Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 174: And then Some Audrey

So here it is the first Oscar Challenge post on this brand new blog in which I continue my quest to watch every film nominated for Best Picture which I think has a projected finish date of 2015. To start this new site off we present another double bill of one person's efforts in the decade and this time we focus on the delicate features of Miss Audrey Hepburn.

Despite being nominated for five Best Actress Oscars only two of those films were nominated for Best Picture one being Roman Holiday which we looked at last decade and the other being The Nun's Story. Hepburn plays Gabrielle Van Der Mal the daughter of a brilliant doctor who herself dreams of being a medical professional and decides to become a nun so that she can work in one of the hospitals in the Congo. The first hour of the film is devoted to her becoming a nun, later known as Sister Luke, including her taking orders as well as learning her vows which means she can no longer have memories or want physical things. When it finally comes to time to take her medical exams her mother superior suggest that she fail her exam in order to show humility however when she passes she is assigned to a mental hospital in her native Belgium rather than her preferred destination of the Congo. Finally she is allowed to go to Africa where she works with Peter Finch's brilliant atheist Dr Fucani who tries to get her to open up but her vows won't allow it. While in the Congo she sees the dangers of the country when one of the other nun's is killed by a villager and she is later transported back to Belgium after she contracts TB. Missing her life in the Congo she is called to be a nurse again when she has to treat casualties hurt in the bombing of World War 2 however her feelings towards the Nazi Party make her think that she can be a nun no longer especially when she finds out her father has been killed. The film ends with Gabrielle denouncing her orders and leaving the convent once and for all her experiences their having made her a better person.

As I mentioned the first hour of The Nun's Story is almost exclusively reserved for Gabrielle's transformation into Sister Luke including watching her during dinner and during mass. As you can imagine this is pretty dull at times however it does make you relate to the characters and also what it takes to become a nun in the first place. The film really picks up in when Sister Luke makes it to the Congo partly due to the on-location filming that really makes you feel like you're there with the characters and partly because of Peter Finch. This is the first time we're seeing Finch as part of the Oscar Challenge, it won't be the last, and he makes Fucani his own being very forthright but at the same time you can see he cares about Sister Luke whether that be in a romantic way or just friendly concern is a matter we have to decide for ourselves. What makes The Nun's Story so great though is Hepburn herself who at times is the only reason to keep watching throughout you can really believe her as this young girl forced to leave behind everything she knows to give herself wholly to God. I feel she is better here than in her Oscar-winning turn in Roman Holiday partly because this film is heavier meaning the role has more gravitas and partly because it is a more mature performance. Overall this was a film of two halves one a semi-documentary on how nuns are welcomed into a convent and the other a medical film set in Africa coupled with a World War II movie. Thankfully Audrey Hepburn is the star that makes the most of her role and therefore this film is a lot better for having her be a part of it.

I'm not sure the same can be said for My Fair Lady, at least not all of it, which was the film that won Best Picture at the 1965 Oscar Ceremony. Most of us know the story of Professor Henry Higgins taking flower girl Eliza Dolittle off the street and making a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he pass her off as a lady at the next embassy ball. The film deals with their relationship as Eliza develops into a lady with Higgins winning his bet and in turn her being pursued by Freddy Eynsford-Hill a boy of breeding who is charmed by her frank nature. However Eliza has fallen for Higgins and runs away from him after he fails to thank her for winning his bet but at the end of the day she returns to him so we the viewer have to decide what happens next. For me this was Rex Harrison's film rather than Hepburn's his blustering, domineering Higgins is a joy to watch mainly because Harrison makes this brute of a man somewhat sympathetic. For me Hepburn struggles with the earlier segments in which she has to play at being a rough cockney flower-seller and personally I never bought her verbal attacks against Higgins finding them forced at times. Hepburn is better in the latter half of the film after she has almost been transformed into a lady her scenes at the races and the embassy ball being my favourite. Stanley Holloway is also great as Eliza's money-grabbing father as is Gladys Cooper as Higgins' disapproving mother. What's so great about My Fair Lady though is how it looks and how it sounds with the production design splendid, the costumes fantastic and the songs being memorable. This musical boasts some of the most famous songs from the theatre including 'I Could've Danced All Night', 'I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face', 'Get Me to the Church on Time' and my personal favourite 'On the Street Where You Live.' Like with Oliver! and The Sound of Music I'm still not convinced that an old-school musical like this should've won a Best Picture prize but again I will reserve judgment until I've seen all five.

