Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1950

The Contenders:

Adam’s Rib
Caged
The Men
No Way Out
Sunset Boulevard (winner)

I'm Not Half the Man I Used to Be

Film: The Men
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

When a movie is about to go off streaming on NetFlix, I go into a little bit of panic mode. In most cases, the movies that vanish are available on disc, but having less to worry about in the queue is a good thing. Typically, this happens at the end of the month. In the case of The Men, I got a bonus day. But it was today or stick it back in the queue for this one, so it was time to pull the trigger on it.

I knew nothing about this film going in except that it was the debut film for Marlon Brando and that it was very short. So it was surprising to discover that this was not (as the NetFlix summary suggests) a film about a man recovering from “physical and emotional wounds,” but about men who became paraplegics during World War II. This sort of heavy material is always unexpected by me in a film of this vintage. I’m not sure why this is, since this comes a good four years after The Best Years of Our Lives, which didn’t pull its punches much in a lot of respects either.