Friday, July 18, 2014

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1945

The Contenders:
Anchors Aweigh
The Bells of St. Mary’s
The Lost Weekend (winner)
Mildred Pierce
Spellbound

What’s Missing

Despite the fact that I’ve seen all of the Best Picture nominations from this year and there are a few I wouldn’t nominate, there aren’t a ton that I’d add in specifically. As it happens, 1945 was the second year that the Academy went back to having only five nominees for Best Picture after more than a decade of 8-12 nominations. Les Enfants du Paradis is something that certainly could justify a nomination based on the story behind the film alone, but 1945 may have been too early for the Academy to look outside the English language, and it earned a nomination in 1946 for an award or two. I know there are fans of Detour out there, but it doesn’t work that well for me. I’d hold up the lovely and sweet Brief Encounter as a film that might be worthy of the pantheon, although it somehow showed up in the 1946 Oscars. Rome, Open City got left out, though. I’ll stand by that. I know there are more from this year that I haven’t seen—please educate me in the comments below.

Weeding through the Nominees

5: I’m not dumping Anchors Aweigh first because it’s a musical but because of the five nominees it’s the one with the story that doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a piece of fluff, a romance that works specifically because it’s also a Gene Kelly musical and involves a massive amount of dance and includes Frank Sinatra singing. It’s entertaining, absolutely. I love the sequence with Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry the Mouse, particularly for the time. But it’s a piece of candy, delicious on the tongue, but once it’s gone it’s easily forgotten. It’s worth watching, but it probably shouldn’t have been nominated.

4: With Spellbound we’re jumping into Hitchcock, which tends to be a positive for me. Sadly, we’re looking at something that is only vaguely a part of the great Hitchcock canon. The issue with Spellbound is that it relies completely on the conceit of very basic, almost childish Freudian analysis, the sort of thing that would be pointed and laughed at today and should have been then. When a film relies on really bad science, I find it difficult to be a fan, and I’m not sure that this even qualifies as good science for its time. A young Gregory Peck doesn’t hurt it, but it doesn’t help enough.

3: My issues with The Bells of St. Mary’s is not the music. After all, just as Anchors Aweigh has Sinatra doing the singing, this has Bing Crosby doing the singing, and that’s a positive. More than that, Crosby is amazingly likable on screen, as he always seemed to be. No, my issues here are purely with story. I object to how pat the ending turns out to be and how much that ending relies on pure manipulation. The Bells of St. Mary’s tries to recapture the magic from Going My Way and succeeds only in pieces, and mostly in terms of the charm of Crosby’s Father O’Malley. It’s such a letdown after Going My Way that I dislike it more than I probably should.

My Choices

2: I watched Mildred Pierce pretty early on this blog, but it’s a film that I recall very well because of how good it is. Say what you want about Joan Crawford’s personal life, in front of the camera, she was a force of nature, and Mildred Pierce is a film that truly demonstrates her talents. Better, this is a film that contains a genuine mystery and one that plays out beautifully over the course of the film. I also love that this is essentially a film noir with a true female protagonist. It plays with the conventions of the style and hits the notes perfectly every time. Mildred Pierce didn’t win, and I wouldn’t have voted for it, but I’d have been tempted. Had it won, I’d at least be able to think that a deserving film made off with the trophy. If you haven’t seen it, track it down. It’s well worth your time.

1: Ultimately, though, this is one of those rare cases where I’m sticking with the winner. I really like The Lost Weekend. Sure, the Hollywood ending brings it down a notch, but I can live with the uplift at the end because of how good everything is getting there. Keep in mind that pre-1945, drunks in films were comic characters; guys like W.C. Fields made their career being the witty, entertaining boozehound. The Lost Weekend showed the dark side of that life, and it gets very dark, indeed. The DT sequence is pretty gripping, but for me, the whole movie is encapsulated in the scene where our failed writer played by Ray Milland walks down the street looking to hock his typewriter—the only thing he has to pull him out of his spiral—for a bottle of cheap whiskey. It’s tragic, gutting, and brilliant. I’d pick it today, and Oscar made the right choice.

