Separate Tables

“We don’t have very much hope together.” “Have we all that much apart?”

There’s really not much worse than holding yourself to expectations that you really don’t need to, or that you know you won’t fulfill. I started this blog as a writing exercise for myself about the films I was watching for the List, and as my writing improved & my ability to detail my thoughts about movies got more in-depth, along the way it sort of grew into a seeming need to write more completely and thus to have much more structure to the reviews I was writing; that’s all well and good, but it also makes it exponentially more difficult for me to write a review on a film, even one I generally liked, when I have genuinely nothing to discuss about it or anything to say that could be wrapped into the structure of a more “proper” review. It makes it that much harder to find a throughline or entry point to talk about the film or elaborate upon, and I end up putting off writing it as a result for longer than I meant to until… well, until a month has gone by and I’m still having trouble thinking of anything. Case in point: Separate Tables, a film from ‘Marty’ director Delbert Mann that’s fairly well-shot, pretty well-written, and certainly well-cast & acted, and that I actually quite liked when I finally did watch it. Now, ask me the particulars about what I liked & why I thought what worked well did work, and… you might have to ask me again in another month.

Separate Tables is actually the collective name of two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan, that on-stage are usually put on one after another and which usually feature the same actors & actresses playing the lead parts in both; here, the two stories are intertwined into a single narrative and with a more fleshed-out supporting cast to fill out the setting of the picture. That setting is the Hotel Beauregard, an extended-stay lodging somewhere on the southern coast of England, and the cast is a myriad of long-term & short-lived guests that stay at the hotel, as well as a few of the staff that take care of them in both body & mind; namely, the manager Ms. Cooper, who winds up as a confidant & shoulder to lean on for a few of the main players in both stories. The one follows Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth, she a well-known actress and he as her former husband who finally left after no longer putting up with her manipulative & toying manner of affection, who must come to terms with what feelings they have for each other after she tells him she is engaged, despite having taken great lengths to track him down to the hotel itself; the other features David Niven and Deborah Kerr as a somewhat blandly chipper British Major and the young madam in love with him despite her waifish plainness & being browbeaten by her uptight domineering mother, who must come to terms with their own self-identities after an article in a local newspaper covers a recent social impropriety the major was found guilty of, one he seeks to hide from the other hotel guests and that the stiff-lipped mother is all too happy to use as kindling to rally the other guests into wanting him expelled from the premises.

If you got the impression from that plot summary that this is very much that type of film that’s more of an actors showcase than anything, you’re right on the money; while everything else about the production is decent as a standard, it’s really the writing and the performances that take center stage with this one, and in this regard, the cast is excellent across the board. Burt Lancaster almost threatens to derail his character when he first appears in the same goofily cringeworthy way his entire performance did in The Rose Tattoo, but thankfully he settles back into the classic dramatic glower he makes work so well once Rita Hayworth appears back into his life, and the narrative tension between the two characters largely works through the whole film thanks to the two of them. The other story seems less effective comparatively, and has less happening with it, but David Niven manages to light it back up whenever the fire threatens to dim too much; though it does beg the question, with how his character is absent for a good half of his storyline that already is only half of the film itself, of how he got his Oscar nom in the lead category instead of supporting (and even went on to win it, becoming the shortest performance by runtime to win the Best Actor Oscar). Deborah Kerr has, by design, less to do with her character, and is decidedly more melodramatic in going about it, but it fits with what the film is going for, and especially so with her and Niven in the final scene, which hits the hardest and ends the film on a perfect note; Wendy Hiller as Ms. Cooper carries much more of the “supporting female character” title throughout the story & does quite a good job with it, and I’m pleased she won her own Oscar category as well.

Besides a quick mention of how well the final scene of the film serves to tie the narrative together (as a bit of a shout-out to the writing), you’ll notice that I really only talked about the cast in that last paragraph, and it’s because I basically didn’t have anything else to talk about in regards to what I liked about Separate Tables and why I thought the film was good. I hate to feel like I’m repeating myself for lack of anything else to say, but that’s kinda exactly what’s happening, and me waffling on about other aspects others have brought up that I could but don’t really have anything to say about would be me basically trying to fill airtime, and that really shouldn’t be what ends up holding me back from writing these in the future. Even with my lack of specific talking points, though, I would still recommend Separate Tables; even with how simple it is in its bones, it ends up being surprisingly complex in the end, and is much more a thinking person’s picture than a pure escapism entertainment that most of the other nominees I’ve been getting through in the past while have largely been at the deep center of their cores. I think it’s that difference that sticks out to me the most, and is the biggest factor in why I liked this as much as I did. Now, if only I could figure out how to talk at length & in detail about more things like that, so I can feel more often that I have something in general to say.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10

Auntie Mame

Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!

As much as the Academy tends to favor dramas for its Best Picture slate (or the occasional comedic drama, if they’re pressed to push their boundaries a tad), it is nice to see an out-and-out comedy make it into the official field of five. Auntie Mame is based on a stage production (as so many films & nominees of this era tend to be), itself based on a novel, and Rosalind Russell originated the title role for the theatrical run before revitalizing her film career in this adaptation, even getting a Tony nomination for the former and an Oscar nom for the latter. Truly, this is Russell’s picture more than anything, providing her with an avenue to basically go nuts with her character & the wacky, madcap hijinks she gets up to & puts others through, and it’s this that is what makes this a comedy in every aspect. Even with the nice change of pace a comedy brings to Best Picture, though, it does make it kinda hard to evaluate the merits of a film like this against those more typical of the Academy’s standard selections; I opined early in my Best Picture odyssey that comedies pretty rarely tend to have that heft or weight that leaves the sort of substantial impact the Academy likes to look for, even a comedically-minded type of impact, and Auntie Mame unfortunately doesn’t do nearly enough with what it does to overcome that additional hurdle that comedies face with the Academy.

Rosalind Russell careens through the silver screen as Mame Dennis, a flamboyant and free-spirited Manhattan socialite determined to live life to its absolute fullest, throwing lavish parties at her elaborate New York apartment almost as frequently as she completely overhauls the decor & landscape of said apartment to meet whatever whims catch her fancy. This decidedly liberal & cavalier approach to life stands in contrast to her brother Edwin, and when Edwin dies unexpectedly, his young son Patrick is remanded into Mame’s care for lack of anywhere else to go, with strict instructions in his will that Mame’s freewheeling potential influence on Patrick be held in check as much as possible by the executors of his estate and Patrick’s future inheritance. Though Mame is so absorbed in her lifestyle that she barely even registers at first that Patrick is to live with her, she quickly comes to care a great deal about her nephew, and as Patrick grows into adulthood, she begins to take it upon herself to make sure that Patrick acquires a zest for life and gets what he wants out of it, especially against the competing and restrictive influences of his more conservative benefactors.

