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.

OVP: Bell, Book, and Candle (1958)

Film: Bell, Book, and Candle (1958)
Stars: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gingold, Elsa Lanchester
Director: Richard Quine
Oscar History: 2 nomination (Best Art Direction, Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's hard to watch a film like Bell, Book, and Candle without thinking about the pop cultural landmarks that would bookend the film: Vertigo and Bewitched.  The film, which stars Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart, has to elicit memories of the former simply by virtue of borrowing its two stars, while the film clearly was an inspiration to Bewitched creator Sol Saks, who borrowed this particular picture's witch marries a mortal and then has her trying to live a normal life while surrounded by a bevy of crazy relatives.  Unfortunately for all of us, Bell, Book, and Candle never really achieves the genius of Vertigo nor the constant laughs that came from Bewitched, and as a result we end up with a middling movie surrounded by clearly a great concept.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Shep Henderson (Stewart), a hapless man who lives (unknowingly) next door to two witches, Gillian (Novak) and her Aunt Queenie (Lanchester).  Gillian finds out that Shep is dating her old college rival, and as a result she casts a love spell on Shep, but after a while Gillian herself falls in love with him, but after Shep learns of her trickery he wants nothing to do with her.  Meanwhile, we have Gillian's brother Nicky (Lemmon, back when he was still doing relatively minor roles at the beginning of his career) trying to make a buck with a mortal but self-proclaimed witch expert Sidney (Kovacs).  As the film progresses, considering it's a romantic comedy, Shep and Gillian eventually fall in love, even though this means that she loses all of her powers.

The film's faults are pretty numerous, but I will counter that the supporting cast tries their best.  It's easy to see why the likes of Aunt Clara, Endora, and Uncle Arthur from Bewitched all came about as a result of such a cast, as you can't really go wrong with Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, and Hermione Gingold, who is at her loudest and most elaborate in the very broad role as Bianca de Pass, a powerful and groovy witch.  The film's best moments involve these supporting players, and you can see why Lemmon became a proper matinee idol soon after movies like Bell, Book, and Candle, as he was stealing the movies away from the likes of Jimmy Stewart.

The problem here, though, is that the script is too dry when it comes to the leads, and neither of them are particularly well-suited to saving it.  It was during this time that Stewart would start to be cast for roles that were unsuitable for his age (the wonderful Man Who Shot Liberty Valance would be another one, but there Stewart found a way to cope), and in fact he never would have the role of a solely romantic lead after this film as he felt he was too old for the part.  While I question this (I would have still bought him falling in love with someone like Greer Garson or Kate Hepburn), it does feel like him stepping once again into the cliche of a man who hasn't started life at fifty is a bit of a stretch.  It also hurts that Stewart has pretty much zilch chemistry with Novak, and they feel like such polar opposites it's impossible not to snicker at the idea that she'd fall for him.  This works in Vertigo because of the angles their characters are playing and the madness of Scottie Ferguson, but the reality is that under normal circumstances these two just don't match.

The film received a pair of Oscar nominations, and it's easy to see why one of them happened.  The movie's Art Direction citation seems appropriate as it relies heavily upon witches' decor and is meticulous in trying to call out the various personalities of the apartments.  I felt a bit like they were relying too heavily on cliches, especially in the apartments (Gillian's shop makes sense), but the movie at least has an attention to detail, even if the witch-y touches feel a tad uninspired.  The costume design is considerably better, in my opinion, though I'm shocked Oscar noticed it since it's relatively subtle.  Novak wears a series of black outfits, of course, giving into the witch-angle once more, but here it's such a glamorous variety of black dresses, hoods, and one particularly fetching backless gown (that would still feel fresh and jaw-dropping on a red carpet today) that you can see why Novak become such a star in terms of fashion after movies like this and Vertigo.

