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.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
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?
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.
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?
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?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
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.
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?
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?
Saturday, August 7, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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?
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?
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