Big Oscar Challenge: June 2010

Monday 28 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 48: The Other Fugitive

In previous posts I've talked about the 1930s studio system and how big stars were attached to them, during the decade Warner Bros' biggest stars was a name that isn't well recognised today - Paul Muni. Muni was one of the only actors at the studio who was allowed to pick his parts and was probably one of the first actors who the term character actor could be attributed to. I've previously watched his Oscar winning performance in The Story of Louis Pasteur and he also features in 1938 Oscar Winner The Life of Emile Zola but at the 1934 ceremony he was also nominated for Best Picture contender I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.

In the film Muni's James Allen finds himself constantly trapped. To start off with he is trapped in the army when he finally leaves he is taken into a job at a constricting factory something he hates. He starts to look for construction work outside but as he travels the country he cannot find anything. While travelling he meets a man in a hostel and is tricked into being an accomplice in a robbery and is sentenced to life on a chain gang. He eventually escapes and gets away where he gets his construction job and soon climbs up the ladder becoming a foreman and coming up with ideas about building a bridge. However he becomes trapped into a loveless marriage with his landlady after she finds out about his past through a letter from his brother. After James finds love with his secretary he asks for a divorce but his wife shops him in and he agrees to go back to prison as a deal is made for him to be pardoned after three months. However the pardon never comes and he is once again on the chain gang. He again escapes by using dynamite to blow up one of the bridges he helps to construct. The final scenes see him meet up with Helen and when she asks him what he does for money he tells her - 'I steal'.

This final scene is probably the film's most famous as the screen goes dark before James delivers the line. Apparently this was a mistake and the lights failed or were turned off earlier than they should've been but the studio was so impressed that it was kept in the film. Like many of these films Fugitive failed to win any Oscars as well as actor and picture it got nominated for its sound. But I have to say I very much enjoyed the picture with the central theme of if a man has done so much good is he bad. In fact James throughout the film really only wants to do good and it is the justice system that at the end forces him into a life of stealing. I was very much impressed with Muni's performance, more so than his Louis Pasteur, but I'm guessing it just wasn't his year. Meanwhile I think that maybe this was the biggest challenger to Cavalcade's winning status so far but I still think I enjoyed that more.

Sunday 27 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 47: Just Testing it Out

And its farewell to the cosiness of LoveFilm as I reach the great abyss with at least another twenty-four films to watch, and maybe more if I can find them somewhere. And we're kicking off with a reunion of San Francisco's leading men Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable and that film is Test Pilot.

The relationship between Gable and Tracy is similar to that in the disaster flick they filmed a couple of year's previously. Gable is the reckless womaniser and Tracy is the more grounded sage who worries about him. Here Gable plays Jim the eponymous test pilot who is tasked to try planes out before they are ready to fly and try and break speed records, Tracy plays mechanic Gunner who finds Jim reckless and often has to get him out of tricky situations. Near the beginning of the film, Jim crashes a plane in Kansas and meets Myrna Loy's Ann who is excited by his lifestyle and leaves her fiancée to be with him. Soon we have three relationships the romance between Jim and Ann, the friendship between Gunner and Jim and the relationship between Gunner and Ann which is based on knowing that Jim's job means that he often faces death. When a fellow test pilot dies in a plane that was meant for Jim, Jim gives all his money to the widow and then goes on a drunken bender. The finale sees Jim quitting the test pilot life after Gunner is crushed during one of Jim's test runs, Jim decides he has to spend time with his wife so decides to train the next generation of test pilots instead.

One thing that really stood out for me in Test Pilot was the cinematography, the shots of the planes were particularly fantastic. However there was no nominations for cinematography instead the editing did get nominated as did the original screenplay. All of the acting talent was well represented and of all of his performances I have to say I have enjoyed Spencer Tracy the most in this film and his double act with Gable was probably the highlight of the film. Myrna Loy didn't really have a lot to do in terms of plot but she is a fine actress as proved in her roles opposite William Powell. Overall a great little film but not one that ever stood the test of time especially in that list at the 1939 ceremony but it's an admirable effort. However at the next year's ceremony the next collaboration between Clark Gable and director Victor Fleming would clean up, that film being of course Gone With the Wind.

Monday 21 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 46: A Farewell to LoveFilm

This is kind of the day I'm on my own a little bit as this is finally the day that I watch the last film delivered by LoveFilm DVD and have to wait till the next decade, in which most of the films will be delivered by them, to use them again. The last DVD from my rental list for now is another one by Frank Borzage, A Farewell to Arms.

