Best Screenplay 1959

[ITALIANO]

As for the second, of course, but you know I was just joking, right?

Of course I know

[The Original BJ]

Original BJ will hate me, but it's - again - between two European movies for me

I could never hate you just for being predictable.

Voting for Green Card, though? THAT'S truly unforgivable!

Yes, I'd love to be more "original", like you - but I have this bad habit of always selecting the best in the end.

As for Green Card... I dont know, I tend to apply terms like "unforgivable" to acts which are more serious than movies, but I guess this is also very European. Anyway, it shows how I can be populistic, sometimes, too.

Hahahahahaha, touché, to the first part.

As for the second, of course, but you know I was just joking, right?

[ITALIANO]

Original BJ will hate me, but it's - again - between two European movies for me

I could never hate you just for being predictable.

Voting for Green Card, though? THAT'S truly unforgivable!

Yes, I'd love to be more "original", like you - but I have this bad habit of always selecting the best in the end.

As for Green Card... I dont know, I tend to apply terms like "unforgivable" to acts which are more serious than movies, but I guess this is also very European. Anyway, it shows how I can be populistic, sometimes, too.

[The Original BJ]

Original BJ will hate me, but it's - again - between two European movies for me

I could never hate you just for being predictable.

Voting for Green Card, though? THAT'S truly unforgivable!

[ITALIANO]

These are certainly the best polls on this board - in terms of the types of movies one can discuss, and of the levels these discussions often reach. Still, they can always be quite frustrating for those, like me, who don't speak - or write - English well. And scripts - certain scripts escpecially - can only be talked about in a language one knows well. I've started at least three times before this post, and was never satisfied. I will be shorter this time - let's see if it works... In Original, I swear that for a while I thought of voting for North by Northwest, but while it IS a very good screenplay, it's even, intentionally of course, a bit too "superficial" for my tastes. Plus, I think that here can we be fully apply the reason so many have used before - it's certainly more a director's than a writer's movie. Original BJ will hate me, but it's - again - between two European movies for me; and I've chosen Truffaut's affecting yet realistic portrayal of adolescence over Bergman's uncompromising portrayal of old age. These are three great examples of writing a movie, though - which makes Pillow Talk's win one of the most absurd ever.

I must defend the winner in Adapted. Room at the Top is an intelligent, piercing examination of life in England in the 50s, and those then almost-unsormontable (in Europe, at least) class barriers. It also works as a character study - and the Simone Signoret part is written with sensitiveness and sincerity. But then, it's not like Anatomy of a Murder and The Nun's Story are badly written, and The Nun's Story especially is a rarity - a sober, yet deeply-felt American screenplay about religion. But, needless to say, I also voted for Some Like it Hot.

[Heksagon]

I can vote in Adapted Category here, and even if the line-up is quite strong, it’s and easy choice with Some Like It Hot, one of my favorite comedies.

An Anatomy of a Murder and Room at the Top both impressed me when I saw them as a teenager. Unfortunately I haven’t seen either one in a long time, so I’m reluctant to comment too much on either one. I’m fairly confident in saying that I would not rate either one above Some Like It Hot even if I was to see see them again (I just like Some Like It Hot that much), but I would need a re-watch to decide which one of these two is the better screenplay, although I’m leaning towards the Room.

Ben Hur and The Nun’s Story are respectable films, but neither one really impresses me as a screenplay nominee. Ben Hur is driven by its visuals and while the basic story of the film is actually quite good, the finished screenplay is made up of a lot of underwhelming material, especially in terms of dialogue and character development.

As far as Nun’s Story is concerned, it’s technically a good film, but I’m just having difficulty in relating with it. I’m not a religious person to begin with, and not having been brought up in Catholic country, the religion depicted in the film just feels very alien to me.

[Big Magilla]

I'd probably start by saying that I think Operation Petticoat is even worse than the actual winner. At this point, I've just decided that war comedies that predate M*A*S*H -- without the cynicism and irony of Altman's film and many after -- just don't do anything for me. A 1950s submarine movie probably wouldn't be my kind of thing to begin with, but when it's all played for "laughs" in a manner as silly as this is, it becomes a very rough sit. I didn't think any of this was even remotely funny.

