Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1944

The Contenders:

Barbara Stanwyck: Double Indemnity
Ingrid Bergman: Gaslight (winner)
Bette Davis: Mr. Skeffington
Greer Garson: Mrs. Parkington
Claudette Colbert: Since You Went Away

The Ties that Bind (and Choke)

Film: Mrs. Parkington
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

There is a particular weird little subgenre of film that attempts to encompass a person’s life. We typically start with the person at the end of his or her life and then experience the movie in a series of flashbacks. This is exactly the sort of film we get with Mrs. Parkington, which earned Greer Garson the fourth of her five consecutive Best Actress nominations. Of course, it wouldn’t be that interesting if the film were just a woman reminiscing about her life. No, we’re going to have a major conflict happening in the film’s present, and the flashbacks serve specifically as a way for us to understand the choice that Susie Parkington makes at the film’s close.

As the film opens, around Christmas, we are initially introduced to Susie Parkington’s family, and they are a miserable collection of people. None of them like each other, and it’s quickly evident that they only like their grand dame Susie Parkington because of her enormous wealth. In fact, the only decent people in the group aside from Susie are her great-granddaughter Jane (Frances Rafferty) and the new rancher husband of one of her descendants (Rod Cameron). The rest of them are exactly the stereotype of people raised on money and inherited entitlement, and every one of them is a swine, which becomes increasingly evident every time we flash back to the film’s present.