Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 70: Getting a Bit Windy

Back to the start of the decade now with the winner of the 1940 ceremony and possibly one of the most famous films of all time - Gone with The Wind. It holds a place in Oscar history as it is the first Best Picture filmed entirely in colour and also the first film to feature an Oscar winning turn by an African American performer but more on that later. The story follows Southern Belle Scarlett O'Hara who we meet at the start of the American Civil War, Scarlett is admired by several suitors but she is in love with the debonair Ashley Wilkes but she discovers that he is to marry his cousin Melanie. Simply out of spite Scarlett decides to marry Melanie's brother Charles but he is soon killed when the Civil War starts. At the same time Scarlett meets the dashing rogue Rhett Butler who seems to have offended everyone who comes into contact with him. As the men go away to fight in the war Scarlett promises Ashley that she will look after Melanie, the two of them soon move to Atlanta to tend to sick soldiers but then a pregnant Melanie gets sick and Scarlett helps to deliver her baby. Scarlett enlists Rhett's to help transport Melanie and the baby back to Scarlett's estate which she finds in a state and her father who has since succumb to dementia and then dies just after the war finishes. Scarlett struggles to keep her estate going and soon marries her sister's suitor the middle-aged Frank Kennedy with whose money she buys a saw mill and convinces Ashley to help her run it. After Scarlett is attacked Frank, Ashley and a returning Rhett go after the attackers and Frank is fatally injured in the scuffle. Scarlett and Rhett eventually marry and have a child but Rhett realises that she is still in love with Ashley and starts to drink heavily and then asks Scarlett for a divorce however she doesn't want the scandal so instead Rhett takes their daughter away to London. They return after Rhett realises Bonnie needs her mother but then Bonnie dies after falling off a horse and then Melanie dies during her second pregnancy. After seeing how distraught Ashley is when Melanie dies she realises that he could never have loved her in the way he did Melanie and finally decides that she is in love with Rhett. However at this point Rhett has had enough and when Scarlett asks what she will do without Rhett he utters the line 'frankly my dear I don't give a damn' and this is followed by the film's other famous line 'tomorrow is another day' when Scarlett realises that the only thing that is left in her life is her family's estate and that's what her priority has to be.

It has been a while since I saw Gone With The Wind and the DVD I rented came as two discs separated by the interval which the original audience would have got. Part One of the film is definitely it's stronger half with the opening scene at the barbecue where we get the feel of all of the four principal characters followed by the war itself. You get the feel of the epic scale of the picture as we get a shot of all the injured soldiers laid out across the land there also some very interesting camera techniques and the use of colour is expertly done. The film's second half is where things get a bit flabby as director Victor Fleming takes too long telling the story of the love quadrangle that takes place but the film picks up in its final part with the marriage and separation of Scarlett and Rhett and the deaths of Bonnie and Melanie. The production itself seemed to be very fraught with original director George Cukor being fired and replaced by The Wizard of Oz's Fleming while there was about 20 actresses in the frame for Scarlett but the role went to the then unknown British actress Vivien Leigh. Leigh's performance won her an Oscar and she did a good job portraying the incredibly complex Scarlett. Clark Gable was brilliant as Rhett but he lost out to Robert Donat and Olivia De Havilland was also nominated as Melanie but she also lost. The actress she lost to was Hattie McDaniel who portrayed the O'Hara's servant Mammy, McDaniel stole most of the scenes that she featured in especially the opening scenes which without her would've been awfully melodramatic. McDaniel laid down the legacy which saw other African American performers being accepted by the academy equally impressive was Butterfly McQueen as the jittery servant Prissy.

Although I do have a lot of love for what The Wizard of Oz did in terms of its special effects and use of colour there's no denying that Gone With The Wind is weightier in terms of its tone. Although, at three and a half hours it's a bit long, at the time the audience would've appreciated this and the cinema was much more of a communal event than it is now. Although I am yet to watch seven of the other films that were nominated against it at the moment I can definitely say that Gone with The Wind was a good choice to be the first winner of the 1940s ceremonies.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 69: Three's Company

As we saw in the 1930s there were a lot of Screwball comedies knocking about, these films usually revolved around a couple who weren't together for some reason and had to resolve issues - usually of class in order to become a couple by the end. That tradition seems to continue in The More the Merrier, a nominee at the 1944 ceremony which was a film that touched on the serious issue of the housing shortage during the Second World War but did it with plenty of screwball comedy-esque touches. The film revolves around Benjamin Dingle, an adviser on the housing shortage who arrives in Washington to find his hotel won't be ready for two days. Dingle then has to find an apartment and ends up moving in with a young girl named Constance Milligan. Constance and Dingle have trouble working out a routine while living together which is further complicated when Dingle rents half of his room out to soldier Joe Carter. Joe and Constance start to fall for each other but she is already engaged to the straight-laced bureaucrat Charles Pendergrass. Through several different means Dingle starts to orchestrate situations where Joe and Constance will be together and even delays Pendergrass by asking him to help with some of his duties. From there, there are romantic complications as Joe and Constance fall in love and Pendergrass then discovers the whole house-sharing mess. The final scene sees Dingle seal the fate of the two younger characters and then sings outside their door with a group of homeless men.

I really enjoyed The More The Merrier and I even found myself laughing out loud at some points, something I have rarely done to any of these films. Most of the reason for that is down to Charles Coburn as Dingle, who steals every scene he is in and the highlight is the very first morning he and Constance are together they construct an almost silent routine which is absolutely hilarious. Coburn won the Oscar for Supporting Actor that year, the only award the film received, and that was more than justified just as with Lionel Barrymore in the 1930s, Coburn is a supporting star who we will see more of throughout the decade. Jean Arthur, previously the plucky heroine in You Can't Take it With You, here plays the practical but ultimately romantic Constance with some ease and also earned an Oscar nomination. The film does suffer when Coburn isn't on the screen and the romantic scenes between Joe and Constance go on a little too long. However the film is incredibly well written and also well shot including the scenes in which Joe and Constance talk to each other through the wall which are filmed through the window so you can see both characters. A nice little comedy with a serious social issue at its heart and some good performances.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 68: A Sprinkling of Ginger

Before I started this voyage, I always thought that Ginger Rogers was just Fred Astaire's dancing partner in whimsical little films. Then I saw her small performance in 42nd Street and then her starring role in Stage Door and suddenly my opinion of her changed. More research proved that she was one of 67 women who has won the Best Actress Oscar and she did at the 1941 Oscar ceremony in the film Kitty Foyle, which was also nominated for Best Picture. The film sees Rogers as the eponymous Foyle who from the outset has to choose between a sensible but dull Doctor and a man named Wyn who has turned up at her doorstep. As she leaves her apartment, seemingly to go off with Wyn, she is taunted by her reflection in a snow-globe which makes her relive her life up to this point. We see Kitty living in Philadelphia with her crotchety but loving father, who has a habit of exclaiming Judas Priest and telling his daughter to be realistic when it comes to choosing a partner. However while working as a typist she meets Wyn who is the member of the well-to-do Stafford family and runs a magazine which Kitty goes to work for. When Wyn's magazine goes under, Kitty tries to convince him to move to New York but he doesn't want to leave his jet-set lifestyle so she moves on her own and meets and starts dating Doctor Mark. Wyn returns and the two get married but Wyn wants to change her into a society wife while Kitty still wants to work. Kitty then finds out she's pregnant and at the same time that Wyn is to remarry, tragedy comes thick and fast as she loses the child in childbirth and then returns to Philadelphia where she runs into Wyn and his new family. The film ends with her deciding to choose the sensible Mark as their dates seemed to have a lot less drama packed into them and because he was really a rather charming fella while Wyn was a bit of a bastard.

