Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 103: Bergman Goes Bonkers

So we're back with a few updates from my recent delving into the archive for the Big Oscar Challenge. Now when you ask most people which film did Ingrid Bergman win her Best Actress Oscar for they would answer Casablanca. However she was not successful in her quest to be crowned Best Actress that year, Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette triumphed, but one year later she got the prize for the film Gaslight. That film was also nominated for Best Picture and sees Bergman's Paula being sent to Italy following the death of her opera-singing aunt. She returns to the place of the murder years later accompanied by her new husband Gregory Anton. Soon Paula begins to think she is going mad, she hears sounds above her and when she goes out she ends up getting hysterical and mistakenly mislaying items to find them later on. Of course as the audience we know that it is Anton sending her barmy so he can go off and do whatever it is he is doing. Anton also employs a new maid Nancy, an incredibly young and sort of sexy Angela Lansbury, who is very stand offish towards her new mistress and her stubborn nature sends Paula even more nutty. Unbeknownst to Paula help is on its way in the form of Joseph Cotten's Cameron, a policeman who recognises Paula and links her to the crime at the house years before. Cameron enlists the help of Paula's nosy neighbour to try and gain access to the house and also uses junior policeman to try and get information out of Nancy during nightly hanky panky. Things come to a head when Anton finds out what Cameron has been trying to do and Paula discovers the truth about her new love. But, I won't spoil it for you if you haven't guessed.

Gaslight builds very strongly with the first half an hour getting the audience member hooked into the mystery surrounding Paula's aunt's death. Paula's meeting with her soon-to-be neighbour Miss Thwaites, played by the glorious Dame May Robson, is both comic and sinister in tone and sets up the central mystery of the film. However once Paula starts to go mad things feel a bit repetitive with Anton, played by the over-the-top Charles Boyer, blatantly making her feel more ill at ease than she already is. The best parts of the film's second half mainly come from Lansbury, nominated here for Best Supporting Actress, her turn as the young, flirty and obstinate Nancy are very fun to watch. Joseph Cotten also plays his part well even if he once again is playing the gallant hero trying to help the vulnerable Paula out of her life. For her part Bergman is very good but not as strong as she was playing in Ilsa in Casablanca and it's a shame that she won the Oscar here beating Claudette Colbert in Since You Went Away which was arguably a much better performance but Bergman still deserved the Oscar she didn't win the year before. Overall this is an interesting mystery thriller which gets a bit repetitive but is saved by some interesting performances.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 102: The Soldiers Coming Back and The Women that Wait for Them

So we're back in the saddle, and as it's Oscar Weekend I'm guessing I'm going to have carry over the Oscar challenge for another year as at the moment we're still straddling around in the 1940s.

First up is The Long Voyage Home, a nominee from 1941, which looks at a group of men journeying back from service in the West Indies firstly to Baltimore and then to England. This is very much a film about men trapped in an enclosed space as one-by-one they become increasingly suspicious that the Englishman Smitty is actually a German spy. When they finally confront him and torture him it turns out that he is no more than a recovering alcoholic who has run away from his family and is concealing his true identity because he is ashamed. The scene in which he breaks down is made even more poignant when Smitty is killed shortly after by a German plane making all the other men decide not to sign up for another tour of service on the ship and instead decide to help the mild-mannered Ole return home to Sweden. However, in the final part of the film, Ole is drugged and kidnapped and forced onto another ship so his shipmates help him escape but in the confusion the ship sets sail with one of their number, their sort of leader the Irish Driscoll, on board and they soon hear that the ship was blown up by a German torpedo with all the men still on board. The film has a sort of a happy ending as Ole does return to Sweden but the rest of the men decide to travel on and return to the ship. I did enjoy this film, for the most part, especially the scenes in which the men are trying to occupy themselves on the voyage home. I loved Ian Hunter as the tragic Smitty and Thomas Mitchell as Driscoll who at times seemed like the only reasonable person on the ship. But the actor in the cast who surprised me most was John Wayne, so much so that at the start of the film I didn't even realise it was him. Wayne's Ole is completely different from most of the other parts he plays, he is understated, softly-spoken and feels very much like a real character. The film sort of falls down in the final third with the stupid stuff involving the drugging and Driscoll's death but other than that a solid film and a worthy nominee.

