Success or Snub? The Great Ziegfeld (9th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

 To see part 1, click here.

Une Tempete Sous Un Crane~Arthur Honegger - Les Misérables

This Oscar ceremony is significant as it was the first year to give out awards for Best Lead and Supporting Actor and Actress rather than just Best Actor and Actress period. As mentioned in my previous chapter, this most likely occurred when Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) held three spots in the Best Actor category the prior year even though only two of the actors in question could be called the star of the movie.

I would normally use this as a chance to segue into the review for one of these movies but actually none of the films are on the hit list today (not including Luise Rainer’s win as Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld, you know what I meant). Yup in true Academy fashion, The Story of Louis Pasteur, Come and Get It and Anthony Adverse were promptly forgotten about after the awards and all are nothing more than poorly-aged melodramas these days (on second thought I take that back; The Story of Louis Pasteur is pretty decent).

The competition this year is a bit of an interesting one to go over. Looking at the line-up of films and how frequently several titles repeat, as well as comparing them to the critical reviews, this was apparently a very competitive Oscar ceremony, and almost all of them were pretty culturally relevant films. While there were other films that came out that year that were big deals, such as The Last of the Mohicans (which is actually a remake of a 20s film),

Show Boat (this is where the song Ol’ Man River comes from)

and Swing Time (arguably Astaire and Rogers’ best film),

I don’t want to drag this on forever and would rather focus on the films that were being debated before using that to segue into another one of the big problems with the Academy.

One of the big competitors that year was My Man Godfrey,

which was also one of the most beloved 30s comedies and a big draw at the Oscars that year, being the first film to be nominated for all four acting categories. It didn’t win any of them, or any award for that matter, but it was still a first.

A couple of rich socialites called the Bullock sisters (Carole Lombard and Gail Patrick) engage in a messed-up game where they see who can be the first one to find a homeless man and show him off to their family. The one sister succeeds when she finds a vagabond named Godfrey (William Powell) and takes to him so much that she hires him to be their butler. Thus, Godfrey moves in with the Bullocks and the rest of them is about his relationship with the family as the one sister wants him out of the house, the other wants to date him, the mother (Alice Brady) has the maturity of an 8-year-old and the father (Eugene Pallette) hates his family for pretty understandable reasons.

This sounds like it has all the makings of a good screwball comedy about the upper-class during the Great Depression and I’m sure it was pretty funny and topical back then but this is one that really hasn’t aged well. Like, if this came out today, the family would be bouncing off the walls with how nuts they are; here it’s a lot more dialed back. What they’re saying isn’t necessarily all that funny stuff either so it’s really lacking that energy.

My Man Godfrey isn’t a bad movie, it’s just a poorly-aged one. That having been said, I’m not really getting why this was one of the Academy’s darlings. I guess it’s for the class issues but, if that’s the case, the movie feels kinda mean-spirited as it’s inviting us to laugh at anyone who’s rich which ends up feeling hypocritical. Like, remember that opening scene where the rich people try to find poor people just to laugh at them that I talked about? Well, that’s what this movie is doing in reverse. Even though it was made by incredibly wealthy people. Figure that one out. (If you want a better screwball comedy from this year with similar socio-political themes, check out Theodora Goes Wild.)

Another big competition that year was the Jeannette MacDonald vehicle, San Francisco,

which was also the highest-grossing film of 1936. MacDonald is another big star from the 30s, who stood out from the crowd with her genuinely beautiful operatic voice. While she initially did a few rom-coms with Maurice Chevalier, her most frequent partner would be fellow opera singer, Nelson Eddy. The two would make several romance epics of the era that usually get ranked on most greatest romantic movies of all time such as Naughty Marietta (1935), Rose Marie (1936, another one of the year’s top grossers) and Maytime (1937).

This makes San Francisco weird since the movie isn’t a musical and doesn’t have Nelson Eddy even though people went to see it because of Jeanette MacDonald and she barely even sings or has her perennial screen partner. Instead, San Francisco details the relationship between a saloonkeeper named Blackie Norton (Clark Gable) and his newest saloon singer, the naïve Mary Blake (Jeannette MacDonald) and Blackie’s childhood best friend, Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy). The film then lazies between their stories before the climax ultimately ties into the infamous San Francisco earthquake of 1906 which devastated the city.