Kitty Foyle is considered to belong to the cannon of 'women's films' that were big from the thirties to the fifties. They always had a big female star and it usually appealed to a female audience as they could see elements of their life in them. For example the scenes in which Kitty shares a cramped New York apartment with two other shop girls would obviously resonate with females who were living alone for the first time. What I didn't like was the gender politics of the whole thing where Kitty was only happy when she was with a man and indeed the premise of the film is that she should either be with Mark or Wyn there's never an argument made for her to be on her own. As we see towards the latter stages of the film bad things happen when she's on her own - her father dies and she loses her child who she was going to raise as a single mother which I'm assuming was frowned upon at the time. That aside Kitty Foyle was a pleasant enough film which never dragged and at its centre was a passionate performance from Ginger Rogers who really did deserve that Bet Actress Oscar.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 67: A Couple More Bogeys

Okay so I know I've been chastising everyone for not watching some of the classics over the last few days but I'm no saint myself when it comes to missing out on the oldies. In fact I've seen less the ten film from this decade's list including the next two films. Also in the last post we looked at Casablanca, but leading man Humphrey Bogart was a busy boy in the 1940s. After a lot of supporting roles in the 1930s he finally became a big star and was probably the top leading man in that decade. Although he didn't win his Best Actor Oscar, for The African Queen, until the 1950s the 1940s were definitely Bogey's best decade. And recently I watched two of his films from the decade one pre and one post Casablanca and both directed by John Huston.

First up we have The Maltese Falcon, Huston's first film as a director, and a nominee at the 1942 ceremony. In it Bogart plays private detective Sam Spade whose detective partner is shot while on a job tracking a man for a girl whose sister has supposedly run off with him. The man also dies that night and Spade is fingered for both murders and has to find out who killed who. Spade then gets charged with the task of finding a black figure of a bird which turns out to be the titular Maltese Falcon, a jewel encrusted figure which was a gift to King Charles V of Spain from the Knights of Malta. During his investigation Bogart meets the diminutive and excitable Joel Cairo and the large and domineering Kasper Gutman sometimes referred to as the fat man. Cairo is the man who first asks Spade to look for the bird and Gutman is able to explain its significance. Meanwhile Spade finds out that the girl Brigid was also after the bird with the man who was killed. The film then builds to a climax as we try to discover who shot who and who is scamming who and what will Spade do? Bogart's Spade isn't a million miles away from Casablanca's Rick, both characters don't really have an emotional attachment to the item on offer and both would rather no attract trouble. Unlike Rick, Spade is basically after money, although there is a brief spark between him and Brigid its nothing like the Rick and Ilsa romance in Casablanca. The similarities to Casablanca don't end there though as Bogart's co-stars are Peter Lorre (as Cairo) and Sydney Greenstreet (as Gutman), the former played the petit criminal in Casablanca while the latter played the rival bar owner. Greenstreet in fact was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and rightly so as, apart from Bogart, his performance is the film's best, the excellent adapted screenplay was also nominated. What I will say is that this is the first proper mystery film that I've watched since I've been doing this quest. While The Thin Man did have a kind of murder mystery structure, The Maltese Falcon was incredibly involving and very well plotted, I believe that Bogart's performance here at least deserved an Oscar nom but this was the year that How Green Was My Valley walked off with most of the awards and there was hardly anything left for even Citizen Kane.

Bogart returned to Oscar-nominated films at the last ceremony of the decade with The Treasure of The Sierra Madre which did however win Best Director and Adapted Screenplay for John Huston and Best Supporting Actor for his father Walter. The film sees Bogart's Dobbs teaming up with Huston's Howard and Tim Holt's Curtin to find gold in the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. Dobbs and Curtin meet as two Americans down on their luck in Mexico and soon decide to seek Gold with the help of old-timer Howard. They soon strike it lucky but there are complications which include the arrival of bandits, a fourth American discovering them and Dobbs' own paranoia and greed. It is the final one of those three that the film ultimately plays on as Dobbs believes that Howard is out to get him and that Curtin plans to short change him later on. In terms of plot that's about it and that's the beauty of the film as it is a study of the human psyche and how much trust we can give our fellow man. This theme is played upon nicely both by the haunting score and by the brilliantly shot close-ups of all three men. The central three performances are all excellent, Bogart really did deserve a Best Actor nomination here as his portrayal of the greedy Gringo Dobbs is an intense and sometimes unlikeable one. Dobbs is definitely different from Bogart's other two roles in this decade and that's even better as we don't really expect a man who's played so many heroes to here play a morally ambiguous character. Walter Huston also does well as the old-timer who's obviously seen men affected by gold in a similar way before, Huston impressed me with his work in Dodsworth so it's nice to see him winning an award while Tim Holt also does well as the upstanding Curtin. The film isn't perfect, it takes a little too long to get started and some of Howard's scenes in the Mexican village should've been quicker but overall this is a masterpiece that shows you don't need a huge story to keep audiences entranced for two hours.

There will be a little bit more bogey before the decade is out but these are definitely two of his defining films and I'm glad that I got to watch both of them for the first time.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 66: You Must Remember This

At the 1944 Oscar ceremony, ten films were nominated for Best Picture, this was the last time this would happen until 2010. The film that triumphed that year was obviously one that is still hailed as a classic that is Casablanca. Those who haven't seen Casablanca, and I will stop chastising people for not seeing these films, will still know lines from it 'here's looking at you kid', 'of all the gin joints in all the world she had to walk into mine' and 'Louis, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship'. There's also the 'Play it Again Sam' quandary as that line doesn't appear in the film when Bogart tells piano player Sam to play 'As Time Goes By', the song which also is something that people would associate with the film. The basic plot concerns people stuck in Casablanca trying to travel from Nazi occupied Europe to the neutral Lisbon and then on to America. Our central figure is Humphrey Bogart's Rick who is seemingly uninvolved in all the struggles that are going on around him and instead is happy to take people's money whether they be Nazi officers or those trying to escape. The item that keeps the plot moving are letters of transit, documents which let whoever holds them travel freely around Europe, which end up in Rick's possession after they are handed him by a petit thief who is arrested by the Nazi Officers. Rick's former love Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman, comes into his bar and back into his life after the two had a fleeting romance in France years earlier. Ilsa along with her husband Victor are another couple trying to leave Casablanca and is after letters of transit himself. From there the film is both a love triangle and a thriller revolving around the transit papers will Rick give them willingly to Ilsa and will they be discovered in his possession by Claude Rains' corrupt cop Louis. Again I'm not going to ruin it for you either you've seen it already or you really need to watch it.

One thing I do really love about Casablanca is the characterisation. None of the main leads are either truly good or bad, even the despicable Louis has a moment of redemption in the film's final scenes. Rick's motivations are unclear for most of the film, and he certainly isn't a hero preferring to be a passive figure during this war. While Ilsa isn't just a wallflower and seems to more in control then husband Victor in terms of their quest for the papers. I also have to applaud the art direction in particular Rick's cafe, in which the majority of the film is set, comes to life through the hustle and bustle of the various patrons and the gambling rooms in the back. Of the performances themselves Bogart is amazing in the lead while Bergman manages to hold her own. Also I do love Claude Rains as Louis, he is incredibly slimy but also humorous and straight-laced when he needs to be. Rains and Bogart were both nominated for acting awards but neither were successful while Bergman wasn't even nominated for her role here, although she did get a nomination this year for her role in Whom The Bell Tolls. As well as Best Picture, the Adapted Screenplay and Michael Curtiz's direction also won, but I think Casablanca should've swept the board. But again this is a classic which more than deserves its place as one of the 82 films that have won Best Picture.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 65: Today's Big Story - It Didn't Win Best Picture