Well, they don't do anything for me either and that was true even in real time. Also, I'm old enough to remember Doris day before she became a virgin (in movies that is). Let's remember that awards in all categories are voted on by the general membership, not that the writers themselves wouldn't have agreed with the outcome. Pillow Talk had some amusing moments even if it pales in comparison to the year's more serious screenplays, but the kind of slapstick nonsense that was Operation Petticoat was moldy even then.

[The Original BJ]

One thing I've noticed while going through these races -- and catching up with many of the movies -- is just how poor many of the Original Screenplay winners are from this era. Keep in mind, when I started watching the Oscars, the winners in this category were Shakespeare in Love and American Beauty. And within the next couple years, I had caught up with Fargo, The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, The Piano, The Crying Game, and Thelma & Louise. I spent my teenage years watching screenplays like Almost Famous, Gosford Park, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind win trophies. So, in my mind, the Original Screenplay category was one where you could usually count on a very cool movie winning the prize.

But the 1950s and 1960s sure offer a lot of grisly winners -- the equivalents of Dave and Braveheart trumping those deeply original 90's efforts. Some years you can see there just weren't that many options, but in many cases, there are perfectly worthy films on the roster that got kicked to the curb for real embarrassing choices. This is such a year.

I'd probably start by saying that I think Operation Petticoat is even worse than the actual winner. At this point, I've just decided that war comedies that predate M*A*S*H -- without the cynicism and irony of Altman's film and many after -- just don't do anything for me. A 1950s submarine movie probably wouldn't be my kind of thing to begin with, but when it's all played for "laughs" in a manner as silly as this is, it becomes a very rough sit. I didn't think any of this was even remotely funny.

The favorite actress of my favorite film professor in college was Doris Day. (I know, I know, but trust me -- he had plenty of other merits in terms of taste/teaching ability.) So...we watched a lot of her movies, including Pillow Talk, in classes. And I will say that when you're watching that movie, and your teacher is in the front row singing along, and quoting all of his favorite lines...well, that makes for a certain kind of entertaining experience that pretty much every student in our class remembers fondly. Which is to say, I don't exactly hate Pillow Talk -- I think it has its laughs and a certain kind of goofy charm to it. If it had triumphed in this category over the '58 slate, I probably wouldn't have been that annoyed. But to win this category over three of the best films from three of the best filmmakers ever? Well, that I DO hate.

As for those three nominees, I could happily pick any of them, which of course makes it virtually impossible to judge a race that's essentially a tie.

I voted for Ingmar Bergman twice as a writer, as well as a director in this game, and I'd have picked him additional times when he wasn't on the ballot. Which I guess is my way of saying that I don't feel like I owe him for Wild Strawberries, so I'm going to vote elsewhere this time. But his script is a thing of great beauty, full of structural imagination, nostalgic flashbacks, startling dreams/nightmares. This is one of the best films ever about aging, and the way in which Bergman incorporates the vastness of his protagonist's life -- both his exciting memories as well as his regrets -- is immensely moving. It's a film that's quintessentially Bergman through and through.

On the other end of the life spectrum, The 400 Blows is one of the best films ever about childhood. It's remarkably clear-eyed about the tough aspects of growing up -- feeling like you have no power over your daily existence, recognizing the mistakes of the adults who you still have to obey, realizing that you still have plenty of lessons to learn yourself. I think it's Truffaut's delicate touch as a writer, and his inventive stylistic curlicues, that help us sympathize with his little rascal of a hero, and that has made the film such a source of inspiration for so many filmmakers who have followed. I haven't voted for Truffaut yet on our board, though that's entirely the fault of the Academy, which didn't give us many chances -- I'd have easily gone for Jules and Jim across the board had it been an option.

I've picked the foreign nominees a lot in this category, so hopefully I won't lose street cred by opting for an American option in this case, because I think North by Northwest is just as influential a film as Bergman and Truffaut's. It's virtually impossible to imagine the entire genre of the suspense thriller over the past half century without this movie. Although Hitchcock himself had made films which essentially served as a warm-up for this (The 39 Steps most of all), North by Northwest basically popularized the template for the espionage thrillers that would prove so successful in the decades following, and which still fill our theaters today. And while Hitchcock always had a dark sense of humor, it's rare for his films to be as laugh-out-loud witty as this one often is, and I have to give credit to Ernest Lehman for both the zippy dialogue and the breakneck thrill with which the film's plot unfolds. So, I gave it my vote, but of course, I'd rather just celebrate the achievements of all three terrific nominees than necessarily have to play favorites.

