All right-we are officially ready for another My Ballot! While we got through the Oscar nominees from 1948 a while ago (click here for the Oscar Viewing Project article where I discuss whom I would pick in each field), we have actually completed a couple of years (both 1957 & 1981) in the meantime as I tried to circle back to finishing up 1948. For those unfamiliar, for the Oscar Viewing Project, I discuss the films chosen for Oscar in their feature-length, narrative-film categories, seeing every single nominee, but with the My Ballot it's my turn, picking my own nominees and winners. If you are curious how I've done this in the past, this is our 30th such article, and links to all 29 past contests are at the bottom of this article. I love writing these, and so I hope you enjoy!
For those with long memories, you might recall that I both loved the 1957 year and thought that 1981 was largely phoned in, maybe the weakest year outside of 2020 that we have profiled for this series. You'll be happy to know that 1948 is back-to-form, and stands as one of the best Best Picture lineups I've ever assembled in our 30 completed ceremonies (in 1981, I had to let in one movie that didn't even bother to get 4-stars from me on Letterboxd, while in 1948 we have a half dozen 4-star alternatives that could've made the cut). Every film in it is a winner, and this might be because 1948 was an a where virtually all of my favorite cinematic genres (film noir, westerns, epics, romantic dramas), were showing up in that lineup (if only there'd been a large-scale fantasy film we could complete the quintet, though those wouldn't really be en vogue for a few more decades). I am very pleased with this Top 10 (and all of the nominees), but if you see a favorite of yours missing entirely, know that (unlike the Oscar nominees) I cannot see every single film from 1948 (you can check on my Letterboxd if you aren't sure if I've seen it), and I'm always down for more recommendations if you have them for the comments!
Note about categories: 1948 is one of the very rare years with Adapted and Original Screenplay mixed at the Oscars. Instead, we have Motion Picture Story and Screenplay categories combined. We will not repeat this at the My Ballot-we continue to do traditional Adapted & Original Screenplay. Additionally, while Oscar separated some of their categories into Black & White and Color, I will stay consistent with both combined, five nominations a piece. I will also continue to use Dance Direction from the 1930's, given the heyday of the musicals lasted until the 1960's, but both Dance Direction & Scoring will have only three nominations.
Note about eligibility: From the 1940's to the 1970's, it's sometimes unclear what is and isn't eligible for nominations in a specific year. With the My Ballot awards, the first thing we do is defer to Oscar, and if he nominated a film in a specific ceremony, then we go with it even if that film isn't typically thought of as being from that year (after that, we go with what the film is largely known for as its release year by contemporary observers of such things). This means that Bicycle Thieves, one of the most-lauded films of all-time (and a personal favorite) is not eligible this year as it was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1949 Oscars, and to keep things as similar as possible (I like the idea of comparing Oscar apples-to-apples given this project is using the ceremony as a touchpoint), it will be eligible when we profile 1949. Hence don't yell at me in the comments for skipping it.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Force of Evil
Fort Apache
The Lady from Shanghai
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Moonrise
Red River
The Red Shoes
Rope
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Gold: One of the great names in directing, and a man you'll see show up disproportionately more with me than with Oscar given my fandom of him, Orson Welles' breathtaking The Lady from Shanghai is a Lynchian, bizarre film noir, one filled with captivating performances and some of the most quotable lines in all of the genre.
Silver: The modernity continues with The Red Shoes, a film so bold in its color, technology, & innovation it shows how obsession, the quest for beauty and for pride, can take down everyone in its tracks. Marvelously staged, it's one of those films that pretty much everyone who sees it rightly calls a miracle.
Bronze: We are finishing off our medalists with a movie that is not modern, but instead encapsulates the very best of its era. Letter from an Unknown Woman is one of those movies regularly name-checked as a "forgotten classic," but it's so impossibly romantic, filled with tragedy & lust & sacrifice (as well as the best performance of Joan Fontaine's career) that you kind of wonder who could possibly forget it.
