Success or Snub? You Can't Take It With You (11th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

 To see part 1, click here.

The Adventures of Robin Hood Suite~Erich Wolfgang Korngold - The Adventures of Robin Hood

As far as years from the Golden Age of Hollywood go, 1938 is interesting in that there’s nothing here that was a cosmic “oh my God, this is such a mainstay epic” that came out this year. That’s not to say nothing notable did, just saying that there’s not as many colorful complaints here or films that the average filmgoer is likely to have seen. Maybe heard of? Meh, who cares, let’s see if we can find anything to measure up to snuff for ol’ Capra.

First, the milestones. There’s actually a few films here that were sort of prototypes for even larger successes in later years (and, thus, showed them up, making them a curious piece of history forever in their successor's shadow). Like Pygmalion, which has the same plot points as My Fair Lady (1964).

Or Jezebel, which has similar themes, settings and characters to Gone With the Wind (1939).

Or Roy Rogers (the infamous singing cowboy) who got his first film with Under Western Stars.

Or the first (and one of the worst) sound adaptation(s) of A Christmas Carol.

And, finally, the teen movie genre was quasi-pioneered with Love Finds Andy Hardy,

which also launched the career of Judy Garland (in case you don’t know who Andy Hardy was, it was a near-deluge of films in the later 30s and early 40s about a boy growing up in the American heartland and were basically sitcoms before the TV was around). These are all interesting watches if you want to see where these types of stories began but hold little else for the modern viewer and would not have really been movie of the year even back then.

Onto the bigger splashes, one that you would think would be a strong contender was the French epic, La Grande Illusion (Eng. title: The Grand Illusion),

which is considered one of the great French films of the 1930s. It is also the first foreign film to have ever been nominated for the Oscar for Outstanding Production. La Grande Illusion takes place during World War I (then still called the Great War) and centers around a pair of French soldiers, Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), who was a nobleman before the war, and his Lieutenant, Maréchal (Jean Gabin), who was a peasant.

La Grande Illusion is a complex and searing indictment of the waste of World War I, particularly in how it totally destroyed all European notions of class. The two main characters come from different backgrounds but they slowly learn, along with the audience, that that doesn’t matter. The idea of European nobility is being annihilated by the war; a war that is honestly accomplishing nothing. The film also touches on some disturbances when it comes to anti-Semitism which was also becoming a big problem in Europe at the time.

This would potentially make a strong contender for the Outstanding Production Oscar, owing both to its timely themes and more humanistic shooting style that would’ve helped it stand out to American audiences. I’ve already complained before how the Academy seldom gives foreign movies the time of day so it does bear kudos that this was even nominated. Just for Outstanding Production, sure, but the point still remains.

That having been said, I’m not going to lie, this is one of those great movies that I personally find boring. The first half of the film where de Boeldieu and Maréchal are with each other is excellent. Eventually, the two do separate, however, and the second half concerns Maréchal’s adventures through the French countryside and it gets really boring really fast. While I guess this was an early pioneer of the neorealism movement that popped up in post-WWII France and Italy, it would be shown up by later films such as Roma, Cittá Aperta (1945) and La Dolce Vita (1960).

Regardless of my own personal quibbles, La Grande Illusion is still an impactful film and one of the greatest films of that year. Was its placement in the Academy Awards warranted or does it seem like a token acknowledgment? I digress; we have other movies to talk about before we analyze this decision more in-depth. Most of America’s biggest films in 1938 were large splashes and pioneers in some of the more genre-type movies. First off: the gangster movie. After a bit of a slump following the erection of the Hays Code, the gangster movie erupted back onto the scene in the form of Angels with Dirty Faces.

Yet another James Cagney vehicle, this is the movie that once again defined him as Hollywood’s favorite tough guy. It quickly became a bellwether for his career and was lauded as one of the best the year it came out. Nowadays, though, it’s most famous for being parodied by John Hughes in Home Alone (1990) with Angels with Filthy Souls.

Angels with Dirty Faces stands out from the crowd of gangster movies with a pretty interesting plot. The film is primarily about the relationship between Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) and his childhood best friend, Father Jerry Connolly (Pat O’Brien). Sullivan has just got out of prison and is a legend in the neighborhood for being a general badass, which leads to him being worshiped by the local teenagers (the Dead End Kids) that Father Connolly has taken under his wing. (The Dead End Kids are a largely forgotten troupe of teenaged actors in late 30s Hollywood who were known for playing ruffians in films such as this one, Dead End (1937) and Hell’s Kitchen (1939).)

