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.

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.

St. Martin’s Lane (1938)

Film: St. Martin's Lane (1938)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh, Rex Harrison, Larry Adler, Tyrone Guthrie

Director: Tim Whelan

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Being a cinephile requires patience, planning, persistence, & perspective (very proud of that alliteration).  The latter is key because unless they invent a watch that stops time or you plan on living forever, you're never going to see every movie.  I know I'm not as practiced as some of my film-watching brethren (actually having to write reviews for the films on this blog occasionally gets in my way-also, follow me on Letterboxd as I do sometimes skip the longer reviews but do shorter ones on there for films that don't speak to me enough to justify a TMROJ treatment), but I still see 2-300 movies a year and that never scratches the surface of what I'd need to see to get to them all.  Sometimes, though, I'm given the opportunity to see an older, forgotten film that I'd never heard of before I press play, and that was the case with St. Martin's Lane, a British film from 1938 (1938 again!) starring Charles Laughton and a pre-Scarlett Vivien Leigh) which is also known as Sidewalks of London based on your geography.  I ended up being delighted by the movie, finding it moving & featuring two beautiful performances from its juxtaposed leads.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Charles Staggers (Laughton) a street performer who does stately oratory for little money, but seems happy enough because it's what he enjoys doing.  He meets a pickpocket named Liberty (Leigh), who initially steals from him but eventually they become genuine friends, and he incorporates Liberty into his act.  Liberty, though, is young-and-beautiful and is pursued by Harvey Prentiss (Harrison), a songwriter who can offer her a way out of her current life of poverty as a real actress.  Liberty takes the chance, leaving Charles (scorning him as he offers her a life together), and becomes a star, while Harvey becomes an alcoholic.  The ending of the film is bittersweet, as Liberty tries to get Charles an audition, but he botches it, understanding that Liberty deserves better & he leaves her to her stardom, returning back to the happy life he had as a busker.

Laughton & Leigh purportedly hated each other in real life (they never made another movie together), but it's hard to see that in this movie where their chemistry is marvelous.  Occasionally billed as a comedy, it's not-this is a serious picture, one that takes a look at the have's and have not's not only when it comes to money, but with happiness.  There's something so bitter in the rough hand that life has given Charles, who has a genuine talent but years of being beaten down, weathered, and discarded have taken that from him, forever.  Given the light of a new opportunity with Liberty, he tries to touch it, but it's too bright, and she's too much for him, even though he's grateful for the time that he's been given with her.

Both performers, as I said, are wonderful.  Laughton has a tendency to teeter into bombast, but that's not the case here-he's so tender & sweet as Charles, and finds dimensions to him that even the smart script can't quite discern-you get the sense that Laughton knew men likes this, where the talent was there but the world didn't quite give them a chance.  And Leigh is excellent as the live wire Liberty.  A year out from the role that would make her immortal, she shows all of the fire & sensitivity of Scarlett, but in a completely different creation, not being shy about Liberty's faults, but also about her bravery in forging into a world that Charles found too scary to indulge.  Both of them combine to make a lovely, small love story, and one that I hope you seek out as in a sea of endless movies, this is one that's worth your time.

OVP: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Film: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Hampden, Alan Marshal, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O'Brien, Cedric Hardwicke, Harry Davenport

Director: William Dieterle

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned last week, Maureen O'Hara is a strange choice to do in a retrospective about Alfred Hitchcock.  In 1939, she did have her first major role in his Jamaica Inn, but it didn't bring the kind of mainstream success that later films would bestow on Hitchcock's leading ladies, and as a result it's not one of the films that we'd consider a "major" picture in her career (O'Hara might be the only actress all year where if I was making a list of her most important movies, I'd skip Hitch).  The first really important film of her career, instead, came about in 1939, and would star her Jamaica Inn costar Charles Laughton in one of his most iconic roles, as Quasimodo in a retelling of Victor Hugo's classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is one of the most famous (and longest) stories in all of fiction, so I'm going to breeze through this, but for those who are new to the story, get ready to head to 15th Century France.  Here we have King Louis XI (Davenport) who is overseeing tumult in Paris as a group of gypsies have entered the city, some without a permit.  One of these is Esmerelda (O'Hara), a beautiful young woman who takes refuge in Notre Dame Cathedral (where she can claim "sanctuary" from the law) and it's here that she meets Quasimodo (Laughton), a man suffering from facial deformities & deafness who spends his days ringing the bells of Notre Dame.  She also meets young Captain Phoebus (Marshal) with whom she falls in love, Gringoire (O'Brien), a young man she marries out of pity, and the cruel Claude Frollo (Hampden), who becomes obsessed with her even though he assumes her beauty is a temptation from the devil to drive him mad.  This is indeed the case, as he murders Phoebus out of jealousy, but frames Esmerelda for the crime.  Quasimodo saves Esmerelda from the gallows, and watches as people lay siege to Notre Dame Cathedral as he defends it...all-the-while the king realizes that Frollo was the one who murdered Phoebus, and sets the guards on him, with Esmerelda to go free.  The film ends with Esmerelda joining her husband Gringoire, now in love with him, and Quasimodo looking on from afar, wishing to be a stone gargoyle so he does not feel the abandonment of Esmerelda, his love.

