Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 78: Frank and Jimmy Take on Congress

After watching seven of his films its time to say goodbye to Frank Capra, for his final film on the list its time to go back to the 1940 ceremony and Mr Smith Goes to Washington. The story sees Jimmy Stewart's Boy Scout Leader Jefferson Smith as the surprise choice to take over from the previous senator in his state. Originally the film had been intended as a follow up to Capra's Mr Deeds Goes to Town with Gary Cooper reviving the Deeds role and entering the senate. However when it was revealed Cooper wasn't available Capra decided it would be a perfect vehicle for him to work again with Stewart and Jean Arthur (who had been a couple in You Can't Take It With You). When Smith gets to Washington he is awe-inspired by the architecture and the history that the place has but is ridiculed by the press for being a simpleton. Smith is taken under the wing of Senator Paine, his father's oldest and best friend as well as charming over Arthur's Saunders, Paine's Chief-of-Staff. Smith proposes a new legislation to approve a government loan to allow for some land to be purchased in his state for a national Boy's Camp, and the loan will be paid back by donations from the scouts. Paine is leaned on by the manipulative political adviser Jim Taylor to quash Smith because the land is already part of a dam-building scheme constructed by Taylor. Paine decides to make out that Smith owns the land and is defrauding the scouts but by this stage Saunders is on Smith's side and uncovers Taylor's corruption. The film's most famous scene is where Smith decides to embark on a filibuster, holding the floor and speaking for as long as possible without sitting down, when all the senators leave the room. Taylor and Paine try and break his spirit by rigging the press in Taylor's state and making out that no-one is supporting him but he finds solace in a smile from the senate's president. At the end of the film Smith collapses from exhaustion and Paine tries to commit suicide when he is stopped he confesses everything and Smith's reputation is redeemed.

Just like with Stewart and Capra's most famous colaboration, It's a Wonderful Life, Mr Smith Goes to Washington is remembered for its final scenes. However before that there is a lot that no-one ever thinks about including the scene where Smith tries to punch a lot of journalists after they diss him and Smith's romance with Paine's daughter which is used as a distraction for Smith's plans. However there is a lot to like here, Capra's themes of the underdog triumphing is possibly at its most blatant here with the innocent and ultimately good Smith gets one over on the cowardly Paine and the tyrannical Taylor. Jean Arthur again proves that she is the most consistent of Capra's female leads, with Saunders she portrays a woman trying to survive in a masculine world and has almost lost all her femininity to do so. In fact there is no romantic end to her relationship with Smith however her greatest moment is when someone calls her Clarissa, her first name, which makes her feel somewhat human. Stewart himself is able to play a real, likeable if innocent character with ease. While there are some fine supporting performances from Claude Rains as the multi-layered Paine and Edward Arnold as the just plain evil Taylor. Rains, Stewart and Harry Carey (as the president of the senate) were all nominated for Oscars although none were successful. Indeed only the story won an Oscar but it did come up against Gone With The Wind, I reckon if it had been released a year before or after it may have done better. Although this is more than a fitting end to my Frank Capra education.

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.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 37: But I'm A Lady

Back from Portugal now, but way behind schedule so going to have to step it up a little bit. More Frank Capra for me first with Lady for A Day. This film contains a lot of firsts Oscar wise, it's the first Capra film to be nominated for an Oscar, losing to Cavalcade, as well as the first film to win him an Oscar nod. It was also the first film to ever be nominated for an Oscar that was distributed by Columbia studios. Unlike Lost Horizon this is definite Capra material it deals with Annie an aging apple-selling woman who gave up a daughter at birth. Annie has been writing to her daughter, telling her that she is an aristocratic lady and that she lives in a fancy hotel. When her daughter is to be married to the son of a Spanish count, Annie frets and is absent from her post, which angers gangster Dave the Dude who doesn't do a deal without buying an apple from Annie. With Dave's help Annie is able to get an apartment, a makeover courtesy of Dave's nightclub singer girlfriend and a 'husband' in Dave's pool hustler friend. Short-term they are able to fool the daughter, fiancée and count but when a party is suggested the police get suspicious as all of Dave's gang gathers together to pretend to be dignitaries. All of Dave's friends are arrested under suspicion of kidnapping some journalists but Dave tells the governor and the mayor the story and Annie doesn't have to reveal the truth to her daughter. All the Capra themes are there - the poor trying to get one over on the rich, the representation of common folk as salt of the earth and the large part that journalists play in the plot once again.

