Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 117: Orson Keeps it in the Family

I think one of the biggest Oscar surprises is that Citizen Kane never won Best Picture and instead it went to John Ford's Welsh mining drama How Green Was My Valley. Welles' next film The Magnificent Ambersons also got a nomination but lost to Mrs Miniver. Unlike in Citizen Kane, Welles doesn't feature in the cast instead giving a fairly ominous voiceover telling us the story of The Ambersons an eccentric family who have all inherited money from the patriarch Major Amberson. The film mainly focuses on George, the spoilt grandson of Major Amberson and his objections to his mother marrying an automobile manufacturer after his father has died. The man in question is Joseph Cotten's Eugene Morgan who was George's mother Isabel's first love. George also falls in love with and gets engaged to George's daughter Lucy however the union is doomed when George's spoilt nature comes out and he reveals he doesn't want to work instead live of the family's fortunes which are dwindling. One of the main themes throughout the film is new money vs. old as the Ambersons fortune is generations old whereas Eugene has earned his money from his inventions. Eugene and Isobel are never allowed to be together as George takes his mother around Europe and then returns when she gets ill and later dies. However the future looks better for Lucy and George after George learns the error of his ways and decides to get a job and also reconcile with Eugene as the film ends.

Compared to Citizen Kane, The Maginifcent Ambersons isn't as big of a film but it still has that Wellsian style to it which is mainly seen during the scenes in the Ambersons grandiose mansion which is almost too big for its inhabitants. Possibly the best performance in the film, and the only one nominated for an Oscar, was from Agnes Moorhead as the Amberson's maiden aunt Fanny who seems a bit distressed that no-one ever finds her attractive and goes off on a rant near the end of the film in which she chastises George for never taking her seriously. Welles' long time friend Joseh Cotten is basically just a bit handsome and debonair as the inventor Eugene while Dolores Costello and Anne Baxter are fine in their roles but are never more than just token female parts maybe this is because Moorhead has such an interesting character it but the other actresses in the shade. One of the biggest problems of the film is that Tim Holt's George is just plain unlikeable so I have no sympathy for him even when he changes his ways at the end of the film I've already given up on him. Although the film did get another nomination for cinematography, there was no Best Director nod for Welles and indeed he was so poorly treated by the Academy that when they awarded him with a Special Award he refused to go and pick it up. Overall the Ambersons is a well-made film but one that suffers from a lack of likeable characters or a plot that flows particularly well.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 102: The Soldiers Coming Back and The Women that Wait for Them

So we're back in the saddle, and as it's Oscar Weekend I'm guessing I'm going to have carry over the Oscar challenge for another year as at the moment we're still straddling around in the 1940s.

First up is The Long Voyage Home, a nominee from 1941, which looks at a group of men journeying back from service in the West Indies firstly to Baltimore and then to England. This is very much a film about men trapped in an enclosed space as one-by-one they become increasingly suspicious that the Englishman Smitty is actually a German spy. When they finally confront him and torture him it turns out that he is no more than a recovering alcoholic who has run away from his family and is concealing his true identity because he is ashamed. The scene in which he breaks down is made even more poignant when Smitty is killed shortly after by a German plane making all the other men decide not to sign up for another tour of service on the ship and instead decide to help the mild-mannered Ole return home to Sweden. However, in the final part of the film, Ole is drugged and kidnapped and forced onto another ship so his shipmates help him escape but in the confusion the ship sets sail with one of their number, their sort of leader the Irish Driscoll, on board and they soon hear that the ship was blown up by a German torpedo with all the men still on board. The film has a sort of a happy ending as Ole does return to Sweden but the rest of the men decide to travel on and return to the ship. I did enjoy this film, for the most part, especially the scenes in which the men are trying to occupy themselves on the voyage home. I loved Ian Hunter as the tragic Smitty and Thomas Mitchell as Driscoll who at times seemed like the only reasonable person on the ship. But the actor in the cast who surprised me most was John Wayne, so much so that at the start of the film I didn't even realise it was him. Wayne's Ole is completely different from most of the other parts he plays, he is understated, softly-spoken and feels very much like a real character. The film sort of falls down in the final third with the stupid stuff involving the drugging and Driscoll's death but other than that a solid film and a worthy nominee.