So while the men are journeying home what are the women up to? Well the answers to that are found in a nominee from the 1945 ceremony - Since You Went Away. The film has a mightily impressive ensemble cast headed up by Claudette Colbert, in what many consider her final great role. Colbert almost didn't take the part as a wife and mother waiting to hear news of her husband in the war, as she didn't think she was old enough to play the mother of two teenage girls. The story concerns the Hilton family and specifically Anne and her two daughters - Jane and Brig played respectively by Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple trying to cope during 1943. The Hiltons are short on money so take in the long-in-the-tooth former serviceman Colonel Smogget, in order to keep up with the rent. Smogget's grandson Bill comes to visit him to tell him he's joined the army, however Smogget isn't really interested but Bill does end up falling in love with Jane and the two begin a relationship which is cut short by Bill's tragic death. The other story concerns Anne herself who is faithful to her husband despite being wooed by long time friend Tony, she also has to consider he place in the war effort and what she is actually doing to help after being apalled by comments made by her snooty friend Emily. Since You Went Away was one of the famous 'women's pictures' of the 1940s and was absolutely tremendous making what could've been just a romantic drama and turning into a film about family, friendship, belonging and finding your place. Colbert was denied the Best Actress Oscar as it went to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight but she is fantastic here as are everyone in the cast which, as well as the three main actress, includes Joseph Cotten, Monty Woolley, Agnes Moorhead, Lionel Barrymore and Hattie McDaniel. Although many will be unfamiliar with the film itself, the scene in which Jane chases after Bill's train has been spoofed in many films most famously in Airplane. Overall another film that deserved all the praise it got but another film that was left out in the cold so the completely average Going My Way could scoop all of that year's prizes.

Okay so we're back on the road again, more to follow.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 65: Today's Big Story - It Didn't Win Best Picture

If you look at lists made of the Best Films of All Time by noted cinema critics, there's one film that always seemed to top the list, Citizen Kane. It is odd then that this film didn't receive a Best Picture award, which went to How Green was My Valley, and only won one award of the nine awards that it was nominated for. That was for Best Original Screenplay which is more than justified as, for a movie made in the early 1940s, it has one of the best scripts of the era. In terms of the narrative structure I believe that it is the only film that I have watched thus far that has a non-linear narrative. For those who haven't seen the film, no excuse really, but the plot involves the death of newspaper magnate whose last word was simply 'Rosebud'. This triggers newsreel reporter Jerry Thompson to try and discover the significance of this final word. Thompson interviews various people in Kane's wife including his business manager, his butler, his best friend and his second wife as well as reading the memoirs of Kane's former guardian. While Thompson's interviews take place in the present once the interviews start we get flashbacks from Kane's past starting with his childhood where he is taken from his parents to live with banker Walter Thatcher, we see him as a ruthless newspaper owner and also running for governor before a romance with a singer ruins his political career as well as ending his first marriage. His second wife Susan is an aspiring singer but Kane pushes her into singing opera which she is really no good and eventually leaves Kane when she realises that he wants her to be something that she can't be. Obviously the final shot of the film reveals the significance of the word Rosebud and if you're any kind of fan of film then you will already know who or what Rosebud is. But again for those of you who are yet to watch it I won't spoil the surprise.

What I will bang on about however is how revolutionary the film is, while it may not be the best film of all time, it is certainly the best film of its time. The cinematography is incredibly well executed from the wide angle shots of Kane's Xanadu mansion to the close-ups on character's expressions every scene is given significance. The art direction is also spot-on, every set is given a lot of detail and it really captures the viewer's imagination, again both cinematography and art direction went to How Green was My Valley. All of this is a testament to Orson Welles, whose cinematic vision is realised here he is a presence both as a director and an actor, again he was nominated for both and lost out to John Ford and Gary Cooper respectively. Although I think the Oscars usually get it right, to give Citizen Kane only one Oscar when it is visually spectacular and narratively brilliant, is just wrong. Having never seen How Green was my Valley I really don't know but it must have to be spectacular to match the power of Kane.