Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 195 and 196: Girls in Love

Regular readers of this blog will know how often I like to group two or three films together in one post. Usually, I've planned this in advance but occasionally I'll do a double film post out of the blue. This is one such post as I noticed a link between two that being young women routinely getting their heartbroken. The stories are centuries apart but both centre around young lovers and hurdles put in their way to stop them finding love. 

Of course we all know the hurdles that are put in the way of Romeo and Juliet - family rivalry, mates being killed and ridiculously large balconies. Obviously Shakespeare's play has had many different screen versions however Fraco Zeffirelli's adaptation, which was nominated at the 1969 ceremony, is one of the most famous. In fact at the time the film was the most commercially successful film version of a Shakespeare play ever partly due to its contemporary feel. Another reason for its appeal is that it was the first time that the two actors playing the titular lovers were of a similar age. Teenage viewers saw the film in their droves due to the fact that fifteen year old Olivia Hussey and seventeen year old Leonard Whiting played the lead roles. Indeed their casting caused controversy not least because of Hussey appearing in a very brief nude scene. I personally felt that their casting added a lot to the overall believability of the story and can see why it would appeal to a younger audience. Hussey especially excelled at portraying Juliet's naive qualities and really made you believe that Romeo was her first love. Personally I wasn't as much a fan of Whiting, however he was still compelling in the scenes in which Romeo kills Tybalt and essentially ruins any chance of happiness he had with Juliet. While we're on the subject of the cast I felt that Michael York was perfectly snide as Tybalt while Milo O'Shea was a great choice to play Romeo's confident Friar Lawrence. The whole film was also given a bit of Shakespearian authenticity by the fact that Laurence Olivier provided the voice-over for the film, even though he was never credited. 

Away from the casting, the other reason for the film's success was its use of colour and setting to convey the story. I personally loved the Oscar-winning costume designs which were used to differentiate the two warring families. While the Montagues war drab greys and blues, the Capulets were decked out in brighter colours and were definitely viewed as the richer of the two tribes. The fact that the whole film was shot in Rome added to the authenticity of the film and the exterior shots were particularly impressive. Indeed Pasqualino De Santis' cinematography also won an Oscar and I felt his visuals shone throughout the film. I personally felt that the balcony scene and the duels which saw the deaths of both Mercutio and Tybalt were brilliantly filmed. Even though the style and the casting were spot on, I can't say that I was completely wowed by the film. At well over two hours, I found the film dragged and there were some scenes that still didn't really work on film. Overall though, Zeferelli was the first director to give Romeo and Juliet that cinematic flare that it so richly deserved. The use of colour, setting and age-appropriate actors all added to the original text and I ultimately found this film to be a rewarding watch. 

We now rewind back seven years for the second film in this double bill. The film in question is Fanny, whose titular character is played by Leslie Caron of Gigi fame. In the 1950s we saw Caron star in two musicals, An American in Paris was the other one, however here Fanny is a musical with the songs removed. Caron's Fanny is an eighteen year old fish-seller who is desperately in love with young bartender Marius. Marius has been ear-marked by his bar owning father Caesar to take over the family firm but his son dreams of becoming a sailor. Fanny later receives an offer of marriage from elderly bachelor Panisse but turns him down as she wants to be with her true love Marius. Fanny eventually realises that Marius feels trapped and doesn't want to pressure him into a relationship. The two spend one last night together, but she still encourages him to go abroad and tells him that she's rather marry Panisse for his money. Two months after Marius' departure, Fanny discovers she is pregnant with his child and accepts Panisse's offer of marriage mainly to save face. Even though Panisse realises he'll be raising another man's child, he wants his family name to continue and feels this will be the only way to do so. Marius soon discovers the truth but finds out that Panisse will not let Fanny takes his child away and so she turns down Marius once again. Obviously Fanny is torn between her love for Marius and for her young son, and so will be left heartbroken either way.  

I have to say it took me a while to warm to Fanny, mainly because the first twenty minutes or so all revolved around the characters either selling fish or playing cards. It was only after Marius and Fanny had their first heart-to-heart that I really got into the story and found myself really caring about the characters. Indeed Fanny has at least four stand-out performances not least from Caron who is much improved from her turn in Gigi. It's also interesting to see veteran actors Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier appear here as both have featured in films on this list since the early 1930s. Boyer, the only member of the cast to get an acting nomination, anchors the film as the passionate yet lonely Caesar. But it was Chevalier who impressed me most in what was a fairly dramatic role, his Panisse was a man who'd never truly found love and used his money to marry Fanny. However Chevalier played a man who really did care for this young woman and longed for her to love him. Horst Buchholtz was a brilliant Marius and had great chemistry with Caron and Boyer meaning that his relationships with both characters were utterly believable. Jack Cardiff's Oscar nominated cinematography captured the French shipping town well and really added to the overall mood of the film. While Fanny was by no means perfect, I found myself getting rather emotional towards its climax and ultimately found it to be an affecting and well-played romantic drama. 

