1945 Oscar Watch

This was a fairly weak year for film.  It's not that the movies were bad, there just weren't many of them.  I'm supposing that had to do with World War II wrapping up.  The country had bigger things to do than worry about Hollywood's output.  Still, the Best Picture lineup is pretty solid but when you look at the acting categories there is some obvious filler.  Anyway, The Lost Weekend wins Best Picture which is great because Billy Wilder really deserved it last year for Double Indemnity and it's a great movie.  So they get to give Billy an overdue award and honor a dark film about alcoholism that still holds up.

You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

5. The Bells Of St. Mary's is a sequel to last year's Best Picture winner Going My Way.  Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley is sent to a parish that is in danger of being shut down.  He butts heads with one of the nuns, played by Ingrid Bergman, but they eventually work together to keep the church and school afloat.  It's a pleasant film but not a Best Picture winner and seeing as the first film won last year, there is no way this should have won.

4. Anchors Aweigh is a very enjoyable musical starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as two sailors on shore leave trying to get laid.  It's always weird when a straight up genre film gets a nomination in this category.  This movie is very fun and downright delightful but it's just a musical.  I get a slight jealousy when this happens, why this movie and not Singin' In The Rain?  Still, this is a very good film and has the scene where Gene dances with Jerry the mouse.  For some reason that moment is still magical.  30 years after Who Framed Roger Rabbit I'm still marveling at how real this looks.  Maybe it's because Gene Kelly is so good or maybe it's just suspension of disbelief but I truly felt that Gene and Jerry were in the same reality.

3. Mildred Pierce is a Joan Crawford film, which usually don't work for me at all, but this is probably her best.  She excelled in romances and melodramas but this is more of a gritty film noir.  It starts with her ex-husband being murdered.  The cops think her first husband did it but the movie makes it seem like Joan did it.  Then there's a twist that I honestly didn't see coming.  It's a really good film from the director of Casablanca.  Joan stars as Mildred Pierce, her husband cheats on her leaving her with sole custody of two daughters.  Her oldest daughter is a complete brat.  Mildred starts a business and starts to make money so she can buy expensive things for her daughter but it's never enough.  The whole movie is told in flashback and keeps you guessing as to what about the story is true.  I've seen a lot of Joan Crawford movies for the purposes of this blog and this is the one I truly think is great.

2. Spellbound is an Alfred Hitchcock mystery/thriller which reminded me a lot of a film I watched for this blog that I didn't like, Suspicion.  That movie acts as a thriller and then tacks on a happy ending that makes no sense.  This movie takes everything that's wrong with that film and does it right.  Ingrid Bergman stars as a psychoanalyst at a mental hospital, she falls for Gregory Peck who plays the new doctor.  It is quickly revealed that he is not who he says he is.  The real doctor is dead and Peck has amnesia and can't remember why he's impersonating him.  He assumes that he killed the doctor and assumed his identity out of guilt.  Suspicion acts as a thriller and you are told that Cary Grant is evil and then all of a sudden he says, 'I wasn't ever evil, I was good all along.  I don't know why I was acting all shifty but we're in love now so everything's good'.  This film sets a tone where you know there's gonna be a happy ending so even though you are given a lot of red flags as to not trust Gregory Peck, you assume that he's really a good guy.  Bergman and Peck embark on an adventure to find out his true identity and find out what happened to the real doctor.  It's a great romance/mystery/thriller with Hitchock at the helm so you know you're in for some interesting camerawork.

1. The Lost Weekend is an incredible film that doesn't pull any punches and still holds up today.  It's about a hopeless drunk writer who spends most of every day drinking, trying to hide his drinking or figuring out where to get his next drink.  His brother and girlfriend are scared to leave him alone as they keep finding bottles hidden around his apartment.  Then he spends a weekend drinking, he has to go to different bars because his regular bars know he's broke, he resorts to stealing money, gets picked up and forced into detox, starts to hallucinate and eventually decides to get sober.  It's an amazingly dark film.  It's also different from anything at the time.  Movies about drinking weren't this dark and if they were they were like Reefer Madness and kinda silly.  This presents alcoholism in a real and honest way and doesn't sugarcoat it.  The only thing wrong with the film is the happy ending.  He decides to give up the bottle and everything seems rosy.  Real recovery is a longer road than just putting down the bottle that day.  Other than that, it's a near perfect film.

