Matt's Big Oscar Chalenge Day 148: More from Monty

As we've seen in our trip through the 1950s we've had a lot of stars straddle films I've done retrospectives of the fifites films of both Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando in the former's collection we found A Place in The Sun. That gently links into this next section as we look into the work of the male lead of that film, Montgomery Clift's, other work.

We kick off with just what I need, another play adaptation, this time thankfully there's enough exterior shots to counteract the scenes of people talking in rooms. That film is The Heiress and once again we find the lead actress Olivia De Havilland once again winning the Best Actress award for her tremendous performance as Catherine Sloper the titular woman of the title. The story has a simple premise would a charming young man who mishandles his money be interested in a dowdy heiress for anything more than her cash. That's the situation that Catheirne finds herself in after being charmed by Clift's Morris Townend who visits her house various times and eventually proposed much to the horror of her father played by Ralph Richardson. Richardson's character firstly quizzes Morris' family members before taking his daughter off to Europe, these scenes are especially bought alive by the film medium, realising he can't change her mind he decides to disinherit her therefore only giving her a small amount of money and when Morris finds this out he leaves her on the evening that the couple were meant to elope. It is here that De Havilland comes into her own as she becomes bitter not allowing her father to speak to her and spurning Morris' advances when he returns despite realising he now loves her she wants to humiliate him the way he did her and therefore ends up sad and alone. I did enjoy The Heiress it didn't outstay its welcome and all the leads acted their parts well. De Havilland's performance in the latter scenes were truly spectacular and she did more than earn her Oscar. Montgomery Clift does as he's told playing charming but sinister and playing on his screen idol persona to try and trick the audience into thinking that he really does love Catherine while Ralph Richardson's stoic routine lends itself well to the father. William Wyler brings the play to life and shoots outside as much as possible to give the film a life of its own all in all a good actors film but nothing spectacular.

We come now to another Best Picture winner from the 1954 ceremony starring Clift alongside Burt Lancaster and Oscar winners Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed that film is From Here to Eternity. Covering the same sort of time as 1940s nominee Wake Island, From Here to Eternity looks at army-life in Hawaii just in the run-up to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Clift plays Private Pruitt a soldier who has been transferred to his new unit for his boxing prowess however when he refuses to box his Captain gets the other officers to bully him and put him doing manual labour his only friend being Sinatra's Private Maggio. Meanwhile Lancaster's Sergeant Ward is romancing the Captain's wife played by Deborah Kerr their romance includes the famous beach sex scene which is the iconic plateau of the film but which had to be toned down for the censors so it wasn't implicit that the sexual act actually took place. Kerr and Lancaster's romance is thwarted by the fact that she hates it on Hawaii and he vows to earn his Captain's stripes so they can return to the States. Pruitt also falls in love with a girl he meets in a club named Lorene, later revealled to be named Alma, at first he is frustrated with the fact that her work comes first but eventually the two move in together. When Maggio goes AWOL to get drunk he is court martialled and beaten by the warden he eventually escapes but dies from his wounds this causes Pruitt to attack and kill this officer and get wounded himself and going AWOL at Alma's house. It is at this time that the Pearl Harbor attacks take place and Ward takes charge with the Captain being sacked for giving preferential treatment to his boxers. Realising that he will always put the army first Kerr leaves him and returns to America alone meanwhile Pruitt dies trying to make it back to base having been shot by one of the other soldiers. Kerr and Reed's Lorene meet in the film's final scene each realising who the other is as they throw their lays out to sea meaning that neither will ever return.

Ocassionally when doing this blog I bemoan the choices of Best Picture but thankfully in 1954 the academy got it spot on with this film. There are no less than five stunning performances with Sinatra stunning me the most as the jovial Maggio who is suddenly brutally attacked and dies a tragic death. Clift is also good here playing a little against type as the stubborn Pruitt but his love scenes with Reed were obviously there for his fans to woo over him. Lancaster is particularly good holding everything together as he's the likeable man torn between love and duty. The almost completely exterior shooting means that this film also boasts great scenery and realistic backdrops and I have to say I was caught off guard by the Pearl Harbor attacks as I'd obviously left my sense of history at the door. Overall a great film and a worthy Best Picture winner and as we've seen here Montgomery Clift definitely made his mark on 1950s film by being both suave and vunerable in both of these classics.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 147: Happy Hollidays

