OVP: Barefoot in the Park (1967)

Film: Barefoot in the Park (1967)

Stars: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Charles Boyer, Mildred Natwick

Director: Gene Saks

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Mildred Natwick)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Robert Redford: click here to learn more about Mr. Redford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Robert Redford always looked like a movie star (he famously was confused when Mike Nichols said he couldn't be the lead in The Graduate because he was too good-looking, apparently being perplexed when Nichols said he wasn't believable as a guy who was turned down by a girl...the real-life Redford being truly unfamiliar with the concept).  However, it took him a while to get there.  In the 1960's, Redford became a mainstay in television guest spots, including roles on Maverick, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone, even getting an Emmy nomination for The Voice of Charlie Pont, but film stardom wasn't really an option.  He started his film career in a guest spot in Tall Story (with Jane Fonda & Anthony Perkins), and became a second-or-third leading man in pictures like Inside Daisy Clover and The Chase.  It was in 1967 that Redford finally got to be a proper leading man and gain a strong foothold in Hollywood in Barefoot in the Park, a big hit (again opposite Jane Fonda) for Paramount that would lead to Redford getting A-list status for the next 50 years.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows newlyweds Corie (Fonda) and Paul (Redford) as they start to understand early married life together.  The beginning of the film is just them having sex for six days at the Plaza (having non-stop sex with a 30-year-old Robert Redford sounds like a good way to kill a week, so well done to Jane).  Afterward, though, they move into their fifth story walkup (without an elevator, a running gag in the movie), and the reality of domesticity starts to take over.  It turns out that Corie is not impressed with Paul's buttoned-up attitude, focusing on his job & not experiencing life, and she wants someone who is more adventurous, someone like their upstairs neighbor Victor Velasco (Boyer), whom Corie is trying to set up with her mother Ethel (Natwick), who is a bit shocked by everything involved, and likes her routine.  As the film goes, it turns out that both Corie & Paul need to give a little, but are clearly meant for one another, and the film ends with them reconciling on their rooftop after Corie saves Paul's life to a smattering of applause (and of course Victor & Ethel end up together too, because why not?).

The movie itself is a bit of a mixed bag.  The script is by Neil Simon, and (are we in a safe space here?)...I've never really gotten Neil Simon.  For much of the 1960's & 70's, his plays & films were a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist, but they feel bland and like they're commentating on things about romantic life that feel pretty prosaic and a weird mix of modern ideals & conservative values.  Maybe you had to be there to get it.  Like, it makes no sense that Corie is just learning about Paul being a "stuffed shirt" now, given they presumably dated before they got married (we learn zilch about what they're like before the wedding, which is an interesting writing choice but it doesn't really get us anything).

The stars, though, make up for it.  Fonda & Redford are sexy as hell, and honestly you kind of just want to spend the entire movie focusing on their randy interactions at the Plaza, with Fonda telling naughty jokes as Redford gets into the elevator being a plus.  The two of them, who had already starred in The Chase as co-leads before this, would go on to star in two more movies in the decades to come, and it shows-their chemistry is off-the-charts.  The supporting roles are less successful.  Boyer, at this point well into his career as a leading man and now taking smaller parts as an aging lothario, is as hammy as you'd expect, and so is Natwick.  This was the character actress's only Oscar nomination, and I have a personal policy of not being too mean about ragging on actor's only nominations, but this isn't earned.  She's two-dimensional, is basically comic relief that rarely provides comedy, and probably only got this because AMPAS wanted to award the film somewhere, and the leads were too sexy to honor just yet.

OVP: When Tomorrow Comes (1939)

Film: When Tomorrow Comes (1939)

Stars: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Barbara O'Neil

Director: John M. Stahl

Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Sound Recording*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The list of films that beat Gone with the Wind at the Oscars is short.  The film, considered by many to be the definition of a Classical Hollywood film, was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning eight, though one of those losses was against itself (in Supporting Actress, Hattie McDaniel beat Olivia de Havilland).  The list of films that beat it include classics like Goodbye Mr. Chips and The Wizard of Oz, but it also includes When Tomorrow Comes, a movie that I'd never really heard of before I noticed it leaving Criterion Streaming (if you wanna catch it, get there by the end of the month!) & that it was on my OVP "tough to find films" list.  As a result, I wanted to see who the film was that could possibly beat the landmark epic for an Oscar, and while I come away enjoying the picture, I more so come away confused.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is really two halves of a movie, as the film plays around quite a bit with genre.  The first half has Helen (Dunne), a waitress who is part of a group of striking servers demanding their due (right on!) meeting Philip (Boyer), a man she initially thinks is a spy from management but turns out to be a man who is smitten with her.  They get to know each other, and after one night (in which they scandalously spend the night together, chastely, in a church) they have fallen in love.  It turns out, though, that Philip is married to Madeleine (O'Neil), a woman who suffers from some sort of depression, and relies on Philip to keep her from spiraling.  Madeleine warns Helen off from her husband, or from Helen being his mistress, and despite the fact that she loves him, she knows she cannot breakup this marriage & look herself in the mirror.  The two refuse to say goodbye, instead simply saying "I'll see you in a bit" when Philip leaves for a flight, knowing that they likely will never see each other again.

