Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 361-362: Days of Future Past Part Two

After several months away; the Oscar Challenge returns with two more films from the 1930s that have become available since I embarked on this quest.

First up we have The Broadway Melody of 1936; not to be confused with previous winner The Broadway Melody although both have plots that are fairly flimsy. In fact I found that the film was more of a showcase for the talents of lead actress Eleanor Powell who was making her on-screen debut. Powell starred as Irene Foster; a wide-eyed starlet who travelled to Broadway in order to make her fortune. Despite her obvious talent, she is cast aside by her former childhood friend turned producer Robert Gordon. The film then becomes a screwball comedy of sorts as Irene becomes a faux French singer and impresses Gordon enough to be given a role in the show. However, her rouse isn't without complications thanks to the show's wealthy backer as well as a gossip columnist who is out to get a particularly juicy scoop. Based on the story alone, The Broadway Melody of 1936 isn't exactly the most original film around but thankfully it is boosted by a number of positive elements. The first of these is the cast all of whom give energetic performances with standout turns given by Jack Benny as the aforementioned columnist and Powell herself. In fact Powell was so impressive that MGM signed her up to appear in the next two films in the Broadway Melody franchise. The songs are also incredibly catchy and contribute to presenting Broadway as an exciting place to be. Although it's a film that hasn't really carved its own legacy, The Broadway Melody of 1936 is an enjoyable romp and doesn't outstay it's welcome. At the same time I feel it's quite forgettable and I feel that I'd struggle to remember it in a few months' time.

Moving on to quite a timely film in so much as its leading actress, Luise Rainer recently passed away at the grand old age of 106. We first met Rainer in one of this blog's opening posts as she won her first Best Actress Oscar for her minimal role in The Great Ziegfeld. At the time I felt that this honour was a little undeserving however I don't hold that opinion with her second Oscar win for the next film on my list; The Good Earth. Sidney Franklin's film, an adaptation of Pearl S Buck's book, is an odd one in which Western actors play Chinese characters. Rainer's role was in fact originally going to be played by a Chinese American actress but because of miscegenation rules she wasn't permitted to partake in love scenes with lead actor Paul Muni. This was maybe a blessing in disguise as Rainer's performance as servant turned wife O-Ran was quietly brilliant. In fact Rainer saves the first half of this heavy-handed epic which I found to be inconsistent. Whilst The Good Earth is epic in scope, the screenplay was incredibly weak in places although there were visual flairs throughout. I personally thought The Good Earth's final sequence which depicted a locus attack on the family's field was incredibly well shot. The close-up shots on the locusts themselves were extremely memorable and were one of the more positive aspects of the film. Whilst I did feel that The Good Earth was impressively shot for the time; going on to win the Oscar for Best Cinematography, I found it overlong with a narrative that was hard to follow at times. Thankfully, Luise Rainer's performance kept me going throughout and I'm hoping that her memory will live on through this well-judged and emotional performance which won her a much-deserved Best Actress Oscar.

The next post will see the Oscar Challenge journey into the 21st century, but fear not classic film fans as I will be sporadically be writing catch-up posts like the one above. See you in the noughties guys!

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 165: Burning Love

We travel from the blood-soaked fields of World War 2 to Ancient Rome under Emperor Nero for our penultimate 1950s film Quo Vadis. The film is very similar to previous entries on this list such as The Ten Commandments and The Robe in so much as they try to utilise the new technicolor methods to create a vivid story while at the same time referencing parts of The Bible. In this case we have Rome just after the death of Jesus, although Peter features quite predominantly throughout, where the Christians are living in private and here are represented by Deborah Kerr's Lygia. Playing opposite Kerr is Robert Taylor as Marcus Vinicius a returning Roman soldier whose uncle Petronius is one of Nero's most trusted advisors and who becomes intrigued with Christianity through is infatuation with Lygia. When the slightly crazy Nero, played by the brilliant Peter Ustinov, decides to burn Rome and blame the Christians people start to believe that he has gone loopy while Potronious goes so far as to kill himself. Both Lygia and Marcus are arrested and then are married by Peter before he himself is crucified upside down. Nero's wife, who has been knocked back by Marcus, decides to teach the couple a lesson by setting Lygia up to be gored by a bull in the coliseum and chaining Marcus up so he has to watch. Eventually Nero is overthrown and has one of his slaves kill him as he is too cowardly to take his own life so the film ends with Lygia and Marcus able to leave Rome as we see Peter's staff and here his words being spoken to those who are lucky enough to have survived Nero's tyrannical reign.

Always when writing these reviews I try and think what I will most remember about this film after having watched it and in the case of Quo Vadis there are two points. Firstly the epic scale of it all as this is very similar to a Cecil B Demille picture complete with an entire sequence with Rome burning to the ground and then another scene featuring live animals trying to attract Nero's prisoners in the coliseum. The other memorable aspect of Quo Vadis is Peter Ustinov's performance as Nero, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, playing this evil man in quite a child-like manner changing his ideas on a whim and often being manipulated by his devious wife whom he finally cottons onto and kills just before the end scene. It is Ustinov you always look forward to seeing because Robert Taylor is such a wooden actor and you don't believe for one minute that he is the great Roman soldier in fact he just seems like another beefcake actor while Deborah Kerr here is on poor form possibly being ill-served with a role in which she doesn't do much than follow other men's leads. So all in all this is a colourful romp through Ancient Rome which lasts far too long, its running time is almost three hours, but has a great performance from Ustinov. While this isn't a great film it does highlight a time where film-makers were using techniques to recreate these epic stories so in those terms Quo Vadis is an interesting film to watch if not just in a historical context.