I guess you could consider this one of the first disaster movies but comparing this to a modern-day disaster movie kinda highlights the main problem with it. Usually a disaster movie will have a lot of build-up to the disaster in question, often in the first couple of scenes. This is a good thing as it gets you more invested in the characters knowing that at any time, there’s going to be some horrific act of God that’s going to ruin their lives. Here, it just kinda comes out of nowhere near the end of the film. There’s no characters talking about the tectonic plates or some slight seismic activity, it just happens.

Even taking that out of the equation, though, this movie is pretty damn dull. I think it’s supposed to be a Tower of Babel-type story but the limitations and restrictions of the time kinda prevent the characters and film from being as hedonistic as I think it wants to be. They try to portray Blackie Norton as this very gray character but, c’mon, is there ever any doubt that he’ll do the right thing in the end?

At the very least the earthquake scene is cool. It’s really crazy, hectic, has some great special effects and ties the whole movie together. It’s just a shame that the rest of the film surrounding it doesn’t hold up as well. But, as long as we’re here, we might as well round out the list of films that haven’t aged well with what is probably the most famous adaptation of the most famous play of the most famous writer of all time, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

So growing up, I first read Romeo and Juliet, the play, when I was a freshman in high school and hated it as I did not understand why it was considered the greatest love story of all time. Then I grew up a little and gave it a bit more credit as you realize that Shakespeare was well aware of that and the story is meant to be a cautionary tale of teenage romance not being kept in check and parents not listening to their children. (It’s still one of my least favorite of Shakespeare’s works since I think that both of the main characters are unlikable, whiny idiots who deserve to die but the point remains.) It’s just that pop culture really has bastardized this work and its message. And I think a lot of that blame can fall on this film adaptation.

While I give it credit for being the first Shakespearean adaptation that a lot of people know about, the film does not do its source material justice. You’re really supposed to buy their romance and believe that these two are truly in love. When it gets to the final tragedy, it’s not played as the byproduct of poor decision-making, it’s played as them truly being in love with each other and how romantic it is that they’re willing to die for someone they met in just a week.

Throw in the fact that the actors are all clearly too old to be playing their characters and terrible action even by the standards of its day and, yeah, this movie’s horrible. I know it’s considered a classic in the romance genre but, I’m sorry, nothing about this seems to work (except for the iconic balcony scene). And it’s not just a poorly-aged thing either. At the time, the film was lambasted by both critics and audiences despite getting Academy nominations; it wasn’t until later years that people began looking at it as a prime example of movie romances. I don’t know how long after it came out that it was seen in that light but, today, it’s pretty terrible.

Now that we got the venom out of the way, let’s switch gears to the films that actually would’ve been good choices. Frank Capra, who you may remember as the guy who directed It Happened One Night (1934), won the Oscar for Best Director again this year, this time for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

This is another highly beloved 30s comedy, telling the story of a small-town country bumpkin, Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), who becomes the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in America and is accordingly stalked by a local reporter (Jean Arthur) to try to humiliate him. If this sounds familiar, that’s because you probably watched the Adam Sandler remake that was simply called Mr. Deeds (2002), although I think that the original is the better movie.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is much more of what I think My Man Godfrey should’ve been as it exposes the hypocrisies and greed of the upper one percent and the general cult of celebrity around rich CEOs. You feel bad for this poor guy because his folk wisdom sees through most of the nonsense that people feed him and yet he’s constantly punished for it and slandered in the newspapers. It’s a real “everything you touch turns to gold” story.

However, it’s also done in a very restrained and respectful manner as well. Frank Capra excels at these kinds of “believing in the best of people” stories and this is easily one of his best. It also fixes the problem that some of his earlier films suffered from in that the heartwarming moments, particularly the climax, don’t feel forced or out of left field, they feel earned and gives the audience much more of a “Hell yeah” moment. I also like how this movie avoids a lot of the clichés from the time period.

From the set-up I gave, and the mannerisms of most of the characters, you could probably guess who’s going to be a good guy and who’s going to be a bad guy but the film actually switches it around. Some of the more level-headed, nicer-seeming characters are the ones trying to rob Deeds blind while the more sleazy, “myah, see” Little Caesar-kind of guys actually end up sticking up for him. It’s a very fun switcheroo and helps make for a more dynamic cast of characters which in turn makes for a better movie.

As long as we’re on the topic of beloved classics, we’re moving on to Dodsworth,

which, granted, probably isn’t as famous as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, but it’s still influential and took some serious risks. Dodsworth (the movie) is based off Dodsworth (the play) which in turn was based off Dodsworth (the novel). All three of these Dodsworths (the stories) revolve around the Dodsworths (the couple) and warned audiences of marriages gone awry by showing the tragedy of Dodsworth (the person).

