Best Screenplay 1946

1927/28 through 1997
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What were the best Original and Adapted Screenplays of 1946?

The Blue Dahlia (Raymond Chandler)
1
4%
Children of Paradise (Jacques Prévert)
7
28%
Notorious (Ben Hecht)
3
12%
Road to Utopia (Norman Panama, Melvin Frank)
1
4%
The Seventh Veil (Muriel Box, Sydney Box)
0
No votes
Anna and the King of Siam (Sally Benson, Talbot Jennings)
0
No votes
The Best Years of Our Lives (Robert E. Sherwood)
9
36%
Brief Encounter (Anthony Havelock-Allen, David Lean, Ronald Neame)
4
16%
The Killers (Anthony Veiller)
0
No votes
Open City (Sergio Amedei, Federico Fellini)
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 25

The Original BJ
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Re: Best Screenplay 1946

Post by The Original BJ »

The Adapted roster is quite strong, though It's a Wonderful Life is the one omitted script that absolutely merited inclusion. After that, I would agree that The Big Sleep and My Darling Clementine are certainly impressive, though it's hard to object much to rest of the slate as is.

Anna and the King of Siam is the one nominee that definitely has got to go. I, too, came to the movie well after absorbing other versions of this story -- the Brynner/Kerr film musical, the more recent Chow Yun-Fat/Jodie Foster movie, the very recent Lincoln Center Broadway revival -- and by comparison, this earliest film version comes off most primitive, presenting such a clearly otherized portrait of the Siamese in ways that would at least be somewhat more sensitively handled in later incarnations. But there are also plot points present in this version that others smartly excised -- the burning at the stake sequence, which really makes one severely dislike the King, and the death of a child, which just feels utterly random. It's not an inconsequential nominee, but also the clear weakest.

The Killers is definitely the best adaptation of Hemingway that I've yet seen. The first sequence in the movie -- the adapted part -- could have stood on its own as a very strong short film. But it also serves as a great springboard for the essentially original story that follows, a twisty noir that's well-plotted, populated with interesting characters, and full of dialogue that emblematizes the genre ("When it comes to dates, 1492 is the only one I can remember"). I think it's WAY better than the noir option on the original side this year, but just falls short of being the finest choice here.

One of the criticisms I heard of Brooklyn last year was that its focus on a heroine whose chief dilemma involved a love triangle was minor at best, anti-feminist at worst. And my response to that was, that's not fair -- issues of finding and losing love are things that all people deal with in their daily lives, and when handled with intelligence and nuance, stories about the same subject can be very moving. And that's how I would describe Brief Encounter -- it's a very human story in which the details of small moments carry big impact (the scene when Johnson and Howard plan their last meeting and have it interrupted by a friend is just heartbreaking), and it remains thoughtful rather than sudsy in its storytelling throughout. Another strong nominee.

I'm a bit surprised Open City didn't get a single vote here. (Italiano, did you sit this one out?) It certainly approaches The Bicycle Thief in terms of sheer narrative drive, and its story has moments of great emotional impact. I totally agree with Mister Tee about Anna Magnani's final scene -- the moment is perfectly contextualized within the narrative, but it still feels startlingly out of the blue. For me, this was the scene in the movie when I really realized I wasn't watching something from the classical Hollywood mode of storytelling, but a film steeped in a level of gritty authenticity that I imagine must have felt very bracing in the mid-40s.

And yet, I ultimately still think the Hollywood option was the strongest of this slate, and I cast my vote enthusiastically for The Best Years of Our Lives. It's a very ambitious work of writing, juggling multiple storylines and a whole bunch of characters, recognizing their foibles but finding the humanity in all of them. And it remains quite resonant today, simply because the theme of soldiers returning from war and finding it difficult to reintegrate into the society they left behind is sadly still very timely. I know I've griped over a lot of the WWII films I've had to sit through for these polls, and of course, Best Years isn't a war film so much as a family/small-town drama with war in the rear view. And yet, its tone is so much closer to my sensibility, its hopefulness imbued with such strong feelings of skepticism and regret, that I find it towers over most of the blindingly patriotic war-themed movies of the era. Even in a strong field, it's my clear choice.
Mister Tee
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Re: Best Screenplay 1946

Post by Mister Tee »

The writers’ branch came up with a pretty stellar roster this year, largely through a wholesale purge of best picture nominees. It’s a Wonderful Life obviously was hurt by this, and should have been retained, but Henry V was ousted for reasons clear to anyone (excluding the branch voters of 1996), and two truly sub-par efforts, The Yearling and The Razor’s Edge, made way for more interesting efforts. There are omitted films that would have further polished the slate – The Big Sleep and My Darling Clementine – but, by and large, the writers did their job.