Those are my thoughts on this disappointing, but clearly intriguing movie.  What are yours?  Do you agree that the leads feel mismatched, or are you still pining for more pairings since it elicits memories of Vertigo?  Who is your favorite of the supporting cast members here?  And furthermore, who are your favorites on Bewitched?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Mystery Street (1950)

Film: Mystery Street (1950)
Stars: Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, Jan Sterling
Director: John Sturges
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There was once a time before television, if you can believe it, and in this era before TV the movies picked up the slack when it came to certain things we take for granted on the small screen.  Take, for example, shows like Law & Order or CSI-these are two of the most popular shows of the past twenty years, and persistently show the minutia of crimes being solved.  That's what's on display in Mystery Street, a dime-budget drama that likely got its nomination due to its continual devotion to creating a factual, reality-based movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of the film is about as simple as you can get when it comes to a detective drama.  It opens with a beautiful blonde B-Girl (likely a prostitute...they figured out ways around calling them that back in the 1950's, but we know what they meant) named Vivian (Sterling) who is clearly in trouble.  She owes her nosy landlady (Lanchester) two weeks of rent and is intent on blackmailing a man from her past to get the cash.  She steals a car from a drunken stranger and then is shot by a mysterious man in the dark of night.

The film proceeds with Lieutenant Morales (Montalban) eventually taking the case, and using scientific reason and the latest technology, tries to deduce what happened to Vivian, first landing upon the hapless stranger whose car she stole and then eventually upon the actual killer in a pretty thrilling run through a train yard.  Along the way the audience learns about what it takes to actually solve a crime from a scientific perspective.

This is the aspect of the film that surely keeps this from being a dumpster bin B-movie that no one has seen in sixty years.  The movie actually partners with Harvard Medical school and in a scene that reeks of tedium (due to forensic science becoming integral to present pop culture years and years ago) we go through a step-by-step process of what happens when you examine a body.  There's expositional dialogue trying to convince people of why this was worthwhile (back then medical examiners didn't need medical degrees) and I'm sure it was thrilling to audiences who were learning about such things for the first time, but with the advantage of time (and knowledge) these scenes play as far too instructive and not organic enough to the actual film.

The acting in the movie runs the gamut.  I actually adored Jan Sterling's work early in the film-her blonde with an attitude was clearly part of a better movie, and she'd soon get bigger and better parts than this (Hollywood was paying attention), but someone like Sally Forrest as the wife of the initially accused stranger is just awful.  It may be that Forrest was much more at home on the stage (she played "The Girl" in the original Broadway run of The Seven Year Itch), but her acting is all-over-the-map.  The scene where she's packing and Ricardo Montalban is questioning her reeks of scenery-chewing, and the clunky dialogue is not helping matters (if you can't tell, I'm not wild about the attribute that brought this film to my attention).  All-in-all, even the hammy Elsa Lanchester cannot save this film from being exceedingly dull by the end of the picture, desperately still hoping for more of Jan Sterling's vivacity.

Those are my thoughts on this film, which my hunch is few of you have seen, but whose stars you might have opinions on so we'll start there.  Do you like Ricardo Montalban, or have a favorite Jan Sterling performance?  Do you ever find while you're watching old movies certain key attributes that clearly television stole as their own?  And does someone want to explain the precise difference between Motion Picture Story and Original Screenplay?  Share in the comments!

OVP: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Film: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: 1 nominations (Best Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Following Whale's previous film, it took a surprisingly long time for Universal to follow-up with a sequel(considering how frequently the studios churned out film series in the 1930's thanks to the studio system, I find it odd that they had to wait four years to get a second film on the docket).  The sequel, far more comedic and generally considered the better of the two films, was the true film I was hoping to catch in the Frankenstein series.  Shall we see if I liked it better?

(Spoilers throughout) The movie shows us the moments immediately following the harrowing "death" of the monster in the last film, but quite instantly you can tell that the movie has switched its tone.  Gone is the heavy-handed attitude of Dr. Frankenstein and his persecuted science, and instead you are greeted with a batty old woman who embraces the Monster's death, and the parents of the young girl, who want to go in for a closer look and end up making it a three-for-one deal at the village cemetery.  The Monster has in fact survived the windmill attack, and goes on rampaging throughout the city.

Meanwhile, Dr. Frankenstein has recovered from what was initially assumed to be death and wants no more of his violent creation, but is forced back into the world of the undead when Dr. Pretorious (the campy Ernest Thesiger), shows him that he has created a series of homunculi (including a miniature King Henry VII, a mermaid, and a devil), and coerces him into creating a mate for the Monster.

The Monster spends this time becoming a bit more "cosmopolitan," aided by a kind blind man who cannot tell that he is a monster (am I the only one who expects Gene Hackman to be playing the character, despite it being forty years too soon?), giving him a penchant for cigars and drink, and this could have worked splendidly if two passersby didn't point out that the Monster was who he was.

