OVP: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Film: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, OJ Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Susan Flannery, Jack Collins

Director: John Guillermin

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Fred Astaire, Art Direction, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score, Song, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen's career hit its financial peak in 1974, when he starred with Paul Newman in today's film The Towering Inferno.  At this point, Newman & McQueen were two of the biggest names in movies, and there were quite a few arguments over who would get top billing in the picture (ultimately it was a draw, with McQueen's name first but Newman's name higher), but after this both would suffer career lulls.  Newman would rebound eventually in the 1980's with films like The Verdict and The Color of Money, the latter winning him his only competitive Oscar, but McQueen would never regain this position.  He'd make an ill-fated Ibsen film in 1978 (one that would basically disappear from public consciousness), and then a pair of pictures in 1980 (Tom Horn and The Hunter), both decent-sized hits that might have hallmarked a comeback, but that wasn't to be.  Just over three months after the release of The Hunter, Steve McQueen would be dead.

(Spoilers Ahead) But before we get into that, let's get into the height of his career, at least commercially.  The Towering Inferno was a landmark movie in terms of its box office in 1974.  In the previous years, films like Airport and The Poseidon Adventure had found a formula for success-put a bunch of famous stars, including at least a few studio system legends that can scoop up a supporting acting Oscar nomination, and place them in an insane disaster situation, one that will have at least a few of them die, but the audience can look on in horror as we wonder who from this insanely-stacked call sheet might be safe.  This film is no less than these, and arguably has the starriest cast  of the bunch, but is much more in the vein of Airport (which I did not enjoy) than The Poseidon Adventure (which I did enjoy, in large part due to Shelley Winters' solid work).  The film has the tallest building in the world on fire, and all of our characters, including architect Newman and firefighter McQueen, fighting to stay alive as more-and-more paths to the ground floor are forfeited.  Along the way, some live (including, surprisingly, conman Fred Astaire), and some die, most shockingly Jennifer Jones, who in a morbid twist would be flung from the top of a giant building in the movie two years before her daughter would commit suicide in exactly the same way.

If only the movie was any good.  Technically, this is impressive-the set design, effects, and especially the stunt work are out-of-this-world, but the film spends no time trying to develop the characters, giving us two-dimensional feats from genuinely talented actors.  It's not like someone like Faye Dunaway or Paul Newman can't add a bit of three-dimensionality to their work, but there's no call for it.  Our star of the month, Steve McQueen, feels almost ancillary to the plot of the picture even as he's supposed to be the hero.  Fred Astaire would receive his only competitive acting Oscar nomination for this movie, and man is it unnecessary-he barely has anything to do, other than shout for a dead Jennifer Jones toward the end of the picture.  It feels weird to live in a world where Fred Astaire (whom I love) never got a competitive acting nomination, but, like...over John Cazale in The Godfather, Part II or John Huston in Chinatown...let's not be ridiculous here.

As I said above, Steve McQueen would disappear from movies after this, having a bit of a nomad period where he just went out into the country in a motor home, in the process turning down parts in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now that might've dramatically changed his legacy.  But his health by the late 1970's was in terrible shape, and he developed mesothelioma (likely due to asbestos exposure from his time in the Marines).  The National Enquirer, at that point most famous for its ongoing coverage of the death of Elvis Presley rather than the right-wing attack ads that it would become known for to modern supermarket shoppers, broke the story that McQueen was dying shortly before his death (he'd been trying to keep it a secret), and McQueen attempted a number of experimental procedures, including a surgery to remove a tumor from his liver in Mexico, a procedure he couldn't have performed in the United States because no doctor would do it (since it would kill him).  12 hours into the surgery, the American doctors were proven correct, and Steve McQueen died at the age of only 50 from a heart attack.

Next month, we're going to talk about a man who was good friends with McQueen, even if they also had something of a professional rivalry during McQueen's early stardom.  Like McQueen, he also would die young, but unlike McQueen, that death would cement his legacy in a way that would in many ways outlast any films he made in life...and would become the source of near constant conspiracy theory in the decades to come, in ways that would haunt his family for generations.