If you look at lists made of the Best Films of All Time by noted cinema critics, there's one film that always seemed to top the list, Citizen Kane. It is odd then that this film didn't receive a Best Picture award, which went to How Green was My Valley, and only won one award of the nine awards that it was nominated for. That was for Best Original Screenplay which is more than justified as, for a movie made in the early 1940s, it has one of the best scripts of the era. In terms of the narrative structure I believe that it is the only film that I have watched thus far that has a non-linear narrative. For those who haven't seen the film, no excuse really, but the plot involves the death of newspaper magnate whose last word was simply 'Rosebud'. This triggers newsreel reporter Jerry Thompson to try and discover the significance of this final word. Thompson interviews various people in Kane's wife including his business manager, his butler, his best friend and his second wife as well as reading the memoirs of Kane's former guardian. While Thompson's interviews take place in the present once the interviews start we get flashbacks from Kane's past starting with his childhood where he is taken from his parents to live with banker Walter Thatcher, we see him as a ruthless newspaper owner and also running for governor before a romance with a singer ruins his political career as well as ending his first marriage. His second wife Susan is an aspiring singer but Kane pushes her into singing opera which she is really no good and eventually leaves Kane when she realises that he wants her to be something that she can't be. Obviously the final shot of the film reveals the significance of the word Rosebud and if you're any kind of fan of film then you will already know who or what Rosebud is. But again for those of you who are yet to watch it I won't spoil the surprise.

What I will bang on about however is how revolutionary the film is, while it may not be the best film of all time, it is certainly the best film of its time. The cinematography is incredibly well executed from the wide angle shots of Kane's Xanadu mansion to the close-ups on character's expressions every scene is given significance. The art direction is also spot-on, every set is given a lot of detail and it really captures the viewer's imagination, again both cinematography and art direction went to How Green was My Valley. All of this is a testament to Orson Welles, whose cinematic vision is realised here he is a presence both as a director and an actor, again he was nominated for both and lost out to John Ford and Gary Cooper respectively. Although I think the Oscars usually get it right, to give Citizen Kane only one Oscar when it is visually spectacular and narratively brilliant, is just wrong. Having never seen How Green was my Valley I really don't know but it must have to be spectacular to match the power of Kane.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 64: Lions and Tigers and Bears and Dead Wives Oh My!

So we're finally into the ten ceremonies that took place in the 1940s, in other words films that were released between 1939 and 1948, the first five ceremonies still had ten nominees but at the 1945 ceremony it retreated back to the original format of five nominees something that stayed the same until this year's ceremony where we went back to ten nominations. Anyway that's way in the future but what's quite exciting is that I own four DVDs of films nominated in this decade so that's where I'm going to start.

And first up is a classic that most of us have seen at one time or another yes it's The Wizard of Oz. I won't really go into the plot that much because if you don't know the story then you've lead a very sheltered life and your childhood was obviously very severe if no-one ever sat down with you and watched the film. What I will do is talk about some of the bits I'd forgotten and some of the segments that make it impressive at least from a filmic point of view. Obviously the first thing to say is the transformation between the sepia beginnings when Dorothy is still in Kansas and then the brilliant Technicolor scenes in Oz. In particular when Dorothy arrives in Oz the colours are so stark and it is so well filmed that at the time audiences must have been stunned. What I'd forgotten about is how good those pre-Oz scenes where and how well Judy Garland portrays a girl who really wants to escape the life she has. The other misconception I'd had was that this was a strong musical film however the second half of the film, from the first meeting with the Wizard onwards, contains no singing whatsoever. For a film released in 1939 the effects are really well done, the twister scene in which Dorothy's house flies through the air and encounters all the other characters is very well executed and later the scenes where the gang encounter the Wizard for the first time is also very well done. From the costumes, to the make-up and the acting the film is just excellent. Which makes it very odd that it was shown very little love at the 1940 Oscar Ceremony. Although it was included in the list of ten films that was nominated for Best Picture, it only got another four noms. From the 1940s some films were shot in colour while a lot remained in black and white, because of this the cinematography category was split into how the pictures were filmed and Wizard of Oz was nominated for colour cinematography as well as special effects both of which it should have won and didn't. There was success for the film in the Original Score and Song categories, the latter was for Over the Rainbow but that's it and that's a shame because there should've been at least a couple of acting nods. In particular Margaret Hamilton as The Wicked Witch of The West deserves a mention, from her opening scenes as the evil Miss Gulch to her terrifying presence after she dons the green make-up she steals the show from everyone else. One scene that still scares me to this day is the one in which Dorothy sees Aunt Em through the witch's crystal ball and as she is shouting her aunt's name the witch appears and taunts her, Hamilton should've got a nomination for Best Supporting Actress and I would've also but The Wizard himself Frank Morgan in there as Supporting Actor. However director Victor Fleming wasn't that upset as his other picture released that year went onto win, you may have heard of it as it was a little film called Gone with The Wind.

Talking of winners the next year's ceremony saw the only Alfred Hitchcock film to win the award and it was Hitch's first major Hollywood picture - Rebecca. I will forgive anyone who doesn't know the plot of this film but basically it sees Joan Fontaine's character, who is never named, meet Laurence Olivier's widower Maxim De Winter while in Monte Carlo. After a whirlwind romance the two get married and return to Maxim's large stately home Manderlay. Soon the new Mrs DeWinter is told tales of the eponymous Rebecca, Maxim's first wife, who supposedly drowned during a boating accident. In particular Fontaine has many run-ins with Manderlay's housekeeper the chilling Mrs Danvers who starts by making subtle digs at her and soon is blatantly taunting her. Maxim also seems to be haunted by memories of his first wife and when his new wife appears in one of Rebecca's old dresses he becomes enraged and forces her to change into a new dress. The final third of the film discovers the mysterious circumstances in which Rebecca died but to talk about those would be to reveal the plot. What I will say is that Rebecca is an excellent film and in particular the filming of both the exterior and interior of Manderlay is what makes it particularly chilling. The film did win Best Cinematography, its only win apart from Best Picture, which is more than justified as the camerawork makes Manderlay another character in and of itself and evokes memories of Rebecca in all of the other characters. The nominated score also deserves a mention as a lot of the scenes feature Fontaine creeping around the large house trying to discover Rebecca's memories for herself. Olivier and Fontaine were both nominated for their lead performances but lost ot James Stewart and Ginger Rogers respectively. However the best performance in the film belongs to Judith Anderson as the cold, distant and ultimately wicked Mr. Danvers who has to be one of the best screen villains of all time. Anderson was nominated also nominated, as Supporting Actress, but also lost out. In all Rebecca got eleven nominations but only two wins, it was also the first of five nominations for Hitch who famously never won an Oscar for directing. This has to be one of the biggest snubs of all time and it's a damn shame that one of the finest directors of all time was never rewarded with accolades that he deserved.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge: Reviewing the Ceremonies 1-11 (1929-1939)

As you know the way that I have set this challenge out is by Oscar Ceremony rather than by decade so the first ten films that I will encounter at the 1940 ceremony were actually released in 1939. But I've done it this way because of the way the first five ceremonies concentrated on films over two years. So here's a ceremony by ceremony breakdown of the decade that I've wrapped up.


Ceremony 1: 1929
Winner: Wings
Nominees I've Watched: Seventh Heaven and The Racket
Did the Right Film Win: Yes
The first year only three films were nominated and luckily I've been able to watch all three. While I didn't think much of The Racket, Seventh Heaven was a fairly good film however it felt a little disjointed and overall Wings had the better structure so it was the right choice to win the first Best Picture award.

