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Classic and modern movies in around three paragraphs each.
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I’m really unsure where I land when it comes to director Fred Zinnemann. His films are certainly well-made, and succeed at what they’re going for, but I’m rarely over-the-moon about them as truly great films; of the ones I’ve seen, only High Noon bucks this trend, and it only does so while still being very simplistic & straightforward in construction, which Zinnemann’s films all seem to be. This pattern continues with The Nun’s Story; largely a vehicle for a choice Audrey Hepburn role, but the film actually had a lot of thought & care put into the making of it, from trying to get it off the launching pad to the lengths Zinnemann & others went to to accurately and respectfully portray the subject matter, managing to bring in people that otherwise would’ve turned away from the adaptation of the book due to their fears of it seemingly discouraging future prospects from joining the convent. All of this, the consideration & craft on display through the whole two-and-a-half-hour runtime, to put together a film that was ultimately, for me… pretty okay. Like, I can tell the passion is there in the filmmaking & the production, but it just seems in service to a picture that doesn’t leave much of an impact after one leaves the theater.

For a film running two and a half hours long, the plot is pretty bare-bones in terms of narrative: Audrey Hepburn is the daughter of a well-regarded Belgian doctor who, at the film’s start, makes the decision to enter the convent and become a nun, hoping to eventually be sent to the Belgian Congo as a missionary nurse, taking the name Sister Luke after taking her vows. While Sister Luke is every bit her father’s daughter in terms of education & medical practice, she continues to struggle with the asceticism & humility required of her as a servant of God throughout her tenure as a novitiate and her eventual assignments out in the world. Really, that’s the whole narrative as intended by the film: the ongoing struggle for Hepburn’s character to fall into place as a proper nun, both through her training and after donning the habit & her assignment to the Congo, and how the character needs to come to terms with whether or not the life of a nun is one she’s really fit to be in.

Though the film is very simple in terms of the narrative it tells, it spares no effort when it comes to filming & production. The cinematography is probably the film’s biggest selling point after its main star, and though there’s not a lot happening on-screen at any one time due to the nature of the story being told, Zinnemann and his DP, Franz Planer, show a palpable love and care for the subject matter through the exquisite result of their work; this is a pretty solid example of a film not having to have deliberately showy camerawork & ostentatious coloring to still have really great cinematography. Aside from that, though, the film is austere in just about every other reason one goes to see a film, from the straightforward narrative to Hepburn’s performance being one of her most reserved & internal; Zinnemann’s background as a documentary-style filmmaker is allowed full rein here, even in the second half when we jump to the Congo, the change in setting merely treated with the same realistic eye & focus on Hepburn’s character that Zinnemann centers the whole picture on (though we are also treated to the addition of a pretty solid supporting turn from Peter Finch as the no-nonsense, atheist lead surgeon at the Congo hospital).

I’ve been pretty rigorous as of late towards discerning what benefits or sense of satisfaction an audience should be getting or rewarded with upon watching a film (at least the ones I’m watching for this blog); whether it be a message the film is trying to say, a satisfactory level of value in some or all aspects of the film or filmmaking, or even just a good time in terms of entertainment. I watched the majority of The Nun’s Story with this evaluative thought in the back of my mind, and even after the somber & pitch-perfect final scene, I was still struggling trying to come up with an answer. It’s not even the fault of separate reasonings like it not being my type of film or it not succeeding at what it’s trying to do; it actually feels like even the appealing facets of the film that would draw viewers in to want to watch it, like Hepburn’s different & reserved performance or someone wanting to follow along with what becoming a nun would be like for this character, end up incompletely satisfied by the time the film is over, and feeling like the film largely succeeds in its endeavors while also feeling like that success will ultimately not be a satisfying one for what audience members will be starting the film to get out of it is causing quite a bit of cognitive dissonance for me, and makes it exponentially harder for me to find a real reason for a potential viewer to sit down and watch this film. It’s a weird feeling, feeling like Zinnemann did exactly what he wanted to with this picture & put some really nice effort into the production but still feeling like it wasn’t worth it in the end. If anything, if this sounds like a film you might want to watch, for any of the reasons I touched on or otherwise, that would probably be the disclaimer I would want to leave you with should you be considering pulling the trigger on this one.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

-Year in Summary/What Did Win-

Even with what little bits of breaking ground and first times there were at the 31st Academy Awards – Sidney Poitier becoming the first black man nominated for Best Actor, & a Bugs Bunny cartoon winning an Oscar for the first time – the Academy definitely had a firmer grasp on what it wanted to be for both the moviegoing populace and the industry at large: a vehicle for promotion. The Oscars were becoming not just a star-studded gala for the stars themselves, but “the” event that would showcase not just the stars & films of the year, but what the movies would mean going forward. Evidently, for the Academy, that meant highlighting the show-stopping, big production, colorful extravaganzas it believed showed off everything that movies could be, so when a certain movie musical came along that ticked all of their boxes so emphatically and with such style & flair as it did, there was no way they’d be able to resist throwing as many awards at it as they could. And so it was: MGM’s production of Gigi not only broke the record set by Gone with the Wind of the most Oscars won by a film, but also winning every single category it was up for; all nine of its nominations, including Best Director for Vincente Minnelli and Best Picture.

-Ranking the Nominees-

-I kind of hate it a little bit that I’m putting Auntie Mame in last place here, since it’s one of the rare comedies that are actually in the running for Best Picture and I’d rather like to add to the thought of films not having to be of a particular genre to justify a look-see from the Academy. The truth is, though, that aside from Rosalind Russell owning her role and the screen in a series of madcap hijinks & character interactions, this film really doesn’t have anything to offer; sure, the costuming & art decoration of Mame’s apartment is never not ostentatious or without substantial effort, but it’s not all adding up to something worth sitting through a whole film for, especially one that runs almost two and a half hours. There’s more reasons not to watch this then there are reasons to bother getting through it, and in no universe should that be the best picture of the year.

-For as much as the Academy eagerly gave Gigi as many awards as it did, boy, does the world of film fans nowadays, wherever on the internet you can find them, just love to shit all over this film; it’s one of those things that’s gotten to the point of being more chic or bandwagoning than from genuine opinion, like “everybody’s doing it, so everyone else is gonna do it, too”. Looking at the story of the film, I can’t really blame them; even with the veneer of it being set in turn-of-the-century France, it’s literally about young women being groomed to be prostitutes, and features probably the most charming French actor of the 20th century singing the creepiest opening number of any musical ever written. That said, almost everything else about this film works; either to an extreme, like the production value, or at least enough to be effective with what it’s going for. It’s not one of the best movie musicals ever made, but setting aside the morals of the plot & the heavy-handed writing typical of musicals from the era, it’s not really a bad film, and that’s something that too many people forget all too completely in their zeal to condemn the film for the angles the story takes.

-As much as I liked Separate Tables when I watched it, that’s also as little as I had to say about it. It always flummoxes me when I have to write a review on a film and I have nothing to actually say, but I already went enough into that in the review itself, so I really should try & avoid beating a dead horse about it. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed this one overall a bit more than the previous two films; it may not be in color or have production value out the wazoo, but it’s smartly written, well acted, and felt like a more satisfying meal than the sugary confections the previous two nominees were, so it’s ending up here.