OVP: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Film: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Stars: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, Sr., Vincent Price, Harry Stephenson, Nanette Fabray

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Errol Flynn lasted as a movie star for decades, but as one who was pretty much unimpeachable in terms of his box office, this period lasted roughly from 1935-1942, at which point he was oftentimes the biggest star on the Warner Brothers lot, give or take Bette Davis & James Cagney.  During this time, Flynn was married to the same woman, actress Lila Damita, but he had a history of womanizing.  Like Gary Cooper before him, he had an affair with Lupe Velez, and would get drunk off of William Randolph Hearst's vodka.  This reputation as a party boy was in stark juxtaposition to the men he'd play onscreen, frequently honorable scoundrels, or in the case of today's movie, a truly honorable man stuck in an impossible situation between two women.  This would also pair Flynn with both of the actresses that he'd be most associated with in his career: Olivia de Havilland, whom he would have a largely amicable relationship with, and Bette Davis...with whom he would not.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a glossy historical melodrama, one where facts should not get in the way of a good monologue.  Private Lives is about an aging Queen Elizabeth (Davis, in de facto kabuki makeup), who is clearly desperately in love with the handsome, popular Earl of Essex (Flynn), but cannot have him in the way that she wants because it would put at risk her power.  She instead constantly finds herself at odds with him, usually in open court, and has fights with him, using her lover as a pawn in a number of battles, oftentimes risking his life as punishment for not returning her love in the way that she wants, because he's also power-hungry.  This all happens while the beautiful Lady Penelope (de Havilland) is also pursuing the Earl, which in the film's final moments we're led to believe was nothing, and that Elizabeth was his own true love.  Of course, at that point Elizabeth has publicly demanded the Earl's head for trying to be her equal, and there is no way out for the Queen, doomed to forever remain unmarried & unloved (except by England).

This is territory we've been to cinematically-Elizabeth's inability to find love because she is not beautiful and demands power instead has been informed by everyone from Helen Mirren to Glenda Jackson to Cate Blanchett to Margot Robbie (even Bette would go to this well twice).  Davis, at the peak of her power and beauty, wears intense makeup that makes her look, well, hideous (and years older than she was), in some ways foreshadowing her later triumph in Baby Jane Hudson.  But the movie, despite looking divine (the costumes, art direction, & cinematography are all a triumph, though why it got a special effects nomination at the Oscars is beyond me...the Scoring nomination is a bit cheeky given there's a song sung by Olivia de Havilland's character written by the actual Walter Raleigh, here played by Vincent Price in an early role), is kind of a snore.  Davis overacts to the rafters (with diminishing returns), de Havilland is fun but too small of a part, and Flynn's performance is a bit underwhelming.  Flynn is so grand in swashbuckling roles, but (as we'll see in the coming weeks), he was a somewhat limited actor when it came to going beyond that ken.  He is breathtakingly beautiful in this-it takes an actress as confident as Davis to appear in this kind of makeup against Flynn, who looks like a Raphael painting in some scenes, and risk being thought ugly, but I don't think he can land some of the scenes, save for the last 15 minutes, when he's betrayed by Davis & they both seem to be in a much better movie.

Offscreen, Davis and Flynn were not close in the same way that he was with de Havilland, and it's hard to pinpoint the exact nature of their relationship given that Davis would outlive him by decades, and therefore be able to go on talk shows (and discuss in memoirs) what she thought of him, and regularly change her mind.  She seemed to not like his ethics as an actor (finding he preferred celebrity more than the serious craft that Davis believed screen-acting), and also thought it beneath her to share billing with him in the film (you'll note, watching it now, that Davis, not Flynn, gets top billing, which makes sense in retrospect given her legend, but at the time would've been a genuine debate as both were equally valuable to Warner Brothers).  Davis wanted Laurence Olivier, who wasn't famous enough to get a role like this in 1939 (Wuthering Heights had not come out when production was in motion), and at one point (according to Hollywood legend) actually slaps Flynn for real in one scene, rather than faking it as would be typical on a production, which caused Flynn to become ill.  Davis, though, had kinder words about Flynn than I do in this movie, conceding that she thought him very good years after the fact while watching the movie, and telling de Havilland "he can act!"

OVP: Murphy's Romance (1985)

Film: Murphy's Romance (1985)

Stars: Sally Field, James Garner, Brian Kerwin, Corey Haim

Director: Martin Ritt

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-James Garner, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sally Field: click here to learn more about Ms. Field (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Coming off of her second Oscar, Field felt a bit of the "Best Actress Curse" when it came to her career.  She continued to get lead roles, but not hits.  Both Punchline with Tom Hanks and Surrender with Michael Caine fell flat with critics, and her only mild success was Murphy's Romance, our film today, one that got her costar an Oscar nomination, not Field herself.  By the end of the decade, Field needed a win, and she got one in one of the most unlikely of places: an ensemble film starring a group of aging women.  In 1989, this wasn't a thing that happened very often (all-female ensembles were rare at the movies, and even rarer to be big hits), but Steel Magnolias was a runaway success.  In a year with Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ushering in a new era of blockbusters, Steel Magnolias made a very sizable $83 million, putting it in similar company to The Little Mermaid and When Harry Met Sally.  Field would not win an Oscar nomination for it (in fact, that would go to her costar Julia Roberts, who was about to usurp her crown as America's Sweetheart), but it was a much-needed hit for the actress.  As I have seen Steel Magnolias before, we won't review it today, but know that that was the movie that Field had been praying for in the late 1980's.

