PROJECT PROGRESS
♦♦INDEX♦♦
♦ Introduction
1927 - 1928
♦ Seventh Heaven (1927)
♦ The Racket (1928)
♦ A Note on 1927-28
1928 - 1929
♦
The
Broadway Melody
(of 1929)
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Dateline: March 9, 2011
THE BROADWAY MELODY (OF 1929)
Story by: Edmund Goulding
Written by: Norman Houston and James Gleason
Directed by: Harry Beaumont
Starring: Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love, Kenneth Thomson
Studio: Mtro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Time: 110 minutes
Written by: Norman Houston and James Gleason
Directed by: Harry Beaumont
Starring: Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love, Kenneth Thomson
Studio: Mtro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Time: 110 minutes
At the Oscars:
Nominee: Best Actress, Bessie Love; Best
Director, Harry Beaumont
Oscars Trivia: The Broadway Melody was the first "talking" Best Picture Oscar winner, as well as the first musical to obtain the top prize.
Oscars Trivia: The Broadway Melody was the first "talking" Best Picture Oscar winner, as well as the first musical to obtain the top prize.
I had to check that title twice when I first saw this movie
listed as the Best Picture winner for 1928-29. Broadway
Melody of 1929? Were they sure about
that year? Because I knew -- knew -- that I
had not only previously seen, but even owned on DVD,
a film called Broadway Melody of 1940.
It couldn’t be they’d gotten it all mixed up, could it?But, no, Oscars.com knows their business, it seems, and it turns out that the 1940 edition of the melody with which I was familiar -- starring Fred Astaire and songs by the magnificent Cole Porter -- was not the original one of these. That honor goes to this bizarrely low budget and silent film-esque early attempt by MGM at what they would later come to do best: a musical.
Dateline: October 7, 2010
A Note on 1927-28
While Wings, Seventh Heaven and The Racket -- all up for what was then called Most Outstanding Production -- have retroactively been named the Best Picture Oscar nominees in this, the inaugural year of the Awards, three other films were nominated in a related, and perhaps equally as prestigious, category: Best Picture, Most Artistic Quality of Production, AKA Unique and Artistic Quality of Production. (As Joss Whedon said, when accepting Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’s well-deserved Emmy for Outstanding Special Class Short Format Live Action Entertainment Program: “We are honored to accept the award for Most Incomprehensible Category.”)
The films nominated were Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness and the colon-less The Crowd.
Let’s take a quick look at them, shall we? Technically, it could be argued that all were also Best Picture nominees... here are my findings...
Dateline: September 14, 2010
THE RACKET (1928)
Based on the play by: Bartlett Cormack
Written by: Tom Miranda
Directed by: Lewis Milestone
Starring: Thomas Meighan, Louis Wolheim, Marie Prevost, Lucien Preval and George Stone
Studio: Paramount
Time: 84 minutes
Written by: Tom Miranda
Directed by: Lewis Milestone
Starring: Thomas Meighan, Louis Wolheim, Marie Prevost, Lucien Preval and George Stone
Studio: Paramount
Time: 84 minutes
At the Oscars:
Nominee: Best Picture Oscar (then known
as Most Outstanding Production).
Oscars Trivia: The Racket is one of only a handful of films to be nominated for Best Picture and no other awards.
Oscars Trivia: The Racket is one of only a handful of films to be nominated for Best Picture and no other awards.
The
Racket
had been lost to us for decades upon decades. It was
one of a handful of Oscar-nominated films that were
literally unwatchable, as no one could locate a copy
of them anywhere. Much like Shakespeare’s Love’s
Labours Won or those episodes of Doctor Who
so cruelly taped over by misguided BBC flunkies,
The Racket was a holy grail for enthusiasts of
its field. Produced by Howard Hughes (of long
fingernails, stockpiled urine and The Aviator
fame) and banned in Chicago upon its release --
‘cause it’s a gangster film, see -- only one print
has ever been found, in the apparently copious files
of the obsessive compulsive genius who funded it.
The film was restored in 2004, and the only way I
was able to see it at all in aid of this project is
because it is occasionally shown on Turner Classic
Movies and some kind soul recorded it digitally
during a recent airing and uploaded it onto the
internet. How far we’ve come! In 1928, it was perfectly commonplace to mislay every copy in existence of an Oscar-nominated film. Now, not yet a century later, thanks to bit torrents and DVD mass production and cable TV, it’s doubtful we could completely erase all evidence of a movie even if we really wanted to. (And sometimes we really want to. Can we all agree that The Bounty Hunter simply has to go?)
So, to the film itself. For a start it’s another silent entry, and is cursed with the least appropriate and most intrusive score of any movie I have yet encountered. It begins with a violin-heavy cacophony giving us to understand that nefarious deeds are afoot -- as indeed they are! Shots are fired. Probition-era wiseguys threaten each other as some form of unspecified liquor is manufactured in a secret factory. There are men wearing checked, double-breasted suits with bowler hats! It’s all very exciting...
Dateline: August 30, 20100, 2010
SEVENTH HEAVEN (1927)
Based on the play by: Austin Strong
Written by: Benjamin Glazer
Directed by: Frank Borzage
Starring: Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell
Studio: None; produced by William Fox
Time: 110 minutes
Written by: Benjamin Glazer
Directed by: Frank Borzage
Starring: Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell
Studio: None; produced by William Fox
Time: 110 minutes
At the Oscars:
Nominee: Best Picture Oscar (then known
as Most Outstanding Production); Winner:
Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best
Director, Best Writing, Adaptation.
