Cinema Hype

You know, in the course of watching all of the Best Pictures (officially, as in Academy Award winners) since 1927, it’s to be expected that DVD may not be the medium of choice. Some of those movies are old, and not all of them have aged well in the collective consciousness: when it came time to watch Cavalcade, for example, Netflix all but laughed out loud. I hightailed it down to my local library and found that nobody had checked out the VHS version in years.

But there are some movies out there that, for various reasons, should logically be near the top of the DVD-conversion list. Take Rebecca, winner in 1940 and next on the Project 501 calendar. Winning Best Picture doesn’t seem to be enough to warrant a DVD release, but Rebecca is the only Alfred Hitchcock film to have done so, which you’d think would count for something. It stars a very young Joan Fontaine and a less-young Laurence Olivier. It’s based on a best-selling novel, and it’s one of the best-known and best-aging winners in Oscar history. Am I crazy to think that somebody, somewhere must have wanted to commit it to DVD?

Yet here we are, with Netflix giving me the crazy-eye and the library barely even acknowledging its existence—they carry the more semi-recent Masterpiece Theater version on DVD, sure, but the classic Hitchcock rendition? VHS only. Maybe I’m becoming old and crotchety before my time, but: what is this world coming to? I can’t fathom it. Thank goodness I still have a VCR (see again: prematurely old and crotchety).

For information on the origins of Project 501, see here. For all existing Project 501 reviews, see here or click the “501 Project” listing in the sidebar.

Everything I know, I learned from Gone With the Wind:

- The Sound of Music TOTALLY STOLE the whole making-clothes-from-curtains motif! It was apparently Scarlett O’Hara, and not Maria (soon-to-be) von Trapp, who pioneered roaming around [Atlanta] in nothing but some old drapes…only to have it stolen in wonderful fashion (ha, pun semi-intended) by Carol Burnett:

- If you can’t have what you want, marry somebody you don’t love. They’ll die a conveniently rapid death, leaving you to repeat the process until you decide you don’t want what you wanted anymore. Works every time!

- Horseback riding—and jumping in particular—is baaaaad.

- Radishes are disgusting.

- Clark Gable must have had the biggest (male) butt in old Hollywood. (Not actually new news—Project 501 has already covered It Happened One Night and Mutiny on the Bounty (click for reviews!), after all—but the way he wears his pants up to his armpits is not helping. Whether the pants are a cause or an effect of the size of his rear end is unknown.)

- When you find yourself in trouble, consult your local Hooker with a Heart of Gold. What she lacks in stature in the (above-board) community, she makes up for in practical advice and financial know-how.

- A wonderfully flawed character can carry a four-hour movie, no sweat.

- A pair of wonderfully flawed characters can constitute one of the greatest love stories of their century, regardless of how badly they need professional help.

In summary: Delightful in its willingness to go big or go home. Silly, dated, and not super-sensitive to the needs of anybody not white and male, but still awesome enough to be compelling 70 years after its release.

Next: Rebecca (1940), the only Hitchcock to win Best Picture.

For the origins of Project 501, click here; for other Project 501 Best Picture reviews, click here.

Project 501, Academy Awards, Best Picture winners, Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Clark Gable

I had to wonder a little this weekend about the Best Picture nominee list in 1938. There must have been an intense historical epic in the running, right? A gut-wrenching war story? A too-long biopic? So how did a sweet little dramedy like You Can’t Take it With You end up with the golden statuette? Can you imagine if Juno had beaten out No Country for Old Men this last March? The 1938 ceremony must have been something like that.

You Can’t Take it With You is almost comical in its Capra-ness. This is right in the middle of his prime, after It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and before Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, and It’s a Wonderful Life, and it combines some of his favorite things: the common man, David and Goliath, the desperation of true love, the joy of community. It even takes place in a house that looks suspiciously like the Baileys’ in It’s a Wonderful Life, and stars Jimmy Stewart.