(Spoilers Ahead) Instead we'll talk Murphy's Romance, a movie about Emma Moriarty (Field), a divorced mother trying to make ends meet on an Arizona ranch where she raises & trains horses.  She's broke, and can't get a loan given her status as an unmarried woman, but also has moxie, which catches the admiration of the local pharmacist Murphy Jones (Garner).  The two strike up a relationship, one that might be romantic despite the age difference, but it's interrupted when Emma's ex-husband Bobby Jack (Kerwin) enters the picture.  This sets up a love triangle between the respectable-but-aging Murphy, and the age appropriate-but-irresponsible Bobby Jack, one that is ended when Bobby Jack's 18-year-old girlfriend shows up with his twin sons.  As he leaves, this allows Emma & Murphy to end up together before the credits roll.

I'm not against the concept of the May/December romance onscreen (I'm not a prudish Gen Z-er who thinks that women can never reach autonomy with a man older than them), so that isn't my problem here.  My problem is more with the way that the script is written.  Field's Emma is poorly drawn, as if she's changing her entire personality from scene-to-scene.  In some moments she's an adult who understands the compromises that come with life, and in the next scene she's acting like a petulant child, willing to throw away all of her gains for no reason.  She and Garner have chemistry, but her character is so inconsistent that it's hard to care.

The film won two Oscar nominations, one for the cinematography (occasionally fun & dusty, but too inconsistent, and it reads like Oscar wanted to go back to the many farm pictures it honored in 1984), and one for Best Actor.  James Garner is not noteworthy in this movie...he's honestly not even that good.  The nomination was the only one in his career, though, and it's hard not to think of this as a career nod for an aging actor who by all accounts was a pleasure to work with (most actors who worked with him spoke highly of him, including Field who called him the best onscreen kiss of her career), but come on-in 1985, there must've been better.

OVP: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

Film: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

Stars: Debbie Reynolds, Harve Presnell, Ed Begley, Jack Kruschen, Hermione Baddeley

Director: Charlie Walters

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Actress-Debbie Reynolds, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Scoring, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1964, Debbie Reynolds had been America's Sweetheart for about a decade, and similar to the two other women that we've talked about this season (Audrey Hepburn & Doris Day) who reigned alongside her with that crown, she was about to have that title (and her position as a box office queen) put into question.  But before that, Reynolds got something that clearly meant a lot to her: an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.  Reynolds is generally considered to be a really winning screen presence, but I'll be honest-I don't see a lot of people praising her for her acting ability, or at least that's not the leading reason that people talk about her.  She is oftentimes praised as "charming" on the big-screen, or that she is a damned fun celebrity, but save for Singin' in the Rain, none of her movies during this time frame enjoys a really solid critical reputation, and she's far more in Day's ballpark than Hepburn's when it comes to acclaim.  I had seen parts of The Unsinkable Molly Brown years earlier, but had virtually no memory of it (to the point where I decided it should count as a "never seen it" qualifier for this series), and was curious for the one Oscar nomination that Reynolds did get, was the public (and to some degree me, who likes her but doesn't think of her as a "great" actress in the same way as peers like Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor) underestimating her?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Molly Brown (Reynolds), a woman who grew up from nothing and then became a fixture in high society at the turn-of-the-century, though it has to be said that this is a highly fictitious telling of her life story.  She starts as a backwoodsman, raised to be a tomboy by her adopted father Seamus (Begley), but she soon falls in love with Johnny Brown (Presnell), a lazy drunk and mining prospector who tries to woo her first on his own terms, and then on her terms (she wants to be a wealthy society woman).  They strike it rich, becoming "new money" but are not accepted by Denver's elite.  To get around this, she befriends multiple royals while galavanting around Europe with Johnny, and comes back with these royals in tow.  She now has the friends to make it in polite society, but Johnny isn't happy, and they grow apart.  While aboard the Titanic, she keeps spirits alive on a lifeboat, and is proclaimed a hero by the town, and comes back to Johnny, their love rekindled, now with them being themselves once more.

