1957 Oscar Viewing Project

One of the biggest regrets I had with finishing the blog was that I wasn't going to do one last season of ballots for the OVP.  The series that basically started this blog was going to get ignored, and while I cheated a bit by having the Halloween blogathon serve as a "placeholder" for the Oscar Viewing Project goodbye, that wasn't enough.  I'll be honest-October has been really challenging on a personal level (one of the main reasons that I'm ending the blog is because I had a wake up call about my personal life), but I have pushed myself in the past couple of days to finish the four remaining films I hadn't completed from 1957 so that they were done, and I can officially unveil the 27th completed season of the series (a truncated version, as I didn't have the bandwidth to write a full twenty articles, but at least I got something!).  For those who have enjoyed this (including me), I want you to know that I have started to transpose all of the previous OVP winners from past seasons onto my Letterboxd lists, and will continue to do the winners on there going forward, so if you want to continue to see what I'm picking (I'm ending the blog-the Oscar Viewing Project continues to see another day), you can find me here.  My brother is trying to help me figure out the best way to present the My Ballots (I didn't have time to finish that for 1957), but I promise as soon as he figures out a way to do this (he's better at such things than I am), I will continue posting those on Letterboxd as well.  But below, you will find the ranked from first-to-last choices for the 30th Academy Awards.

That's enough shop talk.  Now it's time to go back to an era of Sputnik & the Little Rock Nine, of Althea Gibson & Mamie Eisenhower.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Picture

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. 12 Angry Men

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: The Bridge on the River Kwai has been a part of my life since I can't remember when-it was my grandfather's favorite movie, and one that played in the background (along with Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora!) on repeat after he had a stroke.  The only one of these movies that really approaches its grandeur is Witness for the Prosecution, which honestly is kind of a miracle and the best Christie adaptation I've ever seen.  12 Angry Men is very well-done, and a masterpiece but one that might (unfairly) have lost some luster it's been done so much since, and the other two are handsome-but-dull (Sayonara) or a total snooze (Peyton Place).

Director

1. David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Billy Wilder (Witness for the Prosecution)

3. Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men)

4. Joshua Logan (Sayonara)

5. Mark Robson (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Even more than the Best Picture field (if you hadn't noticed, these are carbon copies of each other), David Lean takes the lead here.  Oscar Winner Sydney Pollack once said that a director's job is "less artist, more damage containment expert" and that might be what is drawing me to Lean to a degree.  He has the more challenging job, particularly given that Wilder & Lumet are largely staying in the same locations, and are bringing to life staged plays, but it's more than that.  Think of the ending of The Bridge on the River Kwai, having so many storylines come together with staggering precision-you only get that from thinking meticulously, even in a gigantic epic.

Actor

1. Alec Guinness (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Charles Laughton (Witness for the Prosecution)

3. Anthony Franciosa (A Hatful of Rain)

4. Marlon Brando (Sayonara)

5. Anthony Quinn (Wild is the Wind)

The Lowdown: This is entirely down to the British actors (Guinness & Laughton).  Franciosa (who is in lead, Shelley Winters' memory be damned), gives a good performance but is in an underwritten movie, while Brando is a fabulous actor in a stuffed shirt sort of role.  Guinness gets my vote over Laughton primarily because he's playing so specifically to this character.  Laughton's role is appropriately loud-and-boisterous, he's typecast but in the best way possible.  Guinness isn't initially who I would guess in 1957 for this role (he was better known for comic work in movies before this), but that works to his advantage as Colonel Nicholson is a man obsessed, whose madness toward the end as he realizes what he's done is a crucial component to the entirety of Lean's epic.

Actress

1. Anna Magnani (Wild is the Wind)

2. Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve)

3. Deborah Kerr (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison)

4. Elizabeth Taylor (Raintree County)

5. Lana Turner (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Here's where I'm going to confess something-I have never gotten the hype around Joanne Woodward's performance in The Three Faces of Eve.  I think part of why she got this award (and so many plaudits since) is because it was such a revolutionary idea onscreen-a woman playing three characters in one.  But it isn't as impressive as some of her peers were, and while Woodward is a good actress, this isn't her best work, and she's only as high as she is on this list because this is a weak field.  Magnani stands out more for me-she's a more obvious actor compared to the organic Woodward, but the way she plays this woman is so three-dimensional and felt.  I love it.  Kerr is lovely-but-not-stretched in Heaven Knows, while Taylor & Turner both have their best (sultriest) instinct muted in their dull pictures.

Supporting Actor

1. Sessue Hayakawa (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Red Buttons (Sayonara)

3. Russ Tamblyn (Peyton Place)

4. Arthur Kennedy (Peyton Place)

5. Vittorio de Sica (A Farewell to Arms)

The Lowdown: Hayakawa, at one point a major leading star of the Silent Era, made a comeback with this role very late in his career, and it's easily the best of this quintet.  The way that his Colonel Saito creates a humanizing aspect to his villain is years ahead of what you'd normally expect from such a part, and stands up against what Guinness & Holden are doing.  Buttons' heartbreaking work is a worthy runner-up, and I like that Russ Tamblyn got a nomination here (he's my favorite part of Peyton Place), but Hayakawa is the best choice of the bunch.

Supporting Actress

1. Elsa Lanchester (Witness for the Prosecution)

2. Miyoshi Umeki (Sayonara)

3. Carolyn Jones (The Bachelor Party)

4. Hope Lange (Peyton Place)

5. Diane Varsi (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Man is this a rough one.  Given 3/5 of these are in movies that underwhelmed me already, and The Bachelor Party is just an odd picture, thank the lord for Elsa Lanchester.  Her doddering in Witness for the Prosecution is marvelous, and would've made a fine winner (I would've found room for her costar Una O'Connor, and will in my My Ballot).  The rest, though, are uninspired in a field that could've been great had they invested more in musicals in 1957.  Umeki's groundbreaking win isn't the worst thing to happen to this category (there's an understanding in her work that I liked), and seeing Carolyn Jones outside of the Addams mansion is a change of pace, but man...Lanchester is the only truly acceptable winner of the bunch.

