Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 420-422: Days of Future Past Part Six

Welcome once again to our time-travelling trip through the decades as we attempt to fill in the gaps of the challenge.

First of all apologies for jumping around the timeline a bit but at the last minute I managed to get my hands on a copy of 1931 nominee Five Star Final. Although the film was released around the same time as Trader Horn, I found that the newspaper drama felt a lot more contemporary. Mervyn La Roy's film focuses on editor Joseph Randall who finds himself under pressure to increase the distribution of his tabloid. He's talked in to producing a series of articles focusing on the twentieth anniversary of a murder committed by the notorious Nancy Voorhies. Little does he know that Nancy is now happily married and has a daughter who herself is about to tie the knot. The revelation in the papers soon spoils the family's happiness and results in both Nancy and her husband Michael committing suicide. What I initially thought was going to be a drama in the same vain as previous early nominee The Front Page turned dark very quickly. The double suicide coupled with the general reaction to the event meant that Five Star Final was one of the earliest examples of a press satire. It was quite easy to deduce that Five Star Final's origins lay on the stage however LaRoy at least went out of his way to use the cinematic techniques available to him. Most notably he employed some clever editing during a sequence in which Nancy is desperately trying to get Randall to drop the story about her family. As Randall, I thought Edward G. Robinson was brilliant as he conveyed his character's guilt perfectly and his final speech was brilliantly delivered. Although The Front Page is definitely of its time I think it holds up a lot better than the three films in the previous post and I found it to be an incredibly easy watch. It's also no surprise to learn that the film was one of the two that made Robinson a star and I'm only surprised that he hadn't been a big name before Five Star Final was released.

We now move in the right direction for probably the last 1930s film I'll review for as part of this blog. The Citadel is an interesting film that almost feels like three episodes of a miniseries featuring Robert Donat's trainee Doctor Andrew Mason. The first part of the film looks at Mason's training in a small Welsh town in which he meets resistance from the senior doctor's wife but at the same time is able to help out several villagers. The second part of the movie looks at Mason's move to a Welsh mining village and his marriage to beloved schoolteacher Christine. Once again Andrew faces opposition, this time from the miners who don't want him to change the way they've been doing things for years. Andrew refuses to punch their unfit for work cards and wants to explore the troubling coughs that the miners develop. Eventually frustrated he leaves Wales for London but he struggles to find patients for his burgeoning clinic. The final third of the film looks at Mason's corruption at the hands of the Harley Street set and the fact that he makes a lot of money from doing very little. I personally found the general structure of The Citadel to be quite frustrating as, just as one plot starting to develop, director King Vidor changed the action to another location. The one memorable moment of the film comes halfway through when Mason helps rescue several people from a collapsed mine. However, the film then gets a little dreary as we see Andrew become more and more enchanted with the superficial London lifestyle. I have to say that the point The Citadel was making was quite an obvious one and I found the ending completely anticlimactic. In fact the only thing that saved it was the central turn from Robert Donat who certainly showed qualities that would later see him cast in his Oscar-winning role in Goodbye Mr. Chips. Aside from Donat though there was very little about The Citadel that was memorable and at the end of the day it feels like yet another also-ran nominee.

But describing our next film; The Yearling as an also-ran nominee would almost be giving it too much credit as its one of the most inconsequential pieces of cinema I think I've ever seen. Set in 1878, The Yearling follows the adventures of the Baxter family - former Civil War soldier Penny, his withdrawn wife Ora and their son Jody. Throughout the film Ora's emotional state is explained away by the fact that she'd lost all of her other children and only Jody remained. I have to say if I was in Ora's position I'd be a little annoyed to as Jody is especially annoying. Films like The Yearling only work if the cute child star isn't annoying and unfortunately in this movie that isn't the case. It's particularly annoying as the majority of the film deals with Jody's relationship with a young fawn named Flag who he tries to raise. But, when the time comes to set him free, Jody doesn't take it and instead experiences proper loss for the first time. Whilst I can see what director Clarence Brown was trying to achieve with The Yearling the results are incredibly mediocre. Aside from Claude Jarman Jr's cloying performance as Jody, the cast are uniformly forgettable. Most surprising was the fact that Jane Wyman, who was so superb in Johnny Belinda, made little impression in her role as Ora. To be fair to Wyman the role didn't require much of her apart from sitting sour-faced whilst performing some menial task. Though Gregory Peck tried his best to make us warm to Penny, I found him a little too squeaky clean and didn't think he came down hard enough on his son. Surprisingly The Yearling was nominated for seven Oscars including for the performances given by Peck and Wyman. The fact it won in the colour cinematography and art direction categories leads me to believe that its main appeal to the Academy was its bright colours. Indeed, when films were primarily still shot in black and white, I'd feel that The Yearling would definitely stand out in the crowd. But it's a film that hasn't aged well and at the end of the day I don't think it would've been nominated at all were it not for the fact that it had been filmed in colour.

The only good think about watching The Yearling was the fact that it was the last Best Picture Nominee of the 1940s that I was yet to watch. To that end the next post looks at my completion of both the 1950s and 1960s.