1957 Oscar Watch

1957 is one of my favorite film years, The Bridge On The River Kwai, 12 Angry Men, 3:10 To Yuma, Witness For The Prosecution, Sweet Smell Of Success, A Face In The Crowd, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison... and the Oscars did a reasonably good job of reflecting that greatness.  Sure, they gave a bunch of nominations to Sayonara and Peyton Place, but we should know by now that the Academy screws up a lot.  I have a few big complaints this year but for the most part the winners all hold up, Bridge On The River Kwai, Alec Guinness, Joanne Woodward.  The big problems come in the supporting categories and who was left off the Best Actor list.

 You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

5. Sayonara is a movie I didn't really care for.  Actually, I think flat out disliked is more appropriate.  It's a movie where the message gets in the way of the story.  The message is basically that racism is bad and interracial relationships are okay.  That's a good message to tell people but the movie is really really dull.  Marlon Brando, with a laughably bad southern accent, is told to talk some sense into his friend who wants to marry a Japanese woman.  Brando ends up falling for a Japanese woman himself and realizes that his friend's relationship is based on unquestionable love.  The movie is overly sentimental and preachy and just dull.  It earns respect for giving roles to Japanese actors, earning an Oscar win for Miyoshi Umeki, but it loses all credit by casting Ricardo Montalbon as a Japanese Kabuki actor.

4. Peyton Place is not a movie I expected to like at all but walked away enjoying.  I didn't love the movie by any means but I was surprised with how good it was.  It's an ensemble melodrama about the seedy underbelly in an innocent on the surface small town.  For a movie made in 1957 this movie pushed the envelope as far as it could go while still being kinda sweet and quaint.  This film has sex, violence, rape, suicide, extramarital affairs but it loses something by filming on such obvious sets.  At times it looks like it was filmed on a high school stage.  I watched The Bridge On The River Kwai this year where you can see the sweat on the actors and this movie looks, at times, like a bunch of actors playing dress up.

3. 12 Angry Men is a movie that should be higher than number 3 in my rankings but that's just because the next two movies are so good.  The movie takes place all in one room as a jury is deciding a verdict for a murder trial.  11 men say guilty but one man is not convinced.  Slowly he starts to cast reasonable doubt on the proceedings and one by one they all start to change their minds.  It's all about how one heart can change many minds and if you can ever sentence a man to death if there is any doubt to his guilt.  It has one of the best ensembles ever on film.  Henry Fonda stars as the one rational man, Lee J. Cobb is the angriest of the men, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden and a room full of great character actors round out the cast.

2. Witness For The Prosecution is another courtroom drama but this one focuses on the trial, whereas 12 Angry Men focuses on the aftermath.  It's written and directed by Billy Wilder and based on an Agatha Christie story so it's has twists and turns, great performance and incredibly colorful dialogue.  Charles Laughton is incredibly funny as the old barrister defending a man accused of murder.  The man's alibi relies on testimony from his wife who decides to testify against him.  It's one of the best courtroom dramas ever and the tenseness in the courtroom is as exciting as any action film.

1. The Bridge On The River Kwai is David Lean's epic masterpiece.  Some people will say Lawrence Of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago but those are long and dull in some sections.  This movie is almost 3 hours but is all killer, no filler.  There is nothing to be cut out in the film and everything in the movie works.  Alec Guinness plays a British officer in a Japanese POW camp who is asked to build a bridge, at first he refuses until he is beaten down and orders his men to perform slave labor.  Then he starts to take pride in the bridge he is building for the enemy.  At the same time, William Holden and some other soldiers are sneaking into the camp to blow up the bridge.  It's got beautiful cinematography, superb editing and film making techniques and great performances by the entire cast.  It's a near perfect film.

Like I said before, this was a terrific year for film but everything gets overshadowed by the elephant in the room that was The Bridge On The River Kwai.  If only 12 Angry Men or Witness For The Prosecution came out a year earlier or later.  Surely they would or at least should have beaten Around The World In 80 Days and Gigi.  I gotta vote for The Bridge On The River Kwai but any of my top 3 would be great winners.  The only thing that doesn't belong on this list is Sayonara.  Peyton Place is not a great movie but it is star filled, was based on a best selling book and has good performances so I understand the nomination.

