My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Showing posts with label 1949. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1949. Show all posts
Monday, May 8, 2023
1949 Alternate Oscars
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Alternate Oscars: The Finishing Touches
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
1949 Alternate Oscars
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
Of 1949's Oscar-eligible movies, I would have gone with The Heiress but I prefer a couple of British movies which I have placed here — The Third Man and the hilariously droll Kind Hearts and Coronets.
If you haven't seen Kind Hearts and Coronets — a comedy about a man (Dennis Price) who can't climb the family tree so he chops it down — you really should look for it. Alec Guinness plays eight parts in that one, including Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne.
In the category of best actor, Broderick Crawford represents a philosophical conundrum for me. On the one hand, he is, as alternate Oscar guru Danny Peary put it, "arguably the worst actor ever to win a Best Actor Academy Award." On the other hand, his (extremely) limited range perfectly fit the part, he was ferocious in it and the movie wouldn't have worked without him. Is that worthy of a nomination? I've gone back and forth. Yesterday he was in, today he's out.
On the other hand, Dean Jagger was a pretty good actor and I didn't nominate him either. To me, he isn't even the best supporting actor in Twelve O'Clock High, much less of the entire year. But maybe his performance as a World War II veteran feeling nostalgic about the best years of his life struck a chord with audiences who were beginning to realize that peace and prosperity, for all their charms, could be pretty damn dull.
I didn't nominate the best director winner, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, either. I like Mankiewicz, especially for his work on All About Eve in 1950, but while I think A Letter to Three Wives is a nice picture, well worth seeing, ten or fifteen other movies squeeze it out of my annual list.
But I could be wrong.
Well, that's the way it goes with alternate Oscars — they're often just as screwed up as the Oscars themselves. But the exercise helps me focus on what I truly value and why, and after all, this all about me, right?
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Friday, January 27, 2012
The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1949)
Usually billed as a film noir, The Big Steal—the story of a guy chasing a guy chasing a girl chasing a guy who stole some money, with Jane Greer as the girl and Robert Mitchum as the man in the middle—is actually a screwball road picture, romantic comedy and wry commentary on the Ugly American (this time in Mexico), all rolled into 71 taut minutes.
Known at the time as the first film Mitchum made after his infamous marijuana bust (filming was interrupted for two months while he served his prison sentence), The Big Steal is really Jane Greer's picture. She's funny, she's smart, she's tender, she's tough, and she and Mitchum are very, very good together. Out of the Past made Greer a film noir legend, deservedly so, but The Big Steal is actually a better showcase for her talent.That she also flew down to Mexico on forty-eight hours notice out of loyalty to Mitchum when no other actress would work with him only deepens my affection for this underrated actress.
She and Mitchum crack wise with each other throughout the film and the chemistry between them is palpable. Greer's best scene, though, is across from the foreman of a road repair crew (Pascual García Peña) as she tries to talk him into letting them pass. She tells him that she and Mitchum are eloping, and that her father, chasing them with a shotgun (really William Bendix, the first "guy" in the equation), wants her to marry a short, ugly man. She prefers the big, pretty one—"¿Verdad que es grande y hermoso, no?"And the foreman looks at Mitchum, shrugs and says with a laugh, "Grande, sí. ¿Pero hermoso?"—which is to say, "Big, yes, but pretty?"
The film was directed by Don Siegel, who had cut his teeth putting together the Paris montage sequence in Casablanca, and who would later direct such classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry. His biggest achievement here, aside from some great car chases, was working around Mitchum's absence. Because co-star William Bendix had a prior commitment, he and Mitchum appear in only one scene together, the film's first. Thereafter, Siegel had to make due with stunt doubles, rear screen projection and careful editing.That Bendix and Mitchum stage a convincing fist fight later in the movie without being in the same room together is a minor miracle.
Also look for Ramon Novarro as the Mexican police inspector. Fans of silent film may remember him as the title character in the 1925 verison of Ben-Hur. Like so many, his star fell when the talkies came in.
Despite the commercial and critical success of The Big Steal, there was no follow-up film for Greer. Indeed, it's a measure of the studio's desperation that she'd been cast at all. RKO owner Howard Hughes had vowed to wreck Greer's career after she refused to sleep with him, and wreck it he did. It took Greer three years to get out of her contract with the studio, by which time the public had largely forgotten her.Finally free of RKO, she made a handful of films in the early 1950s, including Man of a Thousand Faces and a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda. After she nearly died from an infection suffered while filming Run for the Sun in the jungles of Mexico, Greer went into semi-retirement, playing occasional supporting roles, most memorably in Against All Odds, a loose remake of Out of the Past.
