With my Top Ten decided, it's time to put 1944 to bed. Here are my winners and nominees for the 1944 Retro Hollmann Awards:
Best Ensemble
Meet Me in St. Louis
2. Laura; 3. Cry 'Havoc'; 4. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek; 5. Hail the Conquering Hero (Robert Mayo)
The entirety of the cast, their chemistry together, the reality they achieve, is key to what makes Meet Me in St. Louis work. You have to believe in the family, in Judy and Margaret O'Brien and Lucile Bremer as sisters, Garland and Bremer at the age where they can get on each other's nerves. You have to believe that Leon Ames and Mary Astor are a devoted couple, true partners, who love each other and their children. You have to believe in Marjorie Main, frank enough to almost be family, deferential enough to keep her place as maid. You have to believe that that household and all their friends and neighbors, from June Lockhart to Chill Wills, you have to believe they all exist and have known each other as long as we are told they have. And you do believe it.
Best Makeup & Hairstyling
Mr. Skeffington
Perc Westmore, makeup
Margaret Donovan, hair stylist
2. House of Frankenstein (Jack P. Pierce); 3. Meet Me in St. Louis (Jack Dawn); 4. Mrs. Parkington (Jack Dawn / Sydney Guilaroff); 5. Jane Eyre (Guy Pearce / Maurice Seiderman)
House of Frankenstein may have a menagerie of monsters, Meet Me in St. Louis has great hair, Mrs. Parkington ages Greer Garson believably, and Jane Eyre boasts subtle work, but for best, Mr. Skeffington's Westmore and Donovan tell a story with Bette Davis's face as canvas. Decades go by and it ain't just the costumes that tell us: the story is there in Fanny's hair and makeup, as she maintains her aura of ageless beauty by keeping up with the times, her looks framed by her coiffure. It is also the site of nature's wrath near the end, her face pocked and her hair thinned by the ravages of diphtheria. Claude Rains also gets aging makeup (and a mustache).
Best Editing
Cover Girl
Viola Lawrence
2. Meet Me in St. Louis (Albert Akst); 3. Double Indemnity (Doane Harison); 4. The Uninvited (Doane Harison); 5. Gaslight (Ralph E. Winters)
The big "Cover Girl" showcase that boasts a bevy of beauties as different magazines in actual picturesque compioitions, the patience of "Long Ago (and Far Away)", the infectious energy of "Make Way for Tomorrow", the way it guides us from present to past and back again, charts Rita Hayworth's success and depression, lets us see how each man "sees" her - how could I not bestow this award on this editor?
Best Visual Effects
The Story of Dr. Wassell
Barney Wolff, special effects
Gordon Jennings, special photographic effects
Farciot Edouard / W. Wallace Kelley, process photography
2. The Uninvited (Gordon Jennings / Farciot Edouard); 3. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (A. Arnold Gillespie / Donald Jahraus / Warren Newcombe); 4. A Guy Named Joe (A. Arnold Gillespie / Donald Jahraus / Warren Newcombe); 5. The Fighting Seabees (Theodore Lydecker)
The Uninvited boasts magically wilting flowers, candles that trip sideways but do not snuff out, and ghostly apparitions apparating into the room. Then we have four war films, with The Fighting Seabees executing battles on land, A Guy Named Joe and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo taking flight with aerial battles and immolations of the enemy, and The Story of Dr. Wassell giving you all those ravages of war plus a volcano! Yes, I voted for the DeMille picture in the end, not just because of how much it does, but because of how good it all looks!
Best Score
1. Laura
David Raksin
2. The Adventures of Mark Twain
Max Steiner
3. The Uninvited
Victor Young
4. Kismet
Herbert Stothart
5. Double Indemnity
Miklôs Ròzsa
Best Original Screenplay
No Time for Love
Claude Binyon
adaptation by Warren Duff
story by Robert Lees and Federic I. Rinaldo
2. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges); 3. Lifeboat (Jo Swerling / John Steinbeck); 4. Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges); 5. The Sullivans (Mary C. McCall, Jr. / Jules Schermer / Edward Doherty)
No Time for Love is probably my #14 of the year, and I credit much of that to the writing. This is witty battle-of-the-sexes rom-com that does not seek to civilize either the lady or the man, but finds the happy medium where the independent photographer and the chauvinist sandhog can co-exist with all their contradictions and palpable erotic energy. Its sly references to the queers and hags that make up Manhattan artistic circles are deftly deployed, never condescending or fearful, but done with the affection of One Who Knows. It's not afraid to get dirty or dirty-minded, which just makes it funnier and sexier.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Uninvited
Dodie Smith and Frank Partos
from the novel Uneasy Freehold by Dorothy Macardle
2. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder / Raymond Chandler); 3. Christmas Holiday (Herbert J. Mankiewicz); 4. Gaslight (John Van Druten & Walter Reisch and John L. Balderston); 5. Meet Me in St. Louis (Irving Brecher / Fred F. Finklehoffe)
If we're talking strictly dialogue, Double Indemnity wins in a walk, but overall? It's got to be The Uninvited. I love the way the characters can be skeptical yet willing to entertain the possibilities of the supernatural, real hands-in-pockets, strollingly casual approach to seances. It builds up the increasingly central relationship so that the final embrace actually makes sense. The mystery at its center may be easy to tease out for the viewer, but that's from familiarity with the genre, the structure of what the characters learn, how, and their reactions are all credible. Effortlessly funny, too, and you bvelieve these people would be that witty.
Best Supporting Actor
Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes
Double Indemnity
2. Vincent Price in The Eve of St. Mark; 3. William Demarest in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek; 4. William Demarest in Hail the Conquering Hero; 5. Peter Lorre in Arsenic and Old Lace
"A lot closer than that, Walter." A performance that conveys more than just the professional warmth between colleagues, Robinson shows a man who's good at his job and has, he thinks, found himself a kindred spirit, a true friend. That last line, the heartbeak of betrayal, hits hard because Robinson convinces us of the deep (brotherly? unknowingly romantic?) feeling Keyes has for Walter. His is the performance that sticks with me most.
Best Actor
Ray Milland
The Uninvited
2. Eddie Bracken in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek; 3. Charles Laughton in The Canterville Ghost; 4. Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity; 5. Gene Kelly in Cover Girl
Rarely is my favorite character in a movie like The Uninvited the straight leading man (Cornelia Otis Skinner as the lesbian doctor is usually more my speed), but Milland is undeniable as the handsome hero with the urbane wit and surprisingly deep emotional wells (how else can he compose such beautiful pieces of music), suddenly thrust into a ghost story. A man who has chemistry with everyone in the room. His quips are tossed off (over the shoulder, even), his romance isn't heavyhanded but gradual and surprising, perhaps, even to him, and his repartee with Ruth Hussey is genuinely familial. And he gives great face, extremely important when ghosts are suddenly appearing before him.
More winners and nominees in Part Two.
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