Singin' in the Rain (1952)

 

Singing in the Rain features so many joyous moments. Everyone, of course, remembers Gene Kelly’s dazzling rendition of the title song, but there are lots of great performances throughout the film. It’s very easy to see why it’s considered one of the greatest of movie musicals. It also depicts a significant historical period in film, the transition from silents to talkies, and it manages to have lots of fun along the way. I’ll admit that the main plot itself isn’t particularly complex, but what Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor manage to do to “fill” the time is what makes it work so spectacularly. The film begins with the arrival of Kelly’s Don Lockwood and Jean Hagen’s Lina Lamont at the premiere of their new film, The Royal Rascal. Prompted by an interviewer who bears a striking resemblance to Louella Parsons, Don starts recounting their (well, mostly his) history. Interestingly, the verbal and the visual of his life story don’t quite match. Don claims his motto is “dignity, always dignity,” but the song “Fit as a Fiddle” with O’Connor’s Cosmo show that they certainly haven’t always lived up to that motto. We get to see a bit of behind-the-scenes filmmaking as Don and Lina prepare for their next film, The Dueling Cavalier, but everything gets interrupted by the arrival of talking pictures. The exaggerated style of silent film acting has to be replaced by the more subtle performances that would come to be associated with the sound era. And poor Lina, with her high-pitched, grating, low-rent voice, struggles the most with trying to fit in with the new expectations of stardom. After the film is completed – despite numerous ridiculous and hilarious problems with sound recording – preview audiences can only laugh at how awful it is and how badly Lina sounds and how silly Don’s overacting is. To “save” the film, Don and Cosmo and studio head R.F. Simpson (a deadpan Millard Mitchell) decide to reshoot it as a musical without letting Lina know that her voice will be replaced by Reynolds’ Kathy Selden, an aspiring actress Don met through one of the funniest “meet-cutes” in film history. It’s the musical numbers that stand out in your memory after watching this film. The performance of the title song is justifiably famous, but the film features a lot of great moments of singing and dancing. For example, “Make ‘Em Laugh” had to be painful for O’Connor, but what a feat of physical comedy he demonstrates. “Moses Supposes” takes the diction training to a new level of hilarity. Kelly’s Don creates a magical atmosphere on a soundstage to tell Kathy that he loves her through the song “You Were Meant for Me.” The biggest number in the film is probably the “Broadway Rhythm” sequence, which doesn’t really fit within what we know of as the plot to The Dueling Cavalier. But it features Cyd Charisse, a particular favorite of mine, in a showcase of her dancing ability. A journey through burlesque, vaudeville, and contemporary theater, the number dissolves at one point into a pure fantasy sequence on a soundstage, featuring the longest white veil in movie history. Again, what this has to do with a movie starring Lockwood and Lamont or, frankly, Singin’ in the Rain’s plot is a mystery, but it’s certainly a beautiful mystery. What strikes me when I watch a classic musical like Singin’ in the Rain is how long the takes last. They had to make movies the hard way in those days: you did all or almost all of the number, and if it took many retakes, you did it over and over again. These performances were not created in the editing room. It took real talent at singing and dancing. All of the stars are great here, and even Rita Moreno in an early and small part makes quite an impression. It’s interesting to watch the film and see Kathy Seldon and Debbie Reynolds become stars simultaneously. Reynolds certainly manages to hold her own in her scenes with Kelly and O’Connor, two of the Hollywood’s most famed dancers. Much has been made of the fact that only Jean Hagen was nominated for an Oscar for her performance, but it’s not as if she were going to compete with the three top-billed performers in the same category. Sometimes, the Academy overlooks people, frequently for decades, but that doesn’t diminish Hagen’s accomplishments here. She takes her few moments on screen and gives them a jolt of excitement and humor that serves the overall plot well. You try delivering the line “I make more money than Calvin Coolidge put together” and see if you can make it as funny as Hagen does.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jean Hagen) and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture

Tommy (1975)

 

Tommy, based upon the rock opera by the Who, is one bizarre movie. It’s not always easy to follow the possible meanings of what happens on screen, but it is certainly intriguing to watch. The film follows the life of a young boy who watches his father, presumed dead in World War II, get killed by his mother’s new lover. His mother, Nora (Ann-Margret), and her lover, Frank (Oliver Reed), convince Tommy that he didn’t see or hear what he actually saw and heard; they also tell him never to speak of what he saw or heard. When he then behaves as if he’s – in the language of the time – deaf, dumb, and blind, they seem shocked. I’ve found this odd every time I’ve seen this film; they demand that he behave as if he were deaf, dumb, and blind, then they try to figure out how to “cure” him of his deafness, dumbness, and blindness? Very peculiar of them not to figure that out for themselves. Nevertheless, the couple embark on a series of strange potential remedies. Nora takes Tommy to a meeting of a cult that worships Marilyn Monroe. Really, it’s an excuse for Eric Clapton to perform “Eyesight to the Blind,” but having all of those masked Monroe impersonators touching all of the people seeking cures is quite creepy. Frank then takes Tommy to a drug-addled prostitute called the Acid Queen. She’s played with great ferociousness by the amazing Tina Turner, a quite hypnotic presence on the screen. Her few moments are a highlight of the film even if some of the imagery is quite unsettling to watch. Nora and Frank then try to find appropriate babysitters for Tommy and make some awful choices: Cousin Kevin (Paul Nicholas), a sadist who tortures the poor boy, and then Uncle Ernie (the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon), who is some sort of pervert. Uncle Ernie’s portion is depicted as just weird sounds with a black screen; we should probably be grateful. I haven’t even mentioned that Tommy is played as an adult by Roger Daltrey, the lead singer of the Who, but to be fair, it’s not much of a portrayal for much of the film. He really seems more catatonic than deaf, dumb, and blind. He stares at a mirror a lot until he wanders away from home one night and finds a pinball machine – a working pinball machine at that – in a junkyard because, of course, there would be a working pinball machine in a junkyard atop a bunch of wrecked cars. Why wouldn’t there be? It turns out that Tommy is some sort of prodigy, and he has to face the Pinball Wizard (Elton John, glorious in that outrageous outfit with the enormous shoes, another highlight of the film) in a tournament. Tommy becomes rich playing pinball because, of course, you become rich playing pinball, so his family takes advantage of his success and starts making money from his fame. Later, when Tommy becomes a new messianic figure, the head of a new cult, Nora and Frank again make money off his fame. When the attendees at Tommy’s “holiday camp” near the film’s end revolt because he’s not providing them with anything useful, you sense that there’s some sort of commentary on capitalism going on, perhaps a critique of Great Britain’s post-war treatment of the working class, but gain, it’s tough to discern exactly what the film is trying to say because everything just seems so strange. The production design for Tommy is amazing, as is the costume design. Ann-Margret’s outfits become quite spectacular as the film progresses, but the costumes worn by Turner and John are certainly iconic as well. At times, Tommy calls into question what is real and what isn’t. For example, Ann-Margret’s infamous scene where the television she’s been watching spills out stuff like foam and baked beans and chocolate may be a figment of her imagination. It’s almost impossible to tell for certain. Given that this is the film version of a rock opera, you’d expect the performances by the rock stars like the Who and Clapton to be good, and they are. However, Oliver Reed is no singer, and Jack Nicholson as a doctor with a potential cure for Tommy isn’t a singer either. Daltrey himself doesn’t even sing until almost seventy minutes into the movie. Doesn’t it seem odd that the lead singer of the band that created the work upon which the movie is based would be relegated to just a few songs in the last third or so of the movie? Yes, I understand that the plot calls for Tommy, his character, to be deaf, dumb, and blind, but someone else could have played the role so that most of the singing duties weren’t delegated to Pete Townsend – not that I have anything against Townsend’s singing.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Ann-Margret) and Best Original Song Score and/or Adaptation

