Oscars Retrospective: On the Waterfront (27th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

 To see part 1, click here.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Suite~Paul J. Smith - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

As you can gather by this point, 1954 (or 55 when this ceremony took place) was the high water mark of the Blacklist movement in Hollywood and the Academy was probably the most conservative it had ever been (and probably ever will be). Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but, in terms of judging art, yeah, this is kind of a bad thing. I’ve come to learn that there are two types of Academy Award ceremonies we complain about here on the show. There’s ones where the actual winner sucks but then there are ones where the winner’s a good choice but the nominees they narrowed down to a top 5 are where the snubs are.

Case in point: On the Waterfront is a pretty great movie. The other 4 nominees for the 27th Academy Award for Best Picture are not. The Academy decided to nominate The Caine Mutiny

an overly-long and blasé ripoff of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935); The Country Girl

a boring-as-all-sin swan song for Bing Crosby and was the odds-on favorite for the ceremony, being On the Waterfront’s biggest competitor; Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

which is the epitome of a musical with great dance sequences but is otherwise a pretty boring movie; and Three Coins in the Fountain

which is an average romantic film of the era. So let’s look at some of the other major films to come out in 1954 and analyze why all of them are better than these 4 films, shall we?

If nothing else, the 1950s was an important decade in pioneering new special effects. In 1954, the major landmark was in terms of underwater cinematography with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

It feels a bit weird grouping these two films together as they have almost nothing in common besides the fact that they both have long sequences taking place underwater. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was one of Disney’s big-budget adventure films, based on the classic Jules Verne novel where a group of sailors are forced to accompany the mysterious Captain Nemo (James Mason) on his voyages in a submarine. Creature from the Black Lagoon is the last of the Universal monster icons as a group of scientists explore a mysterious lagoon that harbors a prehistoric monster (Ricou Browning).

Neither film has aged all that well though they have their moments of campy fun and the underwater sequences in both films are, indeed, great. There’s a certain art of underwater cinematography to make scenes interesting as it’s a bit harder than you’d think (ipso facto, action’s going to move slower underwater) so it is surprising that these sequences in both films hold up so well. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would go on to win the first ever Academy Award for Best Special Effects which seems warranted as it has much larger set pieces and most of them are still pretty great to look at.

On a higher note, 1954 was a great year for foreign cinema that saw American release dates. From France, there was Madame de… (released in America as The Earrings of Madame de…)

This film is kind of a loose remake of Anna Karenina (1935) as it revolves around an unhappy marriage between the deliberately unnamed Général (Charles Boyer) and his equally unnamed wife, the Comtesse (Danielle Derrieux). The title comes from the Comtesse’s earrings being used as a fun plot device for the web of romance and intrigue to revolve around. While initially receiving mixed reviews, it’s now hailed as a classic of French cinema, both for its unique film techniques, its playing with story tropes and just being a good portrayal of a loveless marriage.

Equally notable is Journal d’un Curé de Campagne (English: Diary of a Country Priest)

a film about an unnamed Priest of Ambricourt (Claude Laydu) who confronts a crisis of faith as he tries to sway his procession into becoming better Christians. Laydu’s performance as the tragic priest is essentially the French equivalent to Brando in On the Waterfront as it’s considered one of the greatest performances in film history. Large chunks of the movie contain Laydu acting entirely alone in a bedroom as the Priest confronts his crisis of faith and it is downright mesmerizing to watch. His performance received no acknowledgement from the Academy despite being on par with Brando and the talk of the town at the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals.

From Italy, there was Europa ‘51 (Eng.: Europe ‘51).

Another movie with one of the all-time great film performances of Ingrid Bergman playing a socialite who receives a pang of conscience and starts becoming an activist against the wishes of her industrialist husband (Alexander Knox). Similar to the vein of Bicycle Thieves (1948), this movie shows a grim portrayal of postwar Italy though this time it chooses to tackle gender roles instead of classist ones. While a masterpiece, particularly in regard to its grim ending, Europe ‘51 is another film that received only mixed reviews as it was attacked for being leftist propaganda. Seems that the conservative wave that shook the film industry in the early 50s wasn’t an American-only phenomenon.

But the country that really made its mark this year was Japan, which released an important non-Kurosawa samurai film, Jigokumon (Eng.: Gate of Hell).

