Closing out the '90s

The last Oscar winner of the '90s (in the usual categories) that I had not yet seen was Howard's End, winner of the 1993 Oscars for Best Actress (Emma Thompson) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala). The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (James Ivory), and Best Supporting Actress (Vanessa Redgrave).

In early 1900s London, Margaret Schlegel (Thompson) befriends Ruth Wilcox (Redgrave), a meek older woman, in ill health, who has been left behind by her family while they enjoy vacation activities that are too strenuous for her. The two had been briefly acquainted before, and one of Wilcox's sons had, the year before, been involved in a romantic relationship with Schlegel's sister, Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), which had ended badly. Over the course of their budding friendship, Margaret mentions to Ruth that she will soon be losing her lifelong home. Ruth adds an informal addition to her will, stating her intention that Margaret should be given the family estate, Howard's End. The Wilcoxes agree that this addition was the product of an infirm mind, and that it would be best for the family to simply burn it and keep the house. Afterward, however, Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins), Ruth's husband, falls in love with Margaret, and tries to both make up for and keep hidden his act of duplicity.

And that was the stripped down, simplified plot summary. There were several other subplots that I didn't mention, most of which are equally convoluted. There is a lot going on in this film, probably too much for the already bloated 2 hour 15 minute running time. The story, which I suppose is intended to be a satire of the stuffy British aristocracy, is itself too stuffy and aristocratic to be enjoyed by most viewers. Aside from Ruth, who dies fairly early in the film, it is rather difficult for the viewer to find any characters to identify with, as their motivations are either too selfish and snobbish, or too self-righteously charitable, to be supported. Thompson's character sets herself up to be the only one to identify with, headstrong enough to stay true to her beliefs, but charitable enough to have beliefs worth staying true to... until Henry proposes marriage, and she suddenly abandons all of her principles out of a desperate wish to be a proper wife. I've seen other films like this before - stuffy British period pieces whose main goal seems to be baiting as many Oscar nominations as possible. (See the following year's follow-up, The Remains of the Day, which reunited the writer, director, producer, and two stars of this film) But most of the others that I have seen do at least have something to say, a story that is at least approachable, if not completely absorbing to me. This film didn't really have any of that - it came across to me as nothing more than Oscar-bait.

Movie trivia question: This film marks the only time in Oscar history that an actor was nominated for more than one award posthumously (after he died, he was nominated for Oscars for 2 films, in 2 consecutive years).

One away...

Today's entry puts me one movie away from having seen every Oscar winner (in the categories I write about) of the 1990s! The film is City Slickers, winner of the 1992 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Jack Palance).

Mitch (Billy Crystal) is a radio station advertising salesman in the midst of a mid-life crisis, searching for the meaning or purpose of his life. As a birthday present to him, his two buddies - Phil (Daniel Stern), a newly unemployed and divorcing loser, and Ed (Bruno Kirby), a perpetual adventure-seeker with commitment phobia - take him on a two-week vacation to participate in a cattle drive. Thrown in with a cast of wacky characters and a trail boss (Palance) whose gruff exterior hides a soul full of wisdom, the trio experience zany adventures and hardships, while learning the answers to their respective problems.

The film is entirely a Billy Crystal vehicle, with every scene being a set-up for Crystal to get the punchline, or the drama, as the case may be. It's light-hearted and fun, enjoyable, but shallow. The main characters seem to only be able to relate to each other, or to life itself, through the use of discussions about baseball. They find the answers to all of their problems in the span of their two week vacation, with all of their problems cleared up by the time they get home. Palance was entertaining, but the Oscar here seems to be more an apology for not rewarding him when he was nominated for a similar character in Shane than it was earned on the strength of this performance. City Slickers was an enjoyable way of killing a couple of hours, but not much more than that.

Look for Jake Gyllenhall as Crystal's son, complete with embarrassing early-'90s hair and clothes!

Movie trivia question: One more movie for me to close out the '90s... which film will it be?

Closing out the '80s

It's official! I have now seen every Oscar winner (in the categories that I blog about) of the 1980s! The last one that I had to see to close out the decade was Melvin And Howard, winner of the 1982 Oscars for Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen) and Best Original Screenplay (Bo Goldman). It was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards).

Melvin and Howard is the story of Melvin (Paul Le Mat - the drag racer from American Graffiti), a "lovable" loser who, in the first few minutes of the film, picks up a hobo-like old man (Robards) while driving through the desert toward Las Vegas. The man claims to be eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, though upon reaching Vegas he asks Melvin for his spare change. Melvin drifts through life for the next few years, constantly trying to regain the affections of his on-again-off-again wife (Steenburgen), only to screw it up again by trying to live beyond his means. She leaves him for good when, after she wins enough money on a game show for them to finally break even on the bills, he goes out and buys a Cadillac and a boat. After a few years have passed, Melvin sees on the news that Howard Hughes has died, and a mysterious man drops off what he claims to be Hughes's will at the gas station where Melvin works. Melvin inherits $185 million, but becomes a national laughing stock as everybody accuses him of forging the document.

This was one of the earlier films by Jonathan Demme, who went on to direct, among others, Oscar winners The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. This was not, in my opinion, anywhere near the quality of the later films. The story drifts as aimlessly as its main character does. The characters are all, across the board, too stupid to be believed in or cared about. Melvin is apparently supposed to be a lovable loser, but his misfortune is all brought on by his own foolish behavior, much of which involves buying himself things he can't afford and doesn't need, thereby making himself unable to provide for his family. His predicaments, in a film that was supposed to be a light-hearted comedy, were more sad than funny - or would have been had I been able to bring myself to care.

Movie trivia question: I may as well go for another streak. What 2 films are the last ones that I need to see in order to close out the '90s?

My 40 year Best Picture winner streak

With today's addition, I have now seen every Best Picture winner from the present back through 1970! (It would go further than that, but the 1969 Best Picture never wants to work for me on Netflix Instant Viewer.) The last film that I needed to see in order to complete that streak was 2003's Best Picture, Chicago. The film also won Best Supporting Actress (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and was nominated for Best Director (Rob Marshall), Best Actress (Renee Zellweger), Best Supporting Actor (John C Reilly), Best Supporting Actress (Queen Latifah), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Bill Condon).

In 1920's Chicago, Roxie Hart (Zellweger), a former chorus girl now married to boring schlub Amos(Reilly), would give anything to be up on stage, the center of attention. When the guy she has been having an affair with reveals that he doesn't actually have any connections at the music hall where they met (on the night that singer Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) was arrested there for murdering her husband and sister), Roxie flies into a rage and shoots him. She goes to the same jail as Kelly, where, for a price, guard Mama Morton (Latifah) puts her in touch with shady lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere). Flynn takes Hart's case and makes her a media sensation, giving her the fame that she always wanted, and that she now needs in order to get away with murder.

I was kind of dreading watching this one. There was a reason that it was the only Best Picture in 40 years that I hadn't seen yet. Imagine my surprise when I found that I actually quite enjoyed it! It turns out that I am actually a person who enjoys musicals from time to time. The story is entertaining, and timely - a story about people who can't tell the difference between fame and infamy. The characters are engaging and believable - well, as believable as characters who spontaneously break into choreographed song-and-dance numbers can be. And the songs themselves are catchy, entertaining, and visually very inventive. John C Reilly is heartbreaking in "Mr Cellophane," Gere is a scene-stealer in a press conference number in which he uses Zellweger as a ventriloquist's dummy, and more so in his courtroom tap dance number. Zellweger manages to be both sympathy-inducing and coldly manipulative, and is equally entertaining in either mode. Zeta-Jones is as good here as I have ever seen her, although I think Latifah deserved the Oscar more. Chicago far exceeded my expectations, and it had me entertained and laughing throughout.

Movie trivia question: What was the first film to win an Oscar for a non-English-language performance?

Hitchcock's Best Picture

According to Oscar, anyway. Though probably the most famous director in the history of film, Alfred Hitchcock, only directed one movie which won Best Picture. That film was Rebecca. It was also nominated for Best Director, Best Actor (Laurence Olivier), Best Actress (Joan Fontaine), Best Supporting Actress (Judith Anderson), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Sherwood), although it did not win any of those awards.

A young - and nameless - woman (Fontaine), working as a paid traveling companion to a wealthy but obnoxious old woman, meets widowed millionaire Maxim de Winter (Olivier). The two have a whirlwind two week romance, leading to de Winter asking the young lady to marry him in order to avoid losing her when her employer decides to travel elsewhere. The young lady is at first thrilled to accept his proposal, but begins to have her doubts when she realizes that she does not fit in at his elegant mansion, trying to engage with his friends and family and to maintain the house and its staff. Her doubts are intensified by Maxim's occasional episodes of sudden, uncontrollable rage, by the ever-present memories of his first wife, Rebecca, and by the intense hatred she gets from Mrs Danvers (Anderson), the main servant of the house, who was intensely dedicated to the first Mrs de Winter.

This is not a typical Hitchcock film. The light, yet macabre, sense of humor that is such a trademark of his style is almost entirely abandoned here in favor of a much darker, more serious tone. The change is not unwelcome, though, and it clearly worked for him as far as Oscar was concerned. The characters are much more developed than in most of Hitchcock's work - in many of his films, the characters are just there for the story to happen to, but here they are rich and realistic. The viewer can identify with and care about them, as opposed to just watching them on the screen. I mean, it's hard not to identify with the second Mrs. de Winter in her fear and discomfort at trying to fit into this new situation that bears no resemblance to the rest of her life leading up to it, or with Maxim once the viewer discovers the reason behind his strange behavior - a plot twist that I will not reveal here.

Rebecca is probably the least Hitchcockian of Hitchcock's films, and probably not the one I would choose to introduce a newcomer to Hitchcock's work, or to satisfy a craving to watch something Hitchcock. It is, however, a compelling and rewarding film, definitely worth watching.