Oscar Winner: The Bridge On The River Kwai

My Vote: The Bridge On The River Kwai

GABBY Winner: The Bridge On The River Kwai

Best Actor

5. Marlon Brando has proven himself not only capable of delivering fantastic performances but delivering performances that become iconic and unforgettable.  There was a period of his career where he really stopped giving a shit and it started sometime around Sayonara.  He plays an Air Force pilot who falls in love with a Japanese woman which causes a conflict with his army superiors.  He decided to give his character a southern accent which is more distracting than anything else.  The director did not like Brando's choice but Marlon had so much pull at this time that he didn't have to listen to anyone.  The accent aside, Brando is sleepwalking through this role and gives a fairly lifeless performance.

4. Anthony Franciosa plays the main character's alcoholic brother in A Hatful Of Rain.  The film follows Don Murray as a returning Korean war veteran who is addicted to morphine.  The only person who knows his secret is his brother, Polo, who is a drunk.  Polo is always watching out for his brother and dealing with his own demons.  Franciosa really overplays his part.  His scenes where he is playing drunk border on vaudeville drunks, stumbling all over the place and slurring his words.  He was also in Wild Is The Wind this year so I'm assuming this was a nomination for a guy who was coming up in the industry.  The performance itself is just not that good.

3. Anthony Quinn already won two Oscars before his nomination as Gino in Wild Is The Wind so it's impossible for me to consider voting for him even though he is an actor who always left an impression on any film he appeared in.  In this movie he plays an Italian widow who marries his sister in law only to be cuckolded by a younger man.  He's good in the film, it's a typical Anthony Quinn performance but the roles he won for and Zorba The Greek are much more memorable.

2. Charles Laughton is dryly hilarious as the aged barrister presiding over a murder trial in Witness For The Prosecution.  He's an old man with a live in nurse but he still likes to smoke and drink so every time she turns her back he is sneaking a puff of a cigar.  That's really the only way the role is written humorously, the rest of the comedy comes from Laughton's performance.  He takes a role that could easily be played very dry and flat and makes him hilarious just in his droll manner of speaking and sly looks on his face.  You can tell that his character is a step ahead of everyone else even if he doesn't always show it, he's like a great detective which makes him a good lawyer.

1. Alec Guinness plays Colonel Nicholson, a British soldier in a Japanese POW camp commanded to build a bridge for the enemy in The Bridge On The River Kwai.  Guinness is downright brilliant in his performance.  He's a proper British officer with a stiff upper lip who lives his life by the letter of the law.  When told he is supposed to command his men to build the bridge he politely tells his captor that the request is against the Geneva Convention, not really understanding that his captor doesn't care.  He fights with the Japanese colonel until he is beaten down but then comes to see the value in working with him instead of against him.  Then he starts to take pride in the bridge to the point where he doesn't see that he is on the wrong side of the war.

Before I just say that Guinness deserved the win this year, let me just complain about who wasn't nominated.  Instead of Brando, Quinn and Franciosa this category could have been stacked with a group of actors who delivered iconic performances.  The most egregious omission is Henry Fonda who could have won the Oscar he deserved to win in 1940 for 12 Angry Men, then there's Andy Griffith in A Face In The Crowd, his film debut, Robert Mitchum as a shipwrecked soldier romancing a nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Kirk Douglas in Paths Of Glory, Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell Of Success, Glenn Ford or Van Heflin in 3:10 To Yuma, Anthony Perkins in Fear Strikes Out or even James Cagney as Lon Chaney in Man Of A Thousand Faces.  Any of these would have been better choices than Brando or Franciosa.  The category being what it is, Guinness is the clear winner.  Laughton, Quinn and Brando already won and Franciosa really doesn't belong in the lineup.

Oscar Winner: Alec Guinness

My Vote: Alec Guinness

GABBY Winner: Andy Griffith for A Face In The Crowd

Best Actress

5. Elizabeth Taylor plays a southern belle in the vein of Scarlett O'Hara in Raintree Country, a film that was banking on being the next Gone With The Wind.  This film was not a fun watch for me as this was the movie that Montgomery Clift was filming when he suffered his near fatal car crash that resulted in the change in his appearance and demeanor and got him addicted to drugs and pain pills.  It is very evident in the film and watching the movie becomes less about enjoyment and more about a macabre game of watching for the difference in his face.  Clift plays a southerner who is against slavery who has an affair with Taylor.  She gets pregnant and they get married only to tell him later that the baby was a lie.  She slowly starts to develop signs of mental illness and insanity runs in her family.  Taylor is perfectly adequate in the role, I just didn't care for the movie and she would go on to win 2 Oscars for much better films than this.