-You can take what I just said about Separate Tables and basically say it again with some stronger emphasis about The Defiant Ones. This is a film that is not only well-written, well-acted, and a satisfying watch, but does it all with a goal in mind from the get-go, a purpose that is fueling the filmmaking efforts to put this story on the screen, and it fully succeeds in its endeavors. It may not look as clean in the filmmaking as a film like Tables does, but it almost needs to in order to properly set the stage for a realism-drawn exploration of race relations in the South; director Stanley Kramer should be commended for all he does here, and the film works as well as it does because of it.

-Playwright Tennessee Williams famously hated how toned-down this adaptation of his work ended up, with all the homosexual undercurrents drained into mere occasional implications to comply with the Hays Code and a more reconciliatory conclusion to both Brick & Big Daddy and Brick & Maggie’s storylines; even so, though, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has probably more entertainment value & staying power than any of the other films in this roster. In terms of effectiveness, this hits many of the same or similar marks as 12 Angry Men the year prior: the focus on a much simpler overall production and keeping the dramatic elements of the storytelling squarely with the characters and dialogue ends up making this hit way harder as a result, and it’s a great testament to how skill in the writing stage of development can often carry a film with little else on display or where other films would fall short in the end. Even with the changes to the source material, the strength of the film’s acting and writing alone is what’s putting Cat on the top of this list, and with the assets of the film being what they are, it’s probably a better choice of what should be highlighted as what movies should be all about than the choice the Academy actually went with.

-What Should’ve Been Here-

1958 seems to be an interesting year, in that there’s quite a few films that were successful in a few certain elements, but not good enough overall to really take a crack at the top category. Films like The Big Country, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Young Lions got a few nominations in other categories, but evidently not any further; I Want to Live sits atop the list of nominations that didn’t make it into the big one, so that’s probably the closest possibility there. Considering its humongous box office and the pedigree of Rodgers & Hammerstein, I’m surprised to see South Pacific not among this field. Also among the box office heavy-hitters is The Vikings, which I’ve heard good things about, and Some Came Running, which I thought was decent but not enough so for me to put it up here. Elsewhere on the 1001 list, which comprises the majority of what else I’ve seen from this year, there’s some foreign possibilities in Ashes and Diamonds, Cairo Station, and Mon Oncle, the latter of which won Best Foreign Language Film. By far the two most conspicuous absences, though only so in hindsight after decades of critical re-evaluation, are Touch of Evil and Vertigo.

-What I Would’ve Picked-

I don’t know if there’s a clear-cut winner for me for 1958; there’s a good handful of solid contenders, but not any one in particular that stands out enough for me to pick it over one or two of the others. I’d imagine many would feel pressured to pick Vertigo, with how much that film’s stature has grown over the years, but I don’t know if I’d buckle to said pressure against other contenders like Touch of Evil and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. There’s a spark in my cinephile heart that’s inclined to give it to Orson Welles yet again, but I could honestly be convinced of any of these three depending on what day you ask me; it might take a more critical re-watch of all three for me to concretely make a decision in the future.

-How Did Oscar Do?-

Even with some good films in the roster (though also with plenty on the outside looking in), this field really seems more indicative of the Academy trying to push its agenda of critical renown rather than actually managing to nominate the best films of the year, especially with their ultimate choice. The golden gilding of Oscar was beginning to shine a little too brightly for the Academy’s eyes, and we’re only just barely nearing the end of the 50s; there’s still a few more years to go before the Golden Age of Hollywood starts fading into the sunset. Maybe then we’ll see what Hollywood really has to offer.

Well, I guess if it were ever the time for film adaptations of stage plays to finally shake loose the problems that constantly stick to them like barnacles & make a solid, entertaining, and effective transition to the screen, it sure better be with this one. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is considered one of Tennessee Williams’ masterpieces (it even won him a Pulitzer Prize), along with A Streetcar Named Desire, and considering what a good film adaptation that one had been, it should really have been no surprise that this too would be a success where the other theatrical adaptations of this decade have largely left me wanting. With how prevalent theatrical adaptations have been in Best Picture, and how disappointing the general lack of quality to them has been, it’s annoying that it’s left to something of this caliber to get me over that growing stigma at least enough to modestly appreciate this one as a film. But, I guess I can leave harping about the quality of theater adaptations for another day or a more appropriate forum (though, apparently with the changes that were made to this version of Williams’ play in order to comply with the Hays Code, changes that famously had Williams himself denounce the bowdlerized version & tell people not to see the film, I might have to bring it up a little bit more, still).

Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor headline the film as Brick and Maggie Pollitt, a Southern couple in a well-off plantation dynasty who share a married surname and almost nothing else; Brick in particular shows contempt for the family he was born into and who see him as the scion for their patriarch, affectionately dubbed Big Daddy, and wants nothing more than to live his own life despite Maggie’s constant pestering about the eventual inheritance of Big Daddy’s estate when he dies, not wanting it to go to Brick’s sycophantic brother Gooper and his equally conniving & performative wife Mae. While Brick drinks himself into a numb stupor at Big Daddy’s 65th birthday party, laid up on a crutch with a broken ankle from briefly trying to relive the glory days of his youth & sporting success with his best friend Skipper (who took his own life a few years back), Big Daddy comes home with a clean bill of health after an apparent cancer scare; that is, until the doctor privately meets with the family and tells them this is a lie for Big Daddy’s sake and that the man likely has less than a year to live. With little time left and questions surrounding Maggie’s suitability as the scion’s wife, with no children despite Maggie’s clear desire for Brick, both Maggie and Big Daddy take their questioning & instigating of Brick up a level to get him to face up to hard truths about himself – who he is as a person, what both Maggie and his very dear friend Skipper meant to him, and what kind of man he & the family want him to be – before the night is through.

As far as movie adaptations of stage plays tend to go, there’s usually two routes: either the source material is pretty much wholly reimagined to make it into a more cinematic experience and less of a stage play, or the film version itself conforms to the theatrical standard of the original, becoming mostly a theater performance with the ceiling & all four walls of the room intact instead of a transparent “fourth wall”, and the cameras are there merely to capture the stage rendition through a various selection of shots. With how revered Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (and Tennessee Williams) is in the annals of American theater (did I mention it won a Pulitzer?), you already know this is gonna fall squarely into the latter category; not to sound too flippant or dismissive of films that go that route, this one included, but it does irk me a little personally when a studio or director opts to make a cinematic adaptation of a stage play and then do only the bare minimum in adapting the movie version – like, I have to wonder why they even bothered, if they weren’t going to do anything more with it than put up a solid fourth wall and stick a couple cameras inside. Not that the source material needs anything extra to zhuzh it up, as I’m sure any Tennessee Williams fans were eager to find the reply button on this post to point out to me; the screenplay and the acting of all the main players is of course the main reason this works so well, and, as I also mentioned in my Ma Rainey review from a while ago, if one is disinclined or unable to go to an actual live performance of this, watching this movie version instead is just about the next best thing, since you still get to experience it either way. Even with the changes made to appease the censors (including a whole additional scene with Brick and Big Daddy in the cluttered cellar of the house having a heart-to-heart, which I couldn’t even tell wasn’t in the original play as it works well enough for what the movie version uses it for), the film is still cracking entertainment; the characters constantly bristling with energy & repression, smoldering with uncomfortable anticipation like… well, like a cat on a hot tin roof. It’s nice to see the evolution of some of the bigger names in cinema as I go through these nominees chronologically; Elizabeth Taylor, for instance, has been getting more to do in her films as her star power continues to climb, and she continues to show that she’s more than up for the heavier lifting, and I’m also more than enthusiastic to finally see Paul Newman show up in the Best Picture fields, & he plays his role here just about perfectly even with it not being a particularly showy part in general. Burl Ives as Big Daddy is another standout, and additional kudos should go to Madeleine Sherwood for making it as easy as it is to hate Brick’s sister-in-law Mae.