[Mister Tee]

I’m All Right, Jack, which I mentioned in the 1960 thread, would be a decent substitute in adapted, and The Diary of Anne Frank, while not given an inspired rendition, is such a compelling story at heart it wouldn’t have felt out of place.

Looking at the adapted category in tandem with film and director, you have to conclude voters had six favorite candidates this year but only five slots, and a different one got squeezed out in each match-up. It’s interesting -- to me, anyway – that, of the three that managed to score each time, one went home with 11 prizes and another left empty-handed.

I’ve always seen Ben-Hur as a movie of negative virtues: considering it’s a sort of movie I never particularly want to see again, it’s intelligently rendered and nicely detailed. It’s also a significant improvement on the silent version, which I just watched recently – you can feel the improvement in the writing. This is credit to all involved, whether officially recognized or not. I’m not voting for the film here, but I respect it well enough.

The Nun’s Story is, along with Song of Bernadette, one of the only films during the studio era to deal with a religious subject and actually touch something genuine. Hepburn’s character rings true and doesn’t have that saintly glow about her that diminishes so many American attempts at the subject. Her conflicts – her crushing disappointment at having to leave work she loves in the Congo; her mental struggle with hatred of the Nazis vis a vis her faith’s teachings – are fully real. I still can’t say I’ll ever understand what possesses any woman to become a nun, but I am able to understand how this particular one feels about things and why she makes the choices she does. Quite solid work.

It never struck me odd that Ben-Hur would have lost this category, given its epic genre. But, for years, I wondered why it was Room at the Top – a small British import – that won, rather than one of the more widely popular American efforts. Then I saw the film sometime in the late 80s (I’d seen it in the mid-60s, but barely remembered it), and wondered no more. Room at the Top is one of the best of the Brit Angry Young Man genre, and its depiction of Laurence Harvey’s and, especially, Simone Signoret’s characters lift it into impressive territory. I’ll go BJ one better: I’d have voted for it in 1958 AND 1960. But it had the misfortune, like In Cold Blood 1967, of competing with two sensational American films that for me dominate the category.

And, honestly, I have excruciating difficulty deciding between Anatomy of a Murder and Some Like It Hot – as apples & oranges a match-up as we’ve been offered in all these contests. Each is among the very best ever in its genre. Anatomy is a terrific legal drama, with splendidly draw characters, effective small town atmosphere, a plot that offers multiple surprises and still feels fresh/contemporary, and crackling dialogue both in and out of the courtroom. How can I not vote for it? Well, because it would mean passing up one of the greatest of screen comedies – a film that leaped into the void, mashing up genres and defying sexual taboos, and did it within one the fastest-paced plots in film history, a plot filled with laughs that don’t diminish with repeated viewings. I’m with BJ exactly: I went in knowing this was supposed to be as funny a comedy as was ever filmed, and still I was wowed by it. This is one of Wilder’s greatest creations, and that, of course, is saying a lot.

So…how do I vote? In the end, I went with Anatomy – though to some degree because, when I made my check-mark, Some Like It Hot was pitching a shutout, and I didn’t think it was right for Anatomy to go with no votes whatever. But, truly, on any given day, I could have voted for either.

Original doesn’t offer that much in the way of alternate, but I’ll co-sign Magilla’s enthusiasm for Sapphire, and also advocate for Bresson’s Pickpocket.

It tells us way too much about Hollywood’s taste at the time that, when the writers gave them the option of voting for any of three of the year’s very best – films that endure to this day – they chose the lame-at-the-time-and-absurd-in-retrospect Pillow Talk. BJ mentioned in 1961 that Lover, Come Back struck him as having the same plot as Pillow Talk. I realized then that, though Pillow Talk preceded the film in theatres, I saw them (on TV) in reverse order, which may help explain my preference for Lover, Come Back (it's like Cassavettes: the first one you see’s your favorite). Anyway: I pretty much can’t stand Pillow Talk, and view its victory here as a very dark mark in Oscar history.