4. Anna Magnani just won an Oscar two years ago for a much better performance so I can't see voting for this although she is good in the film.  In Wild Is The Wind she plays an Italian woman who marries her brother in law after her sister dies.  They move to America and butt heads over how they are going to live and eventually she falls for a handsome young ranch hand.  It's a similar role to the one she played in The Rose Tattoo, which she won for.  She's just as good here but she was not exactly an actress who deserved two Oscars in her career.

3. Lana Turner is certainly in Peyton Place but I just watched the film and I'm finding it hard to remember what she did in the movie.  She plays a mother who we find out had her daughter as a product of an affair with a married man.  That's her specific scandal in a town full of them.  I was more interested in other characters in the film than her and I don't remember Turner standing out in either a good way or a bad way.

2. Deborah Kerr gave better performances than the one she gave in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison but she never won despite earning 6 nominations for Best Actress so that's a definite reason to vote for her here and I would be if it weren't for the next person on this list.  I do love her and this film.  The movie starts with Robert Mitchum at sea in a raft washing up on a deserted island.  He searches around and comes upon a woman, bad luck for him though, she's a nun.  The movie is directed by John Huston and filmed on location, it's kind of a spiritual successor to The African Queen.  She's a nun and he's an atheist, there's sexual tension between the two of them but she would never act on it because she's married to God.  Kerr is very good here, not as good as From Here To Eternity but this is definitely good enough to warrant a makeup win.  The Academy ended up giving her an honorary award, she should have won outright during her career but unfortunately all her nominations were in the wrong year and somebody was just far and away better.

1. Joanne Woodward gives the performance of the year as Eve White and her other personalities in The Three Faces Of Eve.  This is just an open and shut case on who I'm gonna vote for, none of the other performances are in the same league.  This is also an instance where her performance raises the quality of the film.  The movie starts to become more about documenting the disease of multiple personality disorder, which is now questioned as to if it ever existed, and has some Reefer Madness type scenes meant to scare the public.  Woodward is so good that she makes the movie better.  Each of her personalities have their own distinct voice and characteristics.  It is one of the top 5 Best Actress performances of all time.

Poor Deborah Kerr, if only I could vote for you.  Woodward has no competition this year.  Magnani already won, Taylor is going to win two, Turner doesn't really stand out in her film and Kerr is Oscar worthy based on her career but her performance is nothing like Woodward's.  In almost any other year Kerr would be my winner but unfortunately she was up against Woodward.  Just for fun I went through all of Kerr's nominations to see what would have been her best shot.  In 1949 she lost to Olivia De Havilland for The Heiress, a great performance.  In 1953 she lost to Audrey Hepburn, in hindsight I might pick Kerr but it's hard to vote against Audrey.  In 1956 she lost to Ingrid Bergman, knowing that Ingrid would go on to win another makes me think Deborah could have won there but she was nominated for The King And I which is not a role that is really Oscar worthy.  In 1958 she lost to Susan Hayward who was just as overdue as Kerr and Rosalind Russell was also in that category so Kerr comes 3rd.  Finally, in 1960 she loses to Elizabeth Taylor for BUtterfield 8, we could give it to Kerr there but that category also had Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment.  Damn, she just had a string of bad luck.  Quality performances in tough years.


Oscar Winner: Joanne Woodward

My Vote: Joanne Woodward

GABBY Winner: Joanne Woodward

Best Supporting Actor

5. Russ Tamblyn is an actor I've liked in movies like West Side Story and TV shows like Twin Peaks but he didn't make much of an impression on me at all in Peyton Place.  He plays one of the young lovers and he's very shy.  That's basically his whole character trait, he's shy and he has an overprotective mother who dominates his life.  He's not bad in the film but he is hardly memorable.

4. Vittorio De Sica is probably best remembered today as a director, specifically for The Bicycle Thieves, but he received his only Oscar nomination as an actor in A Farewell To Arms.  I'll admit that when I downloaded this film to watch I accidentally got the 1932 version starring Gary Cooper.  I watched about 20 minutes of it, thinking it was particularly grainy for a 1950s movie, before realizing I had the wrong version.  Now that I've seen the correct version I can say that De Sica is the highlight of the film.  It stars Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones and they have very little chemistry so when De Sica shows up as Hudson's Italian army surgeon buddy it's a breath of fresh air.  Unfortunately, he's not in the film that much and disappears for a large chunk but he's definitely the best thing about the movie, which isn't saying much.