Again Borzage is focusing on World War One, but this time following the relationship between an American ambulance driver, Gary Cooper's Frederick, who serves in the American army and a Scottish nurse played by Helen Hayes. Just like in Seventh Heaven, war separates the lovers as a jealous Italian general dispatches Frederick into Milan far away from Hayes' Catherine however they are soon reunited when it is organised to have him transferred to the hospital where she works after an injury. Up to this point in the film I thought the action totted along nicely, the war scenes weren't as impressively filmed as in Seventh Heaven but the characters seemed a lot more realistic. However I had trouble in the final section of the film in which a pregnant Catherine sits writing letters to Frederick who never gets them because they are held up by the Swiss censors. I found at the end of the film that it all lapsed slowly into melodrama as Catherine started to despair for her lost love. At the end of course Frederick returns just to witness Catherine's death at childbirth, the child not surviving either which I thought made the film end on a low ebb.

The acting itself was fine enough, again I'm not convinced by Gary Cooper as an actor I find him a little brusque and unprofessional although the role didn't demand as much of him as Mr Deeds Goes to Town. Helen Hayes, whose name is above Cooper's in the credits, is another in a long line of strong women in these films however the second half of the film sees her become more weak and dependant on Frederick, a couple of the supporting performers were also excellent notably Adolphe Menjoy as the jealous Major Rinaldi. Unsurprisingly the film didn't get any acting nominations but it did gets some nods on the technical side of things winning awards for both cinematography and sound and being nominated for art direction. However it didn't have a chance against that year's winner the interesting and multi-layered Cavalcade, I think it should be a film that was glad to be nominated. Now comes the time though were I must concentrate on Youtubing the hell out of the rest of the films on the list.

Saturday 19 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 45: The Silent War

The final film in the opening Best Picture category is next up. In 1929 at the first ceremony, only three films were nominated - eventual winner Wings, patchy gangster film The Racket and Seventh Heaven, a film about love and war.

As with all of the first these pictures, Seventh Heaven is also a silent film and is directed by Frank Borzage whose movies have shaped my viewing habits over the last few days. The film is set in Paris and is essentially one of two halves, the first half follows the romance between sewer worker Chico and young prostitute Diane who has run away from her violent sister. To save Diane from arrest Chico pretends to be her husband and the two start to fall in love. But in the second half the love story is interrupted by World War One and Chico has to go off and fight leaving Diane alone and waiting for updates from Chico's fellow soldiers starts to get depressed. The end of the film sees Diane believe Chico has died in the war and she is about to commit suicide when he returns just as the war is won. Although he is not dead, Chico has been blinded but he and Diane agree to stick together once and for all now he is back and free.

For a film from the early days of cinema, Seventh Heaven is technically impressive. I found the scenes depicting World War One a lot better than some of the amateurish ones in the first Best Picture Winner - Wings. Gaynor and Farrell was also fairly moving in their roles, Gaynor especially was able to display emotion easily and I she gave as a fully-rounded performance and was rewarded with a Best Actress award, Borzage also won best director and the film picked up the prize for adapted screenplay. However I believe that Wings was ultimately the best film to win, I found Seventh Heaven somewhat disjointed and a bit dull in parts, while it was better than The Racket I think that it didn't make enough of the filmic techniques available to it to create a truly memorable picture. Saying that it still more than deserves its place on the list of the first three films nominated for Best Picture.

Wednesday 16 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 44: Let's Hear it for the girls

Interestingly up to now all the African American characters in the films I have watched have been portrayed as maids to the lead protagonists, usually the women, and barely get any lines. Films like You Can't Take it With You and Jezebel gave these characters a few lines and almost a mini sub-plot but they weren't viewed as the leads. So I was surprised to see a film which featured a dominant African American character, and a female one at that, in a film that dealt with the issues of both race and gender.

The film was Imitation of Life and was nominated for Best Picture in 1935, the winner that year was It Happened One Night however Claudette Colbert starred in both films and although she won Best Actress for the former I found her much more impressive in the latter. Colbert plays Bea a widow with a daughter who takes in African American housekeeper Delilah and her mixed race daughter, Delilah agrees to work for Bea in exchange for somewhere to live but Bea struggles to earn a living selling pancake syrup. Thanks to Delilah's pancakes however, Bea is able to start a successful pancake restaurant and later becomes a powerful businesswoman by selling pancake flour. As the year's go on both women's daughters start to grow up Delilah's daughter Peola starts to be embarrassed by her African American heritage and eventually rejects her mother as she wants everyone to believe that she is white. Meanwhile Bea becomes involved with a man named Steven but when her daughter Jessie returns home from college she falls in love with Steven as well. The end of the film sees Delilah dying but having an extravagant funeral paid for with the money that she put aside from the business, meanwhile Bea and Steven go their separate ways after she realises that it will complicate her relationship with her daughter.