I rate Operation Petticoat just a fraction higher, solely because I saw this one in real time – you’d think I wouldn’t have been old enough (7 or 8 ), but my parents took us to the film and we thought it was really funny. And I’ll stand by it vis a vis Pillow Talk, if only because Cary Grant as opposed to Day/Hudson is a no-brainer. But, clearly, it doesn’t enter my thinking in terms of the vote.

We think of the Academy’s failure to do right by Hitchcock primarily in terms of the fact he never won best director, but it’s interesting to note how poorly his films did at the Oscars as a whole, despite many many nominations. Rebecca won best picture but only one other prize (and that was more a Selznick thing than a Hitchcock thing); Joan Fontaine’s Suspicion performance is hardly in the class of the memorable Hitchcock characters (Norman Bates, Bruno Anthony, Uncle Charlie); To Catch aThief’s cinematography is just pretty Riviera scenery. Sadly, the best Hitchcock film wins came in the music categories: Spellbound’s score, and Que Sera Sera. Just think of the prizes his films might have won but didn’t –- Rear Window’s and Psycho’s directing, yes, but also Rains’ performance in Notorious, Psycho’s black and white cinematography, any of Bernard Hermann’s scores, even The Birds’ visual effects. Under screenplay alone, voters passed on Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Rear Window, and, here, North by Northwest. If Hollywood in 1959 was too provincial for Bergman or Truffaut, and insisted on populism, fine: why couldn’t they choose this film -- a huge hit which clearly outshines the dreck that won? As it happens, I’m not voting for the film myself – I’m not so provincial as to ignore the foreign language efforts – but I’m sad the voters couldn’t have chosen it at the time.

Wild Strawberries was the film that sealed Bergman’s position as art house king. The Seventh Seal had of course been a critical sensation, but more than a few were weirded out by it. Wild Strawberries proved you could do an art film and not baffle part of your audience. And I don’t mean that as remotely pejorative. The film is probing and insightful and still completely accessible – an old man’s journey back through his life that is relentlessly unsentimental but deeply moving. The film has probably inspired more imitation than any film this side of 8 ½, and is a perfectly strong choice for the win here.

But, since I’ve voted for Bergman in the past and never Truffaut, and because I’m, in the end, marginally more a Truffautian, I opt for The 400 Blows. This, too, was a film that could have veered into sentimentality – the mistreatment of a young child is a subject ripe for such treatment. But Truffaut’s tough-minded Doinel never asks for easy sympathy. He’s, in fact, an unhappy, angry protagonist, who gets involved with disreputable things. But Truffaut manages to keep us in his corner even while not excusing what he’s doing, and makes us fully empathize (in the famous final shot) with his feeling of being cast adrift in this world A wonderful film – one of the high points of a great career – and my ultimate pick.

[Big Magilla]

Wild Strawberries and The 400 Blows are certainly award-worthy, but I have a soft spot for Ernest Lehman's deft script for Hitchcock's funnier than usual North by Northwest. It deserved its win.

Pillow Talk beat North By Northwest.

I must have been in denial when I wrote that!

[Greg]

Wild Strawberries and The 400 Blows are certainly award-worthy, but I have a soft spot for Ernest Lehman's deft script for Hitchcock's funnier than usual North by Northwest. It deserved its win.

Pillow Talk beat North By Northwest.

[Big Magilla]

Original

It may be just a matter of personal taste, but I'd throw out the comedies, Operation Petticoat and Pillow Talk and replace them with the two intriguing murder mysteries that were also socially conscious meditations on the times, Basil Dearden's Sapphire and Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono. Bergman's The Seventh Seal was also eligible this year, but he's already represented by Wild Strawberries.

Wild Strawberries and The 400 Blows are certainly award-worthy, but I have a soft spot for Ernest Lehman's deft script for Hitchcock's funnier than usual North by Northwest. It deserved its win.

Adapted

I'd replace Ben-Hur with The Diary of Anne Frank, Compulsion or On the Beach, but Ben-Hur was a decent nominee. I can't really fault any of the nominees in this category.

As for the win, I think the other three choices, Anatomy of a Murder, Some Like It Hot and The Nun's Story were stronger,

Wilder and Diamond never wrote funnier dialogue than they did for Some Like It Hot, but their masterpiece, The Apartment was yet to come.

Wendell Mayes was a double threat, also having written the screenplay for 1959's The Hanging Tree, one of the last great westerns in addition to Anatomy of a Murder.

