1956 Oscar Watch

Around The World In 80 Days gets a lot of flack for being one of the worst movies to win Best Picture.  First off, it's not.  It's a perfectly enjoyable film but it's like a dinner at McDonald's.  You like it while you're there but you're not gonna tell all your friends how wonderful it was.  Secondly, this is one weak ass Best Picture lineup.  If you have a problem with Around The World In 80 Days winning Best Picture, I'd like to hear what you think should have won.  The rest of this year isn't any better.  Yul Brynner wins, a decision I don't agree with even though a lot of people would, Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn both win their 2nd Oscars and Dorothy Malone wins for a Douglas Sirk melodramas.  Not that great.  The worst part is The Searchers was released this year.  John Ford wins 4 Oscars but can't get nominated for one of the greatest westerns ever made?

You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

 

5. Giant felt like a chore to get through.  Sometimes I feel like the Oscars see quantity over quality.  Is your movie over 3½ hours?  Here's an Oscar.  I don't mind if a movie is long as long as it's worth it.  The story in Giant could have easily been condensed to 90 minutes.  This is a slow, long and dreadfully paced melodrama starring Rock Hudson as a proud Texan who owns a cattle ranch.  He gets married to Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean plays a hired hand.  There's a brief hint of a love triangle but that is abandoned when Dean strikes oil and becomes wealthier than Hudson, whom he had previously resented for his wealth.  Then the movie jumps forward in time and all the actors put a little gray in their hair and pretend to be old.  It is terrible how unconvincing these actors are at aging.  It looks like a high school production of Driving Miss Daisy.  Then in the last 30 minutes they're like, hey, let's make this a message movie about racism.  Hudson's son marries a Mexican and Hudson gets into a fist fight with a racist restaurant owner.  I hated this movie.

4. Friendly Persuasion is a movie about a family of Quakers and their struggle with whether to engage in violence when the Civil War breaks out.  Their religion tells them to be pacifists but then war breaks out and they have to weigh their beliefs with their safety.  It's a pretty episodic film.  The main story is about the war but then they will just up and go to a carnival or church for 10 minutes and we're left watching a bit of unrelated plot.  It's not a bad film, it's quite pleasant.  If this was the weakest film in a really good year I wouldn't mind the nomination but since everything here is weak it upsets me that this got in instead of a really good movie.

3. The Ten Commandments is a huge epic picture about Moses.  It's a tremendous film in size and scope.  As far as storytelling and acting goes, it's pretty mediocre.  There are stretches of the film that are almost unwatchable as we're following Charlton Heston in all his blandness and a cast of horribly miscast actors, *cough* Edward G. Robinson *cough*.  But then there are scenes like the iconic parting of the red seas and you immediately realize that you are watching a film spectacle.  It was one of the highest grossing films ever and I'm sure that was because people went back and saw it again and again just to marvel in its technical achievements.  I don't mind the nomination at all but there is no way I can vote for it.  First off, I mentioned the boring bits but there is also the length and the fact that it is so religious.  It's a biblical story that surely speaks to a large number of the population but I just couldn't relate to it on that level.  As a work of movie magic and getting butts in the seats, it's magnificent.  As a work of art and film making, it's just not that great.

2. The King And I is a Rogers and Hammerstein musical based on Anna And The King Of Siam.  Deborah Kerr stars as an English teacher who is hired by the king to teach his many many children.  He believes that men are the masters and women should only exist to serve men so he gets tutored too.  I'm not really a fan of musical theater and the movie adaptations of Rodgers and Hammerstein musical specifically are hit and miss.  The songs get in the way of the story and vice versa.  In this movie, the songs aren't that great and the story is just a little better.  I'm sure this would be great to see on stage and in this era this was the only chance the general public got to see a Broadway show.  So I understand its place in history but it's not one of my favorites.

1. Around The World In 80 Days is a big epic spectacle.  It's about David Niven as Phileas Fogg who takes a bet to see if he can travel the world in 80 days.  Him and his valet, played by Mexican comedian Cantinflas, set out on their journey and have a bunch of fun little adventures along the way.  It's certainly too long and could use a little tightening, even though it won the Oscar for Best Film Editing, but it's a big bowl of harmless entertainment...

