Time to Draw Another Year and Category

And the "winner" is...

...1974 Best Supporting Actress!

Yay, finally we're focusing on the female performances! I can't tell you how glad I am to expand the horizons of this blog.

The nominees for Best Supporting Actress, 1974, were:

• Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express
• Valentina Cortese in Day for Night
• Madaline Kahn in Blazing Saddles
• Diane Ladd in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
• Talia Shire in The Godfather, Part II

Meaning I'm in for a fun time. Blazing Saddles, one of the most renowned comedies of all time? Murder on the Orient Express, a star-studded extravaganza based on the work of one of the most popular fiction writers in history? The basis for the sitcom Alice? A Godfather movie? I'm pumped.

I've also seen two of these movies already, but it's been a while, so I'll be re-watching them. I've also decided that I'm going to re-watch The Godfather as well, because it will help Part II to make more sense. Also I'm watching them with my wife, who's seen neither.

Because these movies are a bit longer, and I'm including my wife in the watching (I knew she wouldn't be up for movies from the 30's, but she did watch On the Waterfront with me) It might take me longer to get these out, since I have to wait until we both have time to sit down and watch them. But I'll be sticking to it until they're done, not to worry.

1929-30 Best Actor: My Choice

Time again to recap, rank the performances for this year and category and choose my own winner.

1929-30's nominees, once again, are:

• George Arliss as Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli and the Raja in The Green Goddess
• Wallace Beery as Machine Gun Butch Schmidt in The Big House
• Maurice Chevalier as Pierre Mirande in The Big Pond and Count Alfred Renard in The Love Parade
• Ronald Colman as Captain Hugh Drummond in Bulldog Drummond and Michel in Condemned
• Laurence Tibbett as Yegor in The Rogue Song

The Academy's Choice: George Arliss in Disraeli

Weighing the Performances:

George Arliss in Disraeli

Judging the third Academy Awards ceremony in existence seems a little unfair. As I've pointed out, The idea of talkies was still so new that most of the nominated films were essentially silent films with sound; ludicrously over-acted but with a lack of the subtlety that silent films had just by the fact that the actors couldn't be heard speaking. Actors in silent films had to portray complex emotions almost entirely through facial expressions and body movements, but now that they could be heard, it was time to start acting like people, and many of the silent film stars didn't know how to do that. What we got were bloated melodramas (and bloated comedies) light on plot, or point. Three of the films this year were pseudo-musicals, one an actual musical, another an operatic melodrama, that seemed to have only as much substance as it took to say "we have this popular star who can sing. Let's put him in a singing movie."

George Arliss in The Green Goddess

George Arliss struck a nice compromise, mostly remaining cool, calm and understated, both as the overwhelmed British Prime Minister in Disraeli and as the cunning Raja in The Green Goddess. In both cases he eschewed hammy over-acting for the most part, only going to it in moments of great distress. I didn't care much for The Green Goddess nor did I care for the casting of a white Englishman as a Himalayan king and priest, but he did a fine job in the film nonetheless, taking what could have been the opportunity to chew giant holes in the scenery and mostly just playing him as a standard upper-class villain. That said, there was nothing award-worthy about the film or the performance, but as Disraeli, his look, movements and vocal efforts really do make me think I'm watching old parliamentary films of the PM, even if that can't be the case because none exist. I can see why he was chosen, and I don't have an issue with the Academy's decision here, even if I disagree with it.

Wallace Beery in The Big House

Wallace Beery really isn't the lead in The Big House, but he's certainly the most memorable character, and that's probably what got him nominated. I have to say, his performance seemed ahead of its time. It wasn't merely a silent performance but with talking. He seemed like an actual hardened criminal, with no weird, over-the-top facial expressions or movements, and instead a quiet intensity that occasionally boiled over into violence. It was a very strong, very natural performance that probably wouldn't change even if the movie had been made two or three decades later. Probably the only thing holding him back is that he really is a supporting character, and if that category had existed back then, He likely would have been nominated there instead. But the same can be said for Arliss in Goddess, so I won't take points off for it.

Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond

Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade

I gotta say, if I never see another Maurice Chevalier movie again it'll...what? There's more coming? Gaaaaaaahhhh...Well, let's hope it's a few more draws before I get to them. I find him annoying, not funny in the least and a mediocre singer, which shouldn't even matter as it's his acting that got him these nominations. To start with, The Big Pond is an entirely forgettable, ephemeral little film that should never have gotten the Academy's attention. Oddly, so was The Green Goddess, which makes me think, as I said back in the review of that film, that the Academy this year was trying to nominate actors for every leading role they had, and then you could select which leading role you preferred. There's nothing Oscar-worthy about Chevalier in Pond, and he's basically just playing himself. Even more so than he did in The Love Parade. That film actually got attention in other categories including Best Picture (as The Big House and Disraeli) but I can't say as I understand why. Popularity, maybe. This was back when Ernst Lubitsch was considered the best working director, and I guess it is staged well enough but much like nearly every other film in this category and year, it just doesn't hold up. Chevalier was just hamming it up and being silly.

Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond

Ronald Colman is a fine actor, who I enjoy watching. He was great in If I Were King, and eventually I'll be getting to his winning performance in A Double Life which I'm really looking forward to. Unfortunately I was unable to watch him in Condemned but I did see him in Bulldog Drummond, in which he played what is essentially the prototype for John Steed of The Avengers. No, not those Avengers. As the smooth, unflappable Drummond, who gets into the hero game mainly because he's bored, I can see the attraction to nominating him, but he really wasn't asked to do much he wasn't totally at home doing. I do wish I could see his performance in Condemned, but as I can't, I won't be ranking it.

Lawrence Tibbett in The Rogue Song

Finally we come to Lawrence Tibbett, the dramatic answer to Maurice Chevalier. He kind of made me think of Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, but with occasional opera singing. As I mentioned, he was the only one in the movie who sang, so it really just felt like the entire movie was an excuse for him to play a dashing, singing hero. I'll give the man this, though; boy can sing. Chevalier has no issues carrying a song, but it fails to evoke any real reaction from me. Tibbett is a vocal powerhouse, and that can't be denied. And of course it also provided an excuse for Laurel and Hardy to do their thing. It seemed like the movie could have been cute and funny, but my viewing of it was hampered by the film being 90% lost and therefore 90% reconstructed. It wasn't a bad film, and Tibbett wasn't bad in it, but it wasn't anything special.

In fact, so little that I saw in this category really felt like something that would be regarded with the same reverence today. Unlike the classics of the later 30's, 40's and beyond, and very much unlike the silent film era, these early talkies seemed to focus so hard on the idea that the actors can talk now that half the time they forgot to actually have a real point. I enjoyed The Big House and Bulldog Drummond, and appreciated Disraeli and The Rogue Song, even if the latter two are very much products of their time. What I could see of Condemned while trying to watch the Spanish-dubbed version definitely makes it look like it was ahead of its time the same way that The Big House was. One of these days I'll see it. I hope.

The ranking this time is much easier than with 1954, because I really felt like only Arliss, Beery and Colman were even acting. The other three were just performing. Of them, Colman's performance was fine but the film and character so light and inconsequential that I can't call him the winner. If I'd been able to see his full performance in Condemned it might have been the winner here, but I can't. Arliss was quite servicable as Disraeli, and put in the same level of commitment to a role that did him no favors in The Green Goddess. His performance in Disraeli clearly wins out between the two, but it still contains far too many instances of pantomime and overacting to sell the performance, so I gotta take points away for that.

Wallace Beery, unlike most of his co-stars, didn't make me think he was an actor playing a hardened criminal. He made me think he was a hardened criminal! He was so intimidating and scary that I wonder how I'm gonna perceive his other roles I know I'll be watching at some point. And yet, there was a tender, sympathetic side to him. The scene where he learned his mother died made me wonder if he would have been a different man if he'd not lost his father so young and ended up on the street. It was a grand performance all around, and to me, the clear winner.

My Choice: Wallace Beery

Coming next; it's a new year and category drawn at random!