Ceremony 2: 1930 (I)
Winner: The Broadway Melody
Nominees I've Watched: Alibi, Hollywood Revue of 1929 and In Old Arizona
Not Available: The Patriot
Did The Right Film Win: Probably
The first of two ceremonies from 1930 and the first winner in sound. The Broadway Melody was by far the film that had the best structure however both Alibi and In Old Arizona played around with more filmic techniques. But overall I think Broadway Melody has stood the test of time out of the four I've watched. Meanwhile I will never get to see the fifth film - The Patriot as there is no full print of the film.

Ceremony 3: 1930 (II)
Winner: All Quiet on The Western Front
Nominees I've Watched: The Big House, Disraeli, The Divorcee, The Love Parade
Did The Right Film Win: Yes
After the advent of sound the films at the third ceremony started to draw on controversial themes such as what prison life was like - The Big House and the break-up of marriages - The Divorcee. We also had biopics and Maurice Chevalier musicals but that year's eventual winner still stands up as one of the greatest war films of all time.

Ceremony 4: 1931
Winner: Cimarron
Nominees I've Watched: The Front Page Skippy and Trader Horn
Not Available: East Lynne
Did The Right Film: Yes
As you've just read my review of Cimarron then you know there's not much choice in the way of an alternate winner. East Lynne is the other film that would be in contention but saying that I still think at the time with its epic backdrops and relevant themes - Cimarron would've been a hard film to beat.

Ceremony 5: 1932
Winner: Grand Hotel
Nominees: Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, The Champ, Five Star Final, One Hour With You, Shanghai Express, The Smiling Lieutenant
Did the Right Film Win: Yes
The year that the number of nominees went up from five to eight. Although I did enjoy the realistic nature of Bad Girl, the father/son relationship in The Champ and the plotting of Shanghai Express, Grand Hotel was able to do it on a bigger scale and had some top notch performances to boot.

Ceremony 6: 1934
Winner: Cavalcade
Nominees: 42nd Street, A Farewell to Arms, I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang, Lady for A Day, Little Women, The Private Life of Henry VIII,She Done Him Wrong, Smilin' Through, State Fair
Did The Right Film Win: Yes
Oscar took a year off and returned with two more nominees with the total going up to ten. Again two films stand out for me - I am A Fugitive and 42nd Street were both favourites of mine but the multi-layered narrative and historical accuracy of Cavalcade marked it out as an original piece of film-making and deserved of a best picture prize.

Ceremony 7: 1935
Winner: It Happened One Night
Nominees I've Watched: The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Cleopatra, The Gay Divorcee, Here Comes The Navy, The House of Rothschild, Imitation of Life, One Night of Love, The Thin Man, Viva Villa
Not Available:  Flirtation Walk, The White Parade
Did the Right Film win: Yes
For those of you who can count 1935 gave us twelve nominees which was just a little bit silly as films such as the fluffy Gay Divorcee and offensive Here Comes the Navy made the cut. Claudette Colbert was in three of the films and although I really enjoyed Imitation of Life I will concede that It Happened One Night was the best overall.

Ceremony 8: 1936
Winner: Mutiny on The Bounty
Nominees: Alice Adams, The Broadway Melody of 1936, Captain Blood, David Copperfield, The Informer, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Les Miserables, A Midsummers Nights Dream, Naughty Marietta, Ruggles of Red Gap and Top Hat
Did the Right Film Win: Yes
Sticking with twelve nominees again saw a lot of musical and comic nonsense and some long sprawling epics make the cut. Mutiny on The Bounty wasn't a perfect picture but it was the best from this group of nominees

Ceremony 9: 1937
Winner: The Great Ziegfeld
Nominees: Anthony Adverse, Dodsworth, Libelled Lady, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Romeo and Juliet, San Francisco, The Story of Louis Pasteur, A Tale of Two Cities and Three Smart Girls
Did The Right Film Win: No
Back to ten nominees we still have a couple of non-starters but a lot more strong contenders. Now that we're getting towards the end of the decade film making has become more elaborate as is seen in the adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and the disaster movie San Francisco as well as that year's winner The Great Ziegfeld. However I feel that Ziegfeld was too long and basically just a vaudeville stage show on the big screen. I think in terms of film-making both San Francisco and Dodsworth did it better and told a better story so, in my mind, one of those two films should've won.

Ceremony 10: 1938
Winner: The Life of Emile Zola
Nominees: The Awful Truth, Captain Courageous, Dead End, The Good Earth, In Old Chicago, Lost Horizon, One Hundred Men and A Girl, Stage Door and A Star is Born
Did The Right Film Win: Yes
I wasn't sure about The Life of Emile Zola in terms of sustaining the narrative over the length of time the film was on screen. But it was a poor year in terms of nominees and only Stage Door and A Star is Born were on the same level but neither of those had the level of gravitas that Emile Zola had.

Ceremony 11: 1939
Winner: You Can't Take It With You
Nominees: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Boys Town, The Citadel, Four Daughters, La Grande Illusion, Jezebel, Pygmalion and Test Pilot
Did The Right Film Win: No
As much as I enjoyed Frank Capra's second screwball comedy to win the Best Picture award I feel it didn't deserve Best Picture as much as two of the other films on the list. First of all The Adventures of Robin Hood which was the first film out of the ones I've watched that really knew what to do with the use of Technicolor and was a very good swashbuckler. While La Grande Illusion was just a fantastically made piece of gripping film and one of Renoir's finest. When you've got two films that have defined the history of cinema a comedy about a rich and poor family doesn't really seem that important.

So it's goodbye to the 1930s next up we delve into the ceremonies that took place in the 1940s which honoured films released between 1939 and 1948.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 63: Ending on a Winner

So instead I end the first part of this journey with the final winning film- Cimarron a sprawling epic set during the 1880s and looking at the first settlers in Oklahoma as it became a boomtown and the life of a family experiencing it over forty years. The film starts with erstwhile newspaper editor and lawyer Yancey Cravat returning home from the settlements after five years and taking his wife and son along with him to find a place to live in Oklahoma. Over time we see Yancey try and make the place more inhabitable by getting rid of all the cowboys and bandits and setting up a new newspaper - The Oklahoma Wigwam as well as lessening the amount of taverns and undesirables in Oklahoma. Meanwhile Yancey's wife Sabra also becomes a valuable member of the community setting up a women's group and also looking after various facets of the newspaper and becomes a mother for the second time. As the film tracks later into the future Yancey starts to get restless and leaves home for large periods of time leaving Sabra to become the main face of the family. When Yancey comes back, Sabra starts to feel that he is tarnishing their reputation by writing reports about Native Americans having the same rights as them and defending a woman accused of being a prostitute. As the film gets into the early 1920s, Yancey has left again and Sabra is accepted into the U.S. senate and also acknowledges for the first time that her son has married a young American Indian girl. The final scene of the film sees her witnessing an old man being hit by a cart which turns out to be Yancey who then dies in her arms. Not a joyous ending but an interesting film nonetheless that deals with issues of restlessness, perception, race, class and gender.

What is most notable about the film however, is the large number of extras involved in the early scenes as people race to find settlements in Oklahoma. Indeed up to 5,000 extras were used in the film and up to 28 cameramen were employed at any one time. Indeed during the depression a film like this seemed to make a mockery of the state the country was in as RKO were able to lay on a budget of 1.5 million dollars. Another thing that is interesting in the film is the issue of race especially in the later scenes as the couple's son Cimarron, which incidentally means wild, marries the young Indian girl. While Yancey doesn't see a problem with equality others frown at the Indian settlers with Sabra describing them as 'dirty, filthy, savages' this issue is one of many in which views are challenged. The performances are pretty good Richard Dix plays the lead well a man who doesn't know whether to choose his family over new adventures and Irene Dunne is brilliant as his long-suffering wife, both were nominated for acting Oscars but neither were successful. The film did win an award for its art direction which was more than justified and for its script which I did find long and meandering at times. I have only been able to watch two of Cimarron's competitors - The Front Page and Skippy both of which weren't half as good as this epic but unless I get to see the other two films I'll never know whether Cimarron deserved to win.