My plot summary was particular with the certain aspects of the film (besides the obvious leading actress) that are ostensibly its selling points, chiefly the extensive and bombastic set design of Mame’s apartment as well as the myriad of events & experiences she gets up to both inside and outside said domicile, and man does the film have a field day with both of these aspects of filmmaking. The narrative covers more than a few years with Mame and her new ward, with Patrick starting from a young lad on the cusp of adolescence all the way through to him as a young adult with a fiancée in the mix, and the passage of time can be easily discerned & followed by whatever lavish theme Mame has chosen to adorn her living space & tie the decorations together. Even more frequently switched out are Mame’s own clothing & ensemble, and I’d be surprised if Russell ever wears the same outfit more than once in the entire film; it honestly feels like the film was making a concerted effort toward the Oscars for Art Direction & Costume Design more than anything, though it still missed out on a nomination for the latter. As for the narrative, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect an episodic comedy film to lean on, so if that and the various antics of Mame Dennis aren’t your cup of tea, then what are you even here for, really? For what it’s worth, Russell makes an absolute feast of this role and the picture, and indeed the film, even more than the excessive production design & costuming, basically exists as a vehicle for her to own this role and little more beyond that, but she is never not entertaining, so it’s a little more understandable. Additional commendations go to the supporting players, who all strongly commit to their parts in the comedy bits that make up the frame of the picture, in particular Peggy Cass as Mame’s off-beat quirk of a secretary Agnes Gooch, as well as the three actors who play Patrick’s fiancée Gloria Upson and her parents; the comedy of the film wouldn’t have worked half as well had the supporting cast wilted against the power of Russell’s screen presence, so kudos to them for staying firm in selling the humor throughout the film.

This is another good example of how modern sensibilities of moviegoing often don’t match up with how classic films used to do things; going to the cinema for two and a half hours just to see Rosalind Russell cavort around the screen for the whole thing was evidently a rollicking good time for Golden Age audiences (and indeed, this ended up being the second-highest grossing film of the year), enough so for a whole bunch of people to put their effort together into making a whole film of just that, but it feels almost not worth the effort nowadays to make a trip out to a movie theater to see a two-plus hour film that’s literally nothing but one star just being wacky the entire time, with nothing more to the picture past that. It might be easier for a modern audience to have opportunities to bring this one up & give it a try with the advent of streaming, but I still struggle with coming up with actual selling points to this one, that I could use to try & actually convince someone to go out of their way to give it a watch, beyond “Rosalind Russell at her madcap best”; indeed, that might be enough for some, but it’s apparently not enough for me, and it’s this lack of substantive value, even disregarding this being a comedy or a different genre, that has me uncertain about this film’s real standing for Best Picture contention. Comedies tend to fall into this trap much more often & much more easily, and it might be why they are hard to come by when one goes through a heavyweight Oscar category like Best Picture, and Auntie Mame, while still being rather entertaining and a smorgasbord of production value, does nothing to meet that additional challenge & overcome it.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

Judging Oscar: Best Picture 1957

-Year in Summary/What Did Win-

Evidently the growing expansion of the Oscars as an award body (not to mention a cultural touchstone) was becoming a concern for the Academy, as the 30th Awards were notably more consolidated overall; the Academy trimmed the number of votable categories down from 30 to 24, including combining the black-and-white & color categories together (an experiment that would end up reverted in the next couple years), and while some notable people & affiliated groups within the industry had varying levels of voting privileges for the awards in years past, this year saw the start of Oscar winners & nominees being decided upon solely by members of the Academy in its various branches. Even the television broadcast skipping between Hollywood & New York was abandoned, the ceremony this year broadcasting entirely from the Pantages Theater in L.A., though the duties of emceeing the show were still split between five different stars of stage & screen (as well as an animated segment hosted by Donald Duck). All of this paring down from the Academy is even somewhat reflected in the nominees themselves, with a handful of films taking up slots in almost every major category, including the first time since the Academy cut the Best Picture field back down to five that the Best Picture and Best Director nominees lined up exactly; one of those pairs were director David Lean and his film The Bridge on the River Kwai, which quickly took over the ceremony as the night went on, winning all but one of the categories it was nominated for, including Best Director and Best Picture.

-Ranking the Nominees-

-For the film with the most nominations going into the ceremony, Sayonara was the nominee I ended up feeling the most ambivalent about (though there’s not much of a gap that separates it from the fourth place finisher, admittedly). While it has some nice things going for it, namely the production itself & its use of the scenery of Japan as well as a solid supporting turn from Red Buttons, the nice parts can’t hold the picture up well overall, and especially against the film’s lesser aspects, the most unavoidably prominent being Marlon Brando’s acting style kneecapping the entire rest of the production. Brando may ultimately be effective with what he does, but he also kills the ability of the rest of the cast & crew to make the film anywhere close to good enough to match him, and the film overall just feels both too long & not enough of a story for what it does, and it is especially not effective enough with the social commentary it’s trying to make to leave the impact it should (or, at least, that I felt it should’ve). It is overall the least-successful film with what it tries to be of the five nominees, so it’s ending up in last for me.

-There’s admittedly not a whole lot of real, effective selling points for Peyton Place, and far less so if one is not a fan of melodrama; if you’re curious how the whole genre of daytime TV soap opera and the conventions it stamped into the public consciousness really came about, look no further than this film and the subsequent primetime serial that followed it. Still, with all the marks seemingly against it, I had a pretty easy time with this one; it’s got more than enough plot to fill out its running time & keep it engaging throughout, it’s consistently nice to look at, and while it is technically a progenitor of the soap opera genre, the tropes that it uses are marginal & nascent as a result and are thus far less nauseating to endure. As ambivalent as I am about the film’s overall objective worth & merit, I still enjoyed watching Peyton Place, which is just slightly more than what I got from the previous nominee, so this ends up here.

–Witness for the Prosecution comes off as one of the more basic films in this slate of five (being one of the two black-and-white nominees certainly doesn’t help it any there), but as I tried to lay out as thick as I could in my review, don’t let that fool you into thinking this isn’t an entertaining watch. It may be basic in construction and old-fashioned with its presentation, but damn if it doesn’t still hit as well as an Agatha Christie adaptation should, and with Billy Wilder in the director’s chair & helming the script, you’d be a fool to think that you won’t have a good time with this, especially with Charles Laughton in the leading role of a character that seems tailor-made for him (and with plenty of excellent supporting players backing him up as well). This is undoubtedly a solid picture, but it is also still a very basic & rudimentary one, and while that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) count as points against the film, it does keep it from getting any higher in this ranking.

-As much as people hold David Lean up as the Golden-Age master of the epic, he didn’t start out that way; he was much more a director of pointed character and circumstance, interested as much in why his characters did what they did as he was in setting the environment around them. Almost too-befitting its title, The Bridge on the River Kwai stands right in the transition between the early phases of Lean and the large-scale epics he would later be defined by; not quite at the level of grandeur of a Lawrence of Arabia or a Dr. Zhivago, but still dipping his toes considerably into that much-broader pool, shooting entirely on location in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and making ample use of its jungle scenery. While the film itself is highly effective, just barely keeping its tongue in its cheek about the pointlessness in actions of war while thoroughly building up to the ending, it still manages to hold off with its scale & its scope just enough to where I find myself hesitating in citing the film as an all-timer, and if you don’t get much from war films in particular, I’d imagine you would get even less from this than the average moviegoer. I wouldn’t go nearly as far as to say the film is unsatisfying, but it’s those reasons that keep me from fully throwing my weight behind it in winning Best Picture this year, especially against the one remaining nominee.

