Success or Snub? Gentleman's Agreement (20th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

  To see part 1, click here.

Nightmare Alley Suite~Nightmare Alley - Cyril J. Mockridge

Despite this being the 20th installment of the Academy Awards, there wasn’t much pomp, circumstance or drama (sad as it is to say). Probably the only really notable thing, since it’ll allow us to segue into our first film, is that James Baskett won the Honorary Award for his portrayal as Uncle Remus in Song of the South, making him the first African-American man to win an Academy Award.

Walt Disney fell off during the war years as he spent most of it trying to keep his company afloat and primarily invested in making anthology films (basically lower-budget versions of Fantasia (1940)). Song of the South was one of his first serious forays back into the features. And if you’ve never heard of this movie, then I seriously envy that rock that you’ve been living under.

Song of the South is set on a plantation in (what I presume is since the film never clearly establishes a year) the post-Civil War era as a young white boy named Johnny (Bobby Driscoll) befriends an elderly sharecropper named Uncle Remus (James Baskett). The film is very episodic as Johnny will confront a problem in adolescence, Remus will tell him a story (told in animated sequences) about Br’er Rabbit (Johnny Lee) which ends with Br’er Rabbit learning a lesson and Johnny will then use that lesson to solve said problem. Song of the South has a very notorious reputation as it was attacked, both back then and now, for Disneyfying life on a plantation and the Walt Disney Company has done their best to bury it, refusing to release it on home video or their streaming platforms. (They’ve buried it so well, in fact, that a lot of people don’t actually know that this is the movie where the song Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah comes from.)

While the movie has its heart in the right place as Uncle Remus was one of the first, if not the first, post-Code portrayals of a black character who was meant to be a positive, non-comic character to look up to; there’s a lot of jokes in this movie that are insensitive at best, flat-out racist at worst. And even if you could get past all the offensive jokes on a racial level, the main kid’s acting is offensive on a spiritual level. It is one of the worst, most annoying performances by a child actor in cinematic history (and I sat through Shirley Temple’s movies). Like, seriously, you guys. So bad. I’ve said previously that I’m against censorship in general but Song of the South also just straight-up isn’t good. Its notoriety precedes it in such a matter that actually watching it is a bizarre experience as it's more annoying than enraging.

Walt Disney, for his part, was livid that Baskett wasn’t allowed to attend the film’s premiere or the Academy Awards and petitioned hardcore to get him an Oscar. While Disney succeeded in the latter goal, it’s still pretty crappy that Baskett wasn’t nominated for either acting category and just got an honorary trophy and wasn’t even allowed to attend the ceremony, especially given that the movie that won the big award was about the dangers of prejudice. Call it another time or call it hypocrisy, but it’s a great vignette to illustrate Hollywood culture and the Academy.

Now that we’ve addressed that elephant in the room, let’s look at the field of historically relevant films that could have been called the Best Motion Picture of the Year. Normally on this series, I like to do a bunch of quick-hitters that can be summed in one or two sentences before getting steadily longer until we reach the 1-3 films that should have been seriously considered. Today, we’re going to try something different. We’re going to structure this blog into thirds with a bunch of quick-hitters in each category before building up to the most important film in that category.

First are the film noirs. Ronald Colman won the Oscar for Best Actor this year (even though he should’ve won it 11 years ago for A Tale of Two Cities (1936)) for his performance in A Double Life.

Colman stars as an actor who slowly goes insane and starts to lose his grip on reality. It’s a good concept but the movie is ultimately one of the weaker noirs (though Colman is good but I don’t know if he was “performance of the year” good).

There was also I Walk Alone

which was Kirk Douglas’ breakout role. The movie’s fun though flawed but redeemed by its climactic shootout which is one of the coolest scenes from the Golden Age of Noir.

Another big deal was Kiss of Death

which is notable for Richard Widmark’s performance as the gangster, Tommy Udo. While forgotten today, he was considered one of the greatest movie villains at the time this came out. This was the first movie villain to take an almost manic, joyous glee in murder and earned Widmark a well-deserved nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Out of the Past

and Nightmare Alley

are often considered two of the all-time great film noirs. Out of the Past is probably the most quintessential example of the genre besides The Maltese Falcon (1941) with its cigarette-smoking cynical main character, dangerous femme fatale and convoluted crime storyline. It’s also the movie that made Robert Mitchum a star and his droll, dead-inside delivery is perfect for this type of role and genre.