The movie is overstuffed, overlong, and far too silly for my tastes.  The beginning of the film is basically just Calamity Jane, complete with the adorable Reynolds with her face covered in dirt and her hair cut short.  But this part, like most of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, lasts too long.  The entire film is basically just a series of mishaps between Molly & Johnny, trying to understand why they won't be accepted in polite society, and changing everything about themselves to get there.  It's not that different than The Beverly Hillbillies, which makes the Oscar nominations feel weird, though they aren't all bad.  The cinematography is oddly good, particularly in the singing scenes (in many ways it recalls some of the outdoor singing shots of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music), and the costumes & art direction are splendidly colorful and over-the-top (the grand staircase in the mansion is particularly gauche and features heavily into Molly's return from Europe).  But the music isn't strong, either in terms of sound or in terms of it being memorable (I saw it yesterday, and I can't remember one number from it), and Reynolds...she's not great.  Reynolds worked best in MGM musicals because she was spunky and you liked watching her fall in love.  But this film shows her limitations-she can't elevate a bad movie, and she swings for the rafters too much.  This very much feels in the vein of Pillow Talk and The Blind Side, where an actress who had charmed audiences (and the box office) for years gets her thank you from the Academy, even if it isn't earned.

There is one really weird part of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, though, and it's the complete lack of her time on the Titanic.  If you asked any modern audience member, the only thing they'd know about Molly Brown is her surviving the Titanic, and I'll be real-I suspect that would've been the case in 1964 as well.  Yet in the film's 135 minutes, just over two of those minutes take place during the Titanic sinking.  All you see is Reynolds walking the deck during the iceberg hit, one shot of the ship sinking, and Molly keeping everyone on the lifeboat alive.  It's such a tiny part it honestly feels like a joke...as if they ran out of money during production and didn't save anything for the most famous part of her life.  Reynolds is actively bad in the lifeboat scenes as well...trying to shame the women crying on the ship as their husbands are dying just a few hundred meters away.  It's such a strange scene, and worth noting if you're watching this movie because you're an amateur Titanic historian looking for more movies about the subject...because man is it weird & far shorter than it should've been in a movie that otherwise stretches too long.

OVP: Cinematography (1999)

OVP: Best Cinematography (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Conrad L. Hall, American Beauty

Roger Pratt, The End of the Affair

Dante Spinotti, The Insider

Emmanuel Lubezki, Sleepy Hollow

Robert Richardson, Snow Falling on Cedars

My Thoughts: The further back we go, the more likely it is that we're going to run into names that modern Oscar watchers don't know by heart that were a genuinely huge deal in their day (i.e. life didn't start when you were born).  You see here a few names that still command a lot of respect (Richardson, Lubezki) and could get a nomination even today if they had the right film, but in 1999, the biggest name in this bunch was Conrad L. Hall, who was receiving his penultimate Oscar citation (out of ten total) and had been working in movies since the 1960's, the steady hand behind such New Hollywood classics as Cool Hand Luke, In Cold Blood, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

American Beauty is a very different film from those, though it also invites a lot of color contrasts in the same way we think of some of that 1960's golden hour cinematography.  The way that the camera plays with the suburban idealism here is really fascinating, having it feel like we're watching layers unfold in the film.  The movie's much-copied approach to sexualization of some of its characters (specifically Mena Suvari's), with her opening her shirt and having hundreds of rose petals pour out, is really ingenious stuff, inventively leaning in on Mendes' dark satire and sexual taboo.

Like Hall's work in American Beauty, Dante Spinotti inspired a lot of copycats with The Insider.  The film wasn't the first movie to employ this type of hyper-color screen look that would become extremely popular in the 2000's but it was the one that seems to have been a catalyst of the trend, particularly in the films of Steven Soderbergh and Clint Eastwood.  Unlike some of the latter films where I think it works really well (Traffic, Letters from Iwo Jima), this one is in the middle.  I find the blue-screen more distracting and reducing the richness of what we're seeing onscreen, specifically when it comes to the sharpness of the editing.  I get why this was nominated, and it's not bad (none of these are-this is a really reputable list from the Academy), but I don't find it fulfilling in the way I do some of the other nominees.

I like Robert Richardson more than his nomination count on the My Ballots would indicate (he has two nominations in the time frame he got six Oscar citations, including two wins, which feels off but also-the My Ballot teaches us that two nominations should count for something).  I think Snow Falling on Cedars, though, might be Richardson's finest work to date.  It's gorgeous, moody cinematography, giving us a lot of light-in-nighttime.  This is the only article we'll discuss the movie, so I'll point out it's almost painfully dull as a picture (if you've never heard of this movie, there's a reason for it), but it's breathtaking, Youki Kudoh and Ethan Hawke looking ravishing at every turn of the film.  This is the kind of nomination that you might think just got in on Richardson's name alone, but it's better than that.