Going My Way beat Double Indemnity in 1944 for some reason so this is a makeup win for Billy Wilder.  I think he would have won regardless, The Lost Weekend is a great film, ahead of its time, and easily the best in this category.  Hitchcock already had a win so Spellbound doesn't need to win, Anchors Aweigh is a good film but not so much better than any other musical, Mildred Pierce is good but the win for Joan Crawford is more than it needs and The Bells Of St. Mary's doesn't really belong in this category.

Oscar Winner: The Lost Weekend

My Vote: The Lost Weekend

GABBY Winner: The Lost Weekend

Best Actor

5. Bing Crosby reprises his role as Father O'Malley in The Bells Of St. Mary's, the same role that won him Best Actor last year.  I rarely vote for someone to win a second Oscar, I even more rarely vote for someone to win back to back Oscars, I can't fathom a scenario where I would vote to win back to back Oscars for the same character.

4. Cornel Wilde plays Frederic Chopin in the biopic A Song To Remember.  This movie was boring and Wilde's performance matched it perfectly.  Biopics of this era were far from warts and all situations.  They always painted their subjects as perfect patriots who should be put on the flag.  Paul Muni plays his piano teacher and he's slightly fun but other than that this movie, and Wilde, was a complete snooze fest.

3. Gregory Peck had a breakout year in 1945.  He starred with Ingrid Bergman in a Best Picture nominee, Spellbound, starred with Greer Garson in The Valley Of Decision, a movie that earned her an Oscar nomination and he starred as a priest in The Keys Of The Kingdom.  He plays a Catholic priest doing missionary work in China.  He's trying to help impoverished people, teach them English, and of course convert their religion.  It's not a terrific film, I've never been a fan of the overtly religious films of this era, but it does have a sweetness to it.  One thing I appreciated it for was casting actual Chinese people in the film.  So many films of this era put people in yellowface but this movie actually cast racially appropriate, which is probably why it didn't get any supporting acting nominations.  If those Chinese peasants were white people you can be assured they would get nominated.  Peck is fine in the role, I liked him better in Spellbound, but this is a nice welcome to the club nomination.  It's his first year in film, he gets an Oscar nomination, he's about to become one of the biggest stars in the world and will eventually get his Oscar for Atticus Finch.

2. Gene Kelly plays a sailor trying to scare up some tail during shore leave in Anchors Aweigh.  His character is quite a cad, as a lot of his characters were.  He seems to care only about his own self interests until he meets the right girl that helps him settle his priorities.  I originally had him ranked much lower and thought that he really didn’t belong here.  I mean the guy is possibly the greatest dancer ever on film, but does that earn a competitive acting Oscar?  Then I really thought about his performance, this guy is a total cad but we are instantly on his side because Kelly is just so damn charming.  If he wasn’t so sweet then he could come off as just uncaring and chauvinistic, then we wouldn’t care if he gets the girl and may actively root against him.  Kelly turns this unsympathetic character into a plucky underdog.

1. Ray Milland won the Oscar for playing a drunk writer at the end of his rope in The Lost Weekend.  What makes Milland so good here is that he never plays his character as drunk.  Real drunks try to fit in and true alcoholics don’t act differently when they’re drinking.  We’ve learned to adapt to the point where we can be completely inebriated and you can’t tell.  He even sees himself as two people, the writer and the drunk, but then comes to find they’re the same.  It’s a tragic character brought brilliantly to life by Ray Milland who deserved a better career than he had.

The Oscars love a drunk and Ray Milland wins easily.  He’s miles ahead the best performance in this category that anyone else winning would be a travesty that dwarfs the worst decision ever (Cliff Robertson if you’re curious).  Crosby just won for the same performance, Peck is gonna win for a far superior role, Wilde is just not good and a vote for Kelly is simply just a vote for Kelly.  It would have been cool if he won once but you can’t really say he was better than Milland.

Oscar Winner: Ray Milland

My Vote: Ray Milland

GABBY Winner: Ray Milland

Best Actress

5. Greer Garson got 6 nominations in 7 years and this was her last until she played Eleanor Roosevelt in 1960.  The Valley Of Decision is a romantic melodrama about a maid who falls in love with a steel mill owner and their love is tested when the mill goes on strike.  It's not great but it's fine.  Garson already won for a better performance in Mrs. Miniver so there's no way she should have won for this.

