OVP: Best Cinematography (1931-32)
The Nominees Were...
Ray June, Arrowsmith
Karl Struss, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Lee Garmes, Shanghai Express
My Thoughts: The 5th Academy Awards has one of the lowest category counts of any Oscar race we'll profile. Of the 12 categories that had statues that year, only 8 count for the OVP; three are short categories (you can click the link at the top, but due to bandwidth issues we don't do the Short categories for this project), and while we would normally tackle Sound, in 1932 they only gave them to the studio sound departments, not to individual film, so I don't have a way of tackling this in terms of who most deserved the statue. So we're starting with Cinematography, which only has three nominations (this is actually the case for all but Best Picture, which will make this a very brief season indeed). This is also the best lineup of the year, honestly by a wide margin-no bad nominees, which we won't be able to say for any other category.
Arrowsmith received the most nominations in 1932, so we'll get to this movie a few times, but this is the only time we're going to recognize it for something good. The movie itself is a slog, but the cinematography is decent. We're very early in this category's artistry, and so the Academy was judging it outside of a modern lens. There are scenes in this that are pretty staid, most of the conversations are shot conventionally, but there is some experimentation with the approach, particularly some of the ways that they shoot nighttime sequences, where light is used as a way to show the darkness (the picture I chose above is a good example of that on the far left). Not a great choice, but I do get what Oscar was thinking here.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde gets this nomination largely because the Visual Effects category didn't exist yet. The way that the transformation scenes are shot, where Fredric March turns into the odious Dr. Hyde, are done entirely through trick photography, where using makeup of different colors, Struss was able to make it look as if March was actually turning into Mr. Hyde without cutting away. It's a genuinely terrific visual effect (had that been a category in 1931-32, it surely would've won the Oscar), but the rest of the film is relatively conventional. I'm giving it not only points, but extra points because this is a truly impressive way to do this & there was no other way for the Oscars to recognize this in 1932, but it's more a case of one great set piece in an otherwise routine film.
Or perhaps I'm just being overly critical because of what I know we have in store. Shanghai Express is one of six films that Marlene Dietrich made with Josef von Sternberg, and watching it-I wanted 100 more solely because of the cinematography. This is, quite frankly, one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Every frame of Dietrich (or costar Anna May Wong) is exquisite, the filmy clouds of her cigarettes filling the screen...I honestly wanted to take up smoking after this. It's playing in a different field to the point where you feel like Gregg Toland was looking directly at this movie when he made Citizen Kane's trademark deep focus appearance years later. A movie that has to be seen to be believed.
Other Precursor Contenders: In 1932, there simply weren't precursors, not just in the tech categories (which we'll start to run out of as early as the 1980's & 90's) but even for Best Picture (the Globes wouldn't start for another decade, and the BAFTA's a few years after that). So I don't have any precursors here, and while for the other categories I might hazard an informed guess as to who was an almost-ran, here there's no evidence. I'm thinking maybe The Champ is a good hypothesis, given they love movies about boxing in this category and it made it into four other categories, but I'm up for other interpretations.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I'll be transparent here and say that I'm not remotely done with the "other contenders" options (watch my Letterboxd this weekend, as it's going to be an achievement), and because of the way I'm going to handle this, my focus is more on the films of 1931 for the also-ran's (which means I'll leave out six months of eligibility here as I will be giving out the My Ballot's by year, and not by Oscar's random calendar pre-1934). That said, I am confident Grand Hotel survives in the 1932 ballot for Cinematography, as it's a very romantic lensing of the buzzy cast, and given its Best Picture win (the only category it was nominated in), this would've been a good way to give it more love.
Oscar's Choice: If you've ever seen Shanghai Express, you'd know that even Oscar couldn't turn down this date.
Oscar's Choice: If you've ever seen Shanghai Express, you'd know that even Oscar couldn't turn down this date.
My Choice: And I'm joining Oscar-Shanghai Express has some of the best cinematography of the 1930's...it's an easy win over second place Jekyll and third place Arrowsmith.
Those are my thoughts-how about yours? Is there anyone who thinks that Shanghai Express shouldn't have won (and if so, when was your last trip to an optometrist)? Would you qualify Dr. Jekyll more as a cinematographer's achievement or a visual effects achievement? And who was in fourth place? Share your thoughts below!
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