Best of all, though, for my money was Robert Anderson who made an exciting, tension filled screenplay out of what could have been a by-the-numbers chronicle of a dissatisfied nun's life with The Nun's Story. He gets my vote.

[Precious Doll]

Original: Easy choice of Wild Strawberries, the greatest of all of Bergman's great films.

Adapted: Anatomy of a Murder over a couple of strong contenders, Some Like it Hot & A Room at the Top.

Omissions: Imitation of Life & Compulsion and no doubt a host of worthy foreign language candidates.

[The Original BJ]

There are some very good nominees in both categories this year, with neither slate offering up a clear-cut winner, and Original giving us a pretty terrific three-way collision course of stellar options. (Which, of course, the Academy still managed to screw up big time.)

I'll start with Adapted first, which entirely covers films we discussed in the Picture/Director thread. As for alternates, I've recently been tipped off that this was the year that The Seventh Seal would have qualified, is that true? If so, that's an obvious shouldabeen. Imitation of Life would have been my other inclusion.

If there's one nomination I could have picked for Ben-Hur to lose (well, other than Best Actor), Adapted Screenplay would be it, so it's not terribly surprising the Academy made the same call even in the midst of a sweep. I would argue that Ben-Hur is definitely one of the better entries in the Biblical epic genre -- it's way more engaging than The Robe, for instance -- but I still find it very long, and most of the film's highlights (the chariot race, the ship battle) are visual/action-orientated than script-centric.

The Nun's Story has some decently compelling ideas about what faith means to certain individuals, and the real challenges of pursuing religion as a career. Audrey Hepburn gets a pretty well-rounded character to play, Edith Evans gets some nicely written monologues, and the ending has a compelling ambiguity to it that I didn't expect. Of course, this movie is also pretty long, and I don't know that there are enough exciting moments of personality in the script that would make it stand out as a winner.

Room at the Top would land in third place for me, but I don't want to put down the Academy for choosing this as the year's winner. (I prefer it to all of the nominees in this category in '58, for instance.) This was a movie that I hadn't heard much about before I saw it, and was really surprised by how much bite there was to the Harvey-Signoret romance, and how richly the film delved into issues of class in Britain during the era. I also found the dialogue very witty, full of a lot of sharp, cynical humor that served as a great contrast to the sadness of the story. I think other options are stronger, but this is hardly an ignoble choice.

Anatomy of a Murder is without a doubt one of the greatest courtroom dramas put on film, and I think its script succeeds on nearly every level a film like this should. The legal plot is pretty twisty, keeping the turns coming throughout the movie's three-hour running time. And yet the film also finds plenty of room to explore the various players in the plot as characters in a way that many strict procedurals don't. Thematically, its exploration of the murder and rape issues goes in some interesting directions, and the whole thing keeps from becoming a dull issue movie by nature of the jet-black humor that pops up pretty consistently in the dialogue. This would have been a perfectly acceptable winner.

Before I saw Some Like It Hot in film school, a friend of mine warned me not to get my hopes too far up, that its reputation as the funniest movie ever would inevitably lead to disappointment when I realized it wasn't that. Well, I think that friend was wrong -- I laughed out loud an outrageous amount while watching the movie, and while the wonderful cast and Wilder's light touch as director are crucial assets, there's no probably no element more essential to the movie's laugh factor than its screenplay. The set-up is borderline bonkers, but the way the film takes this premise and runs with it to its most logical human conclusions, while still remaining completely bananas throughout, is comic gold. And the dialogue throughout just kills. "Nobody's perfect," is of course a legendary last line, but there are so many delightful exchanges throughout: "We're the new girls" / "Brand new!"..."Congratulations, who's the lucky girl?" / "I am!"..."You must be quite a girl." / "Wanna bet?"...and, a line that now plays as probably even funnier than when scripted, "Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" / "Security!" Many films that have followed in Some Like It Hot's footsteps have imitated the joke of men disguising themselves as women, but few have done it, like Tootsie did as well, in a manner where the humor comes from a very real place, where the film becomes as much an exploration of the hilarity of human foibles as a side-splittingly funny farce. It gets my vote for Best Adapted Screenplay of the year.

[nightwingnova]

Wow!

400 Blows vs. Wild Strawberries

Some Like it Hot vs....well, no one...I never got into Anatomy of a Murder.