[SPOILERS]
The ending of The Big Steal underscores for me the degree to which we watch movies rather than listen to them. If you watch the last scene, letting it flow over you, and with the expectations of the genre firmly established in your mind, you assume that Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are going to pair off permanently at the end, get married, have ten kids. Nice.On the other hand, if you listen to the words they are speaking, it's clear he's leaving town in the morning and she's staying put. And that makes sense. He's a lieutenant in the army, she has an important job in Mexico. If you read the scene on the printed page, you'd see it as a lament for the life they aren't going to have together.
But if you put the images together with the words they are speaking, it becomes clear that they are negotiating a one-night stand. Which is exactly as it should be—they are attractive, single people who have just finished a life-and-death adventure together, but who, let's face it, have little else in common. Why not?That director Don Siegel contrived to say this in a way that passed muster with the censors during the era of the Production Code is a tribute to his ingenuity and his craft. He let your eyes tell you one thing, your ears another, and if you're really paying attention, you can decode his intentions. It's subtle, something the censors never were. It's one of those times when the lament "they don't make 'em like they used to" is fully justified.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Third Man (prod. Carol Reed)
nominees: All The King's Men (prod. Robert Rossen); Battleground (prod. Dore Schary); The Heiress (prod. William Wyler); A Letter to Three Wives (prod. Sol C. Siegel); The Set-Up (prod. Richard Goldstone); She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (prod. Merian C. Cooper and John Ford); They Live By Night (prod. John Houseman); Twelve O'Clock High (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); White Heat (prod. Louis F. Edelman)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Kind Hearts and Coronets (prod. Michael Balcon)
nominees: Adam's Rib (prod. Lawrence Weingarten); I Was A Male War Bride (prod. Sol C. Siegel); On The Town (prod. Arthur Freed); Whisky Galore! (prod. Michael Balcon)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Banshun (Late Spring) (prod. Shôchiku Film)
nominees: Jour de fête (prod. Fred Orain and André Paulvé); Nora inu (Stray Dog) (prod. Sôjirô Motoki); Riso amaro (Bitter Rice) (prod. Dino De Laurentiis)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Kirk Douglas (Champion)
nominees: James Cagney (White Heat); Joseph Cotten (The Third Man); Broderick Crawford (All The King's Men); Toshiro Mifune (Nora inu a.k.a. Stray Dog); Gregory Peck (Twelve O'Clock High); Robert Ryan (The Set-Up); Chishu Ryu (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); John Wayne (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Sands Of Iwo Jima)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Gene Kelly (On The Town)
nominees: Cary Grant (I Was A Male War Bride); Danny Kaye (The Inspector General); Robert Mitchum (The Big Steal and Holiday Affair); Dennis Price (Kind Hearts and Coronets); Basil Radford (Whisky Galore!); Jacques Tati (Jour de fête); Spencer Tracy (Adam's Rib)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress)
nominees: Jeanne Crain (Pinky); Joan Crawford (Flamingo Road); Linda Darnell (A Letter To Three Wives); Setsuko Hara (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); Alida Valli (The Third Man)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jane Greer (The Big Steal)
nominees: Joan Greenwood (Kind Hearts and Coronets and Whisky Galore!); Katharine Hepburn (Adam's Rib); Ann Sheridan (I Was A Male War Bride)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Carol Reed (The Third Man)
nominees: John Ford (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon); Akira Kurosawa (Nora inu a.k.a. Stray Dog); Yasujiro Ozu (Banshun a.k.a. Late Spring); Raoul Walsh (White Heat); William Wyler (The Heiress)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
nominees: George Cukor (Adam's Rib); Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (On The Town); Howard Hawks (I Was A Male War Bride); Alexander Mackendrick (Whisky Galore!)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Alec Guinness (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
nominees: Paul Douglas (A Letter to Three Wives); Juano Hernandez (Intruder in the Dust); Trevor Howard (The Third Man); Victor McLaglen (She Wore A Yellow Ribbon); Ramon Novarro (The Big Steal); Ralph Richardson (The Heiress); David Wayne (Adam's Rib); Orson Welles (The Third Man); James Whitmore (Battleground)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Mercedes McCambridge (All The King's Men)
nominees: Judy Holliday (Adam's Rib); Ann Miller (On the Town); Elizabeth Patterson (Intruder in the Dust); Margaret Wycherly (White Heat)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Graham Greene (The Third Man)
nominees: Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin (Adam's Rib); Robert Rossen, from the novel by Robert Penn Warren (All The King's Men); Robert Pirosh (Battleground); Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz, from their play suggested by the novel Washington Square by Henry James (The Heiress); Robert Hamer and John Dighton, from the novel by Roy Horniman (Kind Hearts and Coronets)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Ray Harryhausen, Linwood G. Dunn, Willis H. O'Brien, Harold E. Stein, Herb Willis and Bert Willis (Mighty Joe Young) (Special Effects); Anton Karas (The Third Man) (Score); Robert Krasker (The Third Man) (Cinematography)
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