After two years of shocks, the 1953 Oscar went to the film everyone expected to win – Fred Zinnemann’s production of James Jones’ novel about life at Pearl Harbor just before the Japanese attack in From Here to Eternity.

The film, which won eight of the thirteen Oscars it was nominated for, was a critical and box-office hit featuring memorable performances by Montgomery Clift as the sensitive hero, Burt Lancaster as his tough sergeant, Deborah Kerr as the company commander’s nymphomaniac wife, Frank Sinatra as Clift’s buddy and Donna Reed as Clift’s prostitute girl-friend, here called a “dance hall girl”. All were nominated for Oscars, the latter two winning. For Sinatra, it was a comeback after several years of decline in which his career took a back seat to then wife Ava Gardner. For Kerr and Reed, it was a career changer in that although they would go back to playing good girls for the remainder of their careers, neither would ever be thought of again as only capable of playing “nice” ladies.

Next in popularity, William Wyler’s Cinderella romance, Roman Holiday was nominated for ten Oscars and won three including Best Actress, Audrey Hepburn. It was her first major film and she beguiled even the harshest critics with her charm and ease as the runaway princess who shares a brief romance with reporter Gregory Peck.

The film also won for Edith Head’s Black-and-White Costume Design and for Dalton Trumbo’s Screenplay, credited to another writer due to Trumbo’s blacklisting.

One of the screen’s most popular and most durable westerns, George Stevens’ Shane was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture and two Supporting Actors, Jack Palance and ten year-old Brandon De Wilde, but not star Alan Ladd or co-stars Jean Arthur and Van Heflin. The story of a stranger who helps a family, then rallies a town against the bad guys, the film’s best screens were those involving Ladd and the hero-worshiping De Wilde. Who can ever forget De Wilde’s plaintive wailing of film’s last line, “Shane! Come back!”

The film’s sole win was for Loyal Griggs’ breathtaking Color Cinematography.

One of the most popular of the many so-called sword and sandal epics of the 1950s, Henry Koster’s film of the first portion of Lloyd C. Douglas’ monumental epic, The Robe, angered many at the time as it did not contain the entire novel. The rest of the story would appear a year later in the inferior Demetrius and the Gladiators.

What The Robe had that many others of its ilk didn’t have was a convincing portrait of religious conversion in the person of Richard Burton, whose performance accounted for one of the film’s five nominations. As the Roman Tribune tasked with carrying out Christ’s crucifixion, he is transformed by his possession of the robe that Christ wears on his way to the cross.

Jean Simmons, Victor Mature and an outstanding Jay Robinson as the mad emperor, Caligula, co-star in the film that won Oscars for its Color Art Direction and Costume Design.

Rounding out the Best Picture nominees was Joseph L. Mankiewciz’s film of Julius Caesar, the most successful Shakespearean adaptation to date that wasn’t produced and directed by Laurence Olivier.

Oscar voters of the day were most impressed with Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Mark Antony and gave him his third Best Actor nomination in succession. The BAFTAs gave Brando their Best Foreign Actor award while giving John Gielgud (Cassius) their Best British Actor award. The National Board of Review preferred James Mason (Brutus) to both of them.

Louis Calhern (Caesar), Edmund O’Brien (Casca), Greer Garson (Calpurnia) and Deborah Kerr (Portia) were also starred in the film that won an Oscar for its Black-and-White Art Direction.

The year’s Best Actor Oscar went to the only actor not nominated for a film that also up for Best Picture – William Holden for the prisoner of war drama, Stalag 17.

Wrongly suspected of being the camp informant, Holden’s cynical hero was typical of the roles he played from the late forties to his death in 1982. The film also won nominations for Billy Wilder’s direction and for Robert Strauss’ supporting role as the film’s comic relief.

The three women vying for Best Actress against Hepburn and Kerr were Mrs. Sinatra – Ava Gardner in Mogambo, French import Leslie Caron in Lili and unknown Maggie McNamara in The Moon Is Blue.

Mogambo was unusual in that it was a remake of 1932’s superior Red Dust, directed by John Ford who did not usually do remakes, as a favor to Clark Gable who also starred in the original opposite Jean Harlow and Mary Astor. Gable, looking older but not especially wiser, was nevertheless well paired with his two new co-stars, Gardner and Grace Kelly, both of whom were nominated for Oscars – Kelly in the supporting category. Gardner is especially good as the roving prostitute, excuse me, showgirl, now that the Production Code was in full force.

In one of her three Hollywood signature roles, the others being in the still to come Gigi and Fanny, Leslie Caron was a treasure as the naïve country girl who becomes a carnival worker who falls in love with the puppets she works with, not realizing it’s really the gruff puppeteer, Mel Ferrer, she loves. Ferrer and Jean –Pierre Aumont are also in top form in the film which was nominated for six Oscars and won one for its Score. Oddly the film’s unforgettable theme song, “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” was not nominated.

Jaw-droppingly bad and painful to watch now, Otto Preminger The Moon Is Blue was considered a big deal back then because of the puncture wounds it gave the Production Code in using then taboo words like “virgin” and “pregnant”. It all seems pretty silly now as do the performances of William Holden, David Niven and Ms. McNamara, who may well be the most obscure Best Actress nominee of all time. She only made three more films and appeared in several episodes of long forgotten TV series.

The year’s most popular actress, aside from Oscar winner Hepburn, was probably Jean Simmons who starred in three Oscar nominated films, and who won the National Board of Review award for Best Actress for all three performances.

In addition to The Robe,she starred as Ruth Gordon in The Actress with Spencer Tracy and Teresa Wright as her parents, and Young Bess as Elizabeth I with Stewart Granger, the equally prolific Deborah Kerr and Charles Laughton reprising his Oscar winning role as Henry VIII.

The Actress was Oscar nominated for Black-and-White Costume Design, while Young Bess was nominated for Color Art Direction and Costume Design.

Doris Day apparently didn’t merit Oscar consideration either for her marvelous performance in David Butler’s Calamity Jane,but the film was nominated for Scoring and Sound and won for Day’s marvelous warbling of “Secret Love”.

Nominated for three Oscars including one for its Score, Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon is generally, and rightfully, considered Fred Astaire’s best musical, at least the best one in which he did not co-star with Ginger Rogers. Instead he’s paired with the enticing Cyd Charisse, eh hilarious Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray and the acerbic Jack Buchanan. Oddly the film’s theme song, the exhilarating “That’s Entertainment”, like the equally memorable “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” from Lili, was not nominated for an Oscar.

Nominated only for Thelma Ritter’s gutsy portrayal of a police informant, Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street remains one of the best remembered films of the year. Although Ritter’s performance is indeed the film’s highlight, Richard Widmark and Jean Peters also give career high performances under Fuller’s stark, uncompromising direction.

Nominated for its Story and Screenplay, Anthony Mann’s The Naked Spur was perhaps the best of the Mann-James Stewart westerns, featuring flawless performances by Stewart, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh and Ralph Meeker.

Completely ignored by Oscar, Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat did win the Edgar Allan Poe Award as the year’s best mystery. Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin were at full steam on all four burners. If you’ve seen it, you get the pun. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess was also ignored by Oscar, but was a runner-up at Cannes earlier in the year. Montgomery Clift gave his second memorable performance of the year as the priest torn between helping the police and the sanctity of the confessional after he hears a killer’s confession. Anne Baxter and Karl Malden co-star.

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

New on DVD this week are the British gangster film, Harry Brown and the 1951 British post-war film noir, Hell Is Sold Out.