Since I started delving into Broadway musicals at a young age (before I had access to many films), there are a number of works with whose musical adaptations I became familiar well in advance of seeing or reading the original/famous-in-its-own-right material – Camelot/the Arthurian myths, Cabaret/Berlin Stories-I Am a Camera, Hello, Dolly!/The Matchmaker, A Little Night Music/Smiles of a Summer Night. This list very much includes Anna and the King of Siam, which I only finally saw sometime in the 90s, long after fully absorbing The King and I. The surprise is finding out how much juggling Hammerstein did with the story – condensing a narrative that, in this film, spans years, into what seems a few months onstage. The film on its own -- despite the now-offensive casting of Harrison as Siamese -- is interesting enough that one sees why the material has so endured. But, as a piece of writing, it’s the least impressive of this group.

The opening of The Killers is, as may have said, probably as picture-perfect an equivalent to Hemingway’s prose as was ever effected on-screen, a splendid film-within-a-film. What follows in the remainder of the running time is a bit less ambitious, but it’s a thoroughly decent nourish narrative that expands on the Hemingway scenario without literalizing or trivializing it. A solid film, a worthy nominee, but up against more impressive co-nominees.

I’ve always felt Brief Encounter is a bit like Marty – you have to accept the fact that an uber-intelligent writer is stooping a bit to deal with “small problems in the lives of little people”. But, if you’re willing to proceed from that premise, each of the films has an irresistible quality -- Brief Encounter probably a bit more. The famous opening/closing sequence (recently mimicked in Carol) locks us inside Celia Johnson’s head, and the very simplicity of her desire – to have something just a bit out of the ordinary come along – is so touching it carries us along. The action is tactful almost to a fault – carnality is barely hinted at, as if in fear it would turn audiences against the characters. But, in its tasteful way, the film packs an emotional wallop, and sticks with you. I like it well enough.

Open City may be my favorite of the early Italian neo-realist group. It’s a gripping story of wartime resistance, full of tense and sometimes shocking scenes (Magnani’s denouement came as an especial jolt). And the in-the-streets, no Hollywood gloss approach to the filming makes it feel more immediate still. I come close to choosing this.

But, in the end, I have to go with The Best Years of Our Lives, the most ambitious and moving of the five nominees. The film’s reputation has taken a bit of a roller-coaster ride –- hugely lauded in its day, viewed as totally uncool in the revisionist 60s –- but I think it’s hard to deny the film’s open heart, and its willingness to look, unblinkingly, at many things that made America uncomfortable in the immediate aftermath of the war. The film easily juggles multiple storylines and characters, and doesn’t provide easy answers for any of its subjects…a sense of unease hangs over even those parts of the narrative that appear resolved. The film also covers a wide landscape – gives us the sense the characters in this one small town can stand in for the country as a whole. For all these reasons, despite any flaws or dated aspects, the film gets my vote.

The Seventh Veil is one of those early psychiatry movies, that knew just enough about the subject to concoct an outlandish plot and try to explain it with psycho-gibberish. (SPOILER ALERT) I may be misremembering – it’s been 20 or more years – but my recollection is, the film has James Mason essentially browbeat Ann Todd for most of the running time, but the movie’s “insight” at the end is they’re actually in love with one another? Which today comes off as rationale for mental spousal abuse. Whether I’m remembering that part correctly or not, there’s nothing about the film that matches up to the quality of some of the other films nominated, so I can confidently say Oscar voters got it wrong, and I won’t be replicating their choice.

I realized just a few years ago that the only one of the Road pictures I had any familiarity with was the latter-day Road to Hong Kong -- which I saw in a theatre in 1962. So, in quick succession, I sampled the Roads to Zanzibar, Morocco and Utopia. Zanzibar I found a bore, but Morocco and Utopia I found pleasingly entertaining. Utopia is probably the best of them, if only for containing the immortal “Give me a lemonade…in a DIRTY glass”. They’re not, to put it mildly, important pictures, but I can see why critics (and screenwriters) of the time found their ragtag humor a tonic in a serious era. Nomination, fine…though that’s as far as it goes.