I think if I had anything else to say about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it’s something that almost seems to fly in the face of what makes this as well-regarded as it is (which also ends up part of my point): I kinda wish this hadn’t been based on such a hugely-revered stage play as it was. If it wasn’t, this would’ve been regarded much more modestly & cleanly, and on its own merits (of which there are certainly plenty); instead, I almost feel like this film version of the play is being held up a little too high just because of the source material it’s built from, like the film needs to be regarded as a masterpiece of its decade because the stage play is a masterpiece of its century, despite the film itself just being a pretty good film with some fairly-above-average acting & writing to it. Now, to once again use that all-too-familiar caveat of mine, that’s not to say that this is not a good film, and really I’d bristle at just about anyone that would try & make the claim that this isn’t a good film, and possibly just as much at the claim that it is not also an entertaining one. But I almost get the notion that I’m required to think the film is even better than it actually is just because of its source material, and it’s doubly annoying for me to think about because the film would still be regarded very well in its own right if it didn’t have that additional weight behind it trying to prop it up. It’s that notion of leaning & relying on the existing reputation of source material and also doing so little to improve upon the experience of it that I think has so marred my viewpoint on theatrical & literary adaptations in the Best Picture canon the way it has, and that sucks for films like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that are otherwise pretty darn good films by almost any other metric one can think of.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10

There’s really not much worse than holding yourself to expectations that you really don’t need to, or that you know you won’t fulfill. I started this blog as a writing exercise for myself about the films I was watching for the List, and as my writing improved & my ability to detail my thoughts about movies got more in-depth, along the way it sort of grew into a seeming need to write more completely and thus to have much more structure to the reviews I was writing; that’s all well and good, but it also makes it exponentially more difficult for me to write a review on a film, even one I generally liked, when I have genuinely nothing to discuss about it or anything to say that could be wrapped into the structure of a more “proper” review. It makes it that much harder to find a throughline or entry point to talk about the film or elaborate upon, and I end up putting off writing it as a result for longer than I meant to until… well, until a month has gone by and I’m still having trouble thinking of anything. Case in point: Separate Tables, a film from ‘Marty’ director Delbert Mann that’s fairly well-shot, pretty well-written, and certainly well-cast & acted, and that I actually quite liked when I finally did watch it. Now, ask me the particulars about what I liked & why I thought what worked well did work, and… you might have to ask me again in another month.

Separate Tables is actually the collective name of two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan, that on-stage are usually put on one after another and which usually feature the same actors & actresses playing the lead parts in both; here, the two stories are intertwined into a single narrative and with a more fleshed-out supporting cast to fill out the setting of the picture. That setting is the Hotel Beauregard, an extended-stay lodging somewhere on the southern coast of England, and the cast is a myriad of long-term & short-lived guests that stay at the hotel, as well as a few of the staff that take care of them in both body & mind; namely, the manager Ms. Cooper, who winds up as a confidant & shoulder to lean on for a few of the main players in both stories. The one follows Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth, she a well-known actress and he as her former husband who finally left after no longer putting up with her manipulative & toying manner of affection, who must come to terms with what feelings they have for each other after she tells him she is engaged, despite having taken great lengths to track him down to the hotel itself; the other features David Niven and Deborah Kerr as a somewhat blandly chipper British Major and the young madam in love with him despite her waifish plainness & being browbeaten by her uptight domineering mother, who must come to terms with their own self-identities after an article in a local newspaper covers a recent social impropriety the major was found guilty of, one he seeks to hide from the other hotel guests and that the stiff-lipped mother is all too happy to use as kindling to rally the other guests into wanting him expelled from the premises.

If you got the impression from that plot summary that this is very much that type of film that’s more of an actors showcase than anything, you’re right on the money; while everything else about the production is decent as a standard, it’s really the writing and the performances that take center stage with this one, and in this regard, the cast is excellent across the board. Burt Lancaster almost threatens to derail his character when he first appears in the same goofily cringeworthy way his entire performance did in The Rose Tattoo, but thankfully he settles back into the classic dramatic glower he makes work so well once Rita Hayworth appears back into his life, and the narrative tension between the two characters largely works through the whole film thanks to the two of them. The other story seems less effective comparatively, and has less happening with it, but David Niven manages to light it back up whenever the fire threatens to dim too much; though it does beg the question, with how his character is absent for a good half of his storyline that already is only half of the film itself, of how he got his Oscar nom in the lead category instead of supporting (and even went on to win it, becoming the shortest performance by runtime to win the Best Actor Oscar). Deborah Kerr has, by design, less to do with her character, and is decidedly more melodramatic in going about it, but it fits with what the film is going for, and especially so with her and Niven in the final scene, which hits the hardest and ends the film on a perfect note; Wendy Hiller as Ms. Cooper carries much more of the “supporting female character” title throughout the story & does quite a good job with it, and I’m pleased she won her own Oscar category as well.

Besides a quick mention of how well the final scene of the film serves to tie the narrative together (as a bit of a shout-out to the writing), you’ll notice that I really only talked about the cast in that last paragraph, and it’s because I basically didn’t have anything else to talk about in regards to what I liked about Separate Tables and why I thought the film was good. I hate to feel like I’m repeating myself for lack of anything else to say, but that’s kinda exactly what’s happening, and me waffling on about other aspects others have brought up that I could but don’t really have anything to say about would be me basically trying to fill airtime, and that really shouldn’t be what ends up holding me back from writing these in the future. Even with my lack of specific talking points, though, I would still recommend Separate Tables; even with how simple it is in its bones, it ends up being surprisingly complex in the end, and is much more a thinking person’s picture than a pure escapism entertainment that most of the other nominees I’ve been getting through in the past while have largely been at the deep center of their cores. I think it’s that difference that sticks out to me the most, and is the biggest factor in why I liked this as much as I did. Now, if only I could figure out how to talk at length & in detail about more things like that, so I can feel more often that I have something in general to say.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10

As much as the Academy tends to favor dramas for its Best Picture slate (or the occasional comedic drama, if they’re pressed to push their boundaries a tad), it is nice to see an out-and-out comedy make it into the official field of five. Auntie Mame is based on a stage production (as so many films & nominees of this era tend to be), itself based on a novel, and Rosalind Russell originated the title role for the theatrical run before revitalizing her film career in this adaptation, even getting a Tony nomination for the former and an Oscar nom for the latter. Truly, this is Russell’s picture more than anything, providing her with an avenue to basically go nuts with her character & the wacky, madcap hijinks she gets up to & puts others through, and it’s this that is what makes this a comedy in every aspect. Even with the nice change of pace a comedy brings to Best Picture, though, it does make it kinda hard to evaluate the merits of a film like this against those more typical of the Academy’s standard selections; I opined early in my Best Picture odyssey that comedies pretty rarely tend to have that heft or weight that leaves the sort of substantial impact the Academy likes to look for, even a comedically-minded type of impact, and Auntie Mame unfortunately doesn’t do nearly enough with what it does to overcome that additional hurdle that comedies face with the Academy.