Nightmare Alley is unique in noirs in that it was considered an A-picture, was well-financed, had a major star as the lead (Tyrone Power) and is primarily set in a carnival instead of in the city streets (though it does get there eventually). Even by film noir standards, this movie is especially dark for its day though it does ultimately suffer by forcing a happy ending into the story.

While both of these are excellent films, this was actually a year one of the frontrunners for the Oscar for Best Motion Picture was a film noir: Crossfire.

Crossfire centers around a murder investigation as a Jewish man (Joseph Samuels) has been beaten to death. After the police are called in, the investigating officer, Captain Finlay (Robert Young) suspects that the murderer is among a group of demobilized soldiers who were in the same bar as the Jewish man the night of his death. But which soldier did the deed and why did he do it?

Similar to Gentleman’s Agreement, Crossfire gained a lot of publicity in its day for shining a spotlight on anti-Semitism. While this doesn’t tackle casual anti-Semitism in the way that Gentleman’s Agreement does and seems to be examining much more virulent racism, the trade-off is that this movie takes a serious risk by making the villains a group of Marines. It’s one of the biggest unspoken rules in American culture that war veterans and soldiers are the one group that deserve your respect, especially in a post-WWII world. Acknowledging that a group of soldiers could commit so heinous a crime is a major risk but, once again, pays off by showing that no one is invulnerable to violent anti-Semitism.

Crossfire also gains bonus points for having a very clinical approach to its story. It just shows a crime that has happened and the investigation that follows and the villain trying to cover his tracks. It doesn’t have any of the big preachy speeches, the moral is shown and easily understood. It also pushed boundaries as the film features characters using several anti-Semitic racial slurs, such coarse language in a movie being unheard of at the time. And of course it still has the dark lighting, cool characters and great style that makes a film noir such a great genre.

Miracle on 34th Street Suite~Miracle on 34th Street - Cyril J. Mockridge

That is the first of our three feature presentations. Now, let’s move onto other non-noir films that came out in America at that time. The Best Actress award was won by Loretta Young in The Farmer’s Daughter.

This is a weird film as it’s billed as a screwball comedy but the plot is played very straight. Instead it comes off more as a political satire. Pretty decent one though.

One the Western side of thing was Angel and the Badman

another John Wayne classic and the first time that featured Wayne playing an outlaw who has a redemption arc. It’s not one of the great Westerns but still a classic.

But probably the most famous film of the year was Miracle on 34th Street.

Set in New York City during Christmastime (despite the fact that the movie was released in May because producers thought that audiences don’t like watching movies in December; this must’ve been bizarre to see when it first came out), the film revolves around a man claiming to be Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) who becomes the local mall Santa at Macy’s Department Store in New York City. While he at first seems to be a kooky old man, he slowly gets every employee and employer at the department store to start believing in the true spirit of Christmas, making several of his companions start questioning whether or not he really is who he says he is. And it all ultimately climaxes in the trial of the century as he is put in court to decide whether or not he legally can be called Santa Claus.

This is one of the all-time great screwball comedies and it has aged surprisingly well. It’s also considered one of the greatest Christmas movies ever made and is marathoned on most TV networks every December, usually being shown back to back with It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1942). Despite being set in the corporate world of 1940s America, the story is surprisingly pretty timeless. Yes, Macy’s Department Store probably isn’t quite as ubiquitous as it was back then but most of these archetypes still exist in corporate America: the single mother, the soulless HR jerk, the all-powerful boss who’s concerned about the bottom line etc.

Yet, in a very clever piece of writing, Kringle gets people believing in the true spirit of Christmas through the power of capitalism. Despite being told by his bosses to recommend customers to Macy’s stores, he actually issues recommendations to a rival chain because they have a better product. Customers appreciate the honesty so Macy’s starts making it a company policy to send customers to a rival chain if they don’t have one in stock. Something about seeing department store moguls actually start doing the right thing because it affects their bottom line is still pretty funny. (It’s pretty interesting watching this coming off of It’s A Wonderful Life, as both movies seem to have more belief in the good will of the American business class than a movie released today would.)

