And now, a two-fer: the nominees for the 1946 Retro Hollmann Awards, culminating in my official Top Ten!
The nominees are:
Best Visual Effects
Blithe Spirit
Tom Howard, special effects
I Know Where I'm Going!
Henry Harris, special effects
A Night in Casablanca
Harry Redmond, Jr., special effects
A Stolen Life
E. Roy Davidson / William C. McGann, special effects directors
Russell Collings / Willard Van Enger, special effects
The Time of Their Lives
Jerome Ash / David S. Horsley, special photography
Best Score
Children of Paradise
Maurice Thiriet with Joseph Kosma
The Harvey Girls
Harry Warren / Lennie Hayton / Conrad Salinger
Henry V
William Walton
Specter of the Rose
Georges Antheil
The Spiral Staircase
Roy Webb
Best Ensemble
The Best Years of Our Lives
Children of Paradise
Henry V
casting by Irene Howard
It Happened at the Inn
Specter of the Rose
Best Adapted Screenplay
Anna and the King of Siam
Talbot Jennings and Sally Benson
from the book by Margaret Landon
The Best Years of Our Lives
Robert E. Sherwood
from the novel Glory For Me by MacKinlay Kantor
Brief Encounter
Noël Coward & Anthony Havelock-Allan & David Lean & Ronald Neame
from the play Still Life by Noël Coward
Dragonwyck
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
from the book by Anya Seton
It Happened at the Inn
Jacques Becker
from the novel Goupi-Mains rouges by Pierre Véry
Best Original Song
Canyon Passage - "Ole Buttermilk Sky"
music and lyrics by Hoagy Carmichael and Jack Brooks
Centennial Summer - "Centennial"
music by Jerome Kern
lyrics by Leo Robin
Gilda - "Put the Blame on Mame"
music and lyrics by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher
The Harvey Girls - "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Sante Fe"
music by Harry Warren
lyrics by Johnny Mercer
The Harvey Girls - "It's a Great Big World"
music by Harry Warren
lyrics by Johnny Mercer
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Blithe Spirit
Tony Sforzini, makeup artist
Vivienne Walker, hairdresser
Children of Paradise
The Green Years
Jack Dawn, makeup creator
Henry V
Tony Sforzini, makeup artist
Vivienne Walker, hairdresser
Road to Utopia
Wally Westmore, makeup supervisor
Best Cinematography
Caesar and Cleopatra
Jack Cardiff / Jack Hildyard / Robert Krasker / Freddie A. Young
Children of Paradise
Roger Hubert
Henry V
Robert Krasker
It Happened at the Inn
Jean Bourgoin
My Darling Clementine
Joseph MacDonald
Best Costume Design
Anna and the King of Siam
Bonnie Cashin
Caesar and Cleopatra
Oliver Messel
Children of Paradise
Mayo
The Harvey Girls
Helen Rose / Valles
Henry V
Roger K. Furse
Best Original Screenplay
Children of Paradise
Jacques Prévert
Gilda
Marion Parsonnet
story by E.A. Ellington
adaptation by Jo Eisinger
I Know Where I'm Going!
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Magnificent Doll
Irving Stone
The Time of Their Lives
Val Burton & Walter DeLeon & Bradford Ropes
additional dialogue by John Grant
Best Actress
Arletty as Claire Reine, dite Garance
Children of Paradise
Olivia de Havilland as Jody Norris
To Each His Own
Rita Hayworth as Gilda
Gilda
Celia Johnson as Laura Jesson
Brief Encounter
Ginger Rogers as Dolly Payne
Magnificent Doll
Best Sound
Blue Skies
John Cope / Hugo Grenzbach, sound recordist
Children of Paradise
Jean Monchablon, sound
Robert Teisseire, sound engineer
Jacques Carrère, re-recording mixer
The Harvey Girls
Douglas Shearer, recording director
It's a Wonderful Life
Clem Portman / Richard Van Hessen / John Aalberg, sound
The Jolson Story
Hugh McDowell, Jr., sound recordist
Richard Olson, sound re-recordist
John P. Livadary, sound
Best Production Design
Children of Paradise
Léon Barsacq / Raymond Gabutti, production design
Alexandre Trauner, collaboration dans la clandestinité
Gilda
Stephen Goosson / Van Nest Polglase, art direction
Robert Priestley, set decoration
The Harvey Girls
William Ferrari / Cedric Gibbons, art direction
Edwin B. Willis, set decoration
Henry V
Paul Sheriff, art direction
Humoresque
Hugh Reticker, art direction
Clarence Steensen, set decoration
Best Editing
Caesar and Cleopatra
Frederick Wilson
Children of Paradise
Henri Rust
Gilda
Charles Nelson
It Happened at the Inn
Marguerite Renoir
The Time of Their Lives
Philip Cahn
Best Actor
Jean-Louis Barrault as Baptiste Debureau
Children of Paradise
Aldo Fabrizi as Don Pietro Pellegrini
Rome, Open City
Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp
My Darling Clementine
Claude Rains as Julius Caesar
Caesar and Cleopatra
James Stewart as George Bailey
It's a Wonderful Life
Best Director
Marcel Carné
Children of Paradise
John Ford
My Darling Clementine
Alfred Hitchcock
Notorious
Laurence Olivier
Henry V
Charles Vidor
Gilda
Best Supporting Actor
Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton
My Darling Clementine
Jimmy Hanley as Williams, A Soldier In The English Army
Henry V
Marcel Herrand as Pierre-François Lacenaire
Children of Paradise
Burgess Meredith as James Madison
Magnificent Doll
Claude Rains as Alexander Sebastian
Notorious
Best Supporting Actress
María Casares as Nathalie
Children of Paradise
Gloria Grahame as Violet Beck
It's a Wonderful Life
Leopoldine Konstantin as Madame Sebastian
Notorious
Angela Lansbury as Em
The Harvey Girls
Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati
Blithe Spirit
Now we come to the category of BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR. Of the 67 films screened, there were 18 that I considered exceptionally exceptional. I then had to cull that down to a Top Ten, five of which are up for Best Picture. The eight that did not make it, in alphabetical order: Anna and the King of Siam, The Best Years of Our Lives, Brief Encounter, Centennial Summer, Humoresque, It's a Wonderful Life, A Stolen Life, and To Each His Own.
The first half of the Top Ten consists of:
10. The Time of Their Lives - for how many laughs it can wring from ghosts discovering electricity and the radio, its surprising depiction of the more unreasonable elements of American Revolutionaries, and that final pay-off.
9. Notorious - for a genuinely interesting take on the post-War subgenre of "secret Nazi conspiracy," its ruthless honeypot scheme with its casual dismissal and manipulation of desire and feeling in service of The Greater Good, and the mother-son duo whose dynamic will make or break the fate of the free world.
8. The Harvey Girls - for delivering pure entertainment: the songs are engaging, the dancing makes you want to join in, and Judy Garland gives a perfect musical-comedy performance.
7. Magnificent Doll - for its clarity on what made the ideals and ideas of the early USA so unique, so frightening, so foolish, so hopeful, they were always one wrong move from a return to tyranny in some form. Ideals are worth pursuing and, once acted on, are worth improving. And there is nothing more attractive than someone who respects your intelligence.
6. It Happened at the Inn - for carrying multiple mysteries without feeling like a mystery, emphasizing instead the relationships and resentments of the odd family at the center and allowing the semi-comic plot to naturally present itself from there - every word deliberate, every actor in synch.
And that leads us to:
Best Motion Picture of the Year
Caesar and Cleopatra
produced by Gabriel Pascal
for being the kind of talky political drama I adore, its odd casting decisions offset by Claude Rains' killer lead performance, gorgeous costumes and sets and cinematography, and George Bernard Shaw's intelligent, witty writing.
Children of Paradise
produced by Adrien Ramougé
for being one-of-a-kind, pitched right at the heart of cinephile snobbery (three-hour French-language romantic drama about theatre people in the 1800s) yet emotionally universal, its runtime breezing by, its sets tactile, its characters as real as your closest friends and family; romantic, melancholy, and - in its pantomimes, in its love scenes, in that final scene, in its soliloquies - absolutely magic.
Gilda
produced by Virginia Van Upp
for being the sexiest film of the year, anchored by Rita Hayworth's seductive performance and a tough-minded script with some of the most malicious acts of vengeance I've seen, biting not for their physical cruelty, oh no, but for their psychological wickedness, humiliations calculated for maximum hurt.
Henry V
produced by Laurence Olivier
for bringing Shakespeare to the cinema, honoring both without compromising either, making the old world(s) feel very present, indeed.
My Darling Clementine
produced by Samuel G. Engel
for its beautiful cinematography, a weary and moral performance from Henry Fonda, and the general feeling that the West was not fun but dammit, it's ours, and since we're all here the least we can do is manage some kind of common civility, some mutual agreement of terms!
Of the 30 films nominated, it is Children of Paradise that leads with 15 nominations
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