1948-1957: Oscar’s Third Decade – A Look Back

On The Waterfront was my favorite movie from this decade – and definitely the best poster yet

The 1950s’s Oscars – and 1950s pop culture in general – gets a pretty bad rap as white-washed, conformist and undaring. A lot of Oscar history books tend to throw out phrases like “Worst Collection of Best Picture nominees ever” (for 1956 from The Academy Awards Handbook) or “Least Deserving Best Picture Winner of All Time (For The Greatest Show on Earth from multiple sources including Alternate Oscars and The Official Razzie Movie Guide). However, I enjoyed this 10-pack of films much more than the previous decade of Oscar winners (even if none could match Casablanca). I felt that the movies began to “speed up,” by which I mean directors added more cuts and edits to make the movie feel faster as opposed to the relatively static filming styles of earlier times). Movies started to have a more modern look and feel as the science behind movie making advanced in this time period.

The third decade of Oscars also had a much more eclectic “something for everyone” nature to their themes and styles than what came in the previous decade. Most Best pictures from 1938-1947 were divided into the dual themes of either World War II or social ills and most (except for the extravagant Gone With the Wind) were middle-to-low-budget affairs, due to World War II cutbacks and the nature of the stories (a movie about alcoholism, for example, doesn’t need elaborate sets of shots of epic grandeur). From 1948-1957, the themes, styles and budgets of the Best Picture winners are all over the place. We start with a sparse recreation of a classic stage play, then move back to social ills with All the King’s Men, but on a larger scope than your Lost Weekends and Gentleman’s Agreements. Then we hit some lavish, big-budget, all color extravaganzas before heading to the smaller personal stories of On the Waterfront and Marty before going bigger than ever before in shooting style and budget with Around the World in 80 Days and the Bridge on the River Kwai.

 

	Corrupt Authority /Society	Small Scale	Epic/Big Budg	World War II	Social Ills	Sex	Modern Times	Gross
1948: Hamlet	X	X				X		$3.25M (17)
1949: All the Kings Men	X				X	X	X	$3.5M (10)
1950: All About Eve						X	X	$3.6M (7)
1951: An American in Paris			X				X	$4.5M (6)
1952: The Greatest Show on Earth			X				X	$14M (1)
1953: From Here to Eternity	X		X	X	X	X	X	$12.5M (2)
1954: On the Waterfront	X	X			X		X	$4.5M (14)
1955: Marty		X					X	$2M
1956: Around the World in 80 Days			X					$23M (2)
1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai	X		X	X			X	$17.1M (1)

 

A few interesting common themes do emerge. In almost every one of these movies – even the seemingly incongruous Hamlet – there is a corrupt society or authority figure. Whereas the World War II era of movies showed a decided trust in leadership, the McCarthy Red Scare and perhaps other factors clearly altered the public’s faith in those who were supposed to guide them.

Did the public’s fear of Communism lead to so many Best Pictures about corrupt or broken authority and leadership?

Movies also began to look back on World War II with a more introspective, less rah-rah perspective then presented during the actual time of the War. Both Best Pictures dealing with World War II in this decade have bullying, corrupt and foolish leadership (Interestingly, From Here to Eternity was released at the tail end of the Korean War, a war considerably less popular and triumphant than World War II). Did the passage of time allow those who lived through the war to reconsider it, as appeared to happen in the 1920s and30s with movies dealing with World War I? Did the greater ambiguities and indecisive outcome of the Korean War change the public’s overall perception of war?

Alec Guinness deluded Colonel Nicholson is a huge departure from the dignified leaders of the 40s

Another interesting note is the overall alignment between commercial and Oscar success. Between 1948 and 1957, 7 out of the 10 winners were in the top ten for their respective year’s box office and two were the number one movie for the year. Compare that to the past decade’s winners, when no Best Picture winners made their year’s top ten .There is a not altogether unfair assumption that today’s Oscar’s are out of touch with popular appeal, but that certainly did not appear to be the case in the late 40’s and 50s.

Here’s how the collective themes of the third decade stack up to the last ten Best Picture winners.

	Corrupt Authority /Society	Small Scale	Epic/ Big Budg	World War II	Social Ills	Sex	Modern Times	Gross
2004: Million Dollar Baby		X					X	$216M
2005: Crash	X				X	X	X	$98M
2006: The Departed	X?						X	$90M
2007: No Country for Old Men							X	$171M
2008: Slumdog Millionaire	X?						X	$378M
2009: The Hurt Locker		X					X	$49M
2010: The King’s Speech								$414M
2011: The Artist		X						$133M
2012: Argo								$232M
2013: 12 Years a Slave	X							$187M

 

Period pieces are generally considered good Oscar bait and while this is true for technical categories like Art Direction (aka sets) and Costumes, this assumption clearly holds no water the 1940s-50 Best Picture winners or in today’s winners. In fact, even though the last four Best Picture winners could be considered period pieces under a rather broad definition (a movie set 30 or more years in the past where the look, dress and actions of the characters purposefully reflect the given time period), none of those movies really represent the haughty Merchant Ivory type fair that people really think of when describing a period piece (Calling Argo a period piece for example seems strange but it technically fits the definition).

Those sideburns are definitely period piece

Strangely, despite our increased distrust of big government, few Best Pictures of the last yen years represent a broken society or authority. (12 Years a Slave and Crash being the obvious exceptions. Slumdog Millionaire is a strange case in that the broken society is what ultimately provides the hero the keys to success. ) In fact, Kings Speech and Argo present government leaders and agencies working hard for the common good.