Movie trivia question: Another unfair on, but I didn't hear any complaints last time. This film, for which I am currently being waitlisted on Netflix, is the only Oscar winner of the 1980s (for the 8 categories that I concern myself with here) that I have not yet seen. I'm about to close out a decade!

Shared director Oscar

The first film for which two directors shared a Best Director Oscar was West Side Story. Jerome Robbins directed the heavily choreographed dance and fight scenes, while Robert Wise did the non-musical scenes. The film also won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris), and Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno), and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Lehman).

Teenagers Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) meet at a dance and fall in love at first sight. Problem is, Tony's best friend, Riff (Russ Tamblyn), is the leader of the street gang The Jets, and Maria's brother, Bernardo (Chakiris), is the leader of rival street gang The Sharks. Adding to the difficulty, Tony is white and Maria is Puerto Rican, and they live in a time of racial intolerance. Their troubles intensify when the gang rivalry escalates into a deadly brawl.

Romeo and Juliet, retold as a feud between New York City street gangs. In the form of a highly choreographed musical, where dances look like brawls, and brawls look like dancing. Sounds like kind of a train wreck, right? But consider the time it was filmed, and the subject matter. Shot in 1961, in the middle of the civil rights movement, the film focuses on the rivalry between the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. The love story is actually the weakest part of the film - Beymer doesn't have much going in terms of personality, and Wood is about as Puerto Rican as apple pie. The film wisely makes their story more of a subplot, and pays more attention to the gang rivalry, through which it has a lot to say about race relations and about the plight of the urban working-class teenager. If you are in the right mood, and if you can get past the fact that these supposedly tough street gangs are introduced via dancing, then you will find a movie that is surprisingly entertaining, funny, meaningful, and contemporary.

Movie trivia question: Of the past 40 years, what is the only Best Picture winner that I have not yet seen? Admittedly, not a fair question, but it's not like the guesses have been pouring in from my readers on my previous questions.

Alec Guinness' first nomination

This one took me a while to get to. Sorry for the delay. I had the movie at the top of my Netflix queue, but it suddenly became unavailable. I'm sure, faithful readers, that you have all been breathless with antici...


pation!

Alec Guinness' early career was dominated by a series of successful comedies made by a little British studio, Ealing. Guinness was prominently featured in most, if not all, of these comedies, and was even given writing credit on a few of them. One such film got Guinness his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The film was The Lavender Hill Mob. Though Guinness lost, the film won that year's Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (T E B Clarke).

Guinness plays Henry Holland, a meek, fastidious, bureaucratic man who has spent 20 years working at a bank, in charge of security in the delivery of gold bullion to the bank. Holland is known for being a stickler for detail, kept on the job for his impeccable honesty, but never moved up because of his lack of imagination or ambition. He is also a man with a single goal for himself - to steal a load of the bullion that he has been protecting. Twenty years spent on the job, in the name of building an unimpeachable reputation for himself, and in searching for the perfect opportunity to steal the gold - gold which will be worthless to him without the perfect plan to smuggle it out of the country and exchange it for cash.

This is, in the British style, an exceedingly dry comedy. It has more of a general sense of amusement than a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, though it does have a few of those as well. Guinness is spectacularly subtle as a man seeking revenge of sorts for spending his entire career being overlooked, while at the same time being careful to act in precisely the way that he would need to act in order to continue being overlooked. The film is a bit light in terms of substance and story, but it is also light in terms of mood, so it is enjoyable even if it doesn't have much to say.

Don't blink during the opening scene, or you'll miss a small role by Audrey Hepburn, just one year before her breakthrough, Oscar-winning role in Roman Holiday!

Movie trivia question: In Oscar's first year, there were actually two films which won awards equivalent to Best Picture - one was for the artistic quality of the story, and the other was for the technical accomplishment of making the film. What were the two Best Pictures of Oscar's first year?

Bogart's only Oscar

Though a Hollywood legend with countless unforgettable films in his filmography, Humphrey Bogart was not often honored by Oscar - three nominations in his career, only one of which got him a win (though one of those losses is one of the greatest mistakes Oscar ever made). The film that got him the gold was The African Queen. The film was also nominated for Best Director (John Huston), Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Rose Sayer (Hepburn) is a prudish British missionary, helping her brother bring God to the Congolese natives. Their only contact with the outside world is Charlie Allnut (Bogart), the captain (and entire crew) of the small boat that brings their supplies and mail. Shortly after Allnut informs them of the start of World War II, German soldiers show up, kill the brother, and burn the mission. Allnut takes Rose onto his ship, and she convinces him to help her sink the German boat that is holding a key position, blocking much of the water travel through central Africa.

This must have been a rather surprising role for Bogart to have taken at the time. It is one of the least glamorous roles he has ever played, a dirty, drunken bum, with little courage and less education, who has made a hermit of himself, drifting through the rivers of Africa so he won't have to try to make anything of himself. A scene in which Allnut gets drunk, crying and yelling in frustration that the woman he has taken into his boat out of pity is forcing him to take it down a difficult river and use it as a makeshift torpedo - a scene which could easily have been botched in the hands of a less capable actor - turns out to be one of the best scenes in the film, one which shows a vulnerability and cowardice not often seen from an actor known for playing tough guys. Hepburn is also astounding in this film, as her character inspires Bogart's to greatness while she herself learns a much-needed bit about humility. The story is thrilling, leading the characters through one challenge after another without ever seeming contrived or foolish. And even more interesting than the film itself is the story of its filming, done on location in Africa, which had even more adventures in store for the cast and crew than the story had for its characters.

Movie trivia question: The entire cast of this film got Oscar nominations for their performances, playing two married couples... both wives won, both husbands lost.

Inspirational film

Topkapi, a 1964 film about a jewel heist, was the inspiration for both the TV series Mission Impossible, and for an actual jewel heist, very similar to the one that takes place in the film, which occurred a few weeks after the film's release. The film won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Peter Ustinov, who had won the same award four years earlier for the movie Spartacus). It got no other nominations.

Master thief Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) sets her sights on a jewel-encrusted dagger. With the help of former lover and sometime partner in crime Walter Harper (Maximillian Schell), she assembles a crew of amateurs - no criminal record, so less chance of getting them caught - to steal it from the heavily guarded Turkish museum in which it resides. The pair recruit small-time grifter Arthur Simpson (Ustinov) to unknowingly smuggle the weapons they need for the heist from Greece into Turkey. Simpson is caught by Turkish officers and recruited to help them determine the thieves' plans, and is also recruited by the thieves to take a more active role in the robbery than they had originally planned.

Ustinov here gives probably the best performance in a bad film that I have ever seen. The film is not particularly good at all. The keys to a good heist film are an interesting heist and a build-up to the heist that shows the assembly of the team, the coming together of the plan, and hints at the cleverness of the heist to come. This film has none of these elements. For the assembly of the team, the viewer is told that they are assembling a team of amateurs, and then the team is together, with nothing to show how team members were selected or why. For the coming together of the plan, the viewer is shown the object that will be stolen, and one or two of the details of the plan are glossed over, but for the most part, the viewer is left in the dark about the plan until the robbery is actually happening. In fact, not much is accomplished in the first three-quarters of the film. The heist itself is almost laughably simple, so ridiculously low-key that it could only be the easiest part of the plan in any other heist film I have ever seen. On top of that, the film is filled with visual styles that are hopelessly dated, and with mediocre performances that don't convey even a hint of what needs to come across in order for the audience to care what happens to the characters.

And then there is Peter Ustinov. In the midst of this film that I couldn't care less about otherwise, Ustinov crafts a character who is believable, compelling, and even heartbreaking at times. As bad as the film was other than his performance, I still found it worth watching, even if it was only to see one scene, the one in which Simpson is caught smuggling the weapons into Turkey, accused of being part of a terrorist plot, and his only defense is that he couldn't be a terrorist because even his own father could see that he would never be or do anything important. Surrounded by mediocrity, Ustinov delivers a performance without a single false note, a performance that is far and away superior to the film that encompasses it. Ustinov richly deserved the Oscar that he got here, though I have to wonder, if he was a supporting actor in this film, who was supposed to be the lead.

Movie trivia question: Alfred Hitchcock, though widely considered to be one of the greatest directors of all time, only ever directed one film that won a Best Picture Oscar. What was the winner?

Longest gap between nominations

Henry Fonda received his first Best Actor nomination in 1941, for his performance in The Grapes of Wrath. Despite his legendary acting career, he was not nominated again until his Oscar win in 1982 for On Golden Pond. At 41 years, Fonda holds the dubious honor of having the record for longest gap between Oscar nominations. In addition to Fonda's nomination, The Grapes of Wrath won Oscars for Best Director (John Ford) and Best Supporting Actress (Jane Darwell), and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nunnally Johnson).

Tom Joad (Fonda) is released from prison after 4 years to find that his sharecropping family has been pushed off of the land that they had been working for several years, victims of the Dust Bowl. He catches up with them just before they get pushed off of another plot of land, just before they leave Oklahoma for California and the promise of steady work and decent wages. The family faces a long, perilous journey, a dwindling supply of money, and death on their way across country. They arrive to find a lack of jobs, but a steady supply of injustice, prejudice, hostility, and more death.

The Joads' story is probably the definitive cinematic depiction of the Great Depression, produced at a time when Hollywood was still, for the most part, ignoring the event. The film was toned down quite a bit from the book, both for political reasons (the book's highly socialist viewpoint was not popular among the studio's financial backers) and for censorship code reasons (several of the events described in the book were deemed too shocking to be put in the film). Yet the film still manages to be powerful and intense, to not feel watered down. John Ford's direction, which earned him the second of his four Oscars, is masterful. His use of light and shadows, of sets and locations, does as much to tell the story as the performances that he gets from his cast.