Right so 75 films watched and that's all I can do for the ceremonies between 1929 and 1939 for now. Next up are the ceremonies between 1940 and 1949 but before that a little look back at the decade I've just wrapped up.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 62: Claudette is Queen

Although it was one of my favourite films from a couple of years ago, Clint Eastwood's Changeling also let me know that at the time of the 1935 Oscar ceremony everybody thought that Cecile B DeMille's Cleopatra was going to clean up and win big at that year's ceremony, apart from Angelina Jolie's character who reckoned that It Happened One Night would triumph. Of course Ange was right and Frank Capra's film became only one of three films ever to win the Big Five (Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director) while Cleopatra only went home with the cinematography statuette. Not that Claudette Colbert was that arsed as she was the lead female in both films, plus a third nominated film - Imitation of Life. Indeed Colbert was probably the perfect choice to play Cleopatra - not too young, not too old and beautiful without being over-the-top. Indeed Colbert's Cleopatra is very flirty and sexy but never that dominant instead she is always waiting to find out what her man is going to do. The first third of the film essentially steals from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as we follow Cleopatra from Egypt to Rome with J.C. where he is betrayed by Brutus. She is then able to seduce Marc Anthony who has come to deal with Caesar's killers but instead finds himself caught up in a battle of wits with the Egyptian queen in a relationship where they both try and kill each other. The final third of the film sees Caesar's only living relative, Octavian try and overthrow Marc Anthony as leader of Rome and get rid of Cleo once and for all. And in the final scene the Romans barge into Cleopatra's bedroom obviously to arrest her.

But the plot doesn't really seem to be that important to DeMille, instead he seems to want to concentrate on the detail and the extravagance that surrounded Cleo, Julius and Marc during their days in Egypt and Rome. So there are plenty of half-naked servant girls, large dance numbers and any number of animals lying around. Indeed the film opens with a naked servant girl who has been lit for purposes of modesty, this was just before censorship hit cinemas so this was DeMille's chance to get away with a bit more raunchy material than he would in later pictures. Claudette Colbert was great in the lead and she is fast becoming one of my favourite actresses however I still prefer her performance in Imitation of Life. Meanwhile Warren William makes a fine Caesar and Henry Wilcoxon was perfectly adequate as Marc Antony. However as a whole the film was style over substance and, even though I enjoyed a few of the later battle scenes, overall I thought if you took away all the detail you were left with a pretty flimsy film.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 61: An Almost Silent Witness

The films that I have watched from the second Oscar ceremony have all been quite interesting as they are some of the first films to be in sound. While winning entry The Broadway Melody and variety show the Hollywood Revue of 1929 were quite happy to concentrate on being able to broadcast entertaining musical numbers and comedy skits the other films tried to see how far they could push the boundaries. In Old Arizona was the first ever sound film to go outdoors and therefore it seems a little arcane now and I'm never going to be sure about The Patriot because there isn't a print of it in existence any more. However the fifth film from the list - Alibi experiments with various camera angles and sound techniques however at the same time you can really tell that it is an early sound film as the actors themselves are still getting used to having their voices recorded. The basic plot sees gangster Chick Williams released from jail, allegedly for a crime he didn't commit, and start dating cop's daughter Joan. There is then an incident where a policeman is shot and Chick is implicated however he was at the theatre with Joan at the time so he has as the title would suggest - an alibi. The film asks the audience to believe whether Chick has turned over a new leaf or if he is still in league with the old gang. Do we side with the police? Or are they just wanting to frame him especially since Joan's would-be-beau is also a policeman? I actually did get quite into the plot in the later stages of the film and it is fascinating that very little is needed to create this mood.

The acting, I have to say, isn't perfect and a lot of performances, especially those from the police informant and the cop's daughter are laughable. But in the lead role Chester Morris as Chick conveys a very morally ambiguous character who you're not sure whether to trust or not and indeed he was nominated for Best Actor that year. The way the film is shot, especially in the final scenes, is very impressive given the time when it was released and even though some of the fight scenes and the shoot-outs seem very old-fashioned this must have been really revolutionary when it first arrived at cinemas. Although The Broadway Melody is probably a better film structurally, Alibi was possibly the most ambitious of the five films nominated in the academy's second year.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 60: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

At the start of the film Four Daughters, Claude Rains is on the piano while his four on screen daughters are playing various instruments and singing. For a moment what I thought I was going to get was a light-hearted musical romp as Rains chastises the girls for not getting into classical music and instead blowing bubble-gum and reading romance magazines. But instead of being independent all of the girls want to be married especially eldest sister Emma, played by Gale Page the only one of the Four Daughters not portrayed by the real life Lane sisters, who wants romance and a knight in shining armour. As the film rolls on each girl apart from Kay gets a suitor, Thea's suitor is the much older Ben while Emma starts to get interested in a man named Ernest. Then composer Felix Deitz comes around catching Emma's eye but instead romancing younger sister Ann. However the film's most interesting character is the wise-cracking cynical composer Mickey Borden who starts to fall for Ann and convinces her that Emma is in love with Felix. On Ann and Felix's wedding day she runs off and marries Mickey and we see their life isn't as happy as either would think. Returning on Christmas Ann and Mickey find that Emma and Ernest are together and that Kay has gone off to London to sing on the radio. Mickey drives Felix to the station and on the way back gets into an accident and later passes away but at the end of the film we get the impression that Felix and Ann will get together once again.

If the plot sounds a little melodramatic then that's because this film was totally over the top. I think the one problem I had with it was that it couldn't really decide what it wanted to be first of all it was a bit musical and light-hearted with the girls talking about boys a lot and various suitors popping up but towards the end it all started to get a little serious with Ann and Mickey getting into debt and then him dying in a car accident. But the main problem was that I just didn't connect with any of the characters and the Lane sisters acting wasn't up to much. There were some good performances from the supporting players especially from Claude Rains as the girl's father and May Robson as their aunt. The best character of all though was Mickey and he was ably played by John Garfield, who was nominated as Best Supporting Actor. However I feel that this film was just something that Michael Curtiz did to fill his time between making the much more well-known The Adventures of Robin Hood and Angels with Dirty Faces.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 59: Journeys to India and France

A bit of globe-trotting now as we journey to India and then to France. First off is the Lives of a Bengal Lancer which was nominated for Best Picture at the 1936 ceremony. It's hard to describe the film as it isn't really a war film although it does feature scenes of conflict. It is set during the days of the British Raj where Lt. McGregor is stationed and welcomes two new Lieutenants the cocksure Forsythe and Tom Stone the son of the unit's commander Donald. It is this relationship between father and son that is the backbone of the film, as Tom is captured following being tempted by a woman working for the villainous Mohammed Kahn. Despite being told by Donald not to go after his son, Forsythe and McGregor journey to the enemy camp where they are captured and all three are tortured. Tom eventually gives out sensitive information to Kahn but before he can use it Donald and his men burst in and in the ensuing battle Tom kills Kahn but McGregor dies. Tom and Forsythe are given medals of honour and McGregor is posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. Although not exactly packed full of action, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer was still a very accomplished picture. This was mainly due to the screenplay, which was nominated for the Oscar, which gave opportunities for all the central characters chances to grow and develop and also develop some laddish banter, especially that between Forsythe and McGregor. The acting is also very good with Gary Cooper giving his best performance so far on this quest and Richard Cromwell was also very stoic as Donald the man who wanted to get to know his son but his life as a soldier and almost stunted his emotions. The film was nominated for eight Oscars in total but only one two Oscars for its assistant directors, which is a shame as I really enjoyed this one.

