January saw our first Best Director nominee, and now May has our first Best Picture nominee!
Gaslight
release: May
wins: Best Actress (Ingrid Bergman), Best Art Direction - Black-and-White (Cedric Gibbons / William Ferrari / Edwin B. Willis / Paul Huldschinsky)
nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Charles Boyer), Best Supporting Actress (Angela Lansbury), Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography - Black-and-White
dir: George Cukor
pr: Arthur Hornblow, Jr.
scr: John Van Druten & Walter Reisch and John L. Balderston, from the play by Patrick Hamilton
cin: Joseph Ruttenberg
A newlywed woman slowly begins to believe she is going mad, but a detective she meets by chance (or was it?) suspects her husband is manipulating her - and somehow it all comes back to the lowering of the gaslight.
The play Gas Light premiered in London in 1938. Subtitled A Victorian thriller in three acts, Patrick Hamilton's drama only played six months on the West End but was a smash hit in its Broadway transfer, where it was retitled Angel Street and starred Vincent Price. The show played for three years and 25 days, ending its run on December 30, 1944, five months after the release of MGM's film version. This was actually the second film adaptation, following a 1940 British film of the same name (MGM tried to have all copies destroyed when they bought the remake rights, but failed), but it is the one most people know. Its influence can be seen even today, with the reemergence of the phrase "gaslighting" to describe the manipulation of people into doubting their own knowledge of what's true.
Gaslight proved just as popular with moviegoers as the Broadway show had been with theatergoers. Nominated for seven Academy Awards - including Best Supporting Actress for the film debut of 19-year-old Angela Lansbury - it won Best Actress for star Ingrid Bergman and Best Art Direction - Black-and-White. And we will discuss it further in two weeks' time...
Follow the Boys
release: May 5
nominations: Best Original Song ("I'll Walk Alone")
dir: A. Edward "Eddie" Sutherland
pr: Charles K. Feldman
scr: Lou Breslow and Gertrude Purcell, "Soldiers in Greasepaint" by Joe Schoenfeld
cin: David Abel
George Raft plays a vaudevillian-turned-film actor who, unable to enlist, does his part to support the troops by putting on shows for them, thanks to his chairing the Hollywood Victory Committee. Much of the film is a series of skits and musical performances featuring the likes of Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, and Jeanette MacDonald as themselves - there were a few of these to promote Hollywood's efforts in boosting morale, including Hollywood Canteen, which we'll discuss at a later date. This one distinguishes itself in two ways: first, by ending with a roll call of real entertainers who died during the war, whether en route to performances or in battle, such as Carole Lombard and Leslie Howard; second, the story it contains to link the performances is about the strain entertaining the troops puts on Raft's marriage. How can I sympathize with someone who complains, "You're never home anymore, all you care about is the troops!"? What kind of conflict is this?
Cobra Woman
release: May 12
dir: Robert Siodmak
pr: George Waggner
scr: Gene Lewis and Richard Brooks, story by W. Scott Darling
cin: W. Howard Greene / George Robinson
One of those adventure pictures with a beautiful girl, a secret cult, and Lon Chaney, Jr. Considered a camp classic, a 35mm print was recently showcased at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival in Hollywood. The filmmaker Kenneth Anger, the playwright Charles Busch, and the author Gore Vidal have all referenced and/or praised it. I don't quite see what the big deal is, I don't think it's much more outrageous than many of the other "exotica" films of the era. It is rather beautiful, thanks to glorious Technicolor!
Between Two Worlds
release: May 20
dir: Edward A. Blatt
pr: Mark Hellinger
scr: Daniel Fuchs, from the play Outward Bound by Sutton Vane
cin: Carl E. Guthrie
A suicidal couple awakes to find themselves on a cruise ship filled with people they saw killed during an air raid in London; they know they are dead and drifting "between two worlds," but the others do not...yet. Heavy-handed pseudo-profound claptrap. Based on a play that predates the War by 20 years, but you know they had to shoehorn it in somewhere!
Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat
release: May 20
dir: Phil Rosen
pr: James S. Burkett / Philip N. Krasne
scr: George Callahan, from characters created by Earl Derr Biggers
cin: Ira H. Morgan
Charlie Chan makes a bet that he can correctly debunk a true crime author's newly published "solution" of an unsolved murder. It comes down to a statue of a cat, which I think is handled quite cleverly. It ends at a funhouse, which I think is handled quite clumsily. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. The bet involves Chinese war relief, lest ye think Charlie Chan had forgotten.
The Eve of St. Mark
release: May 22
dir: John M. Stahl
pr: William Perlberg
scr: George Seaton, from a play by Maxwell Anderson
cin: Joseph La Shelle
It is said that on St. Mark’s Eve, those gathered at the entrance of the church between 11pm and 1am can see the souls of those who will die in the next year pass through. This becomes a poignant, pivotal bit of folklore around Act Three of this drama about a farm boy who leaves his fiancée and family behind to become among the first thousand conscripted into the War. One often reads of Anderson writing his plays as free verse poetry, and often this was tweaked for film adaptations, but this is the first time I can actually hear the poetry of the prose in his work. That’s probably due to the subject matter and the execution of it: the entire final third takes place in a dark cave, the soldiers suffering from malaria, the sounds of the enemy artillery outside unmistakable, growing - and so they brood on death, on whether they should stay and offer themselves as sacrifice to protect the greater number of evacuees or leave and fulfill the promise of their young lives. And they dream, and deep sleep, in that place where the mind is active yet resting, they are able to communicate with loved ones far away… It’s a beautifully constructed movie, from the way it expands our hero’s world only to constrict it to this cave on a dark night of the soul, to its fantastical ideas of communication beyond what we see. The ensemble of players: Ruth Nelson as the mother at home, Vincent Price (one of his best performances) as the intellectual soldier, JoAnn Dolan as the party girl offering the boys one last hurrah before they ship out, all expand the scope of the picture: this is not the story of one farmboy but of all of them, their friends and families, this cycle that many more have repeated and will repeat before the war is done. Moving.
The Scarlet Claw
release: May 26
dir/pr: Roy William Neill
scr: Edmund L. Hartmann and Roy William Neill, story by Paul Gangelin and Brenda Weisberg, from characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
cin: George Robinson
Holmes and Watson, in Canada to, from the looks of it, thumb their noses at a conference for the paranormal, wind up investigating the brutal murder of a woman in a nearby village who had her throat torn out - and which villagers believe to be the work of an ancient evil. Awesome entry in the series, almost feels like Universal is sneaking in an unofficial addition to their Monsters series. The why of it being Canada is somewhat answered by a final line where Holmes quotes Churchill and waxes rhapsodic about that country’s importance as the link between America and Britain - a reminder to audiences (why should they forget?) of who our Allies are! Odd note to leave on, but before that, a GREAT time!
When we return on Sunday, a quick glance over our second Best Picture nominee…
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