Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 150: More from Monty

As we've seen in our trip through the 1950s we've had a lot of stars straddle films I've done retrospectives of the fifities films of both Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando in the former's collection we found A Place in The Sun. That gently links into this next section as we look into the work of the male lead of that film, Montgomery Clift's, other work.

We kick off with just what I need, another play adaptation, this time thankfully there's enough exterior shots to counteract the scenes of people talking in rooms. That film is The Heiress and once again we find the lead actress Olivia De Havilland once again winning the Best Actress award for her tremendous performance as Catherine Sloper the titular woman of the title. The story has a simple premise would a charming young man who mishandles his money be interested in a dowdy heiress for anything more than her cash. That's the situation that Catherine finds herself in after being charmed by Clift's Morris Townsend who visits her house various times and eventually proposed much to the horror of her father played by Ralph Richardson. Richardson's character firstly quizzes Morris' family members before taking his daughter off to Europe, these scenes are especially bought alive by the film medium, realising he can't change her mind he decides to disinherit her therefore only giving her a small amount of money and when Morris finds this out he leaves her on the evening that the couple were meant to elope. It is here that De Havilland comes into her own as she becomes bitter not allowing her father to speak to her and spurning Morris' advances when he returns despite realising he now loves her she wants to humiliate him the way he did her and therefore ends up sad and alone. I did enjoy The Heiress it didn't outstay its welcome and all the leads acted their parts well. De Havilland's performance in the latter scenes were truly spectacular and she did more than earn her Oscar. Montgomery Clift does as he's told playing charming but sinister and playing on his screen idol persona to try and trick the audience into thinking that he really does love Catherine while Ralph Richardson's stoic routine lends itself well to the father. William Wyler brings the play to life and shoots outside as much as possible to give the film a life of its own all in all a good actors film but nothing spectacular.

We come now to another Best Picture winner from the 1954 ceremony starring Clift alongside Burt Lancaster and Oscar winners Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed that film is From Here to Eternity. Covering the same sort of time as 1940s nominee Wake Island, From Here to Eternity looks at army-life in Hawaii just in the run-up to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour. Clift plays Private Pruitt a soldier who has been transferred to his new unit for his boxing prowess however when he refuses to box his Captain gets the other officers to bully him and put him doing manual labour his only friend being Sinatra's Private Maggio. Meanwhile Lancaster's Sergeant Ward is romancing the Captain's wife played by Deborah Kerr their romance includes the famous beach sex scene which is the iconic plateau of the film but which had to be toned down for the censors so it wasn't implicit that the sexual act actually took place. Kerr and Lancaster's romance is thwarted by the fact that she hates it on Hawaii and he vows to earn his Captain's stripes so they can return to the States. Pruitt also falls in love with a girl he meets in a club named Lorene, later revealed to be named Alma, at first he is frustrated with the fact that her work comes first but eventually the two move in together. When Maggio goes AWOL to get drunk he is court martialled and beaten by the warden he eventually escapes but dies from his wounds this causes Pruitt to attack and kill this officer and get wounded himself and going AWOL at Alma's house. It is at this time that the Pearl Harbor attacks take place and Ward takes charge with the Captain being sacked for giving preferential treatment to his boxers. Realising that he will always put the army first Kerr leaves him and returns to America alone meanwhile Pruitt dies trying to make it back to base having been shot by one of the other soldiers. Kerr and Reed's Lorene meet in the film's final scene each realising who the other is as they throw their lays out to sea meaning that neither will ever return.

Occasionally when doing this blog I bemoan the choices of Best Picture but thankfully in 1954 the academy got it spot on with this film. There are no less than five stunning performances with Sinatra stunning me the most as the jovial Maggio who is suddenly brutally attacked and dies a tragic death. Clift is also good here playing a little against type as the stubborn Pruitt but his love scenes with Reed were obviously there for his fans to woo over him. Lancaster is particularly good holding everything together as he's the likeable man torn between love and duty. The almost completely exterior shooting means that this film also boasts great scenery and realistic backdrops and I have to say I was caught off guard by the Pearl Harbour attacks as I'd obviously left my sense of history at the door. Overall a great film and a worthy Best Picture winner and as we've seen here Montgomery Clift definitely made his mark on 1950s film by being both suave and vulnerable in both of these classics.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 104: Not Many Laughs

Today if you watched a film with the word comedy in it you would expect a laugh out loud romp, not so in 1944 and that year's Best Story Winner - The Human Comedy. The film deals with the adventures of the Macaulay family during World War II primarily focusing on the middle son Homer played by Mickey Rooney. I wasn't so sure about this film because of Rooney's previous performances in the two Spencer Tracey movies I'd seen him in, Captains Courageous and Boys Town, in which he'd either failed to make an impression or he'd gone over the top. However in The Human Comedy, in which he was nominated for Lead Actor, his wide-eyed innocence and over the top spirit were used well in the character of Homer. Despite the war raging and his brother fighting in battle he keeps a bright expression as he helps out his mother and goes to work at the telegram station. His relationship with the two other men he works with, Frank Morgan's Willie Grogan and James Craig's Tom Spangler, form some of the film's better scenes forming almost a surrogate family as the two men take the place of the father Homer has lost and the brother who is away. We also see the older brother, Marcus, at war conversing with a friend Tobey and reminiscing about how much he misses his hometown of Ithaca. While the youngest brother Ulysses is always seemingly getting into mischief but then he only seems to be about four. The whole thing is narrated by the deceased father of the Macaulay clan as he looks over to see that his family are alright.