-In terms of simplicity, you can’t get much more basic with a film than setting it in a single room, with no frills in cinematography or visual effects, and relying entirely on the dialogue of the script to carry the drama of the narrative and the interest of the audience. And yet, there’s something about exactly that that makes 12 Angry Men an absolutely spellbinding watch; lay out the stakes of the narrative and hold it to real-time, keep the interactions between the characters evolving & interesting, and throw in just enough know-how with the camerawork to emphasize the shifting mood of the narrative and the men in the room, and you end up with a film that sucks you in and refuses to let go until the final verdict is dropped. This is an outstanding example of how a basic premise, solid filmmaking, and a fully-realized script can add up to a film that is so much more than the sum of its parts, and despite it not being the full-color, big-production epic the Academy wanted to highlight as the future of movies, it is by and large the best of this field of nominees, and should’ve walked away with this award.

-What Should’ve Been Here-

I haven’t seen much from 1957 outside the 1001 List, so I can’t speak for other Oscar contenders & box office hits like Funny Face, Pal Joey, Les Girls, & Raintree County; I can speak for An Affair to Remember, in that I didn’t get enough out of it myself to put it up for this category. Other English-language films from the List include The Incredible Shrinking Man, which wouldn’t get my vote for Best Picture (Special Effects and possibly Art Direction, absolutely) and was definitely too genre for the Academy; Sweet Smell of Success and Paths of Glory, however, were well within bounds and should’ve both merited serious consideration. On the foreign front, though, is a veritable wealth of contenders; The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Throne of Blood, The Cranes are Flying, Mother India, and Nights of Cabiria are all solidly better than two or even three of the actual nominees, and the latter two were in the field for Best Foreign Language Film, with Cabiria winning.

-What I Would’ve Picked-

Even with some of the foreign contenders that I did particularly enjoy, and with a couple excellent domestic runners-up in Paths of Glory and Sweet Smell of Success, I’m still giving the crown to 12 Angry Men. I don’t know if I could cite a better example of a great film that does so much with so little – that’s like bonus points in my book.

-How Did Oscar Do?-

It seems with all the consolidation they were doing, the Academy couldn’t branch out & notice some of the more worthy films for this category that didn’t otherwise check enough of their regular boxes, especially the one about films being in the English language. Of course, it’s still a long time out from Oscar widening its attention enough to nominate foreign films more in the major categories, but it’s years like this one that show how debilitating that slow progress can really be; couple that with a few pretty egregious domestic misses, and it’s clear how much progress Oscar still has to make before they start getting it right. That is, depending on your inclination toward the Academy, if they ever do.

Witness for the Prosecution

“You’re not worried about the verdict, are you?” “It’s not their judgment that worries me; it’s mine.”

I love it when, in discussions of the all-time great directors, I see Billy Wilder’s name pop up, and I love it specifically because of how much Billy Wilder and his films just don’t care about conforming to the perception of an all-time director or auteur. A lot of the all-time directors have a style or technique that’s singularly identifiable; you think of directors like Kubrick or Welles or Hitchcock, or foreign contenders like Bergman or Fellini or Kurosawa, and you know when you’re watching one of their films – they’re like a genre unto themselves. Billy Wilder’s films are almost the antithesis of that, not because he’s so versatile that he swings so drastically in genre from project to project, but because he almost deliberately avoids imparting any sense of style or directorial touch onto his films; they exist merely for their own sake and for the sake of their story, and aside from him also writing his own screenplays, they feel like they could’ve been directed by almost anyone. Despite how unremarkable his films seem when you’re watching them, you’d be hard-pressed to not enjoy a viewing of a Billy Wilder picture should you sit down for one, and that’s really at the heart of my ultimate opinion of Witness for the Prosecution; there’s not too much about it that really sticks out or is overtly amazing, but damn if it isn’t still a satisfying movie either way.

Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a highly well-regarded barrister in the Central Court of England, has just returned to his office after surviving a heart attack; though he is still on the mend and his home & work care are incessantly supervised by his nurse, Ms. Plimsoll, he is eager to resume his legal duties as a criminal lawyer, despite his doctor advising him against taking any criminal cases, lest the stress of the work bring about another heart attack. Though his medical advisors try and steer him toward simpler, civil cases, a juicy murder trial practically falls into his lap when he meets with Leonard Vole, who is accused of murdering an elderly widow for her inheritance in a case that’s been at the forefront of the public eye. Convinced after meeting with him that Vole is innocent, Robarts decides to join Vole’s defense team, but arguing Vole’s case in the upcoming trial may be just as challenging as figuring out the defense’s case at all, especially after Robarts meets with Vole’s German wife Christine, whose shifty & off-putting demeanor seems only to add more mystery & questions to Robarts’ assessment of the case instead of providing him answers.

As I mentioned in the opener, Wilder’s films are so often scant on ostentatious details that it’s perplexing trying to come up with things to bring up or talk about, and Witness for the Prosecution is no different; the cinematography & production design is just enough to construct the setting of the film and get us through the picture, with some individual parts that seem a mite more purposeful than others throughout the runtime, but nothing more to really get in a twist over. Thus, it falls back on the screenplay that Wilder has written, and the actual story he tells with it, to let us know that this is a solid picture, and if you’re expecting Wilder to come up short when it comes to his screenplays, you don’t know Billy Wilder. It helps significantly that this is also an adaptation of an Agatha Christie play, with all the intrigue and mystery (and even a twist ending or two, which the film even goes so far as to audibly encourage you over the closing credits not to spoil for your friends & family) that Christie is known for, and so it would take a concerted effort from a half-baked director to not make this an entertaining film; if that is at all your concern, then again, you really don’t know Billy Wilder. Aside from the narrative, the only other real standout of the film is the cast, and everyone who has an important role is solid & effective at a minimum; Charles Laughton is exactly as fully entertaining as Sir Robarts as you already know he’s going to be, with his back-and-forth play with Elsa Lanchester as Nurse Plimsoll being a constant highlight, while Marlene Dietrich is an effective scene-stealer and gives a surprising turn for anyone who only thinks of her in the sultry European persona she’s built over the years, reminding us that she’s also a plenty-capable actress when she puts a mind to it.