The film is considered a landmark today, and did launch O'Hara's career, but little about her rings true for Esmerelda.  Her performance here requires her to be beautiful (check), but not much else, and O'Hara wasn't always at her best when the script wasn't asking more from her.  She also has the slightest hints of her Irish accent here, which reads even more ridiculous for a woman playing a gypsy dancer.  Charles Laughton is considerably better, and genuinely inhabits his Quasimodo...I know this might be controversial both because it's a bit overacting & also because his portrayal of Quasimodo strips the character of a good chunk of his humanity (especially toward the end), but I was fascinated by his work here, and think it's one of the better performances that Laughton gave.  It's him who lifts this story to classic status in a way she doesn't, but it's a middling classic at best...in a year like 1939, you gotta stand out.

We're going to jump quite a bit ahead in O'Hara's very long career next week, so I'll talk more about what her life was like after Hunchback then, but I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the film's two Oscar nominations.  Of the two, the Sound nomination feels better.  The siege of Notre Dame, and of course the infamous, omnipresent bells add presence & a bit of depth to the film, and I was impressed with the way that the designers found ways to make them gain some of the symbolism of Hugo's novel.  The Scoring nomination feels odd.  Yes, Alfred Newman did a fine score, but that's not really what the goal of the "Scoring" category is, which is a look at both the score itself but also additional original music (usually this featured musicals or films with musical plots, which Hunchback isn't).  Church music does show up to a slight degree, but it does feel like this was simply nominated on Newman's reputation alone, and while his score is good, it is a strange fit for this category.

Jamaica Inn (1939)

Film: Jamaica Inn (1939)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Newton, Marie Ney

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to start our conversation about Maureen O'Hara with the film that elevated her to leading lady status, if not entirely star status; not by coincidence, it is also the film that connects us to our 2021 theme of Alfred Hitchcock movies, as Jamaica Inn was the sole film that O'Hara made with the Master of Suspense.  At this point she was under contract to Charles Laughton, and his fledgling production company, and so was cast as his leading lady (the two were good friends, and O'Hara considered him a father-figure throughout her career).  The film has an interesting reputation as perhaps the worst movie Alfred Hitchcock ever made, and O'Hara's onscreen persona (stubborn, redheaded, fiery) is the antithesis of what we'd consider the "Hitchcock prototype" for his leading ladies, so I was definitely more intrigued than usual to understand what might be happening in this movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) I will try to ground you a little bit in the plot here, but I'll be real-the story is kind of a mess, and as a result it's hard to summarize.  Joss (Banks) is a boorish innkeeper who lives with his meek wife Patience (Ney).  Their beautiful niece Mary (O'Hara) has come unexpectedly to live with them at Jamaica Inn, a place of ill-repute that houses thieves who purposefully ground ships against the shores of a nearby port, plunder what's onboard & kill the seamen (basically, pirates).  What is not known is that respectable justice of the peace Pengalian (Laughton) is actually behind their criminal enterprise, and has become somewhat obsessed with young Mary.  As the film unfolds, Mary & a new gang member Jem (Newton) are involved with accusations of betrayal from the gang, and accidentally out themselves to Pengalian, who captures them.  He then kills Joss & Patience after they escape, kidnapping Mary & wanting to take her as his captive (it's 1939, but you get the impression he wants her to be his sex slave), but after she escapes & he's cornered, he jumps off of the mast of the ship they are on, to his death.

Jamaica Inn isn't your typical Hitchcock film, despite coming a year after his first real masterpiece, The Lady Vanishes.  Hitch rarely worked in period pieces, and part of that's easy to see here, as his most indulgent ticks are on full-display here (the older man obsessed with a beautiful woman, the cheeky asides & indulgent humor, the many misdirects) don't work in a different era.  Jamaica Inn's plot is tonally imbalanced, particularly when it comes to Laughton's dastardly villain-is he a joke?  Is he a rake?  An evil genius, or just mad?  You can't really tell, and the film falls apart in a way that I've never seen from a Hitchcock film.  On top of that, well...it's super boring, and movies with Charles Laughton might be off-the-rails, but they are never boring.

O'Hara in her first really significant role doesn't make much impression.  She's beautiful, almost shockingly so (you honestly gasp the first time you see her onscreen), but her character is overwhelmed by a meandering plot & Laughton chewing the scenery.  Laughton & O'Hara would be good friends, and make a number of films together, but based on this film alone you have to wonder why-it wasn't like this was a hit (it was ravaged by critics at the time & as I said above is generally considered to be Hitchcock's worst movie,  which after watching it it's definitely the worst I've seen), but perhaps the next film they did together (which we'll look at next week) will give us more clues as to their chemistry.

