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 74: It's All a bit Mental

Although many people consider Alfred Hitchcock to be the greatest director of all time most of his most famous works, such as Psycho, Rear Window, North by Northwest and Vertigo, were never nominated for Oscars. Instead only four of his pictures made betweeen 1940 and 1946 were nominated for Oscars. This was the period in which Hitch was working for David O Selznick something that he hated doing and eventually left to set up his own production company. The first of the four films was his only winner - Rebecca and the last of the four is the focus of this entry, that film being Spellbound. Spellbound focuses on Green Manners Mental Instution and specifically on Dr Constance Peterson, played by Ingrid Bergman. Green Manners is having a change of direction as the head of the institution Dr Murchinson is being replaced by a younger model in Gregory Peck's Dr Edwards. However it soon emerges that Peck isn't who says he is and is a man with amnesia moonlighting as Edwards. Peterson decides to help Peck's character escape and try and find out what he's hiding and who he really is. She does this with the help of her old mentor Dr Brulov, played by an Oscar-nominated Michael Chekhov, who specialises in analysing dreams and piece by piece the puzzle comes together. To say anymore would be to ruin the film for those who haven't seen it however I would like to highlight two scenes. One is a dream that Peck has which Brulov and Peterson then analyse. The whole dream sequence is a master class in surrealism and responsibility for the scene was handed from Hitchcock over to surrealist Salvador Dali who brilliantly depicted someone's psyche although one of the scenes featuring Bergman as a statue didn't make the final cut. The other scene sees one of the characters pointing a gun at someone else, the shot is focused on the gun and as the character who the gun is focused on leaves the room we follow the gun as it is rotated around and pointed at the head of the person who is holding it. When the shot is fired the screen then goes red, the film's only splash of colour, which gives the death about significance.

Another thing that should be highlighted is Miklos Rosza's Oscar winning score, which is able to capture both the romantic and dramatic elements of the film and almost dominated the entire film at some points. Neither Bergman or Peck were nominated, although Bergman was nominated for another film, I think Peck overall didn't demonstrate his full potential as an actor while Bergman's performance was decent enough given Constance a cold edge which was easily thawed with the appearance of Peck. One of my main criticisms is that I didn't really buy their romance which was one of the points that the film's narrative focused on and overall this film wasn't one of Hitchcock's best. But I'm glad I watch Spellbound as its one of the only Hitchcock films I've never seen and even though it's not one of Hitch's best it's still a very well made and well conceived picture.

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.