The Greatest Show on Earth

Well I just wrote my whole blog and when I hit post it deleted it all. So now i have to start again and think I am just going to make it a short one since I don't feel like retyping all that I had before. And since I don't think anyone actually reads this it doesn't make a difference.
The Greatest Show on Earth is considered to be one of the biggest upsets in Oscar History. It beat what was the clear favorite High Noon. This is rumored to be because High Noon was written by Carl Foreman who had just been black listed by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. High Noon was considered to be a statement against blacklisting and some including John Wayne considered it an un-American movie. So the movie about a circus won.
Cecil B. Demille is considered to be the first feature length Hollywood director. He directed 1914's 72 minute movie The Squaw Man and went on to become a great director of several big epic movies including both the 1923 and 1956 versions of The Ten Commandments. The Greatest Show on Earth is by not his best movie. It is inconsistent and has a really bad love story. The train wreck scene which amazed audience's at the time by today's standards is pretty lame. Charlton Heston was one of the best parts about the movie in one of his first movies. Also, Jimmy Stewart in a bizarre role as Buttons the clown with a dark secret did a great job too. The other actors were kind of boring and some were just annoying.
Besides The Greatest Show on Earth and High Noon the other movie from 1952 that many people consider should have won but wasn't even nominated was Singin' in the Rain.
Other Notes
First televised Oscar ceremony
The theme song for High Noon won Best Original Song and was the first song from a non-musical movie to win.

An American in Paris

Not sure how this won best picture. Definitely one of the biggest upsets for best picture. No one expected it to win.  My biggest problem with the movie is that the last 20 minutes of the film have no dialogue and is mostly dancing. I don't have anything against musicals but I like it when the music moves the movie along. There are a bunch of parts where there are musical interludes that have nothing to do with the movie. If you cut out the miscellaneous musical parts the actual story part of the movie will probably be less then one hour. And if it wasn't for my cat and dog fighting I probably would have fell asleep during the last 20 minutes like the first time I watched the movie.

The movie is about An American (Gene Kelly) an artist living in Paris. He is a poor artist living in a small studio when he meets a wealthy lady who becomes his benefactor but then he falls in love with a younger girl who he doesn't know is engaged to someone else. Gene Kelly's dancing is amazing and is one of the best parts about the movie, but his acting is not that great and the story itself just isn't enough to keep it interesting. The technical aspects of the movie is pretty good for the time. Really made great use of color and music. It probably was one of the best technical movies of the year and maybe that's how it won.

Other movies from 1951 that in my opinion are better then An American in Paris.
Strangers on the Train
The African Queen
A Streetcar Named Desire
A Place in the Sun also won six awards but not best picture the second most wins for a movie that didn't win best picture(Tied with Star Wars which also got six). Cabaret holds the record with 8 wins but lost Best Picture to The Godfather,

Other Facts
Second color movie to win best picture Gone With the Wind was the first in 1939. That's 12 years between them.
Humphrey Bogart won his first and only Academy Award for the African Queen
Rashamon won the special award for Best Foreign Language Film (and was better then An American in Paris).
A Streetcar Named Desire was the first movie to win three awards for acting(even with Marlon Brando's loss to Humphrey Bogart)

By The Numbers
Ranked number 68 on AFI Best Movies of all time in 1998 and didn't make the list in 2008
A Streetcar Named Desire ranked number 45 in 1998 and 47 in  2008
A Place in the Sun ranked number 92 in 1998 and didn't make the list in 2008
The African Queen ranked 17 in 1998 and 65 in 2008



And if you want to see some good movies from 1951
These would have been my picks for the 5 Best Picture nominations.
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All About Eve

This is one of those movies that took me by surprise. When I saw it for the first time a few years ago it just blew me away. I figured it would be another one of those old boring movies. It kind of starts out that way but changes quickly. It has some of the snappiest dialogue and Bette Davis is amazing in it. 1950 was a year of great movies with All About Eve, Sunset Blvd., and Harvey but I definitely think this deserved best picture.

