The DVD Report #43

Every year we thrill at certain Oscar winners, scoff at others. Here are a few thoughts on some winners for which the thrill remains.

Six Best Picture Winners

In only its third year in 1930, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave its award to what is still one of the great films of all time. Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, adapted for the screen by Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott and Del Andrews, wasn’t the first anti-war epic to command the public’s attention, but this tale of seven German university students who enlist in World War I, and become, one by one, disillusioned by it quickly took on a resonance that has never faded. In addition to its Best Picture Oscar, it won for its direction by Lewis Milestone and was nominated as well for its screenplay and cinematography. Long available in a shoddy DVD transfer, Universal’s Special Edition of last year gives it the sheen it deserves. Lew Ayres as the film’s protagonist was so taken with the film’s message that he famously became a conscientious objector and served admirably in World War II as a medic under fire in the South Pacific.

Its Best Picture win dimmed in some eyes because it dared to beat critics’ darling Citizen Kane, John Ford’s 1941 epic, How Green Was My Valley is every bit the masterpiece Citizen Kane is, and then some. Its central theme of family love and devotion despite the family’s being spread out over three continents, only grows deeper with time, as does its theme, that of the plight of coal miners who risk their lives every time they go to work. The film won a total of five Oscars including those for John Ford’s magnificent direction, Donald Crisp’s supporting performance as the family patriarch, Arthur C. Miller’s haunting cinematography and for its one of a kind art direction and set design. It was also nominated for Philip Dunne’s brilliant adaptation of the first half of Richard Llewellyn’s novel, its editing, sound recording and Best Supporting Actress Sara Allgood whose portrayal of the family matriarch is easily the equal of Crisp’s. It’s a shame the two didn’t win in tandem. It’s a shame, too, that Roddy McDowall’s didn’t win one of those special awards given child actors at the time for his heart-rending portrayal of twelve year old Huw whose character narrates the tale in middle age.

If All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first talking films to deal with the harsh realities of war, William Wyler’s1946 masterpiece, The Best Years of Our Lives, was one of the first to deal with the problems of returning soldiers after a war, in this case World War II. Nominated for eight Oscars, the film won seven including those for Wyler’s direction, Robert E. Sherwood’s rich screenplay (from MacKinlay Kantor’s novel), actor (Fredric March), supporting Actor (Harold Russell), editing and score. Russell, a real life sailor who lost both hands in the war, was also given an honorary award for his work in the film, the only performer ever to win two Oscars for the same portrayal. Oddly enough Gregg Toland’s deep focus cinematography that is a key component of the film wasn’t even nominated, nor were the remarkable performances of Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright or Dana Andrews. The MGM DVD release is a marked improvement over the HBO DVD, which spread the film over two sides of a single disc.

Long regarded as the best film ever made about show business, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’1950 film, All About Eve,is a backstage comedy-drama about an aspiring actress who not only steals her idol’s parts, but her friends and lovers as well. Bette Davis as the iconoclastic Broadway star gives the performance of her career and she is brilliantly supported by Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter, all of whom, along with Davis, won Oscar nominations for their performances, Sanders winning. The film, in fact, won a total of six Oscars out of a record-setting fourteen nominations. Its wins, in addition to Best Picture, included those for direction (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), screenplay (Mankiewicz again), costume design and sound recording. Its other eight nominations, in addition to the four acting nods already mentioned, included art direction, cinematography, editing and score. Mankiewicz had won the same double honor the previous year for his direction and writing of A Letter to Three Wives.

Arguably the best film Billy Wilder ever made,1960’s The Apartment has lost none of its sparkle and none of its bite over the years. Boldly stretching the boundaries of the Production Code, this matter-of-fact comedy-drama about an office clerk who rises to the top by lending his apartment to the company bosses for their extra-marital trysts, propelled the careers of both Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine. Lemmon proved he could play pathos as well as broad comedy as the lovable schlemiel who wises up after he witnesses the mistreatment of elevator girl MacLaine at the hands of duplicitous boss Fred MacMurray. MacLaine was every bit as brilliant as his equally slow-to-learn female counterpart. The film won a total of five Oscars and was nominated for five more. Its wins, in addition to Best Picture, included those for direction (Wilder), screenplay (Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond), art direction and editing. The other nominations were for actor (Lemmon), actress (MacLaine), supporting actor (Jack Kruschen), cinematography and sound.