Which is why it's not a great Best Picture winner.  It's just entertainment, nothing more.  There's very little substance.  It's like watching auto racing.  Sure it can be fun but don't tell me there's an art to it.  Still, as weak as it is, it's the best choice in this category.  Giant is just not a good film, there's no way Friendly Persuasion deserved to win and The Ten Commandments is too religious (I believe in the separation of church and Oscar).  That leaves only The King And I and Around The World In 80 Days.  Neither would really hold up as a strong winner.  I gotta give the edge to Around The World though because The King And I is pretty much just a straight up Broadway adaptation.  It's not as cinematic, there are scenes that look like they were just lifted from the play, and it's not as original for the same reason.  So Around The World In 80 Days is not the worst choice ever it's just the product of a weak set of nominees.

Oscar Winner: Around The World In 80 Days

My Vote: Around The World In 80 Days

GABBY Winner: The Searchers 

Best Actor

 

5. Laurence Olivier plays the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III.  No matter how good he is, there is no way I can possibly vote for this.  First of all, he already won for another Shakespearean adaptation.  Secondly, he's playing a part that's been played for 100 years, is he the best person to play the role?  Can anyone who does a Richard III film win an Oscar?  Give the guy a Tony, sure, but this is a theatrical performance disguised as a movie.

4. Rock Hudson starred in two films this year, Written On The Wind and Giant which he got nominated for.  He's boring and bland in both of them.  In Giant he plays a ranch owner who deals with all the struggles of being a rich and powerful family man.  He also learns to overcome his casual racism at the end of the film.  I found this movie very dull and Hudson's bland performance in the lead didn't help matters.

3. James Dean gets kudos for scoring 2 posthumous nominations, this year for Giant and last year for East Of Eden.  His career was cut short and there's no telling what would trajectory his career would have taken had he lived.  In Giant he plays a cattle rustler who strikes it rich when he finds oil on his land.  He is really good in the first half of the film when he's playing the tortured youth he specialized in but he is really out of his element in the second half.  The movie jumps forward in time and Dean is probably the least convincing older man in film history.  He puts on a gray wig but that's about it, he doesn't do anything physically to convey that his character has aged and it just comes off as a young man in a gray wig.  Add to that the fact that he's really a supporting character in the film and it all adds up to a no for a vote.

2. Yul Brynner won the Oscar this year for his most famous role as The King Of Siam in The King And I.  He also won a Tony for the role on Broadway and a 2nd Tony for the revivial.  He played the part on stage a total of 4,625 times.  He was so recognizable in the role that other actors who have played the part since have had to adopt his trademark shaved head.  Nowhere in the play does it mention that the king is bald but Yul Brynner was so that's how the part needs to played from now on.  He was also in The Ten Commandments and Anastasia this year so I completely understand the win.  He's good in the role, he's powerful when he's commanding his people and unironic in not understanding his own limitations or shortcomings.

1. Kirk Douglas plays tortured painter Vincent Van Gogh in the beautifully filmed biopic Lust For Life.  This movie looks like a painting came to life.  It’s gorgeous.  It’s also very long and dull in many stretches but it is beautiful to look at.  Douglas holds the film together with his performance.  Not only does he look eerily similar to Van Gogh but he puts so much passion into every line of dialogue.  This is Douglas acting his heart out and the best chance he had at winning.

Olivier is out right off the bat.  I can't vote for a guy in a Shakespeare adaptation, especially if he already won for another one.  Then Dean and Hudson cancel each other out (I wouldn't be voting for them anyway), Dean wouldn't be a bad winner considering this was literally his last chance but I feel wrong voting for a dead guy just for that reason.  So the only two worth voting for here are Brynner and Douglas and I don't know how you don't pick Douglas.  Yeah, The King And I is a more fun movie but Douglas runs the gamut of emotions as Vincent Van Gogh.  It's also a case of weighing film acting vs. musical theater acting.  Obviously it takes a lot of talent to get up on stage 7 times a week and sing and dance your heart out but when it comes to the Oscars I value the former.