Which, of course, is not to take anything away from the cast. Fonda delivers his performance with a quiet intensity throughout, making the audience accept him as a regular guy, much like themselves, even as he goes through events that few people could truly identify with, even after the first thing that the audience learns about him is that he was just released from prison for killing a man in a bar fight. Jane Darwell, winning the Oscar for her portrayal of Ma Joad, gives a mostly heartfelt performance, though she does tend to use an overly melodramatic tone of voice and expression in some of her key scenes. Not nominated, but worthy of recognition, is John Carradine in the role of Casy, a former preacher who becomes an outcast after losing his faith, but then finds redemption as he takes up the cause of the working poor.

Movie trivia question: This film was the first of only two films in Oscar history to have its Best Director win be shared by two directors.

Twelve O'Clock High

I couldn't find a good trivia question to preface this one. Winner of the 1950 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Dean Jagger), it was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor (Gregory Peck).

In the midst of World War II, the American war effort seems to be falling apart. Key to American success is a series of daytime bombing runs, a highly dangerous prospect for the pilots involved. Morale is down, and so is discipline. As a result, casualties and losses are up. Enter General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck), a hard-nosed, heartless flight commander who expects more from his soldiers than they think they are capable of. Savage sets out to revitalize the war effort, not by easing up on the men and allowing them to rest and recover, but by being even more strict. Regulations are upheld to the letter, to the extent that men are demoted for wearing their uniforms wrong. The flyers are retrained on the basics, relearning how to properly fly in formation. They are told to think of themselves as already dead, in order to think about their duties rather than their families or the idea that they might get home again. He even renames one of his bombers The Leper Colony, placing the worst of the worst in his group in that plane as punishment/incentive to improve. The pilots initially all request transfers, and Savage meets with resistance from above, but eventually the men begin to take pride in themselves and their effort again.

Peck excels in this role, tough enough to be believed as somebody capable of turning his soldiers around and enforcing discipline, but betraying just enough humanity in his private moments to keep the audience from feeling that he is just a heartless robot. Though he played a part in removing his predecessor from duty for becoming too close to his men to be an effective leader, Savage eventually finds himself in the same position, struggling to send men to possible death because he knows them too well, taking too many missions himself to keep from having to send others on them.

Jagger won his Oscar playing Harvey Stovall, Savage's right-hand man, a veteran of World War I now confined to a desk. I'm not really sure why he won the award here. He was good, but not particularly memorable, not a stand-out role. I don't mean to take anything away from Jagger, or to suggest that he didn't give a capable performance, but even knowing his character's name and that he won the Oscar, it took me well over halfway into the movie before I could even identify which one he was, and, having just finished watching the film, I am already hard-pressed to remember anything that he actually did in it.

Movie trivia question: This Oscar-winning heist film was the inspiration for the TV show Mission Impossible... and for a real-life jewelry heist which occurred a few weeks after the film was released.

The Philadelphia Story

I watched this one the other night with my fiancee, so I decided to review it, despite my lack of asking a trivia question about it first. The Philadelphia Story won Oscars in 1941 for Best Actor (James Stewart, his only Oscar win - so there's your trivia for this one) and Best Adapted Screenplay (David Ogden Stewart - no relation, as far as I know). The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (George Cukor), Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn), and Best Supporting Actress (Ruth Hussey).

The film tells the story of Tracy Lord, a wealthy Philadelphia socialite who, having divorced her first husband, C. K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), 2 years before, is now planning to remarry to rags-to-riches former coal-miner George Kittredge (John Howard). Haven, a now recovering alcoholic hoping to stop the wedding from happening, uses Lord's father's indiscretion to blackmail the family into letting a pair of society-page reporters, Macauley Connor (James Stewart) and Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) stay at the mansion for the wedding weekend. Slapstick antics and witty barbs ensue, as Lord must learn to crack through her porcelain facade and accept human reality, rather than constantly expecting herself and others to live up to her unattainable standards of perfection.

Witty, heartfelt, and entertaining, this film manages an impressive feat of having almost all of its major cast get nominated for Oscars - the exceptions being Cary Grant (who, though highly entertaining, is honestly just playing the role of Cary Grant here) and John Howard (who has a rather thankless role here, existing more for the advancement of the story than to be a character himself). Though light enough to be funny and fun to watch, The Philadelphia Story has something to say about class relations, and about millionaire liberals. But most of all, it's just a fun, slapstick romantic comedy.

Movie trivia question: Though he has one win and one nomination for Best Director Oscars, acting legend Robert Redford has only once been nominated for Best Actor. For what film did he receive his acting nomination?

Award agreement

The first performance to win both an Oscar and an Independent Spirit Award was Geraldine Page's turn in the 1985 film The Trip To Bountiful. The film was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Horton Foote).

Page plays Mother Watts, an elderly woman living with her married son in Houston in the late 1940s. Her daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn), is a lazy shrew, with no ambitions beyond gossiping, stealing Mother Watts' pension check, and browbeating her husband into taking her for a night out that they can't afford. Her son, Ludie (John Heard), is too spineless to stop Jessie Mae from removing any joy from Mother's life. (The only thing Jessie Mae hates more than hearing Mother sing hymns when she is happy is seeing her pout when she is told to stop.) One day, Mother sees a rare moment of opportunity to break away from her demeaning, oppressive existence. She "steals" her pension check, and sets out to return to her hometown of Bountiful, hoping to stay ahead of her family and, eventually, the police.

Page was exceptional in her role. Mother Watts could easily have been a stereotype, the typical cranky old woman, had she not found just the right notes in her performance. Mother Watts is a sympathetic character - she feels she has outlived her usefulness and become a burden on her son, she longs to go home again, even though it is not the place that it once was, and she is constantly oppressed and disrespected by her daughter-in-law. But she is no angel, either - she is stubborn and hard-headed, she has a tendency to make herself a martyr, and, honestly, at least part of the reason that she sings those hymns is because she knows that it annoys Jessie Mae. She gets the viewer on her side, but without being too good to be believable. It is not surprising that she won the Oscar here. What is surprising is that John Heard, as Ludie, did not get a nomination for supporting actor. His scene where he confronts his mother near the end of the film is the emotional heart of the movie, and that scene alone should have gotten him in. Actually, it was a weak category that year (I mean, Don Ameche was funny in Cocoon, but was he really Oscar-worthy?), so that scene may have been enough for him to win.

Movie trivia question: What actor currently holds the record for the longest gap between Best Actor nominations? His first winning film will be reviewed here soon.

Beatty's debut

Film icon Warren Beatty got his acting debut in an Oscar-winning picture. The film was 1961's Splendor in the Grass, winner for Best Original Screenplay (William Inge) and nominated for Best Actress (Natalie Wood).

Beatty plays Bud Stamper, captain of the high school football team and son of a wealthy oilman. Wood plays Deanie Loomis, Stamper's girlfriend. Coming of age in 1920s Kansas, the two must balance their feelings for each other and their burgeoning sexuality against their families' expectations of them and the oppressive morality of their time and place. Class distinctions also come into play, as Loomis is from a less well-off family, and Stamper's father believes that she will drag Bud down. Though Mr. Stamper promises to send Stamper and Loomis to Europe as a honeymoon gift as long as Bud agrees to go to Yale before marrying her, it is clear that he hopes that Bud will find a more appropriate wife in the meantime. He even goes so far as to suggest that Bud find "another kind of girl" to satisfy his urges. Eventually, both Bud and Deanie crack under the pressures that are put on them, as Bud caves to his father's wishes, and Deanie has a nervous breakdown.

Beatty is very impressive in his debut performance, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that repressed, uptight Bud Stamper is so different from the womanizing playboy type that defined so much of his career. But the film really belongs to Natalie Wood. She is entirely convincing and heartbreaking as a young woman who, caught between her feelings and her desire to be a "good girl," between her love for her boyfriend and her wish to live up to the unfair expectations put on her by the society in which she lives, breaks under the pressure, and is then deprived even the "comfort" of madness, as her parents insist that nothing is wrong with her, even as they continue to insist that she is still their baby, their little girl.

Splendor in the Grass came at an interesting time for Hollywood. Its story of repressed sexuality and oppressive mores came at a time when Hollywood itself was just beginning the fight to break away from oppressive censorship, to begin to deal with sexuality and other adult themes in a more realistic manner. Films like this one broke new ground, made possible everything that was great about the Golden Age of Hollywood that took place in the 1970s.

Movie trivia question: What is the most recent G-rated movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture?

John Ford's last Oscar

John Ford, the most successful director to date in Oscar history, won his fourth and final Best Director Oscar for 1952's The Quiet Man. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Victor McLaglen), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Quiet Man tells the story of Sean Thornton (John Wayne), a "tourist" from Pittsburgh who returns to his childhood hometown of Inisfree, Ireland. He immediately makes an enemy of Will Danaher (McLaglen) by buying his childhood home, a parcel of land which Danaher was trying to buy in order to expend his estate. Just as quickly, he falls in love with Mary Kate (Maureen O'Hara)... Danaher's sister. Thornton wins Mary Kate's heart, and, with the help of the town priest and the town drunk, Will's permission to marry her. But Sean's mysterious past and a deception made against Will lead to conflict, and eventually to a confrontation between Sean and Will.

As great a movie star as John Wayne may have been, he has never struck me as a very good actor. What I mean is, like him or hate him, you have to admit that he didn't exactly disappear into his characters. Every role that John Wayne played was the role of John Wayne. As such, to me, Wayne felt miscast here, setting aside his cowboy and war hero personae to take on a romantic comedy. Picture Sleepless in Seattle starring Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of Tom Hanks. It doesn't really work for Wayne, in my opinion, but he is not so bad as to spoil the rest of the movie, either.

John Ford was also better known for his westerns, but stories of the Irish and English countryside did very well for him, too. Of his other Oscars, one was The Informer, the story of an outcast from the IRA, and another was How Green Was My Valley, the saga of a family of Welsh coalminers. His direction here is wonderful, even in spite of the miscast lead actor. The visuals are filled with beautiful backdrops of the Irish countryside, and the story is told with fleshed-out characters, and with a deft comedic touch.

