Big Oscar Challenge: Clark Gable

Showing posts with label Clark Gable. Show all posts

Saturday, 31 July 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 70: Getting a Bit Windy

Back to the start of the decade now with the winner of the 1940 ceremony and possibly one of the most famous films of all time - Gone with The Wind. It holds a place in Oscar history as it is the first Best Picture filmed entirely in colour and also the first film to feature an Oscar winning turn by an African American performer but more on that later. The story follows Southern Belle Scarlett O'Hara who we meet at the start of the American Civil War, Scarlett is admired by several suitors but she is in love with the debonair Ashley Wilkes but she discovers that he is to marry his cousin Melanie. Simply out of spite Scarlett decides to marry Melanie's brother Charles but he is soon killed when the Civil War starts. At the same time Scarlett meets the dashing rogue Rhett Butler who seems to have offended everyone who comes into contact with him. As the men go away to fight in the war Scarlett promises Ashley that she will look after Melanie, the two of them soon move to Atlanta to tend to sick soldiers but then a pregnant Melanie gets sick and Scarlett helps to deliver her baby. Scarlett enlists Rhett's to help transport Melanie and the baby back to Scarlett's estate which she finds in a state and her father who has since succumb to dementia and then dies just after the war finishes. Scarlett struggles to keep her estate going and soon marries her sister's suitor the middle-aged Frank Kennedy with whose money she buys a saw mill and convinces Ashley to help her run it. After Scarlett is attacked Frank, Ashley and a returning Rhett go after the attackers and Frank is fatally injured in the scuffle. Scarlett and Rhett eventually marry and have a child but Rhett realises that she is still in love with Ashley and starts to drink heavily and then asks Scarlett for a divorce however she doesn't want the scandal so instead Rhett takes their daughter away to London. They return after Rhett realises Bonnie needs her mother but then Bonnie dies after falling off a horse and then Melanie dies during her second pregnancy. After seeing how distraught Ashley is when Melanie dies she realises that he could never have loved her in the way he did Melanie and finally decides that she is in love with Rhett. However at this point Rhett has had enough and when Scarlett asks what she will do without Rhett he utters the line 'frankly my dear I don't give a damn' and this is followed by the film's other famous line 'tomorrow is another day' when Scarlett realises that the only thing that is left in her life is her family's estate and that's what her priority has to be.

It has been a while since I saw Gone With The Wind and the DVD I rented came as two discs separated by the interval which the original audience would have got. Part One of the film is definitely it's stronger half with the opening scene at the barbecue where we get the feel of all of the four principal characters followed by the war itself. You get the feel of the epic scale of the picture as we get a shot of all the injured soldiers laid out across the land there also some very interesting camera techniques and the use of colour is expertly done. The film's second half is where things get a bit flabby as director Victor Fleming takes too long telling the story of the love quadrangle that takes place but the film picks up in its final part with the marriage and separation of Scarlett and Rhett and the deaths of Bonnie and Melanie. The production itself seemed to be very fraught with original director George Cukor being fired and replaced by The Wizard of Oz's Fleming while there was about 20 actresses in the frame for Scarlett but the role went to the then unknown British actress Vivien Leigh. Leigh's performance won her an Oscar and she did a good job portraying the incredibly complex Scarlett. Clark Gable was brilliant as Rhett but he lost out to Robert Donat and Olivia De Havilland was also nominated as Melanie but she also lost. The actress she lost to was Hattie McDaniel who portrayed the O'Hara's servant Mammy, McDaniel stole most of the scenes that she featured in especially the opening scenes which without her would've been awfully melodramatic. McDaniel laid down the legacy which saw other African American performers being accepted by the academy equally impressive was Butterfly McQueen as the jittery servant Prissy.

Although I do have a lot of love for what The Wizard of Oz did in terms of its special effects and use of colour there's no denying that Gone With The Wind is weightier in terms of its tone. Although, at three and a half hours it's a bit long, at the time the audience would've appreciated this and the cinema was much more of a communal event than it is now. Although I am yet to watch seven of the other films that were nominated against it at the moment I can definitely say that Gone with The Wind was a good choice to be the first winner of the 1940s ceremonies.

Sunday, 27 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 47: Just Testing it Out

And its farewell to the cosiness of LoveFilm as I reach the great abyss with at least another twenty-four films to watch, and maybe more if I can find them somewhere. And we're kicking off with a reunion of San Francisco's leading men Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable and that film is Test Pilot.

