Born to Kill (1947)

Film: Born to Kill (1947)

Stars: Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook, Jr., Esther Howard

Director: Robert Wise

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.

Throughout the many years of this series, we have encountered a lot of actors who were huge names in Hollywood, both then-and-now.  Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Harry Belafonte, Kirk Douglas...big glossy names that are synonymous with the Classical Hollywood period.  But not all leading players survive into modern consciousness, and that isn't because they don't have great stories behind them.  The name that you're probably noticing from that call sheet above is Oscar Winner Claire Trevor, and surely Trevor is one of the great femme fatales of the 1940's.  But the name you should be noticing is Lawrence Tierney.  Tierney became a star after the 1945 surprise hit Dillinger, and for a brief time in the following years was a leading man, mostly in crime or noir pictures.  But Tierney was also a menace off-screen, getting arrested 12 times during the time that he was a headliner, frequently for violent assaults that almost certainly destroyed any chance he had at getting into the true A-list or getting the kinds of opportunities (like Oscar-winning films) that his costar Trevor would get.  One of Tierney's most famous films at the time was Born to Kill, our picture today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie looks at Helen Brant (Trevor), who is fresh off of a divorce and staying out the waiting period in Reno until it's official.  Unbeknownst to her, one of the women that live at her flat has been killed by her jealous boyfriend Sam (Tierney), and he is on the run on the same train that Helen is on.  Both Helen & Sam are broke, but her foster sister Georgia (Long) is not, and has a large fortune that Sam (and, for anyone paying attention, Helen) both have their eyes on, with Sam pursuing Georgia romantically, but clearly still intent on ending up with Helen.  All of this is happening while the police are looking into the death of the first woman, which Helen has realized must have been Sam.  The film culminates in a shootout, with Helen confessing all of the plan to Georgia, but in the process getting herself killed by Sam, who is then shot by the police.

The film is quite interesting, and I get why this is a respected deep cut (that 3-star rating up top is a 3.5 on Letterboxd, so I like it better than I'm letting on).  Trevor is such a good actress that it's a bummer her part isn't written with a bit more malice; she does a really good job of being abjectly horny for Tierney's Sam, basically squandering everything she's worked for just to get into bed with him.  But there's not enough background to her-I think a bit more writing would've made this a more classic femme fatale part, and maybe a better movie.  As it is, she's strong, but not as strong as someone like Esther Howard as her bawdy landlady, who steals the picture wholesale.

Tierney's also solid, though given his offscreen persona it's hard not to wonder if part of the menace of his role is knowing that he was like this in real-life (were it not for Tom Neal, Tierney would be the most appropriately true-to-life actor in classic film noir).  Tierney, it's worth noting, would get dozens of chances in Hollywood before his death in 2002 at the age of 82, including in a key role in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.  In proof that people don't actually change, Tarantino cast him as an homage to an Old Hollywood long dead...but before the end of filming, had gotten into a fistfight with Tierney and the two never worked together again.

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

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

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Film: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Stars: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, Richard Bright

Director: Robert Wise

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.

While the French New Wave (as we learned a couple of days ago) was already starting to invest in film noir elements as Hollywood began to lose interest in the late 1950's, that didn't mean that Hollywood had stopped making noir entirely, though the tale-end of the film noir is generally considered to be 1960 (most films after that are "neo-noir" and I refer to them as such if you look at the list of past film noirs at the bottom of this page).  One of the last important film noirs came from United Artists, and was the first film noir from a major studio to star a Black actor, in this case the late Harry Belafonte.  1959 was still within the peak of Belafonte's entertainment career.  At 32, he had starred in major movies, including the box office smashes Carmen Jones and Island in the Sun, and was a popular recording artist, just a couple of years out from "Banana Boat (Day-O)," the biggest hit of his career.  Odds Against Tomorrow represented a different chapter in his career, though, and was an opportunity for him to be seen in a different way by audiences, a dramatic actor who didn't need a musical to make an impression.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a ticking clock story, as we countdown to a bank robbery being orchestrated by David Burke (Begley), a former police detective whose career is ruined when he refuses to provide evidence to state crime investigators.  He recruits a former con Earle Slater (Ryan) and a nightclub entertainer Johnny Ingram (Belafonte) to join him in the hit.  Neither man is excited about the prospect, as Ryan's Slater is an avowed racist who doesn't want to work with a Black man & Belafonte's Ingram is trying to do right by his wife & daughter, but Slater's pride (he's supported by his girlfriend Lorry, played by Winters) and Ingram's gambling debts mean they can't turn down the job.  The heist goes wrong, and Burke is killed holding the keys to the getaway car.  There's a chance for Ingram & Slater to escape, but instead they turn on each other, having a shootout that burns them both alive.  The film ends a bit cheekily, with the police officer not being able to tell who is who with their charred corpses (indicating that underneath, we're all the same).