Gate of Hell is a film whose subject matter feels decades ahead of its time. A samurai named Morito Endo (Kazuo Hasegawa) has helped a local lord (Koreya Senda) put down a rebellion and, in exchange, the lord offers Endo anything his heart desires. During the rebellion, Endo met and protected a noblewoman named Lady Kesa (Machiko Kyo) and became smitten with her so he thinks it’s only natural to ask for her hand in marriage. The problem? Kesa is betrothed to another man and, furthermore, isn’t even all that attracted to Endo in the first place. Endo does not take this lightly and the rest of the film is him growing increasingly obsessed and deranged in his pursuit to make Kesa love him.

With a set-up like that, you would not guess that this was a movie made in a notoriously sexist country like Japan circa the 1950s. Gate of Hell never once allows itself to acknowledge that the character is in the right. The film moves at a good clip and allows Kesa a lot of agency for a film of this era while still keeping her conformed to the gender roles of a film of this time period. What makes this age tremendously well is that while the character is still bound by the social limitations of feminism in the 50s, the women of 1500s Japan would’ve been similarly limited. It’s a magnificently understated performance of a woman caught between a rock and a hard place which contrasts with the increasingly unhinged Endo.

I also believe that this is one of the first, if not the first, samurai films to be shot in Technicolor and increased the budget to a splendorous level. While Rashomon (1950) was an excellent period piece, most of the movie took place in woods and in a ruined village, which seems like it’d be easier to shoot around to give the audience the illusion of medieval Japan. Much of Gate of Hell takes place in magnificent palaces and tea gardens, really making you feel like you’ve been transported back in time to a different era. The production design in this film is on par with many of the Biblical epics coming out in America at the time but with a more mature story.

While you might think we’re kinda spinning our wheels for constantly castigating the Academy for neglecting foreign cinema, especially in a time period that was aggressively pro-American, Gate of Hell did receive acknowledgment from the Academy. It received an Honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and won the Academy Award for Best Color Costume Design. This is the first non-English-speaking film to have ever won any Academy Award, which is astounding to think about. While a slow and steady acknowledgment, it’s clear by this point that foreign cinema was starting to get noticed in America. Maybe we can let it slide that American culture was not yet at the point to be willing to acknowledge superiority in the form of calling Gate of Hell the Best Picture of the year but this is definitely all-star level.

Moving back to America, three major, big-budget, boundary-pushing films were all completely snubbed. First was Vera Cruz

a Western that joins the likes of High Noon (1952) and Shane (1953) in pushing the boundaries of the genre and American values. The film takes place during the Franco-Mexican War as a pair of American gunslingers/mercenaries named Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) and Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) both arrive in Mexico to lend their guns to the cause. With a pitch like that one might be inclined to see this as the typical formula of “grizzled old vet and wise-cracking sidekick save the day” that had already become clichéd by this point in the Western formula. But, similar to Shane before it, Vera Cruz takes these clichés and enhances them by creating more 3-dimensional characters.

Trane isn’t just an old gunslinger who lost a woman he loved and has spent too much time on the frontier. He’s actually a former Colonel in the Confederate army and fled West to escape the shame of having lost the Civil War. Knowing that he’s an honorable soldier who fought for a losing cause and is now stuck in the midst of another revolution adds a layer of cynicism that is not often present in this type of character. Similarly, Burt Lancaster’s Joe Erin is the young gunslinger that wants to prove himself but Vera Cruz turns that on its head by making the character a full-blown sociopath. One scene that proved very controversial is a scene where Erin threatens to shoot several child hostages and this is a good baseline for how beyond redemption he is. The two offset each other perfectly and seem absolutely determined to bring out the worst in each other, which keeps the movie fresh even after over 70 years of these buddy adventure movies.

I have heard that Vera Cruz broke ground by being one of the first dark Westerns and directly influenced the spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s though the first half of this statement is another one of those myriad of film records that I seriously question. Burt Lancaster’s Joe Erin does seem fairly reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart in the equally dark Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and, before that, there was The Ox-Bow Incident (1942). Unlike those two movies, however, Vera Cruz is a lot more fun. Despite its dour setting and cynical characters, Vera Cruz has a lot of moving parts that makes the plot engaging. You have Colonel Trane, you have Joe Erin, you have the Mexican revolutionaries, you have the French conquerors and you have the other American mercenaries who are along for the ride. It’s actually fun seeing how all these sides play off against each other and just slowly degrade into their own personal moral Hells.