Howard Hawks, Red River
Alfred Hitchcock, Rope
Max Ophuls, Letter from an Unknown Woman
Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell, The Red Shoes
Orson Welles, The Lady from Shanghai
Gold: Welles is going to double dip with a matching Best Director statue for Lady from Shanghai, and while it's probably closer than Best Picture, it's easy to see why. Lady is filled with such craftsmanship, such a sense of danger through its filmmaking approach, that it's impossible to be able to deny that the man who changed the game with Citizen Kane continued to find ways to haunt the screen with his less financially successful follow-ups.
Silver: Powell & Pressburger are a close second in this category. We'll talk a lot about The Red Shoes today (I'll allude to this a few times, but it's the most-nominated film of 1948), but the direction feels like one big climb (and fall), a movie that from its opening scene that embodies a train (allusion intended) that is headed to its only possible destination.
Bronze: Hitchcock is going to be (like Steven Spielberg) a threat for the medal stand in so many of these years, you'd might understand me going for someone like Ophuls or Hawks who won't get nearly as much love to spread the wealth. But the #1 rule for these My Ballots is we decide every one in a vacuum (not considering what the rest of their nominations might entail), and he is better than them, particularly in the way that he makes Rope's play on a staged look (and eventually choosing to let the world in) read as part of the grand reveal of the story.
Richard Attenborough, Brighton Rock
Humphrey Bogart, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
John Dall, Rope
Louis Jourdan, Letter from an Unknown Woman
Anton Walbrook, The Red Shoes
Gold: Leading a truly spectacular lineup (in most years John Wayne, Orson Welles, Dane Clark, and especially Laurence Olivier would've been in the Top 5...lead/supporting men are considerably better than the ladies in 1948) is Humphrey Bogart, not given enough credit in his day for his versatility, and you struggle to see why with Treasure of the Sierra Madre as he plays a man obsessed with gold (and more so, with gaining power).
Silver: Anton Walbrook's maddening work in The Red Shoes is sensational, one of those performances that make you wish he'd done more (as a gay, Jewish man living in Germany coming to fame in the 1930's, though...his career took some detours), he so owns this work of cruel disinterest followed by obsessive passion.
Bronze: Speaking of gay men with truncated careers, we have John Dall getting the bronze, his acting as a clearly homosexual murderer totally brought together by countering to his onscreen moral compass (Jimmy Stewart) and nervous lover (Farley Granger). His need to be right even if it brings about his downfall is incredible stuff.
Olivia de Havilland, The Snake Pit
Marlene Dietrich, A Foreign Affair
Joan Fontaine, Letter from an Unknown Woman
Rita Hayworth, The Lady from Shanghai
Moira Shearer, The Red Shoes
Gold: My go-to answer for the actor who Oscar made the biggest mistake of never nominating is Rita Hayworth, and one of the big reasons why is she so clearly deserved not just a nomination, but a win for The Lady from Shanghai (for my money, the best performance of 1948). She plays her Elsa as cool, conniving, where you wonder if even she knows what she's doing (except she knows exactly what she's doing).
Silver: As I said above, Joan Fontaine gives the best performance of her career in 1948, her Lisa a young girl (and then adult woman) obsessed with the love of a man who has no interest in her beyond the prurient. The beauty of this performance is getting the audience to understand why Lisa could throw away so much on a (gorgeous) cad, but Fontaine informs that perfectly.
Bronze: With apologies to Olivia, she will have to settle for the bronze here (given my thoughts on some of their other performances, there's a decent chance this is the only time that the two sisters/rivals will compete against each other for a My Ballot Award even though this is certainly not their sole nominations, so Joan keeps the upper-hand Oscar gives here in head-to-head competitions). That said, Olivia should not be ashamed as what she does with her work in The Snake Pit, played three-dimensionally in an era where this type of role would be all about surface-level histrionics, is some of the best leading work of her career.