The film is solid.  The cast is really good.  Winters is maybe the best part as the scorned girlfriend, who can't understand why her man won't love her even though she gives him everything (Robert Ryan is having an affair with their neighbor, played by Gloria Grahame, who is also good as a titillated, bored housewife), but everyone is solid in this movie.  Belafonte is sexy as hell in the lead role, and they even find an excuse to have him sing some of the jazz score, original work by John Lewis that would be a hit for the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The film doesn't always work, though.  The ending is perhaps a bit too cute (particularly the "can't tell them apart" scene), given that it implies pretty heavily both of these men have committed the same crimes, even though Slater's bigotry is far worse (it's 1959, I know, but I'm still going to say it hurts the story).  I also think that the way that they handle the personal lives of Ryan & Belafonte in particular could've been stronger. We needed more scenes late in the film with Winters & Grahame, as well as Kim Hamilton's Ruth (who plays Belafonte's love interest).  And we sure as hell needed to get more of Richard Bright's delicious Coco, who is so queer-coded that honestly I think he's just meant to be openly gay, a small-time hood who is horny-as-hell for Belafonte, and flirts openly with him.  While film noir will frequently hint at queer characters, this is the closest I've ever gotten to seeing an openly gay one in a Classical Hollywood noir, and man I wish he'd been in more scenes.

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

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

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

OVP: Star! (1968)

Film: Star! (1968)

Stars: Julie Andrews, Richard Crenna, Michael Craig, Daniel Massey, Robert Reed

Director: Robert Wise

Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Daniel Massey, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Scoring, Sound, Original Song-"Star!")

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 Julie Andrews-click here to learn more about Ms. Andrews (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are hitting the halfway point in our month devoted to Julie Andrews by discussing what is seen as one of the nadirs of her career (the actual nadir would happen decades later when doctors would destroy her flawless singing voice in a botched surgery).  In 1968, after a string of enviable hits including Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Hawaii, and Thoroughly Modern Millie, it felt like Andrews could do no wrong, but in Hollywood even the brightest of stars can fall, and that happened that year with, well, Star!.  The film was wildly expensive, the kind of musical that had stopped consistently being profitable as early as 1954, but Andrews had managed to keep in the black.  This wasn't the case after 1967, both Star! and Andrews' next picture Darling Lili would be two of the biggest bombs in Hollywood in their era, and just a few years after she saved Fox with The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews was putting it back on the brink.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, nearly three hours long, is weirdly thin on plot, so this is going to be a short paragraph.  Essentially, we have Andrews as famed vaudeville singer Gertrude Lawrence, who with her friend Noel Coward (Massey) became massive stage successes.  We see a traditional story where Gertrude starts out poor, but her immense talent & pluck get her noticed, and she moves on to bigger-and-better things.  Along-the-way, though, she develops a taste for extravagance, and despite making boatloads of money throughout her career, she's consistently broke.  The movie regularly cuts from Lawrence's spiraling romantic & financial life (she has multiple suitors before ending on Richard Crenna's Richard Aldrich), and weirdly the film finishes before both Lawrence's greatest triumph (playing Anna in the original run of The King & I) and tragic death at the age of 54 from liver cancer.

Watching Star!, I was struck at once by the fact that its reputation as a gargantuan bomb is unwarranted, but also that it totally makes sense that the movie was not a success.  After Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, Star! is merely okay.  There's pleasantness here (the musical numbers are nice, the costumes are grand, Andrews sounds good), but the plot itself is ridiculously underwritten.  There's no sense of who Lawrence is, and her troubles feel watered down to keep the film feel-good.  Also, her romantic life, which I suspect in real life was a bit messier (i.e. romantic relationships overlapping frequently with other men) is too convoluted with interchangeable beaus for me to be able to keep track of who was supposed to be winning her heart.  These are not insurmountable problems, but they are the kind that I get why audiences didn't show up.

