Two Best Picture nominees in one month!
Yes, we must be getting close to The Season, because while The Greatest Show on Earth debuted in February, it took til midsummer to get two of our other Best Picture nominees on the board: High Noon and Ivanhoe.
High Noon is, famously, an allegory for the blacklist. Carl Foreman wrote the screenplay about a man looking for friends and fellow defenders, abandoned by the people he thought he could trust when he needed them most, his doom egged on by a town that can only think in terms of how his presence effects their profits. Ivanhoe is not, it's a historical drama based on a beloved work of literature, but it was #1 at the box office four weeks in a row and the second highest-grossing 1952 release.
Both films came at the end of July. Of the twelve films we cover today, they're right in the middle. As you can see:
Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie
release: July
dir: Henry King
pr: George Jessel
scr: Maxwell Shane, adaptation by Allan Scott, from the novel I Hear Them Sing by Ferdinand Reyher
cin: Leon Shamroy
A barber reflects on the past fifty years in his small town, and the restless wife and son who couldn't wait to get out. One of a dozen such films are released every year - at least they were in the pre-60s Hollywood - but the lack of nostalgia here really sets it apart. Here we have a man with a dream of opening his own business and seeing a town through from its very beginnings, laying roots, not the biggest deal around, but a part of the community, which all sounds good and honorable, and he's a hard worker and all; but does he consider others? He makes plans, spends money, invests, sells - all without consulting his wife, who just wants to visit Chicago once, a promise he made that he's constantly dodging, from the day they wed he has lived his American Dream and expected everyone to fall in line. It could so easily be a fingerwagging story about tragedy following ingratitude, but there is a melancholy streak throughout, especially in David Wayne's performance. It's a film about values, about projecting your own values on the people around you. It's quietly marvelous.
Son of Paleface
release: July 14
nominations: Best Original Song ("Am I in Love")
dir: Frank Tashlin
pr: Robert L. Welch
scr: Frank Tashlin & Robert L. Welch & Joseph Quillan, based on characters created by Edmund L. Hartmann / Frank Tashlin / Jack Rose
cin: Harry J. Wild
The son of Paleface (remember The Paleface?) arrives from Harvard to claim his father's fortune; unfortunately, the town is waiting for him to pay off his father's debts. Another gag-a-minute live-action cartoon with Bob Hope and Jane Russell, who have so much chemistry together, you wish they did 10 films together. Some fun gags, some cheesy ones, it's fine, it's fine. Roy Rogers plays a supporting part, once again proving himself to be the most talented of the singing cowboy stars.
Carrie
release: July 16
nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration - Black-and-White (Hal Pereira / Roland Anderson / Emile Kuri), Best Costume Design - Black-and-White (Edith Head)
dir/pr: William Wyler
scr: Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz, from the novel Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
cin: Victor Milner
An innocent comes to the city and, well, you know, stuff happens. Central performance by Jennifer Jones, human wallpaper. But Laurence Olivier and Eddie Albert play the men smitten with her, and they're both excellent, especially Olivier as an unhappily married man who succumbs to a moment of weakness...a few times. Nominations make sense, the period detail is impressive.
Actor's and Sin
release: July 18
dir: Ben Hecht with Lee Garmes
pr/scr: Ben Hecht
cin: Lee Garmes
Two films in one. In Actor's Blood, a dead actress leads to reflections on the events leading up to it and her thespian father playing sleuth. In Woman of Sin, an agent has the hottest screenplay in town...written by a nine-year-old girl. Both showbiz satires: in one, a man turns the death of his daughter into one more great performance; in the other, Hollywood execs have never been so impressed by such sophisticated writing, i.e., a child's rendering of recycled claptrap. They're both darkly funny; Hecht's directorial pieces are always written and performed with an affectionate axe to grind - "Gosh, I love this business full of phonies and bastards", that kind of thing.
Affair in Trinidad
release: July 29
nominations: Best Costume Design - Black-and-White (Jean Louis)
dir: Vincent Sherman
pr: Rita Hayworth / Vincent Sherman
scr: Oscar Saul & James Gunn, story by Virginia Van Upp & Berne Giler
cin: Joseph Walker
A widowed nightclub singer and her brother-in-law infiltrate a Nazi spy ring - separately, accidentally. Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, together again, I swear he's never better than when he's working with her, she ups his game. And she's dancing calypso barefooted, hot and sexy, challenging the men around her to continue underestimating her, to continue labeling her a roundheel, all the while she's the one who knows what's going on. The ensemble of Nazis is a unique creation, a combination of real-deal fanatics and too-drunk not-quite-high society, people who, without the party, would just be frivolous flotsam.
High Noon
release: July 30
wins: Best Actor (Gary Cooper), Best Score (Dimitri Tiomkin), Best Original Song ("High Noon"), Best Film Editing (Elmo Williams / Harry Gerstad)
nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay
dir: Fred Zineemann
pr: Stanley Kramer
scr: Carl Foreman, from the short story "The Tin Star" by John W. Cunningham
cin: Floyd Crosby
The day of his wedding and retirement, a town's sheriff seeks help in a pending fight against a recently-paroled crook out for revenge. More Friday.
