1940's Oscar Nominees

and the winner is The Shop Around the Corner! oops, not nominated.

(see, Phila Story isn't even best comedy of '40)

Think I've seen 8 of those 10, I'd likely go for The Letter. Both the Hitchcocks are a blast, but they are on the relatively youthful, shallow side.

Philadelphia Story has lots of personal connections for me, but I think The Great Dictator is the best on this list. I'm a sucker for Chaplin. The Letter is really good too, though. Hmm.

Not a fan of either Hitchcock.

but that Chaplin speech at the end of TGD! what a windbag!

of what I've seen here, kinda inclined to go for Rebecca, with TGD second. Can't remember if I've see Phila story or not...

One of the very few years Oscar got it right. I worship Rebecca and if it weren't the crap last half hour or so, it'd be my favorite Hitch ever. And even there, that crap last half hour concerns the banality of patriarchy and The Law so the crappiness is most welcome.

And even though The Letter is prolly Wyler's finest moment, the Chaplin and the Ford (and maybe even the other Hitch) cut it. Wouldn't have shed a tear if either of the latter won.

I can think of at least ten Cukor titles that cut The Philadelphia Story. Why on earth do people get so wet for it?

And there's a 1940 comedy even greater than The Shop Around the Corner, Preston Sturges' Christmas in July which features a climactic speech (from Ellen Drew on behalf of her Joe Schmo beau Dick Powell) to rival Chaplin's in The Great Dictator.

Great year all around.

still haven't seen Kitty Foyle. Should I?

philadelphia story, then great dictator (considering chaplin'd barely spoken in a movie before, his final speech is an astonishing piece of work), then foreign correspondent, then rebecca.

his final speech is the first blast of the endless gassiness that only got worse in his talkies after Monsieur Verdoux.

KJB, you mad! CIJ is fab but minor Sturges; Shop is major Lubitsch.

Never seen The Long Voyage Home -- Arty John Ford sounds deadly.

IT'S ALL ARTY.

^^^

Oh, hi morbs! How long have you been unbanned? I hadn't noticed until right then.

IT'S ALL ARTY.

Is that why his films are so damn slow?

Yes. Yes it is. It's because you don't understand them.

Guilty!

Young Mr. Lincoln and My Darling Clementine are the exceptions.

Phila. Story for me.

his final speech is the first blast of the endless gassiness that only got worse in his talkies after Monsieur Verdoux.

maybe so -- tho i always thought verdoux itself was pretty good.

the only thing that kinda bothers me in philadelphia story is that scene where cary starts lecturing kate about how she'll "never be a human being" until she learns to love or some nonsense like that -- seems totally arbitrary and mean. the rest of it is a delight.

I dunno. I won't change it when it's on, but those drunken Jimmy Stewart monologues in which he calls Tracy a moon goddess or some shit go on a bit too.

Cary Grant underplays the sinister contours of C.K. Dexter Haven's character -- kind of a forerunner for his villain in Suspicion.

i haven't seen any of these :(

those drunken Jimmy Stewart monologues in which he calls Tracy a moon goddess or some shit go on a bit too.

I think The Philadelphia Story is mainily about drinking. I don't dislike it for that reason, mind you, but great movie?

It's a bells-and-whistles transfer of a hugely successful play, lacking "formal interest," one might say.

Kael's quote is perfect: George Cukor never seemed so heartlessly sure of himself.

there needs to be some kind of godwin's law for pauline kael citations in movie threads.

Ebert is also over-loved, but I'm totally one of the guilty ones about that.

I've seen The Shop Around the Corner, it's a good movie, but better than The Philadelphia Story?! No way, it's way too cozy and petit bourgeois compared to the biting wit of TPS.

wouldn't vote for it myself, but since no one said anything about it, Our Town has a really sweet nostalgic soundtrack by.

Audiogalaxy was much cooler though, got to agree with that. It seemed sort of mysterious to me back then!

shit wrong thread ;)

i was going to post this:
slsk still rules, i still find everything i want. 40+ recent albums a month, every old classic and non-classic you can imagine.

ah. ok i woke up.

now i am confusing myself :)

Speaking of Kael overlove, has anyone read this?

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/sontag-n-kael.jpg

I loved it the first time I read it, but I reread it in a sitting last week and it's sort of noxious just how many of Kael's faults the author brings up and then papers over by saying "but she was the best writer since Henry James, so who cares."

I enjoyed the book very much too, even though it depends on a false dichotomy for its intellectual coherence. It's as if Seligman looked for women of comparable merit from the same era. It could easily have been, I dunno, "Joan Didion vs. Mary McCarthy."

Sontag vs. Didion would've been a pretty dry read.

i've only seen half of these and don't love any of them, even though there's lot of great stuff scattered through. so i'll vote foreign correspondent because it's not pretentious.

Can't decide between the great dictator, the philadelphia story and the two Hitchcocks. Although I guess Rebecca or Phila Story would be the only ones I have gone back to repeatedly. I'll go for rebecca though only because High Society is sometimes a better version of the Phila Story.

Ranked in order:
The Letter (Warner Bros.)
The Grapes of Wrath (Twentieth Century-Fox)
Rebecca (Selznick International Pictures, United Artists)
The Philadelphia Story (MGM)
Foreign Correspondent (Walter Wanger; United Artists)
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin Productions; United Artists)
Our Town (Sol Lesser; United Artists)

Haven't seen:
The Long Voyage Home (Argosy-Wanger; United Artists)
Kitty Foyle (RKO Radio)
All This, and Heaven Too (Warner Bros.)

'Shop Around the Corner' would be second had it been nominated.

Benchley's a hoot in 'Foreign Correspondent', btw.

Obv I should probably check out The Letter sometime.

interesting that at least 2 of the nominees are more or less pro-war propaganda (great dictator, foreign correspondent). and are not penalized for it by critics because of the small matter of being on the right side.

are more or less pro-war propaganda

Sorry to quibble but for me the emphasis is less on pro-war than on anti-fascist.

true, but at the time that was the same thing, making the case for american intervention. (that's why the bad guy in foreign correspondent is the leader of a peace group.)

Both of grandfathers were commie, pinkos pre-mature anti-fascists converted from pacifism in the mid-Thirties to a stance of wishing to resist the Axis by the end of the decade. One of them looked at 'the war' as starting with the Japanese invasion of China.

yeah it was a somewhat tricky philosophical evolution for a lot of leftists -- especially the doctrinaire party members who took the hitler-stalin pact seriously. i recently read about pete seeger's real bewilderment when the daily worker practically overnight went from being anti-interventionist to fight fight fight! (seeger had spent the previous year singing about fdr the warmonger, and suddenly had to shift gears to go-get-em-boys tunes.) so anyway i just think those movies are historically interesting.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

the only thing that kinda bothers me in philadelphia story is that scene where cary starts lecturing kate about how she'll "never be a human being" until she learns to love or some nonsense like that -- seems totally arbitrary and mean. the rest of it is a delight.

Dexter's speech is self-serving but honest (he's bitter that she treated his alcoholism with contempt, not sympathy); much worse is the speech she gets shortly after, in which her father tries to blame his affair on her because she didn't make him "keep his youth" by admiring him unquestioningly.

I survey the decade. A couple of these deserved to win Best Picture.