After looking at Charles Dickens adaptations the other day, we have another adaptation this time of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, now much better known as a musical than from its source text. In this version it is Frederic Marsh who plays Frenchman Jean Valjean the man who is imprisoned and after escaping is treated almost like a beggar but is able to rehabilitated by a kindly priest. He then transforms himself into Monsieur Madelaine a factory owner and later mayor however he encounters Inspector Javert, played by Charles Laughton, the head of the police who he remembers from his time in prison. At the same time Madeline takes in the woman-of-questionable-morals Fantine and her daughter Cossette. Javert reveals that a man is being tried under the name of Valjean, as he is about to be imprisoned the real Valjean reveals himself. Just before Javert is able to bring him to justice he escapes along with Cossette. Valjean is then able to work as a gardener and make enough money to enrol Cossette into a fancy school. During this final part of the story there is an uprising in France as groups start to rebel against the harsh nature of the police. Cossette falls for the leader of the group, who themselves start to attract police attention. This means that Javert comes back into Valjean's life, although Javert is captured by Valjean he reconsiders and lets him go. Javert continues to pursue Valjean but in the end commits suicide by jumping in the river and Valjean and Cossette are reunited. Having only been faintly familiar with the story I think Richard Boleslawski did a good job of bringing it to life. The scenes at the end of the film involving Javert and Valjean are incredibly startling as our Valjean's life following him leaving prison. Like with a star is born, Frederic March is able to display a full range of emotions as Valjean while Charles Laughton steals the show as the villainous and despicable Javert. The film doesn't outstay its welcome and hits all the main plot points without lingering on any one character for too long. However it lost to another Laughton film, Mutiny on The Bounty.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 58: Two Different Houses

Back to the serious stuff once again with two films that have nothing in common apart from the word house in the title. First of we have The House of Rothschild which was nominated for the Oscar in 1935. The film is basically a propaganda film bigging up the Jews in response to the start of the Anti-Semitic movement coming from Hitler's Germany. At a time when most of the heads of the major studios were Jewish they decided to fight back in film form. It basically looks at the Rothschild family who grew up on 'Jew Street' a place where the Jews had to stay and keep in from 6 in the evening till 6 in the morning. The family is headed by patriarch Meyer who convinces his five sons to each start banks in Europe's major cities but to always consult each other on major matters. Later on the Rothschild boys are all grown-up and together helped finance the fight against Napoleon, however once Napoleon is captured, because of the Rothschilds being Jewish, their contribution to the success of the war is glossed over and they are once again ignored. When Napoleon escapes the brothers retreat back to see their mother on Jew Street they think about allying themselves with Napoleon but in the end they decide to stay on the side of the allies this portrays the Rothschilds as caring as they help the people who wouldn't help them. The final scene of the film, for some reason, is presented in three-strip Technicolor and sees Nathan Rothschild meet the Duke of Wellington who finally congratulates him on his help during the war-effort. Personally I didn't really 'get' The House of Rothschild, I thought the performances were perfectly adequate especially George Arliss in the dual role of Nathan and Meyer Rothschild. But the story itself was weak there was a horrible subplot in which Nathan's daughter wanted to marry a non-Jew which was just insipid. Also although I got the point in the films which promoted the goodness of the Jews I felt it wasn't really strong enough to constitute being considered as propaganda. I also found the three-strip Technicolor a little gimmicky and I really didn't see the point in it. This was never going to be a match for that year's winner, It Happened One Night.

A better film comes from the third ever Oscar ceremony and could possibly be considered the first ever proper prison film. The film follows Kent Marlowe as he is imprisoned, supposedly wrongly, for manslaughter. He is forced to share a cell with Wallace Beery's fearsome Butch as well as Chester Morris' sensible and good-natured thief John Morgan. Kent quickly becomes a snitch and plants a knife on Morgan. Morgan escapes anyway and meets up with Kent's sister who he falls for but the rest of the family ring the police and Morgan gets put in jail once again. He then finds out that Butch is planning a breakout and Kent is thinking of joining him but, after meeting Kent's family, Morgan tries to talk him out of it. In the end Morgan gets involved in the breakout to stop Kent breaking out but in the process also helps out the guards apprehend the escapees and his release is granted as he leaves the prison hoping to reunite with Kent's sister and live on an island. Although the plot is quite slight, The Big House seems like a revolutionary film, the scenes of the prisoners moving from their cells, to the yard, to the dining hall are filmed very well for an early talking picture. Wallace Beery was the star of the show as the menacing Butch but Chester Morris made a pretty good leading man as the likeable Morgan. This well written film was rewarded for an Oscar for its screenplay as well as being the first ever film to win the Best Sound Oscar. It's just a shame that it came up against the realistic war picture All Quiet on The Western Front because this film really did give you a feel for what life must be like in prison from the first shot in which Kent comes into prison up to the riot itself this was a very good film indeed.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 57: Some Light Relief

After bubonic plagues, evil stepfathers and French revolutions dominating the last three films I watched on the challenge I thought it was time to indulge in a bit of light-hearted relief so here we go with another screwball comedy, bizarrely directed by the guy who directed the Tale of Two Cities adaptation, Libelled Lady. The film sees Connie a millionaire heiress played by Myrna Loy sue a newspaper after a they print a scandalous rumour about her. The newspaper's editor, played by Spencer Tracy, decides to hire ladies' man Bill, played by William Powell, to get Connie to drop the suit. He does this by getting the editor's fiancée Agnes, played by Jean Harlow, to marry him and then manoeuvre it for Connie to fall for him and Agnes to catch them together. Of course this being a screwball comedy things don't go to plan, and Agnes begins to fall for Bill much to the editor's displeasure. Things come to a head as Connie and Bill get engaged and Agnes reveals that she and Bill are actually married and then Connie and Bill have to convince her that she and the editor belong together.

Unless Frank Capra is involved I find these romantic screwball comedies incredibly lightweight. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing and this one trots along at a nice pace. William Powell and Myrna Loy have proved that they have great on-screen chemistry and indeed the scenes featuring Connie and Bill are probably the film's best. Despite Powell and Loy's chemistry, it was Powell and Harlow who were involved at the time of the film's release. This is in fact Jean Harlow's first appearance in the challenge, she accounts herself well in quite a small role but she is still strong enough to contend with the other actors while Tracy excels at doing something a bit lighter than what I have usually seen him in. Not really an Oscar contender per se, this is still an amiable enough comedy that wiles away an hour and a half quite easily.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 56: A Bit of Charlie

In what seems like a lifetime ago I watched two films based on the works of one of Britain's best loved wordsmiths, William Shakespeare, now I'm dipping back into the list and getting two films that follow a similar pattern as both were based on works written by another chap you may have heard of - Charles Dickens.

First off is George Cukor's massive adaptation of David Copperfield, Copperfield is probably one of the better known of Dickens' work and was obviously a good choice to be one of the first of his books to be adapted since the advent of talking movies. Cukor was also responsible for some of the 1930s adaptations that I've already looked at on this list, Little Women and Romeo and Juliet. For those unfamiliar with the story it shows the development of David Copperfield, from being born to being raised by a single mother with the help of Peggorty the maid. Copperfield's mother then remarries and he is sent first to a boarding school (not seen in the film) and then to a factory in London. There he meets the jovial but constantly in debt lanlord Wilkins Micawber but when Micawber is sent to the debtor's prison, Copperfield feels like he has nothing to live for and treks from London to Dover to live with his great aunt and her dotty companion Mr Dick. As David grows up he falls in love with the beautiful Dora while he also works as a trainee clerk alongside the devious Uriah Heap. David's old school friend Steerforth returns and seduces and absconds with Peggoty's niece Emily, this incident gives the film one of its most vivid scenes as Pegggoty's brother searches high and low for Emily in a windswept montage. In the end David married Dora but she dies in childbirth so he remarries the sensible Agnes while the bad guys all get their comeuppance.

