Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 152: Sidney, Tony, Jenny and Bill

Part two of the catch-up with one film I remember and one that really hasn't stuck with me at all.

The film I can't really remember is  Love is a Many Splendored Thing which stars Jennifer Jones and William Holden. As you can probably imagine from the title this is a romantic drama set in Hong Kong in the 1940s with Jones playing it borderline racist as Han  a Eurasian doctor who falls in love with Holden's reporter Mark  a man who was previously married but is now separated. The two enjoy a love affair which is later tarnished by racial barriers as Han is ostracised by her Chinese community for falling in love with an American which is further complicated by the fact he was previously married. I don't want to give the plot away after that for those of you who may want to watch it but for me this was a predictable melodrama that somehow was nominated for eight awards and stopped classics like To Catch a Thief, Guys and Dolls and Rebel Without a Cause from getting a nomination. The only thing really memorable about this film is its award winning title tune and that's about it both Jones and Holden have been in better films and both should've known better.

Finally a film that I did enjoy with two Oscar nominated Best Actor performances for both Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones. Curtis and Poitier play John and Noah respectively who are two criminals that escape from a chain gang and are stuck with each other despite their mutual loathing. As you could imagine from a film released in the late 1950s race comes into play as John has a hatred of Noah based on the colour of his skin while Noah hates John's prejudice towards him. Though over time they learn a little bit about each other and despite their differences they learn to get along for the hope of actually escaping from their lives as prisoners. The final third of the film sees them happen upon a young boy and his mother a lonely housewife who falls for John and wants to escape with him leaving Noah behind to fend for himself. But by this point in the film the two have formed an unbreakable bond and John has to make his mind up whether to be free or stick with his newfound friend. I really enjoyed The Defiant Ones, which was a film I wasn't familiar with before I watched it, as it is a tense cops and robbers film with the camera also following the police's attempts to apprehend the two escapees. In his first starring role Poitier really goes for it and becomes a star while Curtis is also brilliant in a role which shows off his gritty demeanour. The fact that this lost to the very twee Gigi just shows how wrong Oscar gets a lot of the time but I will now be listing this as one of my favourite films I've watched so far which I'm sure is some consolation to those involved, or perhaps not.