And at the center of it all is Edmund Gwenn as the enigmatic Kris Kringle. This is quite possibly the greatest Santa Claus in cinematic history as he is a sweet old man who wants what is best for everyone he meets, loves children and yet still has a dignity about him. It is such a silly character but Gwenn is treating it like it’s the role that he was born to play. Everything about him makes you believe that this man could really be Santa Claus and keeps you wondering with the other characters how anyone could actually behave like this. Seriously, pick almost any clip of him in this movie and you’ll find it almost impossible not to smile at how delightful he is.

(Also, as an aside, I want to take some time to acknowledge Natalie Wood’s performance as Susan Walker as one of the very, very, very few child performances from the Golden Age of Hollywood that is not only not annoying but actually charming. I believe every word that she says and she is actually endearing to watch. As far as child performances go, this is one of the best of the era.)

This was actually one of the frontrunners at the Oscars and probably would have been the most likely to win had it not gone to Gentleman’s Agreement. Miracle on 34th Street won the Oscars for Best Original Story, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Edmund Gwenn (though that does raise the question who the Academy considered the main character of the film if not Kris Kringle), all of which seem well-earned. It does once again illustrate the question, though, of when and why comedies stopped being respected in the eyes of the Academy and when genre snobbery would start becoming more prevalent. Nowadays, a movie like this would never be considered a frontrunner but, back in 1947, Academy members seemed a lot more willing to give credit where it was due.

But, these are just American movies. To properly ascertain the success or snub question, we must once again go globe-trotting to check out the foreign films that would have made their American release in 1947.

From the USSR, there was Ivan Groznyy: Part I (Eng.: Ivan the Terrible: Part I).

A biopic about Ivan the Terrible (Nikolay Cherkasov) that was commissioned to Sergei Eisenstein (the man who made Battleship Potemkin (1925)) by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (who considered Ivan the Terrible his hero and canceled the sequels once they started showing Ivan’s nastier deeds), the movie is very operatic in its style and very incoherent in its storytelling. Considered a landmark in Russian filmmaking, whether it’s one of the greatest movies of all time or one of the worst is entirely in the eyes of the beholder.

From France, there was La Belle et la Bête (Eng.: Beauty and the Beast).

Based on the famous French fairy tale of the same name, it was once considered the most definitive version of said fairy tale, depicting the tragic and doomed love between a naïve but beautiful French peasant named Belle (Josette Day) and a prince who has been cursed into the form of a Beast (Jean Marais). While the story is a bit loose, the atmosphere and design of the Beast’s castle was completely unlike anything anyone had seen at that point. To this day, the movie has a surreal, dreamlike quality that has helped it stick around in cinephile circles. Even if the story isn’t the most tightly-written, this movie should have warranted a nod for Best Art Direction.

From Mexico, there was La Perla (Eng.: The Pearl).

A parable about greed, classism and morality as told amongst impoverished Mexican fishermen and how discovering a clam pearl causes the main couple (Pedro Armendáriz and María Elena Marqués) to corrupt themselves with dreams of wealth. The black-and-white cinematography is gorgeous and the film also has an unusually dark ending. La Perla also straddles a very interesting and unusual line between stylized and Neorealism and it’s one of my personal favorite movies of this era.

From Italy, there was Sciusciá (Eng.: Shoeshine).

Along with Roma, Cittá Aperta (Rome, Open City) (1944), this is one of the earliest Neorealist films, depicting the lives of two street urchins who ultimately land themselves in a juvenile detention center. Unlike Rome, Open City, this is a full-on slice-of-life story with no three-act structure, no professional actors and is just showing the life of these two boys though it is clever in how it builds to its heartbreaking ending. Its high quality earned it an Honorary Academy Award though it received no actual nominations.

And, finally, from England, we have two major films. First is Great Expectations

which is often considered one of the greatest film adaptations of a Charles Dickens novel. The movie really gets down the aura of a Dickensian story with its proud main character, Pip (Anthony Wagner as a child, John Mills as an adult) trying to make it in the world against the constant misery that surrounds both him and the characters in his life. The production design and directing is excellent but not overblown and every actor hits the perfect pitch without overshadowing one another.***

But last, and not certainly not least, is another great British film, A Matter of Life and Death (released as Stairway to Heaven in America).

While this was released in England during the closing weeks of 1946, it didn’t make its way Stateside until March 1947, which would qualify it for this year’s Academy Awards. That is it would have if they honored it at all. Which they didn’t.