For one of the earliest Dickens adaptations, Cukor has been able to fit in a lot of detail and filmed some rather superb sequences. David's trek from London to Dover is a brilliant sequence as comes ever nearer to his aunt. The scene in which Steerforth and David meet Dora for the first time is also rather cute and as previously mentioned the search for Emily. It's a shame then that the two actors in the lead role almost let the film down Freddie Bartholomew who was annoying in Captain Courageous doesn't change my opinion of him here, while Frank Lawton as the older David is fairly bland. Thankfully the colourful characters are given fitting actors to play them W.C. Fields is witty and warm as Micawber, Lionel Barrymore is as excellent as ever as Mr Peggoty and the Benny Hill-like Lennox Pawle brings the eccentric Mr Dick to life spectacularly. Although, at well over two hours, the film sometimes drags overall Cukor has done a good job of bringing the world of Copperfield to life.

Although both of these adaptations were released in the same year Copperfield qualified for the 1935 ceremony losing to Mutiny on The Bounty while A Tale of Two Cities had to wait till 1936 to lose to The Great Zigfield. This time Jack Conway, who we've previously met directing Viva Villa!, tries to adapt Dickens' account of the French revolution. The story sees Lucie Manette discover that her father is still alive imprisoned in the Bastille. Lucie brings her father back across the channel and while on the boat meets the charming Darnay who comes from one of France's most tyrannical aristocratic families. On entrance to England, Darnay is framed for treason, but is released thanks to the efforts of Sydney Carton a lawyer who is able to get a confession out of the men who frame Darnay. Carton falls for Lucie but Lucie has already fallen for Darnay and they marry and have a daughter. We are then taken back to Paris where the French underclasses rebel against the aristocrats but then a certain number of them what revenge against the families that have wronged them including Darnay. He is tricked in going back to Paris only to be arrested despite Lucie and Carton's best efforts he sentenced to be executed but the day before this happens Carton swaps places with Darnay and is able to end his life a hero.

Again a brilliant adaptation this time the scenes that resonate the most are those during the French revolution. A combination of dim lighting transposed with large amounts of fire is quite horrifying. Also the scenes in which Carton falls for Lucie are incredibly well done meaning that the terror is transposed with some humour. Ronald Colman as Carton is brilliant here, previously I wasn't sure about his acting ability especially in Arrowsmith, but in A Tale of Two Cities he brings the drunken, smitten and ultimately selfless lawyer to life. Also worth a mention are two actors who appeared in both of these films first of all Basil Rathbone who has played villains in both pieces as Copperfield's evil stepfather in the first film he terrifies every time he comes on screen while here as the heartless Marquise he is incredibly sinister. Meanwhile Edna May Oliver, who also played the aunt in Little Women and the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, played Copperfield's mad aunt and the loyal and eccentric maid in A Tale of Two Cities, in the latter role she is able to kick-ass and protect Lucie in the final scenes.

I think both of these films deserved their place on the nomination lists as they were able to bring Dickens' stories to an audience who had probably never read them. Although Copperfield probably wasn't a match for Mutiny on The Bounty, A Tale of Two Cities in some way was better than the overly-long spectacular The Great Ziegfeld. But both are examples of how adaptations of classic novels should be done.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 55: The Doctor Will See You Now

Occasionally I've come across a film that I think is incredibly average and unfortunately1932 nominee Arrowsmith is one of them. In fact only several days after having watched it I'm struggling to remember exactly what happened. The basic plot was about a man, Martin Arrowsmith, who was on his way to being a medical researcher but for some reason decides to impulsively marry a nurse called named Leora. Arrowsmith is forced to open a country practise but yearns to do better work and is eventually called upon to conduct important research following some impressive work on cows. After years of neglecting the wife that he originally changed his career to be with, he comes up with some kind of cure for bubonic plague. Then Arrowsmith is convinced by some Swedish bloke that he should go over to some Caribbean island where everybody is dying of the disease and see if his cure works. He is told only to inject half with the cure and let the rest suffer and die. Meanwhile his loving wife has decided to come over to the island where everyone is dying presumably so she can be closer to him to nag him for ignoring her all the time. Blatantly all the people that are given the cure are cured, and there is a good bit of class warfare as all the white people who live on the island obviously get to live. But Arrowsmith has to pay for his experiment as both the Swedish scientist and his wife die before they get back home.

As you can tell by resentment I really didn't enjoy this film. I found dull, meandering and downbeat most of the time. The ending really did nothing for me as I hadn't really invested any time in the characters to speak of. I didn't think Ronald Coleman did very well in the lead role and it certainly didn't suit his everyman hero image that he perfected in Lost Horizon, but then that was made years before. Similarly British actress Helen Hayes was a bit of a wet blanket here whereas she was a lot stronger in the film I'd seen her in previously, A Farewell to Arms. Again I feel Arrowsmith was simply making up the numbers the year that the far superior Grand Hotel won, but Arrowsmith did get another three nominations including bizarrely one for the incredibly dodgy script thankfully it didn't win any. Although Coleman would redeem himself in the film that I would watch the next day.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 53 and 54: Three Important Men

What do British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Meixcan freedom fighter Pancho Villa and controversial French author Emile Zola have in common? Apart from being men and famous biopics of their exploits all feature in this decade's list.

Kicking off then with Disraeli which features an Oscar Winning Performance from George Arliss as the man himself. The film concerns itself with the period in Disraeli's life where he tries to build the British Empire and purchase the Suez Canal, however at the time his rival William Gladstone is big news. Gladstone has a lot more supporters than Disraeli including the head of the Bank of England. As the movie goes on the Russians implant spies in Disraeli's office so they can check on his plans to buy the Canal. As the Suez Canal goes up for sale Disraeli makes a deal with a banker to come up with the funds however the spies infiltrate the banker's firm and declare him bankrupt. Disraeli eventually convinces the head of the Bank of England to give the banker unlimited credit. At the end of the film Disraeli's female companion is awfully ill but he has to leave her in order to see Queen Victoria become Empress of India, but suddenly his lady friend turns up and the film ends happily. In terms of an early biopic Disraeli was admirable enough. George Arliss' performance was very worthy and he carried an air of dignity throughout the film. He portrayed a Disraeli who was very wise and thoughtful and also kind to those around him. But at the same time I struggle to remember anyone else in the film apart from the uppity lady spy but that's because it seemed so far-fetched. I don't think I can be too critical of this film as it did seem to be quite a large undertaking at atime when films were still getting used to sound. However I think if a film made about Disreali's life was made today it would be a lot more professional than this.

Next up is Viva Villa a film about freedom fighter Pancho Villa a Mexican who was fed up with the tyrannical rule of Spanish governors so decided to rise up against them. The film starts with Pancho avenging the death of his father at the hands of one of the generals. Soon Pancho becomes an outlaw attacking willy nilly when and where he sees fit. However his exploits are soon documented by a newspaper man called Johnny who strikes up a sort of friendship with Pancho. The newspaper articles catch the eye of General Madero a visionary who wants to end the Spanish rule and tries to convince Pancho to change his ways and instead of killing people who can't defend themselves to just attack people for further victory. Pancho changes his ways and soon becomes a legitimate general but he gets restless and soon becomes an outlaw once again after he steals. Instead of having him killed Madero simply exiles his friend but when Madero is betrayed and killed by one of his own men, Pancho mounts a massive attack on basically everyone until he becomes head honcho, this time though without changing his beliefs. I found Viva Villa to be more of an actioner than a biopic although I'm guessing some of the major plot points are accurate overall the style was incredibly toned towards Villa just killing anyone that got in his path. The storytelling was very sloppy with a lot of the history written up on the screen instead of conveyed through the narrative although the sound and cinematography was all very good and the former even won an Oscar. Overall though I found Wallace Beery's performance tiresome, Beery's rough and ready approach worked in The Champ but here it just seems like a caracture. I think if they wanted to do a proper dramatic retelling of Pancho Villa's life then they would've got in someone like Paul Muni.