The film won seven Oscar nominations, though Andrews herself was not one of them.  Daniel Massey got his only nomination (making him part of one of the very few father-son nomination teams with the acting Oscars, as his father Raymond was cited for 1940's Abe Lincoln in Illinois), and I actually was fine with this even if it's not a "great" performance.  Massey steals most of the movie, and is charming as Noel Coward, and does enough to underline why Noel is not one of Gertrude's lovers (he prefers the company of men) while not offending the censors of the day.  

The rest of the nominations follow a similar boat-not egregious, but hardly warranted.  The song "Star!" plays over the opening credits but is weirdly not one of the numbers we see performed (though its musical bridge comes up later in the picture), and it's good-but-not-great (it's the kind of song that sounds good but I dare you to hum it a few hours later).  The sound is good, though like the scoring it's more a case of it not being memorable-there are no real numbers in this other than perhaps the tried-and-true "Someone to Watch Over Me" that Andrews totally nails, and when you have peak Julie Andrews, you should be trying harder.  The cinematography is also nondescript-the concept of doing all of these staged sequences feels a bit of a cheat in this era, like they're just moving from sound stage to sound stage rather than feeling properly interactive with a larger audience (it never feels "real").  The best nominations were for Art Direction (all of the sets have their own flare, and I loved some of the crazy mansions these people occupy) and Costume Design (Lawrence, a famed clothes horse, comes across well in her opulent & growing attire in ways that Andrews is never achieve with her acting).  All-in-all, this is fine but forgettable, and though I wanted to save it, its most interesting calling card is that it was such an infamous flop.  Next week, though, Andrews will be starting a comeback in a surprise hit that would mark a second chapter in her film career.

OVP: The Sand Pebbles (1966)

Film: The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Stars: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, Marayat Andriane, Mako
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Picture, Actor-Steve McQueen, Supporting Actor-Mako, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This week we've covered four screen legends for the Best Actor field (John Travolta, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, & Cary Grant), but today as we wind down our Best Actor tribute, we're going to pick a fifth legend, but one with two distinctions from this group.  The first is that despite a pretty robust film career before his early death, Steve McQueen only scored one Oscar nomination.  McQueen had other films that might have popped with Oscar if they'd been a bit more smitten with him (Love with a Proper Stranger, The Reivers, Papillon), but this was the only time Oscar went with the cinematic rebel, and they did it in (second distinction from this week's movies) a Best Picture nominee.  The Sand Pebbles is probably best-remembered in terms of Oscar for its Best Picture nomination, and that it is the rare film to win eight citations from AMPAS and not win a single one in the year where A Man for All Seasons and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were scooping up most of the trophies.  However, we'll try to frame it at least slightly from the Best Actor front today to go with our theme.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Sand Pebbles is a long movie, a proper three-hour epic, and thus we've got a plot to slice through, but I'll try to boil it down.  Essentially we have Jake Holman (McQueen) who is a rebellious maintenance officer in the United States Navy.  He is assigned to the USS San Pablo, nicknamed the "Sand Pebble" and thus the men on the ship are called the "Sand Pebbles."  The boat is  stationed in China in the 1920's, and they hire Chinese men as laborers on the ship to run the ship and do most of the manual work.  This doesn't fly with Holman, who takes over the engine room and instantly causes friction with the other men aboard the ship as a result, with the exception of Frenchy (Attenborough).  This continues as one of the Chinese men who had run the ship prior to Holman is killed in an accident due to Holman wanting to implement better maintenance onboard, and Holman has to hire an additional Chinese laborer Po-Han (Mako), whom he befriends, but their association costs Po-Han his life.  We continue to see increased tension between the Chinese and the Americans as the National Revolutionary Army begins to gain power, and in the end, it's obvious that the Americans are in over-their-head, as one-by-one pretty much every major Sand Pebble is killed as a result of the increasing tension with the Chinese.

There's a lot more to the plot than that, but I don't want to spend this whole article recapping rather than reviewing.  Let's start out with the acting, particularly McQueen's.  McQueen had an effortless cool onscreen in all of his roles (also, he was sexy as hell), which translates here, but in terms of heavy-lifting for his character, it kind of gets lost.  McQueen is watchable, but is a weird counter to the rest of the cast, ranging from the "ACTING!" being done by Richard Attenborough to the distinguished work of Richard Crenna's lieutenant (for my money, best in the cast) to Candice Bergen's "I'm going to under-emote as much as possible which you hopefully won't notice because I am so beautiful" role as the girlfriend (Bergen's role, in particular feels like exactly the kind that Oscar notices for some reason with pretty young actresses even when they don't really do much onscreen, and I'm kind of floored she wasn't nominated as a result).  As a result, McQueen's performance feels too strained, doesn't get enough background, and is out-of-kilter with the rest of the movie.

