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.

Enter Kazan: Director, 1947

Today, we take a look at Best Director. By now, you should be somewhat familiar with the films involved: the actor-goes-nuts drama A Double Life, the anti-anti-Semitism polemic Gentleman's Agreement, its B-picture equivalent Crossfire. The only ones we have not gone into detail about so far are The Bishop's Wife, in which an angel comes to Earth to help a disillusioned bishop and his wife, and Great Expectations, which I assume most of us know from our Dickens. If you don't, it's about a poor boy who becomes a well-off young man thanks to a mysterious benefactor; the most famous element is a wealthy woman forever encased in the wedding dress she wore when she was jilted many many many years ago.

The nominees should be familiar to us all. George Cukor was a favorite of Katharine Hepburn's and was one of the initial directors of Gone with the Wind. A Double Life was his third of five nominations, and he eventually won for My Fair Lady. Edward Dmytryk helmed many a noir, but this would be his first and only nod; better known is his status as one of the original Hollywood Ten held in contempt of Congress during the red scare, who saved himself from the Blacklist by later naming names. Elia Kazan received his first nomination for his fourth film - and won!

He went on to four more Best Director nods, one of which resulted in a second win, but more importantly, he became known as one of the great directors of the 1950s - and, yes, all time. He was unapologetic about naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee, something that caused a bit of a rift in the audience of the 71st Academy Awards, where he received an Honorary Oscar.

Henry Koster did great and acclaimed films like Harvey, My Cousin Rachel, The Robe, Flower Drum Song...those all came after his nomination for The Bishop's Wife, his first and only. And David Lean would become known for his epics, winning Oscars for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. In all, he received eleven Academy Award nominations.

But let's talk about their work in these movies. Let's do that after the jump.

Maestro, If You Please: Score, 1947

Today was going to be focused on Best Original Song and Best Musical Score, but I had some trouble with two of the nominated films in those categories. Thus, I will focus on those next week. But I still wanted a musical interlude, so, why not present the nominees for Best Dramatic or Comedy Score, a category won by Miklos Rozsa for A Double Life?

Rozsa previously won for Spellbound and would win again for Ben-Hur. He was nominated another 14 times between 1940 and 1961. Indeed, the whole crop of 1947 was made up of heavyweights. This was David Raskin's first nod, but he would be back for Separate Tables. Hugo Friedhofer had just won the year before for The Best Years of Our Lives, and would be nominated another six times after this. Max Steiner, also up in Best Musical Score for My Wild Irish Rose, won his third and final Oscar three years previously with Since You Went Away, though he would continue getting nominations until 1955. And Alfred Newman - deep breath - won a whopping nine times, including this year (just not this category), with nods stretching from 1937 through 1970.

Anyway, after the jump, selections from the nominated films, in ascending order of my rankings (that means bottom's up).

1947, Part One: The Beginning (and The Bishop's Wife)

Even though Agatha Christie Month is wrapped, we'll still be looking at Murder on the Orient Express in all its on-screen incarnations starting Monday. In the meantime, as stated before, this month is dedicated to the movies of 1947 and the 20th Academy Awards.

It's a historic year for Hollywood, but not because of the movies. This is the year that saw the beginning of the Hollywood Blacklist. Earlier efforts to rout out Communist filmmakers were unsuccessful and openly mocked. Hell, Russia was our ally during the War just two years earlier, with friendly relations and pro-Soviet feelings encouraged. But that was then, and as Best Picture nominee Crossfire put it, "We're too used to fighting, but we just don't know what to fight. ...A whole lot of hate and fight that doesn't know where to go." By October, the House Un-American Activities Committee was holding hearings; by November, the Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the line of questioning; the next day, 48 Hollywood executives released the Waldorf Statement, assuring the public that no Communist would find work within their hallowed gates. (You can get a fuller account of these events, as well as their effect on individuals, from the 2015 season of Karina Longworth's invaluable podcast, You Must Remember This.)

On this blog, we focus more on the individual films, though to pretend that events outside did not influence their reception is goofy. Pre-blacklist, we find a large output of socially-conscience films dealing with American society post-World War II. Some films are almost propagandistic in their praise of government bodies and officials, sure, but many deal with veteran malaise, housing shortages or prejudice. These themes enter films noir, dramas, comedies, even holiday treats. We'll be looking at these and more over the coming weeks.

Here are the first ten movies. My reactions are honest, and while I've tried to keep in mind the times, in the end, I like what I like.

T-Men
dir: Anthony Mann

scr: John C. Higgins, suggested by a story by Virginia Kellogg

Oscar Nominee: Best Sound Recording

Patriotic noir trumpeting valiant efforts of treasury department's secret service. Semi-documentary approach breezes by minutiae via narrator, getting to the action. Fine performances, moody cinematography, gasp-worthy twists, surprisingly brutal.

Vincent Price, Uncle Remus, an angel, and so much more - 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....