Rosalind Russell careens through the silver screen as Mame Dennis, a flamboyant and free-spirited Manhattan socialite determined to live life to its absolute fullest, throwing lavish parties at her elaborate New York apartment almost as frequently as she completely overhauls the decor & landscape of said apartment to meet whatever whims catch her fancy. This decidedly liberal & cavalier approach to life stands in contrast to her brother Edwin, and when Edwin dies unexpectedly, his young son Patrick is remanded into Mame’s care for lack of anywhere else to go, with strict instructions in his will that Mame’s freewheeling potential influence on Patrick be held in check as much as possible by the executors of his estate and Patrick’s future inheritance. Though Mame is so absorbed in her lifestyle that she barely even registers at first that Patrick is to live with her, she quickly comes to care a great deal about her nephew, and as Patrick grows into adulthood, she begins to take it upon herself to make sure that Patrick acquires a zest for life and gets what he wants out of it, especially against the competing and restrictive influences of his more conservative benefactors.

My plot summary was particular with the certain aspects of the film (besides the obvious leading actress) that are ostensibly its selling points, chiefly the extensive and bombastic set design of Mame’s apartment as well as the myriad of events & experiences she gets up to both inside and outside said domicile, and man does the film have a field day with both of these aspects of filmmaking. The narrative covers more than a few years with Mame and her new ward, with Patrick starting from a young lad on the cusp of adolescence all the way through to him as a young adult with a fiancée in the mix, and the passage of time can be easily discerned & followed by whatever lavish theme Mame has chosen to adorn her living space & tie the decorations together. Even more frequently switched out are Mame’s own clothing & ensemble, and I’d be surprised if Russell ever wears the same outfit more than once in the entire film; it honestly feels like the film was making a concerted effort toward the Oscars for Art Direction & Costume Design more than anything, though it still missed out on a nomination for the latter. As for the narrative, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect an episodic comedy film to lean on, so if that and the various antics of Mame Dennis aren’t your cup of tea, then what are you even here for, really? For what it’s worth, Russell makes an absolute feast of this role and the picture, and indeed the film, even more than the excessive production design & costuming, basically exists as a vehicle for her to own this role and little more beyond that, but she is never not entertaining, so it’s a little more understandable. Additional commendations go to the supporting players, who all strongly commit to their parts in the comedy bits that make up the frame of the picture, in particular Peggy Cass as Mame’s off-beat quirk of a secretary Agnes Gooch, as well as the three actors who play Patrick’s fiancée Gloria Upson and her parents; the comedy of the film wouldn’t have worked half as well had the supporting cast wilted against the power of Russell’s screen presence, so kudos to them for staying firm in selling the humor throughout the film.

This is another good example of how modern sensibilities of moviegoing often don’t match up with how classic films used to do things; going to the cinema for two and a half hours just to see Rosalind Russell cavort around the screen for the whole thing was evidently a rollicking good time for Golden Age audiences (and indeed, this ended up being the second-highest grossing film of the year), enough so for a whole bunch of people to put their effort together into making a whole film of just that, but it feels almost not worth the effort nowadays to make a trip out to a movie theater to see a two-plus hour film that’s literally nothing but one star just being wacky the entire time, with nothing more to the picture past that. It might be easier for a modern audience to have opportunities to bring this one up & give it a try with the advent of streaming, but I still struggle with coming up with actual selling points to this one, that I could use to try & actually convince someone to go out of their way to give it a watch, beyond “Rosalind Russell at her madcap best”; indeed, that might be enough for some, but it’s apparently not enough for me, and it’s this lack of substantive value, even disregarding this being a comedy or a different genre, that has me uncertain about this film’s real standing for Best Picture contention. Comedies tend to fall into this trap much more often & much more easily, and it might be why they are hard to come by when one goes through a heavyweight Oscar category like Best Picture, and Auntie Mame, while still being rather entertaining and a smorgasbord of production value, does nothing to meet that additional challenge & overcome it.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

-Year in Summary/What Did Win-

Evidently the growing expansion of the Oscars as an award body (not to mention a cultural touchstone) was becoming a concern for the Academy, as the 30th Awards were notably more consolidated overall; the Academy trimmed the number of votable categories down from 30 to 24, including combining the black-and-white & color categories together (an experiment that would end up reverted in the next couple years), and while some notable people & affiliated groups within the industry had varying levels of voting privileges for the awards in years past, this year saw the start of Oscar winners & nominees being decided upon solely by members of the Academy in its various branches. Even the television broadcast skipping between Hollywood & New York was abandoned, the ceremony this year broadcasting entirely from the Pantages Theater in L.A., though the duties of emceeing the show were still split between five different stars of stage & screen (as well as an animated segment hosted by Donald Duck). All of this paring down from the Academy is even somewhat reflected in the nominees themselves, with a handful of films taking up slots in almost every major category, including the first time since the Academy cut the Best Picture field back down to five that the Best Picture and Best Director nominees lined up exactly; one of those pairs were director David Lean and his film The Bridge on the River Kwai, which quickly took over the ceremony as the night went on, winning all but one of the categories it was nominated for, including Best Director and Best Picture.

-Ranking the Nominees-

-For the film with the most nominations going into the ceremony, Sayonara was the nominee I ended up feeling the most ambivalent about (though there’s not much of a gap that separates it from the fourth place finisher, admittedly). While it has some nice things going for it, namely the production itself & its use of the scenery of Japan as well as a solid supporting turn from Red Buttons, the nice parts can’t hold the picture up well overall, and especially against the film’s lesser aspects, the most unavoidably prominent being Marlon Brando’s acting style kneecapping the entire rest of the production. Brando may ultimately be effective with what he does, but he also kills the ability of the rest of the cast & crew to make the film anywhere close to good enough to match him, and the film overall just feels both too long & not enough of a story for what it does, and it is especially not effective enough with the social commentary it’s trying to make to leave the impact it should (or, at least, that I felt it should’ve). It is overall the least-successful film with what it tries to be of the five nominees, so it’s ending up in last for me.

-There’s admittedly not a whole lot of real, effective selling points for Peyton Place, and far less so if one is not a fan of melodrama; if you’re curious how the whole genre of daytime TV soap opera and the conventions it stamped into the public consciousness really came about, look no further than this film and the subsequent primetime serial that followed it. Still, with all the marks seemingly against it, I had a pretty easy time with this one; it’s got more than enough plot to fill out its running time & keep it engaging throughout, it’s consistently nice to look at, and while it is technically a progenitor of the soap opera genre, the tropes that it uses are marginal & nascent as a result and are thus far less nauseating to endure. As ambivalent as I am about the film’s overall objective worth & merit, I still enjoyed watching Peyton Place, which is just slightly more than what I got from the previous nominee, so this ends up here.