This is a movie that, in a sense, hasn’t aged all that well. Audiences—and especially Oscar voters—like to think they’ve grown over the years, and You Can’t Take it With You is a fantastically simple story. Whether or not films have grown more emotionally complex since 1938, Capra’s world feels out of pace and out of place, like sincerity has no place in our moviegoing world. On the other hand, well, it’s delightful. Spoiler alert: the good guys win and the bad guys become good guys, and Jimmy Stewart is adorable, and there’s amateur ballet and a harmonica duet and a healthy dose of (literal) fireworks. Capra takes this funny, noisy, lovable family out of their own living room and into the audience’s, din and all. And seeing them so close up, it’s hard not to smile a little at their scrapes and their can-do attitude and the way everything works out. We get their snappy dialogue and the carefulness of their characterization along with the general hilarity of being part of the family—it turns out that behind the fun, somebody knew what they were doing all along, such that the Sycamore-Vanderhof household is not only more fun than the suits they’re up against, but than their competitors in other movies as well. And that is an accomplishment: something to smile about in the Best Picture slot. Slick, Capra. Real slick.

Next on Project 501: Gone with the Wind (1939)

For more on the origins of Project 501, click here. For all Project 501 posts, click here.

You Can’t Take It With You, Moss Hart, Frank Capra, Jimmy Stewart, James Stewart, It’s a Wonderful Life, Oscar Best Picture winners, Best Picture, 1938, classic movies

I tried not to put off watching The Great Ziegfeld, the Best Picture for 1936. After all, I’d just gotten back my momentum after quitting and starting again hiatus, and I do love a musical with large, expensive song-and-dance numbers. But then Pauline Kael had to go and say mean things about it—”It goes on for a whopping three hours, but through some insane editing decision Fanny Brice is cut off in the middle of singing ‘My Man’…a lavish, tedious musical biography,” she said—and it languished by the DVD player for a few weeks before I finally summoned the strength to watch it.

Kael gets the salient points right: lavish, musical biography, three hours, Fanny Brice cut off mid-song. As for the “tedious” comment…maybe, but to be fair, nothing here is either more or less compelling than any other overlong biopic. If anything, The Great Ziegfeld (the story of Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld, of The Ziegfeld Follies fame) is probably more the granddaddy of movies like Ali and The Aviator than anything else. Nothing really happens, per se, but then that’s sort of the problem with a lot of biopics: people with interesting lives don’t necessarily adhere to the kind of beginning-middle-end sequencing that we’re so used to. Aren’t all biopics at least a little boring?

Then there’s the catch-22 of the musical numbers. The Great Ziegfeld is three hours and six minutes long, and punctuated by examples of Ziegfeld’s famously extravagant musical numbers. By fast-forwarding, the impatient viewer can shorten the running time by twenty minutes, easy (by “musical numbers” we’re not talking “They’re Doing Choreography”; more like enormous, round parade floats rotating onstage). But fast-forwarding here is a little like munching on raisin bread and eating around the raisins. If you’re going to watch three hours of this guy’s life, shouldn’t the musical numbers sweeten the deal? I suppose it depends on the crowd and the crowd’s affinity for ladies singing under parasols. I’ll leave it up to you.

As for Kael and the Fanny Brice complaint, I’ve got to agree, and extend it to the supporting cast. William Powell doesn’t do much to distinguish himself here as Ziegfeld, but he’s surrounded by apparent geniuses doing what they do best. First, there’s Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz three years later, practically dancing holes in the stage; then there’s Luise Rainer, who won the award for Best Actress (and won again the next year), as Ziegfeld’s star-struck first wife. And finally there’s Brice, who’s like watching Gilda Radner’s grandmother, and who’s like a jolt of comic energy in the middle of all the languid chorus girls and their parasols. Fantastic.

With 82 years of hindsight since the 1936 Academy Awards, it’s fairly obvious that The Great Ziegfeld had to win Best Picture. It was MGM’s most expensive movie to date—production cost $2 million—and the investment paid off in terms of spectacle and later in terms of box office success. Maybe it wasn’t the best picture of the year (surely also-ran My Man Godfrey beats it for plot and dialogue?), but it sure was the biggest.

The Great Ziegfeld, Florenz Ziegfeld, 1936, Academy Awards, Project 501, William Powell, Luise Rainer, Ray Bolger, Fanny Brice

A little background on Project 501: last year, I started watching and writing about all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners in chronological order and writing about them in this blog. After a prolonged break, I’ve resumed, making good time through the 1930s, and I’m well-intentioned towards (read: rewarding myself with) the 1940s. Anyone’s welcome to watch along—company on the road to theoretical good filmmaking is always appreciated.

Anyway.

In 1935, Mutiny on the Bounty must have been a blockbuster: an adventure on the high seas, packed with rough water, an even rougher villain (in theory), and Clark Gable steering the ship. The footage of the big ships rocking and rolling in the stormy seas is impressive, and it can only have cost a fortune. One might toss the word “epic” around.