This leads to a fun and interesting conflict as Sullivan is on the war path to find his old partners who gipped him while Father Connolly tries to stop him from being a bad influence. This is an identifiable conflict, especially for anyone who grew up in a Christian household, and the two leads do a great job at playing their types. The movie also once again embraces the violence of the gangster genre with a great climactic shoot-out, which honestly makes me wonder what it was about Scarface (1933) that the Hays Office found so offensive since the main character in that movie gets his just desserts in that movie too. But I digress.

The romantic-comedy genre also had a major milestone in 1938 with Bringing Up Baby.

The next evolution of the rom-com genre, Bringing Up Baby wrote all of the clichés that you didn’t see in It Happened One Night. More specifically, It Happened One Night had the tropes of the argumentative couple that acts like they hate each other while Bringing Up Baby has the deranged sociopath who is in love with someone to unhealthy degrees.

Katherine Hepburn plays Susan Vance who falls madly in love with Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) and tries to convince him to help her raise her pet leopard, Baby. From there, hijinx ensue in a memorable screwball that transformed Hepburn and Grant into comedic stars. This is also where the trope of the manic pixie dream girl comes from, pioneering the trope a full 80 years before movie critic Nathan Rabin coined it in response to Elizabethtown (2005). (For those who don’t know, the manic pixie dream girl is a character archetype who acts quirky and weird and would be obnoxious if you knew them in real life but in the world of cinema, is a sagely character who teaches our protagonist to come out of their shell.)

If we’re trying to compare You Can’t Take It With You to its biggest competition in the comedic genre, this would’ve been it. That having been said, I do think that You Can’t Take It With You is an all-around funnier and more well-made movie than Bringing Up Baby. Plus I think Bringing Up Baby is one of those movies that was given just decent reviews at the time and didn’t become seen as a classic until much later so whatever.

Probably the most influential film of 1938 would’ve been the action-adventure Errol Flynn vehicles, The Adventures of Robin Hood and, to a lesser extent, The Dawn Patrol.

We talked in our review of the 8th Academy Awards about how Flynn was a huge blockbuster star and pioneer in the swashbuckler and action-adventure genre. Well, The Adventures of Robin Hood is easily the most definitive swashbuckler ever made, telling of the famous outlaw, Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) and his Merry Men who do battle with the evil Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) and wins the heart of the fair Maid Marian (Olivia de Havilland).

This is the closest to what you would call the modern summer blockbuster of the 1930s. There’s action, there’s adventure, there’s romance, there’s comedy and, of course, there’s some good old-fashioned swashbuckling. Unlike prior swashbucklers which usually had just one sword fight or two, here there are several, cementing the idea of keeping the audience glued to their seats with repeated action scenes. In addition, their scale is amazing, with special mention going to the climactic battle Robin and Guy of Gisbourne where, at one point, the audience sees only their silhouettes fighting.

Obvious spoiler warning.

This particular fight would be considered the gold standard for which all future movie swordfights would be graded against, influencing other movies like The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Black Swan (1942) and the lightsaber duels in the Star Wars films. Even something as recent as The King’s Man (2021) pays tribute to this classic movie moment.

This also remains the most definitive version of the Robin Hood mythos, with that green costume of Flynn’s (silly though it may look today) being parodied and remade numerous times, such as in Bugs Bunny cartoons and in the Disney version. While you would think this film would be a victim of genre snobbery, it actually was nominated for the Oscar for Outstanding Production, believe it or not, as well as winning the Oscars for Best Original Score, Art Direction and Editing. Between this and Wings (1927) being lauded when they came out, I’m honestly curious when the action-adventure genre became less respected in the eyes of the Academy.

Despite this being the most influential version of Robin Hood, I’d also be lying if I said it was the best one. The big problem with this movie, and the reason why I’d hesitate to say that it definitely should have won, is that the villains don’t come off as particularly threatening. Don’t get me wrong, Guy of Gisbourne and Prince John (Claude Rains) are a lot of fun and have a menacing demeanor but their actions don’t really match. Every time over the course of the film that they meet Robin Hood, he always gets the better of them. There’s even a whole extended sequence where Gisbourne is held hostage in Sherwood Forest and ends up being left naked in the middle of the woods. Thus, when it comes time for the big finale, it doesn’t seem like a real question if Robin Hood will beat them since we’ve seen him do it so many times before. I guess we can chalk this up to it being one of the earliest swashbucklers but even in Captain Blood (1935), I thought the bad guy in that seemed like a real threat to the heroes.

If there was any real snub at the awards, however, it would have to be Errol Flynn’s other big movie of the year, The Dawn Patrol (which received no nominations).

