Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1928-1929

The Contenders:

Chester Morris: Alibi
Warner Baxter: In Old Arizona (winner)
Lewis Stone: The Patriot
George Bancroft: Thunderbolt
Paul Muni: The Valiant

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1928-1929

The Contenders:

Harry Beaumont: The Broadway Melody
Frank Lloyd: The Divine Lady (winner)
Frank Lloyd: Drag
Irving Cummings: In Old Arizona
Lionel Barrymore: Madame X
Ernst Lubitsch: The Patriot
Frank Lloyd: Weary River

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1928-1929

The Contenders:

Alibi
The Broadway Melody (winner)
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
In Old Arizona
The Patriot

Go West, Young Man

Film: In Old Arizona
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’m often of two minds when I watch a film from the very early days of Oscar. On the one hand, the majority of the films I’ve seen from this era are, at the very least, incredibly dated. Most of them are pretty wretched from a modern perspective in part because people were just figuring out how to do sound in the movies. I dread them a little bit because of this. On the other hand, if I’m going to see all of them, or at least as many as I can, knocking them out on a regular basis is important so I don’t end up with a bunch of them at the end. So when In Old Arizona showed up today, I was both pleased to knock out a film from the second Oscar ceremony, I was nervous about it as well.

I had every reason to be nervous about it. Aside from our lead actor, this is almost a farce with how overacted it is by every other character. What we have here is a basic love triangle complicated by the fact that one of the men is a wanted criminal and the other is a military officer charged with capturing said criminal. Stick it in the West at some vague time that could be after the Civil War or vaguely in the film’s present and we have a movie. Sorta.