Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 40: Getting the Skinny

One of the elements of 1937 winner The Great Ziegfeld that I enjoyed the most was 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 detective 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 it seems a bit passé 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 39: Wishing on a Star

Obviously I was aware of A Star is Born, but have never seen the two well-known version starring Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand 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 Technicolor 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 unsuccessful 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 role Janet 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. As well as the nominations I've mentioned and of course Best Picture, 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 38: This Town is Our Town

After starring in Captain Courageous, Spencer Tracy would get back to back Best Actor Oscars the second at the 1939 ceremony for his performance in Boys Town. Boys Town is one of those 'based on a true story about inspirational 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 successful 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 bad lad stirring up trouble by smoking and fighting in the peaceful society. Although Whitey tries to escape something always keeps dragging him away and that gets 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 37: But I'm A Lady

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, it's 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 aristocratic 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, fiancée 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 governor 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 ground-breaking or interesting as Cavalcade, that year's winner. The film was also nominated for screenplay and May Robson'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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 36: Another World

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 palaeontologist, 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 soon after. 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 committed 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 elaborate 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 his is 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 35: Sailing with Spencer

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 Bartholomew'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 Bartholomew'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 Portuguese 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 it's 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 Bartholomew 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 precocious 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 34: She's Just a Devil Woman

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 separate 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 essentially 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 33: Let's Go Outside

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-talking 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 whose 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-enthusiastic 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 32: Not Much of a Bounty

It's 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 Night's 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 monstrous 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 scenes 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 31: It's All An Illusion

In the main Best Picture category it is very rare that a film that is completely in another language, features in it. This is especially true since the academy introduced 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 impenetrable  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 German 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 30: One More from Maurice

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 irresistible 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 woes 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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 29: For What it's (Dods)Worth

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 seeing 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 Captain Lockheart (an early role for David Niven) and a man named Arnold. Her relationship with Arnold makes her separate 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 subtly 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 notable 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 monstrous 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.