OVP: The Blue Veil (1951)

Film: The Blue Veil (1951)

Stars: Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell, Richard Karlson, Agnes Moorehead, Audrey Totter, Natalie Wood, Vivian Vance, Dan O'Herlihy

Director: Curtis Bernhardt

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Jane Wyman, Supporting Actress-Joan Blondell)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

The Oscar Viewing Project, which drives maybe 70-80% of the reviews we do each week, is a project doomed-to-fail.  I've talked about this many times, but there are a number of lost films that were nominated for Oscars, and a few more that are next-to-impossible to see anywhere even if they aren't technically "lost."  But then there are other films that are just next-to-impossible to catch despite clearly having cache, and while I'm still brimming with films that I need to see that are readily available on streaming platforms (or even on my counter from DVD Netflix) to watch, I'm aware of these movies & make a point of seeing them as soon as they are made available to me.  By chance, a connection on Twitter turned me on to The Blue Veil recently, one of the most elusive films nominated for a major Academy Award out there.  Never released on commercial home video & never put on TCM for some reason, The Blue Veil has remained an enigma to me.  It was nominated for two major acting Oscars, and the cast list-just look at it!  Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Natalie Wood-these are big name stars, the kinds that usually (and especially in conjunction with Oscar) demand at least a DVD release of the movie, if not regular screening on TCM.  Thankfully, I caught the movie now, and while it wasn't good (we'll get into it), it's finally off of my "how am I ever going to see this?!?" list.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on LouLou (Wyman), a young war widow whose baby dies in infancy while she's still in the hospital after birth, and as a result she must take a job as a nursemaid to a widowed industrialist (played by Laughton).  She grows to love the job, but not Laughton's Frederick, so after he proposes to another woman (played by Vance-and how weird is it seeing Vivian Vance without Lucille Ball?) she's heartbroken to give up the child, but moves on to another job.  The film continues to explore these relationships that she has, at one point nearly getting married, but ultimately never finding love again or having her own children.  Toward the end of the film, she falls particularly hard for a young boy named Tony, whose parents abandon him & she raises him as her own for a number of years.  When they return, she attempts to kidnap the boy (seeing him as hers now), but ultimately must give back the child to the couple.  The final scenes hearken to a Mr. Holland's Opus type of situation, where LouLou, now broke & unable to have children to look after anymore, sees all of her former wards grown up, starts a relationship again with an adult Tony, and is asked to be the nanny to the children of one of her former kids, thus finally feeling like she has a real family.

The movie is saccharine to the point of being insufferable.  It's not clear at any point why LouLou, at the beginning young & attractive, doesn't seem capable of finding a man, or really a declarative sentence.  Wyman is not an actress I've ever truly enjoyed in a film (seriously-I don't think Oscar has ever crushed so hard on a performer with so little charisma), and here she's particularly bad as LouLou, never understanding what is driving this mousy, boring, saintlike woman's dreams or desires.  Wyman is downright bad in some scenes, and while you might cry in her big speech trying to win back Tony (surely where she won her nomination), it's just because it's being manipulative, not because it's any good.  Thankfully Wyman lost the Oscar, but she won the Golden Globe so it's not inconceivable she might have taken the Best Actress trophy.  And she won that Golden Globe for this one-dimensional piece-of-work over Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, potentially the greatest performance in film history.  Let that sink for a second.

The film won two nominations, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Blondell here.  Blondell is cited over a slew of brief parts (Moorehead & Laughton have similarly-sized roles) as a working single mother (she's an actress) who doesn't have time to raise her daughter (played by Wood).  Blondell is not actively bad like Wyman is-she has spark in her performance, and it's easy to see in a sea of vanilla why she stood out.  That said, there's nothing to this role other than sheer charisma...we don't see a lot of what's driving Blondell's character, or if she actually wants to be an important part of her daughter's life.  There's room for interesting commentary here-her Annie's views of what a mother should be are different than LouLou's, and in a different era this would've been worth asking whether our sympathies & support should reside with her rather than Saint Wyman.  Alas, The Blue Veil is not a complicated enough movie to consider such questions.  Considering its historical nature in the careers of some of its high-profile stars, though, it should definitely be more available for home screening than it currently is.