As much as I enjoyed watching the film, and especially with the previously-mentioned twist ending that knocks you for a loop in a good way, I’m not too certain if I’ll ever really feel the need to watch this one again. As much as the ending had me riding high, it also made me keenly aware that I could potentially over-judge the film as a whole just because of it, and I was particularly attentive to how I felt about the film overall in comparison to the ending as a result. It was that lack of any other really discernable characteristics about it (aside from the screenwriting and some cast standouts) that had me ending up on the rating I’m giving this, and I really struggle with any notion of bumping it up higher than that. But again, though I may not have made it abundantly clear with my review, that’s not to say that this is poor or unentertaining, because it is very solidly not; it’s only that the entertainment & production value isn’t enough to compel me to want to watch this several times over, at least in the immediate future. But, as I’ve said a number of times over the years on this blog, just because a film seems basic and rudimentary in its construction should not mean that it can’t or won’t be a good film, and Witness for the Prosecution (along with plenty of other Billy Wilder films) fits that descriptor like a well-worn glove.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10

Sayonara

I am not allowed to love… But I will love you, if that is your desire.

I wonder sometimes if I’m being too misguided in wanting to find or figure out actual solutions to the problems I encounter, or that I see in the wider world. So often, when there’s a problem or issue that’s on a particularly bigger scale, or systemic in origin, or more complex in detail, it feels like the prevailing tactic to working with those problems, as well as addressing them in the public forum even in mediums like entertainment, is a vague and ethereal surface-level understanding of the issue; one that both refuses to dig any deeper to get at the root causes of the problem & bring them to clearer focus, and that also points at the pervasive surface-level understanding itself as an excuse to offer no real workable solutions. Feelings (or even outright statements) like “This is just how things are”, or “You just don’t do that”, or “There’s nothing that I/we/you can do about it”, show up often in movies and shows that deal with topics like this and in this way, and it feels like hand-waving away any attempt to put actual effort into solving the problem, and films like this are more often than not doubly aggravating in how they end, with only a slight fanciful notion that our heroes are going to do the thing anyway despite it being indicative of the problem as if that itself is all the solution one needs; it’s a conclusion within spitting distance of “…and they all lived Happily Ever After.”, and it feels as disingenuously progressive as ‘Happily Ever After’ feels unquestioningly conclusive. I know I’m diverging into quite the rant to start this off, but I’m struggling quite a bit with the general notion of Sayonara, a film by Joshua Logan about U.S. military men post-WWII engaging in interracial relationships with Japanese women against public opinion and military commanders’ orders, being a highly progressive picture for its era on such a topic, when it barely scratches the surface of the issue it’s about and offers no further understanding of how the problem should be solved or dealt with.

Marlon Brando stars as Maj. Lloyd Gruver, a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force and son of an Army general; on tour in the Korean War and known for his relentless work ethic in the air, he’s forcibly given some R&R by his commander, Gen. Webster, who reassigns him to a low-contact air base in Japan where he’ll basically have nothing to do, and can also spend some time with his visiting fiancée Eileen, who is also Webster’s daughter. Transferring with Gruver is his friend & crew chief, Joe Kelly, who’s much more eager to go to Japan than Lloyd as he is engaged to a local Japanese woman in the area, Katsumi, and he plans to make the marriage official while there, despite the higher-ups in military command doing as much as they can to discourage such fraternization in their ranks, as interracial marriage is still not 100% legal in the whole of the United States. Joe is determined to go through with it, however, and he asks Lloyd to be his best man & witness for the marriage; Lloyd, despite his personal misgivings, agrees to his friend’s request, and thus a Pandora’s box threatens to open when some of the commanders hear about Joe and Lloyd’s actions, Joe’s future plans to take his bride home with him to the States, and Lloyd’s own changing loyalties when he himself falls in love with a famous Japanese stage performer named Hana-ogi.

So, there’s really two main focuses or selling points to Sayonara, and since I expounded quite a bit on the main one in the opener already, I shouldn’t waste time on getting to the film’s other main attraction. Marlon Brando is the star here, only three odd years since he won the Oscar after a string of nominations, and if the relatively-meager presence of his name on the poster up there attempts to be humble about Brando’s role in the film, his actual performance and the details of how the film works to center itself around him all but eliminate any notions of the word “humble”. Complete with a down-home Southern accent and more than enough of Brando’s typical waffling mannerisms right from the starting gun, Brando’s Lloyd Gruver almost threatens to derail the film before it even gets going, and for the first time I got an acute understanding of those who look down on Marlon Brando with the deprecative nickname “The Mumbler”; his first scene has him already fully-invested in his character’s Southern drawl and lackadaisical manner of speaking, and it was incredibly off-putting to be dropped into the film with Brando’s affectations without having gotten used to them beforehand. I’ll grant him that it did grow on me the more the film went on, and it helped make his character feel like a more fully-developed individual by the end of the film, but that there was no easing into it or transitory introduction meant the difficulty curve of viewer investment was jacked up right at the start of the film, and it was so steadfast and all-encompassing that it felt like the rest of the cast didn’t know what to do while he was off doing his own thing. His method of intentionally fumbling for lines in order to appear as casual and natural as possible, particularly how others around him thus had to deal with his acting & mannerisms, even seemed to bleed into the filmmaking itself; it became conspicuous whenever the camera cuts to someone else for a reaction shot or the editor tries to find a way to keep the viewer engaged whenever Brando is fumbling around for too long, like the entire production, actors and crew alike, knew that this is Brando who would be doing this and so the rest of the production had to figure out a way to shoot & edit the movie around him. His method might work very well for him, but for the first time it was readily apparent to me how it was also handicapping the efforts of everyone else, and I could better understand how other people could view his acting style as intolerable. The rest of the cast seemed much more aware of what film was trying to be made, and fit in a lot better with the setting and the story; Red Buttons as Joe Kelly was particularly memorable, being solid & self-assured of what’s right no matter what obstacles were trying to throw themselves in his way to stop him, and I’m glad Buttons won Best Supporting Actor for this (though I’m not quite convinced that Miyoshi Umeki as his wife Katsumi really did enough to warrant her winning Supporting Actress). Miiko Taka as Hana-ogi had little to do, aside from fall for Brando’s character because the plot required it of her, and Ricardo Montalban somehow got cast as a Japanese kabuki star, but he makes do with the role well enough. The production design & scenery of the film is also worth a mention, and might be the only other thing to consider as a selling point & worth the watch.

