Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 215-216: A Couple of Major Disasters

Back when I was reviewing films from the 1930s it appeared as if the major studios were competing against each other in making disaster movies. Films such as San Francisco and In Old Chicago explored events like earthquakes and floods, putting major stars at the front of these disasters. However, the definite golden age of the disaster movie was the 1970s in which all-star casts were forced to deal with disasters ranging from fires to floods as well as plenty of mishaps up in the air. These disaster films did particularly well at the Oscars with two of them being nominated for Best Picture.

 The first of these was Airport, which arguably started the whole disaster movie craze. Though not focusing on a particular disaster, Airport was definitely influential due to its all-star cast being put in peril as well as its focus on special effects. The plot of the film is all based around a Chicago airport which is managed by Burt Lancaster's Mel Bakersfield, a man who spends more time at work than he does at home. Mel is besieged by issues such as snow grounding several of his planes, complaints from local residents that planes are flying too low over their houses and the fact that his staff have recently apprehended a stowaway. Mel doesn't take the stowaway case too easily when he discovers that the culprit in his a little old lady in the form of Helen Hayes' Ada Quonsett. Though Mel's loyal assistant/love interest Tanya doesn't share his views and wants Ada watched at all times, though this doesn't happen and the stowaway soon escapes and boards a plane to Rome. The plane to Rome is also where D.O. Guerrero plans to end his life after a string of financial failures and onset depression. Guerrero feels the best way to help his wife his to blow up a plane, with his death meaning that his wife will be able to cash in on his life insurance. Mel and Tanya soon learn of Guerrero's plan and inform Dean Martin's Captain who devices a plan to try and stop Guerrero. From there its a race against time to try to prevent an explosion and get all of the passengers to safety. 

Having some obvious knowledge of the disaster genre I would definitely say that Airport wouldn't classify in the same league as some of them. Despite this, I feel that writer/director George Seaton set up enough peril in the form of Guerrero's bomb to have me on the edge of my seat. I also felt like Seaton had introduced just enough characters for me to know who everybody was and who was in secretly in a relationship with who. Burt Lancaster was the perfect person to play Mel as he was an assured lead who attempted to keep everything at the airport running smoothly while dealing with one problem after another. He was perfectly supported by the much more suave Dean Martin as the captain who was having an affair with one of his stewardesses played by the equally glamorous Jacqueline Bisset. However, the two Oscar-nominated performances came from the supporting actresses who played very different roles. The brilliant Helen Hayes was perfect as comic criminal Mrs Quonsett who was quite matter-of-fact about her stowaway exploits. The fact that Ada later gets to play heroine adds another layer to a character who could've easily been a one-note supporting player without Hayes' performance. Meanwhile Maureen Stapleton adds an air of humanity to the film as Guerrero's wife who attempts to stop his plan before it's too late. Despite its over-the-top nature I still really enjoyed Airport as a film in its own right though I wouldn't particularly class it as a disaster film in the traditional sense of the genre.

The disaster genre itself really began with The Poseidon Adventure, which was nominated for several Oscars but not Best Picture. Two years later we had possibly the ultimate disaster film The Towering Inferno, which had so many stars that they couldn't decide who should receive top billing. Indeed, one of the most infamous stories about the film was that Paul Newman and Steve McQueen both considered themselves to be the leading man so both the poster and the opening credits had their names diagonally placed so as to insinuate that both were taking the lead. In addition, both actors were appeased by having the exact same number of lines of dialogue so the audience would feel satisfied that both were on an equal footing. Personally I would consider Newman the star just because his character, architect Doug Roberts has more of a pivotal role as he discovers that his newly designed building has plenty of electrical faults. It soon transpires that the tower's builder, James Duncan, cut many corners in order to cut costs. These cost-cutting measures included concreting over fire exits and having his son-in-law, electrical engineer Roger Simmons cut as many corners as possible. As a fire breaks out on one of the floors, Roberts attempts to warn Duncan about the incident but he refuses to end his luxury party just because of a small blaze. Predictably the fire is soon out of control and the party-goers are trapped with more and more of their possible exits being trapped. Thankfully McQueen's fire chief O'Hallorhan has several ideas how to rescue the party, with differing results, and at the end of the day some of the more expendable characters have perished. 

While Aiport's body count was extremely minimal, there were plenty of deaths in The Towering Inferno to satisfy those who feel a disaster film should have a life-threatening incident at the centre of it. Unlike Airport though, I didn't feel that I got to know all of the characters before the fire began to take shape. Indeed, aside from Roberts, O'Hallorhan and Duncan the rest of the characters felt a little clichéd. For example, Fred Astaire's conman, who obviously shares a lot of similarities with Helen Hayes' Airport character, isn't given a lot of backstory. While the characters played by Robert Wagner, Jennifer Jones and Robert Vaughn are similarly one-note creations. As Roberts' long-suffering love interest, Faye Dunaway does have a little bit to do but the latter scenes involve her simply worrying about things. Worst of all is Richard Chamberlain's Simmons, who is the smirking British villain of the piece, as I found him to be a very poorly-written antagonist. Despite the wealth of two-dimensional characters, The Towering Inferno was still an enjoyable thanks to the impressively choreographed fire sequences. The peril was steadily built up as the exterior shots of the building saw more and more flames break out, while the more dangerous methods of escape had me on the edge of my seat. The film won well-deserved awards for cinematography and editing while its central theme 'We May Never Love Like This Again' was also rewarded with Best Original Song. While The Towering Inferno may seem cheesy by today's action movie standards, I still felt it provided enough peril to pass the time and, looking at it now, it can be held up as an incredibly influential piece of film-making. 

Next time I'll present a double bill that you won't be able to refuse.  

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 55: The Doctor Will See You Now

Occasionally I've come across a film that I think is incredibly average and unfortunately1932 nominee Arrowsmith is one of them. In fact only several days after having watched it I'm struggling to remember exactly what happened. The basic plot was about a man, Martin Arrowsmith, who was on his way to being a medical researcher but for some reason decides to impulsively marry a nurse called named Leora. Arrowsmith is forced to open a country practise but yearns to do better work and is eventually called upon to conduct important research following some impressive work on cows. After years of neglecting the wife that he originally changed his career to be with, he comes up with some kind of cure for bubonic plague. Then Arrowsmith is convinced by some Swedish bloke that he should go over to some Caribbean island where everybody is dying of the disease and see if his cure works. He is told only to inject half with the cure and let the rest suffer and die. Meanwhile his loving wife has decided to come over to the island where everyone is dying presumably so she can be closer to him to nag him for ignoring her all the time. Blatantly all the people that are given the cure are cured, and there is a good bit of class warfare as all the white people who live on the island obviously get to live. But Arrowsmith has to pay for his experiment as both the Swedish scientist and his wife die before they get back home.

As you can tell by resentment I really didn't enjoy this film. I found dull, meandering and downbeat most of the time. The ending really did nothing for me as I hadn't really invested any time in the characters to speak of. I didn't think Ronald Coleman did very well in the lead role and it certainly didn't suit his everyman hero image that he perfected in Lost Horizon, but then that was made years before. Similarly British actress Helen Hayes was a bit of a wet blanket here whereas she was a lot stronger in the film I'd seen her in previously, A Farewell to Arms. Again I feel Arrowsmith was simply making up the numbers the year that the far superior Grand Hotel won, but Arrowsmith did get another three nominations including bizarrely one for the incredibly dodgy script thankfully it didn't win any. Although Coleman would redeem himself in the film that I would watch the next day.

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.