Interestingly, Victor McLaglen, nominated here for Best Supporting Actor, won the Oscar for Best Actor for The Informer - the first film for which John Ford won Best Director.

Movie trivia question: Who was the first person to win both an Oscar and an Independent Spirit Award for the same performance?

Capra's Oscar spree

Yes, as Dorothy Gale guessed, Frank Capra's middle win of his 3 Best Director Oscars in 5 years, later remade as an Adam Sandler film, was Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. Capra's was the only win that the film got, but it was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Gary Cooper), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Riskin).

Mr. Deeds is a small-town guy, a greeting card poet and tuba player in the local band, who inherits a distant relative's $20million fortune. He is dragged away from town to New York City to go through the business of inheriting the money, whereupon he is immediately set upon by the vultures of society. Lawyers seeking power of attorney, "relatives" seeking their share of the fortune, reporters looking for the big scoop, the societal elite looking to humiliate the new-money rube. Deeds is initially ridiculed in the papers as the "Cinderella Man," even as he falls in love with the reporter who, unbeknownst to him, is writing the Cinderella Man articles. When Deeds eventually decides to give the money to those in need, he is brought to trial to prove he is insane and incapable of managing the fortune.

The film hits all of the typical Capra themes: celebration of small-town values over big city living, the idea that friends/people are worth more than money, etc... all of the anti-capitalist, communistic sentiments that make it so hard for me to believe that Capra was actually one of the most politically conservative people that Hollywood ever saw. Cooper is endearing here in the role that typically went to James Stewart in Capra's films, with a strange combination of enjoyable antics and quickness to violence. (Before seeing the film, I wondered what Adam Sandler could have seen in the role to have decided to star in a remake, as so much of his comedy depends on cruelty or violence. With the number of punches that Cooper's Deeds throws, I understand a little better now.) Capra's films always leave me with a bit of a warm, glowy feeling - sentimental without being sappy, old-fashioned without being dated, having a message without being preachy. And yet, they always seem to me to pale in comparison to his real masterpiece, It's A Wonderful Life. They always seem to have the same goal as that film, without quite managing to achieve it so eloquently and absorbingly as that one great film did. Part of me knows that it is unfair to hold that against his other films, but my gut reaction whenever I see any of Capra's other movies is "It's good, but it's not quite It's A Wonderful Life."

Movie trivia question: Another frequent Best Director winner, John Ford won his last of 4 Best Director Oscars (a record still held to this date), for this John Wayne picture.

The House on 92nd Street

The House on 92nd Street won the Oscar at 1946's awards ceremony for Best Original Screenplay. It was not nominated for any other awards.

The film is a spy story, based on true events and made with the cooperation of the FBI, about a double agent working for the FBI while posing as a German agent. The agent's task is to both discover what the Germans know about, and to throw them off the track of, the development of the atomic bomb.

The performances are less than stellar, due at least in part to the fact that many of the FBI agents in the film were portrayed by actual FBI agents instead of actors. The film uses a documentary-like style, with a lot of voiceover narration to explain what is going on, and "actual footage" spliced in, and a narrative that is heavy on exposition, but light on action or dialogue or character development. It was an unusual stylistic choice, but one that seems to have been very influential... on famed "worst director of all-time" Ed Wood. In fact, bad films everywhere seem to have learned a lot about storytelling from The House on 92nd Street. It seems to have ridden the wave of post-WWII patriotism to its award more than having earned it for quality.

Movie trivia question: What film, Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay, marks the acting debut of film legend Warren Beatty?

Ed Harris' directorial debut

The film in which Ed Harris directed himself to a Best Actor nomination was Pollock, the biopic about abstract painter Jackson Pollock. Harris did not win the award for this film, but his co-star, Marcia Gay Harden, did take home the award for Best Supporting actress for her portrayal of Pollock's wife, Lee Krasner. The film was not nominated for any other Oscars.

The film tells the story of Pollock's life, from his time as a struggling artist beginning to hone his craft and discover his style to his death. Harris is stunningly great as Pollock. I have been a fan of his work for a long time, and I don't think I have ever seen him give such a strong performance as this one. Understandably so, too, as this film was a real passion project for Harris, a project that he had been working on for about ten years before finally getting it filmed. He takes a role that has been done many times before, and that could easily fall into cliche - the role of the tortured artistic genius, struggling to find recognition for work that is far ahead of its time and to battle the personal demons that go along with his genius - and he finds a way to make it fresh and exciting and full of energy. Harden matches Harris note for note with her performance. She is entirely convincing in a role that hits multiple notes, some of which seem to contradict each other. Krasner seems genuine throughout, whether she is acting as a jealous contemporary artist, a loving wife, a domineering shrew, a parasite living off of her spouse's fame, or a verbal sparring partner who gives as good as she gets.

Pollock is thoroughly worth watching on the strength of the performances alone. Unfortunately, the story that the performances serve is not quite so strong. It is interesting, to be sure, but it just doesn't have much of a sense of narrative flow. There is no feeling that this encounter in his early life led to that development in his style and technique later. Instead, the film felt like a random collection of scenes from Pollock's life - here are a few scenes from when he was an unknown artist, skip a few years, here are a few scenes from when others in the artistic community started to know who Pollock was, skip a few years, here are a few scenes from when he started to become famous, skip a few years, etc. I was never bored, watching this, but I didn't come out of it feeling like it had really told me a story either.

Another shortcoming in my opinion, and one that tends to be shared by many biopics about famous artists, is that it tells the viewer that Pollock is a genius without explaining why he was a genius. It may all make sense to viewers who know something about modern art, but the uninitiated will not find any clues to help them to understand what made his work so revolutionary and important. Abstract painting is a style whose defenders have always said that it is not just random splatters of paint thrown onto the canvas, that there is meaning to the colors and patterns of each painting. And yet, in this film, Pollock, the father of that artistic style, says several times that he doesn't know what his paintings are of, and he is often unsure of whether they are finished. Can he really create meaningful works of art without knowing what the meaning is?

Movie trivia question: Performers winning Oscars for non-English language roles are pretty rare - it has only happened six times in Oscar history so far. Who is the only performer to win an Oscar for a performance given in French?

'80s Oscar darling

Nominated for 4 Best Actress Oscars in the 1980s (in addition to 1 win for Best Supporting actress), Jessica Lange did not win the lead actress award until 1995, for Blue Sky. The film, which was actually completed in 1990, but not released until 1995 due to the studio's bankruptcy issues, was not nominated for any other Oscars.

Set in the early 1960s, Blue Sky stars Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Marshall, an army major and expert on radiation, whose outspoken beliefs that the army should put greater restrictions on their nuclear testing have made him unpopular and become an obstacle to his career. Lange plays Marshall's wife, Carly, whose promiscuity and mental instability become another. The coincidental timing of her affair with his commanding officer and his discovery of the cover-up of an accident at a nuclear test site lead to Hank being locked up in a mental hospital, leaving Carly as the only one who can save the day.

Lange does steal every scene she's in, and Jones does a decent job of keeping up with her, but their performances are the only things worth watching in this film. The other performances are not particularly good. The camerawork is sloppy and confused - the film's director had been directing for a few decades, but this felt like the work of somebody who had no experience at all. As for the story, it was pretty improbable, it relied too heavily on coincidence for a couple of major plot points, and it had a happily-ever-after ending that wrapped things up far too neatly to let a little thing like logic get in the way. Even Lange's performance, the main selling point of the film, is the weakest I have seen from her. This felt to me like basically a watered-down, more stereotype-driven version of the character Lange played in the film Frances.

Movie trivia question: In his directorial debut, character actor Ed Harris directed himself to a Best Actor nomination for this film.

Biggest Oscar snub

Many people would say that the biggest snub in Oscar history is that Audrey Hepburn did not get nominated for Best Actress for My Fair Lady. The film won 8 Oscars that year (including Best Picture, Best Director (George Cukor), and Best Actor (Rex Harrison) ) out of 12 nominations. It was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Stanley Holloway), Best Supporting Actress (Gladys Cooper), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Alan Jay Lerner). And yet, the performance that is really the heart and soul of the entire film, Audrey Hepburn's portrayal of Eliza Doolittle, the street urchin transformed into an elegant lady, was not honored with even a nomination due to a technicality - the studio decided to dub in her singing with another woman's voice, and the dubbed in singing comprised a just high enough percentage of the role to disqualify her according to the Academy's rules. What makes the situation even worse is that it was a bad decision on the studio's part. Hepburn had not proven her talent as a singer, so the studio was not willing to take a chance on her voice. She proved in Breakfast at Tiffany's, however, that she was in fact a capable singer.

The story is simple enough. Around the turn on the Twentieth Century, linguistics professor Henry Higgins undertakes an experiment to teach flower girl Eliza how to speak properly, proposing that improving her speech will allow her to rise to a higher social class. Though they initially have an antagonistic relationship, the two gradually fall in love. Certainly not a complex enough story to really require the film's almost three hour running time, and yet it never really drags or bores. To be honest, while I am a fan of Audrey Hepburn, I was sort of dreading this film, fearing that a three hour musical would be one that I had to suffer through every minute of. Instead, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Well, maybe not every minute... It kind of drags in a couple of spots in the third hour. The song "Get Me To The Church On Time," in which Eliza Doolittle's father goes out for a night of drinking and whoring the night before his wedding, is somewhat amusing at first, but is far too long and repetitive - it has 4 or 5 verses, begins to lose its charm by the 4th verse, and then goes on to repeat the entire song about 4 times through. And Professor Higgins' musical lamentation "Why Can't A Woman Be Like A Man" is simply not as funny as it thinks it is.

