The Oscar (1966)

 

The Oscar features one of the most ruthless and arrogant and nasty leading characters ever put on film (and this was in the same year as Alfie!). Some claim that this intensely bad movie is camp, but honestly the main character is so despicable, it’s hard to enjoy the rest of the movie or find any humor in the awful situations in which the characters find themselves. Stephen Boyd plays Frankie Fane, an actor who is one of the five nominees for Best Actor. Boyd, as I have mentioned elsewhere in talking about Fantastic Voyage (also released in 1966) was certainly a handsome fellow, but in this film, he’s a hothead, prone to violence, rude to women, always ready with his fists and a sharp tongue. It's supposed to be a sort of rags-to-riches tale about how Fane makes his way from essentially nothing to being a star. It would be easier to sympathize with Frankie’s rise to fame, though, if the character wasn’t such an ass to everyone he meets (and discards) along the way. The singer Tony Bennett plays Frankie’s best friend Hymie Kelly; they used to work in seedy joints with a stripper played by Jill St. John. Bennett provides the voiceover for the film, but he was reportedly so displeased with his performance that he never acted again, returning to the career at which he was one of the best, singing. The cast is full of former Oscar winners and nominees in small parts. Broderick Crawford plays a small town sheriff, Ed Begley is the owner of one of the strip joints the three worked together, Ernest Borgnine plays a private detective Frankie inexplicably hires to help him get the sympathy vote from Academy members. Edith Head, who was Oscar-nominated for her costume design for the film, also makes a cameo appearance; it’s tough to believe there were no other films with costume design more worthy than this stinker. The film eventually becomes a who’s-who of Hollywood stars. It becomes a guess game of “who is that?” Milton Berle does a fine job in a dramatic role as Frankie’s agent, Joseph Cotton is the head of a movie studio who’s initially reluctant to hire Fane, and Elke Sommer plays his love interest, a designer named Kay Bergdahl who he cheats on almost immediately after they finally marry.  Even Hedda Hopper, sans one of her famed hats but with piles of hair instead, shows up just in time to watch Frank be rude to his “date,” Jean Hale’s Cheryl Barker, an actress chosen by the studio to make Frankie get some publicity. Of course, Frankie is mean to every single person in the film, including his friend Hymie and his wife Kay, the last two people who seem to care about him. His acting career fades quickly because no one wants to work with him. When Fane reaches what he considers his lowest point, working to get a part in a TV western, he’s nominated for the title award and thinks he’s about to see a career rebound. It’s all rather silly stuff, particularly since the role for which Fane is nominated is basically just his awful self. By the time Cotton’s studio chief makes an impassioned speech about how important the Academy Awards “really” are, you’re rooting for any of the other Best Actor nominees to win (and for this film to be over). It’s quite a list of talented nominees, really, including Burt Lancaster, Richard Burton, and Frank Sinatra. It’s up to Merle Oberon, of all people, to announce Sinatra as the eventual winner, and then everyone else in the movie, all of whom strangely seem to be in the audience for the awards ceremony, takes great joy in Frankie’s defeat. If his character weren’t so unlikeable, the audience might wonder what happened to him after his loss, but at this point, the less we see of Frankie Fane, the better. How something as silly as The Oscar, with its cast of former stars and B-list performers and its reliance on the language of beatniks, got any awards attention is a mystery to me.

Oscar Nominations: Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Color Costume Design

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

 

The Man Who Knew Too Much is one of my favorite films by Alfred Hitchcock. I know that it’s considered a “minor” masterpiece of his, but the story, the performances, the effective use of music—all of them and other elements combine to make such an entertaining film. I find it tough to resist. Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day play Ben and Jo McKenna, who are in Morocco for a vacation with their son Hank (Christopher Olsen) when the young boy is kidnapped. A stranger named Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin) gets killed in the streets of Marrakesh and leaves Stewart’s Ben with a whispered clue before he dies. Soon it becomes apparent that the McKennas are caught up in some bizarre international intrigue based upon a misunderstanding of who they are, something that ultimately involves an ambitious ambassador who wants to move up in the hierarchy of his home country. Really, though, those details hardly matter. In a Hitchcock films, it’s not really about the plot; it’s about the suspense that can be created. What strikes me about most Hitchcock films is how he often lets the audience know much more than the characters do. It helps to increase the tension and make us far more anxious when we can figure things out faster than the characters can. We figure out who the villains are and what they’re up to while Ben and Jo are trying to figure out, for example, who or what Ambrose Chappell or Ambrose Chapel is and what he/it has to do with Hank’s disappearance. I also love how Hitchcock can focus in on a particular moment or image, such as when Stewart is thumbing a phone book while someone else is on the phone. He needs to find his son and he needs to get information to his wife, but he can’t let the other characters in the scene know too much. Steward was one of Hitchcock’s favorite actors, and he’s pretty tightly wound here. You can always sense that he could lash out at someone in an instant. Day, always such a welcome presence on the screen, introduces a song in the film that would become her signature recording, “Whatever Will Be (Que Sera, Sera),” first as a song that she sings to Hank in order to get him to go to bed. Later it takes on even more psychological impact when it serves as the means to find Hank after his kidnapping. It’s clever of Hitchcock to use Day’s talent as a singer to make a plot point even more poignant. Music plays another integral role in the film’s plot when Jo and Ben have to try to stop an attempted assassination at the Royal Albert Hall. An orchestra is performing “Storm Cloud” by Bernard Hermann, Hitchcock’s favorite composer, and the crash of the cymbals at a key moment during the performance is supposed to be a cue for the would-be assassin. The sequence just goes on and on, and we are in our own form as terror as we watch Jo, helpless to stop what’s coming, listen and anticipate the fatal note. It’s quite a sequence in both its use of music and in the superb editing for which Hitchcock’s films are known. The Man Who Knew Too Much also has its fair share of those little touches of Hitchcockian humor. For example, one of the conspirators in the kidnapping asks, “Don’t you know that Americans dislike having their children stolen?” Well, of course, they do. It’s also hilarious that Stewart at one point has to climb out of a bell tower in order to escape being trapped. By the time we watch the camera move up a flight of stairs to where Hank is being held prisoner, you know you’re still in the hands of a master filmmaker. He saves one of his best moments for last. When Ben and Jo return with Hank after what must have been many hours away from the friends they’ve left in their apartment, all Ben says is “Sorry we were gone so long, but we had to pick up Hank.” Of course, they did; that’s the whole point of the movie, after all, isn’t it?

Oscar Win: Best Song (“Whatever Will Be [Que Sera Sera]”)

Air Force (1943)

 

Air Force is a solid piece of World War II era propaganda made by Hollywood. It’s filmmaking designed to make the audience support our wartime efforts and to revile, in this case, the Japanese enemy. The battle sequences are staged very effectively, and they often demonstrate the kind of American might that was having success at destroying Japanese warships. Much of the film follows the crew of the “Mary-Ann,” a B-17 bomber plane that arrives in Hawaii just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, then travels to Wake Island just after it has been attacked, and journeys to the Philippines just after another attack – perhaps you can detect a trend here. They always seem to be flying into a dangerous situation despite being warned against landing or flying out of an area to head to another dangerous location. It’s a lot of takeoffs and landings for one film to depict. Most of the characters are “types” more than realistic portrayals of actual people. Whether you want to call them archetypes or stereotypes is up to you. When you have characters called “Irish” and “Tex” and “Minnesota,” you know that you’re probably not going to have the depth of characterization that more actor-driven movies might have. The opening credits don’t even mention the names of the characters; John Ridgely plays The Pilot, Gig Young plays The Co-Pilot, Arthur Kennedy is The Bombardier, etc. We do get some bits of information about most of the men in the “Mary-Ann.” For example, the gunner failed his pilot training but is actually quite a good pilot. There’s a fresh recruit that you just know isn’t destined to last for too long. There’s an old-timer whose son is carrying on the family tradition of military service. Because we only get brief insights into the backgrounds of these men, it is tough to really speak much about the performances, but John Garfield as the gunner Joe Winocki stands out (just as you would expect an actor of Garfield’s talent to do) as does Harry Carey as Robbie White, the experienced crew chief. The film features only a few minor female characters because this is truly a film about men in wartime and what they have to endure in battle and afterwards. (For some comic relief, there is a dog named Tripoli, who barks whenever someone says the word/name “Moto.” It’s rather cringe-inducing after a while, though, a “joke” that truly doesn’t stay fresh for long.) The film spends quite a bit of time in the cockpit with the men gently teasing each other, such as when the pilot and co-pilot rib their passenger, a fighter pilot who prefers to fly the smaller planes, over which kind of pilots are the best. The plane itself endures a lot. It keeps getting shot at and damaged, and more (longer) repairs are needed each time it lands. Air Force also isn’t afraid to depict one of the typical outcomes of war: death. An extended battle sequence late in the film is particularly brutal in that respect, particularly in its depiction of the defeated Japanese. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the cinematography; it’s first-rate and really shows a mastery of the use of light to illuminate faces in those flights at night.

Oscar Win: Best Film Editing

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, and Best Special Effects

Far from Heaven (2002)

 

Far from Heaven is quite simply a gorgeous film. The production design, the costume design, the cinematography – those beautiful fall colors! – are all just first rate. The score by Elmer Bernstein is so evocative of the movies from the 1950s that director Todd Haynes pays homage to. Far from Heaven is really a sort of reworking of the Douglas Sirk classic All that Heaven Allows (1955), but instead of focusing on two people from different classes who fall in love with each other, the newer film focuses on the growing affection between two people of different races. It also presents a sympathetic depiction of a gay man coming to terms with his sexuality during a period when that was as taboo a subject as interracial relationships. Cathy Whitaker (the astoundingly good Julianne Moore) lives a comfortable if restrained middle class existence. When she surprises her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid giving a career-best performance) at his office after work hours, she finds him kissing another man. Their relationship, unsurprisingly, begins to crumble after this revelation. He seeks psychiatric help, as did many gay men of the time, but refuses to share with her how his treatment is going. He begins drinking more, he becomes outraged easily, and he even slaps her over his inability to… uh… perform. Quaid is a standout in this film. The scene where he reveals that he’s fallen in love with someone else, another man, is a marvel to watch. Moore deservedly received attention for her performance, which is note perfect, but Quaid should have been nominated as well. Cathy develops a friendship with her black gardener, played with such gentleness by Dennis Haysbert. His Raymond Deacon is the only person around whom Cathy seems to feel comfortable. They bond over modern art and even go to have a meal at a local restaurant, but their friendship starts to garner them a lot of attention. The neighbors, played by such great actors as Celia Weston, begin gossiping, and he realizes that they cannot keep seeing each other. In a wonderful small touch, Haysbert sometimes even dresses like Rock Hudson, the male lead of All That Heaven Allows. Haynes and his crew pay such close attention to almost every detail. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent. Viola Davis, early in her career here, gets one good scene, but it’s enough to see why she’s such an acclaimed actor. Patricia Clarkson is a delight as Cathy’s best friend Elinor; she seems to be very modern and understanding and accepting until Cathy reveals her possible feelings for Raymond and then Elinor is shockingly judgmental. The final sequence of the film is just heartbreaking in so many ways, but you know that it’s also truly realistic.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Julianne Moore), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score

There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)

 There’s No Business Like Show Business is, by today’s standards and perhaps even by the standards of the 1950s, a rather old-fashioned musical. It’s a family drama that begins in the vaudeville of 1919. Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey play a performing couple named Molly and Terry Donahue experiencing the ups and downs of a theatrical life. The arrival of each of their three children means another addition to the act until they become known as the Five Donahues. However, Molly wants a stable life for her children, and she and Terry agree to pack them off to a boarding school while they continue earning a living on the road. The three children, now grown up, return to the family act, naturally, but each of them starts to want a different path than show business. The eldest child, Steve (played by singer Johnny Ray), becomes a priest. Tim, the younger son (played by the always reliable Donald O’Connor), falls for a very ambitious hatcheck girl, Vicky Parker (Marilyn Monroe—more on her later), but she’s not interested in him initially because he can’t help to further her career. Tim’s sister, Katy (the delightful and underused Mitzi Gaynor), eventually joins him as a backup performer for Vicky. Katy and Tim have an argument, Vicky and Tim have a disagreement, and Tim disappears. Of course, you know O’Connor is not going to be gone for too long, not in a movie this focused on family dynamics. Monroe is definitely the highlight for a modern audience, and her few numbers are wonderfully staged. “Heat Wave” is quite a showcase for her talents; why Hollywood couldn’t see how remarkably gifted she was remains a mystery. You’ll likely recognize the iconic white gown Monroe wears for “After You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want It.” (Many of her best songs relied on that kind of double entendre.) As great as Monroe is or was, she isn’t truly the star of the film. Merman is really the star and is a more fascinating performer to me. She was never a huge movie star; she just couldn’t seem to transfer her Broadway superstardom to the big screen. Perhaps it’s because she always seems to be so… “on.” She never sings quietly; you can always hear her distinctive voice above everyone else, particularly in the rendition of the movie’s title song. All of the songs in the movie were written by Irving Berlin, a favorite composer of Merman’s. However, I don’t know that I needed to hear nine minutes of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in Scottish dialect and French and German and…. It’s a bit much, frankly, even for such a nice and well-loved song. My favorite of the songs is “A Sailor’s Not a Sailor (‘Til a Sailor’s Been Tattooed),” a real eye-opener performed by Merman and Gaynor in naval attire. It’s the butchest I’ve ever seen Merman on screen, and that’s saying a lot. Honestly, nothing all that dramatic happens in the movie. Having children choose different paths from their parents isn’t a new storyline. So when Molly starts belting out the title song during a benefit performance at the Hippodrome, it’s hardly surprising to see her husband and three children join her. Even Marilyn’s Vicky is there. The final scene goes just as you would expect, and really, you shouldn’t necessarily want it to go any other way.

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture Story, Best Color Costume Design, and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)

 

The frame story of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, involving the writing of the family history of a local duke by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, is nowhere near as interesting as the three fairy tales that are presented and that make up a significant portion of the film’s plot. In essence, it’s like having three clever short films linked together by a rather weak and uninteresting story of the guys who collected them. They might have been more successful had they been released as separate short films. Wilhelm Grimm (Laurence Harvey, as unctuous as ever) keeps getting distracted from the work for which he and his brother are being paid and which is allowing them to live rent free. He only cares about the enchanting stories that he hears from local people. Jacob (Karlheinz Bohm, probably best known for his work in European films) is wooing (badly) the beautiful Greta Heinrich (Barbara Eden) and writing boring books about grammar and other dull subjects that no one really wants to purchase. By the way, it’s always a shock for me to see actors like Eden who are so identified with a particular role performing in a film or TV show that’s so vastly different from what they’re known for. The most interesting thing that happens to the two brothers is the loss of the manuscript of the duke’s history and Wilhelm’s subsequent illness that leaves him hallucinating that he’s being visited by various fairy tale characters like Rumpelstiltskin and the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood. Since the film is geared towards kids, it’s tough to imagine that this kind of stuff would hold their interest for the whole 135 minutes running time. The three stories, however, are delightful; they’re bright and colorful representations of the tales Wilhelm is collecting. The first one, “The Dancing Princess,” features Yvette Mimieux and Russ Tamblyn, a cloak that renders the wearer invisible, and one of the longest carriage rides in the history of film—no, really, it takes up a ridiculous amount of time. This segment also has Jim Backus and Beulah Bondi in supporting roles, just a couple the supporting players who make the film more watchable. “The Cobbler and the Elves” actually features Harvey as the shoemaker and George Pal’s Puppetoons as the elves. The story is a famous one about how the cobbler gets into trouble with everyone because he’s always late with their orders, but the elves save him by making all of the shoes in just one night. Watching the Puppetoons craft the shoes is a lot of fun, honestly, and you’re willing to forgive the inclusion of Harvey in this second role because he’s not always the main focus. This is the story that Wilhelm tells a group of kids and the patrons of a bookstore in order to see if there’s any interest in a book of these kinds of tales; I think we all know how that turns out. The final fairy tale is the strangely-named “The Singing Bone” starring Terry-Thoms and Buddy Hackett, a story of betrayal involving a knight and his squire, a very sparkly dragon, a miraculous return from the dead, and the most and best special effects of the movie. One of the few films to be produced in Cinerama, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm makes effective use of all that screen space. Most of the movie still makes for fun viewing, but I kept wanting to fast forward through all of the stuff involving the brothers’ personal lives and get back to the fairy tales.; that’s where the true fun is.

Oscar Win: Best Color Costume Design

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment