All right, I let Oscar have his say, and now it's my turn. I have officially seen all of the screenings that I wanted to before weighing in on 1957, including every narrative, feature-length Oscar-nominated movie, and am prepared to say what films I would pick to nominate for all of the Oscar categories. I will own that this year took longer than I thought, because 1957 is one of the best years of movies I've encountered. The Best Picture lineup here is incredible, filled with directors & genres that I love (Mysteries! Westerns! Epics! Oh My!), some of them hidden gems but many of them films that Oscar just couldn't realize at the time were genius. As always, I haven't seen every film from 1957, so if there's a particular favorite of yours that I missed, don't hesitate to ask in the comments before you assume I just snubbed it!
A few notes before we start. I do not intend to always copy Oscar verbatim. You'll notice here that there are actually a few additional categories (like Makeup & Hairstyling) that Oscar didn't include until later (which is insane given how crucial makeup has always been at the movies), and I have larger lineups for things like Visual Effects than Oscar (which at this point in history is probably more of a "Special" effects situation given there's no CGI quite yet, so I'm counting stunt work, camera tricks, and practical effects here). I also included the category of Dance Direction, which had a short-lived run in the 1930's as a category for Oscar, but I think is really interesting, so I'm going to include it for all of the run of Classical Hollywood (when musicals regularly featured dancing). With that said, let's begin!
3:10 to Yuma
An Affair to Remember
The Bridge on the River Kwai
A Face in the Crowd
Nights of Cabiria
Paths of Glory
The Seventh Seal
White Nights
Wild Strawberries
Witness for the Prosecution
Gold: Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal is one of those movies that stays with you your whole life. I saw it during college, and it changed how I look at cinema, it felt so breathlessly fresh & new despite being almost 50 years old at the time. It gives you a sense of the unrest of death, the way that no matter when or how it happens, we aren't prepared for it, but know that no one can escape it.
Silver: David Lean's brilliant The Bridge on the River Kwai won the Best Picture Oscar, and though I didn't quite give it my top prize, it still is so fine that it ranks amongst the best decisions Oscar ever made in the category. A look at the paranoia that comes from war (and the madness...MADNESS).
Bronze: Finishing off one of the finest lineups I've ever assembled for this prize (give or take 2007, I don't know that I've come up with a better Top 10 list) is A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan's prescient look at the way that celebrity can cover up the darkness in men's souls (and in their audience's).
Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal
Federico Fellini, Nights of Cabiria
Elia Kazan, A Face in the Crowd
Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory
David Lean, The Bridge on the River Kwai
Gold: We're going to keep Bergman in the gold medal seat here (he nearly got a double citation for Wild Strawberries, as he was in sixth place for it), because it's one of the great achievements in the craft. Many directors have tried to explain the meaning of life through their movies. Bergman comes the closest to figuring it out.
Silver: David Lean is up there with Bergman as one of my all-time favorite directors (they'd both make a Top 10 list if I had one), and you see that with Bridge in the way he blends the epic scale of the movie with the quiet, desperate control of the performances he has that will all lead up to the title scene of the picture.
Bronze: Speaking of Top 10 all-time directors, Stanley Kubrick takes the bronze here with the definitive war-is-hell epic (give or take Apocalypse Now!), a haunting look at life in the trenches of World War I, and how it sucks the humanity out of its soldiers while bureaucrats shuffle papers.
Kirk Douglas, Paths of Glory
Henry Fonda, 12 Angry Men
Andy Griffith, A Face in the Crowd
Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai
Charles Laughton, Witness for the Prosecution
Gold: Alec Guinness is known to a generation of filmgoers as Obi-Won Kenobi, a terrific performance that I will undoubtedly nominate when I get to 1977 at the end of this year. But this...this is his finest hour as a haunted, by-the-books Colonel Nicholson who loses all sense of logic as he cannot escape a lifetime of duty.
Silver: For anyone who grew up watching him as Andy Taylor on his eponymous show, Andy Griffith is the most unlikely person imaginable to be playing a ruthless, power-hungry hillbilly given the platform of the world. It's hard not to think of Donald Trump while watching the way that his cruelty becomes fodder for the masses.