The North Star (1943)

 

The North Star features a lot more singing than you’d expect in a war movie set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The film’s music was written by one of our greatest composers, Aaron Copland (who received an Oscar nomination for his work here), and the lyrics are by the renowned Ira Gershwin, so it’s pretty good music. The plot begins with about thirty minutes of idyllic life in a farming village outside Kiev (now Kyiv, the modern-day capital of Ukraine). It’s the last day of school for the year, and a group of five young people are planning their trip to the larger city. So the peasants sing a lot, and why not? They sing at the school, they sing in the village at what appears to be some sort of outdoor festival, and the five young travelers sing on their way to Kiev. The five include Dana Andrews as Kolya Siminov, a pilot trainee in the Soviet air corps; an impossibly young and beautiful Farley Granger in his film debut as Kolya’s younger brother Damian, who’ll be a student at the University of Kiev in the fall; Anne Baxter (always looking like she’s plotting her next move) as Damien’s girlfriend Marina Pavlov; Jane Withers (of all people) as Marina’s close friend, Clavdia Kurin; and Eric Roberts (no, certainly not that one) as Grisha, Clavdia’s younger brother. After they’ve journeyed for a while (and, naturally, sung a few songs), they hear airplanes. We too can hear the faint noise of the plane engines before they appear on the screen. The Nazis attack, killing everyone in sight; only a few people on the road (including, at least temporarily) our five travelers. The Nazis are on their way to the village, apparently the North Star of the film’s title, in order to take care of their wounded. The men of the village realize that the Nazis will kill everyone they encounter, so they leave to defend the village but also leave orders for those who stay behind to destroy everything if the Nazis make it through. You’ve certainly seen enough World War II movies to know that the Nazis do, indeed, make it to the village before it can be destroyed, and they commit such a horrific act that it’s impossible to believe that something like that could happen while simultaneously believing that it’s exactly what could have happened. They start draining the blood of the children of the village to save wounded Nazis, sometimes taking so much blood that the child dies. The men of the village plan an attack, and the film features some outstanding stuntwork during that counterattack by the villagers. The North Star is also beautifully photographed by the great James Wong Howe. There’s a stark brightness and visual clarity in the scenes of village life before the Nazi attack, and those moments are clearly contrasted with a darkness for the scenes where the villagers try to reclaim their homeland. Lots of famed character actors appear in the film, including Walter Brennan as a farmer/wagon driver. (He was always stuck driving a wagon in his movies, wasn’t he?). Walter Huston is the town doctor and father to Clavdia and Grisha. Even Erich von Stroheim shows up as a Nazi doctor who’s apparently supposed to be sympathetic because he knows that what he’s doing is wrong (and that what the Nazis are doing is wrong). Of course, that’s complete bullshit, and the film doesn’t exactly make him seem very human at all by the end of the first sequence where a child is drained of blood and collapses in Huston’s arms to die. SIDE NOTE: I find it interesting that the House Un-American Activities Committee, that fabled band of deep thinkers, considered this film to be too pro-Soviet during the early years of the Cold War when they were trying to find Communists under every rock they could. Of course, the Soviets were our allies during World War II, and the film is set during 1941 before the United States entered the war. Lots of films were made during the war years to show support for our soldiers and perhaps sympathy for our allies fighting against the Nazis and the Axis powers. I didn’t quite see the film as so much pro-Soviet as it is strongly anti-Nazi. The screenwriter, Lillian Hellman, was certainly known as a Communist sympathizer even though she denied being a part of the Communist Party. There’s apparently a heavily edited version of the film that was released in the 1950s where all of the allegedly collectivist village life was deleted, and all references to the characters being Russian in any way were removed. That must have made for a very short film indeed.