Dunne & Boyer had earlier in 1939 made the classic Love Affair, so audiences were desperate to see more, and so this movie made sense as they'd shown they had chemistry.  If you read this blog often, you'll know I have divergent opinions on these two actors-Irene Dunne is almost always a treat, owning the screen, while I find Boyer's overwrought romance too hammy & done.  This is not quite the case for When Tomorrow Comes.  I don't like Boyer in this, but there are times he works with the film, perhaps just as well as Dunne, especially after it has a strange shift from screwball romantic comedy (complete with clumsy waitresses on a picket line!) into deep melodrama.  The film itself gave me whiplash-the shift in tones is too much, but both tones are good so I'm going with 3 stars as I liked it in spite of its clear technical flaws.

The film's Oscar win is a mystery to me, though.  Honestly-it's not a case of me not caring for the movie's sound, it's more that there is nothing specific about the sound work in the movie that caught my ear. I'm assuming it won for the hurricane scenes, but they're playing off-screen for the large part, and they are not anything different than what we'd seen in other films with large-scale storm sequences.  Boyer plays a piano player (sometimes they like musically-inclined films in this category), but he barely touches the keys the whole movie.  That this won over not just Gone with the Wind's burning of Atlanta, but also Mr. Smith's long filibuster & the bells of Notre Dame is one of the bigger Oscar mysteries I've come across in a while.

OVP: Algiers (1938)

Film: Algiers (1938)
Stars: Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, Hedy lamarr, Joseph Calleia, Alan Hale, Gene Lockhart
Director: John Cromwell
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actor-Charles Boyer, Best Supporting Actor-Gene Lockhart, Art Direction, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I am currently suffering from a high fever and pneumonia, so I'm going to be honest-I wasn't sure if I would get this out today.  The last few weeks have been a bit of a nightmare, with me exhausted all of the time, and the introduction today of a spike-and-drop fever is, well, not the best thing that's ever happened to me (I am a wimp about being sick, and so rarely sick that I don't really know how my body is supposed to handle such things).  But I did watch the latest Hedy Lamarr movie for our project, so I'm going to attempt to write this, and if I like it, we're going to publish.

Algiers was Hedy Lamarr's first American film.  She had come over from Europe, where she had been married to Fritz Mandl, an Austrian arms manufacturer who worked with both Mussolini & Hitler in the lead-up to World War II, and was an abusive, controlling husband to Lamarr.  Though accounts vary on exactly how she fled him, she eventually made it to London, where she met Louis B. Mayer who signed her to a contract and began to bill her as "the most beautiful woman in the world"


(Spoilers Ahead) Algiers is the story of Pepe le Moko (Boyer, and yes, this would eventually be the inspiration for the cartoon character Pepe Le Pew), a crime boss living in the Casbah in Algiers.  The film is largely focused on Pepe's relationships with both the law (whom he consistently alludes), as well as the residents of the Casbah, all of whom are somewhat intrigued by him, even if they don't seem to have universal respect for him.  He is torn between his long-time mistress Ines (Gurie) and his new love Gaby (Lamarr), who is engaged to a wealthy man and is currently on a vacation in Algiers when she meets and falls in love with Pepe.  All-the-time, Regis (Lockhart), someone who works for Pepe but doesn't feel he gets the respect that he deserves, betrays him, selling him out to the police, and in the process he is killed for his betrayal.  Pepe eventually is brought out in the open when someone lies to Gaby about Pepe dying, and so she leaves the Casbah, heartbroken.  The final moments of the film are Pepe calling out for Gaby, wanting her to know that he's still alive, and being shot by an overzealous police officer in the process (he's already been taken into custody by the Inspector, played by Calleia).

The film won four Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor citation for Boyer.  If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that Boyer is one of my least favorite stars of classic Hollywood, his hammy approach never really giving me much appeal, and he's absurd as a crook.  There's a reason they created a cartoon character out of this performance-it's indulgent, the sort of thing that might play romantically in 1938, but it's over-the-top just a few years later.  It's worth noting that the film inspired Casablanca to some degree, and you see that (particularly with the set design, which is the movie's best feature), but it's also a testament to what a better actor Humphrey Bogart is than Boyer, as Bogart is able to imbue an actual soul into his character, rather than giving clunky line readings.