If I’m being honest, even with how much I ranted about the film’s superficial exploration of racial issues or how Brando being Brando almost upstages the film entirely, I didn’t really think Sayonara was a bad film. I would say it’s too long for what little it does do, but the production itself is pretty nice and the narrative at the heart of all the political issues at play is handled well enough. To tie this back into my diversion in the opener, what bothers me the most about the film is that it doesn’t do nearly enough with what it’s trying to do, that a film like this covering the topic it’s covering in the time period the film was made in could’ve and should’ve taken a long and confident step forward in addressing this issue and what more needs to be done, instead of side-eyeingly scraping a toe over the line and looking around for the validation that doing so is indeed something to be considered progress. Maybe it’s just me being a person living in the modern world; maybe this indeed was a substantial jump in normalizing interracial relationships and eliminating the stigma for audiences of the later 1950s. For me, though, I can’t help but feel disappointed that a film like this, that deals with its topic so shallowly, was considered progressive and forward-thinking for what it does, mainly because it feels like films and think pieces on topics and problems all the way up to today, some 60 to 70 years later, take much the same approach. And it makes me wonder, with the style of nihilistic cynicism typical of my generation, if people actually really want to figure out and solve such systemic problems that face the world or even just our everyday lives, or if they really only want to just feel like having concern or some passing thoughts about the problem is itself doing something about it. I can’t claim to have the single, definitive, workable solution to something like discrimination against interracial marriage, or a lot of other pressing or persistent societal issues, but it bothers me that it seems like so few people are actually invested in working out problems to find actual solutions to them. With films like Sayonara and their approach to problem-solving being very much the general standard, though, perhaps it’s me that has to accept that I’m the one being naive about it.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

Peyton Place

I don’t want you to be like everybody in this town. I want you to rise above Peyton Place!

Peyton Place had a bit of an uphill battle with me from the get-go; it’s comfortably over two-and-a-half hours long, it tells the story of a small American town writ large (and thus threatens to be narratively aimless in its effort to be all-encompassing), and it’s also a literary adaptation to boot. Throw in that the film would end up tying the record for having the most Oscar nominations without winning any of them, and it’s rather difficult to muster excitement for what all signs are pointing to be a slog, albeit a likely well-produced slog, to get through. Well, far be it from fate to have my expectations exactly met all of the time; not only did I get through the film in one sitting (something that’s been increasingly rarer for me to say about these nominees lately), it was actually quite easy for me to do so, and I might’ve even enjoyed the experience (if only, perhaps, because of that). Now, whether or not I can wholeheartedly say it’s a good film might be something else entirely, but I’m at least thankful that it wasn’t a struggle for me to sit through it.

Peyton Place is a small, idyllic New England town circa 1940 or so, where everybody knows everybody and anything that happens reaches everyone’s ears before the day is through. We follow several characters, most of which are either students at Peyton Place High School or are otherwise affiliated with it through family or work, and who all have their own private lives to lead & wishes to fulfill beyond the public life of the community and the borders of the town. It’s the bridging of that gap between the socialite community and the private affairs of the citizens that ends up as the point of the film and the driving force of the narrative more than anything, as some events occur that bring about excited whispers and others that threaten to (or do) incur salacious gossip & talk of scandal, culminating in the courtroom case of one of its young citizens that, uncomfortably for its populace, brings into sharp focus the downsides of the town’s insular & over-connected community and the reasons why so many of its young people are all too eager to leave Peyton Place and never look back.

Yes, that plot summary is indeed very scant on specific details, not to avoid spoilers but rather because it’s pretty much the only way to do it and have it be succinct & brief, instead of having to inadvertently recount everything about the plot of the film and the particulars of it. It seems that when it comes to lengthy runtimes and a film’s efforts to justify having one, Peyton Place has hit upon a good way to do it: just have a whole lot of plot, and infer the presence of even more. The cast of characters is quite vast compared to most films from the 1950s, with a good five or six of the high school kids heading up either main or subplots, and all of them having family members that are equally involved in the same, with everyone’s stories being more or less interconnected over the length of the film. This does make it easy to stay engaged with the story, since there’s always something happening and things that are leading to other things, but just because it’s got a lot going on to stay involved in isn’t to say that Peyton Place as a film and as a narrative will be for everyone; as should be obvious from the plot summary and the keywords used in it, this is a melodrama first and foremost, and whether or not your palette for stories is primed for the types of relationship drama and secrets brought to shameful light that puts this just before the line of a daytime soap opera (fitting, then, that the original book would go on to be re-adapted as a TV drama that helped to launch the prime-time serial format that took hold in the 70s & 80s) that will determine if or how much of Peyton Place you’ll be able to stomach. What helps significantly, for me at least, is that even the melodramatic beats of the story aren’t overacted in the way typical of the genre; there’s some tears & raised voices, sure, and that stupidly-bombastic horn music that blares in after a particularly “jaw-dropping” development does show up on a few occasions, but that the actions & reactions of the cast are pretty believable & understandable overall does a lot to help us get past the few melodrama cliches that are still present. Most of the cast are great in their roles, with Hope Lange as Selena and Russ Tamblyn as Norman being standouts for me, and Lana Turner proves fully capable as the cast’s anchor & arguable lead; Diane Varsi as her daughter Allison and Lee Philips as her romantic interest Mike Rossi both felt a little wafer-thin in their efforts, though, which makes some sense as this was the feature debut for both of them. Extra shoutout to the cinematography as well; it may not have anything particularly amazing to display, but it still does a nice job depicting the quiet, colorful beauty of this small American town.

Apparently, the reception of Peyton Place the film was a bit more questionable compared to Peyton Place the book: the latter was a sensation upon release for how much it completely leaned into the lurid, sex-filled, ‘scandal underneath the picturesque American town’ premise that the film admittedly waters down and only marginally hints at; a decision almost certainly made to comply with the Hays Code that, even still, caused a lot of critics to call the film sterilized & having lost most of what made the novel what it was. Me personally, I had no knowledge or history with Peyton Place as an IP before this, as a book or as a TV show, and I think it was this that led me to enjoy the film version as a passive viewer & moviegoer instead of being wrapped up in expectations from the soap opera or being let down by changes from the book. Without the baggage of cultural knowledge, I could take what the film itself was giving me on its own terms, and even though the story was a melodrama at its core & did a lot to set a standard that future soap operas and the like would run from (and far further with), I really didn’t mind watching Peyton Place, and it was such an easy watch for me that I don’t think I could really call it a bad film. I’m still unsure if it does enough to be considered a good one, but it never felt like it was unsuccessful with the various things it did do, and it holds together a lot better than quite a few other nominees (even with its runtime), so that’s definitely a win here that I feel like I’ve been lacking lately.

Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

Judging Oscar: Best Picture 1956

-Year in Summary/What Did Win-

Back when I started the Best Picture fields of the 1950s, I quickly picked up on (and mentioned) the growing incursion of big-budget, full-color, epic-production films into the category, now that such features & selling points were becoming much more the standard than the exceptional outlier (throw in the addition of widescreen cinema as a format in ’53, and the coming tsunami almost seemed inevitable). For 1956, the apotheosis of this trend has finally arrived; this is the first Best Picture field where every nominee is in color, and to boot, four of the five nominees were also four of the five top-grossing pictures of the year. While Best Picture seemed to be approaching a fully-realized glory, the Academy was still figuring some other things out with its awards; the long-time award for Best Story, won this year by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo under a pseudonym, also gave a mistaken nomination to the screenwriters of High Society, a Bowery Boys film from the previous year that shared its title with the higher-profile musical from 1956 that the nom was intended for, and despite the musical being a remake of The Philadelphia Story and thus rendering it ineligible for the category. These mix-ups and blurred lines between categories and the work being honored is likely the reason the Academy phased out this category the following year, leaving the writing awards simply between Original & Adapted Screenplays. This was also the first year of the Best Foreign Language Film award being a competitive category, the inaugural award going to Italy for La Strada. For the top-grossers vying for the big one, however, producer Mike Todd managed to strike gold on his first time out (and only time, before he died the next year in a plane crash), winning Best Picture for Around the World in 80 Days.