Final Analysis

12 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more about your assessment of the actual nominees. I'm glad to find someone else who isn't a fan of Spellbound. Brief Encounter is the most important omission for me and gets my vote among the not nominated films though I also love Children of Paradise.

    For some other worthy films that didn't get a nod try Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street (for the life of me I cannot fathom why this is not on The List), Leave her to Heaven (both film noirs), The Clock, and Blithe Spirit.

    Some 1945 film noirs that I liked include Fallen Angel, Hangover Square, Lady on a Train, The Spiral Staircase, and, of course, Detour. The Story of G.I. Joe is a pretty good war film and features Robert Mitchum's only Academy Award nominated performance.

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    1. I'd love to count Brief Encounter as an omission, but it is only technically. Since it wasn't released in the States until 1946, it technically didn't qualify, and it got its nominations the next year. Same with Children of Paradise. What this means is that since neither was nominated for Best Picture in 1946 either, you'll see them again here eventually.

      Thanks for the heads-up on the others.

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  2. About the only thing I'd change is swapping your number 3 and 4 films around. I agree on everything else.

    I second marie_dressler's recommendation of Leave Her to Heaven and your mention of Children of Paradise. I really liked And Then There Were None, which was based on an Agathie Christie story. I like a few others not mentioned yet, but not as much as these three.

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    1. When I first say down to write this, Spellbound was third and The Bells of St. Mary's was fourth. I changed my mind when I remembered how much the Freudian crap in Spellbound pissed me off.

      I'll be getting to Leave Her to Heaven eventually because of Gene Tierney's nomination.

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  3. I much prefer Mildred Pierce, and even Spellbound, to The Lost Weekend.

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    1. Ray Milland, the pawnshop episode and the DTs seal the deal for me.

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  4. I am with Kim on Mildred Pierce. That is an incredible film. I know Crawford got the Best Actress award (well deserved!), but there is so much else there is great about that movie. Lost Weekend was good and important too, but did not give me the same wow! experience as Mildred Pierce gave me. I know you love that movie and I agree on all your arguments, but to me Mildred Pierce is just a better movie.
    Agree on Spellbound. The entire psycho-babble element entirely ruins this film. Everything hinges on it and it just does not work.
    Since, as you mention, Brief Encounter is in Academy sense a 46 film I will not mentions that and Rome, Open City was probably too experimental for the Academy, although I really liked that one.

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    1. Don't get me wrong--I love Mildred Pierce, and I'd be lying if I said that this was a runaway winner this week, but I do like The Lost Weekend because I love how ballsy it is.

      I think Rome, Open City's problem, honestly, is that it was an Italian film in 1945, and the Academy wasn't even recognizing foreign language films as a category at this point, if memory serves.

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  5. I agree that Oscar made the right choice here. Love how you pointed out that before The Lost Weekend, drunks in films were typically played as buffoons. That movie really did change things.

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    1. The perfect drunken buffoon is W.C. Fields, and his stuff is still incredibly funny. The Lost Weekend was really the first film I know of to look at addiction seriously, as something that is a significant problem and should be dealt with in that way. Ray Milland seals the deal for me--he's great in it.

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  6. Having recently posted on The Lost Weekend, I feel I understand it's strengths and weaknesses. It was ground breaking and it was harsh. It is also creepy and sells out at the end. I'll agree that Oscar got it right though I'd be happy if Mildred Pierce was the winner. Those two actresses ripped up the screen with those performances.

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    1. I think remade today, the ending would be different. I don't love the ending because it feels like a cop out, but I do love everything else about it.

      I'm with you on Mildred Pierce. Had it won, my order would probably be the same, but it would've made it into the "I'm happy with it winning" category.

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