The DVD Report #175: September 28, 2010

Three of 1957’s Best Picture nominees have held up extremely well while the other two have lost the luster they once had.

The year’s big awards winner, and still deserving of all its honors, was David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai. With its brilliant score accented by the invigorating Colonel Bogey March, its mammoth art direction and set design and its breathtaking cinematography, the film is still a pleasure to look at and listen to. Aside from a forgettable romantic subplot, the story of a clash of wills in a Japanese prisoner of war camp remains top notch entertainment. William Holden receives top billing as a soldier leading a small unit ordered to destroy the titled bridge, but it is Oscar winner Alec Guinness as the vain British colonel duped into building the bridge and Oscar nominee Sessue Hayakawa as the Japanese commandant who knows exactly how to play him, who command our attention with their unforgettable dual of wits.

Charles Laughton was offered the Guinness part, but turned it down because he didn’t understand the character. Instead, he gave one us one of his greatest performances in a role he understood well, the scowling barrister (court room defense attorney) in Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution for which he won his first Oscar nomination in 32 years. A rare film directed by Billy Wilder that he didn’t write himself, the film has more twists and turns than any other mystery ever written. Matching Laughton’s brilliance are Marlene Dietrich in her best film role in years as the title character,Oscar nominee Elsa Lanchester, Laughton’s real-life wife, in a role written for the screen version expressly for her as a nurse keeping her eye on the ailing Laughton, and Una O’Connor, repeating her stage triumph as the murder victim’s hearing impaired housekeeper. The one off note is Tyrone Power playing against type as Dietrich’s milquetoast husband accused of murdering a rich old lady for her money.

Henry Fonda produced TV director Sidney Lumet’s first theatrical film and gave himself one of his best roles as a juror in 12 Angry Men. The film, which has since been used as a prototype for an episode of just about every TV series out there, has Fonda as the sole holdout for a quick conviction in what appears on the surface to be a slam dunk case of murder. Layers of the prosecution’s case are peeled away as are layers of various jurors’ prejudices. The strong supporting cast includes Lee J. Cobb, Jack Warden, E.G. Marshall and Ed Begley.

Though beautifully photographed and scored, both Peyton Place and Sayonara, two once highly respected films, lose points with modern audiences due to their less than stellar main story lines. Subplots in both films are far more interesting.

The mother/daughter relationship between Oscar nominees Lana Turner and Diane Varsi in Peyton Place actually take a back seat to the subsidiary one involving doctor Lloyd Nolan, Oscar nominated rape victim Hope Lange and her despicable stepfather, Oscar nominated Arthur Kennedy. The main romance between Oscar nominee Marlon Brando and Miiko Taka in Sayonara isn’t half as compelling as the secondary one between Oscar winners Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki.

While these two films have fallen in stature, at least three of the year’s other films have gained in reputation.

The darkest days of World War I are explored in Stanley Kubrick’s Kirk Douglas starrer, Paths of Glory. Douglas is outstanding as a French defense officer trying to get at the truth in the court-martial of three men who refuse to take part in a suicide mission ordered by malevolent generals George Macready and Adolphe Menjou. Based on a true story, the film was banned in France for decades.

Playing against type, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis are two of the nastiest characters ever put on celluloid in the NYC noir, Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Lancaster is the egomaniacal Broadway columnist patterned after Walter Winchell and Curtis is the sleazy press agent who will do anything to curry his favor. Susan Harrison, who makes her screen debut as Lancaster’s sister, came briefly out of obscurity in 2000 when her daughter, Darva Conger, courted notoriety as an instant bride on TV’s Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire.

Don’t believe everything you see on TV is the basic message of A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan, featuring Andy Griffith in a tour de force performance as an overnight TV star who becomes drunk with his newfound fame and power. Patricia Neal is equally superb as the woman who discovers him and directs his career to its logical conclusion. Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau and Lee Remick provide finely etched supporting performances.

Among the many fine foreign language films making their way into U.S. theatres in 1957 were Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet and Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night. Of these, Fellini’s Cabiria proved to have the most immediate impact. Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina, who had scored in the director’s La Strada, was the chief reason for its success. Her portrayal of a prostitute looking for love, but finding only heartbreak and misery was one of the finest performances of the year in any language. Fellini’s sit up and take notice images of modern Rome pre-dated those in his masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, by only a few years.