Emmanuel Lubezki, on the other hand, is one of the kings of the My Ballots of the 21st Century (eight nominations, all with medals, four of them gold).  I think what he does in Sleepy Hollow is also quite special, though not as signature as Richardson's work.  The moody gothic coloring of the film, along with the ways it feels like it was plucked from a storybook, make for one of the most enchanting looks I've ever seen in a live-action Tim Burton movie.  It's a pity the two didn't work on more projects (this is their only collaboration to date) as Lubezki seemed to get Burton's aesthetic more than any other DP.

Our final nominee is Roger Pratt, who got his only nomination from Oscar for The End of the Affair (not to be the "My Ballot" guy, but I nominated him for one of his takes on Harry Potter, The Goblet of Fire).  Pratt's work here is gorgeous, using a lot of rain cover & cloud cover (does the sun ever shine in this movie?) to give us a sense of the moodiness of this Graham Greene adaptation.  The movie is probably at its best when it's super lusty (early on in the picture, Pratt wisely puts Ralph Fiennes's flawless bum center stage, making the audience as horny as Julianne Moore's character), but I don't think that for a film about forbidden passion we get enough of this.  It looks good, but I left wanting a touch more from him.

Other Precursor Contenders: The American Society of Cinematographers went with American Beauty as its victor, besting the Oscar lineup save for The End of the Affair (they instead went with The Sixth Sense, while BAFTA also favored American Beauty, here against Angela's Ashes, The End of the Affair, The Matrix, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.  I could buy either Sixth Sense or Talented Mr. Ripley in sixth place-the former is a Best Picture nominee with a distinctive (though highly-borrowed from in his later movies) color palette, while the latter is from John Seale, who just three years earlier had won an Oscar for his work in The English Patient, and was hallowed ground for the Academy by 1999.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I remain forever confused as to why the gorgeous movies of Pedro Almodovar are absent from this category, even when Oscar notices them in other fields.  Case-in-point: the beautiful over-saturation of All About My Mother ties the entire melodrama together perfectly.
Oscar's Choice: Hall was unstoppable in 1999 with Best Picture winner American Beauty, even against sturdy competition like Lubezki & Richardson.

My Choice: In a first for me, I will be giving this award to Robert Richardson's Snow Falling on Cedars, whose movie may be boring but his camerawork is perfection.  Behind him will be American Beauty, Sleepy Hollow, The End of the Affair, and then The Insider.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Do you want to look into the suburbs with American Beauty or do you want to get lost in the oil painting that is Snow Falling on Cedars?  Do you have a favorite movie of Conrad L. Hall's?  And was The Sixth Sense or The Talented Mr. Ripley in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Cinematography Contests: 1931-32, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.

OVP: The Naked City (1948)

Film: The Naked City (1948)

Stars: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Frank Conroy

Director: Jules Dassin

Oscar History: 3 nominations/2 wins (Best Cinematography*, Editing*, Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

When it comes to film noir and Oscar, it's largely an "admire from a distance" situation.  Oscar did give a Best Picture statue to a film noir (The Lost Weekend), though it was one with a much more serious tone & tenor than you'd normally find in the genre, and usually they kept the statues at a distance.  There are exceptions, though, and one of them is The Naked City from 1948, which won two Oscars (for Cinematography & Editing), and was nominated in one of the writing categories.  The Naked City is probably the most famous American film we're going to get to this month, and certainly the most-lauded.  Hailed as a landmark in 1948, it would be formative in entertainment in the years that followed, particularly when it comes to television.  In many ways, The Naked City eschewed some of the more traditional aspects of the film noir genre, and instead created the formula for the police/detective procedural that would be popular in everything from The Untouchables to Law & Order.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Dan Muldoon (Fitzgerald), an aging detective who is assigned a case to investigate the brutal murder of a young ex-model named Jean, who was drowned in her bathtub.  The motives are not clear as to why she was killed, though robbery is suspected (her jewels are missing), but Muldoon wants to know more, and starts to investigate the people in Jean's life, including Frank Niles (Duff), his chief suspect when it becomes clear that he has had a relationship with both the dead model and her friend Ruth (Hart), whom he's actually engaged to.  Frank eventually confesses to stealing the jewels as part of some con jobs he and Jean had perpetrated, but he turns out not to be a killer.  In a long chase that happens on the Williamsburg Bridge, it's another accomplice who killed Jean, and Frank is cleared on the murder.