-Ranking the Nominees-

-For what I said about this field being chock-full of big-budget, huge-production, box office smash hits, it’s probably fitting then that I ditch the one nominee right off the bat that doesn’t otherwise fit into that group of four. While Friendly Persuasion is fairly nice to look at, being a color film that makes good use of its on-location shooting & period piece setting, everything else about it was either unfocused in its intent, unconcerned with being engaging, or unsure of how to do what it wants to, and my saying that about a William Wyler film at this stage of his career is not something I expected to be able to, and I’m even less inclined to be more forgiving about it. That this also managed to win the Palme d’Or the following year at Cannes is just added hilarity to me, as this really is not successful enough at whatever it’s trying to do to be within reaching distance of major awards, including Best Picture.

-It’s routine among rankings of Best Picture winners to put Around the World in 80 Days near the bottom of the list, and after watching it myself, I don’t begrudge any of those listmakers for doing so; this would’ve been just another flighty, anti-narrative, location-footage travelogue of a film, but that it’s three entire hours in runtime and does so little with everything it throws at the screen (and boy do I mean everything, including all the cameos the film can’t help itself but include) only magnifies all the problems inherent in the film, and that such a film went on to win Best Picture, against anything but the absolute worst possible field the Academy could’ve put against it (and this field is hardly that), is merely the final nail in the coffin. I will say, though, that while the previous nominee had left me flat-out bored almost all of the time, a lot of the cinematography here is pretty nice and some of the humor in certain sequences works pretty well (more often than not thanks to Cantinflas as Passepartout), and so this is only just barely not ending up in last place for me. But only just.

-If big budgets and lavish productions is what one is coming into this nominee field for, I imagine you’ll get plenty to sate your appetite when watching The King and I. The production value in this film, from the sets to the costumes to the dance numbers, is definitely a feast for the eyes, but it’s whether or not the film is a feast for the ears as well that ended up the bigger question for me. As a musical, if the songs don’t work or are just unmemorable, then you’ve failed at the primary goal of working in that genre, and when I as a viewer am left unengaged with the musical numbers and can’t even fall back on the narrative of the story to be more than hacked together & surface-level, then all the production value in the world means nothing to me. I sound like I’m being more mean to The King and I than I’m intending; I really can’t discount the efforts in the production, and Yul Brynner’s performance is definitely memorable & the best thing about the film, and it’s these aspects that are putting this as high in my ranking as it’s getting. But with how directly a piece of enjoyable entertainment the genre of the movie musical is supposed to be for a film, this was just too much of a struggle for me to get through, and I don’t think I can ever see myself watching it again.

-I’ve mentioned before that I do try & rewatch the nominees from each year that I’ve already seen; maybe not the entire way through for every one of them, but enough to get a solid idea of where in my ranking they should go, and to potentially reassess some that I might not’ve been able to appreciate on my first viewing. It’s always a nice feeling when I’m particularly reminded of how good a decision that can be, and my rewatch of Giant is just such a case; this is certainly a better film than I was able to acknowledge at the early point in my quest when my review went up, and I could see myself giving it a slight bump in score had I seen & reviewed it closer to today, for instance. That said, it wouldn’t be that much higher; the main issues I raised in my review, that the fine points of the narrative are rather simplistic and especially that even the film’s good points suffer under the substantial weight of just how freaking long the film is, are still very much the main problems with it, and though I have a much better handle on what the film is aiming to do with its story and can thus appreciate it better for the film it’s trying to be, I still can’t say that this is an all-around winner or that it has a clear shot at Best Picture because of it.

-So for the field of 1956, with all the brilliant color and the lavish production value and the oodles of money thrown back and forth into the budgets and the box offices that it represents, it also seems fitting to put at the top of this ranking the film that does more of all of that than any of the others, the most epically epic example of a large-scale colorful epic that the silver screen had seen up to then (and, for some, ever would). The Ten Commandments may have more production value than some would consider feasible, a budget many may call untenable, and a runtime that pushes the boundaries of what modern audiences would find acceptable; but, to give Cecil B. DeMille the credit he earns, it is all in service to a film that, even with being over three and a half hours long, is still eminently watchable and entertaining more often than not. It’s not perfect, and depending on your preferences, you could probably find more things to not like about it than you would things to enjoy, but for me, this has the least of all the other weaknesses that took out the other films in this field, and for that coupled with how successful the film is with the mammoth production DeMille puts behind it, it’s ending up at the top of this field of five.

-What Should’ve Been Here-

While I guess I can’t fault the Academy for plumbing directly from the top box office grosses this year to pick its Best Picture slate, it does leave out plenty of other deserving films that, for one, are probably a little better suited to the Academy’s tastes up to then, and two, are better overall films than a lot of the blockbuster productions that did make the ballot. Of course, I can’t really speak for the films I haven’t seen, but that still got some love elsewhere in the ceremony; films like Lust for Life, Baby Doll, War and Peace, and Anastasia, from previous Oscar winners & Academy favorites alike. Of what I have seen from 1956, mostly thanks to the 1001 list, a few foreign titles stand out, like A Man Escaped and The Burmese Harp; two holdovers from previous years, La Strada and Seven Samurai, got nominations this year, and so could reasonably make the fold. Of the domestic fare, Forbidden Planet and Invasion of the Body Snatchers were too genre for the Academy, though Bigger than Life should’ve certainly been in the Academy’s wheelhouse. So, too, should’ve been The Searchers, arguably John Ford’s masterpiece and the greatest western ever made, and to see it shut out completely without a single nomination is more than a little befuddling.

-What I Would’ve Picked-

This is a weird one, and it’s because of the Academy’s rules on domestic screenings of foreign films; Seven Samurai, a Japanese film from two years ago, had a qualifying run for this year’s ceremony and even got two Oscar noms, though it also somehow wasn’t nominated for the first-ever competitive Best Foreign Language Film category, but that’s neither here nor there. As such, of the qualifying films for these Awards, I’d be hard-pressed not to pick one of the greatest films of all time, and what the late, great Chip Lary frequently cited as the greatest non-English-language film ever made. If I were to hold myself to something more local and much more within the Academy’s purview (or what should’ve been, given its total lack of actual noms), The Searchers is my choice without a second thought; so, really, it’s whether or not I (or any readers) want to stick to English language films or to be more global in our ultimate assessments.