Original Screenplay

1. Funny Face

2. The Tin Star

3. I Vitelloni

4. Designing Woman

5. Man of a Thousand Faces

The Lowdown: It's weird, given the weak point of most of Fred Astaire's films is a cobbled together by scotch tape plot, that I'm giving his film this statue.  In a perfect world, you'd probably see a few of the Foreign Language Film nominees included in this lineup, but the only subtitled film of this bunch is Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni, where the screenplay is one of the weakest parts in an otherwise really attractive movie.  Funny Face is well-structured, and if you get past the fact that the 30-year age difference should be more of a plot point (let's be real, though, Fred Astaire & Audrey Hepburn are such ageless figures it's hard to think of them as anything more than ephemeral tricks-of-the-light), the only movie that comes close is The Tin Star, a well-structured morality tale that's admittedly a bit predictable and guided by strong work from Henry Fonda & Anthony Perkins.

Adapted Screenplay

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. 12 Angry Men

3. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: The real battle here is between The Bridge on the River Kwai and 12 Angry Men, both impeccable screenplays.  12 Angry Men it's sometimes hard for me to tell if I should dock points for it clearly being a filmed play or if that works onscreen.  Since I can never quite tell, I'm going to go with Bridge, which has a stronger end game, and also manages to tell a lot of subplots without losing focus (harder than it sounds).  Kudos to Heaven Knows in third, particularly in the way that it handles the complicated (for 1957) romantic angles of the story that otherwise could've been abandoned by a different writer.

Foreign Language Film

1. Nights of Cabiria (Italy)

2. Gates of Paris (France)

3. The Devil Strikes at Night (Germany)

4. Nine Lives (Norway)

5. Mother India (India)

The Lowdown: In the early years of this category, you'd get masterpieces from renowned filmmakers like Fellini, which makes it really hard to judge in some ways because how do you compete with something like Nights of Cabiria, one of the all-time great pictures and featuring a beautiful performance from Giuletta Massini?  It's a pity, though, as there's some treasure trove films here too.  Gates of Paris is a wonderfully dark French crime film (with a romantic subplot that'll rip your heart out), while The Devil Strikes at Night gives you a really strong look at the rise of fascism from a film noir perspective. The only one of the bunch I couldn't get into was the unfathomably long Mother India, a well-regarded Bollywood picture that was at least two hours too long.

Score

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. An Affair to Remember

3. Raintree County

4. Boy on a Dolphin

5. Perri

The Lowdown: Any of the Top 3 here would be a worthy prize (Boy on the Dolphin feels like it got nominated based on the composer, and Perri ranks as one of the sillier films to ever be cited for an Academy Award since it's just a children's nature documentary about a squirrel).  Even with the most famous cut of the score being a non-original piece (the "Colonel Bogey's March" is not original to the picture), I think that Bridge does the most with its music, and it will get my nod.  Either Affair or Raintree would make good choices, though, both of them lush & filled with a lot of romance (I'm still finalizing my My Ballot Awards, as I mentioned above, but as of this writing all three of these films would make my nominees).

Original Song

1. "Wild is the Wind" (Wild is the Wind)

2. "All the Way," (The Joker is Wild)

3. "An Affair to Remember," (An Affair to Remember)

4. "Tammy," (Tammy and the Bachelor)

5. "April Love," (April Love)

The Lowdown: A genuinely terrific group of songs-there's not a bad one in the bunch, and in many cases, we're getting some big-deal singers' signature tunes.  The Top 3, in particular, is pretty immovable, and my pick of "Wild is the Wind" might be a little cheat given my favorite version of the song is by Nina Simone (not, as sung in the movie, by Johnny Mathis, though Mathis is also marvelous).  It's such a creepy love ballad.  Sinatra's classic "All the Way" and Marni Nixon belting out the standard "An Affair to Remember" (through Deborah Kerr) are totally acceptable answers here too, though.

Sound

1. Pal Joey

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. Sayonara

4. Les Girls

5. Gunfight at the OK Corral

The Lowdown: I will be honest-every single one of these films will be getting replaced when I do my My Ballot.  That's not to say there isn't good stuff happening (Pal Joey has some solid musical numbers and the dialogue is crisp, Witness has the great final courtroom scene & Marlene singing), but nothing here stands out in a big way.  The shootout in Gunfight, for example, is a disappointment (the best part of it is the Frankie Lane title song), and Les Girls is a great movie, but not one that has a lot of super memorable musical numbers (it works better on its plot).  The Bridge on the River Kwai is clearly missing.

Art Direction

1. Les Girls

2. Funny Face

3. Raintree County

4. Sayonara

5. Pal Joey

The Lowdown: Gorgeous sets abound here, but in particular for the Top 2 (in another year Raintree County's elaborate and epic southern looks would be a serious contender for the win, here it has to settle for the bronze).  I'm going to go with Les Girls for the statue because it plays more with the beautiful looks of Paris than Funny Face does, and the sets have a bit more color and personality, but honestly they're both so good this is splitting hairs.

Cinematography

1. Funny Face

2. An Affair to Remember

3. The Bridge on the River Kwai

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: This one comes down to the romances for me-this is the one area where I think Bridge is good but isn't necessarily breaking the bank except for the final sequence, and so I'd put this between Affair and Funny Face.  Funny Face probably benefits a bit from its plot-there film is literally about catching the exact right photo of Audrey Hepburn, and you get gorgeous scenes and fashion shots of her to accompany that.  I do like the intercontinental glamour and radiant CinemaScope beauty of An Affair to Remember, but if forced to pick, I'd end with Funny Face.

