With my Top Ten decided, and Part One already posted, it's time to put 1944 to bed. Here are my winners and nominees for the 1944 Retro Hollmann Awards:
Best Costume Design
Meet Me in St. Louis
Irene Sharaff
2. Cover Girl (Travis Banton / Muriel King / Gwen Wakeling); 3. Gaslight (Irene); 4. Kismet (Barbara Karinska / Tom Keogh); 5. Lady in the Dark (Raoul Pène du Bois)
Whether in their dressing gowns or their party clothes, taking a ride on the trolley or strolling through the World's Fair, dressed warm for the winter or costumed for Halloween, Sharaff delivers one iconic look after another. The colors pop, the fits are perfect, the Halloween costume looks homemade, and there's still a sense of reality in the cut and style.
Best Sound
Lifeboat
Bernard Freericks / Roger Heman, Sr., sound
2. Meet Me in St. Louis (Douglas Shearer); 3. The Uninvited (John Cope / Hugo Grenzbach); 4. Cover Girl (Lambert E. Day / John P. Livadary); 5. Passage to Marseille (Everett Alton Brown)
No score required. The lapping of the waves against the hull of the boat, Canada Lee's lonely flute playing across the winds, the silence of an infant and the wails of its mother, and the more horrifying bluntness of justice executed at sea, with oars. Storms, squalls, wakes left by ships, you hear it all.
Best Production Design
Meet Me in St. Louis
Lemuel Ayers / Cedric Gibbons / Jack Martin Smith, art directors
Edwin B. Willis, set decorator
2. No Time for Love (Hans Dreier / Robert Usher / Sam Comer); 3. Cry 'Havoc' (Cedric Gibbons / Edwin B. Willis); 4. Kismet (David B. Cathcart / Cedric Gibbons / E. Preston Ames / Edwin B. Willis); 5. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Charles Odds / Maurice Yates)
I just want to say, "It's a great set," and it is! The interior of the Smith home, phone and all, suggests a lived-in home, upper-middle-class, with a family that keeps up with the times. Exteriors feel just as perfect, the different looks for each season are vividly executed, especially the snowbound Winter and the eerie Fall. And the trolley!
Best Original Song
1. Meet Me in St. Louis - "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"
music and lyrics by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane
2. Cover Girl - "Long Ago and Far Away"
music by Jerome Kern
lyrics by Ira Gershwin
3. Cover Girl - "Make Way for Tomorrow"
music by Jerome Kern
lyrics by Ira Gershwin and E.Y. Harburg
4. Meet Me in St. Louis - "You and I"
music by Nacio Herb Brown
lyrics by Arthur Freed
5. Meet Me in St. Louis - "The Trolley Song"
music and lyrics by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane
Best Cinematography
1. Meet Me in St. Louis
George J. Folsey
2. Christmas Holiday
Elwood "Woody" Bredell
3. The Uninvited
Charles Lang, Jr.
4. Gaslight
Joseph Ruttenberg
5. Lifeboat
Glen MacWilliams
Best Director
Vincente Minnelli
Meet Me in St. Louis
2. George Cukor for Gaslight; 3. Robert Siodmak for Christmas Holiday; 4. Arthur Ripley for Voice in the Wind; 5. Billy Wilder for Double Indemnity
Last week, I was all set to give this award to George Cukor for his superb handling of atmosphere and performers in Gaslight. And then, as I began my nomination process and wrote about my winners, I realized more and more just how...perfect Minnelli's work is. He (and producer Arthur Freed) brought all these elements together and made them, ahem, sing. As far as directing a juvenile, his work with O'Brien is nonpareil; as far as directing a leading lady in both musical and book scenes, his filmography with Garland speaks for itself. The mastery of tone that allows us to go from "Skip to My Lou" folderol to "You and I" introspection, all culminating in the promise of the next century as the chorus sings, "Meet me in St. Louis, Louie...," an earned sense of fun that still feels like the children have grown and are on the cusp of a great new era: he does this. Minnelli is the master.
Best Supporting Actress
Margaret O'Brien as Tootie Smith
Meet Me in St. Louis
2. Cornelia Otis Skinner in The Uninvited; 3. Joann Dolan in The Eve of St. Mark; 4. Diana Lynn in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek; 5. Ruth Nelson in The Eve of St. Mark
I take a glance at my friends' Letterboxd reviews, and their main takeaway is Tootie - just as I came away thinking Meet Me in St. Louis is a great Halloween movie precisely because that is when O'Brien gets to shine brightest. Ah, but the whole performance is a scene-stealing, crowd-pleasing one, as evidenced by her crashing her sisters' party to recite an inappropriate snatch of music. She makes us laugh, and we also see a bit of ourselves, or of someone we knew, in her gullibility and overwrought emotions - she murdered that snowman family and she feels bad doing it, and we understand every moment. Superb.
Best Actress
Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist
Gaslight
2. Deanna Durbin in Christmas Holiday; 3. Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity; 4. Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis; 5. Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat
Didn't even have to think twice about this one, this was Bergman's from the very moment I saw the film. I already told you why, read it again.
Best Motion Picture of the Year
Meet Me in St. Louis
produced by Arthur Freed
2. The Uninvited (Charles Brackett); 3. Christmas Holiday (Felix Jackson); 4. Gaslight (Arthur Hornblow, Jr.); 5. Double Indemnity (Joseph Sistrom)
6. Cover Girl; 7. The Eve of St. Mark; 8. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek; 9. Cry 'Havoc'; 10. Voice in the Wind
30 films nominated in 18 categories, and 10 films won. Meet Me in St. Louis led the nominees (15!) and the winners (8!).
Next week, we start right in on 1945!
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