OK hope you like the new place more to come soon.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 143: I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

Recently on this blog I seem to have been doing a lot of moaning about the adaptation of plays into films as they almost always are restricted by the amount of interior scenes they have to have. However this didn't seem to bother me with Separate Tables which was based on a Terrence Rattigan and was set entirely in the Beauregard Hotel in Bournemouth. Like Grand Hotel, which won the Best Picture Oscar in the 1930s, it features various interweaving plots in the same establishment and features an ensemble class which includes David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster. However Separate Tables is extremely British as most of the inhabitants are long-term residents of the Guest House and are mostly there to escape life. Niven, who won Best Actor for his performance there, plays a character known as the Major and strikes up a friendship with Kerr's Sibyl something her overbearing mother doesn't agree with. When the mother finds out that Niven isn't a Major and that he has indecently exposed himself at a cinema she rallies the residents to get him out of the Beauregard. Running alongside this is Lancaster's drunk former soldier having a secret relationship with Hotel Manager Miss Cooper, played by Best Supporting Actress winner Wendy Hiller, which  is complicated when Hayworth's model turns up who just happens to be Lancaster's ex-wife. The two stories then unravel with Miss Cooper deciding that Lancaster is better off with Hayworth and Sybil standing up to her mother by getting all of the other long term residents to stick up for the Major.

Although earlier I made a comparison to Grand Hotel, Separate Tables has a lot of similarities to our own Fawlty Towers. It is a seaside hotel with several long-term residents one of whom is a Major, or at least says he is, and most of the others are mature women apart from Kerr, Lancaster and a Professor type character. The whole ensemble nature of the film means that you never get bored of one story for too long and the fact that the entire piece is set within the Beauregard didn't bother me either. I thought all of the actors did really well I especially thought Kerr was brilliant as the somewhat mental agitated Sybil who's relationship with her bullying mother changes at the end of the film, Kerr was in fact nominated for Best Actress here but was the only cast member not to win. Although I did love David Niven here I feel that he wasn't in the film long enough to get the Best Actor prize and maybe he should've been entered into the Supporting one instead. Hayworth just exudes glamour and she has some great on screen chemistry with Lancaster here but the best performance comes from Wendy Hiller as Miss Cooper stoic yet passionate when she wants to be she is the archetypal owner who keeps things ticking over for her long-serving residents. Witty, warm with well-drawn characters I feel this is a film that deserves a lot more recognition because if wasn't doing this challenge I don't think I'd ever have watched it.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 118: Nothing to Do With the Four Tops

Over the past couple of weeks in the Oscar Challenge we've had a bit of a religious theme whether it be Bing Crosby's priest visiting a school run by nuns or David Niven's Bishop clashing with Cary Grant's Angel it's all been getting a bit too holy. So I was disheartened to learn that The Song of Bernadette was nothing to do with the 1967 Four Tops hit Bernadette, a bit impossible seeing that the film was nominated for Best Picture at the 1944 ceremony. The star Jennifer Jones also was one of the first to discover that if you play a character with an illness, firstly asthma and later cancer, your chance to win an Oscar is greatly increased. Jones' Bernadette is a young innocent who while gathering logs in a cave in Lourdes ends up seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary. Obviously most people don't believe her, her parents are embarrassed and want her to stop and the officials in Lourdes think that her supposed visions are doing adverse things for the town. The Town Officials are all seen as devious men as they all have ominous facial hair and are played by classical actors like Lee J Cobb and most notably a campy Vincent Price seemingly in a different film from everyone else. Eventually people start to believe her when a spring that Bernadette digs produces water that heals the residents and when the emperor uses it Bernadette is appeased. Her former headmaster suggests that she joins a convent where she comes face to face with her old teacher Sister Vazous who is jealous of Bernadette and wonders why the visions are coming to a girl who doesn't deserve rather than someone like her who has prayed and devote all her life. She feels shame when Bernadette is diagnosed and later dies from cancer of course after her death she was sainted and now everyone talks about the healing qualities of Lourdes.

If The Song of Bernadette were released today it would be seen as a traditional Oscar film. Featuring themes of faith vs. religion, a lead character who is a bit dopey and then suffers from cancer and various Americans pretending to be French and of course a true story this has everything that the Academy loves. But in the less cynical 1940s I think they might just have been taken with the sweet nature of the film and Jones' naive performance as Bernadette which won her the Oscar. To be fair Jones is good as the lead having to go from playing a 14 year old school girl to Bernadette at her death she is able to demonstrate her range. Elsewhere I think Gladys Cooper possibly deserved a Supporting Actress Oscar as Sister Vazous the angry nun who shows humanistic qualities also nominated for Oscars were Charles Bickford as her headmaster priest and Anne Revere as her mother although I just loved Price's town prosecutor maybe because he was so over-the-top. For me it was a little bit too long after a while I got the point that people didn't believe Bernadette and thought the second half of her life was rushed in comparison. The general tone of the thing was very much pro-religion presenting all the non-believers as comical villains and giving them no leeway whatsoever basically saying if you don't believe in God, then you're wrong. So if you can overcome this strong message then you might be able to enjoy some of the performances in the film but personally I'd just stick on the best of The Four Tops album on instead.