For better or for worse, none of this can change the giggle factor. Historical correctness aside, Mutiny on the Bounty comes across as a dramedy at best, which might be insulting to the filmmakers, but it does make the movie go down smoother: the promise of upcoming hilarity makes the prospect of two hours of keel-hauling and swabbing the deck more palatable. Half of the actors, including Gable, flounce around in their Royal Navy uniforms sounding like they’re fresh out of Des Moines. Gable (who must have been self-conscious of his hippy figure, otherwise why did he always wear such enormous pants?) plays his usual charming good-guy self, except when he tries to play Master and Commander and gets all shouty and breathy. And don’t even get me started on the Tahiti love-interest sequences—cringe-worthy, and maybe the most entertaining parts of the movie. Who doesn’t love that soft-focus filter?

If there’s a take-away from Mutiny on the Bounty (besides “don’t enslave your crew”), it’s probably the transformation in villains over the last seventy years. Today, Bligh would be a mustache-stroker, and probably chewing on the scenery; as it is, he’s kind of a dope. A mean dope, certainly, but Charles Laughton’s big eyes and lips and his knobby nose make him look more bewildered than dangerous. His performance is fine, but by today’s standards it’s remarkably understated. Might the movie have aged better with a more ramped-up villain? Maybe, though overacting isn’t really what this cast needs.

Next up: The Great Ziegfeld and The Life of Emile Zola. Oh, you’re so jealous. Don’t lie.

Project 501, Oscar winners, Mutiny on the Bounty, Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, sailing, mutiny

As I work my way through the annals of good movies and movies that seemed good at the time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Oscar for Best Picture. It can be a confusing category, especially viewed over time. There are patterns, certainly (so many war movies!), and then there are winners that buck the trends completely. Sometimes it’s hard to see where the Oscar voters are coming from. Not to get all philosophical, but what is “best,” exactly?

For many years, my writer-geek mind has aligned “best picture” with “best screenplay.” Because what is the backbone of a film if it isn’t story, character, and dialogue? It seems to me that an exceptional script should result in an exceptional film regardless of whose hands it ends up in.

But maybe, I’m thinking, the Best Picture Oscar is an award for execution rather than theory, and for collaboration rather than specialization: who made the best combination of script, director, cast, and equipment? This is why Best Picture winners tend to be on the epic side: Oscar voters are about aiming high and pulling things off, about wide-angle rather than extreme close-up. It’s also why, to pull an example from this year’s nominees, Juno never really stood a chance in the Best Picture race. Juno was well-written and well-acted, but it was so much less complex, production-wise, than any of the other nominees that it didn’t really deserve to win. (Excellent screenplays for the other nominees didn’t help, either.)

I think this law-of-averages tendency makes a certain amount of sense—there’s something to be said for achieving ambitious goals, after all, and sometimes everything really does come together—but I also think it accounts for the number of head-scratchers on the past-winners list. After all, special effects age quickly. Acting styles go in and out of fashion (see: Clark Gable, shoutiness, Mutiny on the Bounty). Without any particular area of excellence, sometimes it’s hard to see what, exactly, seemed like such a good idea at the time. We end up honoring movies that are good, that sometimes speak to the times, but the great is the enemy of the good, and maybe a little more specialization wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. On the other hand, maybe that’s why we have categories for screenplays, acting, directing, and cinematography, and maybe the combination really is better than the sum of its parts.

I’m just saying: I think I get it now.

Oscars, Project 501, Academy Awards, Oscar winners, Mutiny on the Bounty, Clark Gable, Best Picture, Juno

When making an exciting but long-overdue comeback, is it best to sneak in the side door or to march up the front steps, flaunting one’s own late but eminent worth? We at CH are all for the latter—being occasionally late ourselves, not that we’d ever admit it—and so we say: Project 501 is back! It’s been a long vacation, but the chronological Oscar train is running once again, and so we’re starting up with the 1934 Best Picture winner, It Happened One Night. Like, now.

Feeling as I do about the current state of romantic comedies, my curmudgeonly little heart watched It Happened One Night and wondered why they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. In fact, I’ve decided that they do make ‘em like that anymore—or, in any case, they try. In fact, I’m testing the theory that all modern romantic comedies are the inheritance, or maybe imitators, of this one movie.