Costume Design

1. Funny Face

2. Les Girls

3. Raintree County

4. An Affair to Remember

5. Pal Joey

The Lowdown: With costume design, sometimes you get contests where you were never going to win.  There are really good nominees in this category (for my money, the best lineup Oscar pulled together in 1957), and some are extraordinary.  That exquisite orange & white dress Deborah Kerr wears in An Affair to Remember, the plunging bodices sported by a never-more-beautiful Elizabeth Taylor in Raintree County, the monochromatic swimsuits & matching chapeaus of Les Girls...all grand.  But when Audrey Hepburn in a strapless scarlet dress & matching scarf walks down the steps of the Louvre in Funny Face...that's what makes movies, movies-it simply has to win.

Film Editing

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. Gunfight at the OK Corral

4. Pal Joey

5. Sayonara

The Lowdown: I feel like too many of these categories are Bridge on the River Kwai facing off against Witness for the Prosecution with the latter coming up short.  This is true here, even though it's close-Bridge sometimes sags in the middle (maybe its weakest aspect even if the beginning and end are so well-conceived), and you can't deny that Witness builds its tension masterfully.  Still, the ending of Bridge is just too good to ignore, and neither Marlene Dietrich or Dennis Hopper's very effective final scene in Gunfight at the OK Corral can really compete with it.

Special Effects

1. The Spirit of St. Louis

2. The Enemy Below

The Lowdown: Our only category with only two nominees in the bunch, this is a battle between two war pictures.  The Spirit of St. Louis is really impressive when you keep in mind this is a special effects category, and so therefore the plane stunt effects and trick flying should be part of your calculation.  It helps that Jimmy Stewart was a pilot in WWII and actually knows what he was doing.  The Enemy Below is both a lesser movie, and honestly has lesser effects by comparison (Lindbergh gets my win).  It's not bad-the water effects toward the end all are strong & believable in a world without CGI, but it's nothing you wouldn't see in a dozen other war films of the era.

Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Film: Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: The film received no Oscar nominations, which given its precursor count would number as a BIG upset by today's standards-Wilder was nominated for both the DGA & the WGA, and the film was cited for Best Picture at the Golden Globes (as well as lead nominations for both Hepburn & Chevalier).  If a film today got that, they'd be a sure thing for a few nominations from the Academy.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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.

One consistent thing that we'll see all year for this theme is that while some of the actresses we'll profile did, in fact, wait around in Hollywood for a bit before they became "America's Sweetheart," all of them pretty much had that picture, that afterward they were instantly stars.  For Audrey Hepburn, that movie was Roman Holiday, which won her an Academy Award and made her a household name.  For the next ten years, Hepburn could do no wrong, with virtually all of her movies doing well with audiences ...with only 1-2 exceptions, the biggest being today's movie Love in the Afternoon.  Why are we focusing on one of those exceptions today, you might ask?  Because, well, I didn't realize it'd flopped until after I'd watched the movie and I have seen so many of her films that I didn't think it would be wise to waste a screening.  Today, we're going to talk about arguably the highest-profile miss from Hepburn from this era, one that paired her with an icon of the previous generation (which may have been the problem).

(Spoilers Ahead) Love in the Afternoon is about Ariane (Hepburn), a young cello student who lives with her father Claude (Chevalier) in Paris.  Claude is a private detective, one who makes his living investigating the crumbling romances of the various men of Paris, many of whom are losing their wives to a lothario named Frank Flannagan (Cooper).  When a client threatens to kill Frank, Ariane intercepts, and manages to save his life...but in the process she becomes enamored with him.  Having read about his escapades for years in her father's notes, she is able to manipulate him, pretending to be a worldly sophisticate and someone he can easily romance without strings attached (this is basically "friends with benefits" for the 1950's), but she's in fact deeply in love with him.  When he becomes jealous of all the men she's "been with" he goes to her father's detective agency...at which point her father realizes what's happened.  He wants him to dump her, knowing that he will break her heart, but at the end (in a romantic train station goodbye), they embrace, and the closing narration shows that she finally tamed the playboy, and made him her husband.

Audrey Hepburn, similar to Grace Kelly, spent much of her acting career being romanced by older men.  Humphrey Bogart was 30 years her senior, Rex Harrison 21 years older, Cary Grant was 25 years older, and Fred Astaire, again, was 30 years older than Hepburn.  There are a lot of guesses as to why Hepburn & Kelly, specifically, were asked to do this, but it was largely because Hollywood had a lot of over-the-hill actors who were still somewhat bankable & they didn't think audiences would continue to see them if they continued to romance women their own age like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck.  This wasn't always a problem for Hepburn-you watch films like Sabrina, My Fair Lady, Charade, & Funny Face, and she plays really well against these guys, using their screen personas and her youthful whimsy to full advantage.  This is why she made so many good movies, as she was the rare romantic lead who could compliment these men's star persona so beautifully, even with an age difference.

But that did not manifest with Gary Cooper.  Love in the Afternoon is a good movie, mind you.  There's a solid script here, even if it should probably be funnier, and the premise works really well.  It's Gary Cooper's casting, though, that doesn't click.  Cooper is not my favorite actor, but in his best roles he did two things well-he was very good as an honorable man stuck in a tough situation and he was really good at playing an idiot being outmaneuvered by a smarter woman.  The script doesn't play into the first part at all, and doesn't really lean into the latter well enough.  Cary Grant was the first choice for this movie, and would've been much better, as in many ways this foreshadowed their work in Charade (which unlike this, was a massive hit).  Cooper & Hepburn, both screen stars in their own right, don't work together, and it's hard to put any of the blame on Hepburn, playing this role decently.  The scenes she has with Maurice Chevalier, for example, are quite light & melodious.  A missed opportunity, and a shame that all of these flashy names couldn't pull together a better picture.