It took an outsider, British director John Schlesinger, to see the beauty in the squalor of the underbelly of New York City in1969’s Midnight Cowboy, the first and only X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar. The X rating was, of course, ridiculous and later changed to R, but there’s no denying that the film’s impact on the portrayal of sexual mores on screen. At its heart, though, it’s a character study about a Southern charmer with dreams of making it big as a male prostitute and the con artist who tries to fleece him before becoming his friend. The performances of Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman remain two of the greatest of all time. Voight’s poignant naiveté and Hoffman’s tough vulnerability complement each other throughout the film. Hoffman, who had become an overnight sensation two years earlier in The Graduate proved his versatility in a completely different kind of role and Voight became a star of equal magnitude here. The film also won Oscars for Schlesinger’s direction and Waldo Salt’s screenplay. Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for Best Actor and the film was also nominated for supporting actress (Sylvia Miles) and editing. Shockingly, John Barry’s provocative score, which is a key component of the film, was not nominated.

Three Best Actor Winners

Fredric March had already provn his versatility in both comedy and drama when he won his second nomination and first Oscar for adding horror to his resume in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Effortlessly moving back and forth between the good doctor and evil monster, March even gets to transform into the beast while the camera stays focused on his face, a masterful special effect that still leaves us in awe today. The 1931 film, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, was pre-code and doesn’t suffer at all from the stodginess that damned the 1941 version. Miriam Hopkins is unforgettable as well as the sexy prostitute, Ivy, who captivates the beast.

Robert Donat had proven adept at playing characters at various stages of life in films before, most notably 1934’s The Count of Monte Cristo and 1938’s The Citadel, for which he won his first nomination, but it’s his portrayal of the beloved schoolteacher in 1939’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips where he gives the performance of his career. Going from shy young schoolmaster to authoritative temporary headmaster during World War I, Donat is brilliant at every turn, especially in the end when the 34-year-old actor is portraying a very old man with a lifetime of memories. Greer Garson, in her first American film, is perfectly cast as Mrs. Chipping, the character’s actual name, Chips being an affectionate nickname. Donat famously and deservedly won the Oscar over James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind.

Fifty years after Donat’s stunning turn as Mr. Chips, Daniel Day-Lewis gave an equally compelling portrait of a man who ages during the course of his film, albeit one whose span of life in the film was hardly as expansive as Donat’s. The Irish actor played the real-life Christy Brown, a man struck with cerebral palsy as a child, who despite his affliction, became an acclaimed poet in My Left Foot. Like Donat, Day-Lewis had the benefit of a brilliant co-star, in this case Brenda Fricker, who won a much-deserved Oscar as his never-say-never mother. Like Donat, he famously and deservedly won the Oscar over two highly acclaimed performances, those of Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July and Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy.

Three Best Actress Winners

Twelve years after winning her first Oscar for playing Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, Vivien Leigh won her second for playing faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois in Elia Kazan’s 1951 film version of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. The performances play like flip sides of the same coin, the first strong and resourceful, the second sad and teetering on the brink of madness. Despite the dynamic performance of Marlon Brando as Leigh’s brute of a brother-in-law, it is Leigh’s transcendent performance that supplies the film’s indelible sense of time and place.

Thirty-five years after winning her first, but only a year after winning her second, Katharine Hepburn won the third of her still-record four acting Oscars for her sly, conniving Eleanor of Aquitaine opposite Peter O’Toole’s wily Henry II in 1968’s The Lion in Winter. Though I personally prefer the Hepburn of Little Women, The Philadelphia Story, Summertime and Long Day’s Journey Into Night, this is easily the best of her Oscar-winning performances. Whether sparring with O’Toole or attempting to secure the future reign of son Richard the Lionhearted (Anthony Hopkins), Hepburn is amazing at every turn. As someone said at the time, if Davis and Crawford are the queens of the movies, Hepburn is the empress.