There are plenty of things in It Happened One Night that aren’t so common to the modern romantic comedy. Long, chatty scenes, for one thing. Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable spend a lot of time together, talking the whole time, and we’re there to see it all. No quick cuts here; just talk, talk, talk. These two are what the average therapist might call “verbal processors.” Indeed. There are also twin beds (how Pushing Daisies!), showing some leg to speed up the hitchhiking process, and—spoiler ahead—a total lack of kissing at the end, which generally doesn’t fly today.

But there are also lots of things that we see over and over again in romantic comedies generally, and maybe it’s a case of doing those things better rather than a case of doing them first—i.e. I’m not claiming these were new story elements, even in 1934—but it’s a little uncanny seeing a million other well-known and well-worn tropes played out in this one story. There’s the falling-asleep-on-the-other-person’s-shoulder bit, the pretend-marriage-to-distract-skeezy-stranger thing, and most importantly, the race to prevent a tragic misunderstanding and therefore save the relationship (Notting Hill, anyone?). Gable and Colbert are perfectly adorable—who knew pre-Rhett Butler misogyny Gable was so cute?—and they play all of these iconic scenes in such a way that imitation is inevitable. This may be the token romantic comedy, the Juno of its day, but it’s aged well and made its mark. Nicely done.

Next up: Mutiny on the Bounty! More Clark Gable!

It Happened One Night, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Notting Hill, Juno, Oscar winner, Best Picture, 1934, Project 501

When it all comes to an end, when I’ve finished Project 501 and have to find some other quixotically obsessive pop-culture quest (Academy Award winners, in chronological order, by Best Supporting Actress!), I believe I know what my final words will be: “Thank goodness for the library.” What would we do without that repository of ancient VHS tapes, the last bastion of the Netflix-free world? I know I wouldn’t have finished the Project. Not even close. I would have been stuck: stuck in 1933, on a movie that doesn’t exist on DVD and probably doesn’t spur many video-tape sales, either.

It’s a sad thing. But anyway.

Cavalcade is a fine film. It’s sensitive, in an epic sort of way. Diana Wynyard is lovely and sympathetic as the requisite long-suffering maternal figure. There are lives and loves lost, wars fought, hardships overcome. The screenplay, based on a Noel Coward play, moves along without being glib. One scene–which I won’t describe on the off chance that somebody is actually going to rent the Oakland Public Library’s one VHS copy–has one of the finest plot-point reveals I’ve seen on film. There is much to enjoy about Cavalcade.

There are just two minor setbacks: first, “epic” does not necessarily equal “memorable.” Cavalcade is about real events, and it was probably a truly moving film in its day. Unfortunately, so many other 20th-century films have done “epic” so much better that it’s not so surprising that Cavalcade would get lost in the shuffle. It’s kind of too bad, but it’s also not quite striking enough of a film to have made its mark.

Second, it’s one thing to make a film about Change and the Decline of Society in the 20th century. It’s something entirely different to make that film in 1933. The temptation is to tap this movie on the shoulder and say, very politely, “Um, you missed a few things.” And of course nobody could know about World War II or the other myriad things that went on in the other 67 years before the millennium, but you’ve got to admit that, mathematically, 1933 was unlikely to be the high point of the century, excitement-wise. Basically, it’s dated. Sweet, but dated.

Next up: It Happened One Night (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Cavalcade, Academy Awards, Best Picture, Project 501, Noel Coward

Not even Netflix
cares enough for Cavalcade
to hit DVD.

Project 501 has hit a bit of a technical snag this week. It’s nothing big–nothing the public library can’t fix–but the 1933 Best Picture winner, Cavalcade, doesn’t exist on DVD. This has us a bit concerned. What, exactly, does a film–the best film of 1933, apparently–have to do to be denied DVD-hood? It’s squeezed between two potential winners, Grand Hotel and It Happened One Night, both of which have achieved disc status. But Cavalcade? It’s too obscure, or too boring, or something to be converted for the 21st-century audience. It’s a little worrisome.

We’ll keep you posted.

Watching Oscar winners is an epic proposition in both senses of the term–the watching of eighty major films is time-consuming, certainly, but I’m talking about the kind of film that tends to win Best Picture. The Academy voters definitely skew towards the Achievement film: they like the big, the expensive, the elaborate, and the heavily-costumed. Surprisingly, then, Grand Hotel, the Best Picture winner in 1932, must have had a large casting budget and not much else: the film stars Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and both Lionel and John Barrymore, but takes place in an enclosed location (the aforementioned Grand Hotel) with more or less nothing in terms of effects or architectural shots. (Does this make it the Studio 60 of Oscar winners?) The absence of bells and whistles makes Grand Hotel stand out in the Best Picture roll call, but it doesn’t lessen the quality of the movie–by virtue of quality writing and a creme-de-la-creme cast, the film is definitely worth watching.