The movie, as I said, is questionable when it comes to being a film noir, more so being a "crime picture" as Hart's character is surely not a femme fatale in a normal sense (the dead Jean, who has ruined multiple relationships as a corpse, is far more fitting of that title but she never actually speaks).  Instead, it feels more like a police mystery, which we don't really have anymore (because those are largely relegated to television), but in 1948 was still a thing that you couldn't see in your home.  Because it's formative, it does toe-the-line between being a bit dull even if it was exciting in 1948, but it still is a mystery you genuinely want to get to the end of when Fitzgerald solves the case.

The Naked City's coolest attribute is where it was filmed.  The movie takes place in New York City...but so does the production.  The picture includes a title card at the beginning calling out that it was actually filmed in New York, which means that the chase at the Williamsburg Bridge is actually on the Williamsburg Bridge.  This adds an authenticity that you wouldn't normally find in a movie like this, and it shows up in the more naturalistic cinematography, particularly during the chase sequence at the end.  Combined with the editing techniques (building suspense alongside real-world onlookers), and the way it capitalizes on a lot of twists and turns, I get why this is considered a classic of the genre, even if it's not a movie that stands out in the same way that Out of the Past or The Third Man do years later.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

OVP: Cinematography (2023)

OVP: Best Cinematography (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Edward Lachman, El Conde

Rodrigo Prieto, Killers of the Flower Moon

Matthew Libatique, Maestro

Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer

Robbie Ryan, Poor Things

My Thoughts: One of the easiest and best ways to get a nomination for Best Cinematography at the Oscars is to do some (or all) of your film in black-and-white.  For years, this has been the easiest path, and for most of the past 15 years, there's been generally at least one film in black-and-white nominated.  That stat exploded in 2023, when four of the five nominated films featured some or all black-and-white scenes in their pictures.  This appears to be the first time this has happened since the 1960's, when black-and-white cinematography had its own category at the Oscars.  It's a good reminder, though that just because it's in black-and-white does not mean that it gets a free pass as being "great" cinematography.

A good example of that is Poor Things.  The films overuse of CGI really gets in the way of a lot of the imagery in the movie.  I get what they were trying to do here.  Showing a hyper-saturated view of the world in the same way that Bella, who is experiencing it for the first time, is living it makes total sense, but it doesn't work.  Much of the movie's CGI is downright ugly, and the black-and-white depth adds very little, even if you get what they're doing (trying to evoke calls to Arthur Edeson's camerawork in Frankenstein).  I was not impressed by this-if you're nominated here, you need to either be inventive or pretty...this is neither.

That's definitely not the case with Oppenheimer, another film that alternated between black-and-white and color, here to distinguish the two timelines the film is facing.  I loved the depth of the black-and-white cinematography (Kodak apparently had to develop new 65mm film stock to achieve this), and I think that van Hoytema's ability to give us so much light in certain scenes (like the explosions) so as to overwhelm the senses, works in the film's favor.  Combined with some bewitching golden hour scenes and the frenetic way he makes the combative scenes feel like you're at the table with Downey & Murphy, Oppenheimer shows the way with a big idea.

Maestro is nominated for its black-and-white cinematography specifically.  The film's camera approach seems to age the older that Leonard Bernstein gets, with a sort of washed-out lens in the 1970's but in the 1950's he's very much in youthful, exuberant black-and-white.  I didn't love all of this (I think the modern photography lacks the style the earlier scenes do, to the point where I also wonder if the substance is a bit lacking throughout), but it's well-constructed and there are certain scenes (like with Mulligan & Cooper sitting back-to-back) that sing off of the screen.

The only one of these films to be entirely in black-and-white was El Conde, Pablo Larrain's vampire political spoof.  The film's cinematography can be beautiful.  The way that we see this cavernous look at Augusto Pinochet's mansion, and the contrast of bright clouds against the dark reality of this man's lonely existence is lovely.  It's also sandwiched between scenes that aren't very interesting.  The movie alternates between practically oil paintings and just standard work, almost as if it's trying to win an Oscar nomination with its flashiest bits.  It has to be noted that both Maestro and El Conde I saw at home, in front of a television screen because they're Netflix movies...I always find that when this happens, I tend to feel less connected to the movies visually (thus is the curse that Netflix has wrought upon the Oscars as normally these would have been in a more controlled, immersive environment like a theater).