SEX! SEX! SEX! It’s on everybody’s minds in the 50s

Another interesting note: While we typically think of the 60s as the advent of the sexual revolution and increasing depictions of sexuality on the screen, a surprising number of the 1950s Best Pictures deal with sexuality in some form, usually with at least a hint of scandal to them (dating back to Hamlet, where Olivier intentionally gave emphasis to Hamlet’s obsession with his mother’s sex life). Several of the Best Picture winners had affairs between unmarried people or extramarital affairs. Meanwhile, one could argue the last decade’s collection of Best Picture winners are among the least sexy – and sexless – collection of movies ever assembled.

…well, maybe not hers

1949: All the King’s Men

Now that’s a tag line!

“I don’t need money. People gives me things because they believe in me.” – WIllie Stark (Broderick Crawford) on the merits of the political system, All the King’s Men.

The Academy Awards closed out the 1940s by celebrating a scathing indictment of America’s political system run amuck.

All the King’s Men, 1949’s Best Picture is a terrific movie featuring some really great performances, especially Broderick Crawford as a scheming politician who morphs from well-meaning do-gooder to all-powerful dictator, Breaking Bad style, over the course of two hours. Unlike a lot of the social ill movies that had previously won Best Picture, All the King’s Men doesn’t offer any sort of answer to fix the problem. In fact, the villain, the corrupt politician, is the main character of the movie, an early anti-hero who is captivating in just how easily he wins over the people despite his wicked ways.

Best Actor Winner Broderick Crawford as hick politician-turned-near-dictator Willie Stark

All the King’s Men is loosely based on the life of noted Louisiana politician Huey Long (or as a snooty English major would say, All the King’s Men is a roman à clef). Crawford pays Willie Stark, a self-described hick, who we’re lead to believe is an “honest man” because about 30 different people describe him that way in the first 15 minutes of the film. Stark is being pushed around in his campaign to become county treasure of a small rural town controlled by a yokel machine (Having worked around rural politics for a number of years, I found these early scenes to be eerily truthful). Stark is championed by Jack Bender, a newspaper reporter suffering from liberal guilt due to his own financially successful family. Stark loses his election, but when his cause cèlèbre – the faulty construction of a local schoolhouse – proves prescient, he is catapulted into state politics.

At first Stark is used as a pawn in the electoral machine, a way to split the vote between the rural sect to get an urban punk elected. But when Stark starts using inflammatory speeches and playing to his constituents’ emotions, he wins over the crowds. Once he’s elected governor, anything goes. Stark hires Bender as a hatchet man to keep dirt on both friends and enemies he needs to control. Increasingly power hungry, arrogant and womanizing, Stark seems unstoppable in his quest for power.

Stark at the height of power

All the King’s Men offers a lot of interesting insight into the American political landscape, not just of the 1940s but even as it carries over into today’s world. Foremost is its examination of the cult of personality that plays into any popular election. Stark doesn’t win the election because he’s the best educated – he actually picks up steam when he stops spouting “facts and figures” and just uses emotional rhetoric. His natural charisma is what wins him over with voters and keeps him popular even as his various corrupt deeds are revealed. The system Willie has to work with is also shown to be broken. Yes, Willie has to bribe and blackmail, but the movie also suggests that’s the only way to get anything done (not unlike the moral quandaries that faced Jeremy Renner’s sympathetic mayor in last year’s American Hustle).

I liked this movie because it didn’t force feed its message in ways other “social ill” movies like The Lost Weekend did and there’s no easy answer to the problem like The Lost Weekend provides. The system as a whole is filled with flaws and taken advantage of by corrupt men. Willie is a great complex character too. He isn’t just an innocent babe in the woods whose naivety leads to his folly. He’s always shown to have a streak of ambition in him, but he loses all control once he gains power. He also does do a lot of good while in office – building highways and hospitals – even if his motives aren’t necessary pure and the deals he cuts to get the jobs done are far from ethical.

My only complaint about All the King’s Men was its ending. Without giving it away, I will say it was rather abrupt and I really felt like it needed an extra five minutes to give some closure to the characters who weren’t Willie. But overall, All the King’s Men remains an exciting political thriller and fascinating character study of modern politics.

Other Oscars Won: Broderick Crawford (Best Actor), Mercedes McCambridge (Best Supporting Actress)

Other Notable Movies of 1949: Battleground*, The Heiress*, A Letter to Three Wives*,Twelve O’Clock High*, Samson and Delilah#, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Bicycle Thief, White Heat, Under Capricorn, Adam’s Rib

*Best Picture Nominee

#Top Grossing Movie of the Year

1948 Hamlet

“This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.” – Narrator, dumbing down the plot of Hamlet

Hamlet, 1948’s Best Picture, is an unusual case among Oscar winners. Although many Best Pictures are adaptions of plays or books, Hamlet is the only one that is an adaptation of a classic renowned piece of literature you are most likely required to read in high school (there’s never been a Dickens adaption that won Best Picture, for example) (I suppose All Quiet on the Western Front now falls into the required high school reading list, but it was a relatively new book when it was made into a movie). Also because it’s Shakespeare, Hamlet is one of the most “play-ish” movies to ever win Best Picture although director Laurence Olivier employs many of the popular noir film techniques of the day to spruce things up.