The film concludes with the climactic title sequence, when Elsa Lanchester, who had played Mary Shelley in an earlier scene, appears as the intended for Frankenstein's Monster, but instead shrieks and recoils from him in horror.  Dr. Frankenstein and his bride (anyone know why Valerie Hobson played this part instead of Mae Clarke-share in the comments!) are allowed to escape, but the Monster, his bride-to-be, and Dr. Pretorious all supposedly perish in fire.

The movie is a treat, particularly the comedic flourishes Whale takes with the film.  Much has been made about the gay-themed content, due largely to Whale's real-life homosexuality and the campy band of characters, principally Dr Pretorious, but I have to admit that while I acknowledged it, I thought people might be reading into things a bit to see a larger gay-metaphor.  I loved the character choices that Elsa Lanchester made in the film, practically winking to the audience during the opening scene where she's being doted upon by Byron and her husband (...I'll be back!) and then going to the rafters with her Marge Simpson hair and exaggerated arm gestures.  They didn't have a Best Supporting Actress trophy in 1935, but if they had, I think that it would have made a fine addition to the Sound nomination the film received.

So yes, I did like this film better, though they aren't really in the same style to compare the two (comparing the film to Young Frankenstein may be more appropriate).  However, I'd love your thoughts on this classic film.  What did you think of our second outing with Frankenstein?  Did you like the comedic elements better, or do you prefer them to stick to Shelley's original work?  And what Universal Monster do you think we should conquer next?

OVP: Naughty Marietta (1935)

Film: Naughty Marietta (1935)
Stars: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester
Directors (according to IMDB they are uncredited): Robert Z. Leonard & W.S. van Dyke
Oscar History: 2 nods/1 win (Best Picture, Best Sound Recording*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Ahh, sweet mystery of life I've found you...growing up, my Grandpa's favorite actress was Jeanette MacDonald, and my mother was not a fan.  I never actually had seen one of her movies, but Grandpa presumably liked the wholesome aspects of Ms. MacDonald's films, and my mother thought that they were a bit saccharine.  Many years later, I decided tonight was the perfect night to give her a shot (not coincidentally, but I did chase the RNC with a bunch of famously GOP actors and their films: Loretta Young, June Allyson, Gary Cooper, along with MacDonald and her partner Nelson Eddy-who said I can't handle a lot of Republicans?).  This was partially because I desperately need room in the TiVo for tomorrow's 4.5 hour taping of Greed, and also because I have a bevy of MacDonald films filling up my TiVo, but I digress. I decided of all of the films that Naughty Marietta, a Best Picture nominee (my 277th) would be the perfect choice.

Like I said-I was wrestling with saccharine and wholesome going into the film, and I came away feeling both, and that may be a good thing.  For starters, MacDonald can act, which was something I was a bit nervous about, as I'd heard not great things (her onscreen costar we'll get to in a moment, but he lived up to, or down to, the hype).  She's very beautiful, and her lyric soprano could steal every woodland creature away from Snow White.  She also has a Jean Arthur spunk about her that I liked, and while her saintliness could hypothetically get grading, I never found myself saying "move it along," to her while she was onscreen.  Additionally, I rather loved her interactions on the boat, and her comic timing was solid.  In fact, aside from the fact that she was clearly a girl of the 1930's and not the 1700's, I have nothing bad to say about her.  Not a Garbo style thespian, but definitely a star.

The plot of the film, on the other hand, is a bit weak even for a musical (which notoriously have flimsy plots, let's be honest).  She's a French princess on the run from a wedding to a man she doesn't love, so she impersonates one of her servants and boards a boat to New Orleans full of women that are going to get married to men that they've never met (clearly, she didn't read the pamphlet).  Once she arrives in the New World, she comes across a handsome army captain (Eddy) whom she falls in love with, despite his macho and egotistical ways.  I could fill you in on the rest of the film, but you already know what's going to happen-the fun is in the music and the undeniable chemistry that MacDonald brings to all of her onscreen partners, including Eddy.  Eddy is a brilliant baritone, but when he's attempting to act, he brings a woodiness that's undeniable.  He's got a connection with MacDonald, but it's clear she's doing the heavy-lifting, and I'm excited to see her in a film like San Francisco, where she's paired with a charmer like Clark Gable as her screen partner.  The film also boasts two terribly fun supporting performances-Frank Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself, as the Governor of the New Orleans colony, and a bumbling fool of a man he is, as well as Elsa Lanchester as his domineering, comedically sharp wife.  The music is sensational, and very operatic (to be fair, the film is based on an operetta by Victor Herbert), and the most famous number, "Ahh, Sweet Mystery of Life, I've Found You,"is a show-stopper.  It's plain to see why this film won a Best Sound Recording Oscar-the cast are soaring in their respective choral pieces, and the two leads fill the entire screen beautifully with each serenade.  While it doesn't bring the technical virtuosity that, say, Top Hat did in the Best Picture category, it's still a fun way to spend a Sunday night.