Bronze: Kirk Douglas is not an actor I generally cite as one of my favorites, and indeed he's generally a mixed bag for me (at best) in his long run during Classical Hollywood. So color me surprised (but delighted) that I will include him as a My Ballot medalist for the best work of his career in Paths of Glory, a fully-felt and realized anti-war achievement.
Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution
Giuletta Masina, Nights of Cabiria
Deborah Kerr, An Affair to Remember
Anna Magnani, Wild is the Wind
Patricia Neal, A Face in the Crowd
Gold: The first time I saw Nights of Cabiria, I was in a second-run movie theater in Los Angeles, and remembered walking out, sunset behind me as I looked for my car, entranced by the things that Giuletta Masina had done in this movie, giving us a vibrant, singular title character that will always be with me.
Silver: Oh Marlene, I'm sorry I couldn't give you the top prize (and oh how wrong Oscar was to not even consider you), but the many chapters of her work (so layered) in Witness for the Prosecution would've won if Masina wasn't giving us a role most would fall before.
Bronze: All of which means that one of my personal favorite movies, one that I've probably seen more than any other mentioned on this list, just barely enters the medal conversation. I love the chemistry that Deborah Kerr, so regal & kind, brings to her romance with Cary Grant. The unapologetic romance of the movie's close only works because Kerr is so committed to the material.
Lee J. Cobb, 12 Angry Men
Bengt Ekerot, The Seventh Seal
Sessue Hayakawa, The Bridge on the River Kwai
George MacReady, Paths of Glory
Max von Sydow, The Seventh Seal
Gold: Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a performance is great or if the role is so crucial to the film you kind of have to love it. Bengt Ekerot toes that line (and part of me wishes that I'd seen more of his work so I'd have faith I'm doing the right thing giving him the top prize over a really solid assembly), but a recent rewatch confirmed how much he understands the inevitable malice of his character...to the point it almost feels comical.
Silver: Behind him is Sessue Hayakawa, one of the great casting decisions of the 1950's (Hayakawa was the first Asian leading man of the 1930's before largely disappearing from Hollywood movies), playing the maddened villain of David Lean's epic (though of course the true villain, and even Hayakawa's Col. Saito falls to it, is war itself).
Bronze: Similar to Hayakawa, George Macready has to embody the villain in his role, but in a much less literal way. Macready's performance is filled with indifference, and the way that he has escaped years of threats to his life, giving the attitude less of a war commander and more of a hostess planning a dinner party.
Ruby Dee, Edge of the City
Elsa Lanchester, Witness for the Prosecution
Una O'Connor, Witness for the Prosecution
Janis Paige, Silk Stockings
Kay Thompson, Funny Face
Gold: It's not often we get to see the benefits of a marital chemistry brought to life on the big-screen, but that's the case with Elsa Lanchester's performance in Witness for the Prosecution. What could've been a silly part as Charles Laughton's private nurse feels crucial to understanding his character, the driving backbone of the picture.
Silver: It's not often you get the same movie getting the top two prizes, but Una O'Connor has spent a lifetime in movies stealing scenes (hell, we may have both of them back for Bride of Frankenstein in 1935). She gives a memorable piece-of-work as a maid, devoted to her benefactress (but also angered by the inheritance she was cheated out of).
Bronze: The late, great Janis Paige steals all of Silk Stockings for herself (Cyd Charisse is just left in her wake). The "Satin and Silk" number is the highlight, but she does delicious, sexy work as a picture star who wants to be taken seriously...but more so wants to have a good time.
The Bridge on the River Kwai
A Face in the Crowd
Paths of Glory
The Seventh Seal
Witness for the Prosecution
Gold: I am likely going to say this a few more times in 1957, but man is this a stacked category (for the record, original screenplay is not an all-timer lineup...but this is). In picking the #1, I'm going to go with Paths of Glory. I think it's the rare war film that gets most of its strength from the plotting and dialogue, which unfold a political message that the audience probably isn't anticipating, which gives it more punch.
Silver: Behind it is another story that you don't necessarily anticipate all of its turns. A Face in the Crowd is a movie that we can see coming now, because we understand the corrupting influence of celebrity, but part of the reason we can see it is that movies like A Face in the Crowd blazed that trail before us...a truly formative screenplay.