4. Jennifer Jones also had a great couple years at the Oscars.  This was her 3rd of 4 consecutive nominations.  She just won for The Song Of Bernadette so she doesn't need a 2nd win so soon.  In Love Letters, Jones plays a woman with amnesia who falls in love with Joseph Cotten.  It's not a great film but it's fine.  No way she should have won for it though.

3. Ingrid Bergman has a weird Oscar history.  She won her first Oscar the year before this because she really should have won the year before that.  In 1943 she stars in Casablanca but instead gets nominated for For Whom The Bell Tolls, then she wins in 1944 for Gaslight, then she stars in Spellbound but gets nominated for playing a boxing nun in The Bells Of St. Mary’s.  So that’s two years where she gets nominated for a lesser role she did in the same year.  Plus there’s the time she wins for 7 minutes of screen time.  So she starred in two Best Picture nominees which is impressive but there’s nothing 2nd Oscar level about her performance as a nun trying to keep her Church afloat, let alone back to back Oscars.

2. Gene Tierney stars as a femme fatale in the gorgeously colorful film Leave Her To Heaven.  This is a movie I did not expect to like at all but came away really enjoying.  Tierney plays a woman who falls in love with Cornel Wilde (much better here than he was in the movie that got him an Oscar nomination).  She is obsessively jealous about him and wants him all to herself.  He has a brother with bad legs who comes to live with them and one day they are out on a lake and she watches him drown.  Then she gets pregnant and throws herself down the stairs to cause a miscarriage.  The she thinks her husband is spending too much time with another woman so she poisons herself and frames her husband and the woman for murder.  She's not a nice lady.  Tierney is really good here and the movie is very pretty to look at.  It's definitely worth a watch.  In another year she would be my vote but this is really the only year to give it to Joan Crawford, who really wanted it.

1. Joan Crawford plays the title character in Mildred Pierce she is a single mother who will do anything for her children.  The problem is that her oldest daughter is a total monster.  Mildred does everything to support her girls and her daughter does nothing but resent her.  Crawford is good here.  This might be sacrilegious to say but I never found her that strong of an actress.  She definitely knew how to be a movie star though.  You can tell by the way she is lit in almost every shot, she knew exactly where to stand and she actually insisted on being lit a certain way to make her look more glamorous.  As an actress though, she's just fine.  She was capable but not one of my faves.

It’s weird that Spellbound stars Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, it gets nominated for Best Picture and Peck and Bergman both get nominated, for different movies.  At a certain point the Academy started fucking with Hitchcock just to fuck with him.  To explain my rankings, Crawford's the vote, Tierney is a pretty close second, everyone else is tied for 5th.  Garson, Jones and Bergman have won already and very recently.  Crawford earns an Oscar before Tierney based on strength of career.  Like I said, Crawford was not one of my personal favorites but she was a legitimate star and her having an Oscar just makes sense.  She also really wanted this too.  I know that shouldn't be a factor in voting for someone but Crawford's career was on the skids at the time she got cast in this film.  She was labeled box office poison and this was her comeback film.  She didn't show up to accept her Oscar and legend has it that she feigned illness to spare her the embarrassment of losing.  When she found out that she won she put on her makeup and invited reporters into her bedroom.  It's a great Oscar story and the performance is worthy and this is really the best chance for her to win.

Oscar Winner: Joan Crawford

My Vote: Joan Crawford

GABBY Winner: Lauren Bacall for To Have And Have Not

Best Supporting Actor

5. John Dall plays an illiterate coal miner in the Bette Davis melodrama The Corn Is Green.  This is one of those films that just bored the crap out of me.  The Bette Davis films of the 1940s usually do.  She is a school teacher who moves into a poor mining town with the intention on teaching everyone to read, she is met with much resistance but finds hope in Dall who is smart but not educated.  He is fine in the role but kind of dull.  I didn't see anything special about the performance that warranted a nomination.

4. J. Carrol Naish plays Charley Martin in A Medal For Benny.  I was unable to track this film down to watch so I know nothing about it.  If I ever get a chance to see it I will update this post.  Usually in cases like these I put them in the 5th spot but sight unseen I would vote for him over John Dall.

