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

Oscar Got It Wrong: Best Picture 1944

The Contenders:

Double Indemnity
Gaslight
Going My Way (winner)
Since You Went Away
Wilson

American Miniver

Film: Since You Went Away
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

When you set up a NetFlix queue with the “very long wait” films at the top, there are benefits and problems that ensue. The benefit is that if you have a lot of films of that designation (as I do), you’re pretty much bound to get one of them every time you get a film. The downside is considerable, though—you really never know what you’re going to get. Might be the first movie on the list, might be the sixth one. So it was a bit distressing that in the last week of a quarter when I have a ton of papers to grade that Since You Went Away showed up. Oh, this isn’t a hard watch; it’s just close to three hours long. “Didn’t you just watch War and Peace?” I hear you ask. Yes. Yes I did. I also didn’t have papers turned in at the time, and I do now.

Since You Went Away is an American propaganda film, circa World War II. It’s obviously this and doesn’t try to hide it for a second. American films about the home front are vastly different from British ones. British films are filled with bombing raids and a burning London. American films are filled with scrap drives, men home on leave, and talk of sacrifice. While this is unquestionably a war film, there’s not a shot fired nor a bomb dropped for us to see. Rather, this is the war from the perspective of an interested family of spectators, essentially. This isn’t to say that their lives aren’t affected, but we won’t be seeing any military conflict here.