The Old Dark House (1932)

Film: The Old Dark House (1932)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey, Lilian Bond
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We shall rejoin the Sound Era today with The Old Dark House, an early pre-Code film, one from James Whale that in many ways anticipates his later picture The Bride of Frankenstein, which also stars Boris Karloff.  The film mirrors it in that it's kind of funny, and feels like it's supposed to be played for laughs even though it's relatively straight-faced in its approach.  The Old Dark House has a strange history as a film, and a happy one if you look at the ending.  The movie was considered lost for decades, but after William Castle remade it in the late 1960's, there was a concerted effort to find a copy of this all-star movie & bring it back to audiences, and eventually a copy was found, which is what we're enjoying today (I'm a film preservationist in my soul, so this makes me smile-all movies deserve to be seen!).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is prototype of the classic haunted house motif.  A group of strangers are brought during a storm to a house: a married couple Philip (Massey) & Margaret (Stuart), their handsome bachelor friend Roger (Douglas), and later on in the film a chorus girl Gladys (Bond) and her companion William (Laughton, in his first Hollywood movie).  When they get there, they meet the Femm family, a gothic crew, complete with Morgan (Karloff), their near-mute, scarred butler, whom they seem to have a strange reluctance toward, and keep warning the visitors about.  It turns out that Morgan becomes rash & violent when he drinks, and he starts drinking with them trapped in the old house, and in the process he frees Saul (Brember Wills) from being trapped.  Saul is the true Femm family member to be afraid of (Morgan feels a combination of bad decisions & misunderstood), and is a murderer obsessed with fire.  Before he can kill the group & burn down the house, Roger is able to throw himself into danger, nearly killing himself by falling off of the balcony, but in the process saves all involved.  In the end, everyone (other than Saul) lives, and because it's Hollywood, Roger & Gladys end up engaged before the credits pull.

The movie is quite enjoyable, if completely silly.  The film plays the villains, with the possible exception of Morgan, as truly comic figures.  Saul is meant to be ridiculous, as are his relatives Horace & Rebecca (who resembles in some ways Grandmama from The Addams Family), and strangest of all is Sir Roderick, their 100-year-old father in the attic, who is played for some reason by a woman rather than a man (other than Whale's penchant for challenging heteronormative culture in his movies there's no explanation as to why the clearly female actor is playing the part, which may have been the point).  All of this makes the movie more fun, and with Stuart, Douglas, & Laughton all game for laughs, the movie is a delight.

The movie doesn't feature one of my favorite Karloff performances.  This was his first role to receive top-billing after his star-making work in Frankenstein (The Mummy would be released a few months later), and he's kind of playing the same character he would in his breakthrough part.  Morgan is mute, misunderstood but on some level a monster (he does unleash Saul on unsuspecting guests knowing the potential for danger, and seems to have a kind of rabid lust for Gloria Stuart's Margaret), but there's not as much soul in this character as Frankenstein's monster, and it feels like a carbon copy.  We're going to get to a less typical Karloff role later this month, but I'm curious if you've seen this movie where you'd rank this performance, as I think it's the rare film where the perpetual scene-stealer gets washed out in the movie.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Freaks, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

OVP: Young Bess (1953)

Film: Young Bess (1953)
Stars: Jean Simmons, Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Charles Laughton
Director: George Sidney
Oscar History: 2 nomination (Best Art Direction, Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I doubt I will ever be able to get through a Jean Simmons movie, ever, and not think "man does she look like Vivien Leigh."  I mean, it's remarkable, isn't it?  It's like Tom Hardy and Logan-Marshall Green crazy.  That's literally the first thing I thought as Young Bess began, but then my mind pivoted to how strange Golden Age biopics are, particularly in the way that they try to encompass all of the grandeur of history with the very staid, G-rated mores of what was required onscreen at the time.  Young Bess is a bit of a piffle, and probably would have been better off had they not relied so heavily on history and just made up a story, but there it is and as a result we get a dated, rather dull look at the early life of Queen Elizabeth.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts where it eventually ends, on the day that a young Princess Elizabeth (Simmons) finds out that she is to be the Queen of England, but the film quickly recedes into flashback, where we see Elizabeth as a child next to her rather ridiculous father King Henry VIII (Laughton, because of course Charles Laughton plays this role again), and we get a lot of foreshadowing with Henry intermittently hating his daughter and thinking her the greatest thing ever.  In one of the more ridiculous scenes of the film, Henry watches his daughter as he's dying and suddenly has an epiphany that she is his "true successor," which seems to jive with history, well, not, at all, as Henry VIII was a famously chauvinistic monarch who couldn't possibly have seen anyone other than Edward as his rightful heir.

Like any good Classical Hollywood film, the movie is centered primarily on a love triangle, this time between Princess Elizabeth, her paramour Thomas Seymour (Granger), and the woman he truly loves, Elizabeth's former stepmother Catherine Parr (Kerr).  It's actually slightly interesting earlier on in the love triangle because our prime heroine doesn't seem to be the love of Seymour's life-he's clearly more in love with Catherine, and seems to only caddishly be interested in the young princess in hopes of perhaps utilizing his power over her should she become queen (side point-considering she was second inline and they rarely mention that Edward, who is a spritely lad in the film is sick, how likely was it that Elizabeth would become queen to the point that literally everyone talked about it).  However, Hollywood can't have such a thing and as the film progresses he turns out to equally love her too, and is cleared of his roguish behavior when Catherine Parr dies, and he is free to seek Elizabeth, but it's too late, as he is executed by his jealous brother, who does so in the name of the sickly boy king.  The film progresses with Elizabeth, defiant, becoming queen after the deaths of her two siblings, and standing tall and proud on a balcony, knowing she's fulfilled her destiny but lost her great love.

