The DVD Report #37

With the nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards less than a week away, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the films Oscar liked 25, 50 and 75 years ago.

Twenty-five years ago the Best Picture nominees were E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Gandhi, Missing, Tootsie and The Verdict, all of which are available on DVD. With wins from the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics and the Golden Globes, the latter in the foreign film category, Gandhi was the inevitable winner even if L.A. film Critics and Golden Globe drama winner, E.T. was then, as now, more popular.

The best thing about Gandhi is the performance of Best Actor winner Ben Kingsley as the East Indian leader. The film’s slow pace under the direction of Oscar winner Richard Attenborough, despite its epic sweep, seems more ponderous as the years go by. Not so, E.T. and Tootsie, the Golden Globe comedy winner, both ofwhich remain as fresh today as they were then.

E.T. remains a delightful film about childhood innocence, chronicling the adventures of a friendly alien stranded on Earth and the ten-year-old boy who befriends him. Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore turn in naturalistic child performances under the assured direction of Oscar nominee Steven Spielberg.

Tootsie is a hilarious comedy about an obnoxious actor who finds his heart as well as success when he disguises himself as a woman and lands a job on a TV soap opera. The film, directed by Best Director nominee Sydney Pollack, provides best actor nominee Dustin Hoffman with one of his best roles. He is ably supported by Oscar winner Jessica Lange and Oscar nominee Teri Garr.

Paul Newman had one of his best late-career roles as an alcoholic lawyer taking on the medical profession and the Catholic Church in The Verdict, an engrossing courtroom drama directed by Best Director nominee Sidney Lumet and featuring superb supporting performances by Oscar nominees James Mason and Jack Warden.

The Oscar nominated performances of Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek as the father and wife, respectively, of a missing American in Latin America, sustain Costa-Gavras’ provocative Missing.

Missing from Oscar’s Best Picture line-up of 1982 were several films that have stood the test of time better than Missing or Gandhi. They include Das Boot, a streamlined version of a German TV mini-series directed by Oscar nominee Wolfgang Petersen; Victor/Victoria,a musical remake of a German screwball comedy of the 1930s with Oscar nominees Julie Andrews, as a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, and Robert Preston, as a gay nightclub emcee; An Officer and a Gentleman with Richard Gere in one of his best roles as a cadet in the Naval Officer Candidate School, Oscar nominated Debra Winger as his girl, and Oscar winner Louis Gossett Jr. as a tough drill instructor; and Sophie’s Choice with Meryl Streep at her career peak as a Polish mother in a Nazi concentration camp forced to make an unholy decision.

Also worth checking out are The World According to Garp with supporting actor and actress nominees John Lithgow and Glenn Close, and My Favorite Year with Best Actor nominee Peter O’Toole.

The Best Picture nominees of fifty years ago were The Bridge on the River Kwai, Peyton Place, Sayonara, 12 Angry Men and Witness for the Prosecution, all of which are available on DVD. Having swept all three precursors then in existence, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics and the Golden Globes, The Bridge on the River Kwai was a virtual certainty to take home the Oscar, and it did.

Coining the term “high adventure”, Oscar winner David Lean’s film is about a group of British soldiers in a Japanese POW camp who are forced to build a bridge as a morale booster. The film featured exquisite cinematography, pulse-pounding suspense, a haunting music score and great performances by Oscar winner Alec Guinness as the half-mad leader of the British work group and nominee Sessue Hayakawa as the camp commandant.

Exquisite cinematography was also the hallmark of two of the other, albeit completely different, nominees: the New England-based Peyton Placeand the filmed-in-Japan Sayonara.

Based on the scandalous bestseller, Peyton Placewas considerably toned down for the screen but remained provocative in its then-frank sex talk and suggestions of incest. Among the film’s nine nominations were one for its director, Mark Robson, and five for acting: Lana Turner as the prim mother of fellow nominee Diane Varsi, the film’s narrator, Hope Lange as a poor girl who becomes pregnant after being raped by her stepfather, Arthur Kennedy as the mean, alcoholic stepfather, and Russ Tamblyn as Varsi’s mother-dominated friend.

The then-exotic locale of post-war Japan and the poignant romance of secondary players Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki, who won Oscars for their performances, were the main drawing points of Sayonara, which also won nominations for director Joshua Logan and star Marlon Brando.

Henry Fonda produced as well as starred in 12 Angry Men, a suspense-filled look at how a jury works as, one by one, this particular jury must determine the fate of a young man accused of murder. Sidney Lumet won his first nomination for Best Director for this, his first film.

The most fun film of the five nominees was Witness for the Prosecution, based on the Agatha Christie stage smash. It was directed by Oscar nominee Billy Wilder and featured great performances by Oscar nominees Charles Laughton as an English barrister embroiled in a tough murder trial against doctor’s order and Elsa Lanchester as his disapproving nurse, a role written for the film version. Equally memorable are Marlene Dietrich in the title role, the German war bride of defendant Tyrone Power, and Una O’Connor as the hard of hearing housekeeper of the murder victim. Only Power, of the film’s main players, disappoints.