Moving onto our feature presentations. While Marlon Brando’s winning of the Academy Award for Best Leading Actor is one of the most famous Academy decisions for acknowledging such a landmark, the other side of the gender divide is equally famous for opposite reasons. In what is often considered one of the worst snubs in Academy history, Judy Garland did not win the Academy Award for Best Leading Actress for her role in the (first) remake of A Star is Born.

A Star is Born is a pretty fascinating IP as it belongs to the same strata of stories such as Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and Les Misérables where it seems to get a new rendition and remake every 20-30 years so each generation can call it their own. Unlike those aforementioned IPs, however, A Star is Born is unique in that it was not based on a book or any other media and is simply the prototypical Hollywood fairy tale told again and again that audiences love to see. Even more interesting is that each time it’s remade, the film is often considered one of the best movies of its respective year; both because it’s such a great story and because the subject matter seems to invite directors to be willing to be vulnerable with themselves and confront a darker subject matter.

A Star is Born revolves around the relationship of Hollywood veteran star, Norman Maine (James Mason) and young up-and-comer, Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland). While the 1937 original shows Blodgett’s move to Hollywood and her constant trials and tribulations as a starving artist before inevitably meeting Maine at a party, the remake fast-forwards a bit. Here, it opens with Maine attending a gala and showing up visibly intoxicated so his publicist (Jack Carson) hires the nearest background dancer, Blodgett, to take him home so he can sober up. Instead, she ends up partaking in his humiliating bender and the two hit it off, fall in love and Maine starts to use his connections to help boost Blodgett’s career. The film then proceeds as a tragic portrayal of the allure of stardom and how it poisons relationships as for every inch Blodgett’s star continues to rise, her boyfriend’s continues to fall.

Watching these two versions of A Star is Born back to back is one of the best ways to see just how much Hollywood had changed in 17 short years and what the Hollywood fairy tale would be like. The 1930s version was a well-paced melodrama that involved a lot of talking and witty one-liners. It’s a very quintessentially 30s film. This version seems to be much more steeped in the big spectacles that Hollywood was moving itself towards. It’s shot in widescreen, spends a lot more time on musical sequences and seems to be trying to split the difference between being a spectacle and being a gripping story about the trappings of fame.

This does tend to lead the movie feeling a little bloated as, despite cutting out Esther Blodgett’s backstory and minimizing the screen time of the film’s villain (both of which are big parts of the original film), this version is significantly longer. A Star is Born gets lost sometimes in the musical numbers though, if we’re being totally fair, that is a very common problem with most big-budget movies of this era. If anything, A Star is Born stands out in the fact that it remains mostly engaging throughout. Supposedly, the film was originally supposed to be over 3 hours long but the producers demanded it be cut to a slightly more economical 150 minutes. Of course, these being Hollywood producers, they were presented with the choice of trimming down some of the bloated musical numbers or cutting a few key dramatic scenes. Take a guess as to which option they chose.

This is probably the weakest version of A Star is Born though it is still a very good movie with another of the all-time great movie performances. While the musical numbers are all great, most of the side-characters are well-acted and James Mason’s performance as the alcoholic star is on par with Fredric March’s, it’s Judy Garland who completely steals the show. Along with Brando’s stint as Terry Malloy, this is one of the all-time greatest movie performances. While Malloy was indicative of where movies were going, Garland’s turn as Blodgett seems like a fitting capstone to the old style of Hollywood acting that would soon be eclipsed. The character has been seen as reflective of Garland’s life herself: the love of performance and the outlets that show business provides while her tragic life constantly batters and beats itself against this love. It’s a very layered performance and a true tour de force.

Which makes her loss for the Academy Award for Best Leading Actress to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl all the more inexplicable. We mentioned The Country Girl briefly earlier in this review and how it was a frontrunner at the Academy and, boy, is this a head-scratcher. Kelly’s performance does essentially mirror Garland’s in that the character has the difficult job of propping up her toxic boyfriend’s unhealthy obsession with fame whilst simultaneously acting as his muse. A noble undertaking in the field of acting that can be difficult to portray, I’m sure, but Garland’s character has to do the exact same thing as well as sing, dance and run a much larger gamut of emotions. So why did Kelly win?

