The 1947 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominees

Can you believe this is the thirteenth iteration of the Retro Hollmanns? Probably you never thought about it!

Following are my picks for what should have been nominated in 1947...but with some not so small differences:

• Best Costume Design - not an Oscar category until the following year; nevertheless, it is a Hollmann Awards category
• Best Makeup & Hairstyling - not an Oscar category until 1981; nevertheless, it is a Hollmann Awards category
• Best Ensemble - not an Oscar category; nevertheless, it is a Hollmann Awards category, awarded where possible to the casting director(s)
• Best Adapted Screenplay - not an Oscar category until 1957; nevertheless, it a Hollmann Awards category
• Best Original Screenplay - considered separate from Motion Picture Story until 1958; both are combined into this single designation for the Hollmann Awards

For a complete list of the 64 films considered, check out my Top Ten of 1947. Eighteen categories in all. And now, the nominees, in the order that I figured them out...except Best Picture, which comes at the end. I've linked to my review the first time each title appears.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

The Bishop's Wife

John P. Fulton, special photographic effects

Harry Redmond, Jr., special effects

Black Narcissus

Ivor Beddoes, special photographic effects

W. Percy Day, process shots / matte painter

Arthur George Day / Thomas Sydney Day, matte painters

E. Hague / Jack Higgins / Sydney Pearson / James Snow, special effects

Forever Amber

Fred Sersen, special photographic effects

A Matter of Life and Death

Stanley Grant, special photographic effects

William C. Andrews / Henry Harris / Douglas Woolsey, special effects

Song of the South

Ub Iwerks, special processes

Brad Case / Blaine Gibson / Joshua Meador / George Rowley, effects animators

18 more films, 17 more categories, all after the jump....

Top Ten of 1947

Many Top Tens are difficult to draft up, but I must confess, this was one of the easiest I've ever made. In alphabetical order....

The Bishop's Wife

dir: Henry Koster

scr: Leonardo Bercovici and Robert E. Sherwood, based on the novel by Robert Nathan

cin: Gregg Toland

Like the angel Dudley, the film possesses a deceptively light touch whose gentle caresses bring forth great depths of feeling. It's funny but not silly, fanciful but not absurd, and it winks at extramarital flirtations without compromising anyone's integrity. Given the subject matter, it is only fitting that it be, from beginning to end, a pure joy.

Black Narcissus

dir/scr: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel by Rumer Godden

cin: Jack Cardiff

A triumph of craftsmanship - the awe-inspiring effects and matte work, Jack Cardiff's photography capturing warmth and tempestuousness in eye-popping Technicolor, the detailed decay of a mountaintop convent. A triumph, too, of narrative - the unhappy woman who shuts herself up behind convent walls in the Himalayas, little realizing that only here, high enough to touch the heavens, is she truly exposed. Sexy and sad!

Tsars, circus folk, holy men and more, after the jump....

For the Twentieth Time: Best Picture, 1947

I took a day to recover from making rather merry this Thanksgiving, but here, at last...the Best Picture nominees for the 20th Academy Awards...after the jump.

Psycho Killer, Santa's Sleigh, Fa-fa-fa-fa...: Supporting Actor, 1947

What a lineup, this year's Best Supporting Actors, not a dud in the bunch! History is made! Movie debuts honored! And Santa Claus goes home a winner!

The skinny on the nominees and their performances, after the jump.

Christmas Miracles, Anti-Semitic Crimes: Screenplay, 1947

Here we have the nominees for Best Screenplay, separate from Original Screenplay and Motion Picture Story for reasons we covered in our post on the latter.

Four of the five nominees for Best Picture are represented here: Crossfire, written by one-time nominee John Paxton, and covering similar thematic ground as Gentleman's Agreement, written by Tony-winner/Pulitzer Prize winner/two-time Oscar nominee Moss Hart. There's Great Expectations, adapted by director David Lean (his third of eleven nominations), former cinematographer Ronald Neame (his third of three nominations), and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan (his second of three nominations). The family-friendly comedy Miracle on 34th Street is here, the only original work, whose source material was a Motion Picture story; director George Seaton wrote the screenplay, received his second of five nominations....and won his first of two Oscars!

The outlier - and outlier it indeed is - is Boomerang!, adapted from a Reader's Digest article by Richard Murphy, who would later be nominated for Story and Screenplay for The Desert Rats. Unlike its competitors, it was not nominated anywhere else, and personally, I feel the only thing that keeps it relevant and available today isn't its nomination, but its status as an Elia Kazan picture. That's just me, though.

Let's talk turkey, shall we? After the jump, of course...

My Funny Valentine: Motion Picture Story, 1947

Ah, the writers! We're talking all writers, all the time today, beginning with Motion Picture Story. Story comes before the Screenplay - I believe it's a scenario or a treatment, something for the eventual screenwriter to work with. Although these are original stories, these are considered separate from Original Screenplay if they are the work of different writers. This also means that there is no Adapted category, but just Screenplay, denoting works based on either previously published material...or an original story not written by the credited screenplay author.

Following? Wonderful.

Many of these writers are here for the first and only time, but there are three with some Oscar history. Smash-Up's Frank Cavett already had an Oscar for the Screenplay to Going My Way, and won again for the Motion Picture Story of The Greatest Show on Earth; this is his second of three nominations. Dorothy Parker (yes, that Dorothy Parker) was previously nominated for co-writing the Screenplay to the original A Star is Born. And first-timer Valentine Davies would be back for the Motion Picture Story of It Happens Every Spring, the Story and Screenplay for The Glenn Miller Story, and the Documentary Short "The House Without a Name". Guess winning the Oscar this year really paid off!

So what do we have? A feel-good semi-musical Christmas tale; another feel-good Christmas tale; a vicious noir; an addiction drama; some French flick I didn't see. Let's talk, after the jump.

1947, Part Six: Sing for Me (and Miracle on 34th Street)

Starting with number one, every other film here is a musical....

Road to Rio (#6 at the box office)

dir: Norman Z. MacLeod

scr: Edmund Beloin & Jack Rose

Oscar Nominee: Best Musical Score

Bing and Bob are musicians who get mixed up with a hypnotized dame forced into -- oh, who cares? It's the fifth Road movie, the plot is secondary to the gags and songs, and brother, I was chuckling and toe-tapping the whole way. Great tunes, big laughs.

More songs, plus adultery, slavery, and Santa Clause, after the jump....

Things to Come

No Agatha Christie post today - had trouble obtaining a copy of Mon petit doigt m'a dit..., the French adaptation of By the Pricking of My Thumbs that started a franchise of Tommy & Tuppence films starring André Dusollier and Catherine Frot. But I did want to announce that next month is dedicated to 1947! Details after the jump....