Oscar Nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Sound Recording, Best Special Effects, Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

 

It’s a bit tough to classify The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. It is set in the West, but it’s hardly a typical western film. It borders on slapstick comedy at times, but the entire movie certainly isn’t set up to be funny. There’s even a lovely romance at the heart of the film, but I certainly don’t think that is the main focus here. I’d instead call it a surreal film experience, particularly when different characters start addressing the audience in voiceover narration, some just before they’re hanged (or perhaps, in retrospect, after they’ve been hanged?). The film is allegedly based upon the story of a real-life person named Roy Bean, who set himself up as an ersatz judge in a saloon he takes over from the gang of people who robbed him and tied him to his horse with the expectation of him being dragged to his death. It has to be very loosely based on anything realistic. Bean is played here by Paul Newman, a somewhat unexpected choice given the erratic tone of the film; Newman tended to pick movies that were, shall we say, more consistent? Bean gets help recovering from a local woman, Maria Elena (Victoria Principal, lovely in her movie debut), who decides that she will become his… wife? lover? co-conspirator? Again, it’s not easy to put a label on their relationship since he seems to be interested in other women besides Maria Elena. For example, he’s inexplicably attracted to the famed actress Lily Langtry, whom he’s never met or even seen perform, yet he puts posters of her on all of the walls of the saloon and frequently writes letters to her professing his love for her. Bean, using a single Texas law book as a prop, proclaims himself to be the ultimate determinant of criminality in the tiny town of Vinegaroon, so when a gang of outlaws rides into town, rather than arrest them or hang them (his preferred method of meting out justice), he instead deputizes them as his marshals. What follows is mostly a series of encounters with various famous actors in small roles. For example, Anthony Perkins shows up as the Rev. LaSalle, who encourages Bean to bury the people he’s killed; Tab Hunter is an outlaw captured by the marshals and quickly dispatched for killing a Chinese man (his defense is horrid, but a sign of what was permissible on screen even in 1972); and Stacy Keach appears briefly as an albino gunman who calls himself Bad Bob and wants to kill Bean. The most touching cameo appearance occurs when Ava Gardner, as beautiful as ever, shows up for the film’s final sequence as Langtry, making a stop at Bean’s saloon, now converted to a museum in his memory. She’s able to take her few moments on screen memorable even without much dialogue; what an expressive face she had, a very underrated talent. Other performers make more of an impact and garner more screen time. Ned Beatty is very good as an outlaw who becomes Bean’s bartender and trusted advisor. Jacqueline Bissett, still a relative newcomer to American film at the time, stars as Bean’s daughter Rose, who wants to carry on the family tradition of maintaining the saloon even after her father’s departure. Roddy McDowell as the lawyer Gass has perhaps the most significant supporting role for the second half of the film. Gass comes to town with a deed stating that he owns the property that Bean took from the saloon folk who tried to kill him; he slowly insinuates himself into the town’s life so that he can gain more control, even managing to befriend the ladies who were saloon girls (I think we know what that means) when they arrived in town. The oddest cameo has to be by John Huston, the film’s director, who makes a brief appearance in the film as mountain man Grizzly Adams (yep, just a couple of years before the movie and TV series with Dan Haggerty), never really showing his face but leaving behind a bear who likes to drink beer and who becomes a companion for Judge Bean. He even takes the bear on a picnic with Maria Elena, and at some point, everyone (bear included) has a turn in a swing and on a seesaw. It’s this random sequence that features the source of the film’s sole Oscar nomination, the song “Marmalade, Molasses & Honey,” which, despite its pedigree of having been written by such talented people as Maurice Jarre, Alan Bergman, and Marilyn Bergman, is instantly forgettable. It’s sung by Andy Williams as if it’s one of the filler tracks on an album of easy listening music that few people were going to purchase at that point in his career.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Marmalade, Molasses & Honey”)

Shaft (1971)

 