-How Did Oscar Do?-

Well, for all the times this decade so far that I’ve looked down on the Academy for going with the safe & routine with their individual picks, I’ve gotta give them a little something for this all-color, top-grossing selection; it is, at least, something a little different than the norm. That said, this isn’t really the best this year in cinema has to offer, and their ultimate choice is especially bewildering; so, I’ll give Oscar some points for trying to shake things up, but there’s still a ways to go & time to practice before they’re gonna be able to hit the target when they do so.

The King and I

…Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

Despite my history with musicals and musical theater, I’ve never seen The King and I until now. Even with my palette for musicals becoming more limited over the years, it’s still one that I’d assumed I’d have gotten to at some point or another just for being a Rodgers & Hammerstein production, and regardless of if you love musicals or hate them, you won’t find a more iconic and influential pairing of songwriters for theatrical & screen musicals than Rodgers & Hammerstein; they became the template for all that came after them, and for pretty good reason. As such, even someone like me who’s largely grown out of the musical phase of their creative development should be able to get through an R&H film adaptation with little issue, right? Well, be it a shifting mood or workflow, the changing of the seasons, or something more unidentifiable; whatever the reason behind it, not only did it take me watching this film in three parts over three different days just to get through it, it still took me well over a week just to muster enough about it to put together a review on the thing.

The King and I, as befitting the musical-writing duo that would go on to pen The Sound of Music, is a somewhat-fictionalized tale of a true story involving actual people; in this case, King Mongkut, the ruler of Siam (present-day Thailand) in the mid-19th century, and Anna Leonowens, a widowed schoolteacher from England that Mongkut hires to teach his many children in an effort to help modernize the country. As an adaptation of its kind, the film both condenses events to make more of a dramatic narrative as well as simplifies the things it covers into an almost-glossy shallowness compared to the historicity of its source material. Really, I could try and detail the plot a little more to possibly make this more appealing, but I’ll be honest; you’re probably not watching a Rodgers & Hammerstein production for the plot. You’re here for the songs, and as long as the plot is a good-enough scaffold to string the songs together, that’s all you really need. I think it’s this that ultimately made me so ambivalent about The King and I, both the film as a whole as well as having the gumption to muscle through a viewing of it: I wasn’t really taken with almost any of the songs, and this resulted in me trying to be more invested in the story, and thus being mostly stymied by how surface-level and undeveloped the actual plot of the narrative is. To be fair, the rest of the film does generally succeed & has plenty of stand-out work in the production itself; the set dressing and the costuming is up to that level of top-notch excessiveness that one might expect from a Cecil B. DeMille picture, and the cinematography is just capable enough to take advantage of all that colorful excess to make the film never uninteresting to look at. The leads do a good job carrying the film when & how they need to; Deborah Kerr may not wow with her performance, but she’s exactly what the character calls for & needs to be, and that’s a good decision in itself, and I can see how Yul Brynner made King Mongkut the role he identified with and continued to play for the rest of his career. But for me, all of this was basically in service to the musical numbers, which I mostly didn’t care for, and falling back on that, to the narrative, which wasn’t interesting or engaging at all beyond being the architecture that led from one number to the next, and so the film became much more of an ordeal to get through the whole thing even with it being the shortest of the five nominees in runtime (though, with it still being over two hours, that’s not saying much).

I’ve said numerous times before how the genre of movie musicals is very much one of those that you either love or hate, and it’s films like The King and I that can really throw into stark relief exactly how a musical, when one is not charmed enough by the music to forgive the general simplicity of the narrative, can fail as a piece of entertainment. I wanted to also say how this can make it fail as a film as well, but to be honest, this does do more than enough with the production and the technicals and the performances to make me hold back on calling the film a failure outright. Really, it all comes down to the songs, much more than almost any other movie musical I can think of; if the songs here work for you, the film is a surefire winner, and if they don’t, then all the shiny baubles of the production itself will likely not be able to cover the deficiencies inherent in the film’s narrative. I’m not sure how much that people who aren’t all that big on musicals will be able to get from The King and I, and even if you are more the musical type, it’s still a bit of a dice roll if the main draw of the film ends up sweetening your cup of tea or not, and with the production being a generally good piece of effort either way, it almost seems like even more of a letdown if that dice roll ends up not landing in your preferred direction.

Arbitrary Rating: 6/10

Friendly Persuasion

A man’s life ain’t worth a hill of beans except he lives up to his own conscience.

Well, here’s another one that just left me at a complete loss in terms of talking points or even an opinion about it. Friendly Persuasion is apparently William Wyler’s first color feature, a couple previous documentaries notwithstanding, and as such it seems like it should be a bigger deal than it is; Wyler at this point had already won two Best Director Oscars, and was a few years removed from winning a third for Ben-Hur, so it’s not like the man didn’t know what he was doing. With this film, though, it is proving to be a real struggle in figuring out what exactly the point of it is, whether it succeeds at whatever point it’s trying to, and whether or not it is ultimately worth it in the end. That this is increasingly common among the Best Picture fields of this decade is just a further source of indignation for me personally.

Adapted from a novel by Jessamyn West, this is the story of the Birdwell family; father Jess, mother Eliza, grown children Josh and Mattie, and younger child Jess Jr. The Birdwells are a Quaker family living in Indiana during the Civil War; deeply steadfast in their faith, they abstain from frivolous pleasures like music and hold to a strict sense of pacifism, though minor squabbles like Jess’ weekly horse race with his neighbor Sam Jordan to church every Sunday and Little Jess’ antagonism with the family’s pet goose serve as constant tests of their religious devotion. It is this testing of their devotion to non-violence that ultimately serves as the backbone of the narrative; with the Confederate rebels marching closer to their small town, it’s only a matter of time before the village will need to defend itself, and with Josh feeling conflicted about the Quaker’s pacifist ways in the face of mortal danger to his village and his family, as well as Mattie falling in love with a local Union officer who’s set to soon head off to the front lines, Jess and Eliza both will have to contend with their belief in God’s will and desire to keep their loved ones safe against a level of human conflict they’ve never come up against before.

Now, that plot summary makes the film itself seem rife with potential conflict and wrestling with decisions that would make an altogether compelling narrative, so it’s more than a bit of dissonance to watch the film itself & have it be so carefree and lackadaisical with what plot events it does have happen. Even against that plot summary I just wrote, the film is actually a slice of life with a Quaker family living in territorial America; the actual conflict with the rebels doesn’t start happening until less than an hour of the film is left, and until then we are basically killing time with the Quakers & experiencing their way of life, and all the lack of conflict that comes with it. The production itself gets a good bit of mileage with all the location shooting, which makes the village life the film depicts easy to believe and fall into, but I still couldn’t help but feel a growing desire the longer the film went on for it to basically get to the point already & stop fiddling around with whatever it had been calling its narrative up to then; perhaps it ended up a mistake for once that I did my usual bit of research into the film before I started it, and thus had more of an idea of the overall story than the film itself would actually depict for the first two-thirds of its running time. Either way, that the film is so meandering with its storytelling and so declawed with its sense of conflict is what largely made it the chore it was to get through; add to it that once the actual conflict starts and the characters all have to wrestle more actively with their pacifist beliefs, that the film basically doesn’t provide a definite conclusion or resolution of these internal conflicts either way, opting for the same type of “life goes on” ellipsis-style ending that rankled me about Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, and I’m left with very little about the film I can pin down or say that I enjoyed or was worth the watch. Anthony Perkins’ breakthrough role as Josh Birdwell is one potential I could point to, with Perkins showing much of the naturalized awkwardness that would work well for him & define many of his later performances; Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire as Jess and Eliza, on the other hand, couldn’t have been drier if they tried, and it sure seemed (in Cooper’s case, at least) that they were trying quite a bit. Extra mention to the dialogue and in particular the film’s insistence on the Quaker characters sticking to their use of “thee” and “thy” in place of any and all other pronouns; it can be grating and confusing getting dropped into the film when it starts up with this, but I was able to get used to it by the second act or so – heads up on it, though.