The year’s best romantic comedy was Leo McCarey’s remake of his own Love Affair, re-titled An Affair to Remember, with Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant and Cathleen Nesbitt in the roles once played by Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer and Maria Ouspenskaya. All are fine, especially Kerr as the cabaret singer who leaves shipboard paramour Grant waiting atop the Empire State building for reasons beyond her control.

The way most people saw films in 1957 was as part a double bill at their local neighborhood theatre. An example of a second feature on such a bill that was even better than the main one was Fear Strikes Out, the story of Boston Red Sox pitcher Jim Piersall’s nervous breakdown, directed by Robert Mulligan with a standout performance from Anthony Perkins fresh from his Oscar nominated turn in Friendly Persuasion and several years before his signature role in Psycho. Karl Malden is equally effective as his stern father.

What was the film that was on top of the bill with Fear Strikes Out, you ask?That was Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen with Audrey Hepburn as a beatnick model in love with much older photographer Fred Astaire to the beat of glorious Gershwin music. “Eloise” author Kay Thompson all but steals the film as a fashion editor singing “Think Pink”.

Other films of note include John Huston’s Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison with Oscar nominated Deborah Kerr as a nun hiding out with U.S. marine Robert Mitchum on a Japanese held island; Oscar winner Joanne Woodward as a woman with multiple personalities in Nunnally Johns’s The Three Faces of Eve; Martin Ritt’s Edge of the City with John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier in fine form as longshoreman buddies battling racial prejudice; Jack Arnold’s sci-fi classic, The Incredible Shrinking Man with Grant Williams and Randy Stuart; Allen Reisner’s Christmas classic, All Mine to Give with Glynis Johns and Cameron Mitchell and three memorable musicals: George Cukor’s film of Cole Porter’s Les Girls with Gene Kelly, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg; Rouben Mamoulian’s film of Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse and George Abbott and Stanley Donen’s film of Adler and Ross’s The Pajama Game with Doris Day and John Raitt.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S.

New DVDs this week include the first U.S. release of Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence on both Blu-ray and standard DVD and the Blu-ray debuts of Terrence Maick’s The Thin Red Line and Merian C. Cooper and Ernst B. Schodesack’s original 1933 classic, King Kong.

 

-Peter J. Patrick (September 28, 2010)

The DVD Report #174: September 21, 2010

Big widescreen color epics were king of the box office from 1953-1955, but not the Oscars where black-and-white prevailed. With the 1956 awards, Oscar joined the party. Only one more black-and-white film would win Oscar’s big prize and that wouldn’t be until 1960.

The nominees this year were all big ones – Mike Todd’s spectacular and spectacularly hyped Around the World in 80 Days; William Wyler’s hearty, homespun Quaker western, Friendly Persuasion; George Stevens’ sprawling modern western, Giant; the lavish Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, The King and I and Cecil B. DeMille’s years-in-the-making spectacle, The Ten Commandments.

The second film made in the 70mm process called Todd-AO, co-owned by producer Todd and American Optical, Todd’s film of Jules Verne’s classic Around the World in 80 Days was even more of an event film than the first projected in this process – Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Going to the see the film in its initial reserved seat engagements was like going to the circus or the zoo – a really special event. The excitement was palpable and impossible to comprehend by anyone whose first encounter with the film was on a small TV screen in later years.

Todd invented the term “cameo” to entice then major stars to appear in small roles in the film in support of David Niven, Cantinflas, Robert Newton and Shirley MacLaine. Among them were Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward, Fernandel, Charles Boyer, Ronald Colman, Peter Lorre, Charles Coburn, Red Skelton, Beatrice Lillie, Joe E. Brown, Buster Keaton and even Edward R. Murrow. Part of the fun was in spotting the star. Nominated for eight Oscars, it went into the race the clear favorite and won five including Best Picture and Best Screenplay.

One of the screenplay winners was John Farrow, who was the film’s initial director. He had been fired by Todd and replaced by Michael Anderson.

