Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 58: Two Different Houses

Back to the serious stuff once again with two films that have nothing in common apart from the word house in the title. First of we have The House of Rothschild which was nominated for the Oscar in 1935. The film is basically a propaganda film bigging up the Jews in response to the start of the Anti-Semitic movement coming from Hitler's Germany. At a time when most of the heads of the major studios were Jewish they decided to fight back in film form. It basically looks at the Rothschild family who grew up on 'Jew Street' a place where the Jews had to stay and keep in from 6 in the evening till 6 in the morning. The family is headed by patriarch Meyer who convinces his five sons to each start banks in Europe's major cities but to always consult each other on major matters. Later on the Rothschild boys are all grown-up and together helped finance the fight against Napoleon, however once Napoleon is captured, because of the Rothschilds being Jewish, their contribution to the success of the war is glossed over and they are once again ignored. When Napoleon escapes the brothers retreat back to see their mother on Jew Street they think about allying themselves with Napoleon but in the end they decide to stay on the side of the allies this portrays the Rothschilds as caring as they help the people who wouldn't help them. The final scene of the film, for some reason, is presented in three-strip Technicolor and sees Nathan Rothschild meet the Duke of Wellington who finally congratulates him on his help during the war-effort. Personally I didn't really 'get' The House of Rothschild, I thought the performances were perfectly adequate especially George Arliss in the dual role of Nathan and Meyer Rothschild. But the story itself was weak there was a horrible subplot in which Nathan's daughter wanted to marry a non-Jew which was just insipid. Also although I got the point in the films which promoted the goodness of the Jews I felt it wasn't really strong enough to constitute being considered as propaganda. I also found the three-strip Technicolor a little gimmicky and I really didn't see the point in it. This was never going to be a match for that year's winner, It Happened One Night.

A better film comes from the third ever Oscar ceremony and could possibly be considered the first ever proper prison film. The film follows Kent Marlowe as he is imprisoned, supposedly wrongly, for manslaughter. He is forced to share a cell with Wallace Beery's fearsome Butch as well as Chester Morris' sensible and good-natured thief John Morgan. Kent quickly becomes a snitch and plants a knife on Morgan. Morgan escapes anyway and meets up with Kent's sister who he falls for but the rest of the family ring the police and Morgan gets put in jail once again. He then finds out that Butch is planning a breakout and Kent is thinking of joining him but, after meeting Kent's family, Morgan tries to talk him out of it. In the end Morgan gets involved in the breakout to stop Kent breaking out but in the process also helps out the guards apprehend the escapees and his release is granted as he leaves the prison hoping to reunite with Kent's sister and live on an island. Although the plot is quite slight, The Big House seems like a revolutionary film, the scenes of the prisoners moving from their cells, to the yard, to the dining hall are filmed very well for an early talking picture. Wallace Beery was the star of the show as the menacing Butch but Chester Morris made a pretty good leading man as the likeable Morgan. This well written film was rewarded for an Oscar for its screenplay as well as being the first ever film to win the Best Sound Oscar. It's just a shame that it came up against the realistic war picture All Quiet on The Western Front because this film really did give you a feel for what life must be like in prison from the first shot in which Kent comes into prison up to the riot itself this was a very good film indeed.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 53 and 54: Three Important Men

What do British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Meixcan freedom fighter Pancho Villa and controversial French author Emile Zola have in common? Apart from being men and famous biopics of their exploits all feature in this decade's list.

Kicking off then with Disraeli which features an Oscar Winning Performance from George Arliss as the man himself. The film concerns itself with the period in Disraeli's life where he tries to build the British Empire and purchase the Suez Canal, however at the time his rival William Gladstone is big news. Gladstone has a lot more supporters than Disraeli including the head of the Bank of England. As the movie goes on the Russians implant spies in Disraeli's office so they can check on his plans to buy the Canal. As the Suez Canal goes up for sale Disraeli makes a deal with a banker to come up with the funds however the spies infiltrate the banker's firm and declare him bankrupt. Disraeli eventually convinces the head of the Bank of England to give the banker unlimited credit. At the end of the film Disraeli's female companion is awfully ill but he has to leave her in order to see Queen Victoria become Empress of India, but suddenly his lady friend turns up and the film ends happily. In terms of an early biopic Disraeli was admirable enough. George Arliss' performance was very worthy and he carried an air of dignity throughout the film. He portrayed a Disraeli who was very wise and thoughtful and also kind to those around him. But at the same time I struggle to remember anyone else in the film apart from the uppity lady spy but that's because it seemed so far-fetched. I don't think I can be too critical of this film as it did seem to be quite a large undertaking at atime when films were still getting used to sound. However I think if a film made about Disreali's life was made today it would be a lot more professional than this.