I can't say that I think My Fair Lady deserved to beat out Dr. Strangelove for Best Picture that year - Strangelove is on my short list of all time favorite films, and much as I may have enjoyed My Fair Lady, it is not as revolutionary and unforgettable as Strangelove. Rex Harrison, however, absolutely deserved his Oscar. He took a character who should have been irredeemably arrogant and condescending, and found a way to make him somehow endearing, and very entertaining. (On a side note, it is apparent after about a minute of listening to him that Harrison's Higgins is clearly the inspiration for Family Guy's Stewie Griffin's entire personality and voice.) Likewise, Hepburn, had she not been unfairly disqualified, would have been absolutely deserving of the Oscar that she certainly would have been a shoo-in to win. She made a character that could easily have crossed the line into being too grating, too irritating to want to spend three hours with into somebody the viewer truly cares about. And, though some may dislike the film for this very reason, I really enjoyed the fact that My Fair Lady took its time to get where it wanted to go, rather than just rushing through the plot as quickly as it could. Yes, there are some unnecessary scenes (more critical reviews at the time called the film cavernous, a vacuum, over-long because of its empty spaces), but I appreciated it's willingness to take the scenic route, to allow the viewer to just relax and enjoy the show, and not feel rushed to the end.

Movie trivia question: One of the most successful directors in Oscar history, Frank Capra won 3 Oscars in 5 years back in the 1930s. The second of these films was later remade as an Adam Sandler vehicle. What was that film?

Dr. Zhivago

In keeping with the David Lean thing (and because Netflix skipped ahead a couple of discs on my queue), today's review is of Dr Zhivago, winner of the 1966 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and nominee for Best Picture, Best Director (Lean), and Best Supporting Actor (Tom Courtenay).

Another of the sweeping epics for which director Lean is best known, Zhivago opens with a Russian general searching for his lost niece, the daughter of his half-brother, a poet named Zhivago, and a mysterious woman named Lara. From there, we are taken back to the days of the Bolshevik Revolution. Lara is a 17 year old student, the mistress of the wealthy Komarovski (Rod Steiger) until she leaves him to marry revolutionary leader Pasha (Courtenay). Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif), a poet by nature studying to be a physician as a more practical career, marries the upper-class daughter of one of his professors. The two meet during medical service in World War I, she serving as his nurse. They are separated following the war, but are reunited after Zhivago's brother, Yevgraf (Alec Guinness), a party official, helps him and his family escape the oppressive living conditions of Moscow to live in safety and obscurity in the Urals. By chance, once in the country, Zhivago is reunited with Lara, and the two have a passionate love affair, as she becomes the inspiration for his poetry.

For all of the people who proclaim Doctor Zhivago to be Lean's masterpiece, I found it to be rather disappointing. And for all of the critics who faulted Ryan's Daughter for failing to live up to the standards of this film, as I mentioned in my previous review, I personally found Ryan's Daughter to be the superior film. That, though, could be due to the fact that I had not heard anything about Ryan's Daughter prior to seeing it, and so had no expectations to be disappointed. I had always heard Dr Zhivago described as a great love story set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, so I was waiting for Yuri and Lara to meet and fall in love. And waiting. And waiting. About an hour and 45 minutes into the film, the two finally meet. For about 10 minutes of screen time. 45 minutes later, they are reunited to begin their affair - an affair, by the way, which springs up out of nowhere, with no precursors or natural development.

Not to say that Dr Zhivago is a bad film. Visually, the film is just as memorable as Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai. The acting is very good, and the story, if you don't let expectations mar your viewing experience, is very absorbing and entertaining. It is worth seeing, if you have three and a half hours to spare. If you have never seen a David Lean film before, though, this is not the one I would recommend starting with.

Movie trivia question: Acting legend Humphrey Bogart only won 1 Best Actor Oscar. For What film did he win?

Silence is golden

The only male to win (or be nominated for) an Oscar for a mute performance was Sir John Mills, who won the 1971 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Ryan's Daughter. The film was also nominated for Best Actress, for Sarah Miles' performance in the titular role. Mills did not limit his muteness to the movie role - he holds an unbreakable record for shortest Oscar acceptance speech. When he won the award, he walked on stage, took the statue, gave a nod of appreciation, and left.

This three-and-a-half hour epic, set in a small village in western Ireland during World War I, begins with Rosy Ryan (Miles), the spoiled, sheltered daughter of the local pub-owner, convincing the town schoolteacher, Charles Shaughnessey (Robert Mitchum) to marry her. She believes that she truly loves him. But, more importantly, she believes that she will be somehow transformed by him, that the act of marriage or the act of physical love will somehow add meaning and excitement to her boring, unfulfilling life. She soon finds, however, that married life in a small Irish village is still just life in a small Irish village, and that sex is just sex, not a life-changing experience.

Enter Major Doryan (Christopher Jones), a British soldier traumatized bt his experiences on the front lines of World War I, who is stationed in the village, ostensibly to aid in the suppression of the Irish rebellion, but actually (as the town is expected to be too quiet for any rebellious activity) to give him a chance to recover from his shell-shock. Rosy is instantly attracted to him, and the two have an affair. Her fellow townspeople soon find reason to suspect the affair, though, doing grievous damage to Rosy's reputation. ("There's loose women, there's whores, and then there's British soldiers' whores," says a shopkeeper after refusing to sell Rosy any goods.)

John Mills plays Michael, the town fool, a slack-jawed imbecile with a mouthful of horrid teeth and a limp, a man who sees much, understands little, and takes a lot of abuse at the hands of his fellow townpeople in the name of humor. His performance, though it won the Oscar, is very dated, and a bit embarrassing by modern standards. Drifting well into the realm of caricature, Mills' portrayal is heavy on affectation (overwrought facial expressions and gestures, limping, etc.), and light on substance or subtlety. By modern standards, the role would be more likely today to win a Razzie than an Oscar.

Despite the Oscar win and nomination that the film scored, it was not well-received critically at the time. In fact, that is a rather drastic understatement. Ryan's Daughter was so poorly received by critics in general, and so harshly torn apart by Pauline Kael specifically, that its director, David Lean, went into exile for 14 years before redeeming himself with his final film, 1984's Oscar winning A Passage to India. There seem to be two main criticisms against this film. One is that it is too opulent, that the story is not strong enough to sustain the epic length, and that the film falls back on lush visuals to hold the audience's interest. This may be true, but it is irrelevant. Are these critics new to epic filmmaking? Gone with the Wind was much longer than the story really needed, and it was heavy on lush visuals. So was Lawrence of Arabia. And Ben Hur. And Dances With Wolves. And Titanic. And so on, and so on. It's epic filmmaking, and that, in and of itself, should not be held against the film. I watched the entire duration of the film in a single sitting, and I was never bored with it, even if there were scenes that were not entirely necessary to the plot. The other main criticism against Ryan's Daughter is that it simply is not as good as David Lean's previous films. Again, this may be true, but it is irrelevant. Considering the fact that Lean's previous films included Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Dr. Zhivago, to say that Ryan's Daughter is a bad film because it is not as good as his previous work is like saying that a perfectly prepared strip steak is a bad meal because it is not filet mignon. Retrospect has been much kinder to this film than its contemporary critics were, and while it may not be seen as a classic, it is at least not reviled now. But it saddens me to think about what classic films the world may have missed out on, what great masterpieces David Lean may have gone on to direct after this one, if not for the fact that Pauline Kael nitpicked this one to the point of driving its director into exile.

Movie trivia question: A frequent collaborator with David Lean was actor Alec Guinness. For what film, an Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay, was Guinness given his first Oscar nomination?

The beginning of a beautiful friendship

The first film to pair up Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, and the one that got Matthau his Oscar, was 1966's The Fortune Cookie. (But at what cost? Matthau suffered a heart attack in the middle of filming. Production stopped while he recovered, and he is visibly underweight in the scenes that were filmed after his return. Oddly, this was director Billy Wilder's second consecutive film which had to stop mid-filming due to his lead actor suffering a heart attack.) The film was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Billy Wilder).

Jack Lemmon plays Harry Hinkle, a CBS cameraman who is accidentally tackled by a player while working the sidelines at a football game. Matthau plays Willie Gingrich, Hinkle's brother-in-law, a shady lawyer who convinces Hinkle to fake an injury in order to turn the incident into a million dollar lawsuit. Hinkle is reluctant at first, is won over to the plan by the belief that he might regain the affections of his ex-wife, but his determination wavers when he sees the toll that guilt is taking on Boom Boom Jackson (Ron Rich), the player who tackled him.

I am usually a big fan of both Wilder and Lemmon, and Matthau has never really done me wrong, but somehow this film just didn't click with me. Matthau was very good here, certainly deserving of the Academy's recognition, especially considering the difficulties that he went through during filming. The story just didn't do it for me, though. Given the talent involved, it just fell below expectations. As a comedy, it just didn't have many laughs. As a con-game, it was predictable. As a satire, it lacked punch. As a drama, it lacked a real emotional connection to the characters. It's not that this was a bad film. It had some laughs and some good moments. It just wasn't a great film. But given the talent involved, given the greatness of the collaborations between Lemmon and Wilder previously, and the great partnership between Lemmon and Matthau afterward, this film being anything less than great is a bit of a disappointment.

Movie trivia question: In the history of the Oscars, five people have won the statue for non-speaking roles. Only one of those was a male. Who is the only male to win an Oscar for a non-speaking role?

Oscar Tie, Part 2

The other (and please, feel free to read that as lesser) Best Actress of 1969 was Barbra Streisand, who won the award for her debut film performance in Funny Girl. (She later went on to become the only person to date to win Oscars for an acting performance and Best Song.) The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Kay Nedford).

Streisand plays Fannie Brice, a poor girl from the Jewish slums of 1920s New York who rises to stardom as a vaudeville comedienne, but struggles to hold together her personal life, as her husband bristles at the idea that his wife finds greater success than he does. It's essentially a retelling of A Star is Born, made that much less necessary by the fact that, a few years later, Streisand starred in a direct remake of A Star is Born.