And in hopes of spurring conversation, have you seen Naughty Marietta?  Are you a fan of MacDonald's and/or Nelson Eddy's?  Do you have a favorite Best Picture nominee of 1935?  And, putting your own politics aside, do you ever find yourself becoming a fan of entertainers of the opposite party?

OVP: Come to the Stable (1949)

Film: Come to the Stable (1949)
Stars: Loretta Young, Celeste Holm, Hugh Marlowe, Elsa Lanchester, Thomas Gomez
Director: Henry Koster
Oscar History: 7 nominations (Actress-Loretta Young, Supporting Actress-Elsa Lanchester, Supporting Actress-Celeste Holm, Cinematography, Art Direction, Original Song-"Through a Long and Sleepless Night," Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

As we've been taking this journey through Oscar's many, many decades of film, we've come across stars that stood the test of time (your Crawford's, your Garbo's), and yet more often than not, we spend time with the stars that highlighted a certain era with a stunning brightness, then slowly flickered out of the big screen and out of memory.  Since this is our first visit to 1949 (certainly not our last-I've got a load of missing films this particular year), that may explain why this is our first introduction to the lovely and talented and very sweet Loretta Young, and no review of Come to the Stable would be complete without first talking about Loretta.

For those unfamiliar, and I must say that I'm not an expert, having only seen this and her Oscar-winning work two years earlier in The Farmer's Daughter, I'm trying to find a modern-day counterpart, but am at a loss, as there's really nothing super modern about Loretta Young.  Yes, she's incredibly beautiful (those eyes, my god!), and yes, she's got acting chops, but her general calling card is that she's largely playing a saint, both on screen and off, in almost every role that she tackles.  With that, you know what you're expecting when you see her on-screen-altruism and truth, but with a spine of steel to go with it.  This authenticity might make her seem a bit pious and dated, but it also lends itself well to certain roles, in particular her work here.

Come to the Stable is the story of two nuns (Young and a woefully miscast Celeste Holm, but I'll get there in a second) who come from France to create a hospital for children in the middle of New England, but run into a bevy of problems, primarily that they have no money or land to speak of to create the hospital.  The film occasionally winks at this problem, particularly in the naivete of the nuns when they venture into New York City to secure the land or their frequent run-ins with the always welcome Dooley Wilson (though, being that he's there and that a beautiful piano-ready ballad features heavily in a subplot, Henry Koster missed a huge opportunity by not putting the two together). However, the occasional depths into slapstick, while fun, don't aid the fact that the plot is incredibly thin-come on, you know those nuns are going to overcome every obstacle to get the hospital made, particularly when everyone seems to bend over backward after admiring the glistening halo the cinematographer seems to perch over Loretta Young's head, so awash in light is she throughout the film.

The problem, and I'm sorry to say this, may have been just as much the casting director's fault as it is Koster's.  Young, it seems, is the only actor that doesn't seem out-of-place within the film.  This makes sense, as this was her big vehicle and she was a huge box office draw at the time, but that doesn't excuse, say, the many teeterings and totterings of Hugh Marlowe's character, not sure if he's a villain or just annoyed, and since his character arch is so crucial to the film, it seems weird that he's missing for half of it.  Additionally, there's Elsa Lanchester, as the doddering Ms. Potts, who can't decide if she's kooky or meek or just in awe of the crazy antics of the nuns, but she spends a lot of time with her mouth gaping open.  And then, of course, is the very talented Celeste Holm, who dons a "now you hear it, now you don't" French accent and her job description seems merely to agree with whatever Young's character says.  This is fine, were it not for the facts that Holm got an Oscar nomination for this one-note role, that Holm is a superb actress who can do great things given the opportunity, and that Holm and Hugh Marlowe would just one year later have bitingly good chemistry in one of the great films, All About Eve.