Based on a best-seller by Jessamyn West, a second cousin of then Vice President Richard Nixon, the gentle hero of Friendly Persuasion,played by Gary Cooper, was based on their great-grandfather.

The beautifully shot film with its memorable soundtrack gave Cooper one of his most atypical roles. He plays a pacifist Quaker who refuses to give in to the violence all around him during the Civil War. It’s also one of his best performances. Dorothy McGuire as his fretful wife and Anthony Perkins as his teenage son, torn between what he has been taught and what he thinks is right, are also effectively cast. McGuire won the National Board of Review award as the year’s Best Actress, Cooper and Marjorie Main, in full Ma Kettle mode as a neighbor, were nominated for Golden Globes and Perkins accounted for one of the film’s six Oscar nominations. Alas, it didn’t win any.

Edna Ferber, whose previously filmed works included Cimarron and Show Boat, provided another best-selling novel ripe for adaptation with Giant, the story of a Texas family rich in oil. Rock Hudson is the titled giant, tall in stature, tall in might and tall in moral values. Elizabeth Taylor is his long suffering wife, James Dean a troublesome former employee, now a rich oilman in his own right, Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper his and Taylor’s offspring, Sal Mineo a troubled kid and Mercedes McCambridge his bitter sister. Nominated for ten Oscars including two for Best Actor (Hudson, Dean), the film won only one, but it was a big one – George Stevens as Best Director.

One of the most beloved stage musicals of all time, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I was brought to the screen virtually intact with Yul Brynner reprising his star making triumph as the King of Siam and Deborah Kerr, in for the late Gertrude Lawrence, as Mrs. Anna, whose tale was told on the screen ten years earlier sans music as Anna and the King of Siam with Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison. Nominated for nine Oscars, it won five including one for Yul Brynner as Best Actor.

Brynner was also one of the stars of the fifth Best Picture nominee, The Ten Commandments,as Rameses, the Egyptian ruler and Moses’ nemesis. Both he and Charlton Heston as Moses gave strong, resilient performances that were as big as the epic they were starring in. Certainly there was more chemistry between Heston and Brynner than there was between leading lady Anne Baxter as Neferiti than there was between Baxter and either of them. Also caught up in the spectacle were Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, John Derek, Nina Foch, Martha Scott, Judith Anderson, Cedric Hardwicke and thousands more. Nominated for seven Oscars, it won one for its Special Effects.

Having stood the test of time at least as well as the five Best Picture nominees were five other films, two of which were nominated in lesser categories and three of which weren’t nominated at all.

The winner of the first competitive Foreign Film Oscar, Federico Fellini’s La Strada (The Road) was a huge hit in the U.S. Anthony Quinn starred as the strong man who buys waif Giulietta Masina from her parents as a helper to him in his traveling shows. Richard Basehart was the man who comes between them. It was the first major starring role for veteran character actor Quinn and the first international success for Masina, who was Fellini’s wife. The film was also nominated for Best Screenplay.

The most popular Japanese film to be released in the United States up to that time, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai was the inspiration for John Sturges’ virtual 1960 remake, The Magnificent Seven, which relocated the action from feudal Japan to the Old West. Toshiro Mifune starred in the film that was nominated for two Oscars – Best Black-and-White Art Direction and Costume Design.

Probably the most enduring film of 1956 is John Ford’s The Searchers, released at a time when westerns were popping on TV practically every night and Oscar nominations only went to westerns with a twist, e.g. the Quaker western, Friendly Persuasion,and the modern western, Giant. The Directors Guild, however, did nominate Ford for the film which has influenced everything from Taxi Driver to Star Wars and beyond.

The impeccable cast of Ford’s revenge western included John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, John Qualen, Olive Carey and Harry Carey, Jr., all at their best. The film proves Wayne with two of his most iconic lines, the image defining “that’ll be the day” and the surprisingly tender “let’s go home, Debbie”, the latter still capable of wringing tears from the most hardened viewer.

It won no awards at the time, but Don Siegel’s science fiction masterpiece, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a frightening parable of the Communist takeovers happening all over the world at the time, is still capable of provoking nightmares and insomnia in audiences discovering it for the first time. Kevin McCarthy’s increasingly terrified everyman is one of the prime reasons for its success.

