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 Day 62: Claudette is Queen

Although it was one of my favourite films from a couple of years ago, Clint Eastwood's Changeling also let me know that at the time of the 1935 Oscar ceremony everybody thought that Cecile B DeMille's Cleopatra was going to clean up and win big at that year's ceremony, apart from Angelina Jolie's character who reckoned that It Happened One Night would triumph. Of course Ange was right and Frank Capra's film became only one of three films ever to win the Big Five (Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director) while Cleopatra only went home with the cinematography statuette. Not that Claudette Colbert was that arsed as she was the lead female in both films, plus a third nominated film - Imitation of Life. Indeed Colbert was probably the perfect choice to play Cleopatra - not too young, not too old and beautiful without being over-the-top. Indeed Colbert's Cleopatra is very flirty and sexy but never that dominant instead she is always waiting to find out what her man is going to do. The first third of the film essentially steals from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as we follow Cleopatra from Egypt to Rome with J.C. where he is betrayed by Brutus. She is then able to seduce Marc Anthony who has come to deal with Caesar's killers but instead finds himself caught up in a battle of wits with the Egyptian queen in a relationship where they both try and kill each other. The final third of the film sees Caesar's only living relative, Octavian try and overthrow Marc Anthony as leader of Rome and get rid of Cleo once and for all. And in the final scene the Romans barge into Cleopatra's bedroom obviously to arrest her.

But the plot doesn't really seem to be that important to DeMille, instead he seems to want to concentrate on the detail and the extravagance that surrounded Cleo, Julius and Marc during their days in Egypt and Rome. So there are plenty of half-naked servant girls, large dance numbers and any number of animals lying around. Indeed the film opens with a naked servant girl who has been lit for purposes of modesty, this was just before censorship hit cinemas so this was DeMille's chance to get away with a bit more raunchy material than he would in later pictures. Claudette Colbert was great in the lead and she is fast becoming one of my favourite actresses however I still prefer her performance in Imitation of Life. Meanwhile Warren William makes a fine Caesar and Henry Wilcoxon was perfectly adequate as Marc Antony. However as a whole the film was style over substance and, even though I enjoyed a few of the later battle scenes, overall I thought if you took away all the detail you were left with a pretty flimsy film.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 44: Let's Hear it for the girls

Interestingly up to now all the African American characters in the films I have watched have been portrayed as maids to the lead protagonists, usually the women, and barely get any lines. Films like You Can't Take it With You and Jezebel gave these characters a few lines and almost a mini sub-plot but they weren't viewed as the leads. So I was surprised to see a film which featured a dominant African American character, and a female one at that, in a film that dealt with the issues of both race and gender.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 16: Mostly Maurice

Over to the 1932 ceremony where two films starred the same leading man and had the same basic format. That man was Maurice Chevalier and those two films were One Hour With You and The Smiling Lieutenant. Of course I've heard of Chevalier but at the same time am not aware of his films that well. Just like Mae West, Chevalier was one the successful vaudeville and Broadway performers who was able to make the transition to Hollywood. With his charming voice and trademark boater hat, Chevalier was a crowd pleaser when he took to the stage and continued to charm in his films. In this case the films were both directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Firstly One Hour With You which has a very flimsy storyline indeed involving Chevalier's doctor who seems only to treat female clients who all obviously fancy him rotten but he is faithful to his wife played by Jeanette MacDonald. Both Chevalier and McDonald have perfect singing voices and basically singing seems to be foreplay to most of the characters in both of the Chevalier films that I watch. Maurice is tempted by his wife's old friend Mitzi while in turn his wife his propositioned by a man named Adolph before the name obviously became synonymous with a certain Mr Hitler. In this film Chevalier addresses the audience on a number of occasions to ask their advice on what he should do with these two beautiful women. At the end of the day even though they've both been unfaithful to an extent MacDonald and Chevalier realise they love each other most of all so it's back to the bedroom for a bit of a 'sing song'. The film is supposedly set in Paris but is obviously an American production with Chevalier the only predominant French cast member. Honestly I don't see why this was nominated for Best Picture, but that's all it was nominated for and it was obviously there to make up the numbers.
But you think the academy would only have picked one Chevalier film that year but instead The Smiling Lieutenant was also nominated. I find the plot was a little more cohesive in this film although Chevalier did essentially play the same character this time there was at least some kind of motivations for all the misunderstandings and misbehaving. This time the two women that were fighting for Chevalier's affections were Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. After watching her as the smart-talking rich girl in It Happened One Night I was surprised how little Colbert had to do here. She was Chevalier's first romantic interest a violinist who he fell for even though his friend liked her, friendship doesn't seem to stand for much in a Maurice Chevalier film. Anyway as you can guess from the title Chevalier's character is a lieutenant in the army and when Colbert's character goes to watch him welcome the ambassadors from a small Austrian suburb to Vienna he winks and smiles at her but it gets deflected towards Hopkins' small town princess. The big plot jump sees Chevalier agree to marry Hopkins because if he didn't there would be an international incident or Chevalier would lose his job. Hopkins and Chevalier have a loveless marriage at first but when Colbert comes to confront the new couple she instead helps Hopkins improve her lingerie collection (in song no less!) and bed Chevalier. At the end Chevalier gives the audience a cheeky wink before going to bed his new wife. Again the film was only nominated for Best Picture.

So what've I learnt from Maurice Chevalier films released in 1931-1932? Women don't care if you screw around, basically everyone sings or at least talks in rhymes, America is ample substitute for either Vienna or Paris and women find Frenchmen in boater hats absolutely resistable. Surprisingly there was no nomination for Chevalier in the Best Actor line-up however that year there was only three nominees. But Maurice will pop up again in this search later on when I watch the film which he was nominated for Best Actor - The Love Parade. Until then its goodbye to cheeky French chit-chat and oh so twee musical numbers.

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.