I really enjoyed Imitation of Life and thought it was one of the first pictures which had a strong female lead and a mostly female cast. Although this is true of films like Norma Shearer's The Divorcee, those films still saw the female characters heavily reliant on men, in Imitation of Life the female characters become successful on their own and the male characters are perceived as foils to Bea as she is able to trick a lot of men into giving them her help free of charge in the opening scenes of the film. The film also deals with the tricky topic of race in the plot involving Delilah and Peola, Delilah is portrayed as a devoted mother who starts the film looking for work so she can house her daughter but Peola starts to become obsessed with blending in and thinks that her African American heritage will stop her from doing this. The final scenes in which Peola believes that she has killed her mother are some of the film's most emotional. Despite this being a well-acted piece none of the actors received nominations however I believe if the Best Supporting Actress category had been around then Louise Beavers may have been nominated for her portrayal of Delilah. Despite the film having an African-American star, Beavers didn't feature on any of the posters instead they all feature Colbert and male co-star Warren William so it seems although the film was fairly open-minded it was still promoted as a traditional romantic drama, which seems like a real shame.

Friday 11 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 43: A Trip to China and a Fairer Lady

As we know Grand Hotel won the Best Picture prize at the 1932 ceremony, this was a film about a seemingly disparate group of people all connected by their surroundings, Shanghai Express. The surroundings are that of the Shanghai Express train which is travelling from Beijing to Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War. The passengers include an elderly English boarding house keeper, a missionary, an opium dealer, a gambler and a French soldier. Also on board is British war hero Doc Harvey who encounters his old girlfriend Magdalen who has now become a courtesan known as Shanghai Lily. The train is soon stopped by government soldiers who arrest a man and then by rebels loyal to fellow passenger Chang who turns out to be a powerful Chinese Warlord and uses Harvey as a hostage to exchange with the kidnapped passenger who is one of Chang's men. Just as Harvey is about to be blinded by Chang he is killed by Lily's courtesan companion and at the end Lily and Harvey are united. The film is impressively shot for a 1931 picture, the material is quite frank and honest about what the courtesans do for a living and it also looks at the issue of religion in terms of sex and love. I found it a very powerful picture and it also depicted the Chinese Civil War in a unique way by involving a group of outsiders in the conflict. This is also the first film on the list that features Marlene Dietrich and, as Lily, she holds the screen whenever she features while Clive Brook is a more than adequate male lead as Harvey. Thankfully the film did win cinematography and was also nominated for direction as well as picture. I don't think it was as tightly plotted and accomplished as Grand Hotel but it certainly more than deserved its place on the Best Picture contender list.

In the 1960s My Fair Lady won the award for Best Picture, this was around a time when musicals dominated the Best Picture category but the story on which the film was based, Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, was first nominated for Best Picture in the 1930s. This version starred Wendy Hiller as the eponymous heroine - Eliza Doolittle and Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins. Most are aware of the story, Higgins bets fellow dialect expert Colonel Pickering that he can pass Dolittle off as a lady at a society ball and in the meantime they start to fall for each other. Having seen My Fair Lady I thought both of the leads were charming and portrayed the story fairly favourably. However I found this first version fairly jarring and most of the reason for this can lie at the feet of Howard whose Henry Higgins seemed to be overly harsh and instead of stern and bookish he came off as quite monstrous .I previously watched Howard in Romeo and Juliet and wasn't impressed by him there and that perception didn't change with Pygmalion despite this he was nominated for Best Actor. In its defence I thought Hillier, a Best Actress nominee, was fairly likeable and portrayed Eliza fairly well while the film was also shot and plotted fairly well and was rewarded with the Best Adapted Screenplay award. A fairly decent film this does seem fairly dated when compared with its fellow nominees like The Adventures of Robin Hood and La Grand Illusion.

Monday 7 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 42: One Disaster after Another

Throughout the 1930s the film industry was mainly run by the studios who contracted various stars to appear in their movies. Two of the biggest studios at the time were MGM and 20th Century Fox and in the late 30s they were run by Louis B Mayer and Darryl F Zanuck respectively. Over the years of 1936 and 1937 both studios produced big budget films concentrating on two separate famous historical disasters that occurred in U.S. States.