–Witness for the Prosecution comes off as one of the more basic films in this slate of five (being one of the two black-and-white nominees certainly doesn’t help it any there), but as I tried to lay out as thick as I could in my review, don’t let that fool you into thinking this isn’t an entertaining watch. It may be basic in construction and old-fashioned with its presentation, but damn if it doesn’t still hit as well as an Agatha Christie adaptation should, and with Billy Wilder in the director’s chair & helming the script, you’d be a fool to think that you won’t have a good time with this, especially with Charles Laughton in the leading role of a character that seems tailor-made for him (and with plenty of excellent supporting players backing him up as well). This is undoubtedly a solid picture, but it is also still a very basic & rudimentary one, and while that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) count as points against the film, it does keep it from getting any higher in this ranking.

-As much as people hold David Lean up as the Golden-Age master of the epic, he didn’t start out that way; he was much more a director of pointed character and circumstance, interested as much in why his characters did what they did as he was in setting the environment around them. Almost too-befitting its title, The Bridge on the River Kwai stands right in the transition between the early phases of Lean and the large-scale epics he would later be defined by; not quite at the level of grandeur of a Lawrence of Arabia or a Dr. Zhivago, but still dipping his toes considerably into that much-broader pool, shooting entirely on location in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and making ample use of its jungle scenery. While the film itself is highly effective, just barely keeping its tongue in its cheek about the pointlessness in actions of war while thoroughly building up to the ending, it still manages to hold off with its scale & its scope just enough to where I find myself hesitating in citing the film as an all-timer, and if you don’t get much from war films in particular, I’d imagine you would get even less from this than the average moviegoer. I wouldn’t go nearly as far as to say the film is unsatisfying, but it’s those reasons that keep me from fully throwing my weight behind it in winning Best Picture this year, especially against the one remaining nominee.

-In terms of simplicity, you can’t get much more basic with a film than setting it in a single room, with no frills in cinematography or visual effects, and relying entirely on the dialogue of the script to carry the drama of the narrative and the interest of the audience. And yet, there’s something about exactly that that makes 12 Angry Men an absolutely spellbinding watch; lay out the stakes of the narrative and hold it to real-time, keep the interactions between the characters evolving & interesting, and throw in just enough know-how with the camerawork to emphasize the shifting mood of the narrative and the men in the room, and you end up with a film that sucks you in and refuses to let go until the final verdict is dropped. This is an outstanding example of how a basic premise, solid filmmaking, and a fully-realized script can add up to a film that is so much more than the sum of its parts, and despite it not being the full-color, big-production epic the Academy wanted to highlight as the future of movies, it is by and large the best of this field of nominees, and should’ve walked away with this award.

-What Should’ve Been Here-

I haven’t seen much from 1957 outside the 1001 List, so I can’t speak for other Oscar contenders & box office hits like Funny Face, Pal Joey, Les Girls, & Raintree County; I can speak for An Affair to Remember, in that I didn’t get enough out of it myself to put it up for this category. Other English-language films from the List include The Incredible Shrinking Man, which wouldn’t get my vote for Best Picture (Special Effects and possibly Art Direction, absolutely) and was definitely too genre for the Academy; Sweet Smell of Success and Paths of Glory, however, were well within bounds and should’ve both merited serious consideration. On the foreign front, though, is a veritable wealth of contenders; The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Throne of Blood, The Cranes are Flying, Mother India, and Nights of Cabiria are all solidly better than two or even three of the actual nominees, and the latter two were in the field for Best Foreign Language Film, with Cabiria winning.

-What I Would’ve Picked-

Even with some of the foreign contenders that I did particularly enjoy, and with a couple excellent domestic runners-up in Paths of Glory and Sweet Smell of Success, I’m still giving the crown to 12 Angry Men. I don’t know if I could cite a better example of a great film that does so much with so little – that’s like bonus points in my book.

-How Did Oscar Do?-

It seems with all the consolidation they were doing, the Academy couldn’t branch out & notice some of the more worthy films for this category that didn’t otherwise check enough of their regular boxes, especially the one about films being in the English language. Of course, it’s still a long time out from Oscar widening its attention enough to nominate foreign films more in the major categories, but it’s years like this one that show how debilitating that slow progress can really be; couple that with a few pretty egregious domestic misses, and it’s clear how much progress Oscar still has to make before they start getting it right. That is, depending on your inclination toward the Academy, if they ever do.

I love it when, in discussions of the all-time great directors, I see Billy Wilder’s name pop up, and I love it specifically because of how much Billy Wilder and his films just don’t care about conforming to the perception of an all-time director or auteur. A lot of the all-time directors have a style or technique that’s singularly identifiable; you think of directors like Kubrick or Welles or Hitchcock, or foreign contenders like Bergman or Fellini or Kurosawa, and you know when you’re watching one of their films – they’re like a genre unto themselves. Billy Wilder’s films are almost the antithesis of that, not because he’s so versatile that he swings so drastically in genre from project to project, but because he almost deliberately avoids imparting any sense of style or directorial touch onto his films; they exist merely for their own sake and for the sake of their story, and aside from him also writing his own screenplays, they feel like they could’ve been directed by almost anyone. Despite how unremarkable his films seem when you’re watching them, you’d be hard-pressed to not enjoy a viewing of a Billy Wilder picture should you sit down for one, and that’s really at the heart of my ultimate opinion of Witness for the Prosecution; there’s not too much about it that really sticks out or is overtly amazing, but damn if it isn’t still a satisfying movie either way.

Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a highly well-regarded barrister in the Central Court of England, has just returned to his office after surviving a heart attack; though he is still on the mend and his home & work care are incessantly supervised by his nurse, Ms. Plimsoll, he is eager to resume his legal duties as a criminal lawyer, despite his doctor advising him against taking any criminal cases, lest the stress of the work bring about another heart attack. Though his medical advisors try and steer him toward simpler, civil cases, a juicy murder trial practically falls into his lap when he meets with Leonard Vole, who is accused of murdering an elderly widow for her inheritance in a case that’s been at the forefront of the public eye. Convinced after meeting with him that Vole is innocent, Robarts decides to join Vole’s defense team, but arguing Vole’s case in the upcoming trial may be just as challenging as figuring out the defense’s case at all, especially after Robarts meets with Vole’s German wife Christine, whose shifty & off-putting demeanor seems only to add more mystery & questions to Robarts’ assessment of the case instead of providing him answers.

As I mentioned in the opener, Wilder’s films are so often scant on ostentatious details that it’s perplexing trying to come up with things to bring up or talk about, and Witness for the Prosecution is no different; the cinematography & production design is just enough to construct the setting of the film and get us through the picture, with some individual parts that seem a mite more purposeful than others throughout the runtime, but nothing more to really get in a twist over. Thus, it falls back on the screenplay that Wilder has written, and the actual story he tells with it, to let us know that this is a solid picture, and if you’re expecting Wilder to come up short when it comes to his screenplays, you don’t know Billy Wilder. It helps significantly that this is also an adaptation of an Agatha Christie play, with all the intrigue and mystery (and even a twist ending or two, which the film even goes so far as to audibly encourage you over the closing credits not to spoil for your friends & family) that Christie is known for, and so it would take a concerted effort from a half-baked director to not make this an entertaining film; if that is at all your concern, then again, you really don’t know Billy Wilder. Aside from the narrative, the only other real standout of the film is the cast, and everyone who has an important role is solid & effective at a minimum; Charles Laughton is exactly as fully entertaining as Sir Robarts as you already know he’s going to be, with his back-and-forth play with Elsa Lanchester as Nurse Plimsoll being a constant highlight, while Marlene Dietrich is an effective scene-stealer and gives a surprising turn for anyone who only thinks of her in the sultry European persona she’s built over the years, reminding us that she’s also a plenty-capable actress when she puts a mind to it.

