Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 165: Burning Love

We travel from the blood-soaked fields of World War 2 to Ancient Rome under Emperor Nero for our penultimate 1950s film Quo Vadis. The film is very similar to previous entries on this list such as The Ten Commandments and The Robe in so much as they try to utilise the new technicolor methods to create a vivid story while at the same time referencing parts of The Bible. In this case we have Rome just after the death of Jesus, although Peter features quite predominantly throughout, where the Christians are living in private and here are represented by Deborah Kerr's Lygia. Playing opposite Kerr is Robert Taylor as Marcus Vinicius a returning Roman soldier whose uncle Petronius is one of Nero's most trusted advisors and who becomes intrigued with Christianity through is infatuation with Lygia. When the slightly crazy Nero, played by the brilliant Peter Ustinov, decides to burn Rome and blame the Christians people start to believe that he has gone loopy while Potronious goes so far as to kill himself. Both Lygia and Marcus are arrested and then are married by Peter before he himself is crucified upside down. Nero's wife, who has been knocked back by Marcus, decides to teach the couple a lesson by setting Lygia up to be gored by a bull in the coliseum and chaining Marcus up so he has to watch. Eventually Nero is overthrown and has one of his slaves kill him as he is too cowardly to take his own life so the film ends with Lygia and Marcus able to leave Rome as we see Peter's staff and here his words being spoken to those who are lucky enough to have survived Nero's tyrannical reign.

Always when writing these reviews I try and think what I will most remember about this film after having watched it and in the case of Quo Vadis there are two points. Firstly the epic scale of it all as this is very similar to a Cecil B Demille picture complete with an entire sequence with Rome burning to the ground and then another scene featuring live animals trying to attract Nero's prisoners in the coliseum. The other memorable aspect of Quo Vadis is Peter Ustinov's performance as Nero, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, playing this evil man in quite a child-like manner changing his ideas on a whim and often being manipulated by his devious wife whom he finally cottons onto and kills just before the end scene. It is Ustinov you always look forward to seeing because Robert Taylor is such a wooden actor and you don't believe for one minute that he is the great Roman soldier in fact he just seems like another beefcake actor while Deborah Kerr here is on poor form possibly being ill-served with a role in which she doesn't do much than follow other men's leads. So all in all this is a colourful romp through Ancient Rome which lasts far too long, its running time is almost three hours, but has a great performance from Ustinov. While this isn't a great film it does highlight a time where film-makers were using techniques to recreate these epic stories so in those terms Quo Vadis is an interesting film to watch if not just in a historical context.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 131-132: A Tribute to Elizabeth Taylor Part 1

Sadly earlier this year we lost a big film legend in Elizabeth Taylor. Even sadder is the fact that I haven't really watched a lot of her films save National Velvet and The Flintstones when I was younger. So I have used the 1950s Oscar Hunt to watch five her films all nominated for Best Picture during this decade to kick off the first three.

Liz Taylor really made her name in the aforementioned National Velvet but then was still considered a child star but she had to wait till 1950 for what many think as her first adult role in the original version of Father of the Bride a nominee at the 1951 ceremony. Obviously I'm very aware of the Steve Martin remake but have never seen the original starring Spencer Tracy as the father and Taylor as his daughter who gets engaged to Don Taylor's Buckley. Obviously the film shares a lot with the remake but what there is much more of an emphasis on is how much the wedding will cost Tracy's Stanley Banks and his wife Ellie played by Joan Bennett. It also doesn't strike me that the relationship with the daughter is as strong as it is in the remake despite this there is a good chemistry between Tracy, Bennett and Taylor as well as the two actors playing their sons. Tracy's comic voiceover is particularly affecting including in one of the opening scenes where he tries to remember which one of Taylor's potential suitors Buckley is. Tracy is also able to show off his slapstick side in a very long scene in which he tries to try on his old suit which is far too tight for him and which he ends up ripping. From the wedding onwards I recognised most of the scenes from Stanley worrying what he has to say in the church to the fact that he never gets to say goodbye to his daughter until she leaves. I feel that the film isn't quite as funny as it thinks it is but it is still very sweet and you believe that the Banks are a real family going through with a real wedding. To be fair Taylor doesn't have a lot to do apart from look very pretty and sulk occasionally when she feels her wedding is being planned by other people. An interesting Oscar nominee in that is predominantly a comedy film but nonetheless a great film.

A year later Taylor starred opposite Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun again a film nominated for Best Picture and once again Taylor missed out on an acting nomination although Clift and fellow co-star Shelley Winters were both nominated. The film starred Clift as George Eastman a poor relation to a wealthy industrial family. George meets his uncle and cousins and is introduced to Taylor's society girl Angela Vickers instantly falling in love. However he feels he isn't good enough for her and instead starts working in the family factory and beginning a casual relationship with Winters' Al. Al and George go out a couple of times and then George is moved up the social ranks and eventually starts seeing Angela but things are complicated when Al reveals she is pregnant and wants to marry George telling him she'll reveal all to his new friends if he doesn't. Desperate for a happy ending with Angela, George sets out to kill Al while on a boat but instead he can't go through with it but when she accidentally drowns he covers it up and is eventually arrested for her murder in the end he doesn't get A Place in the Sun that he so desperately wanted to share with Taylor. As a romantic melodrama, A Place in the Sun was a great film but I'm not sure if it was Oscar-worthy while Clift and especially Winters both deserved their nominations I feel that Taylor was cruelly snubbed here as every time she breezed onto the screen it lit up. A scene in which she realises she is in love with George happens so smoothly that Taylor is able to show the audience her feelings just using her eyes. It's a bit odd to think that Taylor was only 17 here playing against Clift who was over twelve years her senior but their chemistry does work and you do really understand why George would risk everything for Angela because at the end of the day it is Elizabeth Taylor!