Oscar Winner: Yul Brynner

My Vote: Kirk Douglas

GABBY Winner: Kirk Douglas

Best Actress

5. Deborah Kerr plays Anne Leonowens, an English school teacher who is hired to tutor the king's children in The King And I.  As much as I want Deborah Kerr to have an Oscar, she never won despite 6 nominations, I can't vote for her here.  She's in a musical but is dubbed by Marni Nixon.  I feel like if you only deliver half the performance you shouldn't be allowed all the Oscar.

4. Nancy Kelly plays the mother of a demon child in The Bad Seed.  I thought this film was awesome.  It's a thriller about a little girl who is suspected of killing one of her classmates.  Everybody thinks she did it and she seems to be showing no signs of grief over his death.  Turns out that she shares the bloodlines of a serial killer and perhaps her actions are genetic.  Kelly plays the girl's mother and for a while I was considering this a filler nomination.  She's good but nothing too special but then shit gets real near the end of the film.  I won't go into spoilers but she has a monologue where she makes a decision on what to do and I was just spellbound by how good she was.

3. Ingrid Bergman won her 2nd of 3 Oscars for playing a suicidal amnesiac who gets talked into posing as the grand duchess of Russia in Anastasia.  In a ploy to get a $10 million inheritance, Yul Brynner and his cohorts talk Bergman into pretending to be the long lost duchess who was rumored to survive the execution of her family.  Bergman is really good here.  She has to play two levels of her character, the person she truly is and the person she is pretending to be.  Something I'm always impressed by is when an actor is playing a character who is pretending to be someone else.  Bergman is a lost woman who pretends to be Anastasia and she does it so well that she starts to believe it herself.  That's what makes her so convincing in the part.  She doesn't have a memory of who she truly is so why couldn't she be long lost royalty?

2. Katharine Hepburn is maybe a little too old to play the part she plays in The Rainmaker but that didn't bother me at all.  This film is based on a play where a conman comes into a small town and promises rain.  He's obviously completely full of crap but there's a family that believes him because he is their only hope.  Katharine plays a plain Jane who acts as a housekeeper for her family.  She doesn't think she's pretty, has low self-confidence and has a secret crush on the sheriff of the town that goes unrequited.  Do you see the problem?  Katharine is playing a woman who is worried about whether she's ever going to be married at age 50.  It's a touch unrealistic but Katherine is so damn good in the role that I didn't care.  She plays a fragile woman who finally sees her inner beauty.  It's a nice little movie and a fantastic role for Kate, worthy of a 2nd Oscar.

1. Carroll Baker plays the title character in Baby Doll.  This is a beautiful but fucked up film.  The Catholic league tried to ban it.  Usually when that happens you watch the movie and it's something like The Last Temptation Of Christ and you think, why did they get their panties in a bunch over this?  When you watch this film you think, yeah, I don't think my children should be watching this and I feel kind of gross too.  But the movie is so good.  Baby Doll is a 19 year old virgin who is married to Karl Malden, a drunk and gross cotton gin owner.  They were arrange married by her dying father on the condition that the marriage would not be consummated until her 20th birthday.  So Malden spends most of his time drinking and peering in on his child bride sleeping and waiting.  Baker also sleeps in a little nighty and sucks her thumb, like a baby.  It's kinda disturbing but still so good.  It's written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Elia Kazan and all the performances are fantastic, Baker's especially.  She just is the character and you believe her completely.  It might be because this was her highest profile role so we don't really know her from anything else.

Kerr and Kelly are out first.  Kerr because she doesn't do her own singing and that's half the performance and Kelly is off because a lot of her role is just the scared mother role that has been done better.  She is still pretty good though and deserved a nomination.  That leaves Baker, Bergman and Hepburn and seeing how the latter two had already won and would also go on to win again, Bergman once, Hepburn 3 times, I gotta vote for Baker.  She definitely didn't have the career of your typical Best Actress winner but that hasn't stopped the Academy from rewarding other ingenues.  Plus, she's my favorite of the 5.  Baby Doll is just a great movie and Baker is fantastic in it. 