Since I assume everyone’s read Hamlet, I will give only a brief synopsis of the plot. Hamlet (Olivier), the prince of Denmark is depressed following his father’s death and the subsequent remarriage of his mother, Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) to his father’s brother, Claudius (Basil Sydney). Hamlet’s father’s ghost reveals to his son that Claudius, in fact, murdered the king and charges Hamlet with getting revenge. Hamlet, in a quandary about the situation, opts to feign madness in order to ferret out the truth, leaving a trail of havoc and death in his wake, mostly focused on his on-and-off again girlfriend Ophelia (Jean Simmons) and her father, Polonius (Felix Aylmer), the king’s pompous advisor.

I’m 82% sure Olivier dyed his hair for the role, and if so, it looks TERRIBLE

So anyway, if you can remember Hamlet from high school or college English, you probably know what you are getting into here. Of note to English majors, is Olivier’s decision to cut three major characters – Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Fortenbras – from the story as part of an overall slimming down of the story. The actual play runs four hours (!) (Kenneth Branaugh made a full version of it in the 1990s) and this movie clocks in at a trim(ish) 2.5. As noted, Olivier is also greatly influenced by the popular noir style of the time, with lots of shadows and low angles.

Olivier transforms many of the soliloquies from spoken words into overdubbed thoughts, with mixed results. Sometimes this effect is unintentionally laughable, especially when the actor is trying too hard to react to what they are thinking.

Olivier also focuses a lot on the relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet. While the exact nature of their relationship is one that has captivated lit majors for centuries, Olivier definitely has an opinion on it, including highlighting sequences where Hamlet is obsessed with Gertrude and Claudius getting it on and even having the mother and son give VERY tender kisses at a couple different times in the movie.

A cool shot with Claudius in the foreground and Hamlet in the back, as if haunting the King’s thoughts

Olivier’s Hamlet is considered a pinnacle of acting achievement, but the truth is it has not aged well. I found much of Olivier’s performance to be pretty hammy and very emotive. Today’s audiences are more attuned to a natural performer like Daniel Day Lewis, I think. I actually thought Simmon’s Ophelia gave a better performance as the batty Ophelia. Also, for whatever, reason, Olivier delivers the very famous “To Be or Not To Be” speech in a half repose, so that he looks utterly bored while reciting the single most famous speech in the history of English literature.

This is a fine production of Hamlet, but it’s not exceptionally notable or blows away other Hamlets. As noted, I liked the direction and sets a lot – the big empty castles are marvelous, the tracking shots that follow the characters up different flights of stairs or show different characters doing different things simultaneously are cool. But I think the reason there’s never been another Shakespeare movie to win Best Picture or very few adaptions of English Lit’s classical cannon have won is that these classical stories are so ingrained in our conscious they don’t have any surprises to offer us. They give us what we expect. Hamlet is a good production of Hamlet but it’s not going to blow you away.

Trivia: Laurence Olivier is one of only two directors to direct himself to the Best Actor award (the other was Roberto Benigni for Life is Beautiful in 1998).

 

Other notable movies in 1948: Johnny Belinda*, The Red Shoes*#, The Snake Pit*, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*, Red River, Easter Parade, Key Largo

* Best Picture Nominee

#Top Grossing movie of the year

1938-1947: Oscar’s Second Decade – A Look Back

World War 2 was a major driver of Oscar Best Pictures in the 1940s and continues to be so

Following the lead I started WAAAAAY back after completing the first ten Best Pictures, I thought it would be interesting to look at the second decade of Oscar Best Pictures and see what made them “Best”. First here’s a chart to remind us about each movie and look for some commonalities.

	World War II	Social Problems	Epic	Modernity	Evil Bankers	Total Nominations
1938 -You Can’t Take it With You					X	7
1939 – Gone With the Wind			X		X	13
1940 – Rebecca			X			11
1941 – How Green Was My Valley		X		X	X	10
1942 – Mrs. Miniver	X					12
1943 – Casablanca	X		X			8
1944 – Going My Way	X	X-ish			X	7
1945 – The Lost Weekend		X				7
1946 – The Best Years of Our Lives	X	X				8
1947 – Gentleman’s Agreement		X				8

 

Two themes dominated the second decade of the Academy Awards – World War II and addressing social issues. Every movie from 1941 onward (probably not coincidentally the point where the U.S. entered World War II) can easily be categorized under one or both of these subject matters.

While it is certainly easy to dismiss the trend of World War II movies as merely an update/reboot of the popular World War I movie trend that dominated the Oscars’ first decade, it must be noted that the World War I movies popular from 1927-1938 were being made more than a decade after WWI’s end. The World War II movies were being made while the War was going on. Thus these movies aren’t the somber reflections of war’s horror seen in All Quiet on the Western Front or Wings, but more invested in creating a rousing can-do, let’s-win-this-thing sort of spirit.

My favorite of the batch – and one of my favorite movies EVER

World War II clearly holds a special place in the nation’s conscious, even 80 years later. No subsequent war movie would win a Best Picture Oscar while being about a war that’s still ongoing until the Hurt Lock in 2009! Most winning war movies – The Deer Hunter, Platoon – are about wars that have been finished for several years, if not more. In fact, the majority of “current” war movies have been box office duds. But the World War II movies of the 40s were huge hits and World War II movies examining every aspect of the war continue to be churned out – and win Best Picture Oscars – to this day! Clearly the black-and-white nature of World War II – the last true “Good vs. Evil” battle PLUS the nationalistic ideal of America as the heroes – holds a special appeal that will likely never be broken.

