Best Original Story 1943

1927/28 through 1997
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What was the Best Original Story of 1943?

Action in the North Atlantic (Guy Gilpatric)
0
No votes
Destination Tokyo (Steve Fisher)
0
No votes
The Human Comedy (William Saroyan)
3
25%
The More the Merrier (Frank Ross, Robert Russell)
2
17%
Shadow of a Doubt (Gordon McDonell)
7
58%
 
Total votes: 12

Mister Tee
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Re: Best Original Story 1943

Post by Mister Tee »

A relatively solid group for this often woebegone category.

Not to say Action in the North Atlantic or Destination Tokyo are anything particularly special -- they’re war movies, with all the limitations of the genre. But Action has fairly decent…well, action. And Destination Tokyo has some engaging sequences, particularly that journey away from the Japanese coastline, trying to evade the steel underwater net. Neither of these films is in any way a painful watch, which can’t be said for others we’ve encountered in this category.

The other three candidates are among the better films of 1943.

I said elsewhere, I think The More the Merrier is the best 40s comedy not made by Sturges or Lubitsch. It’s got a timely premise, three well-drawn characters, and a neatly worked-out plot that rises above the rom-com. In a weaker field (like 1944 or ’46), I’d consider it for the win.

Academy members opted for The Human Comedy, and I can’t deeply fault their choice. I gave the film my best picture vote in that thread for 1943, and will loudly support its daring concept: offering an idealized, schmaltz-laden view of small-town life into which the pain of wartime suffering seeps. The film somehow manages both a rosy hope and a level of realism – a balance that seems very much what that fraught era demanded. It’s an impressive piece of work.

But the year’s best movie is also on the ballot here (not so in other categories), and there’s no way I can withhold my vote. Shadow of a Doubt is, for me, the peak of Hitchcock’s storied career – not his cleverest, most inventive or most shocking…but his most humane and most penetrating. Through the parallelled/doubled Uncle Charlie/Charlie characters, the film shows both sympathy for the tiny, insular Santa Rosa, and contempt for its inability to grasp the evil that so easily penetrates it (in that thematic sense, it’s not unlike The Human Comedy – perhaps the fact of wartime made people simultaneously protective of their simple lives and more deeply aware of how fragile/vigilance-requiring they were.) The story is a tightly structured cat-and-mouse game, with superb sequences (like Charlie’s late-night rush to the library), but it succeeds most fully as a probing study of familial love and coming to grips with our loved ones’ failings. A great movie, and my clear choice for this prize.
Big Magilla
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Re: Best Original Story 1943

Post by Big Magilla »

I see that Shadow of a Doubt is winning this, and if we were talking screenplay, I'd probably agree, but The More the Merrier and The Human Comedy, as far as basic story is concerned, are also pretty good. For story (or concept) alone, I'd say the Academy in this war savaged year got it right in giving the award to Saroyan for his very human comedy.
Big Magilla
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Best Original Story 1943

Post by Big Magilla »

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