The movie itself is grand, and I'm a sucker for such things (I love a long movie if it gets a big enough payoff, which this movie does in the final moments), but it never really justifies its length.  The love story between McQueen & Bergen has zilch chemistry (I swear, I like Bergen as a rule, but this movie does nothing with her tenacity), and Attenborough seems to be more in love with his girlfriend's (Maily, a virgin who is wading into prostitution) situation than with herself.  The movie is good, but it never goes for great, and when you get a cast & crew that looks like this, great is what you should be expecting.

The other six nominations need their due before we close.  Mako's turn as Supporting Actor is instantly sympathetic, and one of the rare circumstances where an Asian actor was nominated by Oscar, but it's a misdirect as he has very little to do other than be sympathetic & someone to show a shift in McQueen's character.  His work here is unusual as Attenborough & Crenna both have bigger parts (Attenborough even won the Golden Globe), so it's cool such a small role won an Oscar nod, but it's pretty one-note even if it's physically demanding.  Mako's biggest scene in the movie is an intense boxing match that lasts a while, and while it's riveting/exhausting, it's also lensed in an unusual way that felt disjointed, which I can't decide to blame on either the editor (who could have trimmed half an hour from this movie & made everything sharper) or the cinematographer (who otherwise does brilliant work in the waters, especially as the San Pueblo attempts to fjord enemy lines late in the movie).  The Sound is strong, and does great things with quiet (rare for a war picture), especially the thrilling final showdown between McQueen and the NRA soldiers, and the Art Direction was fine, though occasionally feels too "filmy" (the bar/brothel looks so much like a blank movie set you half expect the men to start singing on the tables).  The best nomination, though, was the Score-which is breathtaking.  Jerry Goldsmith (one of my favorites) gives the film a haunting romance with his horns & strings that, quite frankly, the story never earns, but it's radiant stuff.

OVP: The Desert Rats (1953)

Film: The Desert Rats (1953)
Stars: Richard Burton, James Mason, Robert Newton, Robert Douglas
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I used to think that it felt like the only major movies of Classical Hollywood were war films because when I was growing up, westerns and war films were the only ones that my grandfather watched, and were littered across his VHS shelves.  Commanding presences of people like Glenn Ford and Martin Balsam were always amongst his possessions, and displayed proudly on his 12-inch TV screen.  As I grew up, I did realize that for a time, this wasn't an illusion; while war films aren't nearly as omnipresent as they once were (though if you go solely by Academy Awards nominations they might as well be), there was a time when almost every major male actor in Hollywood was getting back into his army fatigues and marching off to heroic battle.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is the case with The Desert Rats, a tiny largely forgotten film about a tiny relatively forgotten chapter of World War II, which starred a young Richard Burton and a fast-emerging James Mason.  The film centers around the battle for Tobruk, a port city in Libya that was a central part of the war campaign in North Africa.  The film shows a British commanding officer Captain MacRoberts (Burton), who is very by-the-book, who must command a battalion of Australian soldiers as they attack Field Marshal Rommel (Mason) to hold the hill and make sure the Germans couldn't attack the Suez Canal.  The film unfolds as one expects, with MacRoberts slowly breaking against his military rigidness, and his men eventually gaining respect for him, and in the process earning victory.

The film itself is pretty slight, and the camerawork shoddy enough for a time it felt like they were filming it as it was a war reel documentary, but there's too much attention paid to MacRoberts' relationship with his former teacher Bartlett (Newton) for that to fly.  The film's best attributes are surely its elaborate and intense battle sequences, with enormous explosions and a number of impressive tank shots.  The film comes most alive during these sequences, if only because of its extraordinary grandness; this is before CGI, so all of this had to have taken place, making it all the more impressive.