3. Red Buttons is an actor I always liked because I grew up watching The Poseidon Adventure hundred of times.  In Sayonara he plays Airman Joe Kelly who falls in love with a Japanese woman while he's overseas and risks repercussions from the army if he marries her.  He is so singularly focused on his goal that his role becomes less a character and more of a plot device.  All he cares about is his relationship and he becomes completely uninteresting because of it.  It's also a dry and humorless performance from an actor who was capable of being engaging.  Buttons is so serious in every single line delivery that it makes the character dull.  If had a sense of joy in his performance the character would be more sympathetic but since he doesn't the character is boring and only here to show that racism affects everybody.

2. Arthur Kennedy earned 5 Oscar nominations in his career but never won and much like Deborah Kerr, it was mainly due to bad luck.  He first got nominated in 1949 and lost to Dean Jagger, a questionable decision but it was his breakout film so it's understandable that he lost.  Then he loses to Humphrey Bogart in 1951 in the same category that had Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.  He goes on to lose to Jack Lemmon and Burl Ives.  So they guy did his best but his performances were just in the wrong years.  This was probably his best chance to win as he is easily the best part of Peyton Place.  He plays the drunk school janitor who abuses his step daughter regularly, swears to quit drinking and eventually rapes her resulting in a pregnancy.  When the movie first starts you think he's going to be the comic relief of the film, the lovable town drunk who just can't stay sober, but as the movie progresses you realize that he is in fact a monster hiding his villainy behind a bottle.  Kennedy is really great in the film and even though I'm voting a different way, I would be more than happy if he would have won here.

1. Sessue Hayakawa was at one point a huge star in the silent film era and the first Asian actor to achieve Hollywood stardom.  I did not know that until doing some research on him but it strikes me odd that he was already an established actor while so many white people got Oscar nominations for playing Asian characters, Luise Rainer, H.B. Warner, Aline MacMahon, Jennifer Jones, Gale Sondergaard, Akim Tamiroff, that's just off the top of my head, I may be missing someone.  Hayakawa plays Colonel Saito in The Bridge On The River Kwai and the best thing about his character, both historically and for the movie's benefit, is that he is not a soulless villain.  He is an army man doing his job and if he fails it will bring shame on him and he will have to kill himself.  You could tell this story from the point of view of the Japanese and make him a tragic hero.  Hayakawa is terrific in the film and just nails this character, bringing humanity and pathos to a man who could have easily been played heartless.

Tamblyn and De Sica are immediately crossed off my list and then next to go is Red Buttons.  He's just not that captivating in the film and his performance is less about creating a character and more about putting a face on racism.  That leaves Kennedy and Hayakawa and I could go either way just because I really like Arthur Kennedy in all of his Oscar nominated performances and wish he would have won once but I gotta pick Hayakawa.  He's just too damn good in this film.  I'm about to talk about Miyoshi Umeki which only holds up because she was the first Asian winner.  If you were gonna pick one performance by an Asian actor this year it should be Hayakawa.  They could have been truly historic and had both of them win but I almost forgot, they're racist.

Oscar Winner: Red Buttons

My Vote: Sessue Hayakawa

GABBY Winner: Lee J. Cobb for 12 Angry Men

Best Supporting Actress

5. Diane Varsi plays one of the young lovers in Peyton Place and her story line is one of the least interesting parts.  There is a brief moment in the film where she goes into a catatonic state after witnessing a suicide but that's only a few minutes in the film.  Other than that her character is fairly unmemorable.

4. Carolyn Jones only appears briefly in The Bachelor Party but she does leave an impression.  The film is about a guy out with his buddies the night before his wedding and whether or not he's going to remain faithful.  Halfway through the film the guy getting married meets Jones at a party and she is a girl who seems to bring a lot of guys back to her apartment.  She asks him to kiss her but tell her he loves her first, so she can pretend that it is something more.  It's a good performance but is only in about 6 minutes of the film.  Her character doesn't even have a name, she's billed as "The Existentialist"

3. Hope Lange is one of the more captivating parts of Peyton Place along with Arthur Kennedy who plays her stepfather.  Lange is a young high school girl who lives a tragic life.  She lives in a run down shack with her step father who routinely beats her and at one point in the film rapes her.  Then she goes to a doctor to get an abortion (which was illegal at the time) and when the doctor refuses she breaks down and tells them that she was raped by her step father.  She eventually loses the baby after suffering a fall running away from him.  It's a good performance that stands out in the film.  She's definitely one of the more interesting parts of the movie.