Its not hard to make links between The Country Girl and the next film on the list - Born Yesterday. Both are based on plays and so mainly feature people talking in rooms, both star William Holden and both have the winner of that year's Best Actress award in them and in this instance it was Judy Holliday. More surprising is the fact that Holliday beat both All About Eve's Anne Baxter and Bette Davies as well as Sunset Boulevard's Gloria Swanson. Holliday's character is Billie Dawn a former chorus girl who is the girlfriend of dodgy uncouth tycoon Harry Brock and is forced to go to a Washington hotel so Harry can do a deal with a few politicians. While meeting with the upper-classes Harry realises that Billie won't be able to mix with the people that he'll be doing business with so he organises her to have some lessons with Holden's journalist Paul Verrell. Obviously as this is a screwball comedy Paul and Billie soon become romantically entwined as she learns more about the country she lives in and is able to understand more than Harry wants her to. As soon as Billie becomes more aware of some of the documents that Harry is having her sign she refuses to do his dirty work so he hits her. Eventually she gets her revenge as she and Paul leak documents of his underground shennanigans to the press before they leave together.

There was much debate on the YouTube comments if Holliday should've won the Best Actress Award at the 1951 ceremony. I have to say its certainly a memorable performance as she makes Billie the sterotypical gangster's moll with a high-pitched voice and a funny walk. But she is captivating as the character grows and learns to stand up for herself and her final scenes where she gets one over on Harry is a fist punch in the air moment. Holliday is ably supported by William Holden as the straight man and by Broderick Crawford, himself just coming off a Best Actor Oscar win, as the brutish Harry. The main problem with the film is that again it is a play adaptation and therefore there are many scenes in Harry's hotel suite in which he welcomes his guests and has meetings with his dodgy lawyer. Obviously the medium of film allows for exterior scenes so we see Paul and Billie exploring Washington landmarks but this almost seems a little forced like the director needed to differentiate the film and the play however it all still fits together. I did enjoy Born Yesterday and found Holliday's performance extremely funny and likeable and I laughed a lot. While Davis, Baxter and Swanson all gave memorbale dramatic turns and at points chewed the scenery I have to say that we all like a laugh once in a while and its good to see a comic actress pick up the prize something that hardly ever happens these days.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 146: Amazing Grace

Imagine you're Judy Garland, I know its an odd way to start this blog but stick with me, you've just given birth to your son and the Oscars have sent cameras to the hospital where you are about to recieve your Best Actress Award at the 1955 ceremony for her role in a A Star is Born and then the winner is... Grace Kelly and you're left with a bunch of flowers from Groucho Marx describing the decision as the biggest robbery since Brinks Which I think is doing Kelly a diservice as her role in The Country Girl, the next film on the Oscar list, is probably her best. Kelly was possibly one of the first glamorous actresses who learnt that if you want to win an Academy Award its best to go a bit dowdy and a play a brow-beaten character since then the method has been used as by Charlize Theron, Holly Hunter and Nicole Kidman among others. Kelly plays Georgie Elgin the wife of once great actor Frank who has become an alcholic since the death of their young son an incident for which he blames himself. Frank is given a second chance at a career by William Holden's Bernie Dodd who was a fan of his earlier work but has to fight the show's producers and financial backers. Dodd believes that Georgie is holding back Frank and affecting his performance especially since Frank tells him stories about her sucide attempts and drunkeness stories which are actually about him. After Frank causes an incident in a bar and is arrested Dodd then realises that all of his hatred for Georgie comes from both Frank's lies and the fact that he is has feelings for her. Frank pulls himself together and becomes a star and realises that Dodd and Georgie both have feelings for each other he gives her permission to begin a relationship with him but in the final scene she decides to stay with her husband.