3. Michael Chekhov studied under Stanislavski, he was the nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov and was a well respected acting teacher.  He was more known for that than he was his film credits although he had great success on the stage.  His performance in Spellbound is good but I'm thinking he got this nomination more for his stature within the industry.  He plays a renowned psychoanalyst who was Ingrid Bergman's mentor.  They hide out with him for a while and she tries to lie to him about her relationship and he's all like, 'you can't fool me I know exactly why you're here'.  Then she's like, 'how did you know?' and he's like 'because I'm a brilliant psychoanalyst'.  It's a fine performance, he adds a touch of comic relief in the middle of the film but this was a nomination for someone who was greatly respected.  Kind of like how Lee Strasberg got nominated for The Godfather Part II.

2. James Dunn wouldn't let Ray Milland be the only actor to win an Oscar this year for playing a drunk.  Dunn's character also likes the booze in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.  This film is about a young girl growing up in a small apartment in Brooklyn with her family.  Dunn plays the patriarch and he's an alcoholic.  Where Milland is at the end of his rope and depressive in The Lost Weekend, Dunn is the exact opposite.  He comes home from a day of drinking and not finding a job and tells his daughter that their ship is about to come in.  He's really good in the film but, spoiler alert, he dies from pneumonia about half way through and you kind of forget about him.

1. Robert Mitchum was one of my favorite actors ever.  Cape Fear, The Night Of The Hunter, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, Out Of The Past, Farewell My Lovely, The Friends Of Eddie Coyle... this guy was awesome.  He was always cool and great.  A life of great film roles and he only got one Oscar nomination as Lieutenant Walker in The Story Of G.I. Joe.  That alone gets him my vote because I know this is the only chance I have to do so.  Also, he's really great in the movie.  This film follows Burgess Meredith as a war correspondent.  He's following a platoon during WWII and Mitchum is the man in charge.  He has a lot of really powerful moments where he's giving orders to his men but then more powerful moments when he's getting orders from the higher ups.  He sees the death all around him and he knows that he is powerless.  The only thing he can do is tell his men what he is told to do and hope they don't die.

The vote comes down to Robert Mitchum and James Dunn, with Chekhov running a distant third choice.  I understand why Dunn won.  His part was much more Oscar bait and Mitchum was still young and should have gotten more chances, why this was his only nomination is a bit of a mystery.  Mitchum gets my vote based on performance and the fact that this is my only chance to vote for one of my favorite actors.  The other reason I'm voting for Mitchum over Dunn is because he has a much bigger impact on his film.  The Story Of G.I. Joe follows Burgess Meredith mostly but Mitchum takes a small part and makes it the most interesting part of the film.  Dunn disappears halfway through his film and is barely mentioned again.

Oscar Winner: James Dunn

My Vote: Robert Mitchum

GABBY Winner: Robert Mitchum

Best Supporting Actress

5. Eve Arden plays a wise cracking waitress who works with Mildred Pierce and eventually goes into business with her.  She is not bad in the film but has very little to do.  You think she's going to be the comic relief, like Flo from Alice, but then she just kinda disappears or wanders into the background.

4. Joan Lorring plays the mother of John Dall's baby in The Corn Is Green.  She was easily my favorite part of the film, which isn't a high bar to jump over.  While Dall is learning to read from Bette Davis, Lorring is scheming on how to get money for the baby, she's planning on marrying another man.  She tries to blackmail him which would ruin his chances for educating himself but Bette adopts the child leaving Joan free to remarry and John free to continue his studies.  She's a really interesting character and an unrepentant baddie but I'm not gonna vote for this boring dud of a movie.

3. Angela Lansbury plays a beautiful cockney singer who gets into a romantic relationship with the title character in The Picture Of Dorian Gray.  She's such a sweet woman but since Dorian is so vain and egotistical he mistreats her eventually leaving her for a life of hedonism.  She kills herself off screen.  I wish I could vote for Angela Lansbury just because I love her so much but she's not in the film enough to win.  Her time to win was for The Manchurian Candidate, which I'll get to soon.

2. Anne Revere plays Elizabeth Taylor's mother in National Velvet.  She also got an Oscar nomination for playing Jennifer Jones's mother in The Song Of Bernadette.  She got another nomination for playing Gregory Peck's mother in Gentleman's Agreement.  She specialized in playing mother figures.  If she was going to win for any of those films it's best that they gave it to her for this one since it was her most substantial role in the better film.  Taylor has a horse and wants to race it and Revere has a nice moment where she gives her daughter enough money to enter the race.  It's a fine performance in a nice movie, I just liked one person this year better.