The Rogue Song

Film: The Rogue Song
Year: 1929-30
Cast: Lawrence Tibbett, Catherine Dale Owen, Nance O'Neill, Judith Vosselli, Ullrich Haupt, Elsa Alsen, Florence Lake, Lionel Bellmore, Wallace MacDonald, Kate Price, James Bradbury, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel
Director: Lionel Barrymore (and Hal Roach, uncredited for the Laurel and Hardy Scenes)
Nominations: Best Actor (Tibbett)

This one is gonna be unique, and hard to review, since only fragments of the film exist, and I watched an attempted recreation (it was actually really well done) to give you as close an approximation as one can of what the film would have been like.

It gives one an idea, but it's still not like watching the actual movie. I can see that the movie itself might have been fun and exciting to watch.

Opera singer Lawrence Tibbett, in his film debut, sings his way through the part of Yegor, a laughing bandit in early 1900's Russia.

The film isn't really an opera, since most of it is spoken, but Tibbett gets several numbers to perform, making this something of an odd musical that seems to mainly exist to showcase Tibbett's vocal talents. As an actor, he's pretty good for the melodramatics of the 1920's and early 30's. He plays Yegor as a boisterous bruiser who likes a good laugh, a drink with his boys, an invigorating raid...and becomes a shy boy when alone with a woman he might actually have feelings for.

One part of this film I was surprised to see, but pleasantly, is that it co-stars that great comic duo, Laurel and Hardy, who play two hapless members of Yegor's raiding party, and every now and then we focus on their comedic exploits as they attempt to do things like mount horses or open stuck doors. This seems a bit out of the ordinary for the duo, who as far as I can tell, usually played themselves, or at least characters based on themselves (right down to having their names), and if it's not a straight-up Laurel and Hardy film, they are restricted to cameos. Here they're a part of the story, but neither the focus of the film nor mere cameos, as we cut to their hi-jinx several times, which are clearly taking place within the film as comic relief. They even have names that aren't their own; Ali-bek and Murza-bek. I'm no expert on the pair, but for them to show up as supporting comic-relief characters in an otherwise serious(ish) movie seems odd.

Also, as a majority of their humor was sight gags, there are long stretches of soundtrack with no words as they do their thing...that we can't see, and there aren't much stills for.

Yegor, back from a successful raid and hanging out at a local tavern, is falling in love with the Princess Vera (Catherine Dale Owen, and princess of what, we aren't told), but upon getting back home, Yegor discovers his beloved sister Nadja (Florence Lake) has been raped by Prince Serge (Ullrich Haupt), brother to Princess Vera. Nadja ends up taking her own life, and you can probably guess what this does for the chances of a relationship between Yegor and Vera. It actually kinda plays out like The Taming of the Shrew and ends in a way I was surprised to see in 1930.

I think if I'd been able to see this in full, I would have enjoyed it as a diverting romp, but I still say the standards of what makes an Oscar-worthy film, or performance, were far different in an age where the entire idea of a film where you can hear the actors is a pretty new and amazing thing. Silent films, in my opinion, seem to hold up better than these early talkies, because they were more artistically focused, while these films just seem enamored of the idea that the actors can be heard. Not one of these films I've watched this time through have really lasted in public memory, though The Love Parade still has fans among appreciators of old musicals and Ernst Lubitsch fans. There wasn't anything special about this film; to be honest it kinda annoyed me in places. Tibbett is very robust and loud, but nothing special.

Next post will be a ranking and choosing of my own winner. And I can't say I'm not glad to leave this year behind. Which kinda sucks.

The Love Parade

Film: The Love Parade
Year: 1929-30
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Lupino Lane, Lillian Roth, Eugene Pallette, EH Calvert, Edgar Norton, Lionel Belmore
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Chevalier), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Recording

This is the first out-and-out musical I've watched since starting this blog. It won't be the last, of course, but this might be the first classic "musical" nominated for Best Picture in Oscar history. Technically, The Broadway Melody was first, and I haven't seen it yet, but I think the musical numbers in that one were actual musical performances even within the film, whereas here characters just break into song whenever they're left alone with their thoughts, or having a conversation. To me, that's what a musical is; not just a movie that contains musical numbers. The Big Pond had just one such number, but it wasn't nominated for Best Picture.