An exciting heist film in which everything typically goes wrong, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing was the film that put him on the international stage. Ignored by Oscar, it was nominated for a Bafta as Best Film of the Year from Any Source. Sterling Hayden stars, and he’s fine, but the film is stolen lock, stock and barrel by character players Elisha Cook, Jr. and Marie Windsor. Why the latter failed to win an Oscar nomination for her classic portrayal of a mean, vicious wife defies credulity.

Other films of particular note include Ingrid Bergman’s comeback vehicle, Anastasia,and two by two directors of particular distinction, Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli.

Bergman had been the most popular actress of the mid to late 1940s when she went to Italy to make a film with Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini. Their ensuing love affair sparked world-wide indignation as the actress who had been held on a pedestal after her portrayals of nuns and saints was brought low by Hollywood gossip columnists for abandoning her husband and young daughter.

By 1956, however, Bergman had been married to Rossellini for six years and had borne him three children. Was the American public ready to welcome her back? Fox, the producers of Anastasia, weren’t so sure so they hedged their bets by securing the services of Broadway legend Helen Hayes, then the most beloved woman in America except for maybe Eleanor Roosevelt or Helen Keller, as one of her two co-stars. The other was the ubiquitous Yul Brynner.

All three performers won raves for their performances and audiences as well as critics and Bergman’s fellow actors welcomed her back with open arms. She was the overwhelming favorite to win her second Oscar as the is-she-or-isn’t-she long lost daughter of the last czar of Russia, and she did.

Douglas Sirk’s forte was taking time worn soap operas and remaking them even better than their originals. He also directed a number of originals, among them 1956’s All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind. The latter, an overheated melodrama was quick to win attention and awards – it was nominated for three Oscars and won one for Dorothy Malone as a nymphomaniac, a sure sign that the Hollywood Production Code was cracking.

While Written on the Wind may not be as popular today as it was then, Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows has only grown in acclaim. On the surface it’s an obvious tearjerker about a widow whose children buy her a TV set, hoping that will stave off her interest in hunky gardener Rock Hudson. It doesn’t work, of course, and the on-screen lovers are even more memorable here than they were two years earlier in Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession which made Hudson a star and earned Wyman her fourth Oscar nomination. On a deeper level, it’s an exercise in film-making mastery as Sirk’s camera lingers on faces, looks through mirrors and more, to underline his characters’ motivations.

Heretofore best known for his many musicals, by 1956 Vincente Minnelli had also become known as the director who made the best use of the widescreen process. Most other directors were still struggling with the process by either limiting their action to center screen with side images of no particular interest, or placing actors on either side of the screen with a fruit bowl or something in-between. Minnelli, on the other hand, filled every inch of the screen with something to look at. In 1956, he gave us two of the best films made in the early days of the process.

The story of the volatile life of Vincent Van Gogh, Lust for Life starred Oscar nominee as Van Gogh and Oscar winner Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin. It had also been nominated for Best Screenplay and Color Art Direction.

Marred somewhat by a tacked on explanatory ending, discerning audiences nevertheless knew that Tea and Sympathy really ended with Deborah Kerr seductively lowering her shoulder strap and saying to sensitive John Kerr (no relation), “when you talk of this...and you will…be kind”, as it did in Robert Anderson’s Broadway smash. Neither Kerr was nominated for this, though both should have been. There is some consolation, however, in the fact that Deborah Kerr was nominated for The King and I, that John Kerr’s Broadway replacement, Anthony Perkins, was nominated for Friendly Persuasion,and that Ingrid Bergman, who played Deborah Kerr’s role in Paris, won for Anastasia.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S. except Tea and Sympathy, which one assumes will eventually be released by the Warner Archive.

New on DVD this week are the Oscar winning Argentine mystery, The Secret in Their Eyes and Neil Jordan’s fantasy film, Ondine starring Colin Farrell.

-Peter J. Patrick (September 21, 2010)

The DVD Report #173: September 14, 2010

1955 was the year the movies and the Oscars met TV head on. While the trend was to bigger, wider, more colorful films, a 35mm. black-and-white film based on a TV play won the year’s major film awards including four of the eight Oscars it was nominated for. The idea may well have been that movies could do better than TV even when playing TV’s game.