Oscar Winner: Ingrid Bergman

My Vote: Carroll Baker

GABBY Winner: Carroll Baker

Best Supporting Actor

5. Don Murray is in the wrong category as he is the lead of Bus Stop.  He gets overshadowed by Marilyn Monroe, but who wouldn't.  This is not a case of an actor straddling the line of lead and supporting like Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl this is a lead performance that for some reason ended up here.  The movie follows his character, a naive rodeo rider who goes to the big city and meets a gal.  He meets Monroe who is basically a prostitute, the movie keeps her profession innocent but she services drunk men in a bar, and he falls in love with her because he's a dumb cowboy.  Meanwhile Monroe is like, what's up with this dumb guy who thinks we're gonna get married?  He's also not very good in the film, I mean, he's fine but nowhere near Oscar level good.  This is a real questionable nomination.

4. Robert Stack's performance in Written On The Wind ranges from dull to outright hammy.  He's the son of a rich oil baron who gets married to Lauren Bacall.  When he was first introduced I thought that this was the most boring Oscar nominated performance I've ever seen.  He's like a flesh covered robot walking through scenes.  Then he starts drinking and he goes so over the top that it borders on parody.  I laughed hysterically during these scenes and I don't think that was the intended reaction from the filmmaker.  It's odd, the same reason why he's so bad here is why he's so good in Airplane!.  He's a bad actor who commits to all of his choices without any irony.  I wonder is her ever knew why Airplane! was so funny.

3. Anthony Perkins plays the eldest son of a Quaker family in Friendly Persuasion.  The Civil War breaks out and confederate soldiers are on their way to wreak havoc.  Perkins wants to join the army and fight but his family wants him to abstain from violence like their religion tells them to.  It's always weird to see an actor so well known for playing a certain character be someone else.  It's almost impossible to see Perkins without seeing Norman Bates to the point where you're expecting that his character Josh Birdwell is gonna start wearing his mother's clothes at one point.  He doesn't and he's good in the role.  He brings both an innocence and an explosive nature to the character so you can really see that he is conflicted with his patriotism and his God.

2. Anthony Quinn won his 2nd Oscar for playing artist Paul Gauguin who befriended Vincent Van Gogh near the end of his life in Lust For Life.  Quinn doesn’t have much screen time in the film.  He shows up late and is only in the last 20 minutes or so, but he does leave an impression.  Once he shows up he kinda takes over and the movie becomes about his relationship with Vincent.  Normally I would immediately disqualify a nomination for such a small part but when you watch the movie you understand why he won.  He’s bigger than life and commands attention.  Plus, he’s at the very end so you remember him.  If he were at the beginning and then disappeared it would be another story.

1. Mickey Rooney doesn't give a performance that's screams Oscar winner in The Bold And The Brave.  He plays his typical Mickey Rooney character.  He's a fun loving guy with an enigmatic personality.  He plays a soldier who likes cards, dice and women.  The movie mainly focuses on Wendell Corey, he's the main soldier, and Rooney is his fun loving friend who gets into trouble.  He's good in the film and I only say it's not typical Oscar quality because I wouldn't think about nominating him myself.  But now that he's here and this is an extremely weak category...

This seems tailor made to give Mickey a win.  You have Don Murray who is not only in the wrong category but also not very good, Anthony Quinn who is barely in his film and has already won, and Stack and Perkins who fall into that "it's an honor just to be nominated" category.  Mickey takes a nice supporting part in a war movie, he has never won an Oscar and was once the biggest star in Hollywood.  You can either vote for the performance or the performer and in this category there really isn't a performance to vote for so you gotta pick the performer, and that's absolutely Rooney.  I don't like the Quinn win for several reasons, he's not in the movie that much, he just won an Oscar and Mickey Rooney would have loved to win.  I can just picture the acceptance speech in my head, you know it would have been one of those Oscar moments that gets replayed every year.  The main reason I don't like the Quinn win is because of Kirk Douglas.  Kirk is acting his heart out for 2½ hours, Quinn shows up for 20 minutes and wins the Oscar.  If they gave both of them wins it would seem right but Douglas should have won first.  This isn't one of the worst decisions in Oscar history as Quinn was a great actor who delivered a solid performance but it is certainly a lame one.  A Rooney win would have brightened this year up a little and I don't think anyone would argue with it.