I think the biggest factor in my overall annoyance towards this film, even with how much of a struggle it was just to get through it, is the one part I touched on a couple times already: about how the entire sense of conflict in the film rests on and is presented as a struggle for resolution between the pacifist ideals of the Quaker family at the heart of the film and the potential necessity of violence in terms of self-defense that comes with protecting oneself and their loved ones, and in how the film ends up concluding without having actually answered this question as it pertains to said family. There’s a few slight hints in the last scene of the picture that there is more of an overall compromise between the two extremes than the family had been able to have until then, but it is not actually elaborated upon or provided any explanation or resolution; there’s just the answer of a middle ground there, and the actual showing the work that would provide the context of how the family arrived at this answer and in particular resolved their struggles about one or the other extreme that they hadn’t before is just missing, and this sticks out even more like a sore thumb with how uncertain all the characters had been through the last half hour of the film leading up to it. Part of it, I suspect, is that the film only adapts basically a single section of its source novel, dealing with only the parts pertaining to the Civil War and crunching the timeframe of it all into one year; as such, there’s probably a lot of further subtext and material that the film simply wasn’t able to include. This still, however, doesn’t absolve the film from being unable to conclude its central conflict itself, or at least in a way that offers conclusive resolution and not even more questions about what the film really did or where it should’ve gone to. That, more than not, is a lot more on Wyler, and merely adding color cinematography to his repertoire shouldn’t have left him unable to resolve his film in a satisfactory way that he’s been shown plenty of times before to be able to do.

Arbitrary Rating: 6/10

Around the World in 80 Days

An Englishman never jokes about a wager, sir.

More like All the Stars in 180 Minutes, am I right? …Yeah, so I know I’m definitely not the first to make pithy jokes about the sheer number of famous cameos jammed into the three-hour runtime of Around the World in 80 Days, the Jules Verne adaptation directed by Michael Anderson and produced by Mike Todd, but in all fairness, the film itself doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of things to talk about. While it was generally well received when it was released, nowadays it’s only really known for its cinematography and breadth of famous actors in bit parts throughout, being regarded as one of the most undeserving and inexplicable Best Picture winners ever, especially given the field it was up against. I can’t really decry any of the criticism the film has gotten, and neither would I want to; despite this being Mike Todd’s baby, and the first & only film he would produce before his untimely death in a plane crash, the film itself just feels far too empty & flat to manage any actual value as entertainment.

For those without a cursory knowledge or memory of Jules Verne, World is the story of Phileas Fogg, an Englishman who makes a wager with fellow members of a private club circa the 1870s that he can go, well, around the world in only 80 days. This film version pads out a few details of the novel more fully, namely the role of Fogg’s valet, Passepartout, to accommodate the casting of Cantinflas, a famous Mexican comic actor regarded as the “Mexican Charlie Chaplin”. This does end up serving the film for the better, as Passepartout becomes much more of a prominent sidekick and comic relief character, able to carry the film at any and every moment where it otherwise would’ve stagnated too far into boredom; it also, conversely, becomes a bit too much of a crutch at times, such as when the valet is called upon to take part in a bullfighting performance in Spain as a form of payment so he and Fogg can use a nobleman’s private yacht, in a sequence that goes on far longer than the film can really justify or make use of. Really, this is the film’s biggest indulgence as well as its fatal flaw: everything in the film is drawn out to its fullest extent, from the scenic cinematography to the individual scenes and location pieces that serve as what amounts to the film’s plot, and I’d be amazed if anything Todd and Anderson shot actually ended up on the cutting room floor; that the film starts off with an entirely superfluous prologue featuring Edward R. Murrow introducing a montage of Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon as a sort of Jules Verne inspiration is a perfect encapsulation of the film (or of Todd) refusing to not have its cake after also eating it. The litany of famous cameos, and the larger number of possible scenes for the film to thus insert cameos into, is also a likely byproduct of Todd wanting to stuff his film with everything he wanted in it, and despite the film coming in relatively cheap at a budget of $6,000,000, it is honestly impressive how much Todd gets done with the money he spent, with the sheer amount of extras, costumes, locations, sets, props, and all the various facets of production utilized across the whole film. Some of these aspects have aged far worse than others, like casting Shirley MacLaine as an Indian princess despite being the whitest woman in the entire film, as well as the general cultural depictions of any “non-civilized” countries (which extends to the Native American tribes shown as well), but that’s the 1950s for you.

Here’s the thing, though; with everything that’s thrown into the film, and with all the lavish location shooting and cinematography used to make this travelogue of a feature, none of it has any impact whatsoever; the main impetus of the narrative has Fogg, depicted as the absolute pinnacle of English punctuality, having to race around the globe to meet his deadline, and despite David Niven being completely game for the character, there isn’t an ounce of anything else in the character at all, and this sense of vapid breeziness extends into every other part of the film right down to the narrative itself. Thus, even with it being three hours long and including all the whole entire scenes it seemingly can’t do without, the film rushes along without a care in the world to actually building an engaging narrative or decent characterization, such that the only possible response after it’s all over and done with is “…that’s it?”, especially with the absolute non-ending the film chooses to go with (and with the actual last line of the film, you know it was completely deliberate). This ultimately falls into the same trap that films like King Solomon’s Mines and Three Coins in the Fountain inadvertently fall into, being essentially a travel brochure for its location footage (as well as, in this case, the cameos) that haphazardly fashions a narrative around it to seem like an actual film. The thing with World, though, is almost the opposite of the intentions of those other films; the “travelogue film” idea is actually what this story genuinely starts off as, and the adaptation just should’ve done a better job at making more of a narrative out of it than the emptiness at the core of Todd’s completed effort. How this won Best Picture in the year that it did and against the films it was up with is an absolute mystery, but one needn’t even go that far; I’m genuinely uncertain how almost anyone could come out of a viewing of Around the World in 80 Days and feel it was ultimately worth the effort to get through it. Some occasional light comedy and nice cinematography is pleasant, sure, but is it worth three entire hours of a non-movie? Is it really?

Arbitrary Rating: 6/10