Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 49: The Bad Girls are always catching my eye

More from Frank Borzage with the 1932 nominee Bad Girl, an interesting film in that it doesn't deal with Borzage's regular themes of war and doomed relationships. Instead it follows an almost mundane relationship between a shop girl and a radio repairs man. Initially Dorothy is interested in Eddie as he doesn't seem to be interested in her and makes a bet with her friend that she can bed him, so that's where the title of Bad Girl comes from. Eventually Eddie and Dorothy do fall in love and he proposes marriage but on their wedding day he gets fired and then aims to set up his own business but at the same time Dorothy finds out she is pregnant so Eddie can't use the money he'd put away for his new business and instead buys an apartment for them. The story turns again when Dorothy wants to hire a private doctor but Eddie doesn't have the money so begins prize fighting and getting himself knocked out in order to look after his wife eventually begging the doctor to work before he is paid. In the end the doctor does the work for free and Eddie and Dorothy are united with their new baby.

For a film that was released in the first few years of sound, Bad Girl seems extremely talky and many scenes feature two people in a room. This would've seemed quite revolutionary at the time when films were full of big action or large blown romantic tales this is just a simple piece of real life drama. For a film ahead of its time it was rightly given the Best Adapted Screenplay award as well as a second Best Director Oscar for Borzage. Of the cast Sally Ellers probably deserved a Best Actress nod for her portrayal of the multi-layered Dorothy whose character changes drastically as the film continues. James Dunn as the hapless Eddie was also fairly compelling but I don't think it was up to the standard of Best Actor. Overall a competent and original picture but not one that could touch that year's eventual winner - Grand Hotel.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 46: A Farewell to LoveFilm

This is kind of the day I'm on my own a little bit as this is finally the day that I watch the last film delivered by LoveFilm DVD and have to wait till the next decade, in which most of the films will be delivered by them, to use them again. The last DVD from my rental list for now is another one by Frank Borzage, A Farewell to Arms.

Again Borzage is focusing on World War One, but this time following the relationship between an American ambulance driver, Gary Cooper's Frederick, who serves in the American army and a Scottish nurse played by Helen Hayes. Just like in Seventh Heaven, war separates the lovers as a jealous Italian general dispatches Frederick into Milan far away from Hayes' Catherine however they are soon reunited when it is organised to have him transferred to the hospital where she works after an injury. Up to this point in the film I thought the action totted along nicely, the war scenes weren't as impressively filmed as in Seventh Heaven but the characters seemed a lot more realistic. However I had trouble in the final section of the film in which a pregnant Catherine sits writing letters to Frederick who never gets them because they are held up by the Swiss censors. I found at the end of the film that it all lapsed slowly into melodrama as Catherine started to despair for her lost love. At the end of course Frederick returns just to witness Catherine's death at childbirth, the child not surviving either which I thought made the film end on a low ebb.

The acting itself was fine enough, again I'm not convinced by Gary Cooper as an actor I find him a little brusque and unprofessional although the role didn't demand as much of him as Mr Deeds Goes to Town. Helen Hayes, whose name is above Cooper's in the credits, is another in a long line of strong women in these films however the second half of the film sees her become more weak and dependant on Frederick, a couple of the supporting performers were also excellent notably Adolphe Menjoy as the jealous Major Rinaldi. Unsurprisingly the film didn't get any acting nominations but it did gets some nods on the technical side of things winning awards for both cinematography and sound and being nominated for art direction. However it didn't have a chance against that year's winner the interesting and multi-layered Cavalcade, I think it should be a film that was glad to be nominated. Now comes the time though were I must concentrate on Youtubing the hell out of the rest of the films on the list.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 45: The Silent War

The final film in the opening Best Picture category is next up. In 1929 at the first ceremony, only three films were nominated - eventual winner Wings, patchy gangster film The Racket and Seventh Heaven, a film about love and war.

As with all of the first these pictures, Seventh Heaven is also a silent film and is directed by Frank Borzage whose movies have shaped my viewing habits over the last few days. The film is set in Paris and is essentially one of two halves, the first half follows the romance between sewer worker Chico and young prostitute Diane who has run away from her violent sister. To save Diane from arrest Chico pretends to be her husband and the two start to fall in love. But in the second half the love story is interrupted by World War One and Chico has to go off and fight leaving Diane alone and waiting for updates from Chico's fellow soldiers starts to get depressed. The end of the film sees Diane believe Chico has died in the war and she is about to commit suicide when he returns just as the war is won. Although he is not dead, Chico has been blinded but he and Diane agree to stick together once and for all now he is back and free.

For a film from the early days of cinema, Seventh Heaven is technically impressive. I found the scenes depicting World War One a lot better than some of the amateurish ones in the first Best Picture Winner - Wings. Gaynor and Farrell was also fairly moving in their roles, Gaynor especially was able to display emotion easily and I she gave as a fully-rounded performance and was rewarded with a Best Actress award, Borzage also won best director and the film picked up the prize for adapted screenplay. However I believe that Wings was ultimately the best film to win, I found Seventh Heaven somewhat disjointed and a bit dull in parts, while it was better than The Racket I think that it didn't make enough of the filmic techniques available to it to create a truly memorable picture. Saying that it still more than deserves its place on the list of the first three films nominated for Best Picture.