Glenn Anders, The Lady from Shanghai
Walter Brennan, Red River
Walter Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Rex Ingram, Moonrise
Everett Sloane, The Lady from Shanghai
Gold: One of my favorite things about doing My Ballot's is when an actor that might not get nominated anywhere else just comes in and nails a role so much they win a Gold Medal on (likely) their only nomination (a reminder that Hollywood is filled with great performers). That's true of Glenn Anders' sensationally sleazy lawyer, cackling his way through this movie as Welles' character makes a deal with the devil, in the performance of a lifetime.
Silver: Anders has to be good, because we've also got Walter Huston giving the performance of a lifetime (one that received more laurels in its day) in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Remembered today for its Simpsons parody, in 1948 he was giving us a prototype that has never been matched (also, he's giving perhaps the most Walter Brennan-like performance I've ever seen not given by his fellow nominee Walter Brennan, whom I have to mention even though he's not medaling because this is potentially the 3x Oscar winner's only My Ballot citation for his sage old man in Red River).
Bronze: Brennan doesn't get the bronze because I'm giving it to Rex Ingram, who takes what could've been a stereotypical role (a wise Black man in the middle of our character's moral journey) and elevates it by essentially playing him like a Sphinx. There's a scene in the movie where he alternates between singing and sharing riddles, trying to guide both the viewers & Dane Clark through the movie.
Ethel Barrymore, Moonrise
Elsa Lanchester, The Big Clock
Angela Lansbury, State of the Union
Claire Trevor, Key Largo
Claire Trevor, Raw Deal
Gold: The one acting category where I matched up with Oscar was Claire Trevor (for Key Largo, though she's good in both of her very different nominated performances). The scene where she sings (a cappella) her torch song under the derision of Edward G. Robinson is heartbreaking stuff from one of the best character actresses of the era.
Silver: Ethel Barrymore has a reputation as one of the best character actresses of the era as well, though I don't always agree (I think she's sometimes too stagy). But if I ever doubt her ability, I just remember Moonrise, where in a very short scene (she's barely in the movie) she plays a woman who has only loved damned men so effectively you believe it when people say she was one of the greats.
Bronze: Speaking once again of the best character actresses of the Golden Age, we have Angela Lansbury as our final acting medalist. State of the Union is not a good movie, but there's a reason that Lansbury singled it out in her Honorary Oscar speech-she does so much in it, stealing the film entirely with her demon lady newspaper magnate, in many ways foreshadowing the fines role of her cinematic career, Mrs. John Iselin, 14 years early.
The Big Clock
The Lady from Shanghai
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Rope
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Gold: In a year bursting with really good adapted screenplays (look at the films that didn't get nominated for writing, and understand as a result just how good every one of these films has to be to displace them...this is what I dream of with Oscar lineups, a sea of contenders where only the very best survive & as a result every nomination is truly a win) The Lady from Shanghai is hands-down the best one of the bunch. Filled with such quotable lines ("New York is not as big a city as it pretends to be"..."everybody is somebody's fool"..."maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her, maybe I'll die trying") and fabulous plotting, it's Welles at his absolute peak.
Silver: Another eminently quotable flick ("badges, we don't need no stinking badges" being as close to profanity as you could get in 1948), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is another movie that finds its footing in its plotting, a movie about the inevitable nature of corruption, and what it will do to the men it ensnares.
Bronze: We finish off this fine list with Rope, a dramatic work that is brimming with plum speeches, frequently expositional without ever feeling that way, and as a result all of the monologues truly inform the characters.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Drunken Angel
Germany, Year Zero
Raw Deal
Unfaithfully Yours
Gold: It is questionable whether or not Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein should count as an original film (it's not really a sequel, exactly, but it does use established characters and is at least tacitly a sequel to other films)...but I'm going to put it here, and give it the top prize because it so reinvents the horror genre, and in the process creates the horror spoof (its own genre at this point).