Speaking of The Big Pond, welcome back to the blog, Maurice Chevalier. We've missed...we're glad to...well, you're back after a short absence. This time ol' Maury is playing Count Alfred Renard, a military attache at the Sylvanian Embassy in France (yeah, right, I'll believe Chevalier as a military anything). Sylvania, of course, doesn't exist, but as with Rukh in the last movie we watched, we'll ignore that for now.

Renard is a wily rascal who spends most of his time seducing beautiful ladies (ah, now that I believe), including the Ambassador's wife. Queen Louise (Jeanette MacDonald) recalls him for a formal reprimand, but the Queen has problems of her own, including a shrill, piercing singing voice, but more importantly, she's had it up to here with all the speculation on when, and whom, she will marry. This Queen isn't exactly a blushing, prrrroper young royal, and in fact, her first scene has her waking up from an erotic dream. It's made clear that she has no use for marriage, but some use for sex. And one of her first scenes is getting nekkid and into a bath. Ah, the pre-Hayes Code days.

One of the biggest problems with finding her a husband is the fact that the laws of her land state that there is only a Queen, and her husband, when she has one, would not be King but merely Prince Consort, a position of high visibility and responsibility, but no power. Perfect punishment for a man with a string of scandals?

One of the first issues I had with this movie is that it's just too long. This story, with some stretching, is about 45 minutes long, but instead it's 109. A majority of the padding are songs, naturally, as this is a Maurice Chevalier movie. Unfortunately I'm not all that keen on Chevalier's voice. He's not a bad singer but he's a boring singer, which is bad because having him sing is supposed to be one of the highlights of his films. And as I've already pointed out, her voice is just annoying.

It was amusing how risque this movie was for a time period we think of as being so innocent. Sure, the Hays Code didn't exist yet, but this is the first movie I've seen from this era where a womanizer is the hero of the story, and a woman who seems sexually interested despite being unmarried is the heroine. At their first dinner together, the Queen asks Renard what he would do if she were not the queen. He immediately holds her close, kisses her hand and gazes into her eyes. "All that the first time you meet?" she asks. "Then what could be left for later?" "...Plenty..." he says, suggestively. Then they sing. Again. And he leaves. The 20's, gang.

The song "Let's Be Common", sung between Renard's servant and the Queen's maid, is essentially a celebration of the fact that commoners don't have to worry about being decorous and if they want to do things without being married, that's fine.

I won't say there weren't moments that I thought worked well, but ultimately this thing is so long and yet so little is happening that my attention kept wandering throughout. Of the two performances that Maurice Chevalier was nominated for this year, this one is probably the more deserving, but that's like saying I'd nominate Adam Sandler for Big Daddy before I would for Happy Gilmore.

The Green Goddess

Film: The Green Goddess
Year: 1929-30
Cast: George Arliss, HB Warner, Ralph Forbes, Alice Joyce, Ivan F. Simpson, Reginald Sheffield, Betty Boyd, Nigel De Brulier
Director: Alfred E. Green
Nominations: Best Actor (Arliss)

So this is a movie...made in the 20's...starring all white people...about a remote tribe in the Himalayas...with a central villain called the Raja.

I knew what I was in for before I even started, and I was right. This is just...unpleasant. By the standards of its time it wasn't bad, in the sense that a good deal of effort went into making it, and the actors and direction are competent, but still...picture what 1920's rich white Americans thought the "dark tribal" Himalayas were like and you'll get an idea of how gross the whole thing feels.

It's a pretty standard adventure/intrigue tale, about three English people (HB Warner, Ralph Forbes and Alice Joyce) who crash-land their toy airplane while also inside their real plane (no really, the crash is so obviously a toy; watch how it bounces) in a remote (fictional) region of the Himalayas known as Rukh. There, the "hoo-yah-hoo-yah" natives bring them before their Raja (George Arliss), who welcomes them with seeming open arms, but there's something a bit sinister about him, and it's not that he's a white-as-snow Englishman himself, who speaks English perfectly well with a strong Received Pronunciation British accent.