As much as I enjoyed watching the film, and especially with the previously-mentioned twist ending that knocks you for a loop in a good way, I’m not too certain if I’ll ever really feel the need to watch this one again. As much as the ending had me riding high, it also made me keenly aware that I could potentially over-judge the film as a whole just because of it, and I was particularly attentive to how I felt about the film overall in comparison to the ending as a result. It was that lack of any other really discernable characteristics about it (aside from the screenwriting and some cast standouts) that had me ending up on the rating I’m giving this, and I really struggle with any notion of bumping it up higher than that. But again, though I may not have made it abundantly clear with my review, that’s not to say that this is poor or unentertaining, because it is very solidly not; it’s only that the entertainment & production value isn’t enough to compel me to want to watch this several times over, at least in the immediate future. But, as I’ve said a number of times over the years on this blog, just because a film seems basic and rudimentary in its construction should not mean that it can’t or won’t be a good film, and Witness for the Prosecution (along with plenty of other Billy Wilder films) fits that descriptor like a well-worn glove.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10

I wonder sometimes if I’m being too misguided in wanting to find or figure out actual solutions to the problems I encounter, or that I see in the wider world. So often, when there’s a problem or issue that’s on a particularly bigger scale, or systemic in origin, or more complex in detail, it feels like the prevailing tactic to working with those problems, as well as addressing them in the public forum even in mediums like entertainment, is a vague and ethereal surface-level understanding of the issue; one that both refuses to dig any deeper to get at the root causes of the problem & bring them to clearer focus, and that also points at the pervasive surface-level understanding itself as an excuse to offer no real workable solutions. Feelings (or even outright statements) like “This is just how things are”, or “You just don’t do that”, or “There’s nothing that I/we/you can do about it”, show up often in movies and shows that deal with topics like this and in this way, and it feels like hand-waving away any attempt to put actual effort into solving the problem, and films like this are more often than not doubly aggravating in how they end, with only a slight fanciful notion that our heroes are going to do the thing anyway despite it being indicative of the problem as if that itself is all the solution one needs; it’s a conclusion within spitting distance of “…and they all lived Happily Ever After.”, and it feels as disingenuously progressive as ‘Happily Ever After’ feels unquestioningly conclusive. I know I’m diverging into quite the rant to start this off, but I’m struggling quite a bit with the general notion of Sayonara, a film by Joshua Logan about U.S. military men post-WWII engaging in interracial relationships with Japanese women against public opinion and military commanders’ orders, being a highly progressive picture for its era on such a topic, when it barely scratches the surface of the issue it’s about and offers no further understanding of how the problem should be solved or dealt with.

Marlon Brando stars as Maj. Lloyd Gruver, a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force and son of an Army general; on tour in the Korean War and known for his relentless work ethic in the air, he’s forcibly given some R&R by his commander, Gen. Webster, who reassigns him to a low-contact air base in Japan where he’ll basically have nothing to do, and can also spend some time with his visiting fiancée Eileen, who is also Webster’s daughter. Transferring with Gruver is his friend & crew chief, Joe Kelly, who’s much more eager to go to Japan than Lloyd as he is engaged to a local Japanese woman in the area, Katsumi, and he plans to make the marriage official while there, despite the higher-ups in military command doing as much as they can to discourage such fraternization in their ranks, as interracial marriage is still not 100% legal in the whole of the United States. Joe is determined to go through with it, however, and he asks Lloyd to be his best man & witness for the marriage; Lloyd, despite his personal misgivings, agrees to his friend’s request, and thus a Pandora’s box threatens to open when some of the commanders hear about Joe and Lloyd’s actions, Joe’s future plans to take his bride home with him to the States, and Lloyd’s own changing loyalties when he himself falls in love with a famous Japanese stage performer named Hana-ogi.

So, there’s really two main focuses or selling points to Sayonara, and since I expounded quite a bit on the main one in the opener already, I shouldn’t waste time on getting to the film’s other main attraction. Marlon Brando is the star here, only three odd years since he won the Oscar after a string of nominations, and if the relatively-meager presence of his name on the poster up there attempts to be humble about Brando’s role in the film, his actual performance and the details of how the film works to center itself around him all but eliminate any notions of the word “humble”. Complete with a down-home Southern accent and more than enough of Brando’s typical waffling mannerisms right from the starting gun, Brando’s Lloyd Gruver almost threatens to derail the film before it even gets going, and for the first time I got an acute understanding of those who look down on Marlon Brando with the deprecative nickname “The Mumbler”; his first scene has him already fully-invested in his character’s Southern drawl and lackadaisical manner of speaking, and it was incredibly off-putting to be dropped into the film with Brando’s affectations without having gotten used to them beforehand. I’ll grant him that it did grow on me the more the film went on, and it helped make his character feel like a more fully-developed individual by the end of the film, but that there was no easing into it or transitory introduction meant the difficulty curve of viewer investment was jacked up right at the start of the film, and it was so steadfast and all-encompassing that it felt like the rest of the cast didn’t know what to do while he was off doing his own thing. His method of intentionally fumbling for lines in order to appear as casual and natural as possible, particularly how others around him thus had to deal with his acting & mannerisms, even seemed to bleed into the filmmaking itself; it became conspicuous whenever the camera cuts to someone else for a reaction shot or the editor tries to find a way to keep the viewer engaged whenever Brando is fumbling around for too long, like the entire production, actors and crew alike, knew that this is Brando who would be doing this and so the rest of the production had to figure out a way to shoot & edit the movie around him. His method might work very well for him, but for the first time it was readily apparent to me how it was also handicapping the efforts of everyone else, and I could better understand how other people could view his acting style as intolerable. The rest of the cast seemed much more aware of what film was trying to be made, and fit in a lot better with the setting and the story; Red Buttons as Joe Kelly was particularly memorable, being solid & self-assured of what’s right no matter what obstacles were trying to throw themselves in his way to stop him, and I’m glad Buttons won Best Supporting Actor for this (though I’m not quite convinced that Miyoshi Umeki as his wife Katsumi really did enough to warrant her winning Supporting Actress). Miiko Taka as Hana-ogi had little to do, aside from fall for Brando’s character because the plot required it of her, and Ricardo Montalban somehow got cast as a Japanese kabuki star, but he makes do with the role well enough. The production design & scenery of the film is also worth a mention, and might be the only other thing to consider as a selling point & worth the watch.

