We begin, however, with a pretty useless film: Born Yesterday. When I watched this many weeks ago, I probably found out about some interesting behind-the-scenes brouhaha that led to its nomination. But I don't remember what that was. There had to be something though because this was pretty terrible. I'm not usually one to complain about perceived plot holes (disbelief be suspendin') but this was a bit much. It's about a misogynistic (even for 1950) mobster who wants his stereotypically blonde girlfriend to become more intelligent. Because you should definitely take your girlfriend to all of your illegal business meetings. And you don't want her to look stupid in front of all of your mobster friends who characteristically believe that women are stupid. The Netflix cover sleeve implied to me that she ends up getting the last laugh on mobster guy after she falls for her tutor. By "last laugh" they meant that she literally laughs as she leaves him. Which is fine but...shouldn't she be giving some info to the police and destroying his empire or something? If the whole point was for her to get with tutor guy then the movie could've been done after 40 minutes. Instead it becomes overly long at a relatively short 103 minutes. Add to that some annoying accents (intentionally so, but still) and this was a fairly unpleasant film to witness. Except to heckle of course. The heckling was good. The real tragedy of this is that the main girl won for Best Actress that year. In a year of so many great female performances! We'll get to more of that later. Most years, especially back then, the female roles are pretty meh. There's not much for them to do and they're resigned to swooning and some light "my heavens"ing. And when there were three (3!) worthy performances...they of course went with screechy blonde.
A movie that is only worthwhile for the ogling is: Father of the Bride. Wasn't I just talking about misogynists and stuff? Irony alert! Nawwwwww but, even the straight ladies have to be like: "dayummmmm." This was Liz Taylor's first movie pretty much. Which means that it's the last one I'll see on my Oscar watch. The end of an era! Unfortunately, in this movie she's kind of reduced to a super-hot MacGuffin. It's mostly about her father, played by Spencer Tracy, and his various annoyances with the forthcoming wedding. So it's one of these "oh I'm learning to let my daughter grow up but I'm doing it humorously through a series of amusing situations." I think if I was an actual father of an actual bride I'd chuckle to myself and go "why yes, that is how I felt! How enjoyable and accurate!" But outside of that, I'm really not sure how one can relate. There were some good scenes in it, don't get me wrong. The engagement party scene where Mr. Tracy is confined to making drinks for guests the entire time was pretty great. Other than that, it could basically be the series finale of Ozzie and Harriet, or another such 50s sitcom. And Best Picture? At least these days they'd have the good sense to throw it an honorary Golden Globe nomination and leave it at that. Poignant at times, funny at others, but it ultimately pales in comparison to some of the film behemoths that were also released in this year.
One of which is not King Solomon's Mines. This was just crap. Seriously. It's an adventure film with almost no action. But it also doesn't work as a real movie with real characters or themes. You have to go one or the other. The Man Who Would Be King doesn't have any action in it but it's a fantastic story with some very interesting and powerful ideas. Something like The Mummy Returns has almost no thematic value but it's freaking awesome! So it works. This movie has no action, no characters, and no treasure either. They spend literally the entire movie wandering around in the desert going: "hey so where do you think King Solomon's Mines are?" Then somebody's like, "I dunno, let's try over there." This continues for 90% of the movie. They then find the mines. What's there? Nothing. They wade through some water in a cave for a few minutes. Then they leave and two black guys start fighting each other. One of them dies. Allan Quartermain rides off into the sunset. Just saved you 103 minutes. My dad told me that he was all stoked to see this movie when he was a kid (upon re-release probably) and then he just remembers waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever did. I will say that it's cool that they filmed on location but maybe after all the money they spent on location they might have thought to hire someone to write a script. Not even a better script. Just any script would have been nice.
Thankfully I can get positive with Sunset Boulevard. Truly one of the greatest noirs of all time. Largely because it isn't a classically made noir and instead relies on noir styles and tones to tell a different kind of story. No gumshoes. No murder investigations. But there is a very different kind of femme fatale. Instead of a woman seducing the protagonist with her feminine wiles and extreme good looks a la Rita Hayworth in Gilda, he's seduced with power and prestige. The woman in question is a former Hollywood starlet who didn't quite make the transition into "talkies" (look it up, kids). And the main protagonist is an up-and-coming screenwriter who is stuck writing the 1950s era equivalents of The Hills Have Eyes 2. She gives him the opportunity to rewrite her magnum opus: a mondo-sized film meant to re-launch her film career. But as we see from the beginning of the film: he's gonna end up dead. In the pool. As you may have seen spoofed on everything from Animaniacs to American Dad. Thankfully it didn't come off as dumb, which some of these iconic scenes tend to do. The big "I'm ready for my close-up" scene was appropriately schmaltzy, since she was an over-emoting silent film star. Her looking at the camera for the final shot and walking towards it was a bit much though. I get what they were trying to do but I'm not a big fan of breaking the fourth wall for anything but comedic purposes. It's a small complaint though. Gloria Swanson really should have taken home Best Actress that year instead of Madame Screech. As I mentioned, her over-emoting really works because she made her name making silent films. In silent films you need to over-act with your facial expressions. So of course she's going to be melodramatic in real life. Though it may seem like a regular drama, albeit an unusually dark one, it plays out in a noir-style. Which as we all know: I am a huge fan of. It's got the narration, the dark and brassy musical score, and of course the plot developments that lead everyone to end up screwed in the end. This should have been the winner, but perhaps they didn't have enough behind-the-scenes lobbyists. It might've fared better in the more cynical 60s but what can you do?
But this year's winner was also a pretty great film: All About Eve. Until 1997's titanic winner (ha! It's an adjective too!) this held the record for most nominations ever: 14. And it still holds the record for most female acting nominations ever in a movie: 4. On a semi-related note: I should call this blog "I read Wikipedia so you don't have to." Anyway, I'll get my only negative feelings toward the film out early. I hate omniscient narration. I love noir narration where it's the stream-of-consciousness of one of the characters in the movie. But anytime there's a narrator explaining key plot points or character histories...I hate that crap. Because they're giving you info that will be apparent in a few minutes. But they're assuming you're not smart enough to decipher said info. Of course, in the 1950s maybe this was true. Not that they weren't smart but they weren't as observant in a lot of ways. So the first 5 minutes I really disliked, since they basically explained the first 45 minutes of the film (at least). The rest of it was excellent. I normally don't care for Bette Davis because I think she overdoes it but I thought she was quite good and understated here. Contrary to what you might think, she does not play Eve. She plays Margo, another aging starlet. Only she's a stage actress instead. And she's the victim in this film and not the femme fatale. Eve is an up-and-coming actress who becomes Margo's protégé and eventually tries to take over her life. Once again, this would play out better if we didn't already know it was going to happen. And she also seems to go from timid newcomer to bloodthirsty usurper kind of quickly. But I suppose she is an actress. This being 1950, she of course needs to receive some punishment at the end. But the middle of the picture is where it really shines, just to see Bette Davis and Anne Baxter act against each other. The end is kind of anti-climactic because there's no real explosive confrontation between the two main women. And though it's poetic for Eve to receive her comeuppance in the form of a new up-and-comer looking to usurp her prestige, the scene is played a little too long to be truly effective. Still in all, a pretty great film. And certainly a lot better than most of the winners from the 50s.
Overall, a fairly disappointing decade. But there were some truly iconic and excellent films in there as well. I'm a little wary of the 1940s because we're about to get into the era of 5+ Best Picture nominees. So it might take me even longer to post these up. I guess we shall see. All I know for now is that next year will include whodunit cuckoldry, gung-ho wartime propaganda, and misleading Humpty-Dumpty allusions.
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