Re: Best Original Story 1940
Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 1:23 pm
I’ve done much catch-up for this category – seeing two nominees only in the past few months – yet I’m still unable to vote, because I haven’t been able to track down the winner, Arise My Love. YouTube says it will be available next week; it doesn’t say if that’s a pay site, but I’ll give it a try, and update if I manage to see it.
Edison the Man is a thoroughly mediocre biopic. Watchable but with nothing to distinguish it from any other film based on any other inventor’s life.
Comrade X is interesting historically, for the time during which it was made— the period of the Nazi/Soviet pact, when Russia was officially evil (after having been an object of sympathy among many Hollywood writers). The country would soon ally with the US and thus become indisputably good, then turn full-on evil again with the onset of the Cold War. This in-between period yields a movie that doesn’t seem quite to know where it stands either as political document and as film – the early rom-com banter doesn’t mix real well with the hint of Stalinist tortures near the end. An odd, unsatisfying film.
The Westerner is much enlivened by the character of Judge Roy Bean – Walter Brennan’s most controversial Oscar (because it was his 3rd), but to my mind maybe his most deserved. The rest of the film doesn’t really stick in my memory, suggesting it isn’t especially notable.
My Favorite Wife isn’t the best of Cary Grant’s comedies in the era, but it’s a reasonably funny one, and would get my vote of the four. But I’ll hold off, pending a viewing of Arise My Love.
Edison the Man is a thoroughly mediocre biopic. Watchable but with nothing to distinguish it from any other film based on any other inventor’s life.
Comrade X is interesting historically, for the time during which it was made— the period of the Nazi/Soviet pact, when Russia was officially evil (after having been an object of sympathy among many Hollywood writers). The country would soon ally with the US and thus become indisputably good, then turn full-on evil again with the onset of the Cold War. This in-between period yields a movie that doesn’t seem quite to know where it stands either as political document and as film – the early rom-com banter doesn’t mix real well with the hint of Stalinist tortures near the end. An odd, unsatisfying film.
The Westerner is much enlivened by the character of Judge Roy Bean – Walter Brennan’s most controversial Oscar (because it was his 3rd), but to my mind maybe his most deserved. The rest of the film doesn’t really stick in my memory, suggesting it isn’t especially notable.
My Favorite Wife isn’t the best of Cary Grant’s comedies in the era, but it’s a reasonably funny one, and would get my vote of the four. But I’ll hold off, pending a viewing of Arise My Love.