Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 276-277: Field of Gold

In my last post I looked at On Golden Pond which featured the final Best Actress winning performance from Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn is famous for being the only woman in history to win the Best Actress prize a total of four times a record that has never been matched. Despite all her nominations, Meryl Streep has only won the prize twice as have Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda and Luise Rainer.

One name whose missing from that list is Sally Field, whose two wins both came during ceremonies in the 1980s. In fact Field's first win came for a film up for Best Picture at the 1980 ceremony in which she played the title character of Norma Rae. Based on the story of Crystal Lee Sutton, Norma Rae Webster is a cotton mill worker in a small Southern town. When we meet her she has two children by two different men and lives with her parents both of whom work alongside her. We learn early on that Norma Rae makes ill-advised decisions as we see her conducting an affair with a married man. However she soon finds love with Sonny, a man with a young daughter who Norma Rae soon raises as her own. At the same time as meeting Sonny, Norma Rae also has several encounters with Reuben Warshowsky, a union organiser who has come to the town hoping to unionise the mill employees. However a lot of the residents are set in their ways and view the union as bad news especially considering how the mill bosses generally treat those who wish to join. But Norma Rae is unmoved in her determination and soon agrees to help Reuben in anyway she can, a move that upsets certain people around her. As she begins to devote more of her time to helping Reuben, Sonny begins to feel neglected and their relationship suffers as a result. But finally, after the death of her father, Norma Rae takes the biggest stand imaginable and this results in some really tear-jerking scenes.

There are a lot of films like Norma Rae being made to this day and their sole intent is to be nominated for as many awards as possible. In fact films such as Erin Brockovich and North Country owe a enormous debt to the film as they share both a similar structure and a story about a single mother attempting to rise above the system and do the right. I feel that if I'd watched Norma Rae when it was first released I might have a bit less of a cynical attitude than I do it in 2014. However I have to admit that the film did move me in its final moments as the factory employees agree to be unionised. The film does do exactly what is says on the tin as this is a story about Norma Rae first and foremost. Screenwriters Harriet Frank, Jr. and Irving Ravetch make Norma Rae feel like a real person as she's a woman who has her faults but has a genuine heart of gold. In addition they paint the picture of the close-knit community perfectly a theme heightened thanks to Martin Ritt's assured direction. But, at the heart of Norma Rae, is the outstanding central performance from Sally Field who at the time was a relative newcomer. Field combines a strength and vulnerability to create a heroine that we just want to succeed at whatever she decides to do. Her performance is what makes the film so captivating and without her I feel Norma Rae could have lapsed into melodrama fairly easily. Ultimately, while not a classic, Norma Rae is a solid feelgood film that has a cracking central performance from an actress who would receive more accolades later in the decade.

Field's second Best Actress win was for her performance as a struggling widow in Places in the Heart. The film, set during the American depression, sees Field's Edna Spalding become a widow when her sheriff husband is accidentally shot and killed. Realising that her husband was still repaying money he borrowed to buy the family farm, Edna is faced with the prospect of moving of splitting up her family. Instead of leaving the house, Edna decides to grow cotton on the land with help from black drifter Moze. Edna gets another lodger when the banker who she owes money to suggests that his blind brother-in-law Mr Will moves in. Mr Will is initially hostile to Edna, and even scolds her children, but later he bonds with the Spalding brood. Edna's new ramshackle family eventually realise that they need to harvest the cotton as soon as possible and get the price for it so Edna can keep the farm. But soon Moze faces difficulty from the racist townsfolk and Will is forced to use all of his facilities to help his new found friend. If this were the only story in Places in the Heart then I may have enjoyed the film a lot more but unfortunately there was a subplot involving Edna's siter and her philandering husband. Edna's brother-in-law Wayne is seen to be having an affair with the local schoolteacher Viola and their story plays out alongside Edna's. However, I found this plot to be utterly pointless and it should have been written out of the film altogether.

