary American dramas in this particular blog post. The film sees Brando play Air Force Major Ace Gruver who moves from Korea to Japan where one of his troop - Joe Kelly is about to marry a Japanese woman. A lot of people in the Air Force and the military in general aren't happy with Kelly's choice to marry a Japanese woman but despite his reluctance Gruver agrees to be Kelly's best man. Also in Japan, Gruver's superior General Webster has bought along his daughter Eileen, played by Patricia Owens, who for a long time Ace has been in a relationship with. However during the time in Japan neither feel the relationship is prety solid with Eileen's feelings being a lot stronger than Ace's. As time goes on Gruver starts to accept Kelly's relationship with his wife Katsumi and himself becomes entranced by a Japanese dancer Hana-ogi. Things come to a head when Kelly is to be shipped back to America and his wife isn't allowed to come with him despite the fact she is pregnant. Ace is also to be sent back after his relationship with Hana-ogi is revealled but the day that Kelly is to be taken away he runs back to Katsumi and they both commit suicide deciding to be together in the next life. Ace then discovers that General Webster has made a law possible for men like Kelly to bring their Japanese wives back to America so he announces to the media that he is marrying Hana-ogi and people best get used to it. The biggest surprise in this film is probably seeing Brando in a kimono despite that this film is a little long-winded in its message of equality and that these soldiers are in love with these women rather than just wanting to be with the first woman they touch as Webster so eloquently puts it in once scene. Brando's Southern drawl adds an extra dimension to this character who is portrayed as being a natural leader but at the same time very simple in his views and he is one round by the differences that Japan and Japanese women have to offer. However the two standout performances come from Oscar winners Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki as Joe and Katsumi both giving spectacular performances as the doomed couple Buttons in particular is a revelation as he was much better known as a comedian than a dramatic actor but this film more than showed that he could do both. I have to say I felt the film needed to be about 20 minutes less and I didn't need to see as many of the Japanese sequences as I did and I felt James Garner was wasted in a worthless role as the military man showing Ace a different side of Japan. Overall though a film with a strong message and another great performance from Brando again displaying his range.

As I watched this quartet of films I really felt that Brando was improving as an actor as the decade went on from rough and ready in Streetcar he honed his skills for On the Waterfront before playing an almost naive character in Sayonara. Like with Elizabeth Taylor I'm looking forward to seeing more of Brando as we trek on through the decades but I guess its Sayonara for now.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 130-133: Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)

Sadly earlier this year we lost a big film legend in Elizabeth Taylor. Even sadder is the fact that I haven't really watched a lot of her films save National Velvet and The Flintstones when I was younger. So I have used the 1950s Oscar Hunt to watch five her films all nominated for Best Picture during this decade.

Liz Taylor really made her name in the afformentioned National Velvet but then was still considered a child star but she had to wait till 1950 for what many think as her first adult role in the original version of Father of the Bride a nominee at the 1951 ceremony. Obviously I'm very aware of the Steve Martin remake but have never seen the original starring Spencer Tracy as the father and Taylor as his daughter who gets engaged to Don Taylor's Buckley. Obviously the film shares a lot with the remake but what there is much more of an emphasis on is how much the wedding will cost Tracy's Stanley Banks and his wife Ellie played by Joan Bennett. It also doesn't strike me that the relationship with the daughter is as strong as it is in the remake despite this there is a good chemistry between Tracy, Bennett and Taylor as well as the two actors playing their sons. Tracy's comic voiceover is particularly affecting including in one of the opening scenes where he tries to remember which one of Taylor's potential suitors Buckley is. Tracy is also able to show off his slapstick side in a very long scene in which he tries to try on his old suit which is far too tight for him and which he ends up ripping. From the wedding onwards I recognised most of the scenes from Stanley worrying what he has to say in the church to the fact that he never gets to say goodbye to his daughter until she leaves. I feel that the film isn't quite as funny as it thinks it is but it is still very sweet and you believe that the Banks are a real family going through with a real wedding. To be fair Taylor doesn't have a lot to do apart from look very pretty and sulk occasionally when she feels her wedding is being planned by other people. An interesting Oscar nominee in that is predominantly a comedy film but nonethless a great film.

A year later Taylor starred opposite Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun again a film nominated for Best Picture and once again Taylor missed out on an acting nomination although Clift and fellow co-star Shelley Winters were both nominated. The film starred Clift as George Eastman a poor relation to a wealthy industrial family. George meets his uncle and cousins and is introduced to Taylor's society girl Angela Vickers instantly falling in love. However he feels he isn't good enough for her and instead starts working in the family factory and beginning a casual relationship with Winters' Al. Al and George go out a couple of times an then George is moved up the social ranks and eventually starts seeing Angela but things are complicated when Al reveals she is pregnant and wants to marry George telling him she'll reveal all to his new friends if he doesn't. Desperate for a happy ending with Angela, George sets out to kill Al while on a boat but instead he can't go through with it but when she accidentally drowns he covers it up and is eventually arrested for her murder in the end he doesn't get A Place in the Sun that he so desperately wanted to share with Taylor. As a romantic melodrama, A Place in the Sun was a great film but I'm not sure if it was Oscar-worthy while Clift and especially Winters both deserved their nominations I feel that Taylor was cruelly snubbed here as every time she breezed onto the screen it lit up. A scene in which she realises she is in love with George happens so smoothly that Taylor is able to show the audience her feelings just using her eyes. Its a bit odd to think that Taylor was only 17 here playing against Clift who was over twelve years her senior but their chemistry does work and you do really understand why Geoge would risk everything for Angela because at the end of the day it is Elizabeth Taylor!