2. Miyoshi Umeki became the first Asian actor to win an Oscar but not the first person to win an Oscar for playing an Asian character, that would be the very white Luise Rainer.  That is really the only reason I support this win.  Up to this point, and sadly even after, white people painted their faces and put tape on their eyes to play Asians.  Umeki was a Japanese actress playing a Japanese character but unfortunately she doesn't do much in the film and doesn't really show any signs of range for future performances.  For most of the film she just serves tea to her husband and bows.  She does have one scene where she threatens to get plastic surgery on her eyes to look more American but other than that and her final scene she is basically just the subservient wife.

1. Elsa Lanchester was a fantastic character actress with a filmography that included dramas and comedies like Bell, Book And Candle and her breakout role as the title character in Bride Of Frankenstein.  In Witness For The Prosecution she gets to play next to her real life husband Charles Laughton as his nurse.  She's very fun in the role, she basically spends the whole film telling him what to do and exasperating him.  The performance is kind of slight to win an Oscar but this being a weak category and Lanchester being the actress with the biggest resumé...

I use Miyoshi Umeki as a reference to an undeserved Oscar win frequently.  She was an actress who was at the right place at the right time, won an Oscar and was never heard from again.  I condone this win because of the historical aspect and if Sessue Hayakawa wasn't going to win they at least gave an Oscar to one of the Asian actors playing an Asian character.  I don't like when non actors win Oscars though, Umeki was certainly an actor but this was her first Hollywood film and she didn't really have a career after this.  Now Umeki is an Oscar winning actor while there are hundreds of actors with terrific careers who never even got a nomination.  Kind of makes the Oscars seem silly and if that's the case, what the hell am I doing?

Oscar Winner: Miyoshi Umeki

My Vote: Elsa Lanchester

GABBY Winner: Marlene Dietrich for Witness For The Prosecution

Best Director
This is one of the rare years where the Best Picture nominees lined up with the Best Director nominees and with no wild cards in the mix David Lean easily and rightfully wins for The Bridge On The River Kwai even though Sidney Lumet and Billy Wilder would have been solid choices as well.

Best Original Screenplay/Adapted Screenplay
The Lauren Bacall/Gregory Peck romantic comedy Designing Woman may sound like an odd winner for Best Original Screenplay until you see the other nominees which included the musical Funny Face, the western The Tin Star, a foreign film called I Vitelloni and the mostly fictionalized Lon Chaney biopic Man Of A Thousand Faces, certainly an odd assortment of films.  The real competition is in the Best Adapted Screenplay race where The Bridge On The River Kwai ended up victorious.  While the movie is a classic, the script is not the most powerful aspect.  I would have thrown this to 12 Angry Men or Witness For The Prosecution, which for some reason wasn't nominated.

Best Original Score/Original Song
Until re-watching The Bridge On The River Kwai the only music I remembered from the film was The Colonel Bogey March, which was a hit song at the time.  After a recent watch I can attest that all the music in the film works perfectly and is beautiful.  The Frank Sinatra tune All The Way from The Joker Is Wild wins Best Song.  The tune was so popular that when the film was re-released they renamed the movie 'All The Way'.

Best Sound Recording
Wait a minute, I thought musicals always won this category.  Maybe Pal Joey and Les Girls cancelled each other out and that's why Sayonara came out victorious.

Best Costume Design
Les Girls beats An Affair To Remember, Funny Face, Pal Joey and Raintree County.  I have nothing interesting to say about that.

Best Art Direction
I suppose the win for Sayonara in this category is just.  There were a lot of well decorated Japanese locales.  None of the other nominees jump out at me as needing to win.

Best Cinematography/Best Film Editing
The Bridge On The River Kwai is far and away the best nominee in both categories and rightfully wins both.

Best Special Effects
The Enemy Below beats The Spirit Of St. Louis.  I've only seen the latter and again I have no opinion on this category.

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2005