Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1937

The Contenders:

Spencer Tracy: Captains Courageous (winner)
Charles Boyer: Conquest
Paul Muni: The Life of Emile Zola
Robert Montgomery: Night Must Fall
Fredric March: A Star is Born

Josephine Who?

Film: Conquest
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

There are times when I could wish that my interests in film were not as focused as much as they are on plot and narrative. Were that the case, I’d have more to say about a film like Conquest, which can so easily be summarized in a single paragraph. That’s not too rare with a lot of earlier films on my Oscar lists. It wasn’t until we started getting massive epics and the twisty plots of film noir that things got more complex on the plot front in general (yes, I’m aware of exceptions).

Put simply, Conquest is a love story between Napoleon Bonaparte (Charles Boyer) and Polish countess Marie Walewska (Greta Garbo). When the film beings, Napoleon is conquering Europe and is moving through Poland. It is here that he meets Marie, who is married to Count Anastas Walewski (Henry Stephenson). After a second meeting, Napoleon falls madly in love with her and basically forces her to give up her marriage for him. She does, and at the moment of his triumph, he marries a daughter of the Hapsburg family for the political connections, not knowing that Marie is pregnant with his son already. In more socially liberal terms, Conquest is the story of a woman who gives up her entire life and everything she wants for the man she is essentially forced to love and continues to do so regardless of how she is treated.