The complete opposite of the endearing Mr. Chips and all those wonderful, kindly schoolteachers that followed, Maggie Smith is a self-indulgent, self-deluded grotesque Scottish schoolteacher in 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, even succeeding in sending one of her worshipping female students off to fight and die in the Spanish Civil War on the wrong side. It is one of many rich characterizations Dame Maggie has given over her now-fifty-year-long film career and one that deservedly won her the first of her two Oscars to date over Hollywood favorites Jane Fonda and Liza Minnelli.

Three Best Supporting Actor Winners

Walter Huston was one of the great star character actors who won his only Oscar late in life as the happy-go-lucky, toothless old prospector in son John Huston’s 1948 classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Equally brilliant in Dodsworth, The Devil and Daniel Webster and his last, The Furies, we still have that indelible image of him a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ about fools’ gold in his Oscar winning turn.

Melvyn Douglas was best known for playing the debonair leading man to most the Golden Era’s great actresses before turning almost exclusively to stage work in the 1950s. When he returned to the screen in 1962’s Billy Budd it was quite a shock to see that he had become a grizzled old man, a persona that fit him like a glove. It benefit him well in his Oscar-winning role as Paul Newman’s father, and the film’s moral compass, in 1963’s contemporary western Hud, for which he won the first of his two Oscars.

Jason Robards was best known for interpreting the works of Eugene O’Neill on stage, screen and television, before becoming a dependable character actor. He was at his best as Washington Post editor Ben Bradley in the first of his back-to-back Oscar wins for All the President’s Men. The film would still have been good without his wonderful performance, but he makes it seem somehow even more real whenever he’s on screen.

Three Best Supporting Actress Winners

Jane Darwell was the embodiment of Ma Joad in John Ford’s landmark 1940 film of what is often regarded as the great American novel,John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The longtime Fox contract player was previously best known for playing minor roles in Shirley Temple films of the 1930s. Her roles didn’t improve much after her Oscar win, but there were a few memorable turns in such films as The Ox-Bow Incident, The Last Hurrah and her last, Mary Poppins.

Ruth Gordon was an acclaimed stage actress who was best known in Hollywood as a three-time, Oscar-nominated writer and one-time nominated supporting actress when she donned an immaculately coiffed white wig to portray the witch next door in Rosemary’s Baby, thus attaining screen immortality at the age of 72. More popular than ever, she remained a star to death, achieving her greatest triumph as the star of the cult classic Harold and Maude three years later.

Peggy Ashcroft was best known as a British stage star with only sporadic appearances in films, when she was given the role of a lifetime, that of the enigmatic Mrs. Moore in David Lean’s 1984 film A Passage to India at the age of 75. When it came to that year’s Oscars, the only question was whether she’d be nominated in the lead or supporting category. It was a foregone conclusion that she’d win in whichever category she was placed for her laudatory performance.

Three Honorary Winners

Poor Rosalind Russell, always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Even when they finally got around to giving her an honorary award at the 1973 Oscars, it was for her humanitarian work, and not her marvelous performances encompassing such classics as The Women, His Girl Friday, Picnic and her glorious Auntie Mame. Many may have benefitted from her charitable works, but we’re all better off for her having been one of the screen’s most versatile actresses for more than four decades.

Barbara Stanwyck had once been the highest paid woman in the world when she reigned supreme at the box office in such triumphs as Stella Dallas, The Lady Eve, Ball of Fire and Double Indemnity, but her glory days were long behind her when they finally got around to awarding her an honorary Oscar at the 1981 awards. Alas, she proved to still have a trick or two up her sleeve when she gave the performance of her career in her great Emmy award-winning role in the following year’s epic mini-series, The Thorn Birds.

Deborah Kerr long held the record for the most lead actress nominations, six, without a win when she was finally given an honorary Oscar at the 1993 awards. Many of her films, including Black Narcissus, From Here to Eternity, The King and I, An Affair to Remember, The Sundowenrs and The Night of the Iguana remain as popular today as when they were first shown. We still smile when we think about her many great performances, remembering as she invoked John Kerr in Tea and Sympahty, “when you talk about this, and you will, be kind.”

-Peter J. Patrick (February 26, 2008)