Other Oscar-nominated films worth seeking out include Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison with Robert Mitchum and Best Actress nominee Deborah Kerr as a marine and a nun stranded on a Japanese-held island during World War II; The Three Faces of Eve in which Best Actress winner Joanne Woodward plays a woman with multiple personalities; and two not yet on DVD. Wild Is the Wind features nominees Anthony Quinn as a widowed rancher and Anna Magnani as the sister of his dead wife whom he marries to remind him of her; and A Hatful of Rain, a grim melodrama about drug addiction with Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray and Oscar nominated Anthony Franciosa as the brother of addict Murray.

Seventy-five years ago there were no precursors. The New York film Critics would not come into existence for another three years, the Golden Globes for eleven and the National Board of Review covered the calendar year while the Academy year went from mid-1931 through mid-1932. They also had eight nominees for best picture as opposed to the now conventional five, which came into being in 1944.

The eight nominees were Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, The Champ, Five Star Final, Grand Hotel, One Hour With You, Shanghai Express and The Smiling Lieutenant, of which only Arrowsmith, The Champ and the winner, Grand Hotel,have thus far been released on DVD. Good news, however, as both One Hour With You and The Smiling Lieutenant are being released next month as part of Criterion’s Lubitsch collection. Shanghai Express is available in Region 2, but shockingly not in Region 1. Bad Girl and Five Star Final have not been released in either region.

The first of the all-star-cast films, MGM’s grand Grand Hotel seems rather ordinary in retrospect. Sure, it was the first film in which Greta Garbo as a lonely ballerina announces “I vant to be alone” and then-mega-stars Joan Crawford and Lionel Barrymore stood out in what were basically supporting roles, she as a stenographer, he as a dying bookkeeper. But others such as John Barrymore as a jewel thief and Wallace Beery as a particularly tiresome businessman don’t fare quite as well.

Beery does much better as the battered old boxer in Oscar nominee King Vidor’s The Champ, for which he shared the Best Actor prize with Fredric March in Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The latter, a particularly poignant and adult take on the classic horror story, is a better film than any of the Best Picture nominees and March’s performance is the better of the two, though Beery is certainly no slouch, particularly in his scenes with young Jackie Cooper as his adoring son.

Legendary director John Ford was not happy with his film version of Sinclair Lewis’ Arrowsmith, but critics of the day raved about the performances of Ronald Colman and Helen Hayes as the pioneering doctor and his ill-fated wife. Hayes proved even more popular in the tearjerker, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar as unwed mother. Claudet is not available on DVD.

Frank Borzage’s Bad Girl isn’t as well remembered as some of his other romantic dramas, notably A Farewell to Arms, History Is Made at Night and The Mortal Storm, but it was thought well enough of in its day to get him his second Oscar for direction, his first having come in the first year of the awards for 7th Heaven. The story is a simple one about a year in the life of a young couple, neither of whom is “bad”.

One of the best of the Marlene Dietrich-Josef von Sternberg collaborations is Shanghai Express for which von Sternberg joined Vidor and Borzage as one of only three nominated directors. The film still sizzles with Dietrich’s provocative portrayal of a woman with a shady past and Warner Oland is terrific in a then-rare villainous role as a Mongolian warlord. Anna May Wong is also quite impressive as another lady with a shady past and Lee Garmes’ Oscar winning cinematography still dazzles.

One of the best films ever made about the media, Mervyn LeRoy’s Five Star Final, is about a daily newspaper, but could just as easily be about today’s tabloid scandal sheets or even cable TV news shows. Edward G. Robinson stars as an editor who doesn’t stop to think about the damage he’s causing the subjects of his exposes, leading to a tragic double suicide. Aline MacMahon, in her film debut, more than holds her own as his loyal secretary.

The two Lubitsch musicals, One Hour With You with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, and The Smiling Lieutenant with Chevalier are delightful bon-bons of the type they stopped making a long time ago.

Other Oscar nominated films of 1931/32 worth seeking out include Best Original Story nominee, What Price Hollywood?, and Emma with Best Actress nominee Marie Dressler, neither of which are available on DVD, though you can still find What Price Hollywood? on VHS. Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman star in the first version of the oft-filmed A Star Is Born, directed by George Cukor who would later do the Judy Garland-James Mason musical version.

Emma is not the Jane Austen story, but rather a well-made tearjerker of the kind they don’t make any more. Dressler, fabulous as always, plays an elderly housekeeper and nanny who marries her employer after his kids are grown and is subsequently sued by the spoiled brats over the old man’s estate when he dies. Dressler receives strong support from Jean Hersholt as the old man and Richard Cromwell as her one unselfish stepchild.

Celebrate the Oscar nominations by watching at least one of these old gems.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 15, 2008)