This is not a rhetorical question, by the way. This is notorious as one of the biggest snubs in Academy history though no one seems to have a very clear answer as to why Garland actually lost. Most articles online or books I can find that discuss this decision simply cite it as being a snub. My best educated guess? Well, for starters, those excised 20 minutes of dramatic time probably didn’t help matters. More importantly, though, Garland was getting a reputation as being notoriously difficult to work with, habitually showing up late and throwing tantrums on set (the fact that she was repeatedly drugged, sexually assaulted and forced onto an anorexic diet by her bosses without any access to therapy or a healthy human relationship may have had something to do with this). Since the Academy’s a good old boy’s club, I wouldn’t be surprised by enough grudges and bad stories being able to swing the vote away from Garland. Gotta love it.

The final feature snub of the year was one of Alfred Hitchcock’s great masterpieces, Rear Window.

L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) is a young photographer living in Greenwich Village who has broken his leg and is now confined to a wheelchair and his apartment. This being decades before they invented video games, streaming services and more than 3 TV channels, he is bored to tears and passes the day by spying on his neighbors in the apartments across the block. As a result of his confinement, he also grows increasingly moody and starts lashing out at his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly whose performance here is much more memorable and fun than The Country Girl). So, they save their relationship in the best way that characters in Hitchcock movies know how: by solving a murder-mystery that one of the neighbors has committed.

Coming off of the stylistic coolness of Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window has one of the most unique filming styles, both of its era and really any movie ever. The camera never actually leaves Jefferies’ apartment which helps put us in his shoes in his feeling of being trapped inside. So when we see the other neighbors who Jefferies interacts with, they’re always seen with a long lens from far away with their personalities being communicated entirely silently. Even when there’s a close-up on one of the neighbors, it’s done with a long lens to give the impression that we’re still seeing the focus from Jefferies’ (very far away) point of view. Rear Window is essentially a masterclass in the usage of the Kuleshov Effect (for those who don’t know what this is, here’s Hitchcock himself to explain) as we always understand that what we see is what Jefferies sees.

The movie has a lot of fun with coming up with ways to create a fun thriller with memorable side-characters all while never leaving the four-walled confines of Jefferies’ apartment. The climax is downright heart-pounding and Raymond Burr plays a memorable and menacing villain despite being seen mostly in profile and only having a few lines of dialogue. When running down the catalog of Hitchcock movies, this usually ranks in his top 5 and is often regarded as one of the most essential movies of the 1950s. It’s well on par with On the Waterfront though the question remains on which is truly better?

While the knee-jerk reaction is to note that On the Waterfront is more of a parable with things to say about contemporary America, Rear Window has a lot more going on beneath its surface than immediately meets the eye, and in ways that I don’t think Hitchcock quite fully intended. During the big cultural shift of the late 50s and 60s, movies played a very essential part (as we shall soon see) and there was the great philosophical debate of what a movie actually is. Movies are, ipso facto, a very voyeuristic medium that invites the audience to gaze into the worlds of other human beings. So, when we watch a film about violence and murder, is this actually desensitizing us to the nature of brutality and killing?

Rear Window has been argued as being the first, and one of the few, films that serves as a parable for this argument. Jefferies watches the lives of his neighbors, far enough away that they seem more like characters than actual humans, and ultimately decides to take the onus upon himself to solve a murder. Specifically, he does so in such a manner where it’s clear he’s actually enjoying the game of it. So, at the end when he’s confronted by the actual murderer, this is the reality of the situation coming home to remind us that violence is real and it could happen to us.

This is a very layered parable though I don’t think it’s actually what Hitchcock ever really intended; I think he just wanted to make a movie set entirely in one apartment building. Then again, death of the author is one of the most important aspects of analyzing art, so to pretend that this means nothing is equally pointless. Rear Window’s reputation in this regard I think sprung more from fortunate timing than anything else. Around this time is when the first counterculture began with the beatniks who acted as a loose precursor to the hippie generation of the 60s. This is the crowd who would congregate in cities like New York and Chicago inside arthouse theaters that imported foreign films and would analyze them in-depth over cups of coffee and how they reflect the world they see around them.