All About Eve is pretty much what it says it is, a movie about Eve. Its about her rise from lowly poor girl to award winning theatre actress. The path she takes to get there is one of manipulation, black mail, and back stabbing. She uses everyone she meets to her own advantage and seeks out anyone that can help her make it to the top. The person who can get her to the top fastest is the aging actress Margo Channing played by Bette Davis. Eve (played by Ann Baxter) connives her way into Margo's life and while pretending to be a modest assistant does everything possible to become a star herself. One of the movies many themes is the place for aging actresses in theatre. This is interesting because this is still a topic discusses in Hollywood. Seems like at least a couple of times a year there is at least one magazine that has an article about roles for older actresses. Entertainment Weekly constantly talks about this. Another timeless theme in the movie is the lure of fame and success. Eve is a person willing to do anything for fame. And the movie ends with her heading to Hollywood to pursue a film career. If this movie was made today there would have been a sequel already about her exploits in film. Actually I am surprised that they never did make a sequel.

The movie had 14 Oscar nominations and won 6. The only other film to have 14 nominations was Titanic in 1997. It had 4 nominations for its actresses the most of any movie. Two for Best Actress(Ann Baxter and Bette Davis) and two for Best Supporting Actress(Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter) and didn't win any. How Bette Davis didn't win Best Actress is beyond me she gave an amazing performance, and I think Thelma Ritter had some of the best lines and should have won supporting actress. It did win best screenplay and best director for Joseph L. Mankiewicz his second year in a row winning both categories and becoming the only person ever to win back to back directing and writing awards(he won both awards the previous year for A Letter to Three Wives).
Ranks up there as one of my favorite movies to win best picture.

Other facts
Voted number 16 Best Movie of All Time by AFI in 1998 and dropped to number 28 in 2008
Voted number 21 Best Movie of All Time by Entertainment Weekly
"Fasten your seat belts it's going to be a bumpy night" (one of my favorite quotes from the movie) voted number 9 best quotes of all time by AFI
Bette Davis performance was voted number 5 of all time by premiere magazine.
Marilyn Monroe has a small part in one of her first roles on screen.
 

All The King's Men 1949

Again a little late as I usually try to post on Thursday's but had a Wedding to go to out of town and didn't get this written on time. But I did get to watch it before I left.
All the King's Men is a political drama about power and corruption. It fits with the late 40's theme of socially conscience Best Picture winners. It follows the political career of Willie Stark from small town backwoods man to Governor of the state. It is based on the book by Robert Penn Warren which is loosely based on the life of Louisiana politician Senator Huey Long. Willie starts out as a man who is fighting the injustice he sees in his home town. Unable to do anything about it he attends law school and becomes a powerful lawyer prosecuting large companies for taking advantage of the people. He eventually catches the eye of some big politicians who think they can use him for their own advantage. During the process Willie learns the tricks of getting elected and getting things done. He becomes very corrupt very fast. He gets a lot done for the state but all of it is done using black mail and payoffs. But because of all he does he becomes very popular with the common people.  Eventually he corruption starts to unravel and he begins to feel the pressure of all he has done and leads to his downfall.

The rise and fall of Willie Stark is a great story. It is amazing to see how people can change and how power goes to some people head even when they start out with the best of intentions. We see the humble beginnings of Willie dedicated husband, good father, looking out for the little people. Then he turns into a political machine only thinking about himself, cheating with multiple women, and making sure anything his son does makes him look good. While the story is good and interesting the movie it's self is kind of clunky. I don't know what it is about how the movie was edited or what but I feel it kind of leaves a lot off. They skip from one phase in Willies life to the next without giving much detail about what happens in between. He loses one election then the movie jumps to 4 years later and all of sudden he is the most corrupt politician. If it wasn't for the great story and the great acting the movie would just fall apart. The movie earned two deserving acting awards one for Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark and one for Mercedes McCambridge(who later in life became the voice of  possessed Linda Blair in the Exorcist) for Best Supporting Actress as Wilie's political aide, secretary, and mistress.  The movie lost best Director and Best Screenplay to Joseph Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives. Mankiewicz would win the same to awards the following year for All About Eve. Making him the second director to repeat winning.  There was a remake of the movie in 2006 starring Sean Penn as Willie Start. I never saw that version but am going to check it out to see how it compares to the original because if done right it could be even better. But seeing as it didn't get that many good reviews I am guessing it wasn't done right.

