Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1941

The Contenders:

Blossoms in the Dust
Citizen Kane
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Hold Back the Dawn
How Green Was My Valley (winner)
The Little Foxes
The Maltese Falcon
One Foot in Heaven
Sergeant York
Suspicion

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1941

The Contenders:

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (winner)
Hold Back the Dawn
How Green Was My Valley
The Little Foxes
The Maltese Falcon

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1941

The Contenders:

Barbara Stanwyck: Ball of Fire
Greer Garson : Blossoms in the Dust
Olivia de Havilland: Hold Back the Dawn
Bette Davis: The Little Foxes
Joan Fontaine: Suspicion (winner)

Over the Border

Film: Hold Back the Dawn
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Keepvid is a nice little internet site that allows one to download videos, which is something I’ve used any number of times to safeguard a rarity that has appeared on YouTube. The downside of Keepvid is that it doesn’t work with Dailymotion, which means that anything I find there is at risk for vanishing suddenly, leaving me with no good option. Because of this, I watched Hold Back the Dawn today in fear that it might suddenly turn into a pumpkin.

This starts with our romantic hero and narrator Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) more or less breaking onto a Paramount Studios set so that he can speak to a film director named Dwight Saxon (played by this film’s director Mitchell Leisen, and filming a scene with Victoria Lake) who he once met. He offers Saxon a story for $500 and his desperation more than anything gets Saxon to listen. Thus begins a tale of love and melodrama starting in a place that is certainly racier than would normally be the case for a film from 1941.