I have to wonder how the Academy voters could possibly have felt that this performance was the equal of that given by Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter. Hepburn's performance was brilliant, a masterful balance of funny and heartbreaking, of sympathetic and coldly manipulative. Streisand, as Fannie Brice, had a few funny lines, but was mostly just annoying and obnoxious. She relies a bit too heavily on silly voices for her comedy here, and her drama relies too heavily on her ability to cry and sing at the same time. The story is one that has been told a million times before. As such, it depends on a unique, winning performance from its star in order to separate itself from the others. This film, in my opinion, simply does not have that distinctive performance. I suppose, if you're a fan of Streisand's singing career, the songs are good. I'm not a fan of her singing, so they didn't really do much for me. In short, this film is really just a star-making vehicle for Streisand, so if you are not a fan of Streisand, there is not much reason to watch it. Two and a half hours long, and I sat through it with no real enjoyment or emotional involvement. The things I sometimes do for you, my faithful readers!

Movie trivia question: Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were a classic comedy pairing. They starred in 8 movies together (not including cameos together and a film in which Lemmon directed Matthau to a Best Actor nomination). Their first pairing, one of their lesser-known films, captured a best Supporting Actor Oscar for Matthau. What was the film?

Oscar Tie, Part 1

At the 1969 Oscar ceremony, there was a tie for the Best Actress category, the only true tie in Oscar history. (At the 1933 awards, the Best Actor category was credited as a tie, but only because of a technicality. Frederick March actually won the award by 1 vote over Wallace Beery, but the rules at the time stated that a win by less than 3 votes would be considered a tie. The rules have since been changed so that only an exact tie will result in awards going to multiple winners.) One of those winners, Katharine Hepburn, also made a record that year for most lead performer Oscar wins, taking home her third Oscar for her performance in The Lion in Winter. (She still holds the record today, having increased her count to 4 Best Actress Oscars when she took home the statue for On Golden Pond.) The Lion in Winter also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Goldman), and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Anthony Harvey), and Best Actor (Peter O'Toole, in his second time being nominated for playing the same character, King Henry II, the first being for Becket, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago).

The Lion in Winter tells the story of King Henry II's attempt to choose a successor to his throne from among his three sons. The power struggle amongst this most dysfunctional of families makes this film like a strange combination of King Lear and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Reunited for Christmas of 1183, England's royal family engage in lies, manipulations, and wars of words as each attempts to grab all of the power that they can get. Hepburn plays Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry's Queen, and his prisoner for 10 years, trying to pull the strings in order to arrange her own freedom, and needling her husband in every way possible. She is trying to get Henry to name her favored son, Richard (Anthony Hopkins, in his debut performance) as heir to the throne. Richard is a war-mongering general, a conquering hero with the strength to hold the kingdom together. Henry favors his youngest son, John (Nigel Terry), a weak, foolish puppet, not really fit for the throne, but favored by the King as the only son he has had a hand in raising. Middle son Geoffrey (John Castle) favors himself for the throne, manipulating his brothers in an attempt to get them to disqualify themselves from the throne or destroy each other, leaving himself to pick up the pieces. Adding fuel to the family's fire is the visiting King Philip of France (future James Bond Timothy Dalton, in his debut performance), trying to shatter the British Empire so he can sweep in to conquer it for France.

The performances are absolutely peerless. Hepburn astounds with her ability to earn sympathy despite her evil manipulations and her cutting sarcasm. ("Every family has it's ups and downs," she says to herself following an argument with her husband in which she suggests that she had a sexual relationship with his father.) O'Toole delivers a much richer performance this time around as King Henry II, capturing the same character as in his previous portrayal, but revealing many more layers of the character's personality than in the previous film. Hopkins, in his first major role, left no doubt that he had an amazing career ahead of him.

Goldman's award-winning screenplay is brilliant, managing to carefully balance the complex schemes and manipulations of six different characters while maximizing each character's potential for both pathos and dark humor. Once again, I find myself surprised at just how absorbed I am by a period piece about a historical era in which I don't have any particular interest or knowledge. Some might complain that there is not much action in this film, but drama doesn't get much better than this.

Movie trivia question: Part 2 of this review's question. With whom did Kate Hepburn tie for the 1969 Best Actress Oscar, and for what film?

Fargo (1996)

Winner for Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Best Original Screenplay. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Joel Coen), and Best Supporting Actor (William H. Macy).

A man makes a mistake. He makes a bad plan, and it backfires on him. He tells a lie to cover up his mistake. The lie is about to be discovered, so he comes up with another plan, makes another mistake, bigger than the one before. He tells another lie, comes up with another plan to cover his tracks, and so on. In a way, it is easy to see how Jerry Lundegaard (Macy) got in so far over his head in this film. I imagine that Lundegaard's original sin was fairly minor, but that is far behind him by the time the viewer meets him. When we meet Jerry, he is arranging the kidnapping of his wife in order to collect the bulk of the million dollar ransom for himself, paying the kidnappers a paltry $40,000 and a stolen car. He is arranging this, in part, in order to pay off over $300,000 in fraudulent financing monies for cars that don't actually exist. Where did that $300,000 go? Who knows? Gone to pay off his previous scheme, presumably. The plot, in terms of the criminal plan, is ludicrous. While you have to admire Lundegaard's chutzpah, it is criminally stupid to believe that you could get away with taking out loans on cars that don't exist. Especially if you're as bad a liar as Jerry Lundegaard is.

The plot, in terms of the story, is pure genius. I fell totally in love with this film from the first time that I saw the trailer. The screenplay not only richly deserved the Oscar that it won, but may actually be the best that the Coen Brothers have ever written - a bold statement, as the Coens are on my short list of the best filmmakers of this generation. In a film like this, the portrayal of ineptitude can be a very fine balance. Characters must behave in a manner that is inept enough to ensure the failure of their plans, but not so inept as to make it entirely unbelievable that they would even attempt to concoct such a scheme. Fargo walks this balance without a single misstep. It simultaneously walks a similar tightrope of balancing a very funny comedy with a brutally violent suspense film.

The performances are all top-shelf. A particularly underrated highlight to me is Harve Presnell, playing Lundegaard's millionaire father-in-law, a heartless, distant businessman. So shrewd a businessman is he that he feels the need to try to low-ball his daughter's kidnappers on their ransom demand. Frances McDormand, playing the pregnant police chief investigating a triple homicide that was an unfortunate side-effect of the kidnapping, delivers possibly the highlight performance of her career. But the real scene-stealer is William H. Macy, an actor I have always admired, who in this role masterfully plays one of the biggest low-lifes ever to grace the screen. His nomination here, for Best Supporting Actor, is one of those nominations that really makes me wonder how the Academy decides what is a lead role and what is supporting. I mean, not that McDormand doesn't deserve a lead actress award for this film, but she doesn't even make her first appearance on screen until 34 minutes into the film. Lundegaard, on the other hand, is present throughout the entire duration of the film. More importantly, his character is the driving force behind the entire story. The entire film is about his criminal plans, and the disastrous effects they have on everybody around him when they go wrong. How was he not a lead performer in this film?

Movie trivia question: One of only ten performers in Oscar history to be nominated for best lead and supporting performances in the same year, Jessica Lange was an Oscar darling in the 1980's, winning a Supporting Actress Oscar and being nominated for 4 Lead Actress Oscars during the decade. But it wasn't until almost halfway through the following decade that she finally took home a Best Actress statue. What was the film that finally got her the gold?

Groomsman,Part 2

Sorry for the delay in part 2 of this post. I'm sure that all of my faithful readers have just been dying from the suspense. Quick addendum to part 1, by the way - yes, as I forgot to mention but my brother pointed out, Michael Caine did indeed miss out on his opportunity to be at the Oscars to accept his first win because of filming obligations to make Jaws 4.

Anyway, Caine's second win for Best Supporting Actor was for 1999's The Cider House Rules. The film also won for Best Adapted Screenplay (John Irving's adaptation of his own novel), and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (Lasse Hallstrom).

The film tells the story of Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire), a young man who tries to set off on his own after growing up in an orphanage in Maine. Caine plays Wilbur Larch, the doctor who runs the orphanage, secretly performs illegal abortions, and gives Homer an apprenticeship until he decides to leave. Homer sets out full of vigor and enthusiasm, but soon finds 1940s Maine to be disillusioning, beset with racism, dishonesty, and betrayal. Before long, he learns that the ethical issues that he thought were so clear-cut from the orphanage are much more ambiguous in the outside world.

The film is full of wonderful characters. Maguire is exceptional in one of his earliest starring roles, and Charlize Theron gives a great, complex performance as the woman who takes Wells in, falls in love with him, but then must choose whether to stay with him or to abandon him when her fiancee is paralyzed during the war. Delroy Lindo is very convincing in the challenging role of a morally confused apple-picking coworker of Wells, as is Erykah Badu in the equally challenging role of his daughter. Even the child actors, Wells' fellow orphans (including Kieran Culkin and Erik Per Sullivan, better known as youngest brother Dewey from the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle), are very impressive.

Even in the midst of this cast, though, Caine is a stand-out in his performance. Even aside from his accent (which is a perfect Maine accent, a rare departure from Caine's natural British accent), Caine is very impressive in this role. His Dr. Larch is kind, caring, and generous, but he is also flawed. He cares very much for his wards, Homer included, but he stubbornly cuts Homer out of his life when the boy sets out on his own, insisting that he should stay on at the orphanage and eventually take over for Dr Larch, effectively cutting himself off from the outside world. Larch performs illegal abortions for fear of the safety of the women who would otherwise have to go to a less experienced abortionist, but his moral objections to what he is doing force him to drug himself with ether in order to sleep at night.

Movie trivia question: In what many people believe to be the biggest snub in Oscar history, the subject of my last review, Audrey Hepburn, failed to receive even a nomination for the one role that seriously challenges Breakfast at Tiffany's for the title of Hepburn's most iconic role. For what film did Audrey Hepburn get snubbed, and why?