Next up is Viva Villa a film about freedom fighter Pancho Villa a Mexican who was fed up with the tyrannical rule of Spanish governors so decided to rise up against them. The film starts with Pancho avenging the death of his father at the hands of one of the generals. Soon Pancho becomes an outlaw attacking willy nilly when and where he sees fit. However his exploits are soon documented by a newspaper man called Johnny who strikes up a sort of friendship with Pancho. The newspaper articles catch the eye of General Madero a visionary who wants to end the Spanish rule and tries to convince Pancho to change his ways and instead of killing people who can't defend themselves to just attack people for further victory. Pancho changes his ways and soon becomes a legitimate general but he gets restless and soon becomes an outlaw once again after he steals. Instead of having him killed Madero simply exiles his friend but when Madero is betrayed and killed by one of his own men, Pancho mounts a massive attack on basically everyone until he becomes head honcho, this time though without changing his beliefs. I found Viva Villa to be more of an actioner than a biopic although I'm guessing some of the major plot points are accurate overall the style was incredibly toned towards Villa just killing anyone that got in his path. The storytelling was very sloppy with a lot of the history written up on the screen instead of conveyed through the narrative although the sound and cinematography was all very good and the former even won an Oscar. Overall though I found Wallace Beery's performance tiresome, Beery's rough and ready approach worked in The Champ but here it just seems like a caracture. I think if they wanted to do a proper dramatic retelling of Pancho Villa's life then they would've got in someone like Paul Muni.

Speaking of Muni, he's popping up once again in the final of this triple bill of biopics playing Emile Zola in the predictably titled The Life of Emile Zola which won the Best Picture prize at the 1938 ceremony. The film is basically an overview of Zola's career starting with his early days being a poor author living with the Spanish painter Cezzane. Both men then hit it big, with Zola writing Nana the book that launched him and caught the eye of both readers and the authorities who didn't agree with some of his ideals and saw him as being very controversial. After the film deals with Zola's antics it forwards a few years and explores his involvement with Alfred Dreyfus the French Captain who was wrongly accused of supplying military secrets to the German army. Dreyfus' wife appealed to Zola's better nature and revealed that another major had found evidence of who the real culprit was. Zola then wrote an open-letter in the French newspapers with the phrase - J'Accuse which is famous to this day. The Dreyfus case re-opened with opinion split between those who chose to support the army fully and those who thought they had too much power. Eventually there was not enough evidence to release Dreyfus and Zola was also sentenced to months in prison for libel. Zola absconded to lie-low in London but his time in London is depicted as being a particularly low point, but thankfully a new war commission sought the truth and released Dreyfus which allowed Zola to return to France. However the day of the celebrations of Dreyfus' release, the news of Zola's death from radiation poisoning is displayed on the front of a paper so the ending was bitter-sweet. As always Paul Muni gives a stunning performance, for which he was Oscar nominated but lost, much better than in Louis Pasteur but not as good as in Chain Gang. He is ably supported by Joseph Schildkraut as the sympathetic and doomed Dreyfus and by Gloria Holden as Mrs Zola. This is certainly a paint-by-numbers biopic which has a lot of gravitas but is pretty slow in some points wanting to paint a good picture of the events but doing so without making a lot of edits where need be. At the end of the day though this is still fairly powerful stuff and some of the trial scenes will stick with you after you've watched the film. It possibly just scraped through with a win that year as the other nominees weren't a particularly inspired bunch and certainly not as much of an Oscar winner as this was. However I suspect had it been another year the film wouldn't have done quite as well as it did.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 26: Boxing Clever