Silver: The word ruthless comes to mind when you talk about the script to Raw Deal, one of those barebone film noirs that I love so much from this era, filled with indulgent spins on the femme fatale and the bone-chilling crime boss that make it stand out in the process.
Bronze: The least-remembered of Rossellini's war trilogy, Germany Year Zero is an ultra-realistic look at what war can do to a country, even once it's ended, by putting us in its ravages through the eyes of a young boy (novice actor Edmund Moeschke).
The Lady from Shanghai
Moonrise
Red River
The Red Shoes
Rope
Gold: Sometimes you win a medal, even a gold medal, just from one scene or trick when it comes to the tech prizes, and we have a couple of those coming up. While all of Rope is wonderful (the film shot as a stage is something else), it's the final scene, where for the first time we get the introduction of flashing lights and street sounds (i.e. we have left the "experiment") that really makes the rest of the film work...that trick is done in the sound department.
Silver: While every year should be in a vacuum, and of course it is (there's a lot of titles you'll see below that only get into one tech lineup and nowhere else...I hate when Oscar doesn't introduce a bunch of new names in the tech categories rather than just plucking from Best Picture), there's always at least one movie that ends up dominating for me in the tech categories and here you're going to see it being The Red Shoes. It's hard to stop it-even when it's not the gold medal (like with Sound) it's still in the conversation with its orchestral flourishes.
Bronze: You feel transported to the west with Howard Hawks' Red River, a totally immersive western, with the cattle and sounds of the larger prairie coming fully into view for your ears (we'll talk about it a few times, but man is that cattle drive something else).
Corridor of Mirrors
The Lady from Shanghai
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Red River
The Red Shoes
Gold: The greatest miracle in The Red Shoes is the music. Today, no composer would be ballsy enough to have an original score and ballet in the movie, and not borrow in part from someone like Wagner or Tchaikovsky to ensure you're getting a classic. But Brian Easdale writes a score that feels like a legendary ballet in the movie, and surely deserves this top prize.
Silver: Dimitri Tiomkin introduces a glorious western score into Red River, using an army of violins and military-style choruses to impart a sense of grandeur and stakes into the movie, though also keeping more optimism than you'd get from this type of western in later years...I love the complicated juxtaposition the score sometimes has with John Wayne's obsessiveness (that would become the source of an even better movie eight years later).
Bronze: Similar to The Red Shoes, Letter from an Unknown Woman gives you a score that comes into play in the actual plot (the violin-heavy composition to give us a sense of Louis Jourdan's classical musician) that also brings about much tragedy as the film focuses on his increasing understanding of the emptiness of his existence.
Easter Parade
A Foreign Affair
Melody Time
Gold: Some original, some from years past, but all really wonderful, Easter Parade is the Judy Garland musical in 1948 that truly sings (and features a gigantic comeback vehicle for Fred Astaire). Everything from "Stepping Out with My Baby" to "Easter Parade" to Ann Miller's sublime scene-stealing in "Shakin the Blues Away"...this is a movie people watch annually for a reason.
Silver: "Melody Time" is merely okay as a movie, but its music is far better than most of the Disney flicks of the late 1940's. It helps that you assemble some of the biggest radio stars of the eras like Roy Rogers, The Andrews Sisters, & Frances Langford to give it a true sense of the era.
Bronze: Few stars of the Golden Age were able to imbue such a sense of personality and emotion into their singing as Marlene Dietrich (there's a reason she spent the latter half of her career in sold-out cabaret acts), and that's all-to-see in the best part of Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair.
"Blue Shadows on a Trail," Melody Time
"Illusions," A Foreign Affair
"Lonesome," Moonrise
"Please Don't Kiss Me," The Lady from Shanghai
"Stepping Out with My Baby," Easter Parade
Gold: Few films are able to have a scene not only establish a character almost entirely, while also giving us a moving piece of music, AND creating an entirely new ambience...but that's what Rex Ingram's mournful singing of "Lonesome" does in Moonrise, a scene that elevates it to one of the very best film noirs.