Killers of the Flower Moon is the only movie that is entirely in color of this quintet, and proof that you can have lovely movies with a full palette too.  I think the movie does really well with the outdoor sequences, using Oklahoma's unyielding landscape to the cinematographer's advantage, making it feel like we're back in time which is not easy to do in a world this vast.  I also think there's an interiority to the camera-look at how small they make Mollie's world look as she gets further & further into this marriage, seemingly never able to escape it.  There's an intelligence to it, and is a good reminder that this is not just about gorgeous imagery, but also about creativity behind-the-camera.

Other Precursor Contenders: The American Society of Cinematographers, generally one of the classiest & most interesting of the precursors, were an exact copy of the Oscar nominations, and they gave their win to Oppenheimer.  BAFTA also picked Oppenheimer, and their only distinguishing characteristic was going for The Zone of Interest instead of El Conde.  I predicted The Zone of Interest in fifth place over El Conde at sixth, and while I think that this is another place that Saltburn could've shown up (but didn't), I feel relatively confident that I was right with Zone of Interest coming from the back.

Films I Would Have Nominated: The over-dependence on black-and-white cinematography meant that we didn't get to recognize one of the most ravishing films of the year, The Taste of Things, a sumptuous feast for all of the senses as we watch the care and love put into Michelin-star cuisine.
Oscar's Choice: There was no beating Oppenheimer here, and Hoyte van Hoytema finally won an Academy Award after years of fans (including me) cheering him on.

My Choice: And I'm going to echo that, giving Oppenheimer its first Oscar statue, though not at the expense of Barbie so the matchup doesn't get any new points.  Behind it (in order) are Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, El Conde, and Poor Things.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Are we all on the same page with wanting to honor Oppenheimer, or did Oscar & I miss something in one of the other nominees?  Do you think Oscar will ever get over his massive crush on black-and-white cinematography?  And was it The Zone of Interest or Saltburn in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Cinematography Contests: 1931-32, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: The Nun's Story (1959)

Film: The Nun's Story (1959)

Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger, Mildred Dunnock

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress-Audrey Hepburn, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Audrey Hepburn: click here to learn more about Ms. Hepburn (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Like many women who wore the title of "America's Sweetheart" Audrey Hepburn's critical acclaim has been questioned through the years by some, claiming she was a "limited" actress.  This feels like an odd thing to point out for Hepburn, who more than almost any actress we're going to profile this year, received a lot of critical acclaim.  Hepburn was cited for five Oscars in her career, winning for Roman Holiday, and that didn't include her lauded work in My Fair Lady, which was widely-expected by many to be a spot for her to get a nomination.  She also was one of the first people to win an EGOT (an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, & Tony) and did so as a performer.  Today, we are going to discuss one of Hepburn's Oscar-nominated turns, the final one that I had yet to see, and one that I think shows the versatility of her acting, rather than calling it (as her critics have) "one-note": The Nun's Story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the life of Gaby, a young postulant who for most of the film is known as Sister Luke (Hepburn).  She has, before the start of the film, decided to devote herself to a life as a nun, something that we don't get a lot of insight into the rationale why, though we think it's to become a nurse in the Congo (there's a throwaway line about a boy she liked late in the film, and I rather liked that this might be a secondary reason for her, because it adds a depth to the film even if it might also be a touch antifeminist to assume she couldn't just want this for a career).  Of course, being a nun is not just about nursing, but instead also about devotion to God, and throughout the film we get to see Sister Luke struggle with a crisis-of-faith, trying to find a way to help those around her through her scientific skills, but also to get back to her devotion to the church, and wanting to show that she can be worthy of her new calling, and not just being a nurse.  As the film progresses, it becomes evident that she cannot, and in the final moments of the film, she leaves the convent forever.

The movie was cited for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it's worthy of most of them.  The film is wonderfully-structured, giving us a glimpse not only into the life of a woman trying to become a nun, but giving it two-dimensionally.  I have read that some (particularly composer Franz Waxman) were critical of the Catholic Church, but I'll be honest-I don't think the story gets that across.  If you want to debate the Church, you've got your evidence there-the constant critiquing of Sister Luke for having human impulses feels cruel in parts.  But there's also a spot for those who are sympathetic to the church, showing how becoming a nun isn't a calling for everyone, even for the most kindhearted of women (i.e. there's more to being a nun than being good).  I loved that approach, and honestly really liked this movie.  There are critiques to be had (I don't think that it gives us enough connection to those around Sister Luke for us to really understand why she ultimately gives up the church after sacrificing so much), but they're thin.  Zinnemann's approach, the film's lovely cinematography, and the way that it wordlessly adds depth to the ending by foregoing Waxman's score as Hepburn leaves the convent, rather than giving us a dramatic swell, is marvelous.  It's clear at that moment that Sister Luke is picking the only way out, but she's not sure if it's the right one, and the music not giving the audience any indication this is the correct path is really well-designed.