Bronze: The Seventh Seal is more of a director's film than a writer's (even though they're the same person), but its complicated look at the Black Plague as metaphor for all of life's troubles (and all of mankind's folly) is smart, concentrated plotting from a man best known for giving us feeling over structure.
The Devil Strikes at Night
Forty Guns
Kanal
Nights of Cabiria
Wild Strawberries
Gold: The other Bergman picture is my choice for Original Screenplay. Wild Strawberries is not about the universal nature of death, but instead about the way that our accomplishments become all that we have to stand upon, and what we give to our loved ones as memories of our time (whether we want to or not).
Silver: Nights of Cabiria is a movie that gives us raw, sometimes uncomfortable dialogue as we live life through a woman full of boundless passion...and men that want to suck it out of her. The scene toward the end where she is begging the only man she's ever trusted for death is frightening, and gives us a sense of the beauty of what comes next.
Bronze: Largely forgotten today, The Devil Strikes at Night (a Best Foreign Language Film nominee that lost to Nights of Cabiria) is a strange amalgamation of genres (it is both a film noir and a look at the rise of fascism in one picture). Its realism, and the way that it inspires the movie's cruel (and unusual ending) are really finely delivered.
3:10 to Yuma
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Funny Face
Paths of Glory
The Seventh Seal
Gold: The Bridge on the River Kwai...I say the name and you can hear the whistling & marching. The movie's best moments are linked to sound-tension, music, conversational dialogue. It is a film given the sound-laden trope of a war picture, but it gets the best results by escaping that cliche, using it as an addition rather than a crutch.
Silver: The Seventh Seal doesn't quite have the budget of Lean's epic, but it also makes use of sound work, from the dancing ending to the abrupt use of the score to drive what's to come, and how the audience must feel (even before the characters)...telegraphing I wouldn't normally enjoy except it gives us time to realize that no one can stop what's coming.
Bronze: Oscar always finds room for a musical here, but I don't...I need it to truly step up to the plate before I just give a musical one of my big five (if done correctly, you should never have a "default" nominee). But Funny Face...that's a movie that earns it. Think of the grandeur of the photo shoot montage-combining a bouncy score with a witty repartee between Astaire & Hepburn, and then a bouncy bit of sound effects all to lead to the movie's famous Nike of Somethrace sequence, when everything combines...and it's just magic.
An Affair to Remember
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Forty Guns
Gates of Paris
The Seventh Seal
Gold: Getting back to that telegraphing, I just am in awe of the music of The Seventh Seal. The film largely uses original music, which is insane as it feels plucked from a chorale concert at the height of the 11th Century, authenticity used for a movie with a modern message.
Silver: Technically the Colonel Bogey March is not eligible here, which is why it's not getting the Gold Medal, but that's the only thing holding back The Bridge on the River Kwai, a grand lesson from Malcolm Arnold in how to craft a big, distinctive composition that feels at once at home within the picture and forever in our memories, bringing us back.
Bronze: Using the title song to keep us linked, Hugo Friedhofer unveils a giant, romantic backdrop to An Affair to Remember, full of big swings & woodwinds, a full-scale romance for a movie that doesn't shy away from the melodrama that comes from burgeoning, first-time true love.
Funny Face
Les Girls
The Pajama Game
Gold: This category differs from Best Score in that it is focusing on how musical songs are incorporated into the picture, with it feeling like it needs to be a plot point (it's not technically a "Best Musical" category but it's definitely where we'll favor it when it comes to the category because musicals are going to have a leg-up in how they handle songs since they are part of the plot, and that's true of all of my nominees in 1957). The gold medalist here, the first time we've done this category in a My Ballot, is Funny Face, which doesn't have quite the same amount of musical numbers as some other contenders but gives us a new interpretation of Gershwin classics.
Silver: Following it is the the "put on a show" deliciousness of Les Girls, incorporating into a surprisingly plot heavy musical fun divergences like "Ladies in Waiting" there to keep you from guessing too much about how this will end up for Gene Kelly and his many dalliances.
Bronze: Finishing this off is the Broadway translation of The Pajama Game, never quite escaping its Shubert Alley roots, but you'd be hard-pressed to care as Carol Haney vamps it up in "Hernando's Hideaway" (the best translation, and the only one that doesn't feel like it's staged) or Doris Day falling desperately in love with "Hey There"...you'll be forgiven for thinking this is a better movie than it is.