I was a huge fan of Raymond Chandler’s books, so I for years looked forward to seeing The Blue Dahlia. I suppose it was inevitable I’d be disappointed when I finally saw it. It’s not bad, exactly – it sets an intriguing plot in motion, and has good 40s atmosphere. But, as with many mysteries, the solution is a bit of a let-down – not twisty/unexpected enough, nor especially resonant. I have no great objection to its being a nominee, but pass by quickly when it comes to a vote.

Notorious is one of the half-dozen best Hitchcock films. It’s full of tense, signature set-pieces – like the stealing of the wine cellar key, and the discovery of the broken bottle. But it’s also fairly complex human story -- while it certainly roots for Bergman’s character to be safely removed from the house, I’m not sure Hitchcock’s greater sympathy at that finish isn’t with the Claude Rains character. Whatever pure evil might lurk in his past, in the story we’ve seen, he’s honorably and undeniably fallen in love with Bergman, and he’s the one who’s deceived/betrayed. This is pretty heady stuff for an espionage thriller, and, in another year, it might be enough for the script to get my vote.

But…there’s Children of Paradise. I’d seen the film back in the 70s, but, since my memory of it was hazy, a year or so ago I DVR-ed it to take another look. When I sat down to watch, I’d largely thought of it as a chance to remove three hours from an expanding DVR backlog. By the time I’d finished, however, I couldn’t even consider deleting it – I felt I’d just watched a masterwork, one I would have to hold onto at all costs. I think this is one of the all-time great films: a decades-spanning epic story of love lost and love gone sour – a film simultaneously clear-eyed and soaringly romantic – which also casts a loving/critical eye on the performing arts in all its many manifestations. Films of this scope and ambition, made with intelligence, are an utter rarity; The English Patient is about the only other example that comes to mind. But Children of Paradise is even more remarkable in that it’s a complete original -- generally, such an epic would be based on some existing novel. Prevert and Carne essentially imagined their own novel for the screen, and wrote a great one. I couldn’t consider voting for anything else over this exceptional work.
Big Magilla
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Re: Best Screenplay 1946

Post by Big Magilla »

Original

I've never been a fan of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby I prefer when he isn't essentially playing himself. I've seen the Road movies so long ago that I can't recall much about any of them. Consequently, I won't be travelling the Road to Utopia or anywhere else with these two.

The Seventh Veil is another film I haven't seen in a long time. It's kind of mixed up in my head with a whole lot of other psychological British dramas of the period. It just doesn't stand out strong enough in my memory to be voting for it.

The Blue Dahlia was Raymond Chandler's only original screenplay. It's a good one, but it's not in the same league as his screenplays for Double Indemnity (his first nomination) or Strangers on a Train.

Children of Paradise is a masterpiece of elegance and style but there's a better choice.

Notorious is not only one of my three favorite films of the year, the others being The Best Years of Our Lives and It's a Wonderful Life, it's my favorite Hitchcock film prior to the mid-1950s. It easily gets my vote.

Adapted

Anna and the King of Siam is a good adaptation of the novel, but not in a class with the other nominees.

The Killers is a white knuckled suspense thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's an excellent screenplay and an excellent nomination.

Brief Encounter is an exquisitely written relationship drama. In another year, it might be an easy winner, but not this year when it's up against the two masterpieces it is.

Open City is a brilliant examination of a place and time so recently lived that it's a shame to have to pass it up, but pass it up I must for something even better.

The Best Years of Our Lives is not only a brilliant examination of a then contemporary issue but one that is universal and speaks to all generations who go to war and come back to an indifferent society. It richly deserved its win.
Big Magilla
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Best Screenplay 1946

Post by Big Magilla »

Raymond Chandler, Ben Hecht, Robert E. Sherwood, David Lean, Ronald Neame, Federico Fellini, all in one year - have at it!

1945 is coming soon. Does anyone know anyone who has seen Marie-Louise, the Swiss film that won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay of that year? An elderly grandparent, perhaps?
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