Silver:"Lonesome" would need to do everything in its picture to be able to upend "Stepping Out with My Baby" for the gold medal. One of Fred Astaire's signature songs, it is accompanied by a gigantic jazz number and Astaire dressed head-to-toe in white spats...it's one of those scenes you watch and think "there's nothing like a Golden Age picture."
Bronze: I kind of wonder if the 1940's & 1950's are just always going to have a solemn western tune in Best Original Song lineup, I'm such a sucker for all of them. "Blue Shadows on a Trail" gives us maybe the best moment in Melody Time, a beautiful ode to the open plains sung by one of the great cowboys of the era, Roy Rogers.
Easter Parade
The Pirate
The Red Shoes
Gold: It's going to be very rare in the Dance Direction category that I'll be picking something other than a musical (hell, it's going to be rare I'll pick something other than MGM) to take the top prize, but this is going to be the rare exception, as you can't really have The Red Shoes without exquisite, mind-blowing dancing to carry the tale.
Silver: It doesn't do as much for me as a picture (it's fine), but the dancing in The Pirate is sensational, and might've won if it weren't up against such a juggernaut. Particularly cool is the "Be a Clown" number, given it inspired one of the great musical numbers of Gene Kelly's career, "Make Em Laugh."
Bronze: Though the musical is less concerned with dancing than it is singing (it beat The Pirate for a reason in Best Scoring), having Fred Astaire's comeback and one of the first big breakout roles for Ann Miller is going to help you out when it comes to the hoofing department.
Corridor of Mirrors
Hamlet
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Red River
The Red Shoes
Gold: Gigantic staged sets, all beautiful and glowing, are what brings you to The Red Shoes (though even the title cards are part of the set design in this one), and make it feel like a dreamscape for all of its run. Even some of the scenes that don't need to bring it (like the party ballroom) do find a way to stand out.
Silver: Letter from an Unknown Woman is one of those movies that reads really well in its production design, particularly in the busy-ness of the movie (I love when it feels like people actually live in the sets because it's more organic, and that's true here with the occasional mess in the background). But it's the date-scene, on a train, that seals the deal here, with the ingenious use of painted backdrops in an amusement park ride giving a sense of romance through the sets.
Bronze: Oscar's Best Picture Hamlet only gets one nomination for my My Ballot Awards (despite me liking it MUCH more than I expected I would, and would've happily put it in Best Picture, Actor, or Cinematography if there'd been room), but it's a doozy of a solo nod. The way that we see a combination of staged works with realistic castle scenes...the juxtaposition of what is real and what is facade in a play that constantly plays with that line is really smart stuff.
Fort Apache
The Lady from Shanghai
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Moonrise
The Red Shoes
Gold: The Red Shoes is just jaw-dropping beauty. What would become stock-and-trade for Powell & Pressburger (I sincerely doubt this will be their only citation in this category before all is said-and-done), this is the peak of their powers, a confluence of color, light, & shadow in nearly every scene.
Silver: Lady from Shanghai comes to play with its cinematography, with virtually every scene of Welles' film feeling like it is ready-to-be-framed. Obviously the scene at the end with the hall of mirrors is legendary for a reason, but everything here is good-the moments on the yacht feel like a hole is about to be burned through the reel it is so scorched with sun.
Bronze: Finishing out our pretty pictures is Fort Apache, up there with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon as one of the greatest uses of Monument Valley ever achieved. Particularly in the final thirty minutes, as we see a battle staged with John Wayne's world-weary military man's journey coming to a close, the movie just comes together in the great expanse.
Easter Parade
The Lady from Shanghai
The Pirate
Red River
The Red Shoes
Gold: The alabaster whites of Moira Shearer's tutu and gown compared with the blood red, telegraphing crimson ballet flats that would seal her fate are such an iconic look you'd be hard-pressed to care that the rest of The Red Shoes is filled with ingenious design, particularly the way that Shearer's character changes through clothing as the movie progresses and she gains more of her dreams (and madness).