"3:10 to Yuma," 3:10 to Yuma
"An Affair to Remember," An Affair to Remember
"All the Way," The Joker is Wild
"Gunfight at the OK Corral," Gunfight at the OK Corral
"Wild is the Wind," Wild is the Wind
Gold: I will own going into this year that I did not expect that Best Original Song would be a category where I'd be actively bartering with myself over 5-star songs that I have to cut, but this ended up being an all-timer lineup, to the point where I literally cut "Jailhouse Rock" (which was eligible) from my list. The song that came out on top for me is Johnny Mathis's haunting overture "Wild is the Wind" which molds the struggling romance within that (very solid) picture.
Silver: Behind it we have Frank Sinatra singing one of his signatures, "All the Way" in another movie that in a lesser year would likely have gotten more notes on this list (it's very good, and has a strong performance from TMROJ favorite Mitzi Gaynor). The song informs the really haunting, personal approach of this biopic.
Bronze: Finishing off this medal round is one of the two Frankie Laine western songs I cited here, "Gunfight at the OK Corral." I'm picking this over "3:10 to Yuma" as I feel like it's a quintessential western song (maybe the quintessential western song), and also it's just so fun-I dare anyone to listen to this and not need to dive right into the movie that follows.
Funny Face
Les Girls
Silk Stockings
Gold: One more music category, but this time it's clearer where the focus is (and, as expected, it's going to heavily favor musicals as they're the ones that generally have dance sequences). Funny Face again wins here, and while the obvious reason is the elegant grace of Fred Astaire (the first of potentially many match-ups between he & Kelly as they fight over this My Ballot statue for years to come), the secret weapon is Kay Thompson, breathtaking (she nearly medal-ed for me, and is one of my favorite nominees I fought to include above), in a rare acting role after many years as an entertainer & writer.
Silver: Gene Kelly's dancing gets the next position. Les Girls doesn't have a lot of musical numbers, and Kelly himself only dances in a few of them, but when you have Kelly having a jazz-inspired ballet of sorts with Mitzi Gaynor (both dressed head-to-toe in skin tight black against a red-and-white stage set), the screen almost starts to steam it's so sexy.
Bronze: We're back to Astaire with Silk Stockings, not my favorite of his musicals, but you've got Astaire just showing off with things like his spats-and-tails take on rock-and-roll with "The Ritz Roll and Rock" and Cyd Charisse's impossible elegance extending into "It's a Chemical Raction."
Desk Set
Funny Face
Les Girls
Paths of Glory
White Nights
Gold: That red-and-white staged bar is just one of many reasons to marvel at the set design of Les Girls. I particularly was smitten with the simple detailing in the title trio's apartment, filled with little splashes of color and clutter that you don't usually find in a Golden Age musical.
Silver: Outdoor design is also something that you don't generally get a lot of beauty for in Classical Hollywood pictures, but the way that we get a visually stunning, realistic trench in Paths of Glory is just one way that the movie inspires a different outlook on what you'd expect in a war picture of the era.
Bronze: You can see both the inspiration (movies like Port of Shadows that came before it), as well as movies like Don't Look Now and Querelle that would not be possible without it, but that doesn't take away from the enchanting loneliness that White Nights (aka Le Notti Bianche) achieves as we get lost in a succession of Italian nights with two desperate souls in a gorgeous, haunting Tuscan village.
3:10 to Yuma
Forty Guns
Nights of Cabiria
Paths of Glory
The Seventh Seal
Gold: There are a dozen movies that would've normally gotten mentioned here (so many pretty pictures), so every one of these movies are bringing their A-Game. I'm going to give the top prize to Paths of Glory both because it's gorgeous, and because it uses the cinematography to tell the story, the wandering camera in long shot (Kirk Douglas's walk through a battle is unforgettable).
Silver: Behind it is the beautiful cathedral style approach of The Seventh Seal, a movie that uses somewhat closed sets to still insist on a sense of beauty & mystery. Like Paths of Glory, its one image so ingrained in moviegoers' memories (the dancing on the hill) is just part of a continually impressive story.