Dodsworth was basically the first film to show a divorce in an honest light and a couple falling out of love. Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) goes on a second honeymoon with his wife, Fran Dodsworth (Ruth Chatterton). And from there, it’s just about their relationship and their conflicting personalities, values and them both slowly realizing that they may not be truly fulfilled. No screwball antics, no villain, no grand adventure, it’s just an introspective look at marital problems and asks some serious questions about devoting your life to someone.

This film is a Goddamned anomaly for when it came out and is very ahead of its time. Back then, the very idea of divorce was far more taboo, just as much as the idea of a couple spending time away from each other for any reason other than work. I mean, Hell, just look at a lot of the relationships coming out of Hollywood at the time. Dodsworth was one of the very first movies to show real problems between a husband and wife.

Normally, this would be the part where I talk about how you have to accept the isms of the time period but that’s the thing, there aren’t a whole lot. It’s ism-less. Yeah, the acting is that antiquated, 30s Hollywood type of acting but even that’s pretty restrained. It’s just the life of these two characters who really could be anyone and asking some powerful questions as they go through their midlife crises. It’s a genuinely timeless film.

Rounding out the list of famous American products that were competing at the Academy that year was Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

Refresher for those who never read this one: the story takes place in the late 1700s as the story transitions back and forth between London, which was becoming fabulously wealthy from the Industrial Revolution, and Paris, which was on the cusp of the French Revolution. More specifically, the film revolves around a couple named Lucie Manette (Elizabeth Allan) and Charles Darnay (Donald Woods) and the entourage of friends and family that surround them as they live their life in this turbulent time period. Particularly their relationship with their lawyer, Sydney Carton (Ronald Colman), who happens to be in love with Lucie.

This is often regarded as the best adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, and arguably one of the best adaptations of any Dickens work ever made. The whole story is very cleverly constructed as there’s this ongoing theme of duality throughout. Obviously the two cities but also the contrasting personalities of Carton and Darnay who both look very similar to each other. Certain scenes and characters during the fun first half of the movie are repeated during the second half in a far more horrifying manner.

This brings us to our next point, that being what this film is most famous for, that it truly shows just how horrifying the French Revolution was. Granted, you don’t actually see any heads roll but the story, characters and especially the acting is so well-done, that it’s actually uncomfortable to watch. Once again, probably not anything too much by today’s standards but for Hays Code-era Hollywood, it’s pretty grim.

The acting is also wonderful. I love this entourage of friends that surround the couple, all of whom have a role to play in the film and of course, there’s our protagonist, Sydney Carton. This guy may be the most complex and three-dimensional character that Dickens ever wrote and a lot of the movie’s success comes from Ronald Colman’s portrayal. Carton is a miserable, pathetic drunkard who really has nothing good going for him. This is probably a guy who had the potential for greatness but he just enjoyed partying and drinking so much that it eventually became his whole life.

Most everyone treats him like a drunken loser except for Lucie and her kindness inspires her friends to welcome Carton into the group as well. For example, there’s a great scene where she invites him to spend Christmas with her and Charles. Carton is so visibly uncomfortable because no one has ever treated him this way before. His unrequited feelings for her could so easily be made creepy or pathetic but the character is mature enough to accept that it won’t happen and, instead, just be as good a friend as possible.

It’s a classic tale of redemption through and through and the decision that he makes is still incredibly inspiring to this day. And this is just this one character. Almost all of the characters have these layers of depth that you can analyze on this level because they are that fascinating. Balancing all of these while still getting to the heart of the story is what lies at the core of every great film adaptation and this is truly a great adaptation.

This is a great movie and was regarded very well at the time. But we’ve still yet to hit our feature presentation. Thankfully, we’re still in France (metaphorically speaking) as that allows us to segue into the film that was truly snubbed, Les Misérables.

Not the Hollywood version; this was a French film released in Paris in 1934 but didn’t make its way Stateside until 1936. Technically, you can debate which is the better film between this and A Tale of Two Cities as they’re both commonly considered some of the best 30s adaptations and the best film versions of their respective works. I’m talking about Les Misérables last because I like it better and also, because it was foreign, that meant that the Academy totally ignored it.

Les Misérables, based on the epic novel by Victor Hugo, details the 50-year-long tale of redemption of Jean Valjean (Harry Baur) who tries to do right by everyone he meets all while being pursued by the ruthless Inspector Javert (Charles Vanel). Along the way, he encounters a poor prostitute named Fantine (Florelle), a pair of scumbag tavern owners called the Thénardiers (Charles Dullin and Marguerite Moreno) and eventually gets caught up in the June Rebellion of 1832 with one student named Marius Pontmercy (Jean Servais).