Breakfast At Tiffany's

I know, I still have three movies to review to answer trivia questions, but I haven't gotten around to watching them yet. And true, this movie didn't even win any of the major awards (though it did take home Oscars for Best Score and Best Song for Moon River), but it was nominated for Best Actress (for Audrey Hepburn, of course) and Best Adapted Screenplay. I plan on reviewing the nominees after I finish the winners, and since I happened to watch this one on date night with my lovely fiancee last night, I figured I might as well get the review done now.

Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, a fun-loving girl drifting through her life in New York City, sleeping through the days, partying through the nights, and bilking her nightly dates for $50 a pop for "change for the powder room." (In the book, Golightly was clearly a prostitute, but the film made the issue a bit more ambiguous in order to get around the censors.) She meets her new neighbor, Paul (though she calls him Fred because he reminds her of her brother), a struggling writer who is (for some reason less ambiguously) prostituting himself to his "designer," the rich, married woman who pays for his rent and clothes, until he gets his big break. The two, of course, fall in love, despite his discovery of her shady past, and her desperate resistance to being caged in by "belonging" to anybody.

Hepburn's performance walks a truly delicate balance here. Holly Golightly is the type of flaky hipster (my fiancee insists that this is not the proper use of the word, but I still think it fits) who thinks that it is too conventional to own a pet cat, but feels that it is not fighting the convention of pet ownership to simply not own a cat, so she owns a cat for the purpose of not naming it, so she can point out to others that the cat has no name because she doesn't own it, so she had no right to name it. Obnoxious, right? She drifts through life with no purpose other than to marry a rich man for his money. And, though Paul spends the entire movie being a friend to her, putting up with behavior that most people wouldn't tolerate, she says things to him that are downright cruel, just to keep him from getting too close. And yet, for all of that, she manages to remain likable, lovable, and heartbreaking. To say that there is a stand-out performance in the career of somebody as talented and appealing as Audrey Hepburn is truly a bold statement, but this is the performance that she should be remembered for, and definitely one that she should have won an Oscar for.

B&W Best Picture

The most recent black and white movie to win Best Picture was 1993's Schindler's List. (Good job, Angie from Cinema Obsessed!) The last black and white film before that to win the award was The Apartment, in 1960. The film also won that year's awards for Best Director (Steven Spielberg's) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Steven Zaillian), and was nominated for Best Actor (Liam Neeson) and Best Supporting Actor (Ralph Fiennes).

The film is, as I'm sure you already know, the story of Oskar Schindler, a greedy factory owner who seeks to earn millions by exploiting Jewish slave labor in World War II Germany, but who ends up becoming a humanitarian and using his factory to sabotage the war effort and save the lives of 1100 Jews who would otherwise have been killed in the concentration camps. Schindler starts out caring about nothing but money, amassing a huge fortune because of the outbreak of the war, but by the end of the film he has spent the entire fortune on bribing Nazi officials and ensuring that his munitions factory does not produce a single artillery shell that could help the German war effort.

Neeson was spectacular in the role of Schindler, and it would be unthinkable that he did not win the Oscar if the award had gone to anybody else that year other than Tom Hanks for Philadelphia. Schindler is the type of character whose change of heart is so total that it could easily become unbelievable if not handled just right. (Though the film does make him a bit more of a saint than he actually was, failing to mention that there was bribery involved in getting one's name onto Schindler's list.) Ralph Fiennes was chilling and thoroughly believable in his role as Amon Goeth, a Nazi official and concentration camp commander, a homicidal madman made all the more chilling by the fact that he commits his acts of brutality not with maniacal glee, nor even with cold calculation, but rather with casual disinterest. He kills Jews not because he wants to, not because he needs to, but because he gives the act no more regard than one might give to swatting a fly. In a film full of horror and brutality, perhaps the most terrifying sequence is the one in which Fiennes' character briefly stops his acts of random brutality, testing the concept suggested to him by Schindler that true power comes through forgiveness or pardon rather than through violence and the ability to kill without warning. As he pardons several of his prisoners for minor offenses for which he would normally kill them, the viewer sits watching, breathless with horrified anticipation, waiting for him to give up the pretense of humanity and start shooting again. Fiennes certainly had a flashier and more attention-grabbing role, but I had to wonder how Ben Kingsley's performance as Itzhak Stern, Schindler's accountant, the driving force behind his change of heart, and the humanizing face of the plight of the Jews in this film, did not warrant a nomination as well.

This film, earning Spielberg his first Oscar as Best Director, was also the sign of his coming into true maturity as a film director. Fascinated by the story, Spielberg bought the film rights to it in 1982, but fearing that he did not have the maturity as a director to do the film justice, he shopped it around Hollywood for 10 years. After being turned down by several directors, including Sidney Lumet, Roman Polanski, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese, Spielberg finally decided he was ready to do the film himself - with the condition that he had to do Jurassic Park first, because if he didn't finish that one first, he felt he would be unable to do it after Schindler. The end result of the extra decade of waiting was most likely a better film than Spielberg could have made in 1983 - let's face it, Raiders of the Lost Arc and E.T. are certainly great films, but they just don't show the emotional complexity that Schindler's List required.

Movie trivia question: The only true tie in any of the major categories in Oscar history occurred in 1969, when these two women both took home the statue for Best Actress.

Always the groomsman, never the groom.

The actor who has gone zero for four in the lead acting category, but two for two in supporting actor wins is Michael Caine. The first of Caine's wins was at the 1987 Oscars for his turn in Hannah and Her Sisters. The film also won for Best Supporting Actress (Dianne Wiest) and Best Screenplay (Woody Allen), and it was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (Woody Allen).

The film tells the intermingling stories of the titular siblings and their large cast of relatives, husbands, ex-husbands, business partners, etc. Hannah (Mia Farrow) is the one successful person among the group, and her success and generosity provide support for everybody around her, support that they resent her for despite their inability to get by without it. Hannah's husband (Caine) spends the first half of the film trying to star an affair with her sister Lee (Barbara Hershey), then spends the remainder of it trying to end the affair. Her other sister, Holly (Wiest), is constantly mooching money from her to start side-jobs in order to support herself (and pay off debts, and support an on-again-off-again cocaine habit) while waiting for her acting career to take off. Meanwhile, Hannah's ex-husband (Allen) has a health scare that forces him to face his own mortality, and she must hold together the tumultuous relationship between her parents (Maureen O'Sullivan and Lloyd Nolan), a not-quite-famous showbiz couple.

Hindsight has not been kind to this film. It is well-made, well-written, and well-acted, but in the end, I felt that it was very been-there-done-that. Which is not exactly fair to this film. Wiest, better know to most as the mother in Edward Scissorhands, builds a very believable character, flaky, needy, and falsely "unique," but not to the point of being entirely unlikable. Caine does a wonderful job in his role, in which he essentially plays the role of Woody Allen - a novel and interesting choice at the time that has since become such a staple of Allen's later films that the novelty has completely worn off in retrospect. The screenplay is complex and involving, seamlessly weaving together several interesting stories in such a way that each story makes the others feel fuller, richer, and more fleshed-out. But, at the same time, the action all feels very much like a stereotypical Woody Allen film - a bunch of neurotic, over-intellectual New York City dwellers, none of whom have to actually work for a living, spend all of their time screwing up all of their relationships and whining about their own insecurities. It is different enough from Annie Hall and Manhattan that, at the time, the film was still fresh. But when he followed it up with Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, and so on, the films have all started to sort of blend together to the detriment of the entire catalog.

Movie trivia question: Part 2 of the question that this review started to answer. What was the other film for which Michael Caine won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar?

Biggest Losers: Oscar Edition

The two actors who received the most Best Actor nominations without winning an award were Peter O'Toole (to date, nominated 8 times - he was given an honorary award in 2003, but has yet to claim a competitive Oscar) and Richard Burton (who received 7 nominations before his death, and was never even given an honorary prize). The film that united them, for which they were both nominated for Best Actor, was 1964's Becket. Winner of the Best Adapted screenplay Oscar that year, it was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Peter Glenville), and Best Supporting Actor (John Gielgud).

O'Toole earns his second Oscar nomination here playing King Henry II, ruler of England in the late 1100s. Burton earns his third nomination playing Thomas Becket, a drinking buddy promoted by the King to the role of Chancellor, and eventually to Archbishop, with the expectation that Becket will cater to his desires and end his troubles with the church. To the King's dismay, Becket takes the Archbishop position seriously, opposing the ruler more effectively that any of his predecessors ever dared. A vulgar and arrogant man who sees himself as the only civilized man in England, King Henry sees his subjects as dogs or possessions, spends most of his time drinking and eating gluttonously while his people starve, shows utter contempt for anything and anyone beneath him, and appoints Becket in order to get tax money from the churches to fund a war against France. Becket, though cold and distant, shows sympathy and compassion toward the people, tries to act as a civilizing influence on his King, and seeks to find a meaningful purpose in his life. When King Henry rules in such a way that the power, and possibly even the existence, of the church is threatened, Becket severs their friendship in order to ensure the church's survival, leading King Henry to seek revenge against his former friend.

An historical drama about a time and place with which I have almost no familiarity, centered around a hero who gives up a life of debauchery in order to come to the defense of the Church against the government, is not typically the type of film that I would find enthralling. But I was enthralled by this film, due almost entirely to the two lead performances. It is easy to see how both Burton and O'Toole lost the Oscar that year. Certainly both were worthy, but it seems likely that the two, being nominated for the same film, split their votes, leaving the award to go instead to the nominee for that year's Best Picture winner (Rex Harrison, for My Fair Lady). Of the two, Burton was probably more deserving of the award. O'Toole was thoroughly convincing as the monarch, a spoiled man-child torn between his obsessive love for his friend and his unflinching need to be obeyed in his every wish or command. However, his performance had an occasional tendency to fall back on overwrought emotion and loud yelling. Burton, on the other hand, was pitch-perfect in every scene, always finding just the right tone to make me believe in and sympathize with this man whose change of heart and of lifestyle could easily have come across as hokey, contrived, and unbelievable.