Another year and another Oscar nominee for Liz this time in the swashbuckling adventure Ivanhoe. This was during the time in her career when Taylor wasn't getting the roles she wanted and in terms of this film she wanted the main romantic lead Rowena which went to Joan Fontaine and instead she had to settle playing Rebecca the girl who loved Ivanhoe from afar but could never get him and was forced into a relationship with George Sanders' Norman soldier De-Bois Gilbert who knew that Ivanhoe could never love her. In fact this was Taylor and Fontaine's film both women giving strong performances making the women more than just love interests and a lot more interesting than the lead man. Yes Robert Taylor's pioneering hero who was trying to fight King John's men and reinstate Richard the Lionheart was in fact incredibly bland. 15 years removed from the Errol Flynn era this almost seemed like a back-step for the 1950s cinema. I'm sure that the studio heads wanted to revisit these blockbusters to film them in Technicolor but this did nothing for me and went downhill when Robin Hood had to step in to help Ivanhoe and introduce all his Merry Men. The final scenes in which Taylor is falsely accused of witchcraft were poorly but together and I didn't really care about any of the characters coming away from it. Taylor really wanted bigger films than a supporting role in a mediocre epic thankfully in a few years later she would get that chance.

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 105: More from Charlie and Bill

Next up we have adaptations of two classic works of British literature from two classic British directors. First of all Charles Dickens' Great Expectations directed by David Lean and then Laurence Olivier's adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry V. When writing about any of these films its always tempting to go into plot detail but with works of classic literature it feels like ret-reading old ground a lot of the time so instead I shall simply discuss the style and acting.

First up then Lean's Great Expectations which goes straight into the story as young Pip first encounters the convict Abel Magwitch and is forced to steel food and a file so that the convict can get away and have something to eat. These scenes between the startled Pip and the terrifying Magwitch are some of the film's best and the way they are shot and edited and the music that accompanies them all adds to the haunting mood and rightfully the film did win the Oscars that year for Art Direction and Cinematography. The Art Direction is also prevalent in the later scenes when Pip is invited to play at the house of Miss Havisham and her ward Estella whom Pip falls in love with. Lean again gets it just right showing this house as a large daunting place full of cobwebs and dust where the clocks are stopped to the time when Miss Havisham was stood up at the altar. About an hour into the film the action switches and Pip is now an adult played by John Mills, it is in these scenes that Pip goes to London to live with Alec Guinness' adorable Herbert Pocket and also romances the grown Estella. For me I felt that Mills was miscast as Pip, I felt that he seemed almost too old to be playing a 21 year old and also didn't really convey the fact that he'd made the transition from blacksmith's mate to gentleman in training. But Mills' performance is the exception rather than the rule as there are some fine performances in the supporting cast from Francis L Sullivan as the belligerant lawyer Mr Jaggers to Bernard Miles as the kindly Mr Joe and Finlay Currie as the terrifying Magwitch all these roles are played as they should be my only criticism is that I feel that Martita Hunt went a little overboard as Miss Havisham almost making her performance lapse into pantomime. As the final scenes come on and Pip finds out who it was that paid for him to become a gentleman and also of Estella's true parentage the film comes together with the final scenes playing out as they should. Lean abridges the book rightfully chopping out the bits that don't really contribute to the overall narrative and at the end producing a great piece of British cinema which was ahead of its time in many ways and was certainly deserving of the two technical Oscars that it won.

Similarly Olivier's Henry V was deserving of the Special Oscar it won for Laurence Olivier in his achievement of bringing this unique retelling of one of the Bard's most famous works to the screen, he was honoured as a director, producer and actor and excels in all three. This film was shot in Technicolor which, in 1944 when it was being shot, was still quite rare and the way the colour is used in this film also feels ahead of its time creating almost like a separate world as Henry V and his charges head to France. However the film actually starts as a performance in The Globe theatre as we see the audiences take their seats and Leslie Banks, as the chorus, welcomes us to the performance as the actors deliver the first couple of scenes from the stage before Henry and the English hit the sea to France to fight in the Battle of Agincourt. The Agincourt scenes themselves are spectacular, the exterior shots are obviously done in interior studios but at some times I had to sort of take a double back as they are so realistic but at the same time quite obviously fake. This contrast creates almost a surrealist feel and when two soldiers are surrounded by what is meant to be snow covering the French castle it feels out of the ordinary. Olivier makes a brilliant Henry V and his performance and the film as a whole are a lot better than Hamlet the film that won him the Oscar and took home the same prize. Henry V was seen as a morale-booster for the British army and therefore this Techincolor marvel was funded by the British Government and some of Olivier's speeches do have a certain morale-boosting resonance to them. This is getting away from just a filmed version of a Shakespeare play and using the medium of film to try and play around with the audience's expectations. I have to say my favourite parts are when the camera goes backstage to see the actors getting ready before taking the stage again at The Globe. As Henry and Katherine get married at the end of the film we return to the theatre with the audience clapping and I'd like to think that the post-war audience was doing the same thing.

O.K. that's your lot for this little update hopefully be back with more Oscar-ness soon.