Top 10 Films of 2023 (that aren't from 2023)

We are officially unveiling today all of our Top 10's for 2023, and while later today we will share out the Top 10 films that were actually released in 2023, this is a blog that centers on classic cinema, and it's never "just" the year at-hand-we're always plumbing over a century of movies.  So we're going to start first with the Top 10 films I saw for the first time in 2023 before we get into my actual Top 10 of 2023.  Please enjoy, and share your favorite first-time experiences in the comments (all titles listed alphabetically)!

Diary of a Country Priest (1951)

dir. Robert Bresson

A fascinating look at the way faith can consume us if we let it, to the point where we stop living our own lives and can't find order without making it align to our worldview.  Claude Laydu gives an astonishing performance as the anguished priest, one that has to be seen to be believed.

Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

dir. Louis Malle

Perfectly-constructed film noir, aided in large part by Jeanne Moreau giving a world-class performance that would make her an international icon.  The way that Malle lenses her is ingenious, always using onscreen light sources to highlight that beautiful, melancholy face.

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

dir. Sergio Leone

In the year of the western on the blog, while I saw a lot of terrific movies, it feels a bit cheater-y to give the next three slots highlighting the only westerns on this list, all from the same trilogy.  But it cannot be denied that this lives up to the hype, starting out with a wonderful spin on what would be the classic "Man with No Name" trope from Clint Eastwood.

For a Few Dollars More (1965)

dir. Sergio Leone

Armed with a stronger budget, Leone makes sure his follow-up uses every dollar on the accounting sheet, giving us a growing set design, and more intentional cinematography (which was already pretty darn great).  Lee van Cleef getting added alongside Eastwood is a strong twist on the original's formula.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

dir. Sergio Leone

The third film wraps it all up with a true sense of the word "epic."  Eastwood, van Cleef, and now Eli Wallach create a glorious trio, and Ennio Morricone, already batting a thousand with this series, brings one of the best scores he ever wrote (and that's saying something).  The final hour is about as good as a movie can get.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

dir. Wong Kar-Wai

One of the sexiest films I've ever seen, In the Mood for Love looks wonderful in every frame.  The way that the art direction, costuming, and the glowing candlelit cinematography add to the forbidden nature of the two title lovers is grand, but Cheung and especially Leung sell it throughout, an absolute electric sexual tension that recalls something like Lauren Bacall walking onto the screen in To Have and Have Not.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

dir. Oren Peli

An impossible level of tension emerges from this film, one that would launch a ton of pretenders, but that doesn't deter how truly scary the first film is.  I loved the way that, for a film criticized for too many jump scares, that's not really the case-much of it just comes from finding the changes, searching in the silence...until we realize there's a reason to be scared of the dark.

Summertime (1955)

dir. David Lean

Maybe the most narcissistic choice on this list (I, too, am a bit of a spinster who loves to travel & maybe in 2023 gave up a little bit on love being the end of my story), but that doesn't deter that Summertime is a grand, marvelous spiritual sequel to Brief Encounter.  I don't know that I've ever seen Hepburn so raw, using her persona against a gorgeous 1950's Venice to craft her best dramatic performance...ever?

The Virgin Suicides (2000)

dir. Sofia Coppola

I love the way that Coppola's debut plays with form & expectations.  We're meant to assume that this is a coming-of-age story, one where the boys will find their own journey through the introspective girls they see across the street.  What it becomes is a mystery, and how our own lore becomes an enigma as we grow up, realizing how much of life, even our own, we can't understand.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

dir. Billy Wilder

Absolutely sensational treatment, a riveting courtroom drama brimming with all of the delicious intrigue that you'd expect from Agatha Christie.  Charles Laughton, Elsa Lancaster, Una O'Connor, they're all grand in this, but it's Marlene Dietrich (robbed of an Oscar) who makes it truly unforgettable.

OVP: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Film: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Stars: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Richard Benedict

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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.

We've talked about this before, but with noir, it's not always clear when I'm headed into the movie whether or not the film in question is, in fact, film noir.  Ace in the Hole is one of the bigger titles that has this problem.  Directed by Billy Wilder in 1951, the film was poorly-received when it first came out and flopped at the box office, despite Wilder coming off of the critical acclaim of an undisputed film noir like Sunset Boulevard the previous year.  The movie has since been rescued by critics, but it's debatable whether or not it's actually a film noir.  In 2022, Eddie Muller (the president of the Film Noir Foundation) said it wasn't, that it was more a depiction of sleazy journalism, and to a degree I agree with him.  This film doesn't entirely fit within the traditional confines of noir, even if it has elements of it.  But because it's oftentimes called noir, I thought it was a good choice for our series this month.  And whatever it is, it's indisputably a great movie.  

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Chuck Tatum (Douglas), a ruthless, ill-tempered journalist who is forced to work for a small town newspaper after becoming basically unemployable at larger papers.  Tatum comes across a man named Leo Minosa (Benedict) trapped in a cave, an amiable guy whom the sheriff assumes he can get out in about 12 hours.  But Tatum, understanding that people will clamor for such a human interest story, convinces the sheriff and Leo's unhappy wife Lorraine (Sterling), who was about to leave him, to take the long way to rescue Leo, therefore extending the rescue to a week rather than the initial 12 hours, and getting him a big story.  It works-he gets national news attention, which results in huge sales for the local paper, and gives Chuck the chance to get back on top.  But in the process, Leo's prognosis gets worse, with him eventually getting pneumonia.  Chuck tries to save him the original way, but it's no longer an option because they've damaged the path by going the long way.  Leo dies, but before that he tells Chuck he has left an anniversary present for Lorraine in their home.  Chuck forces Lorraine to wear it (a fur stole), nearly strangling her with it, and in the process she stabs him in self-defense with a pair of scissors.  Chuck eventually confesses to his crimes, though it's clear that they will never reach the readers who were enthralled with Leo's story, and then dies from the wound that he got from Lorraine.