Next up we have The Champ a film that I didn't really know what to expect from. I had obviously heard of the Jon Voight and Faye Dunaway picture from the 1970s but was unaware that that was actually a remake of this film that was nominated for Best Picture at the 1932 ceremony but lost to Grand Hotel. It did however win a Best Screenplay Award and a Best Actor award for Wallace Beery for playing the titular Champ. The film itself concerns the life of Beery's Andy Purcell nicknamed Champ as he was the former world heavyweight boxing champion. But Champ has fallen on bad times and trains for undercard matches so he can afford to look after his son Dink. But Champ is both an alcoholic and a gambler and therefore doesn't usually turn up in any fit state for his fight and it is often Dink who has to look after his father and not the other way around. Dink and Champ re-encounter Dink's mother Linda who has remarried to a wealthy gentleman who bribes Champ into letting Linda see Dink as the film goes on Dink is forced to stay with Linda when Champ is arrested but is then bailed out by Linda's husband. The finale of the film sees Champ and Dink reunited and Champ boxing the Mexican champion in a main event fight. In the end of the film Champ wins but later dies of a heart attack and in a heart-breaking scene he has a final heart to heart with Dink who then is comforted by his mother.

The Champ is part sports movie but mostly a film about the relationship between a father and son. Champ and Dink's relationship is more friends than father and son and Champ never once acts like a proper father towards Dink but you can't tell that he loves him more than anyone else does. There is a transposition between the seedy underworld that Champ and Dink are forced to live in and Linda' s new life of opulence. The final boxing match is also quite effective and is given ten minutes to develop while I'm sure that the fight scene in the remake is more technically sound the original has a fight scene to rival Raging Bull or Rocky. The two main performances are also brilliant Beery it seems had to share his Best Actor Oscar but this performance was incredibly well thought out and multi-layered while, as Dink, Jackie Cooper shows that he is a brilliant child actor. While I wanted to slap him when I saw him in Skippy, here Cooper gives a turn better than a lot of the more mature actors and if the Best Supporting Actor Oscar had been available this year I reckon Cooper would've been nominated also. A brilliant film about the relationships that define us and how easy it is to lose them.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 17: An Afternoon at The Grand

So what did beat those two Chevalier films to become only the fifth film to win the Best Picture Oscar? The answer to that question is Grand Hotel a large Broadway production that was bought to the Big Screen with a big name cast to boot. The film is set in Berlin's Grand Hotel where, according to one of its residents, people come and go and nothing ever happens but of course a lot of things do happen or there wouldn't be anything worth watching. Certainly as far I'm concerned this was one of the first films do balance several plots all the characters linking to each other in one way or another. The first is of a stenographer (typist) played by Joan Crawford who is hired to help a belligerent businessman played by Wallace Beery, who is in Berlin to finish a business transaction. Then there's Lionel Barrymore who has just found out that he is going to die so he is finally going to start living and books into the audaciously expensive Grand Hotel in order to enjoy his last days only to run into his boss who just happens to be Beery. The third story is of a Russian ballerina, played by the Swedish Greta Garbo, who is worried that people are starting to go off her performances and her large entourage is trying to bolster her confidence, she also is staying in the hotel. Linking all these stories together is Lionel's younger brother John who plays a penniless count who tries to get by by gambling away all his money and stealing from other guests in the hotel. He then strikes up a friendship with Lionel's character, falls for Crawford and tries to steal jewels from Garbo only for her to end up romancing him as well.

Having only seen the two Chevalier films that were nominated in that year, I'm not sure what the quality of film-making was like in the early 1930s but Grand Hotel is by far the best film I've seen from that period. Mostly set within the hotel it is expertly shots and there are some brilliant long shots of the entire hotel seen from above. The hotel almost kind of becomes its own character with its frantic staff members and black and white checked design. The screenwriting is top notch as are the performances. Again it's Lionel Barrymore who's a standout for me, he did actually win an Oscar the year before this was made, but both in Grand Hotel and You Can't Take It With You his performances towered over the rest of the cast. It's strange that given her name is given top billing, Greta Garbo's role is very small, she features towards the start of the film's second third and then right at the end but the main female lead is Joan Crawford who is stunning. John Barrymore meanwhile does the charming gentleman thief role with aplomb. The thing I found strange was the jump from comedy to drama, the film changes its tone drastically in the last ten minutes, but overall a great film and a thoroughly deserving Best Picture winner.