Another year and another Oscar nominee for Liz this time in the swashbuckling adventure Ivanhoe. This was during the time in her career when Taylor wasn't getting the roles she wanted and in terms of this film she wanted the main romantic lead Rowena which went to Joan Fontaine and instead she had to settle playing Rebecca the girl who loved Ivanhoe from afar but could never get him and was forced into a relationship with George Sanders' Norman soldier De-Bois Gilbert who knew that Ivanhoe could never love her. In fact this was Taylor and Fontaine's film both women giving strong performances making the women more than just love interests and a lot more interesting than the lead man. Yes Robert Taylor's pioneering hero who was trying to fight King John's men and reinstate Richard the Lionheart was in fact incredibly bland. 15 years removed from the Errol Flynn era this almost seemed like a backstep for the 1950s cinema. I'm sure that the studio heads wanted to revisit these blockbusters to film them in technicolour but this did nothing for me and went downhill when Robin Hood had to step in to help Ivanhoe and introduce all his Merry Men. The final scenes in which Taylor is falsley accused of witchcraft were poorly but together and I didn't really care about any of the characters coming away from it. Taylor really wanted bigger films than a supporting role in a mediocre epic thankfully in a few years later she would get that chance.

That film was Giant an epic with a difference going over the span of many years of the Benedict family as they become parents and later grandparents. The head of the family Jordan 'Bick' Benedict was played by Rock Hudson while Taylor played his wife Leslie. The film concentrates on old versus new as Bick is the latest in the long line of Benedicts to own the Reata Ranch and is assisted by Mercedes McCambridge's Luz and James Dean's Jett Rink. When Luz dies she leaves a patch of land to Jett and later he strikes rich after finding oil and finds a new way to get money from the land which Bick isn't too pleased with. Bick sells some of his land and gets even more rich from the oil meanwhile Bick and Leslie have three children the eldest of which, Jordy played by a  young Dennis Hopper, wants to be a doctor rather than run the ranch while the older daughter Judy wants to follow in her father's footsteps. Jordy later marries an American Indian woman and fights the prejudice that that brang meanwhile Jett buys a hotel and starts dating the younger daughter Luz II but she stops their relationship after realising he's a bitter drunk and the film ends with Bick raelises how good his life is and how much he actually loves his wife. Although overlong there's no doubting that Giant is a magnificent film from the outdoor shots to the story itself I felt it flew through most of its two and a half hour run time. I have to say I could've done without some of the scenes including the one in which Leslie journeys home to see her sister get married to her former beau played by Rod Taylor. As well as a best picture nomination George Stevens managed to win Best Director with acting nominations for Dean, Hudson and McCambridge but nothing for Taylor which is a shame as she really anchors the film playing a woman who doesn't understand why she isn't allowed in Bick's inner circle of men who constantly discuss business. Even though she ages throughout the film she still looks really glamorous and so pretty this is one film in which she shines yet not even a nomination.

But she did get a nomination towards the end of the decade at the 1959 ceremony she was nominated in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof an adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play and one of a handful of Williams stories that became Oscar nominated pictures in the 1950s. The story revolves around Paul Newman's Brick Pollit a drunken ex-Football player now commentator who has come back to Mississippi for his father, Big Daddy's birthday with his wife Maggie known as Maggie the cat. The film, like the play, is centred all around the day of Big Daddy's party with Brick drunk and in his room while Maggie spends most of the time fighting with Brick's brother and his horrible wife and children. Brick is upset with Maggie because he believes she was responsible for the death of his friend Skipper. Apparently one of the things Williams hated about this adaptation was that the supposed homosexual feelings that Brick had for Skipper were cut out so his outbursts aimed towards Maggie weren't as barbed as they might have been had those themes remained in the film. This was alledgelly to do with the Hays Code, the censorship body at the time, disallowing references to homosexuality and therefore muddying this adaptation. The film also ends with a reconciliation between Big Daddy and Brick after the latter finds out the former is dying, this was another scene that was lengthened so the audience could go out with a happy ending. Despite recieving a plethora of nominations the film didn't win a single one possibly because the subject matter and Taylor's very provocative performance were a bit too risque for an Oscar Ceremony in which the Best Picture statuette went to Gigi. I have to say though this film was very good, although it was quite confined as it was used to being played on the stage the actors still gave it their all.

So in the 1950s Taylor went from young innocent daughter to full on vamp while playing the medieval heroine, glamorous socialite and many eras of the same woman in between. This voyage through five of her films has given me an insight into the career of a great actress and there's two more films from her in the 1960s section which I am yet to view and I have to say now I'm looking forward to it.