This is one of of three movies (along with Sunset Boulevard and A Face in the Crowd) that Wilder made in the 1950's that was about the media, specifically critical of the way that journalism & entertainment were merging in an unhealthy way.  As I mentioned above, only Sunset Boulevard was financially successful of the three, and it's easy to see why that resonated more with audiences, given that it was about a "crazy" movie star, and people love to see a celebrity fall.  The latter two are more indictments on their audiences, and Ace in the Hole in particular.  This is a nasty story-it's about how people will turn a man who is in danger, someone we should want to save, into a story.  The ending of the movie is literally a carnival (the alternate title of this is The Big Carnival), with people celebrating in some aspects Leo getting out of the cave, but more so their own stake in his misery.  There are fights between people over who has been at the cave the longest, and watching people put in their own claim on a piece of one man's fame-through-misery.  The focus is obviously on how characters like Chuck & Lorraine are profiting off of Leo, putting his life at stake for a few dollars, but honestly what struck me about my screening was the people they were catering to.  In an era where we literally watch the Capitol be stormed, and the focus is less on the horror & more on the reaction from politicians of how it happened...it's easy to see the terrible way we all contribute to the degradation of our humanity just for a few dollars and a few moments of macabre entertainment.

It's helped by a pair of wonderful performances from Douglas & Sterling.  Kirk Douglas is a complicated actor for me, as there are times I genuinely do not get his appeal, but other times I'm totally invested in him.  I can't quite say I'm a fan, but when he's good, I totally can subscribe to it, and this is a case of him being very good, playing his Chuck as someone who has never questioned his own morality, mostly because he finds such a thing a nuisance on his way to the top.  Sterling is also good.  I loved the way that she throws herself at Douglas, a love story that even he knows makes little sense, mostly because it's the only thing she knows she can use against a man.  She's been stuck so long that she struggles with changing her own plan even if it means a faster means to an end.  I kind of wish the film had the guts to give us one last moment with her, though the Hays Code might've gotten in the way there.  Lorraine essentially gets out of this with cash & a widow's lease on life...I wish we'd either have seen her completely get away, or forced into her own nightmare, being "Leo's Widow" as the only way to make money going forward (which is probably what would've been her fate).  That lack of focus and maybe a minute or two of repetitive storytelling are my only complaints, though.  This might not be noir, but it's proof that Wilder (more than any other filmmaker of his era) could see the dawning of a new era in America...and it wasn't shining.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, 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, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: 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, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, 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 Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

OVP: Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Film: Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Stars: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Una O'Connor

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Charles Laughton, Supporting Actress-Elsa Lanchester, Film Editing, Sound Recording)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 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 Marlene Dietrich: click here to learn more about Ms. Dietrich (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Marlene Dietrich spent much of World War II doing USO tours.  Dietrich was vehemently anti-Nazi (funding efforts to help Jews and political prisoners flee Germany in the late-1930's), and was one of the most active figures on the USO tour (it's hard not to wonder if she was slightly overcompensating given that to be the most famous German actor in Hollywood at the time would've made her being indifferent to the war effort basically impossible without fan backlash).  But post-WWII, Dietrich's film career floundered.  Though she was still ravishing (she would remain a sex symbol for the remainder of her public life, and would trade on it long after society allowed most women to), and would appear in films by important directors (Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, & Stanley Kramer would all eventually call), it was never quite as magic as it was in her early days in Hollywood.  The closest she might've come was Witness for the Prosecution, which was intended at the time to be a vehicle for Dietrich to get an Oscar nomination, and while much of those involved (including her castmates Charles Laughton & Elsa Lanchester) got nominated for it, she did not...though she should have.

(Spoilers Ahead-And I mean it this time!) The film is based on a play by Agatha Christie, and starts with Sir Wilfred Robarts (Laughton), a barrister who is currently recovering from a heart attack.  He is coaxed (against the wishes of his nurse Miss Plimsoll, played here by Laughton's real-life wife Lanchester) into a case to defend Leonard Vole (Power), a man accused of killing an older woman for the inheritance, after he supposedly seduced her.  We also meet Vole's wife Christine (Dietrich), who appears distant at first, and it's not entirely clear if she wants him to get off (or if she believes he's innocent).  Vole's case looks increasingly hopeless when Christine is a witness not for the defense, but for the prosecution, and admits that Leonard's alibi is a lie.  However, a mysterious woman comes and gives Sir Wilfred letters indicating that Christine is lying-that she's been having an affair and perjured herself by claiming the alibi isn't the truth.  He shows the jury these letters, and she confesses from the witness stand that she lied...that Leonard was with her that night, and couldn't have possibly been the killer, and she & her lover Max wanted to implicate Leonard so she could leave him.  Leonard is acquitted, and everything seems rosy...