The socially conscious trend in the last half of the decade is harder to pin down. During the 1930s, when the country had arguably significantly worse problems of greater scale with the Great Depression, no movie explicitly about the Great Depression won an Oscar and only one – The Great Ziegfeld – even directly acknowledged the Great Depression. Movies were seen as a key to escapism from hardships during the 30s. During the post-war 40s, America prospered like never before. Whether that prosperity unleashed a liberal guilt in filmmakers or just freed them to make statements about issues they’d always been concerned about but seemed insignificant in light of the Depression’s overwhelming despair is hard to say. The Great Depression’s effects were felt indirectly in a number of films that cast bankers and taxmen as villains, although evil taxmen weren’t exactly a new phenomenon in the 1930s.

Epics, while toned down compared to the all-out spectacles of the 30s, still held a powerful sway on Academy voters. Of course, the grandest epic of them all, Gone With The Wind, won huge and several other movies with an epic feel (and/or epic lengths) like Casablanca and Rebecca also took home the gold. But as noted in the Academy Award Handbook, the emergence of the social problem movie also brought about the first real opportunity for smaller films to get in on the action. The Best Years of Our Lives combined the best of both worlds with an all start cast and an epic story focusing on domestic problems of returning soldiers.

You Can’t Take It With You winning is as perplexing as this scene from the movie

You Can’t Take It With You remains a great outlier not just of this period but of the Oscars in general. A smallish, low-stakes moral comedy with a basic message of “Just relax” doesn’t seem like Oscar bait in any time period and is hardly one of the best remembered films of its director or star.

1947: Gentleman’s Agreement

“It would be nice sometime not to have to explain [anti-Semitism] to someone like Tommy. Kids are so decent to start with,” – Mrs. Green (Anne Revere), Gentleman’s Agreement

“You only assured him he was that most wonderful of creatures, a white Christian American. You instantly gave him that lovely taste of superiority, the poison that millions of parents drop into the minds of millions of children,” – Phil Green (Gregory Peck), Gentleman’s Agreement

I think Gregory Peck looks more like an alcoholic than a victim of oppression, but the Oscars had already covered that topic

Gentleman’s Agreement, the 1947 winner for Best Picture, continued the Academy’s late 40’s obsession with Important Social Issues, this time dealing with anti-Semitism. I didn’t expect much coming into this film except some ham-handed speeches and gnashing of teeth over the injustices of the world. And while those aspects are certainly present in Gentleman’s Agreement, the film is a lot more thoughtful and dives deeper into prejudice than a typical after-school special.

Phil Green is a grumpy, widowed journalist with a 10-year-old son and an aging mother. When he moves to New York to work for a prestigious liberal magazine, his first assignment is to uncover the boiling cauldron of anti-Semitism that lies in New York City. At first off-put by the idea, Green eventually decides to pose as a Jewish man himself to get in the meat of the story (despite being a well-respected journalist, apparently he was unaware of “undercover” reporting). Almost immediately, he is taken aback by the social slights he receives (no one mentions that the title of his expose “I Was a Jew For Eight Weeks” is incredibly pandering and derogatory).

Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire

The plot thickens with the moral queasiness of his girlfriend. Despite being a tremendous grump, Green instantly lands his editor’s pretty, forthright niece, Kathy Lacey (Dorothy McGuire). Kathy is sort of a closet racist, in that she stands for good values but says things like “You’re not actually one, are you Phil?” when Phil goes explains to her his plan to go undercover. Kathy is actually the meat of the story because it’s her unwillingness to act against prejudices that is the most interesting part of the movie and the most thoughtful approach to what prejudice in today’s society constitutes.

Gentleman’s Agreement is weighed down by a lot of preachy speeches towards the movie’s end, as well as the punches it pulls in terms of actually addressing anti-Semitism (the worst things that really ever happen to Phil are his kid gets teased and he’s denied entrance to a hotel). Phil’s ham-handed approach to dropping his religion into conversations to reveal himself (literally at one point he just blurts out “I’m Jewish) is also pretty laughable. The movie also takes way too long to set up Phil’s whole undercover scheme – nearly a third of the movie passes before he finally hatches his plot.

Phil and son Tommy (Dean Stockwell)

However, I thought that in certain places, the movie was also very thoughtful about prejudice. Kathy is not outwardly or intentionally racist, but her desire to fit in and not ruffle feathers by speaking out against prejudice or even pretending her fiancé is Jewish was very interesting and thought-provoking about our own prejudices, even today. Phil’s secretary, who is Jewish but pretends not to be, also provides an interesting character who proves prejudiced against her own culture. John Garfield, who has a small role as Phil’s Jewish veteran friend, was my favorite actor in the movie. He’s a friendly guy who doesn’t hide his culture but has also learned to tamp down his anger over slights, until it finally boils over in one memorable scene with a drunken bigot.

The thing I liked most about Gentleman’s Agreement was that I felt it really tried hard to explore all sides of prejudice and delve “into the underbelly of the thing” as Phil’s editor says. There are good and bad people and morals, but mostly shades of gray layered throughout the movie that I really appreciated. The movie is kind of slow and preachy at times, and held up against films like Schindler’s List and 12 Years a Slave, doesn’t even scratch the surface in dealing with racism and prejudicial behavior. But for its time, it was confrontational and thought provoking for a society glad-handing itself for preserving the world for freedom and democracy.