The film's silliness is not necessarily a match for its costume work, which is actually quite good and was Oscar-nominated.  Legendary designer Walter Plunkett (who at this point had already done both Gone with the Wind and Singin' in the Rain) finds a lot of excuses to gown up both of his leading ladies, but the work is impeccable and has an eye for detailing-I loved the way that Jean Simmons wears her dress in the final scene, as if she's forcing it to stand upright (though I suspect the costume designers had a say there), and the Tudor green dress was a particular favorite (you can see it here), as it's both ugly and incredibly detailed, something you might not notice until looking at the movie for a while, but that is perhaps the way a complicated queen would dress.  The film isn't as inspired in some of the supporting roles (dressing Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard as promiscuous is hardly thinking outside the box), but overall it's rather strong work.  The art direction is good, but nearly as uniform as we see a lot of the same empty castle and very little detailing into drawing rooms or trying to transform much outside of every other castle you see in a movie-there's nothing distinctive or sticking out in the way that warrants a lot of attention, and it borders on being a default nominee if we're being honest.

Those are my thoughts on this 1953 movie-what about yours?  If you've seen Young Bess, were you laughing a bit at how silly the treatment of history was, or were you swept up in the epic love triangle?  For those that haven't, are you frequently struck by the similarity between Simmons and Leigh?  And do you think Charles Laughton just kept playing Henry VIII for the food?  Share your thoughts below!

OVP: Spartacus (1960)

Film: Spartacus (1960)
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis, John Gavin, John Dall
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Oscar History: 6 nominations/4 wins (Best Supporting Actor-Peter Ustinov*, Costume*, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Film Editing, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Over the past month, I finally finished a longtime goal of mine, one that has been sitting on my Bucket List for years just waiting to be completed: seeing all of the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Films.  Yes, I managed to see all of the movies (on a 19-year-old list-don't judge, I had other stuff going on, and how many have you finished it?), and as a result I got a teensy bit behind on the reviews for the films because I saw a few in rapid succession.  This week we'll get reviews for the final three movies I saw from the list, one of which is Spartacus, the gladiator epic starring Kirk Douglas that somehow won a mountain of Oscars without a Best Picture citation.  Hopefully this will inspire you to complete a film or two off of the list yourself, as even the worst of the bunch are still iconic parts of American cinema.

(Spoilers Ahead) Spartacus came at arguably the height of the biblical or time-of-Christ epics, and like many of those films it is VERY long.  Clocking in at just over three hours, it's the sort of film you need a Saturday night and a bucket full of popcorn to complete, but thankfully that was the route I went as I really enjoyed the picture.  Telling the tale of Spartacus (Douglas), a slave who can no longer stand his station, he is sentenced to fight as a gladiator, but succeeds in killing his master and then escaping to form a slave army, causing a rebellion that makes its way all the way to Rome, where political maneuverings between Crassus (Olivier), Gracchus (Laughton), and an emerging Julius Caesar (Gavin) result in Spartacus' gaining great fame and eventually causing his doom, but not before hundreds of men die in a senseless act of violence that seals Spartacus' fate as a legend.  The film ends with Kirk Douglas hanging from a cross, seeing his son (who is now free) and having the comfort that he did not die in vain.

I am a self-professed fan of historical epics of this era (I loved Ben-Hur as you may recall), which may surprise some but I'm always a sucker for a gigantic story if it's done well, and this is true of Spartacus. The script, written in secret by Dalton Trumbo (it was essentially the film that ended the blacklist, as you'll recall from the recent biopic about the writer, and a lot of that had to do with Kirk Douglas demanding Trumbo get credit-Douglas was too big of a star for Hollywood to ignore, and the box office for this film was gargantuan so the blacklist suddenly had no purpose).  The movie's core is centered around a man largely devoid of fault, which made director Stanley Kubrick (isn't it weird to think that this is a Kubrick film since it's so alien to the rest of his pictures?), but in reality Spartacus is a man of deep pride who doesn't really know how to play his own game.  There are moments in the film where doing exactly what is right costs him dearly, and so he might be a man without blemish on his character, but tactically he's not always brilliant, so I didn't get the "saint" factor that sometimes plagues films of this nature.  He's essentially Ned Stark, for those of you who watch Game of Thrones, and they meet similar ends.

