Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1986

The Contenders:
Children of a Lesser God
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Mission
Platoon (winner)
A Room with a View

Morgan! (Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment)

Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

Every now and then I find a film where it feels like the nomination went to the wrong person. I’m not trying to denigrate the performance of Vanessa Redgrave, but her nomination instead of a nomination for David Warner for Morgan! (also called Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment) seems bizarre. David Warner is the heart and soul of this film and it’s his performance that turns it from a little film about obsession and insanity into something potentially far more interesting.

Morgan Delt (Warner) is a failed artist and a communist radical. He also has a failing marriage with Leonie (Redgrave), who comes from a wealthy family. It’s never stated but somewhat implied that Leonie may well have married Morgan as an act of rebellion against her parents. However, she has had enough of Morgan’s various antics and has decided instead to divorce him and marry Charles Napier (Robert Stephens), an art dealer. Morgan is against this plan and will do anything he can think of to keep Leonie married to him. Because Morgan is also sliding directly into insanity, “anything he can think of” covers a lot of territory.

Judgment at Nuremberg

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

There are a few films out there that are a wet dream from a casting perspective. Judgment at Nuremberg is just such a film. Seriously, Stanely Kramer must have conspired with the devil to assemble these people in one place. Take a deep breath: Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark, and Burt Lancaster, four of whom nabbed Oscar nominations for this film. For fun, you also get early big screen appearances of Werner Klemperer and William Shatner. Holy shit, but that’s a cast that would make any director of the day drool.

The film takes place in the years following World War II, when various members of the Third Reich were put on trial for war crimes. In the film’s present day, the big trials are over and the surviving members of the Nazi brain trust and military have been dealt with. What remains are the civil servants, officials, and in the case of this film, judges who sentenced people cruelly, unfairly, or with malicious intent. American judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) has been sent to Germany to preside over the case of four judges. His appointed assistant, Captain Harrison Byers (William Shatner) gets him settled in and we jump right into the case.

Dark Victory

Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

When I started watching films seriously, I wasn’t much of a Bette Davis fan. I didn’t understand the appeal. One of the things I’ve taken away from the last several years is that my opinions have changed a ton, and being a Bette Davis fan is one of those changes. I do love me some Bette Davis. When she’s good, and she almost always was, it’s hard to think of anyone better. The biggest hole in my Bette Davis filmography was Dark Victory until tonight. This is one of Davis’s better films and one of the more interesting films of 1939, which is saying something when considering how many great films came from that year.

Judith Traherne (Davis) is a spoiled rich girl who spends her days with her horses and partying with her friends. She’s been having headaches, though, and one day while riding a horse she hopes to turn into a steeplechase champion, she takes a tumble. A fall down the stairs leads to her being dragged to the doctor by her best friend Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald). Her regular doctor, Dr. Parsons (Henry Travers) can’t make headway, so he takes her to a brain specialist named Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent). A few tests and some worried looks later and we learn that Judith Traherne is suffering from a malignant brain tumor that requires immediate surgery.

The Sin of Madelon Claudet

Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

There was evidently a genre of film in the early days in which a woman makes a single bad choice and spends the rest of the film paying for it. Such is the case with The Sin of Madelon Claudet, a film where a rash decision made early in the film leads to continual misery throughout the thankfully short running time. This has all the earmarks of a film destined to appeal to the baser natures of the audience, all about a fallen woman and her various trials and problems.

Young Madelon Claudet (Helen Hayes in an Oscar-winning role) is spirited away from her farmhouse by Larry (Neil Hamilton), an American who she has fallen in love with. The two run off to Paris where Larry attempts to make a go of it as an artist, albeit a pretty poor one based on the work we’re able to take a look at. During their brief affair, Larry receives a cable from home that his father has fallen ill, and he returns to the states, leaving Madelon behind. Once home, he is forced into a marriage to appeal to his parents, leaving Madelon alone to wait for him with her friend Rosalie (Marie Prevost). She’s also pregnant and eventually gives birth to a son she names Larry in honor of the boy’s missing father.

Off Script: Friday the 13th

Format: Independent Film Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

When you prepare to talk about one of the granddaddies of the horror/slasher genre, you need to be careful. Friday the 13th is a film that has a reputation, a following, and a massive amount of influence over the films that follow it. If I’m not properly deferential, I immediately become ignorant of history and genre or someone who disagrees for the sake of disagreeing. Love it too much and I’m just sucking up. As tends to be the case my feelings fall somewhere in between.

This is a film that is short on plot, something it has in common with most slasher movies. The basic premise of the genre is to toss a bunch of young kids into a remote location and start picking them off one by one through a variety of stabbings, slashings, bludgeonings, drownings, and any other form of mayhem the filmmakers can think up. Typically, the killer is unstoppable and the teens are whittled down to a final potential victim, who usually lives. That’s certainly what happens here.

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I think I can be forgiven if I assumed based on the name that the 1978 version of Heaven Can Wait was a remake of the film of the same name from 1943. It’s not, though. It’s actually a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan with a couple of surface changes. This is a film that runs through a lot of genres. It’s a fish-out-of-water comedy, a fantasy, a romance, a sports movie, and a few other things besides. It’s cute, even if it doesn’t all really work, and the casting is truly inspired.

Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) is a back-up quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams—yes, it was made before the team moved. He’s rehabbed himself and with his improved play has put himself in a position to take over the starting job. The team’s trainer Max Corkle (Jack Warden) gives Joe the news that he’s been tapped to start in the next game. In celebration, Joe goes out for a bike ride, but is killed in an accident in a tunnel. Sort of.