The opening sequence of Shaft clearly establishes Richard Roundtree as a star and his character John Shaft as the fascinating central focus of our attention. Clad in a brown leather trench coat and walking with a determined swagger, Roundtree’s Shaft emerges from the subway and walks through Times Square under movie marquees featuring films with white actors. Director Gordon Parks slyly inserts Shaft into movie history here by proclaiming in the opening sequence that, yes, this is a movie with a black lead character, and it’s going to be a different kind of film from those on the screens in New York City in the early 1970s. It certainly helps to have Isaac Hayes’s percolating “Theme from Shaft” to underscore Roundtree’s walk, a welcome musical and lyrical introduction to the film and the character. John Shaft is a private detective who’s hired by crime boss Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn, almost Shakespearean in his venality) to find his kidnapped daughter, this despite attempts by a couple of Bumpy’s men to kill Shaft earlier in the film. At Bumpy’s suggestion, Shaft unites with Ben Buford (Christopher St. John, father of actor Kristoff St. John, who was almost as stunningly good looking as his dad), a leader of a black “militant” group similar to the Black Panthers, to find Bumpy’s daughter. (Every group who wanted equal rights at the time was labeled “militant,” it seems.) It turns out that the Mafia have taken the girl, and according to Shaft’s friend in the NYPD, Lt. Vic Androzzi (Charles Cioffi), the tensions between the two criminal groups from opposite ends of the city are threatening to start a race war. The reasons behind this impending war are perhaps a bit murky, but it’s not those details that make this an exciting film. It’s the action, and Shaft has lots of gunfire and fighting and what must have been pretty violent stuff for the time period. The film also features some very interesting moments involving race relations, and many of them feature some sly humor. For example, when Lt. Androzzi holds up a black pen to Shaft’s face and says, “What is it with this black shit, huh? You ain’t so black,” Shaft holds up a white coffee mug to Androzzi and responds, “You ain’t so white either, baby.” The location shooting in New York lends the film a sense of authenticity, down to the unexpected real protest against the New York Times that Parks managed to capture for the opening sequence, and the numerous supporting characters, such as the many informants (like Antonio Fargas before Car Wash and the TV series Starsky & Hutch), keep the plot moving briskly. The few women in the movie are only incidental to the plot; they’re primarily there as objects for Shaft, who has sex with a couple of different women, never professing emotional attachments to any of them. Of course, James Bond was bedding multiple women in every 007 movie at the same time, but it must have been (and still must be) a surprise for some viewers to see a black male lead character engaging in the same behavior. Movies like Shaft don’t often get recognized for their award-worthy costume design, but even though it might not be a very practical outfit for taking down the Mafia, Shaft looks damn good in the black leather he wears for the latter part of the movie. The film is oddly progressive for when it was made. As an example, I would point out that when Shaft is looking for a couple of Mafiosos in a Greenwich Village bar, there’s a bit of witty interchange or banter between him and a gay bartender. I’d almost characterize it as playful, making this one of the few movies of its time that didn’t traffic in homophobic attitudes towards its gay characters. In a sly nod to other directors like Hitchcock who made brief appearances in their own films, Gordon Parks managed to cast himself in a cameo role as a landlord. It’s a fun moment in a film that holds up well overall despite some of the dated slang that the characters use at times. Shaft was so successful that it spawned two sequels, a sequel/reboot, and another sequel/reboot, all of them grounded in the original mythology of the 1971 film and all of them starring or featuring Roundtree. Oscar Trivia Note: Isaac Hayes was the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Original Song (for the theme song) and only the third African American to win an Oscar in any category (after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier).

