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The Oscar year 1947 is mostly remembered for two things – Hollywood’s acknowledgement of anti-Semitism in the Best Picture race and the sweep of the major technical awards by the British.

Laura Hobson’s Gentleman’s Agreement had been a best-seller but ironically most of the studios, which were run by Jewish moguls, wouldn’t touch it. It took the only non-Jewish mogul, Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck to produce it.

The film, directed by Elia Kazan, has not aged particularly well. Put the blame on the overly somber script or Gregory Peck’s too earnest portrayal of the reporter who poses as a Jew in order to obtain material for a piece he is writing. Far more interesting are the supporting performances of John Garfield, Dorothy McGuire, Celeste Holm, Sam Jaffe, Dean Stockwell and especially Anne Revere. Peck, McGuire, Holm and Revere were all nominated for Oscars, with Holm winning along with Kazan and the film itself.

Gentleman’s Agreement wasn’t the only film about anti-Semitism released in 1947. Edward Dmytryk’s film of Richard Brooks’ The Brick Foxhole re-titled Crossfire had beat it into theatres by five months.

Brooks’ novel, which was about the murder of a homosexual man by a group of marines, was a stinging indictment of intolerance, but because the subject of homosexuality was taboo within the Hollywood Production Code, the film’s script changed the intolerance from homophobia to anti-Semitism.

The film starred the three Roberts – Young, Mitchum and Ryan, the latter Oscar nominated for his chilling portrayal of the killer. Gloria Grahame was also nominated for her femme fatale as was Dmytryk and the film itself.

Oscar nominations came in pairs this year. In addition to the two films about anti-Semitism, two Best Picture nominations went to holiday films.

George Seaton’s Miracle on 34th Street was an instant classic, winning a Best Supporting Actor award for Edmund Gwenn’s beloved portrayal of Kris Kringle AKA Santa Claus. Maureen O’Hara, John Payne and Natalie Wood also starred in the film which starts on Thanksgiving Day and ends on Christmas morning. It also won Oscars for its Original Story by Valentine Davies and for Best Screenplay by George Seaton.

Cary Grant was originally supposed to play the minister and David Niven the angel come to Earth to help him in Henry Koster’s Christmas film, The Bishop’s Wife, but they switched roles to the delight of all. Loretta Young was the titular wife, Monty Woolley an old friend, Gladys Cooper the town matriarchand the splendid James Gleason and Elsa Lanchester were also on board.

Young won the year’s Best Actress Oscar, not for The Bishop’s Wife, but for her other diverting comedy that year, H.C. Potter’s The Farmer’s Wife in which she plays the unlikely role of a farm girl turned maid who runs for Congress. Young, Joseph Cotton, Oscar nominated Charles Bickford and the incomparable Ethel Barrymore made it shine.

The fifth Best Picture nominee was David Lean’s film of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. One of the most acclaimed adaptations of Dickens’ work, the film was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Director and Screenplay, but none for any of its superb cast which included John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Anthony Wager, Jean Simmons, Bernard Lee, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt and Francis L. Sullivan.

The big news, though, was that Great Expectations won the two major technical awards of the evening – Best Black-and-White Cinematography and Art Direction over its Hollywood competition. Not only that, but another acclaimed British film, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus won the same two awards in the color categories.

Black Narcissus has for many years enjoyed a reputation of being one of the most exquisitely photographed films ever made. Most people seeing it for the first time, unless they’ve been forewarned, assume the film was made on location in the Himalayas when in actuality it was shot mostly in a London studio with a matte painting of the mountains as backdrop. Its few locations scenes were filmed in Ireland, not India.

Despite having won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress, Deborah Kerr was not nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of the Anglican nun, the sister in charge of a group of missionary nuns coping with the isolation, heat and sexual tension all around them. Kathleen Byron outstanding as the nun who goes mad, Flora Robson, David Farrar, Jean Simmons and Sabu also turn in memorable performances.

Black Narcissus was one of three Powell-Pressburger films in contention for this year’s Oscars. I Know Where I’m Going! with Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey and Stairway to Heaven (A Matter of Live and Death in the U.K.) with David Niven and Kim Hunter were completely overlooked.

Another popular British film, Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out about a fugitive IRA member, played by James Mason in one of his greatest roles, received its only nomination for Best Editing.

Another film about a fugitive, John Ford’s aptly named The Fugitive, based on Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, about a cowardly priest who becomes a martyr to the faith in a Central American communist state, failed to win a single nomination. Ford was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 1948 Venice Film Festival but lost to Laurence Olivier for Hamlet. Henry Fonda, who provided one of his most indelible characterizations, failed to be recognized by any group.

Vittorio De Sica’s Shoe-Shine was singled out for an honorary Oscar, the first time a foreign language film was so honored.

The film about the friendship between two impoverished children and their eventual betrayal and corruption was considered by Orson Welles to be the greatest film he had ever seen. It had been nominated for Best Original Screenplay but lost to the popular comedy, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple.

Nominated for four Oscars including Best Director (George Cukor) and Best Original Screenplay (by actress Ruth Gordon and her husband, Garson Kanin), A Double Life won two, one for its score by Miklos Rozsa and one for Best Actor, Ronald Colman.

Colman playing an actor who goes mad playing Othello was 57 when he won and well past his prime, but a popular winner nonetheless as his great performances in A Tale of Two Cities, Lost Horizon, Random Harvest and other films were still well remembered and highly regarded.

Nominated for three Oscars including Best Actor (John Garfield), Screenplay and Editing, winning for the latter, Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul provided strong roles for Garfield as the struggling boxer who wanted a shot at the title, Lilli Palmer as his no-nonsense girlfriend and Anne Revere as his poor but proud mother.

Nominated for Best Screenplay, Elia Kazan’s other 1947 film, Boomerang! provided Dana Andrews with one of his best roles as a State Attorney prosecuting a young man for the murder of a priest. Jane Wyatt, Lee J. Cobb and Arthur Kennedy as the falsely accused killer, co-star.

Completely overlooked by Oscar, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past has nevertheless enjoyed a long reputation as one of the great films noir. Robert Mitchum had one of his best roles as the private eye played for a sucker by femme fatale Jane Greer. Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming and Dickie Moore co-star.

Also ignored by Oscar, Jean Cocteau’s haunting, beguiling film of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s classic tale, Beauty and the Beast,was a stunning visual masterpiece, a marvelous adult rendering of the beloved fairytale. It should not be compared to the Disney version. Both are exquisite in their own right, and both should be seen on their own terms.

All of the films mentioned have been released on DVD in the U.S. except The Farmer’s Daughter and The Fugitive. Black Narcissus gets its Criterion Blu-ray release today as does another Powell-Pressburger masterpiece, The Red Shoes.

Also being released today is the acclaimed South Korean film, Mother, on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

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