The film is of course noted for its iconic "I am Spartacus" scene and with good reason.  I'd seen this film in clip shows at least a hundred times before, but positioned in the final third of the movie, it is still a gut punch, and one that will leave you in tears.  Watching hundreds of men sacrifice themselves for a cause, particularly considering the way that this clearly was a metaphor for the Red Scare and what was happening to Dalton Trumbo himself during this era, is deeply moving.  History repeats itself, and Trumbo's script knows that that's the case, and finds ways to make sure the audience can see past the gladiator wear and into their own present.

The film is famed for the homosexual overtones between Crassus and Antoninus (Curtis), and the scenes between them are truly provocative (famously, as Olivier was dead, Anthony Hopkins did the dubbing for this scene which was re-introduced to the picture after being cut by censors in the 1960's when it was added back into the movie in the 1990's).  The scene is rather shocking as there's little subtlety or even hints that Crassus could be talking about something other than having sex with Antoninus, and while it's problematic that we have the "predatory gay" scene here (not to mention the absolute disgust from Antoninus over the entire situation), it's still pretty progressive in terms of simply acknowledging the clear homosexual overtones of a film where only Jean Simmons appears as a major female character.  Plus, any film with John Gavin is at least gay in my mind, so there's that.

The film won six Academy Award nominations, though oddly enough not one for Best Picture, with the Academy perhaps worn out of gladiator epics so soon after Ben-Hur won eleven trophies.  Still, it managed a stronghold on the tech categories, and rightfully so.  The cinematography is breathtaking, a wonderful Technicolor concoction, is one of the most beautiful of the era, and we see gigantic plains of actors, extras, and magnificent settings that feel fully-detailed.  Russell Metty was only nominated for an Oscar once in his career, but thankfully it was for the right picture here.  The Art Direction and Costume are full of great touches, and in the case of the Art Direction in particular the scenery feels (while clearly part of a movie set) relatively-detailed and manages to be both best AND most, which is something that we don't oftentimes see in this category.  The score by Alex North is instantly iconic, and rumbles throughout the picture but never in a way that feels like bombast (or at least when it does, it's tonally appropriate bombast as this is a sword-and-sandals film).  One of the few weak points in the nominations, though, would be the editing.  Occasionally the film's political scenes feel too talky and though I don't quibble with the movie being 184 minutes long, there are scenes that probably could have used some trimming to keep the focus a bit tighter.

My biggest complaint, and why this film doesn't hit five stars (and flirted dangerously with three), is that the acting isn't particularly good.  Kirk Douglas nails his lead role, but it's not a challenging one which is probably good as nuance was never Douglas' forte.  The rest of the cast, though, runs the line between hammy and hammier.  Casting Olivier, Laughton, and Ustinov in your movie is basically begging for Royal Shakespeare Company style acting, but it also means that they are all trying to one-up each other in scenery-chewing.  I am kind of flabbergasted that it was Ustinov over the showier Laughton and Olivier who managed the supporting nomination (perhaps their egos made it impossible for them to compete for anything other than lead?), but Ustinov's morally corrupt, but still with a slight heart of gold, mid-level official is hardly worth noticing except that Ustinov is always fun to watch in a camp sort of way.  The role and most of the other characters feel like cartoons more than anything else, and while Trumbo's script and Douglas' gravitas keep the movie grounded, the side scenes with these characters, except for when the occasional catty aside comes out are nearing the level of bad acting.

Those are my thoughts on this gargantuan movie.  I suspect (considering its status in American cinema) that most of you have seen this-if you have, please share your comments below.  Are you as shocked as I that this is a Stanley Kubrick film?  Are you with me that the film is great, but the acting a massive disappointment?  And considering Ustinov's competition, who were you cheering for in the Supporting Actor race of 1960?  See you in the comments!

OVP: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Film: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Stars: Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Herbert Mundin, Eddie Quillan, Movita Castaneda
Director: Frank Lloyd
Oscar History: 8 nominations/1 win (Best Picture*, Director, Film Editing, Score, Adapted Screenplay, Actor-Clark Gable, Actor-Charles Laughton, Actor-Franchot Tone)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It's rare that I get to see a Best Picture winner for the first time and know that it's a Best Picture winner.  After all, I almost always see the current one before it is crowned and the list of past ones are fleeting that I haven't viewed.  So perhaps the most significant Best Picture winner left on my To Do list was this seafaring epic starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, the film that famously created the supporting categories at the Oscars after Franchot Tone joined his fellow nominees in the Best Actor race (you read that right up top-there are three lead nominees in the same category here, something you can't even pull off with two in the same category anymore).  The film chronicles the merciless attacks of one Captain Bligh in a historically-questionable but still riveting tale of the sea.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows the Bounty and its voyage to Tahiti, focusing principally on a tyrannical Captain Bligh (Laughton), his lieutenant Fletcher Christian (Gable), and a young midshipman named Byam (Tone) who is of a more sheltered background but wants to go and create a dictionary of the Tahitian people.  The voyage to Tahiti, to try and get breadfruit, is fraught with peril and becomes all the worse under Bligh's greed and sadism, frequently finding ways to unjustly torture and demean the men on board, even resorting to keelhauling and beating a dead man.  By the time the crew are returning from Tahiti, they've had enough and assume that they may starve to death aboard the Bounty, so they throw Bligh overboard and he has to navigate the waters for 3000 miles and eventually makes his way back to England.  Byam does as well, and almost dies in a trial until we see that Bligh's viciousness was worth the uprising, and Fletcher Christian stays in Tahiti and colonizes an island called Piticairn where he and the men live forever, seemingly in paradise.