Hepburn's performance here is really stellar.  The cinematography & makeup work are helping her cause, to be fair.  I love the way we start to see the angelic Hepburn's eyes start to become sallow with the weight of the world on her, highlighted by the constant focus on her face (in many ways copying what cinematographer Arthur C. Miller did for Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette).  But Hepburn is also giving something extra to her work here.  Her internal struggles, the way that her inner-monologue never shuts off, particularly when we see that she can't speak to other people, is very reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, and it's very effective.  Hepburn shows here she might always look like a pixie, but she also was able to use that to create versatility.  She's up against actresses like Simone Signoret & Katharine Hepburn, generally considered to be "better" actresses than she is, but her performance honestly is more nuanced and stronger in the way it highlights the picture than either of those two more celebrated thespians.  Hepburn's critical reputation from some snobbish cinephiles as one-note is, well, wrong.

OVP: Little Women (1949)

Film: Little Women (1949)

Stars: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Rossano Brazzi, Mary Astor, Lucille Watson, C. Aubrey Smith

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Cinematography, Art Direction*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on June Allyson: click here to learn more about Ms. Allyson (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we missed June Allyson, because I was in the office all week & it was the Oscars (which as you can imagine, is quite the event around my house), so today you're going to get a double dip of Ms. Allyson, both films from 1949.  Circa 1949, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger name in Hollywood than June Allyson.  Allyson's lack of an Oscar nomination relegates her to a category of actress that isn't super discussed today (we'll talk about this in a couple of weeks, but a few decisions late in her career also contributed to this decline in stature), but she was a big deal on the MGM lot, rivaling figures like Judy Garland or Joan Crawford (at a competing studio) as one of the most noteworthy actresses in Hollywood.  One of the biggest films she made at the time was the all-star rendition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, one of four big-screen studio incarnations of the story, and arguably the one with the most buzz-worthy cast.  In a lineup that included Mary Astor, Peter Lawford, Janet Leigh, and Elizabeth Taylor, it was Allyson who got top billing & the leading role.

(Spoilers Ahead...though do you really need a spoiler alert for Little Women?) The movie is about the four March sisters: headstrong Jo (Allyson), dutiful Meg (Leigh), vain Amy (Taylor), and sweet Beth (O'Brien) who used to be rich, but now live in relative poverty (relative being the operative word here given their house is pretty swanky in this film) with their nurse mother (Astor), while their father is out away fighting for the Union in the Civil War.  The film unfolds with these four women trying to live their lives, at the center of it a love square between Jo, Amy, handsome-and-rich Laurie (Lawford), and handsome-and-studious Professor Bhaer (Brazzi).  Love, tragedy, and even death ensue (we all know that Beth dies), but it's a family drama with all of the trimmings...I could go into it more, but let's be honest, you've either seen one of the movies or read the book if you're on this blog.

I will own that I've never really gelled with this story.  Even the recent critically-acclaimed movie by Greta Gerwig I was just in the middle of (let me tell you-my 3-star review of that picture stands OUT compared to my friends on the platform).  But watching this, I get why Gerwig's film enchanted so many, as it takes a relatively formulaic story and gives it life, particularly through the performances from Timothee Chalamet & Florence Pugh.  The 1949 film has no such luck, giving us little invention, and as a result, playing all of the characters as flat.  Star power will get you a little bit (Elizabeth Taylor is delicious if nowhere near as good as Pugh, playing pretty Amy), but the rest is a struggle.  Jo March is a tricky heroine (she bucks convention, frequently makes somewhat cruel mistakes about people, and spends much of the film not knowing what she wants), and Allyson doesn't know how to land her.  The first and second halves of the film feel like separate Jo's entirely.

The movie won several Oscar nominations, and here I'm onboard.  The technicolor cinematography looks divine, with all of these beautiful actresses framed perfectly in snow-covered houses and richly-detailed libraries.  The art direction in generally is also strong-I get why this, with these houses that actually have personality, won the statue.  I'm surprised, honestly, that it didn't get in for costuming too, which is fun (particularly Elizabeth Taylor's gown in the film's final scene) and lovely.  But there's not enough life in this film to make any of these lush decorations truly sing.

OVP: Cinematography (1931-32)

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.

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!

Also in 1931-32: Previously in 1931-32

Past Best Cinematography Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022