OVP: The Nun's Story (1959)

Film: The Nun's Story (1959)

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

Director: Fred Zinnemann

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

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

Act of Violence (1949)

Film: Act of Violence (1949)

Stars: Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, Phyllis Thaxter

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

One of the holdups with classic noir is that they almost always have to follow formula, and not just in the sense that they're in the same genre.  Detective literature of the 1940's broke barriers, but film noir had to stay within the confines of the Hays Code.  This meant that the good guys, while they could be rough-and-tumble, were required to be good at the end of the day.  Humphrey Bogart & John Garfield were figures that your dad might not approve of, but they were the kinds of guys that he'd secretly respect.  Act of Violence, a late-1940's film noir from Fred Zinnemann kind of upends that idea, giving us one of the more complicated protagonists I've seen in a film noir, one who definitely skirts the line between honor and betrayal.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Frank Enley (Heflin), who is a WWII veteran who lives with his wife Edna (Leigh) in suburban California.  They live a life of secret, but when one of Frank's fellow soldiers, Joe Parkson (Ryan) shows up at their doorstep, it becomes clear that there's more to Frank than he's letting on.  The movie continues with Joe essentially trying to kill Frank, and we soon learn he does so with good reason.  During the war, while they were both in a POW camp, Frank played informant to Nazis about a planned prison riot, and in the process all of his fellow countrymen were killed save for Joe, who played dead.  Now Joe is running after him to enact revenge.  Eventually Frank leaves his wife, and works with Pat (Mary Astor as probably a prostitute, but it's not entirely clear as, again, the Hays Code) to set him up to die...only at the last minute Frank comes in and saves Joe's life, finally finding retribution for his behavior during the war.

The movie is solid, but it easily could've been better, and a big part of that was the Hays Code.  In the end of the movie, we're essentially led to believe that Robert Ryan was our hero and Van Heflin an antihero, but come on-it would've been far more interesting had Heflin just been the villain.  The movie is talking about PTSD behind-the-scenes, a thin metaphor for the emotional wounds that soldiers carried coming back from the Front, and making a veteran be totally bad would've been a nightmare for MGM if they'd tried it, but it'd make a better movie if Frank never repented, or better yet, got away with it, using the guise of his uniform & status as a veteran to start over again, his sins buried in a German grave.

That said, it's still a good movie.  In a cast of strong actors, Mary Astor stands apart as the best performance, perhaps because she encapsulates the promise of the film better than anyone.  For much of the film, she's basically throwing herself at another man's husband (sweet, innocent Janet Leigh), obviously in love with him (and let's be honest, they're having sex even if they won't say it in the movie), and playing her character as a strange combination of world-weary and naive, the sort of woman who didn't want this life for herself, but still got it anyway.  It's a solid bit of acting from Astor, who rarely got to play such seedy parts after her legendary turn in The Maltese Falcon, in an era where she was usually a wife or mother.

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

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

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

OVP: Teresa (1951)

Film: Teresa (1951)
Stars: Pier Angeli, John Ericson, Patricia Collinge, Richard Bishop, Peggy Ann Garner, Rod Steiger
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the truly great mysteries of the Oscar Viewing Project that I'm going to have to figure out at some point is what the precise difference between Best Motion Picture Story and Original Screenplay was.  It's not a case of semantics here-the categories existed concurrently so it's not a Best Art Direction/Production Design situation.  They seem to have roughly the same goal, so I genuinely don't know how to judge them.  We've got a few years before I start to investigate the 1950's in the Oscar Viewing Project (we aren't close to finishing any of those years in the near future), but it's still a puzzling situation.  If you know the difference, please illuminate me below in the comments.  Until then, let's get into one of the Best Motion Picture Story nominees: Teresa.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Phillip Cass (Ericson, who is weirdly good-looking by modern standards in this movie, to the point where he'd likely have been a bigger star today than he was then), a young man dealing with PTSD and a lack of purpose after coming back from the war in Italy.  While he was away in Italy, he fell in love with a young Italian woman named Teresa (Angeli), who is shy and a little unsure, but genuinely steadfastly in love with him, even if she wants a traditional life with him and can't understand the stress he's dealing with after the war.  The two struggle to find a place for themselves, particularly in the shadow of his lazy father (Bishop) and domineering, critical mother (Collinge).

The film runs the gamut from being quite good to being, well, quite bad on a regular basis.  As this is Fred Zinnemann, the love stories may be the best part.  Watching Phillip and Teresa fall in love, it's a beautiful thing; we don't get one upper-hand situation, as both are learning about themselves in addition to falling in love with the other.  The writers are smart enough to keep Phillip from being the "all-knowing" man compared to Teresa, and it's fun to watch the naïveté play out onscreen, as that's something that rarely happens as writers need someone to be the expositional eye for the audience.

