Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 110: Canadian Hideout

Of all the films they worked on together only two of the works from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were nominated for an Oscar. The first, which I watched much earlier, was the classic The Red Shoes which has come to the forefront of the public knowledge after the recent release of Black Swan. However the second film is the lesser known 49th Parallel, a film that Powell made to try and convince the USA to join the war. 49th Parallel sees a German U-Boat crash on the Canadian shore and tracks the adventures of the six Nazi officers as they try to traverse the land and find a way back home. On the way they come across various stereotypical Canadian characters including a French Canadian trapper bizarrely depicted by Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard's reclusive British intellectual and Raymond Massey's soldier who has gone AWOL and in the film's final scene stops Eric Portman's Hirth, the leader of the group, from entering the partisan USA and they both travel back towards Canada where Hirth will be arrested. There also a very long scene in a commune with East German farmers who are pacifistic and live together as a family. The Nazi gang don't understand how they don't have a leader or a secret handshake and instead live in harmony without having strict rules. One of their number even decides to stay only to be found guilty of desertion and killed by his so-called friends.

I'd never thought I'd compare a Powell and Pressburger film to an episode of South Park but that's before I'd seen 49th Parallel a film which resembles 'Christmas in Canada' where the four boys travel round Canada trying to find Kyle's brother Ike and during that time they run into a French Canadian, a Mountie and a Newfoundlander. All of these can be found in this film as can the Scottish Hudson Bayer played by Whisky Galore narrator Finlay Currie who enjoys playing chess over the radio. There are plenty of stereotypes in this film for example having Olivier playing a French Canadian was a mistake and I think the classical Brit actors who play the Nazis were a little too over the top. But it also an interesting film that Powell and Pressburger spent a lot of time working on and thinking about the motivations of the Nazi party. Having the Nazis as the main characters is almost a reverse road movie as they drop off one by one, some dying and others being handed into the police. But notably none of them are credited on the poster instead it is Olivier, Massey and Howard who have been given the lead roles of the three Howard impressed me the most as the character who outwits the Nazis who believe they have a superior intellect. I feel this may've been hailed as a classic if it had got the casting a bit better but as it is it feels a bit dated unlike some of the other P and P works  such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death, neither of which were nominated which is a great shame.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 79: Putting on My Dancing Shoes

Going back to the other end of the decade once again with a nominee from the 1949 ceremony, Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes. The film is one of only a few colour films to feature in this decade's list and all of those films so far (Gone with The Wind, The Wizard of Oz) have been able to utilise the colour to its full potential and give it relevance to the story and The Red Shoes is no different focusing specifically on the titular footwear. The plot itself centres around three characters - aspiring ballet star Vicky Page, ruthless ballet owner Boris Lemantov and naive composer and orchestra coach Julian. The first is almost divided equally into two halves, the first half focuses on Vicky and Julian separately as they try to get to the top of their professions and are occasionally looked down on. Lemantov is able to see potential in Vicky following her performance in Swan Lake and at the same time develops feelings for her. When he loses his prima ballerina he invites Vicky on the road and casts her as the lead in the new Red Shoes ballet, the music for which is being written by Julian. When Julian and Vicky's paths cross for the first time they begin to quarrel but then they fall in love. What I would consider the second half of the film follows the performance of the Red Shoes Ballet where Lemantov discovers the relationship and gets rid of Julian from the company in a way to have Vicky all to himself but Vicky decides to go London with Julian and marry him but Lemantov owns the rights to The Red Shoes and will not let her perform it again. Later on Lemantov and Vicky meet again and he convinces her to take part in his revival of The Red Shoes, Julian abandons the opening night of his new opera to be with her but Lemantov makes him realise that her one true love is dancing. Just as she is about to go on she impulsively runs away to the train station where Julian is and jumps from a bridge into the path of a train. Vicky has Julian remove The Red Shoes from her while Lemantov announces Vicky's death to the audience waiting for her but the show goes on with a spotlight in her place.

What I love about The Red Shoes is the attention to detail that the theatrical sets are given, from the very first scene in which students burst in to see the latest production to the red shoes ballet itself the set and costume designers are able to play around with the colour schemes beautifully, down to the haunting red of Vicky's shoes. The Red Shoes Ballet itself takes up about 15 minutes of the overall runtime and works beautifully as we are shown why Vicky loves dancing so much. For a film that looks and sounds amazing there's no surprise that it won the Oscars for Best Score and Best Set Design. The acting itself isn't at all bad Norma Shearer puts in a spirited turn as Vicky while Anton Wallbrook also shines as the morally ambiguous Lemontov. But this isn't an acting film per se, this is a spectacularly produced film that still dazzles over sixty years after its was made.