In fact one of Places in the Heart's main issues is its script, so it makes it all the more surprising that the other Oscar it won was for Best Adapted Screenplay. Whilst I understand that the screenwriters wanted to remain faithful to the original story, I found the Wayne subplot really didn't fit in with what the rest of the film was trying to do. Like Norma Rae, Places in the Heart is another story of a single woman trying to cope in a male-dominated society. The theme of the outcast is quite prevalent throughout as we have a woman, a black man and a blind man all living together and trying to make the best of a bad situation. Although the story is disjointed, Places in the Heart more than makes up for it with some wonderful cinematography. The period detail is wonderfully realised and cinematographer Néstor Almendros shoots the Texas landscape beautifully. I personally feel that Field's performance isn't a patch on her turn in Norma Rae and she really didn't make me care about the character of Edna very much at all. The performance of the film actually came from John Malkovich as Mr Will as I found his transformation to be utterly believable. Danny Glover similarly excelled as the likeable Moze and his turn here was a million miles away from his performance in The Color Purple. Oddly, Places in the Heart's lasting legacy isn't anything in the film but rather Field's Oscar Speech in which she let out the iconic line,  "I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!" Unfortunately, I didn't like the film as much as the academy like Field's performance as I found it overly sentimental with a disjointed story  albeit one that has some fine supporting turns and some brilliant cinematography.

Next up we take it back a century with an adaptation of a classic piece of English Literature.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 246: A Dog's Tale

As I have now watched almost a whopping 280 films on this journey it's interesting to look at how some of the earlier films I viewed have still stuck in my mind . One movie that I don't feel I'll remember all that well is Sounder, which was nominated for Best Picture at the 1973 Oscars. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with Sounder it's just fair inconsequential. Based on the book by William H. Armstrong, Sounder focuses on David Lee Morgan the son of two black sharecroppers. The early part of the film depicts how hard life is for David and his family and how they struggle to put food on the table. The family is soon forced to cope without its patriarch when father Nathan is arrested for stealing food. The Sounder of the title is he family's dog who is shot by the authorities as they are taking Nathan away. The rest of the film sees David's attempts at being the man of the household and having to cope with Sounder's disappearance. Though boy and dog are eventually reunited, David still finds things tough and tries to tack Nathan down at a prison camp. David's journey sees him bond with a kindly teacher who offers to educate him and give him a place to stay during the winter. The film is given a suitably happy ending when Nathan returns home to his family and is able to watch David take his first steps of becoming an educated man.

Interestingly, I discovered that several changes were made in bringing Sounder to the big screen. Firstly none of the characters in the book were given names that is apart from Sounder the dog, which is why the story is named after him. Secondly, the book has a seemingly more tragic end than this film which actually has an incredibly happy conclusion given the dour nature of the rest of the plot. Though I have no knowledge of the story at all, I did get a feeling that the ending was overly sweet in tone and guessed that it might not have been exactly the same as the book. Indeed, I do feel that if I did have some knowledge of the original story then I would've enjoyed Sounder more but as it is most of it just passed me by. One thing I do have to praise is the ensemble cast, all of whom gave fantastic performances. Both Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson were given Oscar nominations for their roles in the film while I feel that Kevin Hooks deserved recognition for anchoring the movie in his role of David. Martin Ritt gives assured direction throughout the course of Sounder and some of the exterior scenes are very well-handled. Indeed, as I mentioned at the start, I can find little wrong with Sounder in terms of its production values I just wasn't blown away by anything I saw on screen. The fact that this fairly ordinary picture was nominated opposite The Godfather and Cabaret did astound me and I feel if Sounder was released today then the Academy would ignore it completely. Ultimately, Sounder is a well-acted and well-directed film which unfortunately is unmemorable primarily due to its incredibly slight story.

Next time we have a triple bill of films from an actor who really became a headlining star during the 1970s.