In terms of which is the better movie between On the Waterfront and Rear Window, we are arguing apples and oranges here. They’re both often regarded as two of the greatest films ever made though Rear Window is definitely more entertaining and probably experimented with the medium far more. Comparing On the Waterfront to Rear Window, A Star is Born and Vera Cruz, I think the argument can be made for On the Waterfront being the best film of the bunch. However, the fact that none of these three movies were nominated for Best Picture and received paltry acknowledgment elsewhere is still ludicrous. Vera Cruz (which was nominated for nothing) should have gotten Burt Lancaster the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (which went to Edmond O’Brien in the forgettable Barefoot Contessa), Judy Garland should have won the Oscar for Best Leading Actress and I’m going to say that Rear Window was a severe snub for the Oscar for Best Editing (which went to On the Waterfront and Rear Window wasn’t even nominated for) Oscar for Best Color Cinematography (which it lost to Three Coins in the Fountain) and Best Director (which it was nominated for but Elia Kazan won for On the Waterfront).

We’ve discussed previously how the Academy Award for Best Director seems to be one of the most flatout pointless of the Academy Awards. While I do not want to discount the hard work of everyone else who works on a set, a film is ultimately the director’s movie. If a movie wins the Academy Award for Best Picture, doesn’t that imply that it had the best direction of the year as well? Well the Academy seems to think so too as you could count the number of ceremonies where two different films won Best Picture and Best Director on your fingers and toes. It’s very rare that you’ll find an instance where you could say that one film is a better movie but the other had better direction.

This is one of those instances. Elia Kazan’s direction of On the Waterfront is very, very well-done but Hitchcock’s direction of Rear Window shows a complete mastery over how movies work, particularly editing. Setting a movie entirely in one location is something that has been done before and since but never to the degree where every ancillary character is seen from thirty feet away. Hell, the movie never even actually says out loud how Jefferies broke his leg; the film just shows a photograph on his wall of him being close to an out-of-control car and knows the audience is going to instantly understand what happened. Kazan was a very good director, Hitchcock was better and this is one of the keenest demonstrations of that fact.

But to get back to the heart of the review: is On the Waterfront the best movie of 1954? Arguable yes. If nothing else, it’s definitely still a landmark and the fact that the movie’s most famous line (if not the title itself) still remains part of pop cultural discourse to this day should attest to its staying power.

Calling On the Waterfront the best movie of 1954 was a…

SUCCESS!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1954:

• A Star is Born (dir. George Cukor)
• Dial M for Murder (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
• Europa '51 (Europe '51) (dir. Roberto Rossellini)
• Jigokumon (Gate of Hell) (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa)
• Johnny Guitar (dir. Nicholas Ray)
• Journal d'un Curé de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) (dir. Robert Bresson)
• Madame de... (The Earrings of Madame de...) (dir. Max Ophüls)
• On the Waterfront (dir. Elia Kazan)
• Rear Window (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
• Vera Cruz (dir. Robert Aldrich)

Favorite Heroes:

• Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) (Dial M for Murder)
• Colonel Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) (Vera Cruz)
• Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester (Judy Garland) (A Star is Born)
• Irene Girard (Ingrid Bergman) (Europa '51 (Europe '51))
• L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) (Rear Window)
• Professor Pierre Aronnax (Paul Lukas) (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)
• Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) (Sabrina)
• Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) (On the Waterfront)
• The Priest of Ambricourt (Claude Laydu) (Journal d'un Curé de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest))
• Vienna (Joan Crawford) (Johnny Guitar)

Favorite Villains:

• Captain Nemo (James Mason) (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)
• Général André de... (Charles Boyer) (Madame de... (The Earrings of Madame de...))
• George Girard (Alexander Knox) (Europa '51 (Europe '51))
• Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) (Vera Cruz)
• Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) (On the Waterfront)
• Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) (Rear Window)
• Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) (Sabrina)
• Morito Endo (Kazuo Hasegawa) (Jigokumon (Gate of Hell))
• The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Ricou Browning) (Creature from the Black Lagoon)
• Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) (Dial M for Murder)