Obviously shot and shown during the war this film would've been seen by people who were missing their loved ones while they were away fighting and it obviously gave them hope. There are some nice little scenes here including Spangler finding love and Rooney gaining the approval of his stern school mistress. However there are also some missteps for one part there is far too much singing and there is also a segment that lasts about ten minutes in which Ulysses and other boys from the town go to steal some apricots from an apricot tree, I'm sure this is what happened regularly in that neighbourhood but we still really don't need to see a blow by blow account of fruit theft. The end of the film is quite sad, but I suppose that's the point, things never go exactly as we plan them and if this set out to portray an accurate account of what life was like for families in the early 1940s in small town America then I think it did a good job and Rooney's performance in the last couple of scenes were deserving of his nomination, the film itself lost out to the far superior Casablanca but I think it was more than deserving of a place in that year's top 10 list.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 77: Christmas Comes Early

They say that Christmas comes but once a year, but Christmas films can come any time you see fit. As Miracle on 34th Street was nominated at the 1948 ceremony I'd decided I would watch It's a Wonderful Life which I had to watch online, at the same time.

First up then is Miracle on 34th Street, a film I'm very familiar with but mainly due to the 1994 remake. For those who have no idea of the story it's about a department store manager, Doris Walker, who hires a new store Santa after she finds her current Santa drunk. The new Santa, Kris Kringle, believes himself to be Santa and after an altercation ends up in a mental asylum. Kringle then has to prove he is not insane and Fred Gailey, Doris' suitor, decides to defend him thanks to a batch of children's letters to Santa. Meanwhile Doris' daughter Susan is a very grown-up girl and doesn't believe in Santa but Kringle tries to change her mind. I do love this story it's all about belief and love and the true meaning of Christmas. Kringle starts to tell parents where they can get presents cheaper even if it is not in Macy's, the store where he works. The incident that leaves Kringle in a mental institution is after he is goaded by Sawyer, Macy's psychologist who believes Kringle is insane. Sawyer picks on a young Macy's employee who Kringle has befriended and once this happens Kringle strikes Sawyer with his cane and Sawyer exaggerates the injury. I felt this incident was a bit contrived and preferred the old Santa trying to get revenge which happened in the remake. Apart from that though this film is full of old-school warmth and has some great performances. As Doris, Maureen O'Hara is able to show a woman who finds it hard to trust but melts after her encounters with Kris and Fred. Edmund Gwenn won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Kris and it is a lovely natural performance while Natalie Wood shows that not all child actors have to be annoying. This is a Christmas classic whether you watch this version or the '94 remake.

The other film in this double bill is It's a Wonderful Life a film that is always associated with Christmas however only the film's last half hour is set at Christmas time. For the three people who have never seen the film it concerns James Stewart's George Bailey who has basically helped out every member of the community in Bedford Falls but after a lot of money goes missing from his Savings and Loans business he tries to commit suicide. A kindly but dithering angel named Clarence is entrusted with helping Bailey out and showing him what he meant to everyone. However this comes at the end of the film and most of it is depicting George's life from a young boy to the present day. This is shown by Clarence's superiors in order to educate him about George. We see a man who helped his brother from drowning, his boyhood boss from poisoning most of the town and from taking over his father's business rather than going to college. It also shows him marry the love of his life Mary and have four children together and his many clashes with the greedy Mr Potter. After Potter convinces Bailey that he isn't worth anything, George goes off and that's when Clarence shows him how much he helped people. This is all done on Christmas Eve accompanied by snow and renditions of various carols. And I think this is why this film has got so much of an association with Christmas and to be fair it is feel good entertainment up to a point. This is Frank Capra's last film to be nominated for an Oscar and his third collaboration with James Stewart after You Can't Take It With You and Mr Smith Goes to Washington, the latter of those will be the next entry in this blog. By this point in his career Stewart showed that he was a more than competent leading man and gives a great turn as the extremely likeable and hard-working George ably supported by Donna Reed as the loving Mary. Stewart got the only acting nomination which is a shame as there are two other brilliant performances. The first is from Lionel Barrymore, who up to this point had mainly been seen playing kindly old men, playing the villainous and callous Potter. The second is from Henry Travers as Clarence who isn't on screen very long but steals the film most of the time he is. Stewart and the movie both lost out to The Best Years of Our Lives, but out of the five films nominated this year this has stood the test of time which can only be a good thing.