I hadn't really read anything about The Country Girl before watching it, which is sometimes the best way, but after viewing I was convinced it was based on a play and it turns out I was right. I had this inkling as the majority of the scenes feature characters in rooms talking to each other but because those characters are played by Crosby, Kelly and Holden you don't really care. Obviously since you've got a talented singer like Crosby you may as well use him but the context here sees him playing a man haunted by the fact that he let his son's hand go to take a promotional picture the song he sung that day is used a reason for him to start drinking again. In fact of all the films I've seen him in I feel that this is Crosby's best performance its so much more gritty than all of the others in which he essentially plays himself and a lot better than Going My Way for which he won his Best Actor Oscar for. I feel The Country Girl was unfortunate to come up against On The Waterfront so Crosby lost to Brando but any other year I reckon he would've won the award. Kelly is also great having to play the doting wife with the alcholic husband with her hair up and glasses on she doesn't look like Grace Kelly which is why you can really feel for Georgie and William Holden is also great basically playing another member of the audience trying to guess which of the couple is telling the truth. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that Dodd finally decided he was in love with Georgie I could see it coming but didn't think it fit with the rest of the film. Also winning an Oscar for its brilliant adapted screenplay, The Country Girl is a great film from beginning to end featuring three fine performances from a trio of the time's top stars and I would highly recommend it.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 145: Going Stir Crazy

Basically all of the films on this list are coming from either LoveFilm or various YouTube sources so if I can't reference a movie on either of those then I probably won't get to watch it. A nominee from the 1956 ceremony, Mister Roberts, was one such film which I had already banished to the unwatchable pile so imagine my surprise when it suddenly appeared on the T.V. listings for a Channel Five Saturday afternnon. Thanks to that I was able to watch the film whcih it turned out was a comedy-drama set during the final days of World War 2 on a naval Cargo Ship. To me it reminded me of The Caine Mutiny which I recently watched as it was about mundane life on a ship featuring a quartet of impressive performance from big names - Henry Fonda as Mister Roberts, James Cagney in his final MGM performance as the tyriannical Captain, William Powell in his final performance as the world-weary ship Doctor and Jack Lemmon winning the Supporting Actor Oscar here as the jovial ensign in charge of morale and laundry. For me this was one of Henry Fonda's best turns, apart of course from 12 Angry Men, playing a man who is desperate to serve properly and writes weekly letters to be let off the ship however Cageny's Captain sees him as an asset so keeps him around and he is well liked by his crew members whom he doesn't impose strict rules on. As time goes on the Captain is frustrated by Roberts and feels he isn't respecting him so he grants the crew their leave as long as Roberts tows the line and agrees with his orders. When the crew finally find out about this they decide to forge a letter from the Captain and get him transferred from the ship and he finally gets to serve in Japan the film tragically ends with the news that Roberts died when a suicide bomber killed all the crew of his new ship. While the death of your main character would usually be a downer in the case of Mister Roberts it was slightly more poignant and uplifting as he died getting what he always wanted to do and that was serve properly during the war.

I have to say I really enjoyed Mister Roberts mainly how easily it was able to demonstrate how not all men had heroic jobs during the war some of them just were their to ship cargo from one port to another and weren't happy about it. There are a lot of comic segments throughout the film demonstrating this including one where the men try and spy nurses on a nearby island while they are in the shower while one long scenes sees Fonda, Powell and Lemmon try and knock up some home made scotch. These segments are transposed with some truly heart-wrenching moments such as Cagney opening up to Fonda about his life before he became a captain which was fairly reminicent of Bogart's speech to his crew in The Caine Mutiny and also the scene in which Fonda goes crazy after he realises that he might not serve when peace in Europe is announced. Lemmon's performance is indeed great combining his comic timing with more dramatic moments of clarity personally his ways of getting revenge over a captain he's scared of are particularly memorable. All in all a great quartet of performances coupled with John Ford's skilled direction and a great script means that Mister Roberts is one of the better Oscar nominees never to take home the prize.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 143-144: A Song and Dance in France

Some of you may've noticed that to get through as many of these films as possible I am trying to group them into different categories and I noticed that two of the winning films from the 1950s were both set in France, featured song and dance and both starred Leslie Caron. However there was also a third nominee set in France which featured a small amount of merriment so that got included as well so lets kick off with the winner from the 1952 ceremony.

