Previously, in 1931-32...

 1931-32: A Look Back

We are doing something new in the Oscar Viewing Project as we move into our 24th season of the series, and by-far our shortest season-to-date.  We are officially moving not only into an Academy Awards ceremony that I did not see live, but to an Academy Awards ceremony that I doubt any living person saw live...and certainly one that happened well before your host (me!) was born.  While we have largely stayed chronological in our OVP as we tackled the 21st Century (I'll be doing some sort of ode to finishing our present century in the next week or so), that ends as we move into the 20th Century, where we will jump around a lot, keeping you on your toes.  We will start this with the 5th Academy Awards, taking place in 1932 but honoring the films of 1931-32.  While this ceremony honored the films that were released between August 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932, our stats today will be focusing more on 1931, which will also be how we handle our My Ballot, though in our "Should've Been Nominated" sections for Oscar, I'll try to make a point of only including the nominees that I know were eligible.

So now, let's go back (WAY back).  Back to a time when Porsche was just rolling out of factories, the Empire State Building was brand new against the New York City skyline, and Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth was flying off of bookshelves.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Box Office

This is what the Top 10 at the (Domestic) Box Office of 1931 looked like:

1. City Lights

2. Trader Horn

3. Palmy Days

4. The Man Who Came Back

5. Merely Mary Ann

6. Arrowsmith

6. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

8. A Connecticut Yankee

9. Cimarron

10. Possessed

Domestic box office numbers before 1977 get really noisy, and particularly before the 1960's they became dang near unreliable.  There's a variety of reasons for this, including that there's less reporting on the subject before mammoth hits like Jaws and Star Wars changed the game on how the public thinks of "successful" movies, as well as rereleases of movies helped to inflate a certain type of box office.  Frankenstein, for example, is almost certainly the highest-grossing film collectively of 1931, thanks to re-releases and popularity of the film in the years since, but isn't on this list because of what it initially made.  This is the Top 10 of 1931 according to cited Wikipedia articles, so we're going with it, and I'll just call out that I've seen four of these (City Lights, Arrowsmith, Cimarron, & Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and will for sure see Trader Horn before our My Ballot, and hopefully Possessed.

The Films I Missed

While I've seen all of the Oscar nominees, I haven't seen every film in 1931-32.  Going back this far, there weren't really any precursor awards as guides of what the season was like.  I will reference in our articles some other potential contenders (this is going to be a unique experience for both of us, so we'll figure it out as we go along), but there are a few films I plan on seeing in the next few weeks that were released in 1931 that I'll include as eligible for the My Ballot, including Rich and Strange, Mata Hari, & Marius, that are critically-acclaimed or from major artists of the era.  If you have any recommendations of films Oscar totally ignored I didn't just name-check, let me know in the comments.  Otherwise, we will be starting with Best Cinematography later this week!