While this film is beloved by cinephiles and held as a pillar of early French cinema, not many have seen it, for admittedly obvious reasons. It may have something to do with its age or the fact that it’s exclusively in French meaning that you’ll have to watch it in subtitles. Or, it might have something to do with its FOUR-AND-A-HALF-HOUR-LONG running time. You have to be ready to waste an entire afternoon if you want to watch this movie. Even longer if you want to take advantage of the not one, but two, intermissions. But, let me tell you, if you do, you’ll be in for a treat.

Les Misérables is an interesting work when it comes to film adaptations as the original novel is a few Bibles thick at almost 3,000 pages long. Thus, it’s actually worthwhile to watch several adaptations as each one will often include certain subplots that are cut out of other adaptations of Les Mis. This is where this movie comes in. Because of its length, this allows it to adapt pretty much all of the key scenes in the novel, and several that no other version of the film includes, which helps make it a better story.

For example, we all know how the story begins, right? Jean Valjean leaves prison for parole, can’t find work and ends up sheltering with the local bishop (Henry Krauss). Valjean chooses to rob the bishop of all his silver in the middle of the night and leave but is captured by the police. When he’s brought back, the bishop, instead of pressing charges, clears Valjean’s name and tells him that the silver will be used to buy his service to God. This is the spark that starts Valjean’s redemption and is usually where most prologues of Les Misérables end.

This movie, however, takes it a bit further as by showing what happens later that day. Valjean encounters a boy who is playing with a coin. And, just like in real life, changes don’t happen immediately; he’s still an angry ex-con. He steals the boy’s money and runs him off. Then, as soon as the boy’s gone and Valjean’s given a moment with his thoughts, he immediately takes off after the boy to try to make amends. He never sees the boy again and never spends the money.

That is so powerful and adds so much depth to the character and really personifies why this is the best version of Jean Valjean. The title “Les Misérables” roughly translates to “The Miserable Ones.” Many people think it’s called this as it refers to the poor workers and failed student rebellion but, ultimately, it refers to Jean Valjean. While there have been many great Valjeans over the years, none of them have ever really gotten this aspect of self-loathing. That’s not to knock their performances. Like Fredric March in the Hollywood adaptation from the previous year. He was great and showed the difficulties of leading a good life but he also came off as more or less psychologically healthy.

Harry Baur’s Jean Valjean is just brimming with self-hatred. This isn’t a man whose soul was bought and redeemed; this is a man whose soul was bought and redeemed and then screwed it up that same day and can never let himself forget that fact. You feel so bad for the guy because throughout the whole movie, he does all these kind deeds and yet he can never forgive himself. All you want is to see this poor guy happy.

A lot of the other sub-plots are done very well too and, again, because of the extra running time, we’re allowed to see them more in-depth. We actually get to see Fantine’s husband (Roland Armotel) for once which makes her eventual rock bottom destitution all the more tragic. The relationship between Marius and his paramour, Cosette (Josseline Gaël as an adult, Gaby Triquet as a child) is great, which I find especially impressive since these characters are so easy to make into the stereotypical movie schlock romance. And the scale is, of course, impressive for its time.

For a movie that’s close to 5 hours long, it really doesn’t feel like it for the most part. It’s kinda like watching The Godfather (1972) or The Shawshank Redemption (1994) where you’re so hypnotized by what’s going on and aware that you’re watching a truly great movie that it’s easy to lose track of the time. Hell, the first time I looked at the clock while watching this, close to 70 minutes had already passed and I swear that it felt like 10.

So this leads us to our million dollar question: success or snub? Well, first things first, we should dwell on the aforementioned acting snub that I pointed out at the beginning of the blog, which is a shame as I actually do like The Story of Louis Pasteur (where Paul Muni won the Oscar for Best Leading Actor, even though he should’ve won that award back in 1934 for I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932)). It bears mentioning that this is the sort of character that the Academy just loves giving the Best Oscar win to. It probably wasn’t a stereotype at the time but, even with that in mind, this ain’t exactly the world’s hardest performance here. He’s just that kooky mad scientist that you’ve seen in many old films from that time. Ronald Colman and Harry Baur played these very complex, difficult, multi-faceted characters and pulled them off flawlessly. Is it even worth mentioning at this point that neither of them were even nominated?