The film ticks along pretty nicely but is no classic and certainly isn't as ground-breaking or interesting as Cavalcade, that year's winner. The film was also nominated for screenplay and May Robson's performance as Annie but also lost both of these. However the Annie plot-line gets eclipsed by the dealings of Dave The Dude and is underworld associates and there's just as fine a performance from Warren William as Dude. At the end of the day this was a good beginning for Capra and marked the style that he would perfect to win him three director Oscars in this decade.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 36: Another World

Frank Capra is a director who keeps popping up in this decade, two of his films - It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It With You both won best picture and best director while Mr Deeds Goes to Town won Capra Best Director also. But Capra directed two more films that also were nominated for Best Picture but didn't win him any director nominations and one of those is Lost Horizon. The previous Capra films all seem to have several running themes about money being the root of all evil and culture clash romances they're all quite light in tone. However Lost Horizon deviates from this pattern as it sees a plane crash and its five passengers lead to a mysterious place called Shangri-La located in the Himalayan Mountains. The 'leader' is Robert Conway who is leaving with the others, including his brother, from China after rescuing them from the country's rebels. The other passengers are a palaeontologist, a plumber who conned shareholders out of their money and a terminally ill woman. They are eventually rescued by a man named Chang who takes them all back to Shangri-La, Conway learns that he has been picked to take over running Shangri-La by the old leader who dies soon after. However Conway is convinced by his brother to leave Shangri-La, his brother also takes a girl who he has fallen in love with only to find out that she is an old woman because people don't age on Shangri-La. The end of the film sees Conway rescued and taken back to Britain only to return to Shangri-La, without his brother who has committed suicide.

Lost Horizon is a lot different from Capra's films mainly because of the scale of the filming, it is beautifully photographed and there are some elaborate exterior shots. Ronald Colman as Conway is the dashing lead he performance is both measured and multi-layered while all the supporting cast give good turns notably Isabel Jewell as the terminally ill Gloria. However it is H.B. Warner as Chang who is the star of the show, he makes us intrigued by his character and Shangri-La as a place and his is the most interesting performance. In fact Warner was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost out in the end, however the film did win two awards for Best Editing and a much deserved Best Art Direction award. This film definitely proved Capra could do something different however after this, the next film on the list directed by him is You Can't Take It With You which returned to his old style.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 18: Doing the Deeds

As the poster says another great Frank Capra production but unlike my two previous Frank Capra viewings (It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It With You) this did not win Best Picture but he did win Best Director for Mr Deeds Goes to Town. Made in between ITHON and YCTIWY, this is possibly the least comic of the three films but like the other two is all to do with power and status and money. As in You Can't Take It With You, Capra roots for the little guy but sees what happens to that little guy when he gives him money. Gary Cooper, nominated for Best Actor, plays Longfellow Deeds a small-town man who inherits a fortune from a long-forgotten uncle and goes to the Big City to claim it. He is then looked after by the guy who played Max in Hart to Hart who is some kind of press agent for the estate but becomes Deeds' confident. Meanwhile a female journalist decides to get the story of Deeds so she pretends to faint in front of him and then starts to romance him. The journalist is played by Jean Arthur in her big break she would later go onto work with Capra on two more occasions. After he discovers her deception he starts to lapse into melancholy but decides to start donating his fortune to farmers who lost their wealth in the great depression. Although this angers the dead uncle's lawyer who tries to prove that Deeds is insane by gathering evidence from his recent behaviour and his old home town. Obviously in the end everything works out well Deeds keeps the fortune, helps the farmers and gets the girl and Capra teaches all the rich people a lesson.