And as I've revealed my soppier side here, I feel the only way to go next is with an iconic sword and sandals epic. 

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 144-145: A Song and a Dance in France

Some of you may've noticed that to get through as many of these films as possible I am trying to group them into different categories and I noticed that two of the winning films from the 1950s were both set in France, featured song and dance and both starred Leslie Caron. However there was also a third nominee set in France which featured a small amount of merriment so that got included as well so lets kick off with the winner from the 1952 ceremony.

That being Vincent Minnelli's An American in Paris an all singing/all dancing spectacular featuring Gene Kelly and the aforementioned Ms. Caron. The film features on two down-and-out Americans living and trying to survive in Paris, Kelly's painter Jerry Mulligan and Oscar Levant's pianist Adam Cook. Mulligan's artwork gets noticed by a wealthy American woman named Milo who agrees to sponsor Jerry and also falls in love with him while Mulligan meets Caron's enchanting Lisa and falls for her unaware that she is already seeing singer Henri Baurel an acquaintance of Jerry's through Adam. As time goes on Lisa and Jerry become more and more attached then Henri is offered a job in America and he and Lisa plan to marry but at the last moment Henri realises that Jerry and Lisa are in love and lets them be together. An American in Paris is a great old school musical but whether it deserved to win Best Picture is another debate altogether however it deserve to win Oscars for its cinematography, score, costumes and set (not sure about the screenplay award though). I enjoyed the interplay between Caron and Kelly but for me the best performances came from Nina Foch as Milo and Levant whose scene where he imagines he is conducting and playing in a concert hall was one of my favourite scenes alongside the last fifteen minutes of the film in which Jerry imagines his life alongside Lisa before she returns to him. A bright, colourful extravaganza An American in Paris has memorable songs like I've Got Rhythm and S'Wonderful and is an enjoyable ride however I don't think it is truly a classic film.

A nominee from the 1953 ceremony is Moulin Rouge, a film title most of us attribute to a 2001 film which was also nominated for Best Picture. The 1953 film does have some singing and dancing but most of it features the story of Tolouse LaTrec potrayed in the modern film by John Leguizamo and here by Jose Ferrer. The first 20 minutes or so are probably the most entertaining and vibrant showing life in the Moulin Rouge full of drinking, can-can girls and Zsa Zsa Gabor's lead singer. However LaTrec's story is one of heartbreak in flashback we learn that he left his family home to pursue a career as a painter after he found out no girl would love him because he's a cripple. In the modern day his life doesn't go much better he enters into a relationship with a prostitute which ends when he becomes suspicious of her and she keeps taking money from him. He finds solace in his offbeat paintings off the Moulin Rouge and other famous Parisian landmarks and gains a reputation for his work. He also starts a new relationship with Myriamme a lovely girl who loves him but once again he feels that she just keeps him around for amusement and leaves it too late to save her from marrying someone else. The film ends with the announcement that he will be the first living artist to have painting displayed in The Louvre and then we see him visited by images of his paintings before popping his clogs. Moulin Rouge is thematically quite a bleak film with Jose Ferrer's Tolouse being a very dour personality and one who at times I found fairly alienating. The best thing about the film is its colour cinematography, which bizarrely didn't even get an Oscar nomination, which brings the Moulin Rouge to life and the best performances in my opinion come from those who work there. The way Tolouse's pictures are transposed into the film and how they meet him as he dies are also quite splendidly done. Overall a good biopic which is often bleak and saved by the colour and opulence of its titular establishment.

Finally we have Leslie Caron on winning form yet again here as the eponymous heroine in Gigi, the winner of the final Oscar ceremony in the 1950s. The film is light and full of humourous performances which is odd giving the dark subject matter of young girls being groomed to be courtesans for wealthy Parisian men. However Gigi's training isn't going at all well as she doesn't really want to be in her lessons and instead likes spending time with Gaston who visits her and her grandmother. Throughout the film Gaston realises that Gigi is no longer a child and falls in love with her. Her great aunt then trains her up to be Gaston's cortesan but she realises she doesn't want this sort of life for herself and through a sequence of events it suddenly dawns of both of them that they want to be together and at the end of the film are happily man and wife. Narrating events for part of the film is Maurice Chevalier's Honore Lachaille after watching several of his 1930s films for this project its odd now to see him playing the supporting role of the experienced older man but in 1958 he had aged somewhat he still gets to sing the most memorable song 'Thank Heaven for Little Girls' though and did receive the Lifetime Achievement award the night Gigi swept the board. And it did indeed breaking the record for Oscar wins but only holding that record for one year before Ben-Hur came along. The film itself is OK again its fairly entertaining and Caron has improved as an actress from her time on An American in Paris here being possibly the most likeable character of the bunch. The song and dance sequences are a joy but at times I felt the pace lagged a bit especially when Caron and her female relatives were off-screen and instead we had to deal with Gaston's woes which I didn't really care about. Overall an entertaining piece of musical cinema which had some lovely costumes but wasn't a spectacular picture and again didn't feel to me like a Best Picture Winner.

