Best Picture/Director 1927/28

[Mister Tee]

Well, this is a particularly ungainly way to start our picture/director survey, thanks to Louis B. Mayer and his decision to divide commerce from art in the top category. I guess you can argue he meant well – seeing to it the year’s lasting achievements were given some recognition regardless of their box-office fate. But 1) when I was growing up, I always heard Wings referenced as the first best picture winner, so Sunrise was not treated as a co-equal historically; and 2) over the next decade or so, it was the audience favorites/massive productions that tended to win best picture over the art efforts (All Quiet on the Western Front aside – and of course that qualified as a “big” movie); it wasn’t till the mid-40s, with The Lost Weekend and The Best Years of Our Lives, that the “important” films we now expect to dominate best picture started winning. So, an early less-than-ideal paradigm may have been set.

Anyway, to deal with the Best Production nominees first: I’ve seen the four fully-available nominees, and, thanks to TCM, the few surviving moments of The Way of All Flesh, so I’m as qualified to judge the category as anyone. The Racket is a moderately entertaining crime melodrama. It’s clearly based on a play, and some scenes creak, but there’s a shootout in a speakeasy that’s decently cinematic. The Last Command is also pretty much a potboiler; the most interesting aspect of it is seeing William Powell pop up in a silent role. If one had to choose merely from this menu, it’d clearly be between Wings, a respectable enough epic of WWI, and the deeply romantic Seventh Heaven. Borzage is obviously a director with more art to him, but Wellman is no slouch, and I wouldn’t have an easy time choosing between them. As it happens, I don’t have to, here, as the heaviest action occurs in the Artistic Quality of Production slate.

Well, most of the slate, anyway. You look at Chang on this list – essentially a wild animal nature documentary -- and have to figure it’s there to set up a “Which one doesn’t belong?” question. The only reason I can come up with for its placement here is, the scene where the elephants come rampaging in has a slightly off/eerie quality to it, which may have struck Mayer and his cohorts as “art”. In any case, the film is easily dismissed. After that, you come to the two best films in this competition, The Crowd and Sunrise. I was a bit surprised when I finally saw The Crowd – it had such a reputation for being a downer that I found its overall buoyancy (including an ending that felt happy to me) quite a tonic. King Vidor was a director of some vision – a vision that may have flown better in silents (especially when you think of how florid some of his later films, like The Fountainhead, got). The Crowd is, for me, his supreme achievement.

Unfortunately for Vidor, here, it’s still not quite Sunrise, one of the most amazing films of the silent era. I saw the film for the first time on PBS in the early 80s. I thought I was sitting down for some duty-cinema, and was astonished to be so fully engaged by what I saw. Sunrise, made just as the silent era was ending, shows just how much the cinema lost, visually, when sound came in and imposed so many movement restrictions. The film is beyond stunning to look at; it was maybe decades before any director matched the visual splendor Murnau poured into this effort. Of course, it’s hard to argue that, narratively, Sunrise is about anything all that important. But if ever form-over-content made a masterpiece, this is where.

Vidor gets a consolation prize of sorts in the form of my best director vote, with Murnau absent. I’m not even sure the Comedy Direction guys belong in the poll; anyway, the only one I’ve seen -- The Circus -- isn’t in a class with Chaplin’s great films. Magilla, you glided over the subject of Sorrell and Son, the third (mystery) nominee in the standard directing slot. Have you somehow seen this film (of which I’ve never seen the slightest evidence), or are you just voting on the presumption no one ever will? I certainly agree that the choice comes down to Borzage and Vidor, and I’m glad someone cast the vote for Borzage that Damien would have, had he been here. But I find Seventh Heaven fairly minor work next to Vidor’s achievement, so the King gets from me the award he was never able to get from the Academy.

[Big Magilla]

Question: I can't vote once now and once later, can I? Because some years I may be able to vote for Picture but not Director, and vice versa.

Unfortunately as set up you can only vote once. You can;t go back and add a second choice later. However, if we use the option to allow vote changes, you can. Anyone think that would be a good option? Itested it and it works.

[FilmFan720]

Question: I can't vote once now and once later, can I? Because some years I may be able to vote for Picture but not Director, and vice versa.

[Big Magilla]

Not everyone voted for doing Best Picture and Direcotr in the same poll, but this choice did win out by a slim margin so let's give it a try and if it woks, fine - if not, we can go back to separate polling down the road.

The first awards ceremony for the period covering mid-1927 through mid-1928 did not take eplace until early 1929. Things moved a lot slower in those days.

The Academy Awards, they weren't "the Oscars" yet, had a lot of growing pains to go through. The nominations for the first year were split between Best Production and Best Artistic and Unique Production, with the former going to big hits and the latter to well regarded films that disappointed at the box office. The Last Command; The Racket; 7th Heaven; The Way of All Flesh and Wings were nominated for Best Produciton; Chang; The Crowd and Sunrise for Best Artistic and Unique Proudction. The practice would be abandoned by the next awards. For our purposes the films have been combined into one category. Although it's preferable to have seen all the nominated films before voting, that would be impossible here as The Way of All Flesh is a lost film.

The first awards also split Best Director into separate categories, albeit the distinction here was between for drama and comedy. Borzage, Brenon and Vidor were nominated for Best Drama Director and Chaplin, Milestone and Wilde for Best Comedy Director. Then they decided Chaplin, who was also nominated for Best Actor, had an unfair advantage and stripped him of his nominations, opting to give him the Academy's first honorary award instead. For our purpsoes the directors, including Chapli, are combined into one categroy.

For me, Best Picture is an easy selection. Sunrise is not only one of the great late silents, but one of the greatest films of any era. F.W. Murnau's direction not only influenced the work of new directors, it helped redefine the work of at least two established directors, Frank Borzage and John Ford, both of whom were on the Fox lot when Murnau was filming. Ironically Borzage would be nominated (and win) for the heavily Murnau influenced 7th Heaven which was relesed before Sunrise while Murnau would be passed over for a nomination. Ford, whose Murnau influenced Four Sons was eligible during the covered period was not nominated in any category although it did go on to win the only other major award available at the time, the Photoplay Medal of Honor as Best Picture of 1928.

Wings; 7th Heaven; The Crowd and The Last Command are also films that have stood the test of time and The Racket and Chang are well worth seeing at least once.

While my Best Picture and Director choices generally line up, this year that's not an option. For me, only Borzage and Vidor are viable choices with Borzage's Murnau influenced work winning out. His direction of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell is superb, and his tracking shots, particualry of the stair-climbing all the way up to the 7th floor of the apartment building is still amazing. Besides Murnau, most conspicuous by his absence is William A. Wellman, whose breaktaking direction of teh Academy's Best Production choice, Wings most certainly should have been nominated.