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?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
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.
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?
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?
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?
Saturday, July 10, 2010
'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.
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.
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