Oscar Win: Best Original Song (“Theme from ‘Shaft’”)

Other Oscar Nomination: Best Original Dramatic Score

The Omen (1976)

 

The Omen is quite a trippy horror movie about a little boy who is apparently the spawn of the devil. Gregory Peck plays Robert Thorn, an American diplomat who is stationed in Rome with his pregnant wife Katherine (Lee Remick). She gives birth to a boy, but the child dies. A devious hospital chaplain offers Robert another child who was born at the same time but whose mother died in childbirth—or so he says. Robert agrees to the exchange without getting any documentation, proving that you should always, always get the receipts, and he never tells his wife about the swap. As the child grows up, weird stuff starts happening. The child, who is named Damien, doesn’t really talk a lot during the film, but there’s a lot of strange action surrounding him. His young nanny hangs herself in front of all the guests at Damien’s fifth birthday party in some sort of weird tribute/sacrifice. A weirdly intimidating Rottweiler shows up, as does Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw), a wild-eyed new nanny who is fiercely protective of this odd little boy (played by Harvey Stephens). Baboons attack the car when he and his mother go to a wildlife park, and Damien goes crazy when they try to take him to a church. The strangeness just never seems to end. Remick’s Kathy starts to think she’s going crazy, and both she and Robert dismiss all of the signs they keep getting that something is definitely… off… about their kid, much to the frustration of the audience who has seen too many strange things happen to avoid reaching a conclusion about Damien long before the movie confirms it. Robert, in particular, even keeps ignoring the warnings from a priest, Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), but after the priest dies mysteriously, Robert joins a photographer/journalist (the great David Warner) in tracking down clues about Damien’s origins. What they find is certainly unexpected, one of the best shocks that I’ve seen in a horror movie. All of this is, of course, allegedly based upon what the Bible predicts about the Antichrist. I can’t personally vouch for the accuracy of how the scripture is used throughout the movie, but I suspect its mostly hokum twisted for the sake of the plot. Thankfully, Peck has the necessary gravitas to make much of this crazy stuff seem plausible. Remick, always such a luminous and intriguing presence in whatever role she plays, is quite effective in the smaller part of the long-suffering wife; her exit from the film’s narrative is a sad, sad moment indeed. Much as I hate to perpetuate what might have led to his failure to have a longer Hollywood career, Stevens is just creepy, which I guess is a some sort of plus for a movie about the Antichrist.

Oscar Win: Best Original Score

Other Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Ave Satani”)

What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)

 

What’s the Matter with Helen? is an interesting mix of psychological horror film and suspense drama and movie musical. It has two great stars, Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters, playing the mothers of two young men who have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a young woman in Iowa. The mothers decide to move to Los Angeles and change their names. Well, to be fair, Reynolds’ Adelle Bruckner, the pushier one, decides that they should move to Los Angeles and open a dance studio to get away from all the depressing murder trial aftermath and press attention. Winters’ Helen Hill just wants to follow Adelle wherever she goes; she’s a bit adrift mentally and rather clingy. Besides, they’re being threatened by phone calls in Iowa, so they think that changing their names and leaving their home will somehow prevent them from being harassed any longer. When they arrive in Hollywood, Adelle (now Stuart) tries to make herself over in the guise of a Hollywood star, but Helen (now Martin) doesn’t watch movies and has little interest in anything other than feeding her pet rabbits, playing the piano for Adelle’s dance lessons, and listening to an evangelist on the radio each night. She’s suspicious of every man who comes to the studio/home that she and Adelle share, and she frequently has flashbacks or visions that make her very anxious. It’s a wonder than anyone wants her to be around the young children in the dance studio, but she plays the piano and helps with the costumes, so she’s allowed to stick around. All the little girls at the studio want to be Shirley Temple, of course, but what little girl in the 1930s didn’t dream of being Shirley Temple? Their mothers are portrayed as typical stage mothers, demanding that their daughter get more time and attention. One of the little girls, who does happen to be rather talented and can actually do a pretty good job of mimicking Temple, has a very rich, handsome father played by Dennis Weaver. Weaver’s Lincoln Palmer is quite charming and suave (and just a touch suspicious), and seeing him on screen made me nostalgic for the days of McCloud on the NBC Mystery Movie. The great Agnes Moorehead appears briefly onscreen as Sister Alma, a radio evangelist who is quite clearly modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson. Most of her performance, though, is accomplished by having her voice on the radio that Helen listens to so intently. As the film progresses, Helen’s mental state deteriorates further, and when a strange man comes into their house uninvited and calls her by her actual name of Helen Hill, she descends into a murderous state of mind from which she seemingly cannot escape. The film’s macabre ending, which the movie’s poster weirdly gives away, certainly sticks with you as the credits begin to roll. Reynolds has claimed that this is one of her favorite roles, and she’s excellent because it calls for the use of both her dramatic talents and her dancing and singing abilities. Winters is less successful as Helen, but then again, she had almost become something of a parody of herself by this point, giving rather mannered and over-the-top performances that seemed to call attention to her scenery-chewing tics. What’s the Matter with Helen? was nominated for just one Oscar, Best Costume Design, but the overall production design is quite outstanding. It certainly conjures up images of 1930s Hollywood, even somewhat self-consciously copying the kinds of sets that movies from that era would have had. I doubt that Academy voters saw this film, and if they did, they likely didn’t give Reynolds much serious attention as a contender for Best Actress in a Leading Role, but that sadly seemed to be the case for her throughout her marvelous career: lots of great performances, only one nomination (for The Unsinkable Molly Brown).