Movie trivia question: This actor, another frequent non-winner in the Best Actor category (0 awards out of 4 nominations) has had much better luck in the supporting category, winning both times he was nominated in that category. The two films for which he won will be reviewed soon.

Oscar Winning Debut

The first person to win a lead acting Oscar for their debut performance was Shirley Booth, who won Best Actress in 1953 for Come Back, Little Sheba. The film was also nominated for best Supporting Actress (Terry Moore). Other actors and actresses had won supporting performance Oscars for debut performances before this, but this was the first time for a lead. Three other women have since won Best Actress for their debut performances, but to date nobody has won Best Actor for a debut performance.

Booth plays Lola Delaney, a frumpy, unambitious middle aged housewife who rarely leaves the house and endlessly obsesses over her dog, Little Sheba, who disappeared weeks before. She rents a room to Marie (Moore), a young, pretty college student who draws an improper amount of attention from Lola's husband, Doc (Burt Lancaster), a self-conscious chiropractor who wants only to forget or outrun his past. He has a lot to want to forget, too - he dropped out of medical school to marry Lola when she got pregnant, only to have her lose the baby. Then he inherited enough money from the death of his parents to return to medical school, but became an alcoholic, losing the money and most of his patients because of his uncontrollable drinking and fighting. Doc's interest in Marie at first seems to be fatherly, but it eventually develops into temptation in more than one form. He resists the urge to cheat on his wife, an urge driven more by desire to recapture his lost youth than by lust, but he has a disastrous relapse into drinking.

Lancaster is captivating, as he always is, but he seems a bit miscast here. He is wonderful in the role, but his performance seems a bit hampered by his reputation. Lancaster, over his career, has played characters who are tough, confident, successful and self-assured. So as great as he is here, it is a bit of a challenge to accept him as somebody so weak-willed, meek, and lacking in control over his own life. Moore is good, but her character is more a means of driving the plot than as an entity of her own. But Shirley Booth really shines here. Her dotty, intrusive behavior, annoying at first, is gradually revealed to be her defense mechanism. She has suffered the same setbacks as Doc, and has had to be the source of strength to carry her husband through their difficulties. Her refusal to accept that Little Sheba won't return gives her a diversion, something to focus on so she doesn't have to think about her lost youth, her lost prettiness, her lost child.

Movie trivia question: What is the most recent black-and-white film to win the Oscar for Best Picture?

Multi-talented

The first person to direct himself to a Best Actor Oscar, and the first person to claim both Best Actor and Best Picture, was Laurence Olivier, for his 1948 adaptation of Hamlet. Olivier was also nominated as Best Director for the film, although he did not win, and it was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Jean Simmons). To date, nobody has managed to win both Best Actor/Actress and Best Director for the same film. Olivier was more successful at Oscar time with this film than he had been two years earlier, with unsuccessful nominations for both Best Picture and Best Actor for Henry V, though he missed the Best Director nomination that year. Henry V did, however, get Olivier an honorary award for the feat of producing, directing and acting. One wonders, though, at the legitimacy of that honorary award, as Orson Welles had, in 1942, managed to get nominations in all three categories without being honored for the feat. And, in case you were wondering, the other person to get both Best Actor and a Best Picture Oscar was Michael Douglas, who won as a producer on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, and a Best Actor statue for his performance in Wall Street.

The problem with so many of the films based on the works of Shakespeare is that they get too caught up in the staginess of the performances, and in the lyricism and poetry of the words being spoken, to the point that the story itself is pretty much forgotten. The most frequent victim of this unfortunate tendency is Hamlet. How familiar is the "To be, or not to be speech," delivered in a thundering, bombastic, triumphant tone. "TO BE... (dramatic pause) OR... NOT TO BE!!!" The speech is delivered so often in that tone, as though the actors don't even notice the meaning behind the words they are saying. This is not the speech of a conquering hero, as it is so often delivered. It is the mumbled ramblings of a sullen, angst-ridden youth, trying to decide whether he should kill himself rather than try to deal with the problems of his life. It is a speech to be muttered uncertainly, not thundered confidently. Olivier, for one, actually manages to get it right. Unlike so many before him, and unlike so many that came after, Olivier actually sees the source material as a story to be told, not just as a vehicle by which an actor can prove his greatness by reciting a famous speech or two.

This film truly is the best of both worlds, as Shakespeare goes. Olivier does not ignore the poetry of the words, he just doesn't let it override their meaning or overshadow the story that they tell. He doesn't dumb down the screenplay, or feel the need to update it to modern English just to make it more palatable to a more modern audience. He doesn't, as so many have done, feel the need to transplant the basic framework of the story into a more modern setting. In short, Olivier does not feel the need to rewrite Shakespeare. Shakespeare is Shakespeare for a reason. All things considered, if I had to pick a single film version of Shakespeare to watch, this would be the one.

That being said, I must admit that this film would not have been my pick to win either of its awards. Hamlet beat out The Treasure of the Sierra Madre for Best Picture, and Humphrey Bogart's wonderful performance in that film somehow failed to even get nominated alongside Olivier's. But, of course, that is just quibbling, and, as you are probably already guessing after my last review, I am a bit biased where Bogart is concerned. Certainly, that is just a matter of personal preference, not of unworthiness on the part of Olivier's film.

Movie trivia question: This film, winner of an Oscar for Best Screenplay, scored Best Actor nominations for its two stars. Coincidentally, the two went on to be the two actors with the most Oscar nominations to never actually win the statue. Who were the stars, and what was the film?

Who stole Bogie's Oscar?

Taking the Oscar for Best Actor in 1944, and leaving Humphrey Bogart empty-handed for one of the greatest film performances of all time, was Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Lucile Watson), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Dashiell Hammett).

In the opening days of World War II, just before Germany begins to take over its neighboring countries, an American woman, Sara (Bette Davis) returns to Washington DC after 18 years of living in Europe, bringing her family with her. Her family includes her German husband, Kurt (Paul Lukas) a former engineer who has spent the last several years working for an underground anti-Nazi movement, exposing his family to poverty, danger, and a nomadic lifestyle. As Kurt is getting older and his health is flagging, the trip to America is meant to be his retirement from the movement. Unfortunately, a Romanian count, a houseguest of Sara's mother with heavy debts due to his habit of gambling away money he can't afford at Nazi card games at the German Embassy, discovers Kurt's identity and decides to blackmail him.

Many of the performances in this film struck me as kind of strange. The dialogue is oddly formal, and the delivery of the lines from many of the characters is stiff and uncertain. In a weird way, this makes the performances of Sara's children more convincing - they are children speaking in a language that is not their native tongue, and they were very convincing as such. What was odd was that Sara's brother, an American speaking in English, seemed just as stiff and formal to me, and so his performance struck me as very unnatural. Lucile Watson, Oscar nominated for her role as Sara's mother, is very convincing and entertaining as the intrusive, obnoxious, but well-intentioned matriarch. Bette Davis, the big name star of the film, was cast against type in a way that doesn't entirely work for her.

But, of course, the performance with which I concerned myself in watching this film was that of Paul Lukas. Lukas does indeed give a strong performance here. He does a fantastic job of drawing the audience in, getting them to care about his character and his story. The bottom line, though, is this: does he deliver a strong enough performance to deserve the Oscar over Bogart's iconic turn in Casablanca? The answer, in my opinion, is no. Lukas was very good, and worth seeing here, but time has shown that Bogart's role has remained unforgettable through several generations, while most people have probably never even heard of Paul Lukas. It is, however, easy to understand why Lukas would have taken the award at the time. In the midst of World War II, with the outcome still uncertain and American patriotism and anti-Nazi sentiment at an all-time high, Lukas and Bogart play men who essentially make the opposite decisions in the same circumstances. Lukas plays a man who, as the Nazis begin to come to power, sacrifices everything in his life to devote himself to taking up the cause of fighting them. Bogart plays a man who, as the Nazis begin to come to power, does everything he can to distance himself from the fight, to refuse to take sides, and to look out for himself alone. In hindsight, it is easy to see that Bogie should have taken it, but it is also easy to see why, in the heat of the moment, the emotional response was to award it to Lukas.

Movie trivia question: This film marked the first time that an actor directed himself to a Best Actor Oscar. It also marked the first time that a person won Oscars for both Best Actor and as producer for Best Picture (a feat that has only been repeated one other time to date). Who is the actor/director/producer, and what is the film?

Short, but strong

The only short film to win in a non-short-film category is French film The Red Balloon, winner of the 1957 award for Best Original Screenplay.

A young boy, wandering alone through the streets of Paris, finds and befriends a red balloon, and he and it follow each other through various misadventures. The boy misses his bus to school because the driver will not allow him on the vehicle with the balloon. But soon, the balloon proves itself capable of following the boy on its own volition. The boy, apparently friendless, suffers many setbacks, as he gets into trouble for bringing the balloon to school, and finds himself harassed at the hands of a mob of schoolmates seeking to steal or destroy the toy.

The dialogue is minimal, with only a few spoken lines, most of which are the boy talking to the balloon, and the runtime of the film barely clears the 30 minute mark, but I came out of the movie feeling like I knew the boy better than most characters who spend two hours on the screen talking and interacting with others. Hell, even the balloon was a more developed character than some that I have seen. Empathetic, cute, and family-friendly, this would be a great choice to watch with young children.

Movie trivia question: As I mentioned in a previous post, Oscar nominees for best lead performance tend to go to actors and actresses who have already established themselves within their profession. There have been a few notable exceptions, though. What was the first role to win an Oscar for best lead performance for and actor/actress in his/her debut film acting performance?