It may have been a fluke, but it helped that the films the Academy chose to put up against Marty were not the year’s best. If you couldn’t vote for East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, The Night of the Hunter, The Man From Laramie, Bad Day or Black Rock or Summertime,what could you vote for? Maybe you could be persuaded to cast a vote for Mister Roberts or Picnic,but not Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing or The Rose Tattoo.

A film about a middle-aged Bronx butcher living with his elderly mother and finding romance with a shy, homely, Brooklyn schoolteacher doesn’t seem to resonate with today’s audiences who have many more options. Fifty-five years ago, however, the situations featured in Delbert Mann’s Marty were commonplace and struck many a chord with contemporaneous audiences. Whether or not you can relate to those situations, you should be able to relate to the moving performances of Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine as the self-proclaimed “fat, ugly, little man”, nominee Betsy Blair as the wallflower he falls in love with, Esther Minciotti as his confused, but kindly, mother and Augusta Ciolli as his bitter aunt.

Based on a smash hit 1948 Broadway play starring Henry Fonda and directed by Joshua Logan, Mister Roberts was an even bigger smash hit film that not only starred Fonda but James Cagney, William Powell and Jack Lemmon as well. It wasn’t directed by Logan, but John Ford who left the film after clashing with Fonda, and by Mervyn LeRoy who took over from Ford.

The film is an unusual mix of poignant drama and high comedy aboard a Navy cargo ship in the Pacific during World War II. The drama surrounds second-in-command Fonda’s attempts at a transfer to a destroyer where he can be more useful while the comedy is left mostly to Cagney as the ship’s mean captain and Oscar winner Jack Lemmon as the ensign who is Cagney’s nemesis. In addition to Best Picture and Supporting Actor, the film was nominated for Best Sound.

Joshua Logan did get to direct the film version of another of his Broadway hits, Picnic, with a dream cast that included William Holden, Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell, Cliff Robertson, nominee Arthur O’Connell, Susan Strasberg, Betty Field and Verna Felton.

Set over a steamy Labor Day weekend, Picnic is the story of a handsome drifter whose presence upsets life in a small Kansas community. Nominated for six Oscars, it won two for Color Art Direction and Editing. The instrumental recording of “Moonglow” from the film’s picnic scene became a huge hit.

Holden and a hit record also figured in another of the year’s Best Picture nominees, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, directed by Henry King. The story of a Eurasian doctor, nominee Jennifer Jones, who has an affair with the married journalist played by Holden, was based on a best-selling autobiography by Han Suyin. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won three for Best Color Costume Design, Score and Song, the hit title tune.

A bit of trivia: Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing is the only film in which Charlie Chan’s three screen sons, Keye Luke, Sen Young and Benson Fong all appeared.

Though hardly in the same league as A Streetcar Named Desire, the latest Tennessee Williams play to reach the screen, The Rose Tattoo, directed by Daniel Mann, was well received at the time due to Williams’ name and the excitement surrounding Italian star Anna Magnani’s Hollywood debut.

Magnani did not speak English well and had to learn her lines phonetically, but her performance was impressive all the same, winning all the year’s acting awards including the Oscar. Her co-star Burt Lancaster was another matter. His over-the-top performance is quite an embarrassment.

Nominated for eight Oscars, The Rose Tattoo also won for Best Black-and-White Cinematography and Art Direction.

The dominant film personality of the year, however, was not Magnani, but James Dean, who died on September 30, 1955, five and a half months after the release of East of Eden and almost a month before the scheduled release of Rebel Without a Cause. His iconic performances in both have kept his legend strong all these years.

Based on the last section of John Steinbeck’s famed novel, East of Eden won nominations for Best Actor (Dean), Director (Elia Kazan), Screenplay (by Paul Osborn) and Supporting Actress (Jo Van Fleet), with only the latter winning for her brilliant portrayal of Dean’s whorehouse madam mother. Julie Harris, Raymond Massey and Richard Davalos also starred.

