Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 425-426: Days of Future Past World Tour

As we've seen throughout the course of this journey very few foreign films are actually nominated for the main Best Picture prize. In fact to this day only nine films not made in the English language have been in contention for Best Picture and none of these have been successful. That's partly why foreign films have their own category at the Oscars which often features better films than those in the Best Picture race. In this post I return to the late 1960s and early 1970s to look at two films from the small group of nine to have found themselves among the five Best Picture nominees.

The first of the two films in this post feels extremely relevant and if I didn't know it already I would've been surprised that it was forty-five years old. Costa-Gavras' Z is an incredibly intense film about the assassination of a communist speaker by the hands of the far right government. Cinematographer Raul Coultard employs an incredibly realistic tone to his camera work meaning that at times you feel like you're watching a documentary. The bulk of the film focuses on Jean-Louis Trintigant's investigating magistrate who attempts to get to the bottom of conflicting statements given by both the assailants and the witnesses. Along the way he discovers false statements, witness intimidation and persecution of anyone who tries to argue with the right-wing establishment. Having previously watched Costa-Gavras' only other Best Picture nominated film Missing I know that his style is very much that of a fly-on-the-wall film-maker. Additionally both films were about political injustice and as a result I found myself getting more and more invested in Z as it went on. Particularly powerful was the final scene in which it was revealed that the majority of the generals who were charged with conspiracy ultimately went free whilst most of the witnesses were killed. Z won that year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar with Françoise Bonnot also being rewarded for his excellent editing of the movie. Another notable element of Z was the fantastic score by Mikis Theodorakis which was at times incredibly jarring but added to the overall feel of the film. Z is an example of a movie that I feel deserved to win Best Picture and I think if it had been released in the English language then it would have done just that. Ultimately I think Z is an outstanding piece of cinema and was more than deserving of winning the Best Picture prize as well as the title of Best Foreign Language film.

The other film in this post, Jan Troell's The Emigrants, also featured in both categories but oddly in different years. This occurred due to the fact that, at the 1972 ceremony, it had only been screened in its native Sweden rather for the larger Academy audience. After attaining a proper screening the following year it was nominated for Best Picture as well as a further three Oscars. The film looks at a group of people, all from the same small province in Sweden, who decide to emigrate to America. This group includes proud farmer Karl-Oscar, his idealistic brother Robert, his wife Kristina, their children and an oddball preacher. My main issue with The Emigrants was the fact that the group didn't get on the boat to America until 90 minutes into this three hour epic. I feel that Troell could've easily have skimmed 45 minutes of the running time had everything happened a little quicker. That being said the second half of the film more than made up for the first with Troell drawing the audience in to the claustrophobic settings of the boat journey from Sweden to the USA. It was in this second half that I became engrossed in the characters' fates partly due to the fact that the performances were fantastic. Liv Ullman, who was nominated for Best Actress, was brilliant as the young mother who was worried that she'd never set foot in America meanwhile Max Van Sydow gave a powerful turn as her strong-willed husband.  The film built up to a great ending which also set up for a sequel, The New Land, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature the same year that The Emigrants featured in the Best Picture category. It's fair to say that The Emigrants is definitely a film of two halves and I definitely struggled to make it through the first part of the feature. Despite the pay-off being rewarding I think the subject of foreign travellers coming to the USA has been dealt with better elsewhere most notably by 1960s nominee America, America. Ultimately The Emigrants was a realistic film with some fine performances but one that suffered from some bad pacing and an inflated running time.

And with that we're back to the present day as I sprint to the finish line next with the final fifty or so Best Picture nominees.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 244: History Repeating Itself

A lot of the Oscar-nominated films that I've already watched have been based around real-life events, primarily historical stories. For example the plot of how Henry VIII met and married Anne Boleyn has already been told in two films - the Private Life of Henry VIII and A Man for All Seasons. But those films tell the story form the perspectives of King Henry and Thomas More and not from that of the woman who would be Queen. Thankfully, we now have Anne of the Thousand Days which shows us everything from Anne's first meeting with Henry to her eventual execution.