Oscar Winner: Anthony Quinn

My Vote: Mickey Rooney

GABBY Winner: Henry Jones for The Bad Seed

Best Supporting Actress

5. Mercedes McCambridge was probably my favorite part of the bloated and uninteresting Giant.  She gives the film a spark early on as Rock Hudson's sister who doesn't trust his new bride and tends to his land.  But then she dies off screen soon into the movie.  She already won for All The King's Men and she's barely in the film and unlike Anthony Quinn, who also has very little screen time, hers is at the beginning of an over 3 hour film.  I all but forgot her by the time the film was over.

4. Mildred Dunnock plays Baby Doll's senile old aunt.  She doesn't do much in the film but she's a nice presence throughout.  She's the cook of the house and she's not all there.  She calls everyone by a different name and she never seems to know what's going on.  The movie is pretty relentless in its darkness and uneasiness and Dunnock gives the movie its lighter moments.  Still, she isn't in the film nearly enough to consider winning this category.

3. Dorothy Malone won the Oscar for playing an alcoholic nymphomaniac in the Douglas Sirk melodrama Written On The Wind.  She plays Robert Stack's sister and she is the town tramp.  She picks up men at bars, gets them drunk and takes them home to have sex with them.  She is by far the best part of the film.  She strikes just the right balance between being over the top and campy.  Here's the thing though, I don't know if that helps her film or hurts it.  I was getting a lot of enjoyment out of her performance but it might have been for the wrong reasons.  I was never sure if this movie was taking itself seriously or not.  I laughed a lot during it, but was I supposed to?  Malone seems to know what movie she's in and she was the only one who seemed to be in on the joke.

2. Eileen Heckart only has 2 scenes in The Bad Seed but she leaves an impact.  She plays the mother of the boy who drowned.  His death left some mysteries though, why was there another girl on the dock with him?  Why was he out there to begin with?  And what happened to the medal he kept around his neck that the little girl coveted so much?  All these questions drive Heckart to drink profusely.  She shows up to the house twice, completely sloshed, and wants to question the little girl.  While not in the film that much her scenes are really the most important in the film and Heckart chews every piece of scenery, in a good way.  I can't vote for her though because she's up against one of her co-stars that was better.

1. Patty McCormack plays the demon spawn in The Bad Seed.  I don't usually vote for child actors but, damn was she good.  She is creepy as all hell in this film.  You think it's gonna be a Linda Blair type situation where she's just a sweet little girl trapped but nope, this kid is just plain evil and needs to be killed.  McCormack does a great job of being despicable enough that you want to murder her but just sweet enough that you want her to maybe repent for her evil ways.  But then you find out that there's no hope and this child must die.

Dorothy Malone wins the Oscar and I can completely understand that.  I would never vote for Dunnock or McCambridge and The Bad Seed actors cancel each other out.  That's an easy logic to follow.  I just found the performance a little too over the top.  Written On The Wind is a straight up melodrama where everyone is "soap opera acting" and it works on that level but there is something about Malone's performance where she is in a different league.  Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall and Robert Stack seem to exist in their film and Malone seems like she is in on the joke of it all.  I gotta pick one of The Bad Seed actresses and I usually don't like to vote for children but McCormick is on another level.  If you told me she was a 40 year old woman and had some sort of growth disease that made her appear like a little girl, I would totally believe you.  She doesn't seem like a child at all.  Her perfect blonde hair in pigtails seems like it doesn't belong on her head.  There's a scene near the end of the film where she confesses to her mother and there is absolutely no signs of child acting.  She seems like a woman possessed.

Oscar Winner: Dorothy Malone

My Vote: Patty McCormack

GABBY Winner: Patty McCormack

Best Director
George Stevens wins his 2nd Oscar for directing a film that didn't win Best Picture.  He also won for A Place In The Sun the year An American In Paris won.  So twice this guy wins and his film loses out to a big colorful crowd-pleaser.  I really disliked Giant but there wasn't really anyone in this category worth voting for, Michael Anderson for Around The World In 80 Days, William Wyler for Friendly Persuasion, Walter Land for The Kind And I and King Vidor for War And Peace.  Nobody really deserved this.  I like how the voters picked what seemed like the most Academy friendly film here but when it came time to vote for Best Picture they picked what gave them the most fun.  Not really a surprise at all, if everyone who was in Around The World In 80 Days voted for it, it wins easily.

