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Friday, February 13, 2015

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1944

The Contenders:

Double Indemnity
Gaslight
Going My Way (winner)
Laura
Meet Me in St. Louis

What’s Missing

One of the problems I have with dealing with screenplay is figuring out whether or not a given screenplay was adapted or original. Even now, I’m not always sure about where the line is drawn for particular movies. For 1944, I think I’d suggest Arsenic and Old Lace as a possibility. To Have an Have Not was loosely based on Hemingway, so it might qualify here as well. Olivier’s Henry V is a fine adaptation and technically came out in 1944, but was somehow nominated for Oscars in 1946. I might also toss out Murder, My Sweet as worthy of a nod. I might suggest National Velvet, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Weeding through the Nominees

5: Meet Me in St. Louis may well be a faithful adaptation of its source material, but this is a film that I dislike intensely. Sure, the songs are good, but I don’t like any of the characters except for the poor, put-upon father. Everyone else in this film is a selfish, spoiled jerk who treats the person who spends his like making theirs better like a pariah. I know this is my personal preference getting in the way of objectivity, but with this film, I can’t help it. There’s nothing here that I like beyond a couple of songs.

4: Gaslight is a film I liked pretty well, but it’s also a film that is incredibly simplistic in almost every aspect of its story and screenplay. Again, this is likely a solid adaptation of the story itself, but the story itself offers nothing too difficult for the audience to follow. Really, the entire plot hinges on the height of a gas flame in a lamp. All of the good performances in the world can’t get past the idea that the story we’re watching has a mystery solvable by a relatively observant person in a couple of minutes. No sale.

3: No one was more surprised than I was that I liked Going My Way as much as I did. This film had everything going against it from my perspective—priest main character, musical, huge potential for sappiness—and yet it holds together really well. It’s also really fun and entertaining. I like it a lot, and love that it gave us the song “Swingin’ on a Star.” It’s a good adaptation and I like the nomination. I just don’t think it was the best screenplay of its year.

2: I could see someone suggesting that Laura has some of the same problems as Gaslight. In one sense, the story that we’re given here is kind of silly, or at least the characters are. But it’s a really interesting plot with some excellent twists, not the least of which being that several characters are in love with a dead woman. I could stand for more interesting lead characters in the roles here, but that’s hardly the problem of the screenplay.

My Choice

1: I’ve never been shy about my love of Double Indemnity, and there are a couple of Oscars I think it probably should have (or at least could have) won. Of all of those Oscars, Best Adapted Screenplay is probably its strongest case. In addition to having a twisty, intricate plot, it also has some truly wonderful moments of dialogue and sets up a few moments that ramp up tension quickly to an insane degree. This is the sort of film that should be and is studied for how to make a plot work. In 1944, no film gave its director a stronger place from which to start. It deserved to win.


Final Analysis

14 comments:

  1. I've only seen Double Indemnity of this list, but I'm 100% with you that it should have won!

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    1. Scratch that, I've also seen Laura. I still think Double Indemnity wins.

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    2. Agreed. Laura is a good film, but it doesn't have the smarts in the screenplay that Double Indemnity has.

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    3. Exactly the same for me! How could it not be at the top?

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  2. Since I have not seen Going My Way I cannot say that it did not deserve the Oscar. Of the the four remaining films DI is definitely the one with the best put together story. I may not share your total devotion to Stanwyck and this film but there is no doubt that the story works. I love Murder, My Sweet, there story is wonderfully twisted but it may be a bit on the silly side for an Oscar win. It would however easily have made top 4, maybe even top 2.

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    1. I'd have nominated Murder, My Sweet over both Meet Me in St. Louis or Gaslight. I'd do the same with Arsenic and Old Lace.

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  3. Somehow I've managed to see all of these. You've got it right. For me there could have been only one choice.

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    1. I'm of the opinion that cracking dialogue should be rewarded.

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  4. That is actually a pretty tough batch of films to choose from. I think I would give it to Double Indemnity by a whisker, just over Meet Me in St. Louis, but the other three are all great films (even though Going My Way isn't really type of movie, I can't deny that is incredibly well-made and entertaining. And Laura and Gaslight are both amazing films).

    (And one of my favorite Universal horror films is from 1944 - House of Frankenstein - but I doubt I'll be getting much support if I try to shill for it here.)

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    1. We'll disagree on Meet Me in St. Louis. I found that film to be nothing but annoying from start to finish.

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  5. I've seen four of the nominees (haven't yet seen Going My Way), and from these four I fully agree with your top two, although I think I enjoyed both Gaslight and Meet Me In St. Louis a bit more than you did.

    Of the non-nominated films that would qualify in this category and deserve a look, I would recommend both Passage To Marseille and 30 Seconds Over Tokyo. Passage To Marseille has a relatively unique flashback within a flashback within a flashback structure that works remarkably well. 30 Seconds Over Tokyo is a thoughtful war movie about the Doolittle raid and its aftermath.

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    1. I'm not typically in the business of recommending feel-good musicals, but Going My Way is surprisingly entertaining. A lot of that is the presence of Bing Crosby, who is immediately likable on camera. It's a difficult film to not enjoy on some level.

      I'm familiar with 30 Seconds Over Tokyo. I think I've seen pieces of it. I should probably watch the whole thing some day.

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  6. The challenge with this category is what qualifies as "best". Is it the best story that happens to be adapted? If so, then I agree with your choices.

    On the other hand, is it the one that best translated the original source material, which is from another medium, onto the screen? If it is this, then it's almost impossible to judge the best without having read/seen the original source.

    An example of the latter would (fittingly) be Adaptation which took a basically unadaptable non-fiction book and turned it in to something much greater.

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    1. Well, yeah. I agree completely. In that respect, I am looking at this more on the best story that happens to be adapted, because in most cases, I'm not familiar with the original work. That was my biggest worry in adopting this category, so that was the decision I made--I have to look at each work as it is on the screen rather than how well it adapts where it came from.

      My guess is that that also tends to be how voting members view this category.

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