Trivia That’s Only Interesting to Me: Phil’s son, Tommy, was played by future Quantum Leap star Dean Stockwell.
Ironic Trivia: Even though the majority of the major Hollywood Studio heads were Jewish, Darryl Zanuck, a Christian, made Gentleman’s Agreement, even though several of the other heads asked him not to for fear it would “stir up trouble”, a scene mirrored in the movie when Phil describes his planned article.

Other Movies Released in 1947: The Bishop’s Wife*, Crossfire*, Miracle on 34th Street*, Great Expectations*, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, Unconquered#
* Nominated for Best Picture
#Top Grossing Movie of the Year

1946: The Best Years of Our Lives

Fred: You gotta hand it to the Navy. They sure trained that kid how to use those hooks.

Al: They couldn’t train him to put his arms around his girl or stroke her hair.

– Al Stephenson (Fredric March) and Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), discuss fellow veteran Homer Parrish’s return home, The Best Years of Our Lives.

While The Best Years of Our Lives is a great movie, it sure has some shitty posters. This one plays up the sex appeal of Fred’s horrible wife and ignores two of the three main characters!

                The Oscars infatuation with socially conscious films continued in 1946, when they awarded the Best Picture trophy to The Best Years of Our Lives, a very powerful film dealing with the problems faced by veterans returning home from World War II. Before I watched this, I was expecting some maudlin soapboxing, but I was surprised to find this is an excellent movie. The movie employs subtlety – like a glance or wince from a character – to detail their inner turmoil, instead of something more heavy-handed, like the sort of outrageous moments in The Lost Weekend. Things that could have been played up as way too sappy – like a veteran who lost both his hands in the war – are instead treated in a positive and gentle manner. Most of all, The Best Years of Our Lives is a very human story with a lot of compelling characters dealing with real problems in real ways, problems that are still resonant in the fallout of today’s wars.

The three leads – Best Supporting Actor Harold Russell, Dana Andrews, and Best Actor Fredric March.

               The story focuses on three returning vets: Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) was a fighter pilot who is returning home to a far less glamorous life; the middle-aged Al Stephenson (Best Actor Winner Fredric March), who was an infantryman and is now returning to his family and his old banking job; and Homer Parrish (Best Supporting Actor Harold Russell), a sailor who lost both his hands and now has hooks (which he is very adept as using), but is unsure how his family and girlfriend will react to them. All immediately face problems when they return. They feel isolated from their families, who they have been away from for three or more years and don’t really understand the struggles they went through overseas (Al’s son, for example, quizzes his father on the variety of guns and tanks he saw, not seeing them as instruments of death but as curiosities he learned about in school). For Derry, who was a leader of men, the return to being a soda jerk is particularly soul crushing. He married a woman he barely knew in basic training and the two can barely stand each other now that the war is over. Al turns to the bottle to deal with the stress of his home life and his job – where the bank he works for is trying to skate the requirements of the GI bill and not give loans to some of Al’s fellow servicemen. And Homer is faced with the stares and unease of his family and friends as they try to cope with his handicap.

                As noted, the movie’s director – William Wyler – does an excellent job with subtlety and uses non-spoken moments to powerful effect. There’s a tremendous scene early on where Homer returns home. As he waves goodbye to Al and Fred, his jack sleeve slips down, fully revealing his hooks for the first time. His family stares in bewilderment and then Homer’s mother slowly starts to cry. Nothing is said, nor needs to be said. The effect on every person in the scene is evident just from the shot.

The powerful bedroom scene where Harold finally fully exposes his handicap to girlfriend Wilma.

                Homer Parrish is the best and most interesting part of the movie. Played by an actual World War II veteran and amputee, Harold Russell gives Homer dignity. Although he sometimes falls prey to self-pity, Homer is a very likable guy who really tries to see the best in all situations. His story is sometimes given short shrift to Al and Fred’s family dramas and when he’s not in the movie, I kept wishing he’d show up more. Towards the end of the film, he finally confronts his longtime girlfriend, Wilma. He takes her up to his room to show her how his hooks really work and how helpless he is without them (it’s for the audience’s benefit too – we’d never seen Homer without his hooks before this scene). When Wilma bravely helps him undress, it’s a very powerful and fulfilling scene.

The movie sometimes falls prey to soap opera plots – there’s a very drawn out romantic subplot between Fred and Al’s daughter –  but ultimately this movie is very moving and I felt pretty realistic in handling the issues of veterans.

Trivia: Harold Russell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but the academy was worried the unknown actor would not win. Not wanting to send an amputee home empty-handed (no pun intended), Russell was given a Special Oscar “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance.” However the Academy misjudged one of the most powerful forces in Oscar voting – the sympathy vote – and Russell won the competitive award as well, making him the only person to win two Oscars for the same performance.

Fun Fact: The trailer for The Best Years of Our Lives actually promotes it as “THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED.” While it’s certainly a good movie, this might be taking things a bit too far.

1945: The Lost Weekend

“Once I even got myself a gun and some bullets. I was going to do it on my 30^th birthday. Here are the bullets. The gun went for three quarts of whiskey.” – Don Birnam (Ray Milland), explaining why he’s still talking, The Lost Weekend.

Although not as crazy as Cimarron, this is still a pretty wild poster. The fog is in his mind, you see, because of the demon gin.