In the other Capra films I have watched there has been someone to root for or someone likeable but the main problem I found was that Deeds wasn't particularly relatable. Although Gary Cooper is a fine actor there's something lacking in the script that gives Deeds any small-town charm instead he often quite easily resorts to punching people in the face which isn't a good representation of the small guy done well. He only redeems himself in the second half of the film and Cooper is very good in the final insanity hearing scenes. Jean Arthur again handles herself well as the typical woman in a man's world she is able to wrap the newspaper editor, the cameraman and briefly Deeds round her little finger. Max from Hart to Hart is also fairly decent as Deeds' sidekick. Overall I can see why this didn't win best picture as it doesn't have the charm of You Can't Take It With You or the knockabout humour and the romance of It Happened One Night. But there are still elements of greatness as this is a Frank Capra film after all. There'll be more Capra to come as his films did garner another two nominations in the decade those films being Lady for a Day and Lost Horizon.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 12 & 13: A Load of Old Screwballs

A staple of the 1930s, the screwball comedy genre produced a couple of winners and more nominees during that decade. Having already watched the 1935 winner - Frank Capra's It Happened One Night I am familiar with the screwball comedy format - quick dialogue, one upmanship between the male and female leads and almost a clash between the upper and lower classes. In It Happened One Night Clark Gable was very much in control and had to look after Claudette Colbert's heiress however the two female leads in my next two screwballs were more than a match for their male counterparts. First up was The Awful Truth, a 1938 Best Picture nominee, which lost out to The Life of Emile Zola. Despite that loss director Leo McCarey took home that year's Best Director Oscar and overall the film had six nominations. One of those was for Irene Dunne who more than deserved to win, as she plays Lucy who decides to divorce her husband Jerry, played by Cary Grant who didn't get a nomination. Lucy is able to wrap all the men in the film around her little finger, she is able to get custody of their dog through manipulative means and then starts romancing the reliable but dull Dan (Ralph Bellamy who inexplicably was nominated for Best Supporting Actor despite having no charisma whatsoever), even though she contemplates marrying Dan she realises she still loves Jerry but then Jerry finds love and Lucy manages to ruin this relationship. Dunne is probably the strongest female lead I have seen so far, even though there is a hint that a woman needs to be married and get be the one who initiates the divorce, Lucy is definitely the more dominant of the pair. The film is perfectly timed and brilliantly executed and right up my street, the final few scenes set in a cabin are a bit odd as the pair ponder a reconciliation. Although there is no real comment on social standing or econmic wellbeing - Lucy, Jerry and Dan are all fairly well off and dress fancily and get afford servants no real mention of money apart from in the divorce.


That's a complete contrast of the other film and the last winner from a 1930's ceremony - You Can't Take It With You. It won Frank Capra his third Best Director Oscar and it was the second of his films to win Best Picture after the aforementioned It Happened One Night. I think this more than any film sees the female lead be a lot stronger than her male counterpart. The film sees Jean Arthur's Bank Worker fall in love with the boss' son played by James Stewart in one of his first lead roles. Stewart's family are straight-laced his father wants to buy up the entire town and his mother is very prim and proper. Meanwhile Arthur's family are all odd and eccentric - a father who designs and tests fireworks, a mother who rights plays on a typewriter that was wrongly delivered to the house, a sister who dances atrociously despite having a live-in Russian dance coach and a brother-in-law who likes playing the xylophone along to his wife's dancing and also likes printing slogans and sticking them inside candy. The heart of the family, and of the neighbourhood, is Lionel Barrymore's Grandpa Martin Vanderhof, who is the owner of the house that the bank wants to buy. So it is the clash between the banker and the eccentric heart of the neighbourhood as they meet as potential family members. The film is full of fancy farce and plenty of witty dialogue (the script got a nomination) and also a great ensemble cast. Surprisingly Barrymore didn't get a Supporting Actor nomination instead the only acting nomination went to Spring Byngton as the family's matriarch which was a decent performance if nothing else. But it is Arthur who decides to turn down Stewart's proposal after their families clash, Stewart indeed seems quite closeted and not as worldly wise as his female counterpart. At the time of the depression it was great for people to see a comedy which applauded the little man for leaving boring jobs and doing what they loved rather than racking up lots of money. The bankers are seen as unhappy and unfeeling while the Sycamore family are seen as loving and happy throughout, although they are not completely penniless as they can afford two members of staff in their home. Also a little side-note is that this is the first film I've seen in which the African American staff members have had a little bit more to do than simply greet their masters (seen in The Great Ziegfeld, Three Smart Girls and The Awful Truth) and instead feel more a part of the family.

Both of these films greatly cheered me up and I thought they were great, especially You Can't Take it With You which I think is better than most modern comedy films. I think we had two films with very powerful female leads - Jean Arthur and Irene Dunne, who could teach the leading ladies of today's Hollywood a thing or two about how to keep a man in his place.

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.