...or so it seems with ten minutes to spare.  Witness for the Prosecution was one of the first films to really underline the concept of "don't spoil the ending" to the point that they included it in the ad promos and had a voiceover over the ending instructing people not to spoil the ending for others.  This is because the ending is a true twist.  It turns out that Christine does love Leonard, and played this role because he is guilty, but figured the only way that the jury would believe her is if she was a cold, unloving spouse (something that Sir Wilfred hints at early in the picture).  So she perjures herself, sending herself to jail, and it's also revealed that Dietrich was the actress playing the unrecognizable mysterious woman.  In a further twist, it turns out that while Christine loved Leonard, Leonard did not love her back, and was having an affair with a younger woman.  Freed by double jeopardy, he now gets a small fortune and can marry his younger mistress, but Christine feeling betrayed and headed to jail for Leonard, kills him...and Sir Wilfred, horrified by what she's endured, proclaims that he will get her off in the closing scenes.

The movie received six Academy Award nominations, and they're all well-earned.  The editing & sound mixing aren't showy, but they're definitely top rate (as are the cinematography, score, and especially the art direction).  The makeup (more on that in a second) would've surely gotten a nomination in a different era.  Most of the cast is splendid.  I loved the dottering comedy between Laughton & Lanchester.  Laughton leaned in heavily on this part, one of his last great roles, and it feels like it was written for it he bombasts and orates so well, and Lanchester (thanks to years of living with him) shows a marital chemistry that could be silly but comes across beautifully in the film.  Una O'Connor is also good as a scorned maid (who would've otherwise gotten the inheritance).  I don't entirely like Tyrone Power here, who I think is too much (especially when he's being dramatic during Dietrich's testimony), but this is a 6-time Oscar nominee that should've gotten more citations.

And one of those should've been Dietrich.  Dietrich was largely expected to be nominated (she'd even recorded a new opening to her cabaret act where she was introduced as "Oscar Nominee for Witness for the Prosecution, Marlene Dietrich," and was devastated when she somehow didn't make it.  Looking back with her, I'm devastated too.  Dietrich nails her courtroom scenes, completely keeping you guessing the entire time, but in retrospect it's clear what was there (that she was always on Leonard's side).  It's a very tricky part, made even more difficult by Dietrich playing the unrecognizable mysterious woman.  I'll be real here, the accent was SO different than Dietrich's normal sultry German baritone that I completely missed that it was Dietrich playing the part, so the twist totally threw me.  The publicity around the twist ending surely hurt Dietrich's chances, because they couldn't publicize her two roles, and how different/good they both were.  But of all of the 1957 Best Actress nominees I've seen so far, she's better than all of them-this was a crime that she didn't get into the field, or honestly win it all.

Dietrich would have a very long life, and an equally long career, but while she'd have two more major movies (1958's Touch of Evil and 1961's Judgment at Nuremberg), most of the rest of her career was performing a legendary one-woman act that she would sell to sold out audiences for decades around the world, from the early 1950's all the way to the mid-1970's, when her health started to fade to the point that she couldn't handle the rigors of performing live.  She eventually did voiceover work (she did not appear) for an Oscar-nominated documentary about her life called Marlene (made by her Nuremberg costar Maximillian Schell).  Dietrich died in 1992 at the age of 91 from kidney failure.  Next month, we are going to take an unusual approach to our Saturdays with the Stars' headliner, looking at his long career in westerns through the lens of one specific director, as the two together made one of the most critically-acclaimed actor-director pairings of the era.

OVP: Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Film: Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Stars: Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff, Erich von Stroheim, Peter van Eyck

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, & Film Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Anne Baxter-click here to learn more about Ms. Baxter (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are not going to move too far into the future of Anne Baxter's career this week, though we are going to move to a different studio momentarily.  Last week we took a look at Baxter's career in 1942, when she graduated from teenager to adult onscreen with both The Pied Piper and The Magnificent Ambersons.  Baxter, though, as a leading woman during this era seems to struggle in terms of finding films that were the correct fit for her (and one could argue, as we move further into the years, that this was the case her whole career).  We'll talk more about this in a second, but at this point Baxter was cranking out a lot of "love interest" roles, and the best-remembered of the bunch was Five Graves to Cairo, which she did for Paramount rather than her typical studio of Fox.  The film, like last week's, is another World War II drama filmed within the confines of the war (this was actually a pretty common typecasting for Baxter-she found a lot of success in the early 1940's as a woman in war movies), focusing on a fictionalized story about the campaign in North Africa.

(Spoilers Ahead) In the opening sequence, John Bramble (Tone) wanders, dumbstruck, out of the desert into a hotel owned by Farid (Tamiroff), with the help of Mouche (Baxter), a French maid.  Once Bramble comes to, he has to pretend to be a dead waiter that they have buried in the basement, as the Germans have come to stay at the hotel & the only way he'll survive is by pretending not to be British.  The Germans include Field Marshall Erwin Rommal (von Stroheim), at the time of this filming the most famous military leader in the Third Reich, who develops a rapport with Bramble, and through this rapport Bramble figures out how Rommal is planning on campaigning through North Africa with limited supplies (by using the letters on the map that spell "Egypt" as secret supply dumps, hence the "Five Graves of Cairo").  Bramble escapes, but while he's trying to leave one of Rommal's aides, Lieutenant Schwegler (van Eyck) catches that he's the dead waiter, and he has to kill him.  Mouche briefly takes the blame for the death, though, so that Bramble can escape & help stop Rommal in his tracks, helping the war effort.  This costs her her life, which Bramble realizes when he goes back for her, and puts a parasol, something she'd long-desired, to place over her grave.

I talked about this last week, but I find war films filmed during a war, specifically World War II, fascinating because it wasn't crystal clear who was going to win.  During filming (which, if the internet is correct, was a few weeks in January & February), Rommal was still in charge of the campaign in North Africa (the Battle of Medenine would be waged after production but before this film came out), and so was a formidable opponent, albeit one who was losing the tide of the war.  This makes the Rommal character in Five Graves to Cairo the most interesting figure in an otherwise underwhelming movie.  Von Stroheim is quite good as the military commander, playing him as a figure more focused on flexing his own intellectual prowess than caring about the politics of his decisions (mirroring historians' problematic trouble with this particular leader, who would eventually commit suicide as a result of a coup attempt against Hitler).  The rest of the film struggles to match him, though, particularly with Tone as kind of a blank canvass performance in the lead (he's very handsome, but nothing else about his performances really sing with me, even his Oscar-cited work in Mutiny on the Bounty was just okay).  The movie also doesn't really know what to do with its domestic trappings.