With World War II finally over (the 1945 Oscars were voted on and awarded in 1946, as you may recall), the Academy Awards turned their attention to “issue” movies,  giving the next three Best Picture Awards to films that dealt with a particular social ill or concern. First up was The Lost Weekend, which dealt with the rather low hanging fruit of alcoholism. Fortunately, the movie is more of a character study of an alcoholic than a Lifetime Channel-esque cautionary tale of the dangers of alcohol, although it does tend to wander into preachy territory from time-to-time.

The Lost Weekend begins with a shot of a bottle of booze hanging out of a window, carefully hidden from the observers inside. We soon learn the bottle belongs to Don Birnam (Ray Milland), a pathetic alcoholic. Don is being taken by his brother Wick (Phillip Terry) to dry out over a long weekend, but Don is intent on sneaking the bottle along with him, somehow missing the point of the trip. Don is supported by a loving girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman), who wants only to help him. Don tricks Helen and Wick into leaving him alone before the trip then sneaks out to a local bar. Fed up, Wick leaves Don, causing the latter to go on a weekend-long bender, hence the film’s title.

Best Actor winner Ray Milland. Director Billy Wilder said before making the movie that whoever got the part would win the award.

 Don’s situation becomes increasingly dire and pathetic as the weekend progresses. He whines pitifully about how he met Helen (their coats were mixed up at a theater’s coat check and his coat had a bottle of sweet, sweet bourbon in its pocket), hits on a lonely hooker, tries to steal more booze money from a couple on a date, and resorts to selling his cherished typewriter (he is a long-blocked writer) to get more liquor money. Finally Don ends up in a sanitarium. Can he ever overcome his demons?

Like I said, The Lost Weekend is better-than-expected because it’s more than just a simple “alcohol corrupts innocent soul” type of picture. In fact, we never see Don not as an alcoholic, and the movie never really searches for a redeeming reason why Don did end up as an alcoholic. That said, Don is so unlikeable, both drunk or sober – he tends to make pompous speeches sprinkled with Shakespeare quotes when he’s not wallowing in self-pity – that it’s hard to root for him to ever recover. When he is stymied by the pawn shops being closed for Yom Kippur, he’s so pathetic I nearly laughed. I also enjoyed the surly bartender who suggests on more than one occasion that Don kill himself, which was probably not the story’s intention (the bartender eventually makes up for being a dick).

The great lamp scene

The movie is perhaps most notable for being directed by famed director Billy Wilder, who helmed such classics as Double Indemnity and Some Like It Hot. Wilder, a two-time winner (The Apartment), continued the long-standing Oscar tradition of honoring directors for films that are not their best or most well remembered work (i.e. Hitchcock’s Rebecca instead of Vertigo or Psycho or Martin Scorsese for The Departed instead of Goodfellas or Raging Bull). Wilder infuses the movie with a lot of noir-style touches, like a great scene where Don frantically searches for a missing bottle of booze. The bottle is hidden in a lamp and its shadow becomes apparent to the audience, but not Don, when he turns the light on. The Lost Weekend was also one of the originators of the shot where a character walks down the street past an array of disappointing signs (in this case notification that all the pawn shops are closed), becoming more distraught and disheveled as he walks. It’s a pretty famous trope these days, although I don’t think a lot of people realize where it comes from.

However, some of the direction is borderline hokey by today’s standards. At one point, Wilder shoots a crazy nose-dive zoom-in into a full shot glass while ominous music plays in the background. Wilder also heavily uses a Theremin, the sort of waily string instruments that would become clichéd in cheesy sci-fi flicks of the 50s and unfortunately makes today’s viewer think of those movies when we’re supposed to be focused on Don’s descent.

The Lost Weekend isn’t as ridiculous as many of the cautionary movies of the late 30s like Reefer Madness and truly strives – while not always succeeding – to be an adult exploration of an alcoholic’s life.   

1944: Going My Way

“Schmaltz isn’t selling this season,” – Father O’Malley (Bing Crosby), Going My Way.

The poster is kind of misleading, as the lady featured on par with Bing Crosby had a relatively minor part, and despite the title, there’s no literally hitch hiking involved.

Going My Way is a sort of bland, gentle movie about the virtues of America that made it pretty obvious Oscar bait, especially for its time. Made deep in the heart of World War II (although the movie makes just one mention of the war), the clear idea of the movie is to show the U.S. as filled with small town virtues (even in New York City!) and to trumpet the strength and passion of the youth of the country and the tenacity of every good thinking American to overcome hardship.

Which isn’t to say Going My Way is all sunshine and chocolate. The movie starts with Father Chuck O’Malley (Bing Crosby) beginning a new assignment as the assistant at St. Dominic’s Parish, under the exceedingly crusty Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald). Fitzgibbon, who literally built St. Dominic, is old and set in his ways. As a result, Fitzgibbon has lost touch with the congregation he is supposed to attend and St. Dominic’s is in perilous position to be possessed by the bank (Bankers had retained their roles as easy villains, stemming from the Great Depression). O’Malley favors  a softer touch than Fitzgibbon’s fire and brimstone rhetoric. When a young runaway, Carol, is brought to the church, O’Malley tries to win her over with a singing lesson before Fitzgerald chases her off. O’Malley starts a boys’ choir to keep the neighborhood ruffians from stealing turkeys (it’s a simpler time). Fitzgibbon slowly starts to see O’Malley’s way of thinking as beneficial to the church. But can they save the church from financial ruin?