Nominated for three Oscars, Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause was up for Best Screenplay (Ray), Supporting Actor (Sal Mineo) and Supporting Actress (Natalie Wood). Generally considered the best of the teen angst films, Dean, Mineo and Wood all play anxious teenagers misunderstood by their parents. Corey Allen and Dennis Hopper are the teen bad guys and Jim Backus and Ann Doran are Dean’s parents.

A huge flop in its day, but now considered one of the greatest films of the all time, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter,with its unflinching screenplay by James Agree and a no-holds-barred performance by Robert Mitchum as evil personified, was way ahead of its time.

Mitchum plays a twisted preacher who marries widow Shelley Winters, then kills her and attempts to kill her children who come under the protection of Lillian Gish in one of her signature roles as a woman of great kindness. Brilliant as Laughton’s direction is, legend has it that he had no patience with child actors Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce who were actually directed by Mitchum.

Based on the evidence here, Laughton should have had a second career as a director but due to the film’s failure at the box-office, he was never given another opportunity.

Perhaps the best of the Anthony Mann directed westerns starring James Stewart, The Man From Laramie with its literate script, exquisite cinematography and great performances by Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Aline MacMahon and Alex Nicol should have been recognized for something but standard westerns at the time were considered the province of television and even the best of them such as this, were ignored.

A ‘modern’ western, John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock is set in the recent past as one-armed war hero Spencer Tracy comes to a small Arizona town to present a posthumous medal of honor to the father of a Japanese-American war hero. The town’s tight-lipped citizens as exemplified by Robert Ryan, Dean Jagger, Walter Brenan, Ernest Bognine and Lee Marvin try to prevent him from finding the man’s farm. The highly atmospheric film was nominated for three Oscars including Best Actor (Tracy), Director and Screenplay.

David Lean’s gorgeously filmed Summertime, his first film in color, which was also the last of his “small” films, was based on the Broadway play, The Time of the Cuckoo. Katharine Hepburn gave one of her best performances as the middle-aged spinster on vacation in Venice before settling down for a life of presumed spinsterhood. Rossano Brazzi co-starred. Hepburn and Lean received the film’s sole Oscar nominations.

No less than three major actresses played legendary real life singers in major biographical films – Susan Hayward was Lillian Roth in I’ll Cry Tomorrow directed by Daniel Mann, Eleanor Parker was Marjorie Lawrence in Interrupted Melody directed by Curtis Bernhardt, and Doris Day was Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me directed by Charles Vidor. Hayward and Parker were nominated for Best Actress. Day was not, but James Cagney as her gangster husband, was.

Love Me or Leave Me was nominated for six Oscars and won one for its screenplay. Interrupted Melody was nominated for three and also won one for its screenplay. I’ll Cry Tomorrow was nominated for four and won one for its black-and-white costume design.

Other 1955 films of note included Richard Brooks’ Blackboard Jungle with Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier (four nominations, no wins); Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm with Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker and Kim Novak (three nominations, no wins); Mark Robson’s The Bridges at Toko-Ri with William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March and Mickey Rooney (two nominations, one win); Raoul Walsh’s Battle Cry with Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Aldo Ray, Dorothy Malone and Nancy Olson (one nomination, no win); Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film of Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls with Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine (four nominations, no wins); Fred Zinnemann’s film of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! with Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones and Gloria Grahame(four nominations, two wins) and John Ford’s The Long Gray Line with Tyrone Power, Maureen O’Hara and Donald Crisp (no nominations although Ford was nominated by the Directors’ Guild).

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S.

New DVD releases this week include Letter to Juliet and Glee, Season One, Vol. 2 – Road to Regionals, which is also available as part of Glee – The Complete First Seasons, which includes the previously released Glee – Season One, Vol. 1 – Road to Sectionals.

-Peter J. Patrick (September 14, 2010)

The DVD Report #172: September 7, 2010

Elia Kazan’s compelling film about union racketeering on the New Jersey docks, On the Waterfront won everything in sight in late 1954, early 1955, including eight of the twelve Oscars it was nominated for.

The film’s soiled reputation as an apologia for Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg’s informing at the 1952 HUAC hearings did not kick in until years later. At least Kazan and Schulberg didn’t stoop to substituting red-baiters for the gangsters as suggested by Columbia head Sam Cohn. Taken on its own merits, the film is an exciting, if somewhat incredulous tale of a young hooligan (Marlon Brando) who reforms for the love of a good woman (Eva Marie Saint), the sister of a man he had killed.