Come to the Stable received seven Academy Award nominations, and like I said previously, the Holm and Lanchester ones in particular are hard to swallow.  I'm also not a huge fan of Young's nomination, though it is understandable considering she does saintly well, though she can't compete with ultimate winner Olivia de Havilland in her march toward bitterness in The Heiress.  I'm still waiting to see Pinky from 1949, which also featured three nominated women, and am hoping I will respond better to that film.  As for the techs, the art direction nomination seems generous considering the limited sets and how little interaction the cast has with the interchangeable New England cottages, but the Cinematography is strong and the original song, so lush and torchlit, may be unnecessary to the plot, but is probably the best of the Academy-recognized attributes.

What about you-are you a fan of this film, or Young's in particular?  Do you think that any of the three ladies deserved mention against the competition in 1949 (or that the film deserved a win for its rather high nomination count, which featured no victories)?  And is there a modern day equivalent of Young that I'm not thinking of?

OVP: Lassie Come Home (1943)

Film: Lassie Come Home (1943)
Stars: Roddy McDowell, Donald Crisp, May Whitty, Edmund Gwenn, Elsa Lanchester, Nigel Bruce, Elizabeth Taylor
Director: Fred M. Wilcox
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Cinematography-Color)
Snap Judgment Rating: 4/5 stars

"A classic is something everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read," said Mark Twain, and occasionally, it feels that way with the cinema.  Granted, movies like Casablanca and The Godfather are well worth everyone's time and some of my favorites, but I kind of see his point.  I've invested the time in a movie like The Jazz Singer-I was better off with the random AFI clips than actually seeing the film.  The Birth of a Nation has moved to the bottom of my Netflix list more times than I can count.  So I went into this movie, the cinema's first introduction to the most beloved dog committed to celluloid (sorry Rin Tin Tin) with a bit of hesitation.  It hasn't survived in the sense that The Wizard of Oz or The Miracle on 34th Street have-I was guessing that I'd run into a saccharine, bloated nightmare of a film that would be two parts treacle and one part "aged poorly."  Thankfully, this was (mostly) not the case.

The movie is about a young boy whose parents (Donald Crisp and Elsa Lanchester, who really does look like Shirley Jones in this film, doesn't she?) have sold his dog to a rich Duke and his granddaughter, but the dog keeps running back to his master, played by an adorable Roddy McDowell.  The Duke, however, is bound for Scotland, and thinks this is the end of the running away since the boy and his family live in Yorkshire, England.  Of course, the dog has other plans and starts a wild adventure home that has been told countless times with both dogs and war horses alike.

The movie has just enough sense not to focus too much on any one particular set of British character actors for very long.  Nigel Bruce is his boisterous self as the Duke, and in one of her earliest roles, a young Elizabeth Taylor plays his granddaughter.  Liz is almost certainly the most identified character in the promotions for the film these days (outside of the collie), but she has a bit role and the dog quickly moves on to a host of characters, most notably Dame May Whitty, who plays a lonely old woman who takes in the dog after he swims into England, and Edmund Gwenn, free of his Santa Claus beard and armed with the most adorable of little dogs named Toots (which in my opinion steals the film's second act away from Lassie herself).  The ending of the film, as expected, brings tears to your eyes right around the time the entire town recognizes this brave dog, limping her way back to her owner.  Only a heart of stone could stay intact while watching dog and owner reunited, even if you've seen it copied in a hundred other movies and know that there's quite a bit of sap to mingle with those tears of joy.

The Cinematography, the only aspect of the film to be nominated, is handsome and shiny technicolor, but like most technicolor, it becomes a bit much at times and somewhat distracting and saturated.  Overall, though, Leonard Smith, who three years later would win a shiny golden man for the equally revered The Yearling, finds a strong light throughout the movie.

What about you?  What are your fondest memories of Hollywood's Best in Show?  Do you also think that Elsa Lanchester bares a resemblance to Mrs. Partridge?  And what child stars do you wish had followed Roddy McDowell and Elizabeth Taylor's leads and become stars as adults?