Can he be trusted? Would he be portrayed on the poster so alien and threatening if that were the case?

In all fairness, this movie has a lot to say about British Imperialism and the belief of the white aristocrat that he is lord of all the world, but considering it's delivered from the mouth of a white British man, this undercuts the message somewhat.

This movie more or less confirms for me what I had already suspected; the nominations were handed out to actors this year for any work that could be considered a lead role. Why else would they nominate Arliss for this movie? Or Maurice Chevalier for The Big Pond? It certainly wasn't just due to it being a different time; Wallace Beery and Ronald Colman's performances still hold up. This was just plain hard to watch, and for the first time since I began this project I debated not finishing. Its short length is all that kept me going.

Disraeli

Film: Disraeli
Year: 1929-30
Cast: George Arliss, Doris Lloyd, David Torrence, Joan Bennett, Florence Arliss, Anthony Bushell, Michael Visaroff, Ivan F. Simpson, Gwendolyn Logan, Charles E. Evans, Norman Cannon, Cosmo Kyrle Bellow, Margaret Mann
Director: Alfred E. Green
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Arliss), Best Writing

It is so hard for me to evaluate performances from this era of film.

The "Talkies" were still a relatively new thing at this time in history. In fact, all of the actors I've been talking about for this category and year were former silent film actors, and in at least one case this year featured their very first talkies. Technically speaking, this was George Arliss's second talkie, his first being The Green Goddess (review coming soon) but this was released first.

You can tell Arliss isn't entirely used to communicating primarily through words. While he's affable and understated as the well-remembered British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, he will every now and then milk a giant cow or give an over-exaggerated facial expression, much like a pantomime actor, because that's how silent film stars had to act.

The film focuses on Disraeli's efforts to purchase the Suez Canal, and thus secure a British Empire in Asia. He's convinced that Russia, who are also eyeing the canal, have sent spies to watch him, which his parliamentary enemies think is a paranoid fantasy, and have used it to vote down his foreign policy. But he's right, and he uses his own clever means to ferret them out, but not before they've managed to bankrupt his expenditures for the canal purchase...after they've gone through.

This wasn't the first time Arliss played Disraeli, or even the fifth time, as he'd played him in a silent film and on stage many times before. He does look a lot like Disraeli, and his performance, as I said, is mostly understated and quite enjoyable. I enjoyed his quips, such as, after walking in on his aide making out with the woman he loves (yes, even in 1929), he simply says, with no malice, "Time's up". Later, when he realizes one of the spies has come to call before he's ready, he blurts out "Send her away! Delay her! Kill her!" I dunno, made me laugh.

So far, I would think his win was somewhat a forgone conclusion, as his competition was mainly comedic performances, and one thug (though I haven't seen Condemned and it still hurts to think of that). His other performance in The Green Goddess, for which he was also nominated, seems to be a less serious film as well, but we'll see, as that's next.

Ultimately, there wasn't much to this film. It felt like a filmed play, as most of it takes place in the same room, and has people walking into and out of the given scenes (I say most; early on it does show scenes in Parliament and even out of doors). Watch it mostly for the historical value, but don't expect much.

The First Film I Can't Review

Film: Condemned
Year: 1929-30
Cast: Ronald Colman, Ann Harding, Dudley Digges, Louis Wolheim, William Elmer, William Vaughn, Albert Kingsley
Director: Wesley Ruggles
Nominations: Best Actor (Colman)

It finally happened.

Some of these movies it's borderline impossible to get hard copies of, and for this one, the streaming service I've been using for classic movies does have this one...in Spanish. Without subtitles.

I'm sorry, but I can't review this one because I can't watch it. I'm sure of Colman's two performances this one was probably the more serious and "Oscar-ish" of the two, but I'll probably never know.

I have confirmed that my streaming service does have Disraeli, The Green Goddess and The Love Parade in English. We'll move on to them now.