Oscar Nomination: Best Costume Design

Black Narcissus (1947)

 

How to describe Black Narcissus to a contemporary audience? The plot involves a group of nuns who trek to a remote former palace in the Himalayan Mountains to start a school for girls and a hospital to treat the indigenous population. However, they encounter harsh winds and frequent misunderstandings with the people they claim to want to help. And something else happens… Each of the nuns starts to become, well, disturbed or distracted. The Sister Superior, Sister Clodagh (the great Deborah Kerr), starts experiencing flashbacks to her life before she joined the order, a time she was in love with a young man she hoped to marry – memories she has not recalled in many years. Sister Philippa (Dame Flora Robson, subtle and effective) keeps getting distracted from her duties of planting vegetables and stares off into the distance, eventually planting lots of beautiful flowers instead of the vegetables necessary for food. Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron, giving a performance that is so gloriously unhinged it’s impossible to ignore), who was ill before the sisters made the journey up the mountain, decides to renounce her vows. And on and on and on… Is it the wind that causes these feelings? Is it the pure air they are now breathing? Is it the history of the place, its rather carnal past as a location where a former king kept his women? It is David Farrar’s hunky Mr. Dean? The film features a lot of sexual tension between Mr. Dean and the Sister Superior, and Sister Ruth fantasizes that she and Mr. Dean will be together once she’s left the order of nuns. Is there a possible love triangle there, or is it the frenzied mind of an unwell person? The film doesn’t really answer most of the questions that it raises. Should someone succumb to what they’re feeling, no matter how disturbing it might be, or should they just ignore their feelings? Can someone ignore those kinds of feelings? While you’re contemplating the underlying eroticism of the movie, you also can’t help but pay attention to the cinematography of Black Narcissus. It’s pretty spectacular even by today’s standards. You’ll see high-angle shots, canted angles, a range of dominant colors in different scenes, and some of the most astounding matte paintings integrated into the story. Considering that the film was shot inside the famed Pinewood Studios in England – yes, almost all indoors – the filmmakers were certainly able to create the feel of the outdoors through, for example, those matte paintings. They certainly wouldn’t have risked an actress being so close to a cliff; the insurance company would have vetoed that, certainly. I mean, it seems like a pretty bad place to put a bell anyway. I also kept noticing – how could you not notice – how Farrar, the male lead, is photographed. A lot of his body is exposed throughout the movie; he’s shirtless or has his chest exposed throughout the movie. And has any man ever worn shorter shorts on film? (I will refrain from mentioning the awful hat that he wears.) He’s clearly a distraction for Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth and perhaps even for us as audience members. As beautiful and intriguing as the film is, it’s also very problematic in its depictions of the indigenous and native people. Some of them are meant to be comic relief, such as May Hallat’s Angu Aya, or even Eddie Whaley Jr. as the young translator Joseph Anthony, who knows way more than he ever tells. The nuns, especially Kerr’s Sister Clodagh, are often confused by the behaviors of the indigenous people, and it leads to some very ridiculous behavior. For example, trying to get rid of a holy man revered by many people is a really, really bad idea. Sister Clodagh also gets to represent that British colonial gaze when, for instance, she (and the camera and we viewers) looks at – leers at? – Kanchi (played by British actress Jean Simmons, horribly miscast here) and makes some pretty offensive assumptions about her. Indian-born actor Sabu, playing the so-called Young Colonel, gets the most well-rounded role for a native actor, and he is the only person playing an indigenous person in an important role who isn’t a British actor in yellowface. Black Narcissus was released just months before India declared its independence from Great Britain in 1947. Perhaps the film can be read as a commentary on how the British were truly never able to comprehend why they didn’t belong in India and had to retreat quietly but with unresolved confusion.