The acting by Brando, Saint, Lee J. Cobb as the mob boss, Karl Malden as the waterfront priest and Rod Steiger as Brando’s mob connected brother is quite intense. It’s small wonder they were all nominated, with Brando and Saint winning. The real star of the film, though, is Boris Kaufman’s stunning black-and-white cinematography which also won in its category.

Much admired at the time despite an unnecessary inserted romance between co-stars Robert Francis and May Wynn, Edward Dmytyrk’s film of the Broadway smash hit, The Caine Mutiny hasn’t quite held its reputation mainly due to those sequences, but at its core remains an absorbing character study of madness.

Humphrey Bogart, in one of his best roles, is the mad Captain Queeg whose loose grip on reality is pushed beyond the breaking point by his senior officers, Van Johnson and Fred MacMurray. Jose Ferrer also gives a fine account of himself as the attorney defending the officers in their court-martial, but its’ Bogart whose performance you will never forget.

Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Actor (Bogart), The Caine Mutiny went home empty-handed.

Yet a third film whose reputation has somewhat diminished over the years, George Seaton’s film of another Broadway smash hit, The Country Girl featured brilliant star turns by Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and William Holden. Crosby was nominated for his portrayal of the alcoholic actor attempting to make a comeback with the help of director Holden, and Kelly won for her portrayal of Crosby’s gruff, dowdy, misunderstood wife.

Kelly’s performance was widely hailed at the time and she won all the year’s acting honors, though it has long been the fashion to ridicule the performance as nothing more than a pretty girl camouflaging herself behind glasses and an old sweater. The performance is much more than that with Kelly displaying reservoirs of feeling one cannot find in any of her other performances, but it’s difficult to convince anyone of that who thinks Judy Garland (A Star Is Born) was robbed. In hindsight had the voters known that Kelly would soon become the Princess of Monaco and live a storied life of even more privilege while Garland would go on to a series of career ups and downs and several more broken marriages, the outcome may have been different. Personally I think Garland’s performance is the slightly better one, but that in no way takes away from my admiration of Kelly’s work, which is certainly of award caliber.

Seaton’s screenplay accounted for The Country Girl’s second Oscar out of the seven it was nominated for.

A huge hit in its day, and still capable of charming new generations, Stanley Donen’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers brings a smile to the lips just thinking about it. The story when you think about it, though, makes little sense – the six brothers of a newly happily married rancher kidnap six women from the local town and cause an avalanche to keep their families from recapturing them through the winter. When the locals finally arrive and hear a baby cry, all the women claim the baby is theirs and there is an immediate shotgun wedding for all six.

The film was nominated for five Oscars and won one for its score, which features some lovely songs put over with verve and style by Jane Powell, Howard Keel and others. Michael Kidd’s choreography, particularly in the barn raising sequence, is outstanding.

These four films were worthy nominees, but why in the world would they nominate Three Coins in the Fountain over Rear Window and A Star Is Born?

One can understand that Jean Negulesco’s trite tale of three women looking for love in Rome was a huge box office success, propelled by the hit title song and the public’s desire to see films made on location after decades of studio sets, but a Best Picture nomination? The film’s other two nominations, for Color Cinematography and Song, both of which it won, are certainly more understandable.

The story of Three Coins in the Fountain, such as it is, features Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters and Maggie McNamara as the women and Clifton Webb, Rossano Brazzi and Louis Jourdan as the men in their lives.

Nominated for four Oscars including Best Director, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window retains its reputation as one of the suspense master’s greatest films. James Stewart as the wheelchair bound voyeur, Grace Kelly as his elegant girlfriend and Thelma Ritter as his wise-cracking nurse are at the top of their game. Why Stewart and especially Ritter weren’t nominated for their performances remains one of Oscar’s greatest mysteries.

George Cukor directed 1932’s What Price Hollywood? with Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman about a rising star whose director husband’s career is in decline. Oscar nominated for its screenplay, William A. Wellman’s 1937 film, A Star Is Born covered the same territory. That film was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture, Actor (Fredric March), Actress (Janet Gayor) and Director (Wellman), winning for its “original” screenplay. The film was also given an honorary Oscar for its color cinematography.