Where Algiers is at its most interesting is when they simply focus on life in a closed city, focusing on the minutia of the residents, all of whom are biding their own time until something like Pepe's accidental shooting happens to them.  The movie is kind of weird when it does this (Calleia's Inspector is a bad performance but also kind of an awesomely bad performance...is he secretly in love with Pepe too?), but it's distinctive and keeps you intrigued long enough to get around Boyer.  The movie's other acting nomination was for Gene Lockhart, who gets a meaty part as the man who betrays Pepe, but he's two-dimensional and not remotely the best supporting character in the lot, so I'm surprised they even noticed him for this honor.

As for Lamarr, it's clear that this is her first film in a language that is not her own.  She's gorgeous, almost ridiculously so (apparently when the film initially opened, people audibly gasped the first time she was onscreen), but there's not enough fire in her to sell Gaby as anything other than a lost trophy wife, trying to figure out what to do with herself as she's about to give in to a loveless marriage.  Gurie is considerably better as her romantic rival, someone who is obsessed with Pepe, to the point where she'd rather him die than leave her, and she's ultimately the one who betrays him, but Lamarr doesn't have the natural spark that she brought to Ecstasy.  Hopefully as she becomes more acclimated to Hollywood in our remaining two weeks we'll see that spark return.

OVP: Hold Back the Dawn (1941)

Film: Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
Stars: Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Walter Abel
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Actress-Olivia de Havilland, Adapted Screenplay, Score, Art Direction, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Charles Boyer, I have found through the years, is a bit of an acquired taste that I don't believe I'll ever properly acquire.  This is a pity for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that Boyer starred in a lot of OVP films, including four that he was nominated for Best Actor for.  As a result of that, I will be seeing a bunch of him whether I want to or not (much like Spencer Tracy), though I will admit that, since this isn't one of the films that won him Oscar acclaim, I didn't know he was headlining this movie prior to clicking the play button on my DVR.  As a result, I started this in a disappointed mood and no amount of melodrama (something I'm usually clamoring for) was going to save me from a pretty paint-by-numbers picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows a gigolo named Georges (when is Boyer not playing a gigolo?), who wants to find a way into the United States as a citizen, and realizes from his old flame Anita (Goddard) that he can in fact become an American citizen by marrying one (clearly this took place before FOX News).  After an unpleasant first encounter, he manages to charm a lonely schoolteacher named Emmy (de Havilland) into being his wife, but quickly has an immigration inspector (Abel) tailing them and trying to suss out if they're truly in love or whether Georges is swindling Emmy.  During his sly evasion of the law (masquerading as a honeymoon), Georges of course falls in love with Emmy, and though she eventually finds out his pretense and tosses him to the curb, this isn't one of those "sad ending" romances (even if part of me thought that would have played better), and they reunite at the border late in the picture.

The film has very little comic relief save for some boys letting off firecrackers and a side story about a pregnant woman trying to find a way to have her baby become an American (again, FOX News would have a field day with this, and how she eventually pulls it off by giving birth in an embassy), but it should work in theory.  Straight romances were generally pretty good in the 1940's, arguably their heyday because they could believably sell, say, a woman who marries a man after a short conversation or a cad falling in love after a lifetime of nefarious attitudes.  Look at something like Brief Encounter or Waterloo Bridge from the era as a picture that can prove you can have romance without any issue of plausibility.

No, the film doesn't fail in that regard-it fails in the world of its two leads.  Boyer and de Havilland have very little chemistry together onscreen-she's too naive to function, he's too much of a Lothario to be remotely believable.  The final third of the film (where Boyer is largely absent, thanks in part to him having a fight with writer Billy Wilder, who never again would do a screenplay for a film he didn't direct) is easily the best part, perhaps because it focuses on the two leading women, and de Havilland comes alive a bit when she's unhindered by her goody-two-shoes and faces off against the other arch in her love triangle (and Goddard, easily the best part of the cast, is aces as Anita), but at that point we've spent too much time kind of hoping that Georges would get his comeuppance and have to live with what he did to Emmy-that he gets away nearly scot-free after behaving so abominably left me the wrong way.

Suffice it to say, I don't get the Best Picture nomination (well, I get it as it was a big hit starring two of the era's major headliners), but the rest of the nominees are a bit more hit-and-miss.  Victor Young's score is solid even if occasionally forgettable (he sure loves his swells), and the cinematography is okay, only occasionally finding some solid lighting in the movie studios (it's not even in the same hemisphere as what Gregg Toland was doing in Citizen Kane that same year though), and the writing/art direction are fine if pretty routine (I liked the look of the mechanic's office with the art direction, at least, arguably the most worthy nomination).  As for de Havilland, who famously stopped speaking to her sister after she lost the Oscar for this film?  Neither she nor Fontaine deserved that little gold man that year, so it was really Barbara Stanwyck or Bette Davis who should have held the grudge.

