Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 160: The Last Days of Summer

There are several stars that keep cropping up during each decade and in the 1950s it's William Holden from the brilliant Sunset Boulevard to the melodramatic Love is a Many Splendored Thing he's excelled at playing male leads and the latest film Picnic is somewhere in the middle. Set over 24 hours in an idyllic Kansas town it features Holden's Hal Carter coming into town having stowed away on a freight train and is now eager to find his old college pal Alan Benson as he believes Benson's father will give him a job. Before finding Alan, Hal first encounters Alan's sweetheart Madge Owens and her bookish sister Millie. Alan initially offers Hal a job wanting to impress the college football hero, now that he has fallen on hard times but obviously he catches the eyes of both of the sisters with Millie suddenly discovering hormones and dressing up for Alan. The title of the film refers to the Labour Day picnic which signals the end of the summer and will be the last time for Madge and Alan to announce that they're going steady. Along with Hal, Alan and the Owen sisters the picnic also comes kindly old lady Mrs Potts, the single parent of the two girls, store owner Howard and his would-be love schoolteacher Rosemary. The film's pivotal scene is where Hal and Madge are dancing and a drunken Rosemary breaks it up wanting to prove she is still young and exposes him for what he really is in what felt like a scene from a Tennessee Williams story. After being blamed for getting Millie drunk he runs away with Alan now jealous of him he decides to skip town but the question is will Madge come with him?

Of all of these films I think this is the one in which Holden is fully showing off his sex symbol status and Hal does find any excuse to remove his shirt or have it ripped from him. To be fair he does add some substance to his physique portraying the fading jock who once used his looks to help him get by but now realises he should've worked harder and not flunked out. He has great chemistry with Kim Novak as Madge with the scene in which they dance being the film's most memorable as they sizzle and create jealousy from most of the other characters. Also worth a mention is Rosalind Russell as Rosemary a woman who transfers her own fears about growing old and alone onto the unstable Hal with her diatribe directed towards him being fairly brutal. Another plus point in terms of Picnic was the idea of this damaged character coming into this small town and changing everyone's lives within a 24 hour period. The downside was the fact that as there was so many characters some of them got little time to develop and that's true of the girl's mother played by Betty Field who essentially becomes a cliché full of worry and nagging in addition the music was a bit over the top for a film which was on the whole subtly filmed. Overall a great character-led piece which should've been nominated for more acting awards which gave a story of a man languishing as he readied himself for middle age.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 159: In My Place

Peyton Place is a name that I know mainly as a TV series of the 1960s however before that it was a 1956 novel which was quickly bought and turned into a film the following year. The film follows six young people who are all to graduate from Peyton Place high school and move on with their lives while also portraying their parents in different lights. Central to the film is Lana Turner's Connie McKenzie a dress maker who has returned from New York to her hometown with her daughter Allison who was later revealed to be the product of an affair she had with a married man. Allison's childhood has been quite sheltered but when she blossoms as a woman her affections turn to local outsider Norman Page who also has a parent who does allow him to grow up. Connie is pursued by new headmaster Michael Rossi who hopes to crack her hard exterior and does so briefly but she begins to worry about her daughter once the revelation of her parentage gets out. Allison's best friend is Selena Cross the daughter of the McKenzie's cleaner Nellie and whose stepfather Lucas begins to abuse her so one night she eventually snaps and kills him. Finally there is Rodney Harrington son of Peyton Place's wealthiest town member who is drawn to the promiscuous Betty Anderson a match that his father disapproves of because of her reputation in the town.

The main problem I had initially with Peyton Place was getting to the bottom of all the stories and meeting all the characters but once I did I started to enjoy it. I did though find it was far too long clocking in at over two hours and I felt the Rodney and Betty storyline could've been cut as it came to a conclusion a while before the film had finished. There are some great performances here which is evident by the fact that the film received five acting nominations including a Lead Actress nod for Lana Turner who was great as the emotionally fraught Connie. My favourite member of the cast was Hope Lange, another Supporting Actress nominee, whose Selena is initially presented as quite weak but learns to fight back after a horrific incident involving stepfather Lucas. This is at its heart a melodrama and at times the music got too much as the dramatic scenes were almost outshone by the booming score. What I did like though was the fact that a lot of people are afraid to let their true feelings come out in a town where there are far too many gossips so they keep things like illegitimacy and rape to themselves. The costumes are also well made however the hair styles could do with some work especially in the case of Lee Phillips who has some really bad grey hair dye applied to him when playing Michael Rossi. Peyton Place is a good bit of trashy fiction which is over long but well acted and unlike a lot of films in this list a deserving Oscar nominee.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 107: Not Watching this for my GCSE Coursework

So if you've been following this haphazard adventure up to this point you do know that I have being using a YouTube channel to watch some of these films and one of my guilty pleasures is reading the comments that others have left under the video. Before starting the viewing of the latest film, the adaptation of Of Mice and Men that was nominated at the 1940 ceremony, I read the comments most of them seemed to be from teenagers copping out from reading the book and watching this movie instead but from what I could garner this adaptation was rather tame and left out some of the more risqué elements of the text. I have to say I have heard of the book and was aware of some elements of the plot but have never seen the story told in any form up to this point. For those of you like me that aren't aware of the plot it sees two friends - the smart and quick-witted George and the somewhat slow and bulking Lenny, go to work on a ranch in Southwest California after being chased out of their previous town thanks to an incident involving Lenny (something that is never fully explained in the film but in the book he has been accused of rape after stroking a girl's hair). George keeps Lenny happy by reciting the story of the ranch that they're going to own together one day in which Lenny can keep an eye on their rabbits and this dream almost becomes a reality when fellow ranch hand  Candy agrees to pitch in some money to help with the project. However Lenny gets them in trouble once again first by punching the boss' son Curly and then for accidentally killing Curly's wife while trying to stroke her hair. I won't spoil the ending but it things don't end well for the twosome and lets just say their dream never quite becomes a reality.

Of Mice and Men is a strange one to review as in the back of my mind I can see it more as a text than a film even though I've never read it and maybe that's because I've been influenced by those YouTube commenters. The story really never sags and there is some good interplay between the ranch-hands with moments of joy juxtaposed with some really sad moments including one with Candy's dog. Of the acting Lon Chaney Jr. does a magnificent job with Lenny coming across a simple man who is picked upon because of his size and his lack of brain power. A pre-Batman pre-Rocky Burgess Meredith gives George a sympathetic edge and a very real quality to him as well and Betty Field as Curly's wife Mae plays the vampy bitch with an air of style. But this is very much a re-telling of a story, there isn't much to say in terms of camera-work or sets which are fairly basic. I wasn't particularly moved by the ending but still thought there was some solid storytelling within the film overall a decent literary adaptation but not really a film that left a major impression on me.