Oscar Wins: Best Color Cinematography and Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration

Rashomon (1951; 1952)

Rashomon is a film that features black-and-white cinematography, just eight actors, and only three settings for the entire narrative, yet it still manages to captivate viewers and make then reconsider their notions of what a film can achieve with such simple materials. At the film’s start, a woodcutter and a priest are sitting out a rainstorm in the crumbling ruins of the Rashomon Gate when a commoner seeks shelter with them. The woodcutter and priest are still puzzling over the conflicting testimony that they’ve just seen involving the death of a samurai and the rape of his wife. The commoner, sensing that the rain might last a while, is intrigued enough to ask what happened. What follows is a bewildering, entrancing series of four different versions of the same event told from multiple perspectives: the woodcutter’s version, that of a bandit who captures the couple and rapes the wife, the wife herself, and, most astonishing, the dead samurai, who testifies through a medium. We see just how altered the same story can be through different sets of eyes, and we are left at the end of the film with no clear sense of what “really” happened. I don’t think we’re meant to know anyway. Instead, we’re supposed to start questioning the integrity of any story that we hear or see, even this film itself. When the woodcutter has to admit later that he has lied in his testimony, we are dumbfounded to discover that even the person telling us the story of what he has seen and said might be lying. The optimistic ending perhaps is necessary for us to retain some faith in our fellow human beings, but it doesn’t automatically satisfy a viewer who has begun questioning the very role of narrative itself. The breakout star of Rashomon was Toshiro Mifune as the bandit Tajormaru; he’s wild, almost deranged, in his behavior, and you sometimes wonder if he thinks he’s in a different movie from the rest of the cast. The real star for me, though, is Machiko Kyo, the actress who plays the woman who is raped by the bandit. She gets the most wide-ranging series of characterizations because each witness tailors the story to suit their individual needs, and she is depicted in wildly different ways by the men who tell her story. Her own version of events is quite the tour-de-force performance itself. Rashomon was the first major Japanese film to garner international attention, and even though more than seven decades have passed since its initial release, it still has the power to startle us and make us wonder how people can have “seen” such wildly different events. That’s what a true cinematic masterpiece can do – even after all these years. The woodcutter’s refrain of “I just don’t understand” lingers with us long after the film itself has ended. A note about foreign films and their years of eligibility: Rashomon was first released in Japan in 1950, but it didn’t make it to the United States until December 1951. That, however, didn’t mean it was eligible for anything other than a special honor, which it won, for foreign language film. It was still in release in 1952 and received Oscar attention the next year for its set decoration. You’ll see throughout Academy Award history this particular oddity. A film will be nominated for or even win the Foreign Language Film Oscar and then be nominated for other awards the following year. Such are the vagaries of the Academy Awards.

Oscar Win (1951): Honorary Award for being the “most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.”

Other Oscar Nomination (1952): Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration