Best Picture of 1939

 

Oscar Winner: Gone With the Wind

Other Nominees: Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights

My Choice: The year 1939 is often referred to as the “greatest year in Hollywood” because of the astonishing number of quality films that were released that year. It’s tough to argue with the list of nominees for Best Picture even if it fails to include some other classics from that same year. However, it’s also tough to argue with the Academy’s choice of Best Picture. I’ve already discussed the complications that come with the film Gone With the Wind, but when you consider the sheer scale of filmmaking involved and you watch the iconic performances by everyone in the cast and you think of the lasting impact that it has had (good and bad, I suppose), it’s the most obvious and deserving choice.

If I’m allowed to pick a runner-up, it would be The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the second most influential film from that year, and it too represents filmmaking on a grand scale and features great performances from everyone in the cast. Why wouldn’t I be allowed to pick a runner-up? It’s my blog, after all.

Of Mice and Men (1939)

 

Of Mice and Men is a pretty bleak film set in Depression-era California. It’s based upon the novel by John Steinbeck, and if you’re expecting a happy experience, you’ve clearly never read one of Steinbeck’s books from that era. Two migrant workers keep moving from one job to another, and it’s a tough existence, particularly since one of them suffered a brain injury as a child and cannot fully comprehend most of what people say to him. However, he’s astonishingly strong and a hard worker who listens to and does whatever his friend tells him to do.

The two friends are George (played by Burgess Meredith) and Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr.), and they’ve been together for years. I think I heard George say they were cousins at one point early in the film, but that still doesn’t stop the questioning from everyone about why the two of them are together. It’s pretty simple, though. Lennie needs someone to keep him from using his brute strength to harm someone or something. At the start of the film, the two of them are escaping from Weed because Lennie did some act that upset the townspeople. We’re never told exactly what happened, but we start to imagine what it could be.

We quickly get introduced to a host of characters that will play important parts in the narrative. Curley and his new wife, for example, will keep getting involved in George and Lennie’s lives. Curley (Bob Steele) is the son of the owner of the barley farm the two men show up at. Curley is jealous of any attention his wife gets, and he’s quite hot-tempered, seemingly always up for a fight. His wife (Betty Field, fascinating in a small role) is bored and, to be fair, a bit of a tramp. She wants to see other people, to get out of the house from time to time, but Curley keeps leaving her alone to hang out in the nearby town with other men and, presumably, other women. Make of that sentence what you will.

Charles Bickford plays Slim, the most experienced and knowledgeable hand on the farm and someone who takes little guff from Curley. Roman Bohnen plays Candy, a farm worker who lost his hand in an accident and hangs around doing little odd jobs. He has an older dog that the other workers object to because it’s gotten weak and rather smelly. One of the first terrible incidents in the film is when several of the men convince Candy to let them kill the old dog and he would get a new puppy from Slim (like Curley’s wife has done). You can see from Bohnen’s face just how much it breaks Candy’s heart to let them kill his dog. It’s a tough moment in the film, one that will resonate all the way through until the ending.

Georgy and Lennie have a plan to earn enough money to buy a farm, a place where they can escape the constant difficulty of being someone else’s worker. Lennie will get to raise some rabbits, and he never stops talking about the rabbits. He really, really gets excited about them. That’s how Candy finds out about the farm and asks if he can join them. He has a lot of money, probably from being paid off after losing his hand on the job. Even Crooks, an African American farmhand who isn’t allowed to sleep in the bunkhouse with the rest of the men, asks to join them on the farm. It’s clearly meant as a representation of the American Dream, and it’s interesting to see that the downtrodden, the disabled, and the marginalized are the ones most invested in trying to escape their current situation and achieve that dream.

A series of misunderstandings leads Curley to attack Lennie, and the larger man breaks Curley’s hand even though he was just trying to stop the temperamental Curley from continuing to hit him. Lennie just cannot control himself; he doesn’t understand how strong he is and how dangerous he is as a consequence. Chaney was dismissed as a character actor and later as a horror film actor, but he’s very effective here. He is more expert at conveying someone with the lingering effects of a brain injury that a lot of other actors could muster.

The acting overall is particularly first rate. Several of the cast members came from the original Broadway production of the play adapted from Steinbeck’s novel, including Leigh Whipper who played Crooks and then went on to have a long career in Hollywood. Bohnen was also a stage actor, but he embodies Candy in a very naturalistic way here. Meredith had already performed in a few films, and Chaney had more than fifty film credits by the time he was cast as Lennie. Field was starring in just her second film here, but she brings a fitting sense of world-weariness to the role. She makes quite an impression in the few key scenes she has in the film.

It’s a sequence between Chaney and Field that serves as the climactic moment of the film. Curley has kicked his wife out of the house, so she goes to the barn to get the puppy that Slim gave her. She discovers Lennie there, sad because he’s accidentally killed his puppy by petting it too hard. Field makes the most of this scene, giving quite the monologue about how she wound up with Curley and how she’s going to Hollywood to be discovered. Lennie, of course, doesn’t follow most of this. He just keeps repeating the same lines, which prompts the rather low-class, rough woman to call him “goofy.”

Lennie talks about how much he likes soft things, perhaps the fur of the puppy or the fur of a rabbit, as examples. She talks about how soft her hair is and asks him to touch it to feel for himself. He hurts her because he doesn’t realize how strong he is and winds up killing her by accident. It’s a tragic moment in the film because we realize rather quickly that Lennie and George will have to leave again and keep looking for a new place.

When George and Candy discover the body, it doesn’t take long for the rest of the men on the farm to show up and figure out that Lennie is to blame. They form a search party, and it’s a race to see who can find Lennie first. This final sequence really allows Meredith to shine. He demonstrates the heaviness of the burden he’s been carrying trying to look out for Lennie all these years. It’s quite exhausting, so when he reaches a fatal decision that harkens back to an earlier scene in the film, the audience might be horrified, of course, but they will fully comprehend why he takes the action that he does. Meredith had a long and distinguished career in film, and this early role demonstrates how suited he was to the medium.

I don’t always talk about musical scores for dramatic films because, to a degree, they’re meant to serve as background music. However, Of Mice and Men features a marvelous original score by the great American composer Aaron Copland. This was only three years before he completed “Fanfare for the Common Man” and just five years before “Appalachian Spring,” two of his masterpieces. It’s tough to watch the film and not pay careful attention to the music that underscores the dramatic tension.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Sound Recording, Best Scoring, and Best Original Score 

Wuthering Heights (1939)

 

Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest love stories in fiction even though it ends tragically for the lovers. (No, I won’t apologize for spoiling the ending of a novel that’s been around for almost two hundred years now.) This film adaptation of Emily Bronte’s novel features less than half of the full plot of the novel, but that allows it to focus more on the central romance, and that’s probably the reason that so many readers, particularly English majors, still love the book.

The film begins and ends with the arrival at the estate called Wuthering Heights of a stranger named Lockwood. He’s been caught in a snow storm and seeks refuge at the home, but the owner, Heathcliff, is less than hospitable. When Lockwood sees and hears what appears to be the figure of a woman in the snow, Heathcliff runs outside into the storm, leaving the housekeeper, Ellen (the great Flora Robson), to share with Lockwood the details of the love between Cathy and Heathcliff. What follows for much of the film is a flashback narrative told by Ellen. A small complaint here, and perhaps it was just the print that I watched, but Robson’s voiceover sounded like it had been recorded in a well.

Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights as an orphaned young boy from Liverpool. Cathy’s father takes him in, and Cathy and Heathcliff become friends as children. Hindley, Cathy’s brother, is a different matter, though, and he never accepts Heathcliff as belonging to the family or the home. Heathcliff and Cathy fantasize about having a future together that is more fairy tale than realistic, but when Cathy and Hindley’s father dies, Hindley takes over control of the home and becomes a drunk. He also becomes even more dismissive of Heathcliff, who has been forced to live in the stables with the horses.

As adults, Cathy and Heathcliff are played by Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, certainly one of the most attractive couples to appear on film. The two young lovers have been meeting in secret atop Penistone Crags overlooking the Yorkshire moors. It’s there that they profess their feelings for each other and make plans to be together. Yes, the class distinctions and Heathcliff’s unknown origin will present difficulties, but they seem unwilling to consider that they might ever be separated.

The two of them sneak into a neighboring home to watch a party from outside, but two dogs attack them, leaving Cathy’s leg wounded. The young man of the house, Edgar Linton (played by a young David Niven), takes charge of her recovery but demands that Heathcliff leave. Cathy stays at the Linton estate for months healing and gets caught up in the word of rich people. Edgar falls in love with her and proposes to her. After all, Heathcliff (who is frequently dismissed as being a gypsy) hasn’t been around, Edgar is handsome and she is beautiful, and why shouldn’t they be together? Who has ever heard of a romantic storyline that didn’t involve at least three people?

Cathy now wants fine things and confesses to Ellen that she’s planning to marry Edgar. Heathcliff overhears their conversation and gets upset when he thinks she no longer loves him. I mean, she does say that it would be degrading for her to marry him, and this is not long after she’s criticized him for having dirty hands, which is probably pretty common for stable boys, to be honest. Those are some rather unkind things to say about someone you love. Of course, he doesn’t hear the entire discussion and misses the part when Cathy says that she realizes that they are meant to be together. He rides away, and she runs after him in a storm.

Once again, Cathy takes months to recover. They had very delicate constitutions in those days, and a good soaking from a rain would make them ill for a long time, I suppose. After she recovers, she marries Edgar and moves into his home. She and his sister, Isabella (Geraldine Fitzgerald) become friends, and everyone seems happy. You know where this is headed, right? Yes, Heathcliff returns after being away for a long time, and he’s now a gentleman. You can tell by the change in his clothes. He’s also acquired enough money to pay off Hindley’s gambling debts and liquor bills, making him the owner of Wuthering Heights.

His success shocks everyone, naturally, but Cathy claims to be happily married. It’s Isabella who finds herself attracted to Heathcliff. Edgar vows to prevent them from seeing each other, but everyone knows how that’s going to turn out. Heathcliff has become especially cruel now that he has money. He lets Hindley live at Wuthering Heights, but he regularly demoralizes the man and reminds him constantly of his cowardice. He also plans to make Cathy suffer by marrying Isabella.

You could see why someone young and perhaps naïve like Isabella could find Heathcliff appealing. He’s handsome and has a lot of money. He doesn’t seem to suffer fools easily. (Plus, he’s played by Olivier when he was perhaps his most handsome.) I have always suspected, though, that she is more aware of what’s going on than most viewers or readers think. Look at the scene where Isabella and Cathy fight over Heathcliff. Isabella clearly knows that Cathy is still in love with him, and he’s unable to look at anyone but Cathy. It’s only after living in the miserable home that is Wuthering Heights that Isabella herself starts to regret her decision.

Cathy then falls ill to one of those mysterious ailments that no one in the movie can name, perhaps for fear that it will be catching. It might just be love sickness or heartbrokenness, but as Ellen puts it, she’s willing herself to die. I guess if she cannot be happy with Heathcliff, she’d rather just perish. Heathcliff finds out that she’s ill and shows up in her bedroom to, basically, tell her off for leaving him, not just now but all those years ago when she chose Edgar, a pretty rough way to say goodbye to someone you love, certainly. She asks for forgiveness, tells him that she’s always loved him, and asks him to take her to her window so that she can see the moors again.

She vows that she’ll wait for him at the crags after she dies, and he prays that she will haunt him until his own death. That brings us back to the frame story that began the film. The doctor, played by the reliable Donald Crisp, shows up and says that he thought he saw Heathcliff and a woman walking together on the moors. When he climbed to Penistone Crags, he only found Heathcliff’s dead body in the snow. The film then provides a fantastical image of their “ghosts” (for lack of a better word) walking away from the camera.

It’s an emotional story, true, and you can see why it still resonates after so many years. I could point out that it seems from this version that Heathcliff was more in love and devoted than Cathy, but that might draw the ire of the Cathy-lovers out there. I will say that musical score by Alfred Newman is so evocative and lush, and the rather dark cinematography by Gregg Toland certainly fits the overall tone of the film. Olivier received his first of twelve Oscar nominations for this film, and Fitzgerald was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Oberon was overlooked for her performance, but it was a very tough year for Best Actress.

I’d like to single out one performer who didn’t get any Oscar attention. Robson is marvelous as Ellen. Watch her face during that pivotal scene where Heathcliff overhears the wrong part of a conversation about Cathy’s impeding marriage to Edgar. Look at how emotional she gets when she has to tell Isabella and Heathcliff that Cathy is dying. Robson takes a small role as a housekeeper and turns it into a pivotal one to the plot without the kinds of overacting that normally gets attention in small roles.

Oscar Win: Best Black-and-White Cinematography

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Laurence Olivier), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Geraldine Fitzgerald), Best Director (William Wyler), Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score

Best Actress of 1939

 

Bette Davis was always at her best when she played strong-willed women, and the role of Judith Traherne in Dark Victory was perfect casting. Judith is a hard-drinking, hard-partying socialite who learns that she has a brain tumor. At first, she refuses medical attention, but eventually she succumbs to the wishes of those around her, including her doctor, played by George Brent. It’s interesting to watch Davis as a young woman who realizes that she might die from her illness. She’s so good at fidgeting when she’s uncomfortable such as during her initial examination in the doctor’s office. You know she’s fearful and fragile under all of her bluster. After the surgery, Judith initially has a different personality; she is confident and cheerful and outgoing. However, discovering by accident that the tumor was inoperable and that she has very little time left to life, she reverts to her old ways of drinking. She’s hurt and angry after learning the truth, and she lashes out at people who are her friends and even at her now-husband, the doctor. By the way, Davis is particularly good at playing drunk. She doesn’t overplay it; she behaves the ways that drunks often do. The film’s emotional payoff happens after Judith comes to a place of acceptance. The final sequence of the film, after she’s learned that she’s going to die within a few hours, is heartbreaking to watch as Davis makes a series of choices for her reactions to her best friend and her husband. She’d already won two Academy Awards by this point, and no one was likely to take the honor away from Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind, but Davis gives another one of her unforgettable performances in Dark Victory.

Irene Dunne plays Terry McKay, a former nightclub singer who enjoys a fling with a handsome French playboy in Love Affair, and she’s witty and knowing and dear, qualities Dunne could bring to almost any role. She also displays a flair for fashion and sophistication in this film, so it’s no wonder that Charles Boyer’s Michel Marnay falls for her. Both of them are, naturally, involved in relationships with other people, but as we watch their romance bloom while they are on a journey by boat to the United States, we can sense how they are meant to be together. Terry may act very coy with Michel at times, but Dunne infuses a wry sense of humor (and that hearty laugh of hers) into the performance at just the right time to undercut any sense of hesitation we might have about believing that she loves him. When they arrive in America, they depart with plans to meet up six months later to see how they feel about each other after some distance apart. You don’t think a Hollywood romance can occur without obstacles, do you? Unfortunately, it’s Dunne’s Terry who suffers the most; she is struck by a car on her way to the Empire State Building for their rendezvous. She decides not to burden him with the news of her injuries, so he’s left to believe that she didn’t want to meet. Of course, whenever she thinks about their time together on board the ship, she gets rather wistful, so it’s unclear what exactly motivates her to let him think she’s abandoned him. The two lovers accidentally meet at the theater after another six months pass, and he comes to her apartment to visit her and learns of her paralysis. It’s the romantic ending you might have hoped for, but it does seem that the obstacles the film has placed between Terry and Michel are horribly unnecessary. If they truly feel this strongly about each other, wouldn’t they have been together even after her accident? No matter. Dunne makes their reunion a tender and emotionally satisfying ending to the film, and that’s really what we should care about.

Greta Garbo received her third and final Oscar nomination as the title character in Ninotchka. Watching her Nina Ivanovna Yakoshova, nicknamed “Ninotchka,” alter her facial gestures and body language and almost every aspect of her character as the film progresses is quite a marvel. This would be Garbo’s penultimate film, and she’s marvelous. At the start of the film, she’s so deadpan and matter of fact and seemingly emotionless that you can’t imagine that she’s going to fall in love with Melvyn Douglas’ Count Leon or anyone else, really. After all, she has only arrived in Paris from Russia to settle a matter of some royal jewelry that the Bolsheviks are trying to sell in order to raise money for needs back in their home country. However, Garbo delivers her lines perfectly, and she modulates her facial expressions to fit the plot’s development. When she breaks out into a laugh after Leon falls in a restaurant, it’s so shocking that it’s no wonder that MGM advertised the film with the tagline, “Garbo laughs.” She gets to do more than laugh, though. She starts to adjust her posture as she becomes more accustomed to Parisian customs; you can see her body relaxing. Her smile, that radiant smile, appears with greater frequency, and she conveys so naturally the progression of a woman’s emotions as she falls in love. One of the most moving and effective scenes occurs when Ninotchka has returned to Russia and is meeting with the three agents who failed to sell the jewelry quickly enough in Paris. They’re having a dinner at her (shared) place – four eggs made into an omelet – when a telegram arrives. Unfortunately, it’s been redacted because it comes from Leon in Paris. The disappointment on her face is heartbreaking. So few actors, male or female, could master the closeup the way Garbo did. She would never win a competitive Oscar, and she would retire from the screen just a couple of years after Ninotchka’s release. What a loss for the profession of acting!

From the moment that the image of Greer Garson’s lovely face emerges from a mist in the Alps, she becomes the heart of Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Her Katherine is such a warm, gentle presence in the film, and she serves as a naturalistic counterpoint to her costar Robert Donat as the title character of Mr. Chipping. Interestingly, Garson’s character is only in the film for about 35 minutes or so, and that would normally be considered a supporting role instead of a leading role for a movie of this length, but it’s the way that her Kathy, in essence, uses her sweet and easy persuasion to take over so much of the life of Mr. Chips that makes this such a star turn for Garson. She’s charming all of the time, but Katherine can also be a bit brash and forward; she is a suffragette, after all, who’s taking a bike tour of the Alps when she meets her future husband on that misty mountainside. Everyone in the film who meets Kathy is charmed by her – her husband’s colleagues, his students, even the headmaster of the school –and it’s tough for us as audience members not to be similarly charmed by Garson in her first major film role. When Katherine dies in childbirth, her absence casts quite a pall on the rest of the film, and frankly, with only Donat to take up our time, the movie falls precipitously in interest.

Gone with the Wind clocks in at almost four hours, and it gives viewers a lot of time to watch Vivien Leigh deliver one of the greatest performances in film history. Her Scarlett O’Hara begins the film as a vain Southern belle more interested in making her prospective beau jealous, but she ends the film as a woman who’s suffered a great deal of loss and pain in her life while managing to maintain a sense of who she is. She’s flirtatious and lively and charming, but she’s also serious and calculating and tough. Scarlett has the intelligence to be successful in business, but she doesn’t have the opportunity as a woman to do so. Southern society at the time defined women like Scarlett in terms of the man they were attached to. We understand why she marries each of the three men Scarlett weds during the course of the film, and we also realize before she does that it’s truly Rhett Butler that she’s destined to love, not the rather bland and colorless Ashley Wilkes. The film allows us several great close-ups of Leigh’s face, and it’s especially effective at allowing us to see just how masterful Scarlett can be at manipulating men. The ending of Gone with the Wind tries to make it seem like the focus should be on Tara, the former plantation that was her home, and the land and her connection to it. However, I never think the film is about Tara. It’s about Scarlett and how she’s managed to find a way to survive through some of the most astonishing events any one person could have experienced. When she notes that “tomorrow is another day,” you recognize that this is not the end of what has already been an astonishing story of a woman’s life. Watching this film allows us to savor how well Leigh conveys so much of what has happened to that woman.

Oscar Winner: Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind

My Choice: You think I’m going to disagree with the Academy on this? Leigh is so fantastic that it’s impossible to imagine any other actress in this role. I realize that this is such a stacked category of indelible performances, but Leigh has to be the obvious choice. If I were given the option of choosing a runner-up, it would be Garbo for her delightful comedic turn, but the Academy Awards don’t announce runners-up.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

 

Like most people of my generation, I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz on television each year. It was an event that so many people shared on an annual basis, and even though we all had become so very familiar with the story, we would still talk about it the next day at school. Having so many opportunities to share a common experience made a sense of connectedness over the film that very few other movies have. Perhaps The Sound of Music with its annual Thanksgiving screenings now or The Ten Commandments at Easter could be similar, but nothing can approach the sheer numbers of people who have seen The Wizard of Oz thanks to its repeated showings on TV from 1956-1991. That’s longer than most television programs last.

The story is justifiably familiar. A young girl, Dorothy Gale (played by Judy Garland), falls and hits her head during a Kansas tornado (very accurately depicted) and awakens to find herself transported to Oz. How or why the tornado went from Kansas to Oz doesn’t matter, but the contrast could not be starker. Kansas is all sepia tones and dust and darkness. Oz and Munchkinland, by contrast, are so bright and vivid and beautiful. Dorothy spends much of the film trying to follow the Yellow Brick Road to ask the Wizard of Oz for help in returning to Kansas. Why she wants to return to such a drab place remains a mystery to me after all these years. Who wouldn’t want to stay in Oz with all of its excitement and vibrance and brilliance? Just based on the cinematography alone, I’d never want to go back to Kansas, and I’ve actually been to Kansas in real life and know that it’s much more colorful than the film depicts.

Along the way to meet the Wizard, Dorothy (accompanied by her adorable dog Toto) meets a series of strangers who wind up joining her on the journey. Each person (well, “person” might be a stretch) wants to ask for something different from the Wizard. Each of the three companions gets their own introduction and backstory: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. Heck, the lion even gets two songs! Each member of the cast was spectacular, and many of them had to perform two different roles, yet none of them were nominated for acting honors. In fact, other than Garland, none of them would ever be nominated by the Academy Awards for acting. Garland, who wasn’t even the first choice for the role of Dorothy, received a special “Juvenile Award” for The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms, the two films she completed in 1939, but I have always wondered how she might have done in the race for a competitive Oscar that year. It would have been tough to deny Vivien Leigh’s legendary performance as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

Garland’s co-stars were multitalented performers. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, as we learn later in the film, are manifestations of three farmhands from her home in Kansas. Ray Bolger plays Hunk and the Scarecrow, and his rendition of “If I Only Had a Brain” features some of the loosest, most acrobatic dancing in the film. Jack Haley (Sr., if I need to add that) is both Hickory and the Tin Man, a romantic trapped in a metallic body. The great Bert Lahr performs the roles of Zeke and the Cowardly Lion, and given how heavy that lion suit looks and how annoying that constantly moving tale must have been, he was astonishingly good at dancing and singing. It’s tough to imagine the movie being as successful as it is without these three.

Of course, those are not the only actors in the film to perform multiple roles. Frank Morgan seems to pop up everywhere you look. He’s Professor Marvel back in Kansas, he’s the Wizard (in disguise, hidden behind a curtain), and he’s a carriage driver and a doorman and… and… and…. It’s fun to watch the film to see just how often Morgan pops up. Margaret Hamilton makes the Wicked Witch of the Witch iconic, but her performance as Elmira Gulch back in the sepia world of Kansas is just as frightening. Almost every filmed version of a witch since 1939 has been measured against Hamilton’s performance and been found lacking. Her line reading of “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too” sends a shiver down the spines of viewers no matter how many times they’ve seen the film.

Speaking of being frightened, I was never really all that scared by the Wicked Witch or her flying monkeys, but a lot of other people were. Certainly, they are meant to be scary, and I can see why others felt that way, but what scared me more were sequences such as those grumpy trees that can talk and throw apples. They seemed much more likely to appear in the world I inhabited then, and I never quite recovered from those moments. The most emotionally frightening moment for me, however, was Dorothy seeing her Aunt Em in that crystal ball of the Wicked Witch’s and tearing up because she was afraid that she’d never see her aunt again.

The Wizard of Oz is filled with so many wonderful, joyous moments too. Billie Burke as Glinda with her high-pitched voice and that enormous pink gown and her wand and the bubble she travels in is just delightful. The costumes throughout the film are spectacular, especially the ones designed for the residents of Emerald City. Again, once you’ve seen what they were, why would you want to go back to overalls and gingham? Nevertheless, Dorothy is homesick and wants to return to Kansas, so Glinda gives her the ruby slippers and sets her off on the journey that takes up much of the film. I’ve seen one of the pairs of ruby slippers at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, and I couldn’t help but sigh at the memories associated with them. How important costuming can be to the success of a film!

The film won two Oscars, one for its musical score and one for the stunning “Over the Rainbow.” The winning song is performed by Dorothy while she’s still in Kansas at the beginning of the film, and it’s such a simple, beautiful series of dreamy images. It’s no wonder that Oz had to live up to a lot just on the basis of the song’s lyrics, and it’s such a great song that it’s no wonder that it has become as beloved as it has. If you consider the imagery in “Over the Rainbow,” you can appreciate the work of the production design team even more. The Yellow Brick Road is very bright, and Oz simply sparkles and shines. Even when you know that the backdrops in Oz are painted, you still appreciate the achievement.

Those of us who were regular viewers in the past have memorized the songs and learned so many of the lines from the film and analyzed what we saw on the screen. So beloved and influential is The Wizard of Oz that it was among the first twenty-five films selected for preservation by the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. What a rare and special honor that was, and, really, what a rare and special film this.

Oscar Wins: Best Song (“Over the Rainbow”) and Best Original Score

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Art Direction, and Best Special Effects

Gulliver's Travels (1939)

 

Gulliver’s Travels is a charming animated adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s famed novel. Well, actually it’s an adaptation of a portion of Swift’s book, the section where Lemuel Gulliver’s ship crashes near Lilliput, an island of tiny people. This film version was the first feature-length film released by the Fleischer Studios, who were best known for such cartoon characters as Popeye the Sailor and Betty Boop and who were clearly trying to compete with the Disney studio’s just-released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Fleischer film begins in 1699 with a spectacular sequence involving the wrecking of Gulliver’s ship. The rolling sea and the crashing waves and the other elements of the storm are rendered beautifully. In fact, the entire film is drawn in such rich colors and with such careful attention to detail. For example, when the very small denizens of Lilliput are crossing a covered bridge, the light shines through the cracks between the boards. The film also features some nice comic moments, such as when the Lilliputians attempt to tie up Gulliver while he is unconscious on the beach after the shipwreck. How does he not wake up during all of the random activity that’s taking place on his actual body? The main or central plot involves a struggle between the kings of Lilliput and Blefuscu. They’re trying to arrange a marriage between Princess Glory of Lilliput and Prince David of Blefuscu, two impossibly good-looking young people who can’t help but be in love with each other (or seem to keep their hands off of each other), and everything is going well until they fight over which traditional song will be sung at the wedding. King Little of Lilliput prefers “Faithful,” the song that his people sing, and King Bombo of Blefuscu wants “Forever,” the song of his people. Inexplicably, this dispute leads to Bombo declaring war on Lilliput. I guess music is a big deal to the people on these small islands. Gulliver winds up being the savior here, as expected, interceding when Bombo’s ships attempt an assault on Lilliput. He also saves the princess and prince even though the prince is almost killed from the attempted use of Gulliver’s “Thunder Machine” (a pistol). You expect a happy ending in an animated film from this era, and so it’s comforting to see Gulliver sailing off into the sunset at the movie’s end in a boat that the Lilliputians have built for him. Perhaps there could have been a sequel involving the other sections of the novel that weren’t included in this film version. Gulliver’s Travels is also quite the musical film, featuring a series of fun songs, my favorite being “All’s Well,” sung by the town crier who discovers the “giant” on the beach. Another favorite is “It’s a Hap-Hap Happy Day,” performed by the residents of Lilliput while they are, um, grooming (?) Gulliver, making him more presentable after the shipwreck. It seems like the film skipped over quite a few elements involved in getting a man dressed and ready for meeting a king, but that’s probably best given the intended audience. The merging of “Faithful” and “Forever” into one song called, unsurprisingly, “Faithful Forever” – is not a particularly inspired choice even if it was nominated for the Oscar, but if it keeps the peace and everyone can be reunited as a result, so be it.

Oscar Nominations: Best Original Score and Best Original Song

Gone with the Wind (1939)

 

Writing about Gone with the Wind poses an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, it’s one of the most accomplished epics in film history, with great performances and astonishing visuals that keep audiences returning to the movie again and again. On the other hand, it is clearly sympathetic to the Southern side of the Civil War, and its depictions of African Americans and Yankees and (at times) even Southerners are remarkably stereotypical and offensive. It’s like watching The Birth of a Nation. While you might admire the technical accomplishments of the film, it’s very tough to sit through some of the more objectionable material.

So how do you tackle an examination of such a film? I’d start by noting that I’ve always felt that the focus is less upon the Civil War and Reconstruction – although those pivotal historical periods are certainly important to the plot and provide its central context – and more upon the story of a remarkable woman, Scarlett O’Hara. It’s one of the greatest roles an actress could have, and Vivien Leigh is just perfection as one of the most complex and complicated and contradictory heroines in film. We watch as Scarlett marries two men she doesn’t love, the first as a means to make her purported lover jealous and the second to secure a safe financial future for herself and her family. When she finally does marry someone she should love (and ultimately does), she takes so many opportunities to sabotage her happiness by continuing to pine for Ashley Wilkes (a rather wan Leslie Howard) instead of just loving the man who loves her, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable, never better).

Everything in the movie indicates that Scarlett should be with Rhett, yet she keeps missing the cues that the universe seems to be sending to her. When her first husband, Charles Hamilton, dies from measles before he can even join a battle, her only fun as a very unrepentant widow is when Rhett shows up and “bids” to dance with her. Her second husband, Frank Kennedy, gets shot in the head when he and some of the other men are trying to scare the residents of a “shantytown” where Scarlett was attacked. (It seems pretty clear to me that Frank and the other men are a part of the Ku Klux Klan, but the film doesn’t directly state their affiliation.) Her way of mourning Frank’s death involves drinking heavily, not out of sadness over his death but more over the fact that she’s still young and already twice widowed.

Even the man Scarlett longs for throughout the movie is rather a disappointment. What, exactly, does she see in Ashley? He’s honorable and stoic and, well, boring. He’s not even especially handsome or dapper. I don’t get what his cousin-wife Melanie sees in him either. Howard is not the most expressive actor, which perhaps explains why he was one of few major performers in the cast not to be nominated for an Oscar. Gable’s Butler, by contrast, is fun and exciting and just enough of a “bad guy” to make him immensely more attractive. He certainly makes his intentions clear from almost the first time we see him on screen, and his roguishness is just the kind of spark that someone like Scarlett needs in her life.

The film’s Oscar-winning screenplay is filled with great lines throughout the story. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” is justifiably famous, and “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again” serves as a great finish to the first half of the film. Gable gets most of the best lines, honestly, and he knows just how to deliver them with the correct dose of smirk and slyness. If there’s a second place for best line delivery, it would have to go to Hattie McDaniel, who takes the stock character of Mammy and infuses it with knowing facial expressions and sharpness. She and Gable, Leigh, and Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton Wilkes were all nominated for their performances, and McDaniel and Leigh richly deserved their Oscar wins.

Given the film’s length – almost four hours if you watch the version with the entrance and exit music and the intermission and entr’acte music – there’s time to showcase some great visuals. The siege of Atlanta (and Rhett and Scarlett’s escape with Melanie and her baby and Prissy through the burning of much of it) is quite spectacular. Similarly, when Scarlett arrives at a makeshift hospital to get the doctor’s help in delivering Melanie’s baby, the reverse zoom that keeps expanding our view of the dying and the dead is an impressive accomplishment. We sometimes forget that CGI has not always been available, so the ability to wrangle huge numbers of actual people on screen is a skill that many directors could not manage, but Victor Fleming (plus George Cukor and Sam Wood, the other directors credited with working on the film for a time) works wonders with his crowds. There’s an energy and an excitement to those big moments.

The scale of the production was massive, and the production design must have been a monumental undertaking. The filmmakers needed the interiors and exteriors of several Southern mansions, and they needed to make the town of Atlanta just so they could burn much of it down. Even the little touches that help to create a clear sense of what the interiors of the homes would look like are carefully done. I’ve always marveled at the sequence involving the women having to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon just so they won’t be too tired for the barbecue later that evening. The number of beds and large fans alone is mind-boggling. I’d also like to mention the costumes by Walter Plunkett. Even though Costume Design wasn’t an Academy Award category when Gone with the Wind was made, he surely would have been a contender for the range of dresses that Scarlett alone has to wear.

The film does spend too much of its time discussing the “Southern way of life,” which is really just code for slavery. Before the Civil War begins, the white Southern characters (well, the men, primarily) discuss the possibility of their way of life disappearing. During the war and the Reconstruction period that followed, Ashley, in particular, expresses a sense of loss for the way things used to be. Gone with the Wind really does take that silly myth about “moonlight and magnolias” before the war and devotes far too much energy to trying to make us care that slavery has ended. Having read the Margaret Mitchell novel upon which the film was based – and which is even longer than the film, if you can believe that – I know that the filmmakers were being dutifully respectful to the text, but they ended up making a film that doesn’t particularly age well in those moments.

Likewise, most of the depictions of the people who were enslaved are very limited and resort too easily to stereotypes. It’s only through the talent of actors like McDaniel that some dignity emerges. Otherwise, we’re left with characters like Pork (Albert Polk) and Prissy (Butterfly McQueen), who have very little to work with in terms of the story to make much of an impression. The actor who plays Big Sam (Everett Brown) seems only to appear when Scarlett (the film’s primary white woman) needs rescuing. I’ve often wondered why Mammy, Pork, and Prissy continue to stay with their white former “owners” after the war ends. When Prissy sees the new mansion that Rhett builds for Scarlett in Atlanta, she says, “We’s rich now.” No, they’re not. They’re still basically enslaved, but their loyalty to their former masters is meant to suggest something (ridiculous) about how they were treated in slavery. Watching the film now is tough when you see how what the movie often does to its African American characters, but I have a feeling that even in 1939, it was tough to watch some of these particularly offensive moments. It is/was certainly a product of its time.

The film does a better job with some of its minor white characters. I’d single out Ona Munson’s performance as Belle Watling. Of course, the filmmakers couldn’t directly state that Belle is a prostitute in 1939, but it’s clear from the way that she’s dressed in red and heavily made up that she’s not a “nurse” in the traditional sense. Munson is so direct and fresh, though, that we start to sympathize with her. In her few moments on screen, we learn so much about her character’s life and what she’s endured. She’s a tough woman who manages to convey just how difficult it was for a woman during the time period Gone with the Wind covers.

And that’s a good point at which to return to Scarlett O’Hara. She has the instincts of a solid business owner. She, unlike her second husband, knows that the lumber business is where the money will be as the South starts to rebuild. She also manages to meet whatever difficulties she faces with a straightforward sense of purpose. She delivers a baby without a doctor’s assistance, she turns around the fate of Tara by making a shrewd business decision even at great personal cost, and she even kills a Yankee soldier who tries to steal from her. She also faces the loss of her beloved mother, the death of two husbands, and the accidental death of her only child. The film’s focus on the remarkable life of this central character is perhaps the key to its lingering impact.

Oscar Wins: Outstanding Production, Best Actress (Vivian Leigh), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Hattie McDaniel), Best Directing, Best Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Film Editing

Special Award: John Cameron Menzies for “outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood in the production of Gone with the Wind”

Technical Achievement Award: R.D. Musgrave for “pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment in the production Gone with the Wind”

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Olivia de Havilland), Best Sound Recording, Best Special Effects, and Best Original Score

Union Pacific (1939)

 

One of the primary plot threads of Union Pacific is the behind-the-scenes attempts to sabotage the historic attempt to connect the eastern and western parts of the United States with railroad tracks, and the end of the film takes place at Promontory Point, the place where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads were connected with a golden spike driven into the last rail. Throughout the film, we get to see some intriguing aspects of the building of a railroad: the laying of the wooden rails, the laying of the rails themselves, and the driving of the spikes to hold the two together. We even learn that many of the buildings that sprang up near the railroad construction sites were dismantled and moved by the railroad to the next location, allowing for saloons and other structures to be always available. Those moments are fascinating to watch. However, the film keeps returning to the machinations of Asa M. Barrows (played by Henry Kolker), one of the financiers of the railroad, and his hired hand, Sid Campeau (Brian Donlevy), to keep the construction from progressing. Barrows, for example, promises $200,000 in cash to pay back wages but asks Campeau to have the money stolen before it reaches its destination. More than two hours of subterfuge regarding railroads might be a bit much, so Union Pacific devotes much of its time to a love triangle. Robert Preston, in one of his earlier film roles, plays Dick Allen, a gambler who works with Campeau. He even calls himself Campeau’s “partner” (more on that later), and they ensure that there’s lots of alcohol and gambling and prostitution at each stop in order to keep the workers distracted from their work. Barbara Stanwyck plays Mollie Monahan, the train’s “postmistress” (the diminutive term used at the time for a woman who was doing what was considered a “man’s job”) and the daughter of the train’s engineer. Dick has been trying to get Mollie’s attention for years, but she resists his attempts to propose to her. And then Joel McCrea shows up. He’s Jeff Butler (or “Captain Butler,” the second character so named in 1939, the other being the more famous Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind). He’s taken on the job of “troubleshooter,” the person whose job is to keep law and order for the railroad, and that’s going to put him at odds with Campeau and his old friend Dick. Yes, McCrea’s Jeff and Preston’s Dick are Army buddies from the Civil War. When they reunite on the train—with Mollie between them—we learn that they “slept under the same blanket” and have “eaten off the same place.” Very close indeed. It’s not long after meeting Jeff that Mollie decides that she’d much rather spend time with him than with Dick. After observing him beat up one of Campeau’s men (a really big guy) using just a shovel, all she can say is “Glory, what a man!” Watching the two men maneuver for Mollie’s attention takes up quite a bit of the film, even when other events are taking place. For instance, they play an interesting game of cat-and-mouse in the car that serves as Mollie’s railroad car/post office/tea shop after the theft of the payroll. The men like each other—well, “like” might be the wrong word—but they also compete with each other. Watching such homosocial moments in older films has been a fascinating experience; there are far more than you might initially expect (and, obviously, far more than the Production Code folks were able to discern—thankfully). Stanwyck, Preston, and McCrea are all good here, but they were always reliable performers and would give greater performances in other films. Overall, Union Pacific features some pretty typical stuff for a western: buffalo herds, an “Indian” “attack” on a train, a train robbery, the atmosphere of the saloon, and several shootouts. It also includes a few moments of humor, such as when the Native Americans discover one of those carved wooden cigar store “Indians” on the train. Anthony Quinn makes a brief appearance, one of the earliest in his career, as one of Campeau’s men who shoots someone whose about to beat him at gambling. However, other than the love triangle plot, the most interesting aspects of the film are the two train wrecks. The first occurs when the Native Americans use a water tank tower to knock a train off the rails, and the second happens as the railroad workers try to lay tracks on top of the snow in order to get around a mountain. Both are amazing to watch, and when you remember that the director of Union Pacific, Cecil DeMille, staged another spectacular train wreck in his Oscar-winning The Greatest Show on Earth thirteen years later (boy, he really enjoyed staging train wrecks), you can appreciate the nomination for Best Special Effects that Union Pacific garnered. Unfortunately, like many films of its time, it’s marred by its attitude toward Native Americans. After Jeff beats up half of Campeau’s men for killing a Native American who was harmlessly waving to the passengers on the train, Campeau says, “What’s a dead Indian, more or less? The Army’s been killing them for years.” Jeff’s horrible response? “The Army doesn’t kill Indians for fun, Campeau. And I don’t think you do either.” It’s quite obvious that Campeau’s men do, indeed, kill for fun, an action better described as genocide, and Jeff’s rationalization for the Army’s behavior hardly improves the image of the Army.

Oscar Nomination: Best Special Effects

Captain Fury (1939)

 

Captain Fury is, essentially, a traditional western that happens to be set in Australia. However, other than a few shots of emus and kangaroos, the film doesn’t really depend very much on its alleged setting. You can tell that most of it was shot on a studio lot; the images of emus and kangaroos seem to be stock footage. Brian Aherne plays Michael Fury, the title character, who fought for Irish independence but is now a convict sentenced to hard labor in Australia. After they arrive in New South Wales, the convicts are distributed among the rich landowners, and Fury winds up under the oppressive rule of Arnold Trist (George Zucco, frequently guilty of scenery chewing). Trist has his men abuse the convicts, and he also wants to get rid of the neighboring settlers so that he can consolidate what he calls “an empire within an empire.” Fury is about to be beaten for his inept shearing of sheep when he escapes with the help of another convict, Coughy (John Carradine, perfectly suited for playing a consumptive). However, he isn’t free for long, as June Lang’s Jeanette Dupre, a settler’s daughter, takes him prisoner with plans to collect the $100 reward for returning escaped convicts. When he realizes that Trist is trying to frighten away the settlers so that he can take the land (much like he has already taken their money in taxes), Fury takes up their cause and even rescues some fellow prisoners from Trist’s control. They begin retaliating against Trist’s men, who are systematically destroying the settlers’ farms. Jeanette’s father, Francois Dupre (Paul Lukas, speaking with an accent that inexplicably sounds like no one else in the film), a very religious man, doesn’t approve of Fury or his friends or their tactics, even when they help to save his own farm. He certainly doesn’t want his daughter to fall in love with Fury, of all people, so you know how that’s going to turn out if you’re familiar with classical Hollywood plotting. Captain Fury has a few aspects worthy of attention. Victor McLaglen plays Blackie, a convict who knew of Fury’s escapades back in Ireland, gets to have a series of humorous moments in the film. Despite his large size—he’s a bit of a brute visually—McLaglen was able to demonstrate more than just strength here. Carradine is also quite good in the role of the dying romantic who’s always rhapsodizing about the beauty of the clouds and stars, often at the oddest times. Frankly, they’re more intriguing that the bland leads of Aherne and Lang. Speaking of odd, there’s a scene where the convicts and settlers (minus Papa Dupre, of course) have a dance even though all of them are under constant threat of attack by Trist’s men. While I don’t think that the art direction for Captain Fury is particularly award-worthy—its sole nomination was for its art direction—some of the details are nicely done: the scars from the ankle chains, for example, or the rats near the bowls and spoons that the exploited convicts use for meals. Its message is certainly a solid one: how once you’ve been convicted of a crime, it’s almost impossible to have people see you as anything other than the worst that you might have done, no matter how much good you might have done since. What might be most surprising is that the film was directed by Hal Roach, more noted for his work on the Our Gang comedy shorts. This is quite a departure from those films, but Captain Fury is a competent film overall.

Oscar Nomination: Best Art Direction

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Goodbye, Mr. Chips takes place at the Brookfield School where the 83-year-old Mr. Chipping (played by Robert Donat, the winner for Best Actor), nicknamed "Chips" by his wife Katherine (Greer Garson in her first major film role), has not missed a first day assembly in 58 years (even though he has been retired for the past 15 years). The start of a new school year has always been exciting for Mr. Chips, and despite being sick, he makes his way to the assembly hall only to find the doors already locked. After he meets the new history master and prepares some tea and cakes in case any of the boys should stop by his home, he falls asleep in a chair by the fireplace.

Presumably, what follows would be the dream that he has. It covers much of his career at the school starting with his first day in 1870 when a clean-shaven Mr. Chippings arrives with no previous teaching experience. His first time in the classroom is disastrous as he lets the boys get out of hand with their disruptive questions and continual interruptions. They physically attack him just as the headmaster arrives, prompting a stern warning to Mr. Chips to enforce discipline if he plans to maintain control of his classroom. He does so in a rather harsh fashion, punishing the entire class by making them miss a crucial soccer match. For years afterward, he remains relatively isolated from the friendly banter that often accompanies teacher-student relations at the school.

It's at the insistence of fellow teacher Staefel (Paul Henreid, a few years before Casablanca) that Mr. Chips agrees to go on a walking tour of the Alps. He meets Katherine in the mountains, and they begin an awkward if charming relationship. He is, admittedly, terrified of women, but she is such a calming presence that he cannot resist wanting to spend more time with her. She is the first person who seems to understand him. She too is touring the continent, but she and her friend are on bicycles. By accident, Chips and Katherine meet again as they depart from a boat that has been floating down the Danube, and she convinces him to waltz with her that night at a party in an enormous ballroom. The next morning, she has to depart by train, and he goes to the station with her, running after the train once she kisses him goodbye. It's a cliched moment nowadays, but placed within the context of this sentimental drama, it still manages to elicit an emotional response from viewers.

After they marry, he and Katherine move into one of the houses at the school, and she slowly begins working on making him more popular among the boys. She begins inviting them to have tea and cakes on Sunday afternoon, and she's also the one who suggests that he try telling a few jokes as a part of his lessons. It works, and he begins to believe in himself as both a good teacher and a potential headmaster. Sadly, Katherine dies in childbirth, as does the baby she's carrying. Mr. Chips goes to his class that night—ironically, it's April Fool's Day—but he cannot carry on with his lesson. After one of the boys arrives late and begins to spread the word about the death of Mrs. Chips, you see just how much they care about Mr. Chips, how much loved he and his wife are. The closeups of the tearful faces of the boys make for a tender scene, to be sure, and one of the few that made me almost tear up. That probably has more to do with Garson’s portion of the movie being over, though, rather than any natural sympathy that Donat has earned in his performance.

Throughout the film, there are various montages to mark the passage of time. There’s nothing like a good montage in an older movie, is there? For the most part, it's always the roll call of students entering the school. They are always in alphabetical order, an astounding feat, and they call out their names as they pass by Mr. Chips or whichever person has the clipboard. We see them in various uniforms for athletics or academics as they pass, so we get a sense of the styles of clothing common to the period. We also get brief moments where the boys talk about current events so that we know the specific year or era in which some of the actions take place. It's during these scenes that we also get to see one of the running gags of the film: "There's always a Colley here." Indeed, there is always a Colley. Mr. Chips teaches four generations of them himself, and all of them are played by Terry Kilburn. It makes for some cute moments, but nothing laugh-out-loud funny.

The final portion of Mr. Chips' dream (or flashback, if you prefer) involves the war years. Despite having retired already, Chips is asked to serve as headmaster when all of the younger men enlist to serve in World War I. Several of the boys sign up as soon as they are old enough, and it's a sobering moment when Chips has to read out the names of the war dead, and we recognize several of the former students as being on the list. Among the first he has to read is that of Peter Colley, whose wife and child Mr. Chips has been visiting at Colley's request. The movie doesn't make a great deal of the depths of the loss to England of that generation of young men, but then that would take the focus off Mr. Chips and he is the center of attention for the film. It's really more about how the war and the deaths of all those boys he taught affect him rather than how it might have had an impact on the school or the other boys.

Donat isn’t necessarily bad in the title role. He does get to age several decades throughout the film, and I suppose he is having the most fun in the part when he's allowed to play an old man. He seems to get some of the best lines in those scenes, and he’s adapted his body movements to mimic an older man. I suspect it's that range of ages that won him the Oscar, and the make-up is pretty convincing. However, I still maintain that it's a far too theatrical style of acting that he's doing here. Compare him to, say, Garson in the same film. She is much more realistic and believable. When her character dies (far too quickly for my taste), the heart of the film is gone too, and Donat is allowed to overact without a strong naturalistic performer to balance him.

I've never been fond of movies about teachers. They always try to ennoble the profession and the people who practice it. Not everyone can be as beloved as Mr. Chips, certainly, and not everyone should be. Yet when people watch a film like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, they start to judge all teachers by the standards set by fictional characters like Mr. Chips. Live, flesh-and-blood teachers have good days and bad days. Some of us are strong when it comes to lecturing, and others are strong at garnering class participation. Some have effective classrooms because they are disciplinarians, and others create welcoming environments by being laxer about the rules. We never get to see the other teachers performing in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and in truth, we don't even get to see Mr. Chips teach that often. However, I suppose everyone would want a teacher who could manage to get a class through a passage in Julius Caesar while outside the city of London is being bombed. I just don't think all teachers would be up to that task, nor would many of us even feel it is appropriate to endanger students during such a time. That's why no one should choose a fictional teacher to serve as a role model to actual people.

Oscar Win: Best Actor (Robert Donat)

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actress (Greer Garson), Best Director (Sam Wood), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, and Best Film Editing

Love Affair (1939)

Love Affair has been remade at least twice. The first time was as An Affair to Remember in 1957 with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant, and almost everyone is familiar with that version thanks to Sleepless in Seattle (if someone didn't know about it before, that is). The most recent remake in 1994 starred Warren Beatty and his wife Annette Bening, and it's pretty much a disaster. When you return to the original, though, you realize that no one needed to tamper with what was already a charming, deeply romantic film. It certainly had no shot at beating Gone With the Wind that year, but Love Affair is a movie still worthy of our attention and our affection.

Charles Boyer plays Michel Marnay, a French playboy who is taking a steamship to America so that he can finally be wed. His bride-to-be, Lois Clarke (Astrid Allwyn), is the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. (Aren't all industrialists in the movies wealthy?) He gets a lot of attention on board the ship because everyone has heard of his reputation as a womanizer; his name appears frequently in the newspapers, usually in rather large headlines. He is a famous public figure who has never even had an occupation. The news media have, obviously, changed a great deal since 1939…. He meets Terry McKay when the letter he's reading blows through a porthole and she picks it up and starts reading it. They begin talking, and he invites himself back to her cabin. Terry, played by Irene Dunne, is pretty sharp, though, and doesn't fall for his advances, especially when she learns that the letter is not from his fiance but from the fiance's best friend with whom Marcel has shared an intimate trip to Lake Cuomo.

This portion of the film being set aboard a ship, they conveniently keep bumping into each other. After they begin dining together and having drinks together regularly, the other passengers start to become suspicious of a shipboard romance. People even try to eavesdrop on their conversations, and there is some very witty banter there, especially as delivered by Dunne. Michel and Terry don't help to squelch the rumors when they rip out film from a camera after their picture is snapped. They do try to split up, but they are seated side by side when they request individual tables. It's inevitable that they spend time together and start to learn more about each other.

During one of the ports of call, the last before they make their way to New York, Terry accompanies Michel to the top of a mountain in Medeira to visit his grandmother, played with Old World charm by Maria Ouspenskaya. The older woman knows a romance when she sees one, and she talks to Terry about her grandson in such a way that you know she's trying to set them up. Soon Terry knows that Michel is a talented artist who has never seriously considered a career as a painter, and she seems to forget that he is already engaged to another woman. It's when Terry sings, though, that Michel falls in love with her. Ouspenskaya's grandmother is playing the piano at his request, but it's Dunne's voice that makes him realize that Terry would be a better choice than Lois. One of Boyer's best moments in the film is his reaction to Dunn's charming performance; you can see the love develop in his eyes as he looks at her.

They quickly remember, however, that both of them have partners waiting at home. In fact, their partners will both be at the docks when they reach New York. They discuss how they might know if their circumstances change and they can be together. They make a plan to meet in six months at the Empire State Building. That would make it July 1, and before that day arrives, both of them deal with some significant changes in their lives. Michel breaks off his engagement to Lois, a story which is carried in the papers, and Terry moves to Philadelphia to resume her career as a singer. Her apartment in New York has a direct view of the Empire State Building, and the building's reflection shines in the open door. No wonder she has to leave; she has a constant reminder that she loves someone other than her fiancé, and it’s a rather… um… “predominant” reminder too.

Terry returns to the city on July 1 with only a few minutes to spare, but thanks to an interruption by her former fiance, she has to rush to get to the Empire State Building, and a car hits her when she tries to cross the street quickly without looking at the traffic. Michel has, of course, already gotten to the observation deck of the building, but he doesn't see what happened below. After waiting several more hours, he leaves thinking that she chose not to see him. He leaves the United States again, hoping to see his grandmother, but when he gets to Medeira, he discovers that she has already passed away. She has left behind a shawl that she promised to Terry, though; even after death, she has conspired to get the two of them together.

When he finally returns to New York after starting a career as an artist, Lois convinces him to join her at the theater on Christmas. He sees Terry with her fiancé as he leaves the theater, and he is shaken. The next day he tracks her down at the orphanage where she works teaching singing and confronts her as to why she never came. He does so by lying that he didn't show up and by speculating as to why that might have been the case. Slowly, he learns the truth of what happened that day and that she is still an invalid. They are reconciled, and she promises that both of them will achieve their dreams.

It's tough not to notice the repeated visual references to the Empire State Building. When Terry and Michel have their conversation on the ship about the plans for the July 1 meeting, it towers above the fog of New York City--something that might have been possible in 1939 but seems unlikely today given the number of subsequent skyscrapers that have been built. I've already mentioned the reflection of the building on Terry's door. What a testament to the cinematographers at RKO that they could pull off that shot. While he is waiting for July 1 to arrive, Michel takes a menial job as a billboard painter. One of his jobs has a clear view of the Empire State Building. Filmmakers in those days knew how to use a visual cue consistently throughout a movie.

This is not a perfect movie, however. For instance, the orphans are a bit too well-scrubbed, and all of them are talented singers. That must have been some very selective orphanage, but you need good child singers to make Terry seem more successful at her job. However, the bigger issue is what makes Terry so stubborn about getting word to Michel about her injury. Surely he would have understood and rushed to her side if he truly loved her. Yet she claims she doesn't want him to know. She seems to want to be her perfect self whenever she's with him. I guess that makes the ending even more touching and romantic, but it inflicts a great deal of pain on both of them in the meantime. I suppose that's why we've come to expect some pain and separation in most romantic films.

If you watch Love Affair, perhaps you too will develop a craving for pink champagne, Michel's and then Terry's favorite drink. You'll also witness two great actors, Dunne and Boyer, doing some of their best work. Dunne was adept at drama and comedy, and she has a lovely quasi-operatic voice that she displays here. Boyer was always charming and dashing in his roles, and here’s he’s at his most charming, smooth persona. He could play a villain well, as in the movie Gaslight, but he was so good at playing the romantic lead. Here he is given a chance to express with his face the growing depth of Michel's affection for Terry, and it's a masterful performance. Dunn was nominated for Best Actress of 1939, but Boyer was overlooked in the Best Actor category. That's a shame because both of them are outstanding.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actress (Irene Dunne), Best Supporting Actress (Maria Ouspenskaya), Best Original Story, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Song (“Wishing”)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is an expose of the depths to which the government is influenced by the wrong men. You might say it's about how corrupt the government, the Congress, especially the Senate, had become in the 1930s, but that might imply that we've somehow gotten rid of the kind of backroom deals that the movie depicts. We all know that's not the case, of course, making Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in many ways just as insightful today as it was more than eighty years ago.

James Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, a naive young man chosen to fill the vacancy created by the death of one of the senators from his home state. Smith's choice as a replacement senator is a difficult one for the governor, given how much pressure he faces from newspaperman Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) to choose someone who will help push through a shady land deal. Smith, the head of the Boy Rangers, a sort of Boy Scout organization, gets public support from the boys themselves, so Governor Hopper (Guy Kibbee, of all people) chooses Smith over Taylor's initial objections, particularly after his own children give him the idea to choose Smith. After all, what does Smith know about how the federal government works? So long as his powerful and influential fellow senator, Claude Rains' Joseph Paine, guides him, the deal should go through. Right?

No one expects Smith to be as naive as he is, though. For example, when he finally arrives in Washington, he disappears for hours just so that he can see all of the monuments and memorials in town. He stands in awe of the Capitol Dome itself, and I won't even mention how much attention the Lincoln Memorial gets in this film. Even we as viewers get a quick tour through a very delightful montage of the sights in our nation’s capital. Smith’s assistant, Miss Saunders (Jean Arthur, who's growing on me as an actress), tries to help Smith learn the ways of bill-making and other government operations. Unfortunately, she can't always control him, such as when he's questioned by the press. He makes bird calls and gives Indian signs in his first press conference, and his actions are used to ridicule him in the newspapers the next day. He even punches out one of the newspapermen in retaliation for the damage to his reputation. It’s not a particularly flattering portrait of the media, who seem to be complicit in the corruption in Washington.

Smith, you see, has a specific goal he hopes to achieve while in the Senate; he wants to build a national boys camp to teach morals to the young boys of America. He tells Saunders about the ideal location for this camp, oddly enough the same site that Jim Taylor wants to build a dam. Needless to say, when word gets out about the conflict, everyone tries to distract Smith so he won't know about the plans for the dam. Senator Paine even uses his daughter Susan (Astrid Allwyn) as a "distraction," let's call it, while the bill for the dam is presented. The state where the proposed camp and/or dam would be located is never mentioned. It doesn’t need to be, really, since it’s not like this kind of behavior is limited to only one of the states in our country.

There's a confrontation, naturally, between Smith and Taylor where their core beliefs are revealed. Is it any surprise that Taylor, the rich guy, thinks he "owns" everyone? There's also a confrontation between Smith and Paine where Paine tells the younger man that he has to compromise his principles. Taylor inevitably tries to smear Smith in the newspapers and other media outlets he controls, and Paine even goes so far as to accuse Smith of being unfit to be a Senator because, he claims, Smith is trying to profit from the sale of the land that is in dispute. They even attack the Boy Rangers trying to deliver their paper with the other side of the story that Taylor’s papers aren’t sharing. Paine lies at a meeting of a Senate committee, a moment so shocking to Smith that he packs his bags and tries to leave town. Saunders catches him at the Lincoln Memorial, and he agrees to return to the Senate and attempt the longest filibuster in the history of government.

It's tough to imagine that the writers of a film would decide to make such an arcane Senate rule as the one governing filibusters into a central piece of its narrative, but Mr. Smith Goes to Washington certainly does so to great effect. There's still quite a bit of dramatic license taken with the rules of the Senate, including the scene where bags of mail allegedly against Smith's filibuster arrive on the Senate floor, but you can't fault director Frank Capra for wanting to amp up the dramatic tension in scenes like these. Besides, who doesn’t love a good montage of newspapers being printed with the headlines that help to propel the narrative?

Stewart is reliably good here, as are Arthur and Arnold and Rains and Thomas Mitchell as Diz Moore, a newspaper reporter who is one of Saunders' closest friends. As much as you enjoy the performances, though, this is really a movie about the government itself. To a degree, it's an essentially conservative message that's being filtered through this narrative. After all, Smith's proposal for a boys camp couldn't be any more "traditional values" than much of the legislation passed these days. However, it's really more about the power the individual has in the face of government that you're supposed to realize at the film's end. If one man like Smith can come to that most corrupt of places, Washington, and retain his integrity, then why (you're supposed to ask) doesn't everyone else? It's an interesting question to which the film gives perhaps too pat of an answer. It is Hollywood's version of the government, after all (well, Capra’s version anyway), and that could account for all the idealistic, optimistic talk.

I've been trying to figure out just how this film would have been received by those in Washington in 1939. It doesn't portray most of them in a very favorable light, of course. In fact, almost every Senator seems to be under the sway of some person or interest with deep pockets. The press is represented in a negative way as well, yet the film received good reviews at the time of its release. Perhaps in the midst of the Great Depression, people wanted to renew their faith in the integrity of the government. How ironic that it sometimes takes a movie like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to make people consider that issue.

Oscar Win: Best Original Story

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Director (Frank Capra), Best Actor (Jimmy Stewart), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Harry Carey and Claude Rains), Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Scoring, Best Sound Recording, and Best Screenplay

Ninotchka (1939)

“Garbo laughs,” and so does the audience. Ninotchka is a fun romantic comedy set against the backdrop of Paris during the years after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Not exactly what most people would consider fodder for a comedy, but Ninotchka uses the differences between the stereotypical Russian types and the more laidback Parisians to good effect here. The screenplay was written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch, three of the most talented screenwriters in movies. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, whose deft touch with comedy is on full display here.

The plot is an intriguing one revolving, ostensibly, around several items of royal jewelry confiscated by the Bolsheviks after the tsar was deposed. (Yes, I know that “deposed” is a genteel way of describing what happened, but this film isn’t truly interested in addressing such grim subject matter… unless it could be played for laughs.) Three Russian agents have been dispatched to Paris to try to sell the jewels, only to face a series of obstacles such as the reluctance of the Parisians to get involved in such international intrigue. There’s also the small matter of the Russian Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), who wants the return of her jewels, and she’s been tipped off by a waiter at an upscale hotel (another Russian in exile) that they’re in France.

The title character, played by Greta Garbo in one of her best performances, is a special envoy sent to Paris to figure out why the three earlier agents have not yet managed to sell off the royal jewelry. The three men—Buljanoff (Felix Bressart), Iranoff (Sig Rumann), and Kopalski (Alexander Granach)—have, it seems, become very enamored of the French way of life, which is so much more luxurious and, well, fun than the life they had to live back in Russia. As soon as Ninotchka arrives, she demonstrates that she will remain steadfast in achieving the goal of helping her fellow Russians. Unfortunately, she too falls victim to the charms of Paris and of one Parisian in particular, Count Leon, played with great charm by Melvyn Douglas.

Leon has tried to convince the three Russian agents to consider making an arrangement regarding the jewels that would be more favorable to Grand Duchess Swana, who just happens to be his fiancé. He tempts them with fancy dinners and wine and lots of cigarettes provided by lovely young women who keep arriving at the hotel room they’ve chosen because it has a bigger safe to hold all the jewels. They find him charming (well, who wouldn’t?), and he’s clever enough to use their affection for him and their disenchantment with Russia to full effect.

It’s almost twenty minutes into the film before Garbo first appears, and she’s a marvel from the first instant we see her at the train station. Severe, serious, humorless—it’s clear that she is not going to let the three men continue to enjoy themselves. They marvel at Russia sending a female agent, only to have her deadpan, “Don’t make an issue of my womanhood.” She carries a picture of Lenin with her, and she’s definitely committed at the start of the film to adhering to Bolshevik principles.  

One of the things that is striking about this movie is how Ninotchka and Leon begin to switch ideologies as the narrative progresses. She slowly becomes more cosmopolitan, even buying a new hat that she had earlier denounced as frivolous. He, on the other hand, becomes more inclined to goad his butler into starting a revolution among the workers. It's quite funny, really, to see them exchange roles in this way, and you don't need a deep knowledge of the inner workings of capitalism or communism to get the joke quickly.

The hat itself deserves a special mention. Given that the film was released by MGM, you’d expect that the production design and costume design would be first-rate, and it certainly is. But the hat? It’s, frankly, quite silly. Perhaps that’s the point. It’s something so frivolous that no one in Russia… well, no Bolshevik anyway… would find it attractive. Garbo’s Ninotchka does, though, and makes an impulsive purchase. However, even perched above that amazing face, it’s still a silly hat.

Ninotchka and Leon first meet by accident on a street when she’s trying to find her way to the Eiffel Tower. Not to admire it, of course, no. She wants to study it as an example of engineering. Before their sightseeing finishes, though, she’s back at his apartment, and he’s trying to woo her as best he can, but the best compliment she can afford him is “Your general appearance is not distasteful.” Quite the way to turn a man’s head, isn’t it?

It’s a sequence in a restaurant that led to the famous advertising tag line of “Garbo laughs.” (She had only spoken on screen a few years earlier, and that was billed as “Garbo talks.” What about “Garbo eats” or “Garbo stares”? They missed out on great opportunities.) Leon is trying to tell her jokes, but they’re not terribly funny, and she’s so severe. It’s only when he falls and knocks down a table that she begins to laugh, and then the whole restaurant laughs, and then Leon himself laughs. You can see that her demeanor toward him begins to change, and Garbo allows her facial expressions and body language to convey such a remarkable softening.

Eventually, the plot becomes absorbed into the love triangle, naturally, that includes Ninotchka, Leon, and the Grand Duchess Swana. Ninotchka and Swana clearly dislike each other because they blame the other for what happened in Russia or what’s happening in Russia. Their showdown at a nightclub is powerfully tense, and Swana makes it very clear that Ninotchka will be ending her relationship with Leon after the matter of the jewels has been settled. Garbo’s performance as a woman drunk on champagne for the first time is a delight. She needs to enjoy what little time she has left in Paris.

There's some interesting moments set in Russia after all four of the agents return home. Their night of sharing a four-egg omelet is quite funny, even if it does devolve into some of the most stereotypical Western views of what life under Communist rule must have been like. They have some lovely memories of their time in Paris, and even though she’s gone back to being quite humorless, she allows herself to enjoy their company and their reflections on better times. The ending is perhaps pure romantic fantasy, but that's always been one of the great contributions of film: allowing us to live in a world where fantasies like this can take place.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actress (Greta Garbo), Best Original Story, and Best Screenplay