Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1951

The Contenders:

Katharine Hepburn: The African Queen
Jane Wyman: The Blue Veil
Eleanor Parker: Detective Story
Shelley Winters: A Place in the Sun
Vivien Leigh: A Streetcar Named Desire (winner)

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1951

The Contenders:

John Huston: The African Queen
Vincente Minnelli: An American in Paris
William Wyler: Detective Story
George Stevens: A Place in the Sun (winner)
Elia Kazan: A Streetcar Named Desire

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1951

The Contenders:

The African Queen
Detective Story
A Place in the Sun (winner)
La Ronde
A Streetcar Named Desire

Watching Oscar: Detective Story

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

I love film noir, as any regular reader of this blog will know by now. While the endings are often harsh, they also tend to be the endings that the characters deserve (thanks in large part to the Hays Code). There’s a sense of justice that comes with film noir that doesn’t happen in a lot of other film styles. With Detective Story, the status as a film noir is far less obvious and something I only really realized after the fact. That’s not because it’s a bad noir, but because the focus of the film is not the typical.

Virtually the entire film takes place inside the station of New York police precinct 21. During the course of the film, we spend a little time with some of the cops and see a series of criminals and others come and go. There are those caught stealing, those who admit to stealing, and those who do what they can to avoid confessing to anything. We get petty crime and major crime. But most of what we see is the most tragic day in the life of detective James McLeod (Kirk Douglas), who goes from being a respected officer to a man completely broken by his own tragic flaws.