This film once more pairs Flynn with Rathbone as his antagonist in another adventure setting (in this case, it’s an aviation film instead of a swashbuckler) but it turns the tropes on their heads. Captain Courtney (Errol Flynn) is the ace pilot in a squadron of the RFC (the precursor to the RAF) during World War I, serving under Major Brand (Basil Rathbone) with whom he constantly butts heads with as Courtney blames Brand for sending new recruits into battles without proper preparation. This, in turn, leads to most of said recruits getting shot out of the sky and killed, usually horribly.

In any other movie of this era, Brand would be the obvious villain but, instead, they show his plight as well. Brand is pressured by his own superiors to keep sending men on raiding missions, even when they’re surely doomed. He’s constantly stressed and has to watch each and every morning as faces he personally knows go off into the sky, never to return again, and break the news to the rest of the squadron. Captain Courtney’s own frequent broey antics (including some pretty awesome aviation stunts) and constant insubordination don’t help matters much.

This is a movie that could very easily have been either too dour and melodramatic or not given the dignity it deserves but The Dawn Patrol manages to find just the right note. It can be very silly and fun but the last half-hour is very dark and really shows the suffering of the middle management of war and the difficulties commanding officers must face. It’s a very identifiable conflict and makes you understand where both characters are coming from.

In addition, most of the clichés we associate with WWI flying films that were pioneered with Wings and Hell’s Angels (1931) were defined here. The white scarves they wear, the chivalry in the air, the soldiers binge-drinking enough to make a Russian puke, the grumpy commanding officer and the legend of the dangerously good German ace (Manfred von Richthofen a.k.a. the Red Baron in real life, called von Richter (uncredited) in the film). While it’s not as well-known as The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Dawn Patrol is easily one of Flynn’s best films and probably the best anti-war movie since All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).

So, that brings it back to Success or Snub? Well, this is where it can turn into a real toss-up. Narrowing the choices here down to La Grande Illusion, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Dawn Patrol and The Adventures of Robin Hood, they all have their appeal for being considered the most timely and most influential. The Adventures of Robin Hood was a pioneer in the action-adventure genre, permanently bringing the swashbuckler back into pop culture. Angels with Dirty Faces showed the danger of the hero worship that surrounds gangsters in poor neighborhoods (like many of the ones that many people in Great Depression America lived in). You Can’t Take It With You reminded audiences that there’s more to life than making money and how American robber barons weren’t necessarily beyond redemption. And La Grande Illusion and The Dawn Patrol showed a bleak portrayal of the waste and death brought on by the Great War, a grim reminder to audiences when it seemed like another European war was right around the corner.

Yeah, this one’s kind of a toss-up. Though I’m sure back then it was more or less a runaway answer. Looking at the ceremony, the biggest competitors were apparently Jezebel (mentioned above) and Boys Town (a decent film that has similar themes, and is ultimately inferior, to Angels with Dirty Faces). So, maybe we can issue snubs for the best acting and writing categories but, honestly, this series is just focused on the Best Picture awards. If I made a blog about each and every Oscar in each and every ceremony, we’d keep this going until I was older than the Academy. Maybe after we’re done, we can circle back around and look at the acting categories but, whatever, I’m getting off-topic here.

Yes, You Can’t Take It With You is a very excellent film and you could definitely have made the case for it being the best and most culturally relevant film of that year. Calling You Can’t Take It With You the Outstanding Production of 1938 was a…

SUCCESS!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1938:

• Angels With Dirty Faces (dir. Michael Curtiz)
• Bringing Up Baby (dir. Howard Hawks)
• La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion) (dir. Jean Renoir)
• Pygmalion (dir. Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard)
• Room Service (dir. William A. Seiter and James Anderson)
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (dir. Norman Taurog, H. C. Potter, George Cukor and William A. Wellman)
• The Buccaneer (dir. Cecil B. DeMille)
• The Dawn Patrol (dir. Edmund Goulding)
• The Lady Vanishes (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
• You Can't Take It With You (dir. Frank Capra)

Favorite Heroes:

• Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) (La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion))
• Courtney (Errol Flynn) (The Dawn Patrol)
• Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) (You Can't Take It With You)
• Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) (The Adventures of Robin Hood)
• Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn) (Bringing Up Baby)

Favorite Villains:

• Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold) (You Can't Take It With You)
• Mr. Wagner (Donald MacBride) (Room Service)
• Mrs. Kirby (Mary Forbes) (You Can't Take It With You)
• Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) (La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion))
• Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) (Angels With Dirty Faces)