Bronze: Has the west ever felt so isolating (and alive) than the gigantic widescreen scale of Forty Guns, a movie that you almost can feel the dust hitting your face during some of the horse chases. At one point near the beginning the camera gives us a look from the vantage of a pair of frightened horses to instill that this is not just a typical late-stage western we're watching.
Funny Face
Les Girls
Raintree County
The Seventh Seal
Silk Stockings
Gold: Edith Head, on her first nomination for the My Ballot, already has secured a Gold Medal for her Givenchy-aided work in Funny Face. I don't know that Audrey Hepburn has ever looked as glamorous as she does coming down the steps of the Louvre in a strapless scarlett gown...hell, I don't know if anyone has ever looked that glamorous in a movie.
Silver: Three times the fun for Orry Kelly in Les Girls, getting to do different riffs on what Kay Kendall, Taina Elg, & Mitzi Gaynor will do with matching outfits is a lot of the character-building fun in this movie. Particularly love the giant chapeaus they have in black velvet dresses & white silk gloves in the title song (complete with crimson pumps to keep the sex appeal as high as you can get it).
Bronze: Cyd Charisse's elegant ballerina act with a see-through teddy lingerie (it's got the title name for a reason) is the best look, but this film is constantly throwing out fun stuff (even for the men...Astaire looks super dapper), and I love that it sees its leading ladies mile-long legs (Charisse & Paige) as an asset in the costume department.
The Bridge on the River Kwai
A Face in the Crowd
Paths of Glory
The Seventh Seal
Wild Strawberries
Gold: We're getting toward the end, and one last "all Best Picture" lineup (sometimes I get creative with Film Editing...apparently not in a year this tight). The winner is our Best Picture winner, The Seventh Seal, which has tricky editing (it's not always clear what time we're in, or if we're in a time at all), but that it gets us where we need to go is a true achievement.
Silver: Behind it is the wartime struggles of Paths of Glory, a movie whose pacing is almost hidden, as you can't quite understand where it's going. It makes key scenes at the end, like those of the prisoners scared of death, all the more potent because we've been lulled into this not realizing where we're about to be taken.
Bronze: The pacing of The Bridge on the River Kwai is easier to ascertain, but it still feels crucial as it's not picked up by all of the characters...the tension isn't in what's about to happen, but more so will they understand in time.
Funny Face
Kanal
Nights of Cabiria
Paths of Glory
Witness for the Prosecution
Gold: The gorgeous clown makeup Giuletta Masina dons in Nights of Cabiria, complete with an elegant pixie cut that doesn't read as chic so much as easy (very important to a character who aspires to glamour but can't actually achieve it) are some of the subtle touches brought to this beautiful work.
Silver: To say too much about the achievement in Witness for the Prosecution would be to ruin some of the best little bits of the picture, but let's just say it's transformative, and that the still-life beauty of Marlene Dietrich in her early scenes proves that she only got more devastating with age.
Bronze: While it's a mainstay in this category for modern movies, realistic or wartime makeup is not something I normally get to recognize for this category in the Golden Age. But Kanal is made far from Hollywood (and is years ahead of its time), and the grungy sewer looks of this movie, as they try desperately to escape, adds to its haunting power.
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Jet Pilot
Paths of Glory
The Spirit of St. Louis
Gold: And for our final gold medal we're going to introduce a movie that we haven't mentioned once, The Incredible Shrinking Man, a movie about toxic masculinity before that was a phrase (the opening scene he spends demanding his wife get him a beer...and the movie that follows he literally becomes less of a man). The special effects here, especially those involving him against the backdrop of live animals (you see actual cats & tarantulas in the picture) are some of the best I've seen in this era.
Silver: Though there are some war-time effects throughout, The Bridge on the River Kwai is getting this medal solely for one big bang at the end of the picture. David Lean (who took a heavy hand in this sequence) had multiple cameras set up to see an actual bridge explode for the title scene, and what comes out of it is one of Hollywood's best finale climaxes.
Bronze: In a face-off of two aerial showcases for the bronze, I'm going to go with The Spirit of St. Louis over Jet Pilot, mostly because I like the retro charm and grace that it uses compared to the sleekness of Howard Hughes' final big production, but both are well-showing why the movies turn to the skies.
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