The film tries, in vain, to make the PTSD work, but it feels like (considering the length of the picture) there's one too many cooks in the kitchen here and perhaps it should have been left on the side in favor of the strange relationship that Phillip has with his mother.  Patricia Collinge doesn't overplay her domineering mother (this isn't a Lelia Goldoni in Bloodbrothers situation), but it's not clear at first that that's what is holding Phillip back, and quite frankly it's a more interesting commentary.  Yes, people struggle with multiple problems at once, but movies don't always have time to sort through all of those things, and it feels like the PTSD and his toxic family life are cured in the same full swoop by Teresa giving birth.  All-in-all, the second half of the film suffers even though there's mountains of potential in this particular tale.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Has anyone seen Teresa, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?  If not, anyone have any opinions on Ericson (an actor I'd never heard of before this picture) or the tragic Pier Angeli?  And again-what is Best Motion Picture Story?!?

OVP: The Seventh Cross (1944)

Film: The Seventh Cross (1944)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Signe Hasso, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Agnes Moorehead
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Supporting Actor-Hume Cronyn)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Spencer Tracy is one of the sturdiest of the Golden Age actors, and oddly doesn't have a filmography that screams "legend" in the way that Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart do.  Sure, the Tracy/Hepburn films are well-known, but Adam's Rib or Woman of the Year aren't part of the lexicon the way that Gone with the Wind or Casablanca are.  And yet, Tracy is a legend, well-regarded, and an Academy superstar.  He received a stunning nine nominations in his career, and I will admit right now that I have yet to see a one of them, so we will be visiting all nine in the upcoming months/years/decades (don't really have a time table yet on this project, but with 2,228 films to go, it'll be a while).

So I was very glad that last month on Turner Classic Movies it appeared that they were doing Spencer Tracy month, and while most of my recordings got eaten by a very hungry TiVo while I was on vacation, I did manage to save this small film from 1944 by Fred Zinnemann.  Zinnemann, a director who got his films Oscar-nominated almost every time he went out, was a methodical director-a man who  could get at the hearts of his characters and their minute actions-look at The Search or From Here to Eternity or Julia-these are films that are about the obstacles people need to undertake to make their lives better, and The Seventh Cross, one of the lesser known movies in his filmography, does just that.

The film is about George Heisler (Spencer Tracy), one of seven men who have escaped from a concentration camp.  Slowly but steadily, Heisler is the only man left standing amongst the seven, as all of them are brought back to the concentration camp, and killed on one of the seven crosses in the yard (hence the title).  The film follows Heisler as he slowly works his way through a small German city, trying to figure out a way to connect with his friends and get a passport out of the city.  After being rejected by the woman he loved before his arrest, who is now married and threatens to turn him over to the Gestapo, we are given a cavalcade of odd characters (including Moorehead, in a strangely small role considering she was an Oscar nominee two years earlier and would be again in 1944), before Heisler finally calls on an old couple that he knew (Cronyn and Tandy), who risk everything to get him to safety, which he eventually does reach, but not before Cronyn realizes that he needs to become political and involved, and of course Heisler gets a brief amount of romance (though nowhere near the amount indicated in the film's posters and promotions) with the lovely Signe Hasso.

The movie is noteworthy for a couple of reasons, not least of which is the date it was made.  Like Casablanca, the war was still going on when this film was made, and it's one of the few films to feature the concentration camps to be made during the era.  It's shocking the amount of detail that they are able to get into for a film that had minimal first hand accounts (though it is based on a book, so that is likely the main source, but still).  It's also fascinating to see the great chemistry that Tracy, playing an introverted character, can still muster with his costars.  I loved the way that he slowly realizes the amount of risk people are willing to go to save him, and the realization at the end that he will be living his life to help them, save them if necessary, comes across less as melodramatic and more as a legitimate reaction a person would have to such a turn of events.

Cronyn was the film's sole Oscar nomination (oddly Tracy didn't land it, despite his Meryl Streep-like track record with the Academy), and this was the only Oscar nomination he received in his entire, decades-long career.  It seems appropriate that he received the nomination opposite his beloved wife of over 50-years Jessica Tandy, as he always had his best chemistry onscreen when the original Blanche Dubois is by his side.  Cronyn's work is strong-it reminded me a little of the work of Harold Russell two years later in The Best Years of Our Lives, in that they are both very earnest, and slowly realize their own limitations and what they would be best at in the world.  Cronyn's work isn't quite of the same level as Russell's (admittedly, Russell gets meatier material to work with), but it's definitely the sort of strong character work that the supporting nominees in the 1940's usually enjoyed.

It's a fairly straight-forward film, so that's where I'll leave it, but some questions to ponder before you go-what did you think of The Seventh Cross (if you've seen it)?  What's your favorite Tracy performance, and why do you think he doesn't enjoy the stature of a Gable or a Bogart?  And what's your favorite pairing of Cronyn/Tandy?