Going My Way has a certain charm about its sweetness. I think the movie’s too long, especially an unnecessary final twist where the church burns down and Fitzgibbon’s plans to rebuild (I guess this was to exemplify America’s can-do spirit in the face of setbacks). The film is sort of a musical, in that O’Malley – who is played by a beloved crooner, after all – routinely sings at pianos, but most of those instances, like when he gives Carol or the choir a lesson, bring the movie to a halt and feel really unnecessary.

I was legitimately surprised to find a still from the checkers scene on-line.

But there are other parts I found pretty interesting. The actors have a very naturalistic way of talking, often smirking and talking over each other, like real people do. Fitzgerald and Crosby have terrific chemistry together. In one scene, O’Malley beats Fitzgibbon in a game of checkers and Fitzgibbon just slowly slumps his head in defeat in a manner that’s really funny without being over-the-top.

A lot of the characters are also funny, although mostly unintentionally. The leader of the teenage ruffians, Tony Scaponi (already a funny name), talks like the ULTIMATE New Jersey caricature, pluralizing essentially every word out of his mouth (“Youse guys better be ready to sings real goods, ya hear?”) Also, there is a bonkers scene where he coerces one of the boys to sing with the choir by slapping him upwards of 15 times in short bursts of three to four a piece.

It is a catchy song.

The climatic singing of “Would You Like to Swing on a Star” also deserves mention for its awkwardness. Basically the boys are gathered around a piano with some adults. The adults all stand stiffly around the piano and occasionally the camera will zoom in one on of them as he or she stands there with a fake smile, unsure of what to do or how to act. It’s just bizarre.

I would also like to address the idea of censorship in these early movies. Film historians make a lot out of the Hayes Code, a 30s crackdown on immorality in cinema that neutered storytelling. However, a lot of these early Oscar movies still have a lot of morally questionable activities in them. For instance, Carol, the runaway, takes up with the banker’s son and is pretty clearly living in sin with him, although the actual particulars of their relationship are danced around. Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca, Rebecca in Rebecca, Joan Crawford in Grand Hotel ­­­­– all these movies have some pretty illicit happenings, even if they aren’t made especially explicit.

I have made a good deal of fun of Going My Way but it actually kind of grew on me. Like I said, it’s sort of bland and sappy, but Crosby and Fitzgerald (who both won Oscars for the movie), have real charisma together. The movie has a lot of laughs – some intentional, some not – and really isn’t as dull as some of the other “small town charm” films of the era like How Green Was My Valley. It’s not that there weren’t dark movies being made during the war – 1944 also saw the release of the noir classic Double Indemnity, which is about a woman who uses a man to murder her husband for the insurance payoff – but my guess is Hollywood was trying to showcase its positive side by rewarding the movie they thought best exemplified American values, certainly neither the first nor the last time the Oscars were about Hollywood trying to put on a certain façade regarding the industry.

Trivia: Because of the vagaries of early Oscar rules, Barry Fitzgerald was nominated for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for his role as Father Fitzgibbons, making him the only person to ever achieve such a feat. Oscar rules have such been rewritten that an actor can only be nominated for one of the two categories per film.

1943: Casablanca

Captain Renault: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?

Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.

Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.

Rick: I was misinformed.

– Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Captain Renault (Clause Rains) share a healthy quip, Casablanca

(For the record, the whole movie is quotable, I just wanted to go with something a little less well known than “Here’s looking at you kid.”)

What can be said about Casablanca? It is basically the perfect movie. It is filled with awesome people doing awesome things, coming up with pithy, perfect comebacks and rejoinders even in the midst of self-pity and drunken, self-loathing benders. A movie with characters so charismatic and engaging that we barely notice – if we notice at all – that the plot doesn’t actually make that much sense and turns on a totally ridiculous plot device. It is a story of love, sacrifice and redemption in a time of heroes.

At the height of World War II, Casablanca is a lawless no-man’s land populated by smugglers, thieves and sad escapees trying to get from Nazi Germany to a better life in America. The country is a quasi-neutral zone where refugees and criminals alike can escape. At the heart of the dangerous city is Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart in an iconic role) a cynical nightclub owner who proudly proclaims to “stick his neck out for nobody.” Bogart is a loner, but remains fiercely protective of his staff, notably piano player Sam and shares a witty repartee with the corrupt police Captain Renault (Clause Rains).

Rick comes into possession of Letters of Transit, documents that will allow the holders to leave Casablanca, no questions asked. At the same time, heroic Hungarian freedom fighter Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and his wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) come to Casablanca. Laszlo is fleeing from the Nazis and desperately needs the letters of transit to get to safety. But Blaine, who claims to not care about either side in the war, was once in love with Ilsa and in fact became the bitter broken man he is now because she left him without explanation.

One of the great cinema romances – Rick and Ilsa

Casablanca’s plot turns on Bogey learning how to care about something other than himself and finding the hero he had buried away in himself (he used to be a gun-runner for “losing efforts”). The movie’s grand climax – a scene so iconic basically every line in it could end up in Bartlett’s Quotations – brings everything to a head in grand fashion.

There is so much to love about Casablanca. Its dialogue – from oft-repeated phrases like “Here’s looking at you kid” to “In all the gin joints in all the world, she had to walk into mine” – crackles with a skillful turn of phrase rarely seen. And Bogart owns the role, bringing a witty charm to all his wise-cracks, but also finding the wounded heart beneath the bitter exterior. The scene where Rick finally turns a corner – helping a young couple cheat at roulette so they can buy passports – is as rousing as the film’s actual climax, not just because we feel good for the couple but we’re so happy Rick has proven not to be a louse.