There you have have it folks-Best Picture nominees two days in a row!  What are your thoughts on Hold Back the Dawn-anyone want to defend one (or all six) of its nominations?  Who was the Best Actress of 1941 in your opinion (one of those rare years where all five women were previous nominees, and perhaps the only year where they all went in and came out later with another Oscar nomination)?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Conquest (1937)

Film: Conquest (1937)
Stars: Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer, Reginald Owen, Henry Stephenson, May Whitty, Maria Ouspenskaya
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Actor-Charles Boyer, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the most popular posts in the run of the Oscar Viewing Project thus far has been that of the Garbo/Brown collaboration in Romance, so when I saw that Conquest was buried in my TiVo, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to unearth another Garbo/Brown collaboration and make it my Saturday Morning Movie, and the next OVP film.

The movie, for those unfamiliar, is about Napoleon Bonaparte (played by Boyer) and his mistress, Countess Walewska (played by Garbo).  The film follows the first meeting between Bonaparte and Walewska, where she shows that she adores him as if like a God because she believes he will liberate her beloved Poland.  As the movie goes on, she grows disdain for him as he's clearly interested in her for "only one thing" and proves that he is just a man.  Then, quite suddenly (too suddenly, if you ask me), she decides she is back in love with him (but first she is abandoned by her husband for betraying him by trying to free Poland with her feminine whiles).  We see her by his side as he first becomes the great Emperor of Europe, and then when he is banished to Elba and defeated at Waterloo.  Throughout, she remains devoted even as he strays and marries another woman.  All-in-all, an exhaustingly epic story, and very ambitious for its time period (the film cost an exorbitant amount of money, and was actually a sizable flop at the Box Office when it first came out).

Because this is Clarence Brown, and because this film is made in 1937, Garbo's character is as saintly as can be, and her intentions always look noble, even if on the surface they are not.  My biggest problem in the film had to be the quick-turnaround for Walewska about her love for Napoleon.  While it's certainly believable that she fell in love with his power or developed some Stockholm Syndrome, since this is 1937, we don't get to see that and considering Brown's rather sexist treatment of women, I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; the Countess's unwavering devotion to Napoleon, and so suddenly, makes it hard to swallow the role and the film's love story.  This is a woman he basically forced into being his mistress, and yet we get little indication that Garbo resents him for it, even though she almost certainly would have.

I rather enjoyed the supporting parts played by Whitty and Ouspenskaya, both strong character actresses of the 1930's and both with far more realistic reactions to this egotistical emperor.  Whitty, his mother, acknowledges his weaknesses even when Garbo doesn't, and Ouspenskaya, a Countess Dowager whose mental capacities are gone (she still thinks that her friend Louis XVI is ruling France when Napoleon enters the picture), are strong character bits that the film probably needed more of-by far the best acted scene in the film, in my opinion, is the wry scene with Ouspenskaya and Boyer while they are playing cards.  Ouspenskaya thinks Napoleon is mad because he is an emperor, even though she is obviously the mistaken one.  This sense of fun is missing severely from the rest of the film, and with an actor with such an eye twinkle as Charles Boyer, that seems like a wasted opportunity.

Boyer received one of the film's two Academy Award nominations, his first of four nominations for Best Actor (he would never win, though he would win an Honorary Oscar certificate in 1942).  There's definitely a lot one can say about Boyer-he has presence, for certain, and he has the onscreen chutzpah to pull off a character like Napoleon, but his tendency toward the overcooked, and his ability to constantly be switching from love to anger and nothing in-between is a pale comparison to, say, the haunted work that Fredric March does as a fading movie star/alcoholic in A Star is Born from the same year.  The film's other nomination, however, is far more up my alley-the millions of dollars that they spend on the budget to create the elaborate castles and houses that litter the continent of Europe were well spent, as every scene creates that decadent luxury that one associates with this period in European culture.  Bonus points go to the film's opening scene, when we see a gorgeous and stately manor torn asunder by horses braying around the foyer (it sounds weird, but totally works on-screen).

All-in-all, I gotta say I'm still not impressed with Brown, and am starting to lose a little bit of hope that I ever will be (though with five more of his Best Director nominations to go, I'll have ample opportunities to change my mind).  The film's complete lack of character development, and the overwrought performance by Boyer move this to 2-stars, though the handsome production design, strong (female) supporting work, and the luminescence of Garbo keep it from falling into the 1-star column.

And, as always, we end with some food for thought-what'd you think of Conquest?  Is there a Clarence Brown film that would win me over?  And which Garbo film shall we take a journey to next?  Don't be shy-comment away!