The film's historical accuracy is quite questionable (in real life Bligh wasn't nearly as bad as depicted here, and Fletcher Christian's end wasn't nearly as noble or as peaceful as he was likely murdered soon after the mutiny), but the two lead actors are riveting in the roles.  Admittedly Clark Gable occasionally feels a little miscast, as his 1930's rogue doesn't quite seem to leave him in this film, and occasionally you wonder if he should be aboard a ship that is entirely made up of Englishmen, but Gable has a movie star's tenacity and that's always enjoyable.  Better, but also only if you love his brand of bombast, is Laughton, who eats the scenery whole in his role as Captain Bligh, but he's insanely watchable.  There's absolutely no scene he's out there where you aren't wondering what's next, what terrible evil will come up from those bulbous eyes.  He is, of course, a one-dimensional cartoon but something worth watching, for sure.  As for Franchot Tone, it's easily a supporting role, one that it's hard to imagine making it in lead today and quite frankly it's hard to realize why then, as it's the sort of naive young man that you'd normally expect to be forgotten, except of course Tone was becoming a bit of a star at the time and this was probably a way to acknowledge that.  Still the acting is solid.

The best part of the film, though, may be the direction.  Frank Lloyd's ability to keep every scene compelling, particularly with a two-hour epic that has a narrative that even at the time most people would have been familiar with, is excellent.  The pace is sharp, the film's action sequences pop and hold-up well, and while the film has moments of racism on the island, we're not talking about Gone with the Wind-levels of cringe-worthiness.  I would have lightened up on the beginning and the end of the film, where Tone's naivete becomes obnoxiously plot-serving, but the middle, and particularly the showdown between Bligh and Christian are well worth the praise this film long ago acquired.

Someday (probably in a number of years) we'll get to the OVP for 1935 so if you have thoughts on Mutiny on the Bounty now is the time to share them.  Do you like this particularly noted film of the 1930's, or it is one of those AFI flicks you never got around to?  Who is your favorite of the three leading actors?  And what film actually deserved three Best Actor or Actress nominations other than Mutiny on the Bounty?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)

Film: Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Stars: Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, ZaSu Pitts, Roland Young
Director: Leo McCarey
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Picture)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

It's not often that a film that's nearly eighty years old gets a new honor, so when the Library of Congress decided this past week that Ruggles of Red Gap would be one of the 25 films entered into the National Film Registry, I figured it was appropriate to make that our next OVP film.  In a lovely coincidence, we've actually investigated films from both Charles Laughton and Roland Young this past week, so it's a perfect way to tie the whole thing together.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film stars Laughton as Marmaduke Ruggles (the best moniker ever), a butler who has been lost by his stuffy and oblivious employer the Earl of Burnstead (Young) in a game of poker to a crass "new money" style pair of millionaires that live in a Western boomtown (Boland and Charlie Ruggles, whose name is a wonderful coincidence since this is based on a novel by Harry Leon Wilson).  The film follows Laughton's Ruggles, all manner and no feeling, as he makes a trek to the Old West, and must come to terms with his new employers and their ideas of what it is to be a servant.

The film works well because it's terribly silly.  The film has strong comedic supporting players in Boland, Ruggles, and Pitts, but Laughton would seemingly be miscast in a comedy.  After all, he was one of the great dramatic actors of his era.  This isn't the case though-Laughton makes a superb straight man and as a result lands all of his comedy.  It helps that Laughton had a distinguished air to begin with (he made a point of playing kings and doing Shakespeare and all that), and so not only are we seeing Marmaduke Ruggles completely out of place, we get to see Laughton himself feel out of place.  The movie consistently has him learning from his new friends, but also them learning a thing or two from him, particularly about being open-minded.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the ridiculous lengths the supporting players will go to get a laugh.  I personally adored Mary Boland as a social-climbing woman who clearly loves her husband but has gotten so set on how things are supposed to be that she can't always remember why she's getting there (it says something about this film that the later scenes don't feel like she's conceded, but merely found a way to compromise her vision with her husband's, which is a nice change of pace from all of the "women give up their careers for a man" pictures I've seen in the past month).  Roland Young is hilarious as a man who clearly hasn't had to work a traditional day in his life, living off of his inheritance and having a family of butlers taking care of him so long he doesn't realize how much he relies upon them.