Also, while we’re on this topic, why was William Powell nominated for Best Actor for My Man Godfrey and not for his role in The Great Ziegfeld a.k.a. the movie that actually won Best Picture? I’m not saying that was a snub, I’m just more curious as to actually why. It’s a weird decision.

It probably also bears mentioning that neither of the best supporting actors and actresses were exactly all that great either. Don’t you think some of these fun, multi-layered supporting characters in A Tale of Two Cities should’ve won? But, I digress, we’re losing focus, that being the Outstanding Production award.

It bears mentioning that Les Misérables wasn’t nominated for anything on account of it being foreign. I briefly talked about in a previous chapter about how the Academy routinely ignores foreign films due to it being a Hollywood institution. Now, to be totally fair, foreign cinema didn’t really catch on in the States until sometime in the 40s and 50s so maybe it’s a bit more forgivable here. It’s still an unfair decision, especially given how influential foreign cinema can be but, remember, we grade these decisions based on how they were made at the time, not 80 years in retrospect. Still, this is a trend that has become far too common over the years as it would take until 2019 before a foreign film ever won the Oscar for Best Picture, over 90 years after the Academy Awards were established.

With that in mind, The Great Ziegfeld is ultimately a much better movie than San Francisco or Romeo and Juliet so we’ll give it to them there. And while I don’t think it’s quite as good as some of the rest of these movies, it’s still one Hell of an epic for its time. And I think those are the three words worth homing in on here: for its time.

In 1936, there was nothing else like The Great Ziegfeld. This was, and still is, a major step forward for musicals. I mean look at those sets, look at those numbers. And, despite some plot issues here and there, it’s still mostly a good movie. It was one of the first “real artist” movies and does have some pretty damn good performances to boot. Honestly, what I said earlier about this blog being comparable to King Kong (1933) still holds up.

They both have their problems and can get lost in their own little world but they’re still such big leaps forward in technology that they can’t really be ignored. Now, granted, King Kong is a far more iconic film these days than The Great Ziegfeld but Ziegfeld still helped pave the way for where the musical genre was going. Without this movie, you probably would never have had other beloved musical epics like The Wizard of Oz (1939), Mary Poppins (1964) and so forth.

And we rated King Kong a snub when we listed it against Cavalcade (1933) so it only seems fair at this point. I might be cheating a little bit here and I know that a lot of other film scholars often consider this choice a snub and think the Oscar should’ve gone to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town or A Tale of Two Cities. The actual definition for what wins the Oscar for Best Picture is a bit hazy which is why we tend to go in circles a lot for these things. Are they grading it based on what they think is the all-around best movie or do they also take into consideration if the movie for breaking boundaries and being culturally relevant? If the answer is the former, then The Great Ziegfeld is clearly not the best movie of the year; if the latter, then I would consider this at least a tie.

Granted, it’s only barely a tie at that and really I think it only deserves the award because of how much it pushed the envelope. It’s a good movie but if you want something that’ll entertain you more or give you an appreciation for film, I’d definitely recommend Les Misérables, A Tale of Two Cities, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town or Dodsworth over The Great Ziegfeld. Maybe that does mean I should call it a snub but then again it’s just how it was at the time and there’s far worse decisions that the Academy has made.

So, by the standards of people living in 1936, I think it’s fair to call giving The Great Ziegfeld the Oscar for Outstanding Production a…

SUCCESS!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1936:

• A Tale of Two Cities (dir. Jack Conway)
• Dodsworth (dir. William Wyler)
• Fury (dir. Fritz Lang)
• Les Misérables (dir. Raymond Bernard)
• Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (dir. Frank Capra)
• Our Relations (dir. Harry Lachman)
• Swing Time (dir. George Stevens)
• The General Died At Dawn (dir. Lewis Milestone)
• The Great Ziegfeld (dir. Robert Z. Leonard)
• The Story of Louis Pasteur (dir. William Dieterle)

Favorite Heroes:

• Alf Laurel and Bert Hardy (Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy) (Our Relations)
• Jean Valjean (Harry Baur) (Les Misérables)
• Joseph Carton (Ronald Colman) (A Tale of Two Cities)
• Lucky Garnett (Fred Astaire) (Swing Time)
• The Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) (Modern Times)

Favorite Villains:

• John Cedar (Douglas Dumbrille) (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town)
• Joseph Wilson (Spencer Tracey) (Fury)
• Kirby Dawson (Bruce Cabot) (Fury)
• Madame DeFarge (Blanche Yurka) (A Tale of Two Cities)
• The Thénardiers (Charles Dullin and Marguerite Moreno) (Les Misérables)