The relationship between Gable and Tracy is similar to that in the disaster flick they filmed a couple of year's previously. Gable is the reckless womaniser and Tracy is the more grounded sage who worries about him. Here Gable plays Jim the eponymous test pilot who is tasked to try planes out before they are ready to fly and try and break speed records, Tracy plays mechanic Gunner who finds Jim reckless and often has to get him out of tricky situations. Near the beginning of the film, Jim crashes a plane in Kansas and meets Myrna Loy's Ann who is excited by his lifestyle and leaves her fiancée to be with him. Soon we have three relationships the romance between Jim and Ann, the friendship between Gunner and Jim and the relationship between Gunner and Ann which is based on knowing that Jim's job means that he often faces death. When a fellow test pilot dies in a plane that was meant for Jim, Jim gives all his money to the widow and then goes on a drunken bender. The finale sees Jim quitting the test pilot life after Gunner is crushed during one of Jim's test runs, Jim decides he has to spend time with his wife so decides to train the next generation of test pilots instead.

One thing that really stood out for me in Test Pilot was the cinematography, the shots of the planes were particularly fantastic. However there was no nominations for cinematography instead the editing did get nominated as did the original screenplay. All of the acting talent was well represented and of all of his performances I have to say I have enjoyed Spencer Tracy the most in this film and his double act with Gable was probably the highlight of the film. Myrna Loy didn't really have a lot to do in terms of plot but she is a fine actress as proved in her roles opposite William Powell. Overall a great little film but not one that ever stood the test of time especially in that list at the 1939 ceremony but it's an admirable effort. However at the next year's ceremony the next collaboration between Clark Gable and director Victor Fleming would clean up, that film being of course Gone With the Wind.

Monday, 7 June 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 42: One Disaster after Another

Throughout the 1930s the film industry was mainly run by the studios who contracted various stars to appear in their movies. Two of the biggest studios at the time were MGM and 20th Century Fox and in the late 30s they were run by Louis B Mayer and Darryl F Zanuck respectively. Over the years of 1936 and 1937 both studios produced big budget films concentrating on two separate famous historical disasters that occurred in U.S. States.

First up was MGM's San Francisco a film that looked at 1906 era San Francisco in the build up to the famous earthquake. It sees Clark Gable corrupt nightclub owner Blacky Norton who hires and later romances Jeanette MacDonald's club singer Mary Blake. MacDonald is eventually tempted away from Norton and his Paradise Club and ends up singing at the opera and dating a wealthy opera scion. Meanwhile Norton's childhood friend, now a priest, tries to get his old friend to change his ways and also tries to convince Mary that Norton isn't all bad. In the end Mary returns to Norton with a performance of the song San Francisco that wins The Paradise Club an award. Just after this however the earthquake hits and the final 15 or so minutes of the film sees the specially constructed scenes as the quake followed by the fire as Norton tries to find Mary and he has to pray to God, something he's refused to do up to now, eventually finding her alive. In the impressive final scene the survivors of the earthquake march hand in hand singing as the shot of the wreckage of the earthquake dissolves into the San Francisco of the 1930s. The final earthquake montage sequences were the most impressive and obviously cost the most to make, the film also made a star out of MacDonald, who had previously been noted for her work with Maruice Cheavlier. However Clark Gable didn't seem to have a good time filming the movie clashing with MacDonald and also almost refusing to deliver the final breakdown scenes claiming that he would make him come off as soppy. Despite putting in a great performance it was actually Spencer Tracy, as the priest, who got a Best Actor Nomination even though he was the support to the Gable character. The film also won the award for Best Sound and was nominated for director, assistant director and original screenplay. But this was the year that over-hyped Great Ziegfeld won Best Picture so there was no chance for San Francisco despite in being a pretty impressive picture.

A year after the release of San Francisco, Fox decided they were also going to release a disaster picture and picked the Chicago Fire as their backdrop. They tried to cast Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the lead roles however they were both tied to MGM so in the end the roles went to Tyrone Power and Alice Faye . The film starts with the O'Leary family travelling to Chicago when the father dies, the mother becomes a washerwoman and with her three sons begins running a farm. Years later Dion is a dodgy club owner, Jack is a respectable lawyer and Bob helps his mother out. Dion begins a relationship and later marries club singer Belle despite his mother's protests. Dion then helps Jack run for council in Chicago and pays off a lot of his underworld friends to make this happen so Jack can do Dion's bidding however Jack finds out and the two brothers go to war. Again disaster strikes as the fire starts thanks to an incident provoked by Mrs O'Leary's cow, the fire sequences themselves were said to cost over $150,000 and the set is said to have burned for three days. Although up to this point the film hadn't been up to much the final disaster is what everyone had been waiting for. In terms of Oscars it won one more than San Francisco as Alice Brady as Mrs O'Leary was the second woman to win the Supporting Actress award and the Assistant Director was also honoured. The Life of Emile Zola beat the film out for Best Picture and In Old Chicago also received nods for its score, sound and original screenplay.

Of the two films I think I preferred San Francisco I think the plot had more to say it was glamorous, had big musical numbers and I enjoyed the themes of greed vs. religion and the relationship between Spencer Tracey and Clark Gable while I thought In Old Chicago was a film that was just waiting for its expensive conclusion and didn't really care about the rest of the plot despite some good performances from Alice Brady and Don Ameche as Jack. Both of these films should be watched to see what big budget disaster movies looked like back in the 1930s and I reckon both certainly deserved their places in the Best Picture list.