So while the men are journeying home what are the women up to? Well the answers to that are found in a nominee from the 1945 ceremony - Since You Went Away. The film has a mightily impressive ensemble cast headed up by Claudette Colbert, in what many consider her final great role. Colbert almost didn't take the part as a wife and mother waiting to hear news of her husband in the war, as she didn't think she was old enough to play the mother of two teenage girls. The story concerns the Hilton family and specifically Anne and her two daughters - Jane and Brig played respectively by Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple trying to cope during 1943. The Hiltons are short on money so take in the long-in-the-tooth former serviceman Colonel Smogget, in order to keep up with the rent. Smogget's grandson Bill comes to visit him to tell him he's joined the army, however Smogget isn't really interested but Bill does end up falling in love with Jane and the two begin a relationship which is cut short by Bill's tragic death. The other story concerns Anne herself who is faithful to her husband despite being wooed by long time friend Tony, she also has to consider he place in the war effort and what she is actually doing to help after being apalled by comments made by her snooty friend Emily. Since You Went Away was one of the famous 'women's pictures' of the 1940s and was absolutely tremendous making what could've been just a romantic drama and turning into a film about family, friendship, belonging and finding your place. Colbert was denied the Best Actress Oscar as it went to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight but she is fantastic here as are everyone in the cast which, as well as the three main actress, includes Joseph Cotten, Monty Woolley, Agnes Moorhead, Lionel Barrymore and Hattie McDaniel. Although many will be unfamiliar with the film itself, the scene in which Jane chases after Bill's train has been spoofed in many films most famously in Airplane. Overall another film that deserved all the praise it got but another film that was left out in the cold so the completely average Going My Way could scoop all of that year's prizes.

Okay so we're back on the road again, more to follow.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 85-87: Catch-Up Part 1

So over August and September I watched 17 films for the Big Oscar Challenge which I sort of abandoned to start watching films for the end of 2010 list. Before I restart the Challenge I'm going to just briefly write about the films I watched back then we start with the first five.

First up was Johnny Belinda which was the 100th film I watched for the challenge and was nominated for Best Picture back in 1949. The film is one of a few in Oscar history to be nominated for all four acting Oscars but won only one of them. That was for Jane Wyman who was absolutely excellent as Belinda, a girl who was born deaf and dumb and was kept separate from the small town community and instead was raised by her father and aunt on a farm. Belinda is befriended by Lew Ayres' new town Doctor who realises that she is smarter than anyone has given her credit for but then tragedy strikes when Belinda is raped by Locky the local town hero. When Belinda gets pregnant the Doctor is suspected as being the father and to protect Belinda he marries her and plans to take his new family out of town. However while the Doctor is away Locky kills Belinda's father after he finds out what Locky did and then the town plan to take Belinda's baby Johnny away after they decide she is an unfit mother. Belinda is then arrested after killing Locky who is trying to take Johnny away but she is saved by Locky's wife Stella who found out about what Locky did to Belinda. I felt the film was absolutely excellent, the four main players - Wyman, Ayres, Agnes Moorhead as Belinda's aunt and Charles Bickford as her father all thoroughly deserved their Oscar nominations as did the film itself. This was a film all about small town suspicion and gossip and what we can do out of spite for example Stella doesn't speak up earlier as she is jealous of Belinda's relationship with the Doctor who she has always been in love with. The film was one of a strong bunch that lost out to Olivier's Hamlet and it's become increasingly obvious that that film shouldn't have won the Oscar at the final ceremony of the 1940s.
After Rebecca and Spellbound, the other two Hitchcock films that have been nominated for Best Picture - Suspicion and Foreign Correspondent were the next two films I watched. The former is the better of the two and stars Joan Fontaine as the dowdy daughter of a wealthy General who is swept of her feet by Cary Grant's dashing cad and they are quickly married. As Fontaine's father and later Grant's cousin are both found dead, she starts to suspect he has killed them so he can get money to continue his gambling ways. In the end it turns out that Fontaine's Suspicion was unfounded as Grant was away when both the murders occurred. This was possibly one of Hitchcock's better studio pictures as it is based on a simple premise and features two superb lead performances and Fontaine was rewarded with the Best Actress Oscar becoming the only performer to ever win an Acting Oscar in a Hitchcock film. The film is another of the superior offerings that fell to the odd mining drama How Green was My Valley.

While I enjoyed Suspicion, I found 1941 nominee Foreign Correspondent a little bit too much with the premise based around political intrigue slightly far-fetched. It stars Joel McCrae, who is pretty decent as the Hitchcock everyman, as a New York reporter who goes to uncover the growing power of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party. As you would expect he is soon thrown into a conspiracy when a Dutch diplomat is killed. While I enjoyed McCrae's performance I thought the film as a whole lacked a certain something especially as it was directed by Hitchcock. But I don't think Alf minded that much as Foreign Correspondent was nominated for Best Picture in the same year as Rebecca won.

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.