An RAF pilot, Peter Carter (David Niven), is piloting an out-of-control plane through a fog bank and is forced to make a miraculous leap to safety without a parachute. Despite the fact that this should have killed him, he emerges safe and sound and begins a tryst with a radio operator named June (Kim Hunter). Before long, however, he is encountered by a mysterious figure known only as Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) who informs Carter that he was supposed to die and only failed because Conductor 71 missed him through the fog bank. Realizing that Conductor 71 intends to reap his soul, Carter demands an appeal before he dies and has three days to find defense counsel before he is put on trial to determine whether or not he deserves a second chance or must go to the afterlife.

While this is not the first movie to deal with metaphysical concepts such as the afterlife and angels, this is the first mainstream movie to deal with the afterlife as a setting for such a long period of time. A lot of the movie is spent in the afterlife and it has a great atmosphere to it. The design of it seems to eschew all prominent schools of architecture and thought whilst being color corrected in a way to give it an ethereal shimmer. Of particular note is the eponymous stairway to Heaven that a large chunk of the movie takes place on.

While the “stairway to Heaven” is a trope that predates Western literature as we know it (it’s likely inspired by Jacbob’s Ladder referred to in the Book of Genesis), this depiction of a slow-moving escalator that takes you to the Pearly Gates has become one of the most predominate in pop culture, being shown in countless other movies, TV shows and sitcoms. It’s a great set too and you find yourself easily believing that this could be what awaits you when you die.

The movie itself is very excellent, both as a romance and as a screwball. Carter and his attending doctor-turned-advisor/friend, Frank Reeves (Roger Livesey), are very likable characters and the film is so delightfully British, in more ways than one. There’s a ton of dark humor permeating throughout the movie, especially considering how most of it is dealing with death. One of the main conflicts/running gags is that for his trial in the afterlife, Carter is given the choice of anyone who has ever died for his defense counsel (e.g. Socrates, Abraham Lincoln etc.) and he has trouble thinking of the perfect person. He also ends up discovering that the prosecuting attorney (Raymond Massey) was the first man killed during the American Revolution and is still pretty bitter about it.

This in turn ties into the parable of the last act which ends up being a very fascinating look in time at cultural attitudes towards Britain. The movie climaxes in the trial and, at the risk of spoiling it, it does end with a very interesting view of British culture, morals and their relationship with Americans. While the film doesn’t go quite as far as a full-on mea culpa for all the atrocities that the British Empire has committed over the centuries, it acknowledges that if Britain is going to wag its finger at Germany for the genocides that it caused, then Britain will have some things to answer for to a lot of peoples.

Furthermore, the film seems especially keen to home in on Anglo-American relationships. The two countries have had a long and rocky relationship, and there were records in WWII of British and American soldiers butting heads, but the movie insists that they must learn to bury the past and move onto the future with their heads held high. It’s an interesting time capsule of British attitudes post-war, acknowledging both British and American fault as well as British and American pride.

But it’s not a lecture either. A Matter of Life and Death is very elegant in its dictating the message while still being a fun-to-watch movie. Showing this through the lens of death (something that just about everyone in the world in 1947 would’ve had experience with) makes it even more effective. It’s often regarded as one of the best films, if not the best, by renowned filmmaking pair, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and is often regarded as one of the best British films ever made. A Matter of Life and Death manages to handle a very philosophical topic in such a way that it leaves you thinking after it’s over.

So with all that said and done, this brings us to the Success or Snub question and this is where it gets really tricky trying to ascertain what was truly the Best Motion Picture of 1947. This is also starting to get to the point where I think choosing just one single choice as the one and only Best Motion Picture starts to get a little ridiculous but that kinda gets to the heart of awards in general. We’re here to rag on the Oscars specifically. And I don’t think I need to tell you that none of the foreign films were even considered for the big prize.

That having been said, this does get into a pretty heavy philosophical discussion as to what constitutes best in this case and that can easily be seen in the eyes of the beholder. As a historical landmark, Gentleman’s Agreement is of paramount importance to American cultural history. In terms of its timing, it’s probably one of the most important movies ever made about racism. It would’ve been so easy for the average moviegoing American to write off the Holocaust as something that couldn’t happen anywhere but Germany. Showing a mirror to the masses about their own casual racism and prejudice was a good way to show the error of this thinking (though I’ll admit to not knowing how much the film actually accomplished in terms of changing American culture, there’s no way in Hell it didn’t affect some people at least).