Ivanhoe
release: July 31
nominations: Best Picture, Best Score (Miklós Rózsa), Best Cinematography - Color
dir: Richard Thorpe
pr: Pandro S. Berman
scr: Noel Langley / Marguerite Roberts, adaptation by Æneas MacKenzie, from the novel by Sir Walter Scott
cin: Freddie Young
A Scottish knight fights against the Normans and for his captive King Richard. More Friday.
Sudden Fear
release: August 7
nominations: Best Actress (Joan Crawford), Best Supporting Actor (Jack Palance), Best Cinematography - Black-and-White, Best Costume Design - Black-and-White (Sheila O'Brien)
dir: David Miller
pr: Joseph Kaufmann
scr: Lenore J. Coffee and Robert Smith, from a story by Edna Sherry
cin: Charles B. Lang, Jr.
A wealthy playwright marries an actor, then realizes he's plotting her murder. Now this is cinema! A trio of perfect performers, with Joan Crawford as the smart but surprisingly malleable playwright who surprises herself with her spontaneity and how she's willing to survive, Jack Palance as the unconventional charmer with greed and murder in mind, and Gloria Grahame as the scheming broad who makes killing his wife worthwhile. San Francisco becomes a maze of doom, you're either stumbling uphill or careening too fast downhill, the black shadows of midnight slashing the face, the street. Explosive, sweaty finale: terrifying. Should've received a nomination for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration for Crawford's study alone. Can't wait to discuss more when I get into the acting categories next week.
What Price Glory
release: August 15
dir: John Ford
pr: Sol C. Siegel
scr: Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron, from the play by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings
cin: Joseph MacDonald
WWI dramedy about a company of messy soldiers in France, waiting for their next orders. Episodic, proto-M*A*S*H* sees James Cagney and Dan Dailey in an ongoing fistfight, both too old to be romancing the beautiful Corinne Calvert, now slapstick, now witty - and then, suddenly, we're in the trenches and remembering the cost and horror of war, and the most beautiful man you've ever seen is photographed looking directly into the camera, blue eyes piercing, sweating, in pain, asking, "What price glory," - holding not just the military and the world governments accountable, but us, the rah-rah patriots. Joseph McBride's Searching for John Ford goes hard on this one, and sure, not everything works, but there's a lot to admire here: the cinematography, for one, but also the balance of tones, the pacing that gets us from comedy to war drama, is so perfectly calibrated. Now, I give you that most of its runtime is given to awkward sex farce shenanigans, but what do you want? Like I said, it's the proto-M*A*S*H*, that alone makes it worthy of study.
The Big Sky
release: August 19
nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Arthur Hunnicutt), Best Cinematography - Black-and-White
dir/pr: Howard Hawks
scr: Dudley Nichols, adaptation by Ray Buffum / DeVallon Scott, from the novel by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
cin: Russell Harlan
Fur traders make their way through Blackfoot territory with a Native princess in tow. One of two films I've seen where livestock is catapulted, the other being Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but here it's less for comic effect than it is for historical "can you believe that's what they had to do?" purposes. Nothing against the movie, just didn't click with it.
Miracle of Fatima (aka The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima)
release: August 20
nominations: Best Score (Max Steiner)
dir: John Brahm
pr: Bryan Foy
scr: Crane Wilbur and James O'Hanlon
cin: Edwin B. DuPar
Three Portuguese children have a vision of the Virgin Mary in a time when religion was outlawed - a true story! The best of the "praise Jesus, not Marx" anti-Red films of this year, if only because it wears its Catholic heart on its sleeve and doesn't try to hide behind, "Well, you know, all faiths agree in some sense and, uh, also, denominationally, philosophically, uh..." No, this is a Catholic triumph, the miracle of the Virgin speaking through the mouths of babes and transforming a nation when it needed it most. Kids' performances are meh, script is feh, but the cinematography and the score and the editing in the Miracle scenes make it, uh, miraculous.
Big Jim McLain
release: August 30
dir: Edward Ludwig
pr: Robert Fellows / John Wayne
scr: James Edward Grant & Richard English & Eric Taylor, from a story by Richard English
cin: Archie Stout
Two agents for HUAC investigate Communist agents in Hawaii. John Wayne plays our hero, the titular Big Jim, so you can't fault the charisma. Perfectly paced, suspenseful, righteous indignation and action - a climactic fistfight is particularly satisfying. And listen, the Red Scare and subsequent blacklisting were horrible, but these guys, in this context, are going after the real deal spies attempting world domination. It's a little clumsy, a little ostentatiously macho, but it's an entertaining movie, what do you want?
Tomorrow, at least four films I pretty much loved.
No comments:
Post a Comment