Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 109: Nun of Your Business

If you ever find yourself in a tie-break at a quiz and the question is what is the first ever film sequel to be nominated for an Oscar, I have the answer - The Bells of St. Mary's. Never heard of it? Well it is the sequel to Going My Way, the winning film at the 1945 Oscar ceremony. A year later we meet Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley continuing improving the church system by moving to a flagging catholic school run by a bunch of nuns which is in dire need of repair. O'Malley clashes with the unrealistic views of the nuns who hope to convince local business owner Mr Borgadus to give them the new complex he is building to house the school. O'Malley's unconventional techniques also incur the wrath of the lead nun Sister Mary Benedict convincingly portrayed by Ingrid Bergman. We also follow the story of Patsy Gallagher whose daughter appeals to the Father to allow her to start the school as she doesn't know what to do with her. Obviously Patsy reforms her way and starts to improve her grades but Mary and O'Malley clash again when she fails her final exam and can't graduate. The ending involving Mary Benedict's removal from the nunnery is odd as it is really neither happy or sad but maybe the message just is that life goes on. Although they did succeed in moving St. Mary's after appealing to the good nature of Borgadus who was suffering from various illnesses and the next year would become an iconic figure as Clarence the Angel in It's a Wonderful Life.

Back to the Bells of St. Mary's a sequel to a film that I felt did not deserve to win the Best Picture Oscar over the tremendous Double Indemnity. But St. Mary's is only a sequel in the fact that it continues the adventures of the same characters, it doesn't really reference O'Malley's work in Going My Way and instead presents this as an entirely new story. Although it is very similar, Bing Crosby arrives at a Catholic institution the locals are suspicious but then won round and he ends up getting what he wants. After winning a Best Actor Oscar the year before, Crosby's performance really hasn't changed but that really doesn't matter. As an actor Crosby can instantly put me at ease as his style is very relaxed and that works well for the character. Ingrid Bergman was also nominated after a win for Gaslight the year previous, her sister Mary Benedict could be a clichéd stuck-up character but she can go toe-to-toe with Bing and they spark off each other with their very asexual chemistry. The film does suffer from being very overlong and also there are entire sequences that I felt could've been cut out but it is decent entertainment and if you like a good nun-based film you could do a lot worse.

Big Oscar Challenge Day 93-94: Catch-Up Part 4

The 1940s Oscar contenders didn't tend to be light-hearted and as well as Chaplin's masterpiece there are only two other pieces that are fairly easy-going. The first is the first winner of the Best Picture Oscar when the field thinned back to five nominees at the 1945 ceremony. Going My Way was a sort of comic musical and featured Oscar winning turns from both Bing Crosby as a young priest and Barry Fitzgerald as the older priest who Crosby has come to take over from. The film is an easy-going film about Crosby's Father O'Malley's efforts to improve the parish by getting all the boys together into a choir as well as mentoring a young woman who also surprisingly has a lovely voice. As the film stars Crosby there is plenty of singing and also plenty of life lessons learnt. Crosby is a fine, jovial lead but it is Fitzgerald as the older priest who seems to have more to do as he realises that he isn't as relevant as he once was. Going My Way was a triumph winning a total of seven Oscars including one for its director Leo McCarey.

The other comedy film is The Philadelphia Story a nominee from the 1941 awards it stars Katherine Hepburn alongside Cary Grant as her ex-husband and James Stewart as the reporter come to cover the story of her relationship. I know The Philadelphia Story much better in its musical version of High Society and had never seen the original version which I quite enjoyed thanks in part to Cary Grant however this was the film that James Stewart won his Oscar for despite him putting in much better turns in Mr Smith Goes to Washington and It's A Wonderful Life. But The Philadelphia Story was an enjoyable enough fare but it never really bothered Rebecca as a serious contender for Best Picture.

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 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.