The best part of the film, though, is Laughton as Ruggles.  His dry wit and comedic shock at his employers and the town are marvelous, and his use of the Gettysburg Address as a way to transform his character from one who serves others to one that serves himself is deeply patriotic and a bit cliche, but actually works with Laughton's theatricality.  1935 was really a high point in Laughton's career.  Not only was he starring in this, but he managed to have a leading role in two other Best Picture nominees, Les Miserables and Mutiny on the Bounty, the latter of which won the top prize and landed Laughton his second Best Actor nomination.  For an actor that I've always known about but never really studied, this is the first time I'm really excited about where his career will take me in the OVP (as he's got a LOT of nominated films).

Those are my thoughts on this movie-what about yours?  Is anyone else excited that the film might get a bit more press with its inclusion in the National Registry?  Where does it rank in your Best Picture lineup of 1935 (while I'm missing a few citations, I have to admit that it's very close to Top Hat in my estimation)?  And what do you think of Charles Laughton as a comedian?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Captain Kidd (1945)

Film: Captain Kidd (1945)
Stars: Charles Laughton, Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, John Carradine, Gilbert Roland
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Charles Laughton is one of the most unlikely of movie stars.  Portly, always, with a rough temper and consistently playing bad guys he is hardly what you'd have considered a fine choice to be one of the biggest headliners of the 1940's, but that's what happens sometimes-Hollywood gives the public what they want, and films starring Laughton is what came as a result of that.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is one of those many pictures that Laughton starred in in the 1940's (he would make twenty films during the decade), a historically inaccurate look at the life of William Kidd, a 17th Century pirate who was more famous than most and more ruthless to go along with it.  He manages to trick King William III to let him sail to India with a crew of pirates in order to bring a ship back from India.  The Indian Lord Fallsworth and his beautiful daughter Lady Anne (Britton) are taken aboard at this juncture, though Lord Fallsworth is soon murdered in an "accident" by Kidd, who then destroys the other ship, but wants to find a way to both bring back his loot from the beginning of the film (a treasure plundered from a ship called the Twelve Apostles) and also become a gentleman in the court of the king (seriously-the guy has mad social-climbing ambitions).

Thankfully for Lady Anne, who has found herself on a ship full of pirates ala Keira Knightley, she's got her own personal Orlando Bloom in the form of Randolph Scott (random thought: is there a better modern day analogy for Randolph Scott than to call him the 1940's Orlando Bloom?) as an undercover pirate who is out to avenge the death of his father, who was the captain of the Twelve Apostles.  Through some swashbuckling sword-fights and a smartly timed trip to shore, the two manage to escape Captain Kidd's clutches, incriminate him to the king, see Kidd hanged at the gallows, and then get married with a fleet of ships from the king as a wedding present.  Seriously-that's how the film ends.  It's the 1940's-what do you expect?

Honestly, the entire endeavor seems rather silly even if you disregard the gross historical inaccuracies (never mind that Kidd went back to New York, not to London before he was eventually hanged-the better question is how did Tower Bridge show up in one scene 200 years before it was actually built-was it time-traveling pirates...cause that's a movie I want to see?!?).  Laughton is always insanely watchable even if he's a giant fussbudget and a bit too worldly and proper to be believable as a pirate.  I've always found Randolph Scott incredibly dull onscreen, a bizarrely popular movie star who doesn't seem to have enough charisma to be a compelling leading man, and who at 47 is too old to be playing this part and twenty years the senior of Barbara Britton.  The film is occasionally fun (I loved the pirate quarrel at the beginning of the film), but once it becomes Laughton vs. Scott I sort of lost interest, as Laughton is always more interesting even if he's being a bit hammy and scenery-chewing in certain scenes.

The film landed one Oscar nomination, for Best Score, though not to impugn nominee Werner Janssen's nomination too much but this was the final year where basically any studio could guarantee a nomination for Best Score just by submitting at least one eligible film.  As a result Captain Kidd was actually one of 21 nominees in this category, three of which actually belonged to Janssen himself.  The music is exactly what you'd expect from a pirate film, and doesn't really compare with some of the contenders it was facing that year, including Miklos Rozsa's winning Spellbound.  I doubt very sincerely that in a five-wide field this would have been one of the ones that made the cut-the score only comes out when they need to cover some action, and relies too heavily on cliches (the light, frilly music whenever Lady Anne comes on, the ominous notes starting at least thirty seconds before we see that Captain Kidd is about to do something unspeakable yet again).  It occasionally takes away from the film, and even if it is boisterous to listen to on its own, that doesn't mean that it's any good when it comes to aiding the story.

Those are my thoughts on this pretty forgettable pirate adventure-has anyone else seen it (it's in public domain, so it's probably one of those $2 DVD's you see in a K-Mart bin)?  If not, what are your thoughts on the careers of Randolph Scott and Charles Laughton?  And anyone want to speculate why they made it so easy to get an Oscar nomination for music back in the day?