Speaking of Muni, he's popping up once again in the final of this triple bill of biopics playing Emile Zola in the predictably titled The Life of Emile Zola which won the Best Picture prize at the 1938 ceremony. The film is basically an overview of Zola's career starting with his early days being a poor author living with the Spanish painter Cezzane. Both men then hit it big, with Zola writing Nana the book that launched him and caught the eye of both readers and the authorities who didn't agree with some of his ideals and saw him as being very controversial. After the film deals with Zola's antics it forwards a few years and explores his involvement with Alfred Dreyfus the French Captain who was wrongly accused of supplying military secrets to the German army. Dreyfus' wife appealed to Zola's better nature and revealed that another major had found evidence of who the real culprit was. Zola then wrote an open-letter in the French newspapers with the phrase - J'Accuse which is famous to this day. The Dreyfus case re-opened with opinion split between those who chose to support the army fully and those who thought they had too much power. Eventually there was not enough evidence to release Dreyfus and Zola was also sentenced to months in prison for libel. Zola absconded to lie-low in London but his time in London is depicted as being a particularly low point, but thankfully a new war commission sought the truth and released Dreyfus which allowed Zola to return to France. However the day of the celebrations of Dreyfus' release, the news of Zola's death from radiation poisoning is displayed on the front of a paper so the ending was bitter-sweet. As always Paul Muni gives a stunning performance, for which he was Oscar nominated but lost, much better than in Louis Pasteur but not as good as in Chain Gang. He is ably supported by Joseph Schildkraut as the sympathetic and doomed Dreyfus and by Gloria Holden as Mrs Zola. This is certainly a paint-by-numbers biopic which has a lot of gravitas but is pretty slow in some points wanting to paint a good picture of the events but doing so without making a lot of edits where need be. At the end of the day though this is still fairly powerful stuff and some of the trial scenes will stick with you after you've watched the film. It possibly just scraped through with a win that year as the other nominees weren't a particularly inspired bunch and certainly not as much of an Oscar winner as this was. However I suspect had it been another year the film wouldn't have done quite as well as it did.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 52: My Day with Katharine Hepburn

So far I've encountered a lot of the great female icons of the era during this search - Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford in Grant Hotel, Bette Davis in Jezebel, Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express and Claudette Colbert in a number of films. However one star has eluded me so far so I decided to watch all three of her nominated films from that decade in one day, that star is Katharine Hepburn.

Although Katharine Hepburn won her first Best Actress Oscar for only her third performance in Morning Glory. The first film that she was in that was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar was George Cukor's adaptation of Little Women that was up for Best Picture at the 1934 ceremony. Most people already know the story of Little Women but if you don't it basically concerns four sisters as they grow up and become women by finding love and independence. In this version it is Hepburn who plays second eldest sister Jo an aspiring playwright who meets the shy Laurie and they begin to fall in love however she rejects his advances and goes to New York to work as a nanny and to concentrate on her writing. Meanwhile of her other sisters Meg gets married, Amy goes off with her auntie and Beth contracts and eventually dies of Scarlet Fever. The end of the film comes full circle as Beth's death reunites the family and Jo discovers that Amy and Laurie have fallen in love and are about to be married so she accepts the proposal of the German linguist who works with the children that she nannies. Approaching this film I only had a smattering of what the story was about, mainly from that episode of Friends where Rachel gets Joey to read it. At first I found this a little hard to grasp and at times I mixed up the non-Hepburn sisters but once it found its stride and the male characters were introduced I really started to enjoy it. Hepburn's regular strong female stance was on display here as Jo, here she never lets her guard down till the very end and anchors the film from beginning to end however I also thought Jean Parker as Beth was particularly compelling and older character actress Edna May Oliver did a good job of portraying the wealthy but harsh aunt of the girls. Overall this was a good literary adaptation and as so won the Adapted Screenplay Oscar and Cukor was nominated for his strong direction. This probably would've made it into the list of nominees had it been five strong but it just wasn't as different and challenging as that year's winner Cavalcade.

Two years later at the 1936 awards Hepburn was nominated for her second Best Actress Oscar for her titular performance in the film Alice Adams. Hepburn here would be unsuccessful losing to Bette Davis for the film Dangerous but for me Alice Adams marked a departure for Hepburn in terms of character, Alice displayed little in terms of bravado and instead was quite weak and understated. The film is all about class as Alice and her mother hope to rise above their lower-middle class status. The family's father is ill in bed and, even though his job at the glue factory has been left open, they have little money. Alice goes to a party and unable to find a job has to go with her smart Alec brother. While there she meets and dances with the dashing Arthur however her lowly class means that she feels she isn't good enough for him. Alice's mother convinces her father to sell an invention for a new type of glue without consulting his business partner and boss essentially meaning he gets called a thief. The finale of the film sees the Adams family host a dinner party with Arthur which is awkward as Alice struggles to make conversation with Arthur while the rest of the family is worried about the consequences of the father's actions. However just when everything seems lost Alice's father and his business partner make up and Alice gets her man, something I found a little far-featched. Despite that finale, Alice Adams was a charming enough picture with another great little performance from Hepburn who is ably supported by Fred MacMurray as Arthur and Frank Albertson as her brother. Again not a film that was ever going to hold a candle to that year's winner Mutiny on The Bounty but again there was nothing particularly wrong with the film.

Hepburn's final Best Picture nominated film came two years later and this time she shared the headline status with Ginger Rogers. This film was Stage Door about a group of aspiring actresses who share a boarding house together with Rogers playing the street-smart dancer and Hepburn the haughty rich-girl newbie who puts everyone's noses out of joint. As well as Hepburn and Roger's characters is Kay Hamilton played by Andrea Leeds a young actress who had won rave reviews for her first performance but was struggling to find enough work to pay for rent and meals. Hamilton's chance comes when she auditions for a show directed by Anthony Powell, a respected director who is pompous and arrogant and refuses to see Hamilton leading to her fainting and Powell getting a tongue-lashing from Hepburn's Terry Randall. However eventually Terry's rich father agrees to finance Powell's show but only if his daughter in the lead role which again means that Randall is an outcast in the boarding house once again. In the end Kay dies and Terry dedicates her performance to her and is eventually forgiven by the rest of the inhabitants. The final scene sees yet another aspiring actress enter the boarding house and life goes on as normal. Out of these three films I think I enjoyed Stage Door the most, the mainly female cast do a great job of everyday banter and you can really believe that they are struggling actresses. Hepburn returns to her strong nature playing the posh girl in a house full of down-to-Earth characters but she really has some good chemistry with Ginger Rogers. Even though Rogers played a small grittier role in 42nd Street this film sees a complete departure from the work she did with Fred Astaire and is great. But it is Andrea Leeds as Kay who was nominated for Supporting Actress that year and that was rightly deserved. Rounding off the cast was Adolphe Menjou again playing a little bit of an unsavoury gentlemen, while some of the smaller parts were taken by actresses who would find fame later on including Lucille Ball, Eve Arden and Ann Miller. Despite this being my favourite of the three films it did the worst at the Box Office and by the end of the 1930s Hepburn along with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were considered Box Office poison and weren't getting the roles that they once got.

However Hepburn would turn that around and still holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscars but most of those would be awarded in the 1950s and 1960s so for now its goodbye to Miss Hepburn.