As a movie, however, Gentleman’s Agreement falls flat in a few key areas. Crossfire tackles similar themes and is far more watchable and enjoyable. Sciusciá and A Matter of Life and Death deal with different themes but do them far, far more elegantly and subtly. They’re actually excellent films as well as parables. While Miracle on 34th Street doesn’t really have much complex themes other than “Be excellent to each other,” it’s still a very well-made movie that's acted, shot and directed in a better and more memorable manner.

Here’s where we start getting into the nitty-gritty and philosophy of what actually makes a great movie as well as genre snobbery. I’ve personally always been of the opinion that a film should be graded on the parameters of what it’s trying to accomplish and that a mediocre drama is not automatically better than a great comedy just because it happens to be a drama. From this point-of-view, Gentleman’s Agreement most certainly is not the best movie of 1947. Honestly, I’d venture to say it’s inferior to at least half the films listed in this blog.

However, once again, we need to remember historical relevance and timing. If Gentleman’s Agreement came out fifteen, ten or even just five years later, it would not have been nearly as poignant. So it could be argued as being the most important movie of 1947. I’m kinda see-sawing here as I can see both arguments for whether this was a good choice or not. In the interest of appealing to the better angels of our nature and acknowledging that this was a decision that has higher implications than just what is the best collection of celluloid, I think we can label this as a success. Though that also means that this will be an important barometer in future Academy Award ceremonies, particularly the ones where socially relevant and challenging films did not win.

For now, though, calling Gentleman’s Agreement the best motion picture of 1947 was a…

SUCCESS!

***As another aside, I had great difficulty writing praises for Great Expectations as I personally don’t like it despite the fact that it’s a very well-made movie. The only reason why I don’t like it is because I personally really hate the story, Great Expectations (1861). From my point-of-view that makes this movie even more impressive as it’s like somehow sculpting Michelangelo’s David out of garbage. As a faithful adaptation of Great Expectations, that means that it’s still horribly boring, has 3 different plots and features a whiny brat of a main character who takes too long to appreciate the only halfway decent person in his life. Nevertheless, Great Expectations is still considered one of the best British films of all time so if you don’t hate the story, you’ll probably like it.

Personal Favorite Movies of 1947:

• A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
• Boomerang (dir. Elia Kazan)
• Crossfire (dir. Edward Dmytryk)
• Kiss of Death (dir. Henry Hathaway)
• La Perla (The Pearl) (dir. Emilio Fernández)
• Miracle on 34th Street (dir. George Seaton)
• Nightmare Alley (dir. Edmund Goulding)
• Out of the Past (dir. Jacques Tourneur)
• Road to Rio (dir. Norman McLeod)
• The Farmer’s Daughter (dir. H.C. Potter)

Favorite Heroes:

• Dr. Frank Reeves (Roger Livesey) (A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven))
• Fred Gailey (John Payne) (Miracle on 34th Street)
• Jeff Bailey/Jeff Markham (Robert Mitchum) (Out of the Past)
• Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) (Miracle on 34th Street)
• Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) (Kiss of Death)
• Philip Schuyler Greene (Gregory Peck) (Gentleman's Agreement)
• Quino and Juana (Pedro Armendáriz and María Elena Marqués) (La Perla (The Pearl))
• Scat Sweeney and Hot Lips Barton (Bing Crosby and Bob Hope) (Road to Rio)
• The Ghost of Captain Gregg (Rex Harrison) (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir)
• Uncle Remus (James Baskett) (Song of the South)

Favorite Villains:

• Abraham Farlan (Raymond Massey) (A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven))
• Br'er Bear (Nick Stewart) (Song of the South)
• Dink Turner (Kirk Douglas) (I Walk Alone)
• Giuseppe Fillippucci (Sciusciá (Shoeshine))
• Mr. Sawyer (Porter Hall) (Miracle on 34th Street)
• Stanton Carlisle the Great (Tyrone Power) (Nightmare Alley)
• The Pearl Dealer (Fernando Wagner) (La Perla (The Pearl))
• Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) (Kiss of Death)
• Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) (Out of the Past)
• Willie the Giant (Billy Gilbert) (Fun and Fancy Free)