The film, however, is not particularly good outside of these moments.  Both Burton and Mason are fine actors who would eventually create some of the screen's greatest creations, but here, early in their careers, they don't lend much to what they're doing onscreen, and you don't relate to any of the characters save for the contradictory Bartlett (Newton is best in show here, and pretty much the only real reason to watch).  The fact that the film won its only nomination for Screenplay is ludicrous, as even in 1953 every contrivance of this movie's plot was hackneyed and overdone.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Anyone out there already seen this movie (it's on TV quite regularly)?  If not, share your thoughts on the rather eclectic nominees for Original Screenplay in 1953 (it was very much a year for the adapted category), or your thoughts on Richard Burton & James Mason-any favorite performances?

OVP: Executive Suite (1954)

Film: Executive Suite (1954)
Stars: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Douglas, Shelley Winters, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, Nina Foch
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Nina Foch, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

There is no genre harder to gage in how it will age than straight-dramas.  For any classic film fan, there's really few joys greater than investigating a classic movie for the first time, but I have to say that dramas always have their own risks.  Westerns, whether comedy or drama, you know what you're getting into; same with action-adventures, love stories, horrors, noir, but straight dramas run multiple different pitfalls.  The issues that are being discussed (because almost every drama has an issue at its core) may no longer be applicable, or applicable in the same way.  What might have seemed important at the time could, in fact, be unimportant now, and societal norms may shift to make the film much more dated than you'd hope.  As a result, I headed into Executive Suite (as part of Operation Clean My DVR), not knowing what I was in store for, and actually ended up pleasantly surprised.  The film, with an inexplicably gigantic cast of stars, works despite on-paper seeming like something that might not.

(Spoilers Ahead) Executive Suite uses the ticking clock aspect of storytelling well-while the film isn't quite in real time, it's only the course of about a 24-hour period, where an unseen man, a wealthy and controlling titan of industry, has died, leaving a gaping hole over who will be his successor at a successful furniture manufacturing company.  In the 24-hour period, we see multiple different men jostling with each other and other members of the board trying to figure out who will end up being the CEO, though the chief protagonists in that regard are Don (Holden), the young upstart with a lot of big ideals for the company, and Shaw (March), a practical man who lives mostly by the adoration of the shareholders.

I'll give you one guess over who wins (let's not forget this was made in 1954), but the film actually rises above its predictable nature in that regard.  We're well aware that Holden is the one in command here, and will eventually become the successor, but the film is still pretty riveting nonetheless.  It helps that Robert Wise hired a slate full of movie stars to fill up his picture; it was reported years later that they made this film, similar to the Grand Hotel-style all-star casts of the early 1930's, to compete with television, and while not all of the acting is on the same level, everyone is very watchable and knows how to command a scene when they're expected to do so.  I particularly liked Shelley Winters as a secretary having an affair with her boss, and Fredric March is commendable at making his mustache-twisting villain into a real human being (March is such a fine actor-the fact that he largely made pictures like these without any sort of genre hooks is the only explanation why he isn't still just as famous with casual moviegoers).  Nina Foch won the film's sole acting citation, and she's good, but it's the sort of good you only notice when someone else points it out to you-her character is mysterious, and rises above what could have been completely stock work (think of that scene where she's opposite of March and telling him off as carefully as she can, knowing he's likely to be her next boss), but I'll admit that I wouldn't have paid her much heed had I not been looking for the OVP.

The film's other three nominations are about on the same page-they're all good, though one wonders if they were listed simply because the movie is actually quite good and these were easy categories.  Art Direction is solid-I loved the C-Suite hallway stairs (it's such a nice, elegant touch, the sort that would happen dozens of stories above the earth), though the rest of the film (especially the homes and the other offices), don't have this level of inventive detail.  The costumes are all very appropriately tailored to this level of importance (one wonders if the Mad Men costume designers looked at a film like this for inspiration), and again there's the great touch of Nina Foch's pencil necklace, but overall I was less impressed with other parts, such as the men's suits which felt completely interchangeable.  And finally, the cinematography has a gimmick (never properly seeing the face of the dead CEO, and a first-person camera early on in the picture), which was catnip at the time to that particular AMPAS branch, but again (aside from those great C-Suite hallway shots), there's not a lot to recommend this nomination.

Stil, even if it didn't quite deserve all of its Oscar accolades, I can't help but be fascinated by this movie.  It's wildly watchable, particularly Winters and March, and the sort of film that's less about the acting or visual elements and more about the sum of its parts.  Think of something like Argo where nothing specifically is singled out as "the best" but it's damn fine entertainment.  At least those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Have any of you seen Executive Suite, and if so, what are your thoughts?  If not, share some favorite straight dramas that have stood the test of time in the comments!