What I most got out of the movie is that nothing really changes. This movie is from 1949 and talking about political corruption. How has things changed? Power still corrupts, politicians still look for the easy way to get elected, and they will always tell the people what they want to hear. Makes me wonder when the good old days were that all these people talk about today. It seems to me that things have always been this way and there really is no way to change it. It reminds me of the Billy Joel song lyric "The good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems".

Hamlet 1948

What can you say about Hamlet. It is just a film version of the Shakespeare play with very few changes. Although it is the only film version that eliminated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Laurence Olivier's version from 1948 is considered one of the best versions of Hamlet on film which is saying a lot because there have been many versions. But as far as I am concerned it is one big snooze fest. If you have insomnia and need something to watch to fall asleep this would be my suggestion. Maybe I am just not into Shakespeare but I find it very boring. It doesn't bring anything new to the story, I feel like once you have seen one version there is no need to see another. Took me like five restarts to finally finish the movie because it kept putting me to sleep. I don't know how this movie beat The Treasure of the Sierra Madre for best picture. That was a great movie.

Other Facts
Laurence Olivier was the first person to Direct themselves to a Best Acting Academy Award. Roberto Benigni is the only other person to do that for Life is Beautiful in 1997. They both lost the best directing Oscar.

Eileen Herlie was 28 when she played Hamlets mother Laurence Olivier was 41.

Dentist Movies

Well I found this blog about the 5 movies not to watch before going to the dentist. And while I agree with most of it I really think that the scene from Castaway where he removes his tooth with an ice skate should be on that list. Five Flicks to Avoid Before Dental Work

Since they already had the scary movies I tried to come up with the 5 funniest movies with dentists.
Here is what I came up with.

Little Shop of Horrors-While it is on the list of movies not to watch the Dentist song is hilarious.


Bill Cosby Himself. -Some of the funniest stand up about Dentists.


The Whole Nine Yards-Fun to watch the dentists go crazy.


The Hangover- He is such a good dentist he can pull his own tooth out.

Gentleman's Agreement

I have been trying to get these out every Thursday but this one didn’t quite make it. The 20th movie to win Best Picture and the third in a series of socially aware movies Gentleman's Agreement is about a writer’s investigation into anti-Semitism in post WWII America. It took me a few tries to watch the whole movie because it's a little boring and I kept falling asleep. Gregory Peck plays a magazine writer who moves to New York from a rural town. His first assignment at the magazine is to write a piece on anti-Semitism. He tries to come up with a new angle and decides the only way he can write something different is to experience it himself and he pretends to be Jewish for six months. During the six months he experiences different types of prejudice even some from other Jews, and the whole experiment puts a strain on his relationship he just started with a young woman and also his family and friends.

The movie seems kind of dated as anti-Semitism is not a prevalent nowadays or at least not as obvious. Or maybe I am just being naïve in thinking that. Either way the movie just doesn’t resonate with me and just felt preachy. Gregory Peck gives another amazing performance as he usually does. Elia Kazan was considered one of the Best Directors of the time he had 5 nominations and 2 wins for best director. He did win best director for this movie, but I read that he did not like the movie. He felt that if lacked passion and that the romance was too forced. I agree with that. The romance in the movie was kind of forced. He meets this girl and the next day they are engaged. It appears that another girl likes him but nothing happens and it just seems like it was an after thought. The studio execs at the time did not want this movie made. Most of them were Jewish and they thought that making this movie would just stir up a hornet’s nest, but producer Darryl F. Zanuck thought it was a good topic to talk about after the revelations of what happened in German Concentration Camps. While the movie did cause some problems wjen it was released for the most part it was widely accepted and was one of the highest grossing movies of the year. It appears to me that it was a bad year for film and there were not many good movies released that year and this might have been the best movie of the year. The only other movie I saw that was released in 1947 was Song of the South and while that is notable for other reasons I would not consider it a great movie. I never did see Miracle on 34th Street even though it is played every year at Christmas time I am not much into Christmas movies.

Other Facts
Beat Miracle on 34th Street for best picture.
The first special award for foreign film was given to Shoeshine, although it was not made an official competitive category till 1956.
James Baskett received an Honorary Award for playing Uncle Remus in Song of the South making him the first African American male win an academy award, (the first African American Male to win a competitive award would be Sidney Poitier for The Defiant Ones in 1958). Song of the South also won best song for “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” and oddly enough Song of the South was never released on DVD in the United States because of what is seen as racial stereotyping of African Americans.