Best Original Screenplay/Adapted Screenplay
A 35 minute French film with no dialogue wins Best Original Screenplay.  The Red Balloon becomes the first (and thus far only) short film to win an Oscar in any category that is not Best Live Action or Animated Short Film.  Oddly, it wasn't nominated in that category or Best Foreign Film.  Around The World In 80 Days wins Best Adapted Screenplay, which is a joke.  It was up against Friendly Persuasion, Giant and Lust For Life, which would also be poor winners.  The best in the category was Elia Kazan's Baby Doll, but that would probably prove too controversial.

Best Story
This is one of my favorite pieces of Oscar trivia.  First off, the winner was The Brave One and the award went to the guy who pretended to write it.  Real screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was on the Hollywood blacklist at the time and used a front when it came to the film's credit.  He was listed as the writer of the film years later.  But the real interesting thing about this category is that High Society got nominated.  Not the Bing Crosby/Grace Kelly/Frank Sinatra musical but a comedy from The Bowery Boys.  People thought they were voting for the musical but 2 movies came out in 1956 with the same title.  The musical High Society was based on The Philadelphia Story and would have been ineligible in this category.  Realizing that this was an obvious mistake, the writers of The Bowery Boys comedy requested that their names be withdrawn.  I would have campaigned hard if it were me.  Like, come on, this is probably your only chance.  Get dressed up, go to the ceremony and pretend it's legitimate.  Walk up to the stage when they announce the winner and pretend you heard the wrong name.  Them winning would be almost as legit as the guy who pretended to write the actual winner.

Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture/Scoring of a Musical Picture
Victor Young wins a posthumous Oscar for the score to Around The World In 80 Days.  Nothing was incredibly memorable in this category.  The scores to Anastasia, Giant and The Rainmaker are fine but not incredibly award worthy.  The King And I wins in the musical category, well deserved.

Best Song
A pretty weak category produces a pretty weak winner as 'Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" from The Man Who Knew Too Much wins.  The song isn't bad but if you didn't know that it was from this film you might think it odd.  This is an Alfred Hitchock mystery/thriller and Doris Day sings a song in it.  The song is not reflective of the film is what I'm trying to say.

Best Sound Recording
Musicals always win this category and it is proven again as The King And I beats the parting of the red seas in The Ten Commandments.

Best Art Direction (Black And White)/Art Direction (Color)
Seven Samurai earns 1 of its 2 nominations in this category but loses out to Somebody Up There Likes Me a Paul Newman boxing movie that is really good.  I can't really say that the art direction or set direction is better than Seven Samurai but the film is good.  The King And I wins the color category which is a good decision until you see the other nominees.  Around The World In 80 Days and The Ten Commandments are probably better winners but Lust For Life is just gorgeous to look at.  That would be my vote.

Best Cinematography (Black And White)/Cinematography (Color)
Somebody Up There Likes Me wins the black and white category which is a good decision.  I would have picked Baby Doll but Somebody Up There Likes Me is a Robert Wise boxing drama and if you've ever seen this or The Set Up, you know this guy knows where to put the camera.  Around The World In 80 Days wins in the color category, which is fair.  Everything else in the category is comparable.

Best Costume Design (Black and White)/Costume Design (Color)
Once again, I feel like costumes are costumes no matter if they are in black and white or color so separating them into these categories seems weird.  Nevertheless, The Solid Gold Cadillac wins the black and white category over Seven Samurai and The King And I wins the color category.

Best Film Editing
For some reason, Around The World In 80 Days wins this category.  The movie is unnecessarily long as are fellow nominees Giant and The Ten Commandments.  This is a category that should have gone to Somebody Up There Likes Me or Baby Doll, which wasn't nominated.

Best Visual Effects
The Ten Commandments beats Forbidden Planet.  No complaints here.

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1962