Although from a certain perspective, the movie’s real romance is Rick and Captain Renault.

The movie is also very unusual. Nothing of note really happens – and the film’s main conflict isn’t established – until about 25 minutes – or nearly ¼ of the way – through the movie. But the movie is all about establishing scene and character, taking time to really lay out Rick’s world-weary, loner attitude. Rick’s Café is an amazing setting, basically the Star Wars cantina populated solely by humans.

Humphrey Bogart as Rick. That is one cool cat!

And then there are the letters of transit. The movie hinges on these fantastical documents that for some reason even the Nazis – not known for following international rights or procedures – cannot overrule of simply ignore. Thinking about these letters for very long shows how ridiculous they are but it doesn’t really matter in the end. The story is about character and the conflict is not really heroes vs. Nazis. It’s a love triangle and man’s ability to learn to find goodness in himself.

Roger Ebert said Casablanca was his favorite movie and it’s not hard to see why. Every time I watch, the characters continue to pop out of the screen to captivate the audience. It is basically the perfect movie.

Casablanca Trivia: The lore surrounding Casablanca could fill several blog entries in its own right, but here’s a tidbit I like. The movie’s climatic scene takes place at an airport, but because of World War II, the movie studio couldn’t get an airplane. Thus they made a mini-scale model and surrounded it with little people to make the plane appear full size.

1941: How Green Was My Valley

“Memory. Strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago of men and women long since dead,” – Huw Morgan waxing poetic, How Green Was My Valley.

It Really Was Quite Green

1941’s Best Picture, How Green Was My Valley, is more commonly known as “that fucking movie that beat Citizen Kane.”  While bitching about who won the Oscar is a sport as old as the awards themselves, to cinephiles, the defeat of Citizen Kane is particularly hard to stomach. Nevertheless, I entered my first viewing of Valley hoping to find some underappreciated masterpiece, a movie that turned out to be something really special in its own right. Alas, this was not the case.

While not as outright terrible as Cavalcade, Valley is still very sugary and very, very dull. It’s another movie about the onslaught of modern times, but takes a more microeconomic approach to its story. That’s is a hoity toity way of saying that instead of focusing on the big improvements in terms of roads, law and the economy (like in Cimarron, another Best Picture about modernity), this movie looks at the price paid by blue collar laborers in the light of such earth-shaking changes (and a little bit to the price paid by the Earth itself).

The movie starts in modern times (for 1941), where the titular Welsh Valley and its scenic village have been ravaged by years of over-mining and general industrial neglect. As the narrator packs his belongings to leave, he thinks back to his time as a child, when the Valley was green (allegedly – the film is in black and white) and the inhabitants’ lungs weren’t coated black with coal dust.

Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall), long before becoming an ape man.

Huw (Roddy McDowall – more famous from the original Planet of the Apes) (get ready for lots of “w’s”, “f’s that sound like d’s and other crazy spellings – we’re in Wales) is the youngest of the many Morgan children (he was apparently a late-in-life baby because his brothers all seem to be about 10-15 years older than him). Gwyllim Morgan, Huw’s father (Best Supporting Actor Donald Crisp), is a leader in town and very much a traditionalist. Gwyllim resists his sons’ call to unionize when the coal mine owners start slashing wages, leading striking miners to ostracize him. When Huw’s mother tries to stand up for her husband at a secret town meeting, she and 10-year-old Huw fall in an icy creek. Surprisingly, neither die, as is usually the case in turn of these century stories, but Huw’s legs apparently freeze and take a year to thaw out (really, he is bed-bound for a year and that is the town doctor’s explanation). Huw is encouraged in recovery by the kindly and liberal-leaning pastor, Mr. Gruffydd, who has a thing for the Morgan’s sole daughter, Angharad, even though she is engaged to the mine owner’s wealthy son.

Oh the crushing weight of these modern times!

Slowly, the times and the increasing cruelty of mine life tear the family apart. Various Morgan brothers can’t find work and are forced to leave Wales. One of the sons, Iver, is killed in a mining accident. Angharad and Gruffydd’s relationship becomes a scandal amongst the town. Huw – recovered from his ice diving – excels at school but opts to start working in the mine to impress Iver’s widow, who he is in love with despite an apparent 15-year-age difference. Finally, Gwyllim himself is killed in a cave-in, although adult Huw notes his father will always live on in memory.

The thing that bugged me most about How Green Was My Valley was the assorted loose ends in the film. Angharad and Gruffydd’s relationship is left in the air. Huw’s one-sided romance with Ivar’s widow is similarly never resolved. Mr. Morgan dies and boom – we’re out. While things in the Valley appear headed down hill (no pun intended), we’re never told exactly why Huw decided to leave or why it took decades after the events portrayed in the movie for him to decide to go. And how can one forget the endless Welsh singing – the movie employs an actual Welsh choir who sings – in Welsh – all the time.

How Green Was My Valley is unfortunately saddled with many of the negative “Oscar bait” qualities that cause some people to find the awards loathsome: main characters die in dramatic fashion, there’s loads of social issues addressed in somewhat simplistic tones (the plight of mine workers and in a more general sense the plight of all workers), and an overall schmaltzy feeling permeates the film.  And there’s a lot of Welsh singing to accompany it all.