The film won three Oscar nominations, two of which I enjoyed: the art direction & the cinematography.  The film's hotel setting is full of some fun detailing (I love not only the rubble-drenched basement with a body under it, though there's not enough comic maneuvering with this particular situation for my taste), as it does look like an abandoned hotel in the middle of the desert that might otherwise be left for the elements.  The cinematography is great in the opening sequence, where there's a cool shot of a tank meandering through the desert with a bunch of corpses on it (I initially thought we were going to get a much less conventional film), and the film is well-lit (but more conventional) as the movie continues.  Every actor has a moonlight-drenched face, and this works well with a comely pair of leading performers.  As I mentioned above, though, the film is juggling too many narratives without enough focus, which is basically the definition of rough editing, so I'm not cosigning with the Academy in that regard.

Don't think I forgot about our star.  I once remember someone saying that Philip Seymour Hoffman was a "movie star in a character actor's body," but with Baxter, a few films in, it's kind of the reverse-she was conventionally a quite attractive woman, but her performances all ring like they're supposed to be invisible, fitting into the confines of the script through solid character acting.  She doesn't know how to centralize a misguided attempt at a love story (particularly one where we're supposed to assume she's willing to sleep with Lt. Schwegler to help her imprisoned brother in France, something the Hays Code isn't going to condone). As a result, this is a case where Baxter feels miscast.  Next week we're going to move further into the decade, past the end of the war, and into a genre that I am genuinely excited to see what Baxter does with it as it feels completely outside of her expectations, or really of what we'd expect of most actresses of the era: a fantasy film.

The Living Stars of the Great Directors

Barbara Harris with Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Family Plot

In a month with a lot of obituaries on this blog (here and here), it's worth noting an actor I didn't have time to acknowledge yet, Ms. Barbara Harris.  Harris, a longtime fixture of the New York theater scene, had a brief but glorious tenure as a film star in the 1970's, starring in the original Freaky Friday, getting an Oscar nomination for Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Such Terrible Things About Me?, and earning an Oscar nomination even if she didn't receive one for her performance as Albuquerque in Nashville.  Her passing also means that we have one less actor who has been the lead in an Alfred Hitchcock picture still alive.  Harris starred in the Master of Suspense's final film, Family Plot, and was one of ten living figures who have headlined a Hitchcock film; we profiled all 10 of these people in one of my favorite articles of last year.

This got me to thinking, however, how many actors of other Golden Age directors were still with us, and so I set out to challenge myself to look through some of the bigger Hollywood directors of the 1950's and 60's (many of whom would have been considered Hitchcock's peers) to see how many of them still have leading actors and actresses, and found that Hitch, all-things-considered, is doing rather well in terms of longevity even with just nine.  Perhaps because he had a famous penchant for hiring young women early in their careers (Shirley MacLaine and Tippi Hedren getting their first leading roles from the director), Hitch actually has more living leading players than any of the five directors I'm going to take a look at today.  For this article, I'm profiling the leading players of five noted Oscar-winning directors: John Ford, David Lean, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, and William Wyler.

(A Quick Note: I will state that when doing these write-ups, "leading" players was a loose term in some cases.  I tried to stick to strictly above-the-line players, but I'll accept quibbles in the comments if there are some actors who might have been the "leads" but weren't famous enough to get top billing at the time).

John Ford with Carroll Baker on the set of
How the West Was Won

John Ford (1894-1973)

Oscar History: Ford would become the most-honored director in the history of the Oscars, winning four Academy Awards for his work in The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man.  In fact, the only time he lost the category was for 1939's Stagecoach (no one was getting bested by Gone with the Wind that year).

Final Film: In addition to making narrative pictures, Ford frequently worked on documentaries, so technically his final movie as a director was Chesty: A Tribute to a Legend (about Marine Corps General Chesty Puller), but his final narrative feature was 7 Women in 1966.

Survivors of His Pictures: Ford frequently worked with the same actors in his pictures, and many of them were from his heyday of the 1940's and 50's (look at how long he worked with the likes of Maureen O'Hara or John Wayne).  As a result, he's tied for the least represented director on this list, but he still has four figures that are still with us.  Among them are Sue Lyon (aged 72, from Ford's 7 Women), Carroll Baker (87, from both Cheyenne Autumn and How the West Was Won), Shirley Jones (84, Two Rode Together) and Dianne Foster (89, Gideon's Day).  These four actresses were relatively well-known in their days, but aside from Jones (who gained most of her modern fame from her work in musicals such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Music Man, as well as her tenure on The Partridge Family, though she was also an Oscar-winner for Elmer Gantry), none of them are what you'd consider household names today; Jones is also the only one of the four that is still acting.  However, I think that TCM or AMPAS or AFI should get these four women on a stage to discuss Ford for posterity before it's too late for us to ask questions about working with such a major director (not to be morbid, but I think this should be true for all of these groups, in my opinion).

Julie Christie with David Lean

David Lean (1908-1991)

Oscar History: David Lean won two Academy Awards in his long career, both for Best Director (The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia).  He was also cited for Best Director for Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Summertime, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India, losing in all of those contests, and was nominated for writing and editing at points in his career as well.