If I’m being honest, even with how much I ranted about the film’s superficial exploration of racial issues or how Brando being Brando almost upstages the film entirely, I didn’t really think Sayonara was a bad film. I would say it’s too long for what little it does do, but the production itself is pretty nice and the narrative at the heart of all the political issues at play is handled well enough. To tie this back into my diversion in the opener, what bothers me the most about the film is that it doesn’t do nearly enough with what it’s trying to do, that a film like this covering the topic it’s covering in the time period the film was made in could’ve and should’ve taken a long and confident step forward in addressing this issue and what more needs to be done, instead of side-eyeingly scraping a toe over the line and looking around for the validation that doing so is indeed something to be considered progress. Maybe it’s just me being a person living in the modern world; maybe this indeed was a substantial jump in normalizing interracial relationships and eliminating the stigma for audiences of the later 1950s. For me, though, I can’t help but feel disappointed that a film like this, that deals with its topic so shallowly, was considered progressive and forward-thinking for what it does, mainly because it feels like films and think pieces on topics and problems all the way up to today, some 60 to 70 years later, take much the same approach. And it makes me wonder, with the style of nihilistic cynicism typical of my generation, if people actually really want to figure out and solve such systemic problems that face the world or even just our everyday lives, or if they really only want to just feel like having concern or some passing thoughts about the problem is itself doing something about it. I can’t claim to have the single, definitive, workable solution to something like discrimination against interracial marriage, or a lot of other pressing or persistent societal issues, but it bothers me that it seems like so few people are actually invested in working out problems to find actual solutions to them. With films like Sayonara and their approach to problem-solving being very much the general standard, though, perhaps it’s me that has to accept that I’m the one being naive about it.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

Peyton Place had a bit of an uphill battle with me from the get-go; it’s comfortably over two-and-a-half hours long, it tells the story of a small American town writ large (and thus threatens to be narratively aimless in its effort to be all-encompassing), and it’s also a literary adaptation to boot. Throw in that the film would end up tying the record for having the most Oscar nominations without winning any of them, and it’s rather difficult to muster excitement for what all signs are pointing to be a slog, albeit a likely well-produced slog, to get through. Well, far be it from fate to have my expectations exactly met all of the time; not only did I get through the film in one sitting (something that’s been increasingly rarer for me to say about these nominees lately), it was actually quite easy for me to do so, and I might’ve even enjoyed the experience (if only, perhaps, because of that). Now, whether or not I can wholeheartedly say it’s a good film might be something else entirely, but I’m at least thankful that it wasn’t a struggle for me to sit through it.

Peyton Place is a small, idyllic New England town circa 1940 or so, where everybody knows everybody and anything that happens reaches everyone’s ears before the day is through. We follow several characters, most of which are either students at Peyton Place High School or are otherwise affiliated with it through family or work, and who all have their own private lives to lead & wishes to fulfill beyond the public life of the community and the borders of the town. It’s the bridging of that gap between the socialite community and the private affairs of the citizens that ends up as the point of the film and the driving force of the narrative more than anything, as some events occur that bring about excited whispers and others that threaten to (or do) incur salacious gossip & talk of scandal, culminating in the courtroom case of one of its young citizens that, uncomfortably for its populace, brings into sharp focus the downsides of the town’s insular & over-connected community and the reasons why so many of its young people are all too eager to leave Peyton Place and never look back.

Yes, that plot summary is indeed very scant on specific details, not to avoid spoilers but rather because it’s pretty much the only way to do it and have it be succinct & brief, instead of having to inadvertently recount everything about the plot of the film and the particulars of it. It seems that when it comes to lengthy runtimes and a film’s efforts to justify having one, Peyton Place has hit upon a good way to do it: just have a whole lot of plot, and infer the presence of even more. The cast of characters is quite vast compared to most films from the 1950s, with a good five or six of the high school kids heading up either main or subplots, and all of them having family members that are equally involved in the same, with everyone’s stories being more or less interconnected over the length of the film. This does make it easy to stay engaged with the story, since there’s always something happening and things that are leading to other things, but just because it’s got a lot going on to stay involved in isn’t to say that Peyton Place as a film and as a narrative will be for everyone; as should be obvious from the plot summary and the keywords used in it, this is a melodrama first and foremost, and whether or not your palette for stories is primed for the types of relationship drama and secrets brought to shameful light that puts this just before the line of a daytime soap opera (fitting, then, that the original book would go on to be re-adapted as a TV drama that helped to launch the prime-time serial format that took hold in the 70s & 80s) that will determine if or how much of Peyton Place you’ll be able to stomach. What helps significantly, for me at least, is that even the melodramatic beats of the story aren’t overacted in the way typical of the genre; there’s some tears & raised voices, sure, and that stupidly-bombastic horn music that blares in after a particularly “jaw-dropping” development does show up on a few occasions, but that the actions & reactions of the cast are pretty believable & understandable overall does a lot to help us get past the few melodrama cliches that are still present. Most of the cast are great in their roles, with Hope Lange as Selena and Russ Tamblyn as Norman being standouts for me, and Lana Turner proves fully capable as the cast’s anchor & arguable lead; Diane Varsi as her daughter Allison and Lee Philips as her romantic interest Mike Rossi both felt a little wafer-thin in their efforts, though, which makes some sense as this was the feature debut for both of them. Extra shoutout to the cinematography as well; it may not have anything particularly amazing to display, but it still does a nice job depicting the quiet, colorful beauty of this small American town.

Apparently, the reception of Peyton Place the film was a bit more questionable compared to Peyton Place the book: the latter was a sensation upon release for how much it completely leaned into the lurid, sex-filled, ‘scandal underneath the picturesque American town’ premise that the film admittedly waters down and only marginally hints at; a decision almost certainly made to comply with the Hays Code that, even still, caused a lot of critics to call the film sterilized & having lost most of what made the novel what it was. Me personally, I had no knowledge or history with Peyton Place as an IP before this, as a book or as a TV show, and I think it was this that led me to enjoy the film version as a passive viewer & moviegoer instead of being wrapped up in expectations from the soap opera or being let down by changes from the book. Without the baggage of cultural knowledge, I could take what the film itself was giving me on its own terms, and even though the story was a melodrama at its core & did a lot to set a standard that future soap operas and the like would run from (and far further with), I really didn’t mind watching Peyton Place, and it was such an easy watch for me that I don’t think I could really call it a bad film. I’m still unsure if it does enough to be considered a good one, but it never felt like it was unsuccessful with the various things it did do, and it holds together a lot better than quite a few other nominees (even with its runtime), so that’s definitely a win here that I feel like I’ve been lacking lately.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

-Year in Summary/What Did Win-

Back when I started the Best Picture fields of the 1950s, I quickly picked up on (and mentioned) the growing incursion of big-budget, full-color, epic-production films into the category, now that such features & selling points were becoming much more the standard than the exceptional outlier (throw in the addition of widescreen cinema as a format in ’53, and the coming tsunami almost seemed inevitable). For 1956, the apotheosis of this trend has finally arrived; this is the first Best Picture field where every nominee is in color, and to boot, four of the five nominees were also four of the five top-grossing pictures of the year. While Best Picture seemed to be approaching a fully-realized glory, the Academy was still figuring some other things out with its awards; the long-time award for Best Story, won this year by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo under a pseudonym, also gave a mistaken nomination to the screenwriters of High Society, a Bowery Boys film from the previous year that shared its title with the higher-profile musical from 1956 that the nom was intended for, and despite the musical being a remake of The Philadelphia Story and thus rendering it ineligible for the category. These mix-ups and blurred lines between categories and the work being honored is likely the reason the Academy phased out this category the following year, leaving the writing awards simply between Original & Adapted Screenplays. This was also the first year of the Best Foreign Language Film award being a competitive category, the inaugural award going to Italy for La Strada. For the top-grossers vying for the big one, however, producer Mike Todd managed to strike gold on his first time out (and only time, before he died the next year in a plane crash), winning Best Picture for Around the World in 80 Days.