William A. Drake’s adaptation of the German novel Menschen im Hotel has that mid-century American feeling that so few modern films have: light and efficient, even in the face of heavy character development and impending tragedy. The film tells a sort of ring-shaped story about the beautiful people staying at Berlin’s swankiest hotel in the 1930s, where, we’re told, “nothing ever happens.” There’s a terminally ill man discovering life in the shadow of death, a temperamental ballerina, a beautiful and street-smart stenographer, her bullish boss, and the axle turning the wheel, a cash-strapped baron–nobody really seems to leave, and we get the sense that these characters are as interchangeable as the new Ford motor parts, but nothing here is boring. Everybody is connected, everybody has needs–some of which remain tragically unmet–and everybody stands to lose something important. In short, there’s not much action, but there’s plenty going on.

And then there’s the cast. Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford were the same age–both born in 1905. So how is it that Garbo comes across as the patron saint of the 20s melodrama, while Crawford feels like the most modern of modern girls? Perhaps it’s the roles they play–Garbo is a depressed, smitten ballerina, and Crawford a sarcastic, pragmatic working girl (not in that sense; she’s the stenographer). Either way, Crawford practically pops off the screen, while Garbo just threatens to faint at any moment. The comparison is striking, and an interesting insight into women of the 1930s–we’ve got old-world vs. new century living in the same hotel. There’s also John Barrymore as the aging, impoverished baron-turned-cat-burglar, and his performance is not to be missed (though, it should be noted, none of the cast were nominated for performance Oscars for this film). He’s believable in both parts of his role–the debonair man-about-town and his desperate, ashamed private self (and also bears a striking resemblance to his famous granddaughter, who is very modern in her own right).

The upshot: A small but thoughtful and very watchable film. Definitely worth a rent.

Next up: Cavalcade (1933); It Happened One Night (1934)

Project 501, Oscar winners, Grand Hotel, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, classic film

When I started Project 501, I thought a lot about all of the great movies I was going to get to watch. It Happened One Night! An American in Paris! Think of all of the rich stories and beautiful cinematography! The whole thing sounded so exciting! I thought a lot less about the war movies and the westerns–fine films that aren’t as…relatable, I guess, for a woman in her 20s. So coming upon Cimarron, the first western in the Best Picture dynasty, was a bit of a stretch for this critic. I sat down knowing that I needed to watch the movie eventually, but also not really feeling enthusiastic for a movie about the Oklahoma land grab. Sue me.

I’m pleased to say that I was wrong. Cimarron, it turns out, is…well, it’s kind of great.

You may have seen the opening sequence before: at the sound of a starting gun, thousands of people run, gallop, and drive their covered wagons into the Oklahoma territory to claim their free land. It’s chaos–the fastest riders take off, zigging and zagging; wagons collide and flip over; there’s even a man on an old-fashioned bicycle making his way through the grass. It’s a big scene–a long scene–even by today’s standards; in 1931, it must have been unspeakably expensive to film. It’s a testament to the director’s eye that seventy-six years later, his opening scene is still a little bit thrill-inducing.

The rest of the film is equally good. The secret to Cimarron is that it isn’t a western in the traditional sense: it takes place on the frontier, but it’s not really about posses and shootouts and riding the range in the West. It’s about family life–Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) and his fearful, delicate wife Sabra (Irene Dunne) are among the founding settlers of Osage, Oklahoma, and build their public and private lives there over the course of forty years. It’s a good mix of engaging plot and epic family drama–there’s plenty going on, but Director Wesley Ruggles also makes it character-driven in a way that keeps it from being over-grand in the way that so many epics are. He keeps things moving with horses and saloons and the occasional gunfight, but those things serve the characters–Yancey’s good but restless heart and Sabra’s latent strength–over the long haul of the movie. Because so many Best Picture winners are mile-wide-inch-deep epics, it’s refreshing to see a big movie that takes the time to get to know its characters. The ending feels inevitable for Yancey and somehow surprising–but exciting–for Sabra. There’s been growth, but it’s growth that makes sense. Essentially, Ruggles ends up with a film that’s just the right size.

The upshot: A good place to start if you’re afraid of westerns. A delight from the very beginning.

Next up: Grand Hotel!