Final Film: Lean went out with a bang for his final film (the only director on this list to do so), picking 1984's critically-acclaimed A Passage to India as his swan song, coming back after a fourteen-year hiatus following the critically-panned Ryan's Daughter.

Survivors of His Pictures: Like Ford, David Lean worked frequently with the same players in his pictures (actors such as Alec Guinness and Ann Todd were in multiple Lean pictures), so there aren't as many figures to choose from when highlighting the living leads of Lean's filmography.  That being said, there are once again four figures still alive from Lean's pictures: from A Passage to India both Judy Davis (aged 63) and James Fox (79), Ryan's Daughter's Sarah Miles (76), and Doctor Zhivago's Julie Christie (78).  Sarah Miles is the only one of these figures that is officially retired, though Julie Christie is always threatening to do so.  Judy Davis is surely the most active of the bunch, however, having recently been nominated for an Emmy for her work as Hedda Hopper on Feud.

Billy Wilder with Kim Novak on Kiss Me, Stupid

Billy Wilder (1906-2002)

Oscar History: Billy Wilder's career with Oscar was far more celebrated as a writer than as a director.  While he won for helming a picture twice (The Lost Weekend and The Apartment), he was often-cited for writing, getting trophies for both of those two films as well as Sunset Boulevard.  All told he was nominated 21 times for the Oscars, including eight citations for directing (in addition to his two wins, he was also picked for Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, and Some Like It Hot).

Final Film: Wilder's final picture was 1981's Buddy Buddy, starring his longtime friends and co-collaborators Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, a film that was reviled by critics (Roger Ebert, in particular, found it an abomination).  Wilder notably disliked the picture, and despite living another two decades, never sat in the director's chair again.

Survivors of His Pictures: Despite working with similar collaborators in the vein of Lean and Ford, Wilder has a bit more luck when it comes to his leading actors, with six of them still with us today.  They include Fedora's Marthe Keller (aged 73), Avanti's Juliet Mills (76), Kiss Me, Stupid's Kim Novak (85), One Two Three's Pamela Tiffin (75), Ace in the Hole's Kirk Douglas (101), and 84-year-old Shirley MacLaine, who starred in Wilder's The Apartment and Irma la Douce, winning Oscar nominations for both of them.  Novak and Tiffin have been retired for a while, and while Kirk Douglas frequently makes appearances still, he hasn't acted professionally in ten years, so really it is Keller, Mills, and MacLaine who you can still see working from Wilder's era.

Elia Kazan with Kirk Douglas 

Elia Kazan (1909-2003)

Oscar History: Kazan won two Best Director trophies (for Gentleman's Agreement and On the Waterfront), while losing three of them (A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and America, America).  Kazan was also cited for producing and writing in his career, and won a controversial Honorary Oscar in 1998.

Final Film: Like Wilder, Kazan retired from making films decades before his death after a major flop.  Despite having major stars at the time, The Last Tycoon was a critical and (in particular) financial flop that caused Kazan not to make another picture for the final 27 years of his life.

Survivors of His Pictures: Here we have a more robust list of actors that almost approaches the list of survivors of Hitch's films at this point.  Among the final living stars of Kazan's films are Man on a Tightrope's Terry Moore (aged 89), On the Waterfront's Eva Marie Saint (94), Baby Doll's Carroll Baker (87), Splendor in the Grass's Warren Beatty (81), America, America's Stathis Giallelis (77), The Arrangement's Kirk Douglas (101) and Faye Dunaway (77), and The Last Tycoon's Robert de Niro (75).  It's worth noting that Baker and Saint both got Oscar nominations for their work with Kazan (Saint won the trophy), and that most of these people are still working (save Douglas and Baker).  De Niro presented Kazan with his Honorary Oscar in 1998, while Beatty was among the actors who stood and applauded (other actors such as Nick Nolte, Ed Harris, and Amy Madigan famously refused to stand or clap due to Kazan's involvement as a friendly witness during HUAC).

(From Left) Audrey Hepburn, William Wyler, and Shirley MacLaine
on the set of The Children's Hour

William Wyler (1902-1981)

Oscar History: Few directors come close to William Wyler's tenure with the Academy, as he is the only person in history to direct three Best Picture winners: Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur.  In addition to these wins he'd gain another nine nominations for Best Director for a total of twelve (still a record): Dodsworth, Wuthering Heights, The Letter, The Little Foxes, The Heiress, Detective Story, Roman Holiday, Friendly Persuasion, and The Collector, as well as three citations for producing.  He'd take the Thalberg in 1965.

Final Film: I had always thought his final film was Funny Girl, but in the course of researching this article realized it was The Liberation of LB Jones, a drama from 1970 with an all-star cast.  Has anyone seen this-is it any good, cause I might check it out?

Survivors of His Pictures: Wyler, like Kazan, has eight living stars from his films, with two coming from his final picture: Lola Falana (aged 75) and Anthony Zerbe (82).  The other six are Funny Girl's Barbra Streisand (76), The Collector's Terence Stamp (80) & Samantha Eggar (79), The Children's Hour's Shirley MacLaine (at age 84, she's the only living person to have worked with William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, AND Billy Wilder), Detective Story's Kirk Douglas (101, as a result the only living person to work with Wyler, Kazan, and Wilder)) and The Heiress's Olivia de Havilland (102).  Wyler, famously an actor's director who was very good at getting Oscar nominations for his performers, directed both Streisand and de Havilland to trophies among these nominees, and Eggar was nominated for her work.  Streisand, Stamp, MacLaine, and Zerbe are all still working of this bunch (the rest have retired, and in Falana's case, has had an extremely interesting series of career turns since her work with Wyler).

There you have it-five famous directors and the actors who still remain from their work.  In the comments, let me know if there are other directors you'd like me to feature in a sequel to this column.