Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 73: Love is in the Air

Back to the 1940 ceremony again where there were still ten films in the running for Best Picture which meant there was still a lot of filler. Although 1940's list of films did have a lot of worthy contenders the next film on my list, Love Affair, just seems to be making up the numbers. The film is directed by Leo McCarey who previously won a Best Director Oscar for The Awful Truth and here is reunited with its female star Irene Dunne. Dunne stars as singer Terry McCay who meets French painter Michelle Marnet while on a liner across the Atlantic Ocean. Both are engaged to be married but after some screwball-comedy like banter they fall for each other and their relationship is blessed by Marnet's grandmother when they visit her while the liner is docked. They agree to meet at The Empire State Building but on the way there Terry is hit by a car and may be crippled. Terry is then tended to by Ken, the man she was engaged to, who knows she is still in love with Manet even though Ken is also love with her. Terry then starts to work at an orphanage teaching the little ones how to sing and helping them out at a Christmas concert. It is around that time that she and Ken got to the theatre and by chance Manet is also there. Manet thinks that Ken and Terry are together so blanks her but later on Christmas Day he goes to see her and in the film's final scene they reunite.

Love Affair is a very odd film, in the first twenty minutes or so it seems like McCarey, who also directed Ruggles of Red Gap, was going for another knockabout romantic comedy but then when Terry is hit by a car the mood dramatically changes. I always associated the meeting at the top of The Empire State Building with An Affair to Remember and later with Sleepless in Seattle, maybe this film isn't mentioned in conjunction with that landmark because the lovers never get there. I thought Dunne and Charles Boyer both did a good job and the McCarey's Oscar nominated original story flowed along fairly nicely but that was about it There was also too much singing for a romantic melodrama this was especially true when Terry starts teaching the annoying orphanage kids to sing. Overall then a fairly average romantic piece which really hasn't stood the test of time.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 63: Ending on a Winner

So instead I end the first part of this journey with the final winning film- Cimarron a sprawling epic set during the 1880s and looking at the first settlers in Oklahoma as it became a boomtown and the life of a family experiencing it over forty years. The film starts with erstwhile newspaper editor and lawyer Yancey Cravat returning home from the settlements after five years and taking his wife and son along with him to find a place to live in Oklahoma. Over time we see Yancey try and make the place more inhabitable by getting rid of all the cowboys and bandits and setting up a new newspaper - The Oklahoma Wigwam as well as lessening the amount of taverns and undesirables in Oklahoma. Meanwhile Yancey's wife Sabra also becomes a valuable member of the community setting up a women's group and also looking after various facets of the newspaper and becomes a mother for the second time. As the film tracks later into the future Yancey starts to get restless and leaves home for large periods of time leaving Sabra to become the main face of the family. When Yancey comes back, Sabra starts to feel that he is tarnishing their reputation by writing reports about Native Americans having the same rights as them and defending a woman accused of being a prostitute. As the film gets into the early 1920s, Yancey has left again and Sabra is accepted into the U.S. senate and also acknowledges for the first time that her son has married a young American Indian girl. The final scene of the film sees her witnessing an old man being hit by a cart which turns out to be Yancey who then dies in her arms. Not a joyous ending but an interesting film nonetheless that deals with issues of restlessness, perception, race, class and gender.

What is most notable about the film however, is the large number of extras involved in the early scenes as people race to find settlements in Oklahoma. Indeed up to 5,000 extras were used in the film and up to 28 cameramen were employed at any one time. Indeed during the depression a film like this seemed to make a mockery of the state the country was in as RKO were able to lay on a budget of 1.5 million dollars. Another thing that is interesting in the film is the issue of race especially in the later scenes as the couple's son Cimarron, which incidentally means wild, marries the young Indian girl. While Yancey doesn't see a problem with equality others frown at the Indian settlers with Sabra describing them as 'dirty, filthy, savages' this issue is one of many in which views are challenged. The performances are pretty good Richard Dix plays the lead well a man who doesn't know whether to choose his family over new adventures and Irene Dunne is brilliant as his long-suffering wife, both were nominated for acting Oscars but neither were successful. The film did win an award for its art direction which was more than justified and for its script which I did find long and meandering at times. I have only been able to watch two of Cimarron's competitors - The Front Page and Skippy both of which weren't half as good as this epic but unless I get to see the other two films I'll never know whether Cimarron deserved to win.

Right so 75 films watched and that's all I can do for the ceremonies between 1929 and 1939 for now. Next up are the ceremonies between 1940 and 1949 but before that a little look back at the decade I've just wrapped up.

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.