1. Ann Blyth plays the daughter from hell in Mildred Pierce.  Her mother does everything for her, sacrifices everything to give her everything her little heart desires and then her daughter does nothing but resent her.  I love Ann Blyth in this film.  She's so good at being a spoiled little brat.  You're waiting the whole movie for Joan Crawford to just slap the crap out of this bitch and then when it happens I just about stood up and cheered.  Then you find out at the end that Mildred will do absolutely anything for her daughter (trying to avoid a spoiler) and she still treats her mother like shit.

Well, first off is Eve Arden.  She barely does anything in her film and she's in the same category as her co-star who is infinitely better.  Next is Joan Lorring who is good in her film but her film is so bad I can't vote for her.  Angela Lansbury would be a fine winner but only because she's Jessica Fletcher, the performance isn't worthy of a win.  That leaves the two Ann(e)s.  Both are good in vastly different roles.  The Academy usually picks the nicer role so I can see why Revere won, plus she had more experience.  I gotta vote for Ann Blyth.  She had the showier role and just nailed it.  She's so deliciously evil but also so beautiful.  You want to murder her for the whole film but you can see a slight hint of why only her mother could love her.

Oscar Winner: Anne Revere

My Vote: Ann Blyth

GABBY Winner: Ann Blyth

Best Director
Billy Wilder wins the award he should have won the year before.  He's easily the best choice in this category that included last year's winner Leo McCarey, Clarence Brown for The Yearling, Jean Renoir for The Southerner and Alfred Hitchcock who would have been my second choice for Spellbound.

Best Original Screenplay/Screenplay/Motion Picture Story
I always like to make sense of the writing categories.  All the nominees in the Best Screenplay category are adaptations and The Lost Weekend rightfully wins.  Best Original Screenplay seems obvious and includes a Margaret O'Brien musical, a war comedy, 2 gangster movies and a foreign film.  They give the win to the foreign film as Marie-Louise wins and becomes the first non English language film to win in a writing category.  I'm not sure what the criteria is to get nominated for Best Motion Picture Story but The House On 92nd Street wins.

Best Scoring Of A Dramatic Or Comedy Picture
21 nominees in this category makes it a bit hard to pick a favorite.  This is when each studio would submit which film it wanted to be nominated in this category.  So you get movies like Brewster's Millions getting nominated.  I've seen that movie but I could not tell you if it had good music or not.  Miklos Rozsa ends up winning for Spellbound

Best Scoring Of A Musical Picture
Only 12 movies are nominated here which makes it a little easier to figure out what to vote for.  Although you can probably bet that if one of the movies is nominated for Best Picture it will probably win.  Anchors Aweigh took home the award.

Best Original Song
14 nominees?  The music branch really liked honoring each other.  Rodgers and Hammerstein win for 'It Might As Well Be Spring' from State Fair.  Probably the best choice in the category, I would have voted for 'Accentuate The Positive' from Here Come The Waves.

Best Sound Recording
None of the 12 nominees here leap out as a winner but the best choice was surely They Were Expendable with all the gunfire and bombs in that film.  Instead the Academy goes with The Bells Of St. Mary's.  What have I always said?  Musicals always win this category.  While maybe not technically a musical, it does include a number of songs.

Best Art Direction (Black And White)/Art Direction (Color)
The James Cagney thriller Blood On The Sun wins the black and white category over a probably more deserving The Picture Of Dorian Gray.  Something called Frenchman's Creek wins the color category.  The only two nominees I saw were Leave Her To Heaven and National Velvet.


Best Cinematography (Black And White)/Cinematography (Color)
The Picture Of Dorian Gray wins the black and white category even though the most impressive shots in the film are in color.  The movie is in black and white except for a few shots of the titular portrait in incredible technicolor.  If you're looking for great cinematography you need look no further than fellow nominees Spellbound and The Lost Weekend.  Leave It To Her Heaven wins the color category which is richly deserved, the movie is absolutely gorgeous.

Best Film Editing
National Velvet wins and I was about to say that The Lost Weekend was robbed here but then I thought about all the times the horse probably didn't do what was asked of it.  There was probably a lot of takes where the horse snorted or looked the wrong way.  The editor did a good job putting all of that together.


Best Special Effects
Wonder Man beats Captain Eddie, Spellbound, They Were Expendable and A Thousand And One Nights.  It's hard to tell what's a special effect in a 1940s film so I have no idea what should win here.  Wonder Man is a fun Danny Kaye movie though so I'm glad they picked that one. 

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1986