That's your lot from France and as your captain I hope you enjoyed your journey.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 30: One More from Maurice

A third Maurice Chevalier film and the earliest one to feature in the Best Picture category. It also saw Chevalier pick up a Best Actor nomination. Chevalier is directed by long-time collaborator Ernst Lubitch, who also picked up a Best Director Oscar nomination, as well as Jeanette MacDonald his leading lady in One Hour With You. The plot, if there really is one, sees Cheavlier's Parisian count being exiled to a fictional country and start a relationship with MacDonald's Queen Louise. For some reason Maruice Cheavlier is irresistible to any woman and they are soon married, but hilariously Chevalier then has to be an obedient husband, he soon realises that as prince consort he has no power and it is the Queen who makes all the decisions. This gender role reversal is the main basis of the second half of the film as Maurice becomes more and more disenchanted with the whole marriage as he feels it belittles his masculinity to have to run everything past his wife. However, Maurice is cleverer than he seems and his able to sort out all of Louise's financial woes and come up with a whole budget for the country, which is odd seeing as most of the time he is singing he doesn't seem to have a lot of time to do any maths. The end of the film sees Louise come around and let Maurice do whatever he wants which seems to be a lot more singing.

I think when sound first came into cinema people were impressed by just about everything but by today's standards these Maurice Chevalier films seem incredibly dated. Saying that The Love Parade has some good set pieces and is a lot more solidly directed than the other Chevalier films that I watched (which were made after this). The film has some brilliant set pieces and was rightfully nominated some technical awards for cinematography, sound recording and art direction. The plot maybe flimsy, the songs may drive you crazy but there's no denying that some of the musical numbers are well choreographed and well shot.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 16: Mostly Maurice

Over to the 1932 ceremony where two films starred the same leading man and had the same basic format. That man was Maurice Chevalier and those two films were One Hour With You and The Smiling Lieutenant. Of course I've heard of Chevalier but at the same time am not aware of his films that well. Just like Mae West, Chevalier was one the successful vaudeville and Broadway performers who was able to make the transition to Hollywood. With his charming voice and trademark boater hat, Chevalier was a crowd pleaser when he took to the stage and continued to charm in his films. In this case the films were both directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Firstly One Hour With You which has a very flimsy storyline indeed involving Chevalier's doctor who seems only to treat female clients who all obviously fancy him rotten but he is faithful to his wife played by Jeanette MacDonald. Both Chevalier and McDonald have perfect singing voices and basically singing seems to be foreplay to most of the characters in both of the Chevalier films that I watch. Maurice is tempted by his wife's old friend Mitzi while in turn his wife his propositioned by a man named Adolph before the name obviously became synonymous with a certain Mr Hitler. In this film Chevalier addresses the audience on a number of occasions to ask their advice on what he should do with these two beautiful women. At the end of the day even though they've both been unfaithful to an extent MacDonald and Chevalier realise they love each other most of all so it's back to the bedroom for a bit of a 'sing song'. The film is supposedly set in Paris but is obviously an American production with Chevalier the only predominant French cast member. Honestly I don't see why this was nominated for Best Picture, but that's all it was nominated for and it was obviously there to make up the numbers.
But you think the academy would only have picked one Chevalier film that year but instead The Smiling Lieutenant was also nominated. I find the plot was a little more cohesive in this film although Chevalier did essentially play the same character this time there was at least some kind of motivations for all the misunderstandings and misbehaving. This time the two women that were fighting for Chevalier's affections were Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. After watching her as the smart-talking rich girl in It Happened One Night I was surprised how little Colbert had to do here. She was Chevalier's first romantic interest a violinist who he fell for even though his friend liked her, friendship doesn't seem to stand for much in a Maurice Chevalier film. Anyway as you can guess from the title Chevalier's character is a lieutenant in the army and when Colbert's character goes to watch him welcome the ambassadors from a small Austrian suburb to Vienna he winks and smiles at her but it gets deflected towards Hopkins' small town princess. The big plot jump sees Chevalier agree to marry Hopkins because if he didn't there would be an international incident or Chevalier would lose his job. Hopkins and Chevalier have a loveless marriage at first but when Colbert comes to confront the new couple she instead helps Hopkins improve her lingerie collection (in song no less!) and bed Chevalier. At the end Chevalier gives the audience a cheeky wink before going to bed his new wife. Again the film was only nominated for Best Picture.

So what've I learnt from Maurice Chevalier films released in 1931-1932? Women don't care if you screw around, basically everyone sings or at least talks in rhymes, America is ample substitute for either Vienna or Paris and women find Frenchmen in boater hats absolutely resistable. Surprisingly there was no nomination for Chevalier in the Best Actor line-up however that year there was only three nominees. But Maurice will pop up again in this search later on when I watch the film which he was nominated for Best Actor - The Love Parade. Until then its goodbye to cheeky French chit-chat and oh so twee musical numbers.