-Ranking the Nominees-

-For what I said about this field being chock-full of big-budget, huge-production, box office smash hits, it’s probably fitting then that I ditch the one nominee right off the bat that doesn’t otherwise fit into that group of four. While Friendly Persuasion is fairly nice to look at, being a color film that makes good use of its on-location shooting & period piece setting, everything else about it was either unfocused in its intent, unconcerned with being engaging, or unsure of how to do what it wants to, and my saying that about a William Wyler film at this stage of his career is not something I expected to be able to, and I’m even less inclined to be more forgiving about it. That this also managed to win the Palme d’Or the following year at Cannes is just added hilarity to me, as this really is not successful enough at whatever it’s trying to do to be within reaching distance of major awards, including Best Picture.

-It’s routine among rankings of Best Picture winners to put Around the World in 80 Days near the bottom of the list, and after watching it myself, I don’t begrudge any of those listmakers for doing so; this would’ve been just another flighty, anti-narrative, location-footage travelogue of a film, but that it’s three entire hours in runtime and does so little with everything it throws at the screen (and boy do I mean everything, including all the cameos the film can’t help itself but include) only magnifies all the problems inherent in the film, and that such a film went on to win Best Picture, against anything but the absolute worst possible field the Academy could’ve put against it (and this field is hardly that), is merely the final nail in the coffin. I will say, though, that while the previous nominee had left me flat-out bored almost all of the time, a lot of the cinematography here is pretty nice and some of the humor in certain sequences works pretty well (more often than not thanks to Cantinflas as Passepartout), and so this is only just barely not ending up in last place for me. But only just.

-If big budgets and lavish productions is what one is coming into this nominee field for, I imagine you’ll get plenty to sate your appetite when watching The King and I. The production value in this film, from the sets to the costumes to the dance numbers, is definitely a feast for the eyes, but it’s whether or not the film is a feast for the ears as well that ended up the bigger question for me. As a musical, if the songs don’t work or are just unmemorable, then you’ve failed at the primary goal of working in that genre, and when I as a viewer am left unengaged with the musical numbers and can’t even fall back on the narrative of the story to be more than hacked together & surface-level, then all the production value in the world means nothing to me. I sound like I’m being more mean to The King and I than I’m intending; I really can’t discount the efforts in the production, and Yul Brynner’s performance is definitely memorable & the best thing about the film, and it’s these aspects that are putting this as high in my ranking as it’s getting. But with how directly a piece of enjoyable entertainment the genre of the movie musical is supposed to be for a film, this was just too much of a struggle for me to get through, and I don’t think I can ever see myself watching it again.

-I’ve mentioned before that I do try & rewatch the nominees from each year that I’ve already seen; maybe not the entire way through for every one of them, but enough to get a solid idea of where in my ranking they should go, and to potentially reassess some that I might not’ve been able to appreciate on my first viewing. It’s always a nice feeling when I’m particularly reminded of how good a decision that can be, and my rewatch of Giant is just such a case; this is certainly a better film than I was able to acknowledge at the early point in my quest when my review went up, and I could see myself giving it a slight bump in score had I seen & reviewed it closer to today, for instance. That said, it wouldn’t be that much higher; the main issues I raised in my review, that the fine points of the narrative are rather simplistic and especially that even the film’s good points suffer under the substantial weight of just how freaking long the film is, are still very much the main problems with it, and though I have a much better handle on what the film is aiming to do with its story and can thus appreciate it better for the film it’s trying to be, I still can’t say that this is an all-around winner or that it has a clear shot at Best Picture because of it.

-So for the field of 1956, with all the brilliant color and the lavish production value and the oodles of money thrown back and forth into the budgets and the box offices that it represents, it also seems fitting to put at the top of this ranking the film that does more of all of that than any of the others, the most epically epic example of a large-scale colorful epic that the silver screen had seen up to then (and, for some, ever would). The Ten Commandments may have more production value than some would consider feasible, a budget many may call untenable, and a runtime that pushes the boundaries of what modern audiences would find acceptable; but, to give Cecil B. DeMille the credit he earns, it is all in service to a film that, even with being over three and a half hours long, is still eminently watchable and entertaining more often than not. It’s not perfect, and depending on your preferences, you could probably find more things to not like about it than you would things to enjoy, but for me, this has the least of all the other weaknesses that took out the other films in this field, and for that coupled with how successful the film is with the mammoth production DeMille puts behind it, it’s ending up at the top of this field of five.

-What Should’ve Been Here-

While I guess I can’t fault the Academy for plumbing directly from the top box office grosses this year to pick its Best Picture slate, it does leave out plenty of other deserving films that, for one, are probably a little better suited to the Academy’s tastes up to then, and two, are better overall films than a lot of the blockbuster productions that did make the ballot. Of course, I can’t really speak for the films I haven’t seen, but that still got some love elsewhere in the ceremony; films like Lust for Life, Baby Doll, War and Peace, and Anastasia, from previous Oscar winners & Academy favorites alike. Of what I have seen from 1956, mostly thanks to the 1001 list, a few foreign titles stand out, like A Man Escaped and The Burmese Harp; two holdovers from previous years, La Strada and Seven Samurai, got nominations this year, and so could reasonably make the fold. Of the domestic fare, Forbidden Planet and Invasion of the Body Snatchers were too genre for the Academy, though Bigger than Life should’ve certainly been in the Academy’s wheelhouse. So, too, should’ve been The Searchers, arguably John Ford’s masterpiece and the greatest western ever made, and to see it shut out completely without a single nomination is more than a little befuddling.

-What I Would’ve Picked-

This is a weird one, and it’s because of the Academy’s rules on domestic screenings of foreign films; Seven Samurai, a Japanese film from two years ago, had a qualifying run for this year’s ceremony and even got two Oscar noms, though it also somehow wasn’t nominated for the first-ever competitive Best Foreign Language Film category, but that’s neither here nor there. As such, of the qualifying films for these Awards, I’d be hard-pressed not to pick one of the greatest films of all time, and what the late, great Chip Lary frequently cited as the greatest non-English-language film ever made. If I were to hold myself to something more local and much more within the Academy’s purview (or what should’ve been, given its total lack of actual noms), The Searchers is my choice without a second thought; so, really, it’s whether or not I (or any readers) want to stick to English language films or to be more global in our ultimate assessments.

-How Did Oscar Do?-

Well, for all the times this decade so far that I’ve looked down on the Academy for going with the safe & routine with their individual picks, I’ve gotta give them a little something for this all-color, top-grossing selection; it is, at least, something a little different than the norm. That said, this isn’t really the best this year in cinema has to offer, and their ultimate choice is especially bewildering; so, I’ll give Oscar some points for trying to shake things up, but there’s still a ways to go & time to practice before they’re gonna be able to hit the target when they do so.