Wednesday, 5 May 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 32: Not Much of a Bounty

It's been a while since I've watched a winner and the Mutiny on The Bounty DVD has been lingering on the side since it was delivered from LoveFilm several weeks ago. Mutiny on The Bounty one the Best Picture Award at the 1936 ceremony beating off competition from films I've watched already including a Midsummer Night's Dream, Captain Blood, Ruggles of Red Gap and Top Hat. Another film that I've already watched, The Informer, was nominated alongside Mutiny on The Bounty and was the big winner that year. In fact Victor McLaglen won Best Actor over three actors in Mutiny on The Bounty - Charles Laughton, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone. Having previously bigged up McLaglen's performance I'm now not entirely convinced that he deserved the award mainly because Charles Laughton's performance as the monstrous Captain Bligh was completely mesmerising. If the award for Best Supporting Actor was around then (it didn't come in till the year after) I think Laughton would've fit that role better. As you can probably guess from the title the plot revolves around the ship The Bounty and the mutiny that eventually occurs on it. That is mainly due to the way that Bligh tortures the sailors under his command and eventually Clark Gable's Officer Fletcher Christian decides enough is enough and sets Bligh adrift with a number of his supporters. Meanwhile Franchot Tone plays the man in the middle who is forced into mutiny and goes back to England to face his penalties at the end of the film.

For me the film was at its best in the scenes on the ship with Laughton lashing the disobedient sailors and depriving them of food. He was absolutely brilliant in the role and I feel the film lags when he's not in it. Most of these scenes are off the ship in 'Tahiti' where both Christian and Tone's Byam fall in love with local girls. I found a lot of the portrayal of the natives insulting and their native ways were sneered upon. It is Tone rather than Gable who is the dashing male lead and is the more reasonable of the three men, meanwhile Gable gets to play the rebel and probably changes the most throughout the film. While The Informer was the big movie at that year's Oscars, the grand scale of Mutiny on The Bounty obviously shined over the gloomy 'Irish' scenery in John Ford's film. I certainly think this film was better but I don't know if I want to watch it again, however I have to watch the remake which was also nominated for the Oscar in the 1970s.

Tuesday, 30 March 2010

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 8: The First to Five

So far I have watched quite a few iconic films on this list but in terms of Oscar history, It Happened One Night is possibly one of the most important. The film was one of the only three to win the Big Five awards (Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay and Director), I also have to admit that it is one I haven't seen but I have wanted to see for a while so this project was really ideal for an excuse to finally see what I was missing. What first struck me was the whole simplicity of the story - a rich girl runs away from her overprotective to father to be with her new husband but on the way meets a handsome journalist who helps her on her travels, unlike a lot of films that I have previously watched this film is timeless and could easily be made today. The knockabout humour of the stars and the road movie aspect made me think of the Rob Reiner films The Sure Thing and When Harry met Sally both films see mismatched couples meet on the road and survive together only to find that they actually love each other. However I'm wondering if a film like this was made today with the calibre of stars and script, if it would be nominated for an Oscar. Romantic comedies are very much seen as passé and to be fair a lot of them are awful but if someone made a really good one I think the snobbery of the Oscars would still prevent it from being nominated. But It Happened One Night kept me interested from beginning to end with its light script and its themes of oppression, money and journalism.

Clark Gable thoroughly deserved his Oscar for his charming portrayal of the journalist who turns his attention to Colbert's character after he realises who she is, but his declaration of love near the end of the film is brilliant. It's nice to see such a positive female lead, unlike Luise Rainer two years later, Claudette Colbert deserved her Oscar she was feisty and also naive more than holding her own against Gable. I have to say it's the first time since I started this that I felt that the female lead was a strong as the man despite some very famous actresses already passing my eyes (Olivia De Havilland, Ginger Rogers) I have to say that Colbert was glamorous and entertaining and a darn fine actress. Meanwhile Frank Capra's direction and Robert Riskin's adapted script were also more than deserving of their awards. From watching Clint Eastwood's Changeling I also learnt that this film wasn't expected to win a thing at it was Cecil B DeMille's Cleopatra (also starring Colbert) which was expected to sweep the board. Today it would be hard for a romantic comedy to top a historical epic but not so in 1935 when things were a lot simpler

It's also odd that this is the second film I've watched about 'newspaper men' (the first being The Front Page) and the second time that I've found some more of my Oscar films on YouTube. Out of my 1920s/1930s period of Oscar films I'm now only missing 22 out of a possible 86 titles. The one I mostly looking for is Cavalcade (1933) winner of the 1934 Best Picture Oscar, it is the only Best Picture winner from this era that I'm still hunting for so if anyone could tell me a place to find it that would be great. Be back soon with more Oscar movies.