In Cukor’s 1954 remake, Judy Garland is the actress whose career is in the ascendant and James Mason, now an actor instead of a director, is the star whose career in decline.

Both Garland and Mason are terrific, with Garland’s singing at its peak. The film was nominated for six Oscars including Best Actor and Actress, and Best Song, the iconic “The Man That Got Away”, but won none.

Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Actress (Audrey Hepburn) and Best Director (Billy Wilder), the romantic comedy Sabrina won only for Black-and-White Costume Design.

Hepburn’s follow-up to her Oscar winning Roman Holiday of the previous year, Sabrina featured Hepburn as a chauffer’s daughter wooed by brothers Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. Never mind that Hepburn at her most glamorous doesn’t look anything like a chauffer’s daughter and Bogart and Holden don’t resemble each other in the least, the film was a huge hit.

Holden, the previous year’s Best Actor winner, was in a third major Oscar contender this year. Nominated for four Oscars, Robert Wise’s Executive Suite is an exciting film about a seemingly unexciting subject, the selection of a new company president after its CEO dies suddenly. It failed to win anything but is nevertheless remembered for its great ensemble cast that in addition to Holden included June Allyson, Fredric March, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Pidgeon, Dean Jagger, Paul Douglas, Louis Calhern, Shelley Winters and Best Supporting Actress nominee Nina Foch.

Bogart also had a third film that figured in the Oscar race this year, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa, in which he played a has-been director who gets a new lease on life when he promotes the career of a dancer turned actress played by Ava Gardner. The film was nominated for Mankiewicz’s screenplay and Edmond O’Brien portrayal of a fast-talking press agent, which won. It’s all talk, talk, talk and not very interesting. O’Brien’s Oscar can only be explained by the presumed split in the vote between the three nominees form On the Waterfront. The firth nominee, Tom Tully, is hardly even in The Caine Mutiny, for which he was nominated, appearing briefly at the beginning and even more briefly at the end.

Time hasn’t been all that kind to William A. Wellman’s The High and the Mighty, kept out of the public eye for decades by the John Wayne estate, it was finally released to home video after the death of Wayne’s eldest son. Wayne is fine as the pilot of a plane in trouble, as is Robert Stack as his co-pilot, but the outcome is never in question, making it less suspenseful than it originally seemed. The best performances are those of Laraine Day, Jan Sterling and Claire Trevor as passengers, the latter two accounting for two of the film’s six nominations. It won for Dimitri Tiomkin’s score.

Douglas Sirk’s remake of Magnificent Obession was a huge success at the box-office, propelling Rock Hudson to major stardom and Jane Wyman to her fourth Oscar nomination as the woman Hudson accidentally blinds. Its reputation has increased with that of its director who was generally taken for granted at the time. Sirk’s visual styling is in evidence throughout the film which is even better than John M. Stahl’s 1935 original with Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor. That film did the same thing for Taylor’s career that the remake did for Hudson’s.

One of the most bizarre films of all time, no one can quite explain Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, but once seen, no one can forget it either. Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge are the gunslingers in this, with the title character played by Sterling Hayden the object of lust the women fight over. The use of the color red highlights the feverish pitch of the film throughout. It wasn’t nominated for any Oscars but is one of the year’s films most highly regarded today.

Other 1954 films of note include Richard Flesicher’s film of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre (three nominations, two wins); Walter Lang’s film of Irving Berlin’s There’s No Business Like Show Business with Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Donald O’Connor, Marilyn Monroe, Johnnie Ray and Mitzi Gaynor (three nominations, no wins); Michael Curtiz’s film of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen (one nomination, no win); Anthony Mann’s The Glenn Miller Story with James Stewart and June Allyson (three nominations, one win) and Edward Dmytyk’s Broken Lance with Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Robert Wagner, Jean Peters and Katy Jurado (two nominations, one win).

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S. except What Price Hollywood? and Johnny Guitar.

New to DVD this week are Solitary Man with Michael Douglas and That Evening Sun with Hal Holbrook.

-Peter J. Patrick (September 7, 2010)