The film commences with Henry signing the document condemning Anne to death, before flashing back to the first time they met. Throughout the film Anne is presented as quite a strong-willed woman who outright refuses to become the King's latest lover, partly due to his prior relationship with his sister Mary. Part of Henry's attraction to Anne is the fact that he treats her as if he weren't the king, but this charm soon wares off as she begins to irritate him. However, she still refuses to let him have his wicked way with her until he makes her his Queen. She does this by undermining the power that Cardinal Wolsey possesses and showing Henry that he doesn't need the church. Anne's words also bring power to Thomas Cromwell who helps him set up a new church that lets Henry divorce his wife Catherine and marry Anne. But Anne's life as the Queen isn't all rosy as she isn't accepted by the people of England and when she gives birth to a daughter, Henry starts to tire of her. But Anne lets the power go to her head and she tries to prevent Henry from starting an affair with the younger and prettier Jane Seymour. As the arguments start to fly between the two, Henry puts pressure on Cromwell to find a way out of his marriage to Anne. Cromwell's scheming ultimately results in Anne's death and the end of her thousand days with Henry.

There's no denying that Anne of The Thousand Days is incredibly melodramatic, a fact which is bolstered by a scenery chewing performance by Richard Burton. Indeed, Burton's King Henry VIII is so cartoonish that occasionally you feel you like you're watching a pantomime. As somebody who has quite a bit of knowledge of this time in history, Anne of the Thousand Days feels like a bit of a potted guide to the whole reign of Anne Boleyn. To me it has none of the class that A Man For All Seasons possessed and instead is over-the-top in every way. That's not to say it doesn't have its positives primarily all of the ascetic detail from the art direction through to the Oscar-winning costumes. Geneviève Bujold's performance as Anne was equally impressive as we saw her transform the young Queen from a strong-willed innocent into a manipulative game-player. To me Bujold was the star of the show and she made this into Anne's story, even when she wasn't on screen. There were a couple of supporting players who briefly shone namely Irene Papas as the dignified Queen Catherine and William Squire's brief appearances as a wise Sir Thomas More. But, alongside Burton, all of the other cast members were overplaying their roles too much for me to enjoy them. Though Anne of a Thousand Days scooped a massive ten nominations at the Oscars, it only won the costumes prize and it seems as if the makers of the film curried favour with the Academy by serving a champagne dinner after every screening. Thankfully, those who in charge of the Oscars today are a lot less bribeable and instead watch every film before coming to an informed decision on the year's best films. That's what happens isn't it?

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 202: Much More War

In my last post I complained about the amount of war films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in the 1960s. I reckon that my feelings about war films come from the fact that I was forced to watch so much of them as a kid. Though all of these films have their plus points, I find myself switching off every time a massive action scene occurs. The Guns of Navarone definitely fits into the category of war film that I was forced into watching on weekend afternoons in my youth. The story concerns a group of men who are sent to destroy a number of massive radar-guns that have been aimed at the Greek island of Navarone by the German army. These guns are aimed at the island in order to threaten Turkey into joining the Axis Powers during World War 2. The group of men sent on the mission include mountaineer Keith Mallory, explosives expert John Miller, Greek army captain Anthony Stavrou and their leader Major Roy Franklin. The group disguise themselves as Greek fishermen but encounter peril from the get-go when their boat is hit by a storm and the majority of their possessions are destroyed. Meanwhile Franklin is injured during a climb and Mallory ends up taking control of the unit as they meet up with some of the island's local resistance fighters. Eventually the team are captured by the Germans but, thanks to a diversion from Stavrou, they are able to overpower their captors and disguise themselves as German officers. However, Miller later discovers his explosives have been tampered with and realises that there is a mole within their midst. So it remains to be seen if the guns of Navarone will be destroyed or if our heroes will fail their mission. Which one do you think is more likely?

I'm going to try and be a little positive in this review and say there were some things I liked about The Guns of Navarone. The lead performances from Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn all had something to offer even it all three have done a lot better. As Mallory, Peck was a natural leader but was full of regret about what he'd done in the war up to this point. Mallory's blood feud with Stavrou was also an interesting theme running throughout the film as I found it utterly intriguing that the latter had promised to kill the former after the war was over. I did enjoy Quinn's turn, even if it was a slightly more aggressive version of his Zorba the Greek character that he would play several years later. Meanwhile Niven acted almost as the light relief of the film but then turned towards the end as he found out who the saboteur was in their group. My main issue with the film is that I just wasn't invested enough in any of the characters and therefore I didn't really care when they started dying in the final scenes. I do have to admit though that the action scenes were fairly spectacular for the time and that the film did deserve to win its Special Effects Oscar. I feel like I'm repeating myself when I'm saying the film is far too long but I don't feel that the story needed two and a half hours devoted to it. Overall The Guns of Navarone was a well-acted war film with some great set pieces but I never really found myself immersed in the action in the way I feel I should've been.

Next time I take a step away from the action with something a little more sedate.