Silver: There's few things I love more than a random fashion show put in the middle of a musical, and Easter Parade further plays with this motif by putting the fashion show cleverly on the magazine covers. Combined with some exquisite looks...Ann Miller in a black-and-canary-yellow gown, complete with elbow length bright yellow gloves and a skirt that opens halfway through for monogramed nylons...the elegance & creativity here is (sigh).
Bronze: Sometimes you need to have a little sex with your costume work, and boy howdy is that what's happening with the form-fitting stuff in Red River. Think of the black undershirt that Monty Clift is wearing to better highlight his neck or John Ireland's suggestively slung ascot...the movie is basically begging you to picture these guys on top of each other (sorry, this might be a horny choice, but the movies, again, are supposed to be sexy...it's not like The Pirate as one of our just-misses for the medal stand this year isn't also using Gene Kelly's backside for maximum exposure...I mean look at that poster!).
The Lady from Shanghai
Moonrise
The Naked City
The Red Shoes
Rope
Gold: The extremely rare tech gold medal that I'm not giving to The Red Shoes comes in Best Editing, where we return to our Best Picture winner The Lady from Shanghai. The movie feels so deliberate, much of it from memory (so there's a hazy, heightened quality to it throughout), and the way that the Hall of Mirrors scene is shot is the stuff of cinematic legend for a reason.
Silver: Speaking of dreams, Moonrise works so well because it feels like we're trapped in one, where a sense of what is reality and what is just something happened in Dane Clark's paranoia keeps the movie shifting. I love the way that you can't quite tell what's coming next, frequently getting around the Hayes Code to ensure you're still in the dark.
Bronze: We finish off with The Red Shoes once more, particularly for the ballet sequence, which is riveting and needs to be, as in any other film it would've stopped the picture dead-in-its-tracks to just throw a ballet in the middle of the movie, and yet it keeps you glued to what will happen next in the story.
The Lady from Shanghai
The Loves of Carmen
Red River
The Red Shoes
The Three Musketeers
Gold: Like I said above, sometimes you get an honor just from one key moment in a film, and come on...Moira Shearer's wide-eyed, heavily pencilled, overdone makeup with black eyes and a painted downward pout ranks as one of the most memorable looks in the history of movies in The Red Shoes.
Silver: It might seem strange to pick a film starring almost exclusively men without a gimmick or prosthetic for a nomination (much less a silver medal) in 1948, but that's the case with Red River. The fight scenes feel authentically bruised, but it's the smaller touches, like Montgomery Clift's overdone eye liner and the faded youth slipping from the once equally beautiful John Wayne (his aged hair late in the film, the dark shadows under his eyes) that add to the longevity in the picture.
Bronze: If you've read these for a while, you know that (unlike Oscar) I almost always throw in at least one nomination for "pretty movie stars being pretty" and that's true for Rita Hayworth in both of her nominated films...but especially The Loves of Carmen. Her bright red mane of hair and gorgeous sun-kissed makeup show why the men in this movie are obsessed with her.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Deep Waters
Portrait of Jennie
Red River
The Red Shoes
Gold: The stampede sequence in Red River is honestly impossible to ignore. There are other scenes in the film (including the fireball attack) that assist this gold medal, but it's winning the award for the combination of practical effects and stunt coordination in one of the movie's most iconic sequences, as a group of cattle run after our heroes.
Silver: Though not as robust, you could argue that Portrait of Jennie (Oscar's choice in this category) was maybe more innovative. Using then impressive and rare color framing to enhance the water effects at the end of the picture, we feel Joseph Cotten truly fighting for his life in that storm.
Bronze: Best visual effects should be remembered as not always the most innovative, but ones that used them to their advantage. This is the case of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which use the groundbreaking effects of the Universal monster movies to comic effect, making things that were once terrifying and instead giving them a funny tilt, like a levitating Bela Lugosi or a jolted Frankenstein's Monster.