Oscars Trivia: Seventh Heaven won the first ever Best Adapted Screenplay Award.
Oscars Trivia: Seventh Heaven won the first ever Best Adapted Screenplay Award.
Tinkling
piano music heralds yet another silent movie
adventure; we’re in a sewer, and yet not a
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in sight. (Which is
the only reason to be in a sewer, as far as I’m
concerned… unless it has something to do with
the Ghostbusters.) Two dirty-faced yet strangely
robust-looking peasants are hard at work,
digging in the sludge. One of them, named Sewer
Rat (clearly not our hero, hairy, diminutive and
corrupt as he is -- looking up girls’ skirts
through a sewer grate!) acts as sounding board
to the other, named Chico (Charles Farrell), who
announces with lofty ambition: “That’s what I
want to be, Rat… a street cleaner! Up there in
the sun, among people.” Woah, dude. Aiming for
the moon much? Steady on...Dateline: August 25, 2010
WINGS (1927)
Story by: John Monk Saunders
Written by: Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton
Directed by: William A. Wellman
Starring: Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen and Gary Cooper
Studio: Paramount
Time: 141 minutes
Written by: Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton
Directed by: William A. Wellman
Starring: Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen and Gary Cooper
Studio: Paramount
Time: 141 minutes
At the Oscars:
Winner: Best Picture Oscar (then known
as Most Outstanding Production) and Best
Effects, Engineering Effects.
Oscars Trivia: Wings is the only silent movie to win Best Picture.
Oscars Trivia: Wings is the only silent movie to win Best Picture.
Dramatic
organ music and shots of flying
bi-planes kick us off and, ah! Wings!
I get it. I get it even more when the
opening title card establishing the back
story mentions one Charles Lindbergh,
who is famous for having had a baby whom
he mysteriously misplaced. Here,
Lindbergh is being quoted from a speech
he gave on June 12, 1927 paying “simple
tribute to those who fell in the
War.”(How cute, “the War”, as if it were
the only one.) The date of this speech
perplexed me: I recalled from my early
Googling that Wings had offered
up a preview of its charms in May of
1927, the month before that
speech. Woah! The people who made this
movie were prophets! Or time travelers!
Or knew Lindbergh and/or his baby, and
got the particulars of his speech ahead
of time! Cool! Or… well, sure, maybe
they just added that Lindbergh part
later, prior to the film’s official
premiere in August of ’27. That does
make more sense. (I prefer the prophecy
theory.)Anyway, we open in a small town in 1917 (we know this because the title card says: “A small town -- 1917”) and we meet Jack Powell (Charles Rogers), a young lad who looks a bit like Reggie out of the Archie comic books. Jack has always longed to fly, and in fact his every day-dream features the whir of wings (we know this because the title card says: “Jack Powell had always longed to fly… in every day-dream he heard the whir of wings.”). Jack once saved his life-long neighbor, Mary Preston (Clara Bow), from a bonfire, and sometimes he regretted it (we know this because the title card says: “Mary Preston had always lived next door. Once Jack had picked her out of a bonfire--and sometimes he regre--okay, I’ll stop now. It’s just that silent film exposition is weird, y’know?)...
Dateline: August 23, 2010
PROJECT FILM GEEK: AN INTRODUCTION
It
has been brought to my attention that I have bad taste in
films. Apparently, the fact that I love the Twilight
movies but hate Nosferatu, that I worship M. Night
Shyamalan but disdain Francis Ford Coppola, that I have an
abiding love in my heart for Keanu Reeves but just don’t get
what’s so great about Dustin Hoffman are black marks against
my judgment, my discernment and my upbringing -- nay, my
very being. If the cinema intelligentsia -- the
cintelligentsia -- are to be believed, anyone who can
find merit in Battlefield Earth yet none in
American Splendor (dude: it feels about a decade long,
and NOTHING happens) must have a drastic failing in their
fundamental DNA and be in immediate need of intense therapy.Certainly, I have an extensive and appreciative knowledge of Mandy Moore’s body of work. I have seen (and enjoyed) every Pauly Shore movie ever made, from Encino Man to last year’s Opposite Day. I am well-versed in -- and generally well-pleased by -- every piece of schlock, drek or utter nonsense produced under the Syfy (or Sci-Fi) imprimatur; love anything with Meg Ryan in it; count both Howards the Duck and Hawk among my all-time favorite flicks; and just adore the High School Musicals.
Okay, I get it. I’m like the anti-film geek.
But
why, I wonder, do I suffer from this alleged lack of
refinement and discrimination when it comes to the world of
film? I mean, my tastes in television and literature, while
often running to the ridiculous, also encompass the sublime:
I love Jane Austen at least as much as I love Jeffrey
Archer; The West Wing a good deal more than
Wings. I’ve seen almost every episode of E! True
Hollywood Story, and have even watched Inside the
Actor’s Studio enough that I think I can actually
pinpoint the exact moment when James Lipton starts picturing
himself naked on his knees in front of that week’s guest--so
clearly, I know movies. But, somehow, it is a vanishingly
rare event that I am on the same page as the critical
majority about any given film. I Know Who Killed Me?
An underrated masterwork. The Shawshank Redemption?
Tedious in the extreme. Waterworld? A
thought-provoking exploration of environmental calamity
(with pirates!). Citizen Kane? Just awful. And
Speed Racer? One of the greatest movies of all
fricken time. Come on, people, what is wrong
with you?Or is something perhaps wrong with me?...