That being Vincent Minnelli's An American in Paris an all singing/all dancing spectacular featuring Gene Kelly and the afformentioned Ms. Caron. The film features on two down-and-out Americans living and trying to survive in Paris, Kelly's painter Jerry Mulligan and Oscar Levant's pianist Adam Cook. Muligan's artwork gets noticed by a wealthy American woman named Milo who agrees to sponsor Jerry and also falls in love with him while Mulligan meets Caron's enchanting Lisa and falls for her unaware that she is already seeing singer Henri Baurel an acquaitance of Jerry's through Adam. As time goes on Lisa and Jerry become more and more attached then Henri is offered a job in America and he and Lisa plan to marry but at the last moment Henri realises that Jerry and Lisa are in love and lets them be together. An American in Paris is a great old school musical but whether it deserved to win Best Picture is another debate altogether however it deserve to win Oscars for its cinematgoraphy, score, costumes and set (not sure about the screenplay award though). I enjoyed the interplay between Caron and Kelly but for me the best performances came from Nina Foch as Milo and Levant whose scene where he imagines he is conducting and playing in a concert hall was one of my favourite scenes alongside the last fifteen minutes of the film in which Jerry imagines his life alongside Lisa before she returns to him. A bright, colourful extravaganza An American in Paris has memorable songs like I've Got Rhythm and S'Wonderful and is an enjoyable ride however I don't think it is truly a classic film.

A nominee from the 1953 ceremony is Moulin Rouge, a film title most of us attribute to a 2001 film which was also nominated for Best Picture. The 1953 film does have some singing and dancing but most of it features the story of Tolouse LaTrec potrayed in the modern film by John Leguizamo and here by Jose Ferrer. The first 20 minutes or so are probably the most entertaining and vibrant showing life in the Moulin Rouge full of drinking, can-can girls and Zsa Zsa Gabor's lead singer. However LaTrec's story is one of heartbreak in flashback we learn that he left his family home to pursue a career as a painter after he found out no girl would love him because he's a cripple. In the modern day his life doesn't go much better he enters into a relationship with a prostitute which ends when he becomes suspicious of her and she keeps taking money from him. He finds solace in his offbeat paintings off the Moulin Rouge and other famous Parisian landmarks and gains a reputation for his work. He also starts a new relationship with Myriamme a lovely girl who loves him but once again he feels that she just keeps him around for amusement and leaves it too late to save her from marrying someone else. The film ends with the announcement that he will be the first living artist to have painting displayed in The Louvre and then we see him visited by images of his paitings before popping his clogs. Moulin Rouge is thematically quite a bleak film with Jose Ferrer's Tolouse being a very dour personality and one who at times I found fairly allienating. The best thing about the film is its colour cinematography, which bizzarely didn't even get an Oscar nomination, which brings the Moulin Rouge to life and the best performances in my opinion come from those who work there. The way Tolouse's pictures are transposed into the film and how they meet him as he dies are also quite splendidly done. Overall a good biopic which is often bleak and saved by the colour and oppulance of its titular establishment.

Finally we have Leslie Caron on winning form yet again here as the eponymous heroine in Gigi, the winner of the final Oscar ceremony in the 1950s. The film is light and full of humourous performances which is odd giving the dark subject matter of young girls being groomed to be cortesans for wealthy Parisian men. However Gigi's training isn't going at all well as she doesn't really want to be in her lessons and instead likes spending time with Gaston who visits her and her grandmother. Throughout the film Gaston realises that Gigi is no longer a child and falls in love with her. Her great aunt then trains her up to be Gaston's cortesan but she realises she doesn't want this sort of life for herself and through a sequence of events it suddenly dawns of both of them that they want to be together and at the end of the film are happily man and wife. Narrating events for part of the film is Maurice Chevalier's Honore Lachaille after watching several of his 1930s films for this project its odd now to see him playing the supporting role of the experienced older man but in 1958 he had aged somewhat he still gets to sing the most memorable song 'Thank Heaven for Little Girls' though and did recieve the Lifetime Achievement award the night Gigi swept the board. And it did indeed breaking the record for Oscar wins but only holding that record for one year before Ben Hur came along. The film itself is OK again its fairly entertaining and Caron has improved as an actress from her time on An American in Paris here being possibly the most likeable character of the bunch. The song and dance sequences are a joy but at times I felt the pace lagged a bit especially when Caron and her female relatives were offscreen and instead we had to deal with Gaston's woes which I didn't really care about. Overall an entertaining piece of musical cinema which had some lovely costumes but wasn't a spectacular picture and again didn't feel to me like a Best Picture Winner.

That's your lot from France and as your captain I hope you enjoyed your journey.