First up was MGM's San Francisco a film that looked at 1906 era San Francisco in the build up to the famous earthquake. It sees Clark Gable corrupt nightclub owner Blacky Norton who hires and later romances Jeanette MacDonald's club singer Mary Blake. MacDonald is eventually tempted away from Norton and his Paradise Club and ends up singing at the opera and dating a wealthy opera scion. Meanwhile Norton's childhood friend, now a priest, tries to get his old friend to change his ways and also tries to convince Mary that Norton isn't all bad. In the end Mary returns to Norton with a performance of the song San Francisco that wins The Paradise Club an award. Just after this however the earthquake hits and the final 15 or so minutes of the film sees the specially constructed scenes as the quake followed by the fire as Norton tries to find Mary and he has to pray to God, something he's refused to do up to now, eventually finding her alive. In the impressive final scene the survivors of the earthquake march hand in hand singing as the shot of the wreckage of the earthquake dissolves into the San Francisco of the 1930s. The final earthquake montage sequences were the most impressive and obviously cost the most to make, the film also made a star out of MacDonald, who had previously been noted for her work with Maruice Cheavlier. However Clark Gable didn't seem to have a good time filming the movie clashing with MacDonald and also almost refusing to deliver the final breakdown scenes claiming that he would make him come off as soppy. Despite putting in a great performance it was actually Spencer Tracy, as the priest, who got a Best Actor Nomination even though he was the support to the Gable character. The film also won the award for Best Sound and was nominated for director, assistant director and original screenplay. But this was the year that over-hyped Great Ziegfeld won Best Picture so there was no chance for San Francisco despite in being a pretty impressive picture.

A year after the release of San Francisco, Fox decided they were also going to release a disaster picture and picked the Chicago Fire as their backdrop. They tried to cast Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the lead roles however they were both tied to MGM so in the end the roles went to Tyrone Power and Alice Faye . The film starts with the O'Leary family travelling to Chicago when the father dies, the mother becomes a washerwoman and with her three sons begins running a farm. Years later Dion is a dodgy club owner, Jack is a respectable lawyer and Bob helps his mother out. Dion begins a relationship and later marries club singer Belle despite his mother's protests. Dion then helps Jack run for council in Chicago and pays off a lot of his underworld friends to make this happen so Jack can do Dion's bidding however Jack finds out and the two brothers go to war. Again disaster strikes as the fire starts thanks to an incident provoked by Mrs O'Leary's cow, the fire sequences themselves were said to cost over $150,000 and the set is said to have burned for three days. Although up to this point the film hadn't been up to much the final disaster is what everyone had been waiting for. In terms of Oscars it won one more than San Francisco as Alice Brady as Mrs O'Leary was the second woman to win the Supporting Actress award and the Assistant Director was also honoured. The Life of Emile Zola beat the film out for Best Picture and In Old Chicago also received nods for its score, sound and original screenplay.

Of the two films I think I preferred San Francisco I think the plot had more to say it was glamorous, had big musical numbers and I enjoyed the themes of greed vs. religion and the relationship between Spencer Tracey and Clark Gable while I thought In Old Chicago was a film that was just waiting for its expensive conclusion and didn't really care about the rest of the plot despite some good performances from Alice Brady and Don Ameche as Jack. Both of these films should be watched to see what big budget disaster movies looked like back in the 1930s and I reckon both certainly deserved their places in the Best Picture list.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 41: Down and Out

Next up is Dead End which was nominated for Best Picture at the 1938 awards but lost to The Life of Emile Zola. It is also an adaptation of a play of the same name that featured the first appearance of the Dead End Kids a gang of slum children who would appear in several other films including, most notably, Angels with Dirty Faces. In this film the Dead End Kids' slum is at the back of a new block of luxury apartments and after roughing up one of the rich kids the gang gets in trouble with the child's father, one of the kids - Tommy inadvertently stabs him in the hand and ends up going into hiding. Other plots see Tommy's sister Drina not wanting to see her brother resort to a life of crime and Drina's friend Dave beginning a relationship with a woman who is having an affair with a rich man the two of them knowing they can never be together as Dave cannot support her the way she is already being supported. The third plot strand involves Humphrey Bogart's Babyface Martin returning to the slums to visit his mother and reunite with his old girlfriend however when he finds out the former wants nothing to do with him and the latter has become involved with prostitution he resorts to kidnapping a rich child to make his return worth it. All three plot strands collide as the film reaches its conclusion which sees one character dead and one of the others a hero.

When Dead End was being made, America itself was still in the throes of the depression. While other films, like those by Frank Capra for example, tried to make people forget their troubles when they went to the picture house, Dead End did just the opposite. While the plot isn't exactly thrilling throughout one thing that did strike me was the way that the slum had been constructed and how it represented the juxtaposition between the poor Dead End Kids and the wealthier families in the new apartment blocks, it's no surprise then that it was nominated for both its Art Direction and cinematography. Of the cast, Bogart gives a good supporting performance as the generic mobster character reacting well to the surprises that await him when he returns to his old haunts, this meaty supporting role obviously set him on his way to become a headliner in the next decade.

Joel McCrea also does well as the loveable loser Dave and most of the child actors steer the right side of annoying. However the only acting nomination went to Claire Trevor who starred as Bogart's ex, she was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category which was in only its second year at the time. This was also the second William Wyler film to get a Best Picture nomination but bizarrely he didn't feature in the Best Director section. Overall a fairly decent film but not an amazing one and I reckon if the Best Picture nominees were only five, Dead End would've failed to make the cut.

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