Best Screenplay 1956

[Heksagon]

I can vote in Adapted, and my choice is between Baby Doll and Giant. I saw Baby Doll at a relatively young age, and it impressed me, perhaps mainly because I hadn’t seen a lot of classic films by that time. I think I wouldn’t like it as much if I re-watched it, but then again, I’ve never been a huge fan of Giant either. So I’m going with Baby Doll, even if I’m not disappointed to see Giant winning this.

Of the other nominees, Lust for Life is a decent film, but the screenplay isn’t anything special. 80 Days has a disappointing screenplay and Friendly Persuasion is disappointing in every way. I have always presumed the latter was rated so highly at the time - even winning the Palme d’Or - more because of its pacifist theme than artistic merits.

[ITALIANO]

It's gotten to the point where I wonder if even Italiano is getting tired of how often I've voted for Fellini in this category,

I'd never get tired of this...

[The Original BJ]

The Original Screenplay slate has some better nominees overall, but also some very peculiar ones. Of the alternate options, I'd go for two wildly different candidates: The Seven Samurai, a very literate epic (whose structure has influenced too many movies to count), and The Court Jester, which I think is pretty consistently laugh-out-loud funny (with "the pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle" the comic high point).

The Bold and the Brave is a bizarrely structured screenplay -- the whole movie feels like it starts over every half hour. The picking up girls in Italy sequence seems to have very little to do with the gambling plot line, which has hardly anything to do with the final battle sequence. And by the end of the movie, what were we supposed to be left with? A non-specific quote from a general about bravery? I guess that fits the end of this non-specific story, with pieces that barely add up to much at all, as well as anything would.

I don't think Julie is as atrocious a movie as Big Magilla and Italiano do -- the word I'd use would be "ordinary," because I think for most of its running time it's a decently effective thriller, but one lacking much narrative invention or clever dialogue, the kinds of things I'd look for in a nominee in this category. I do think that by the end it becomes ridiculous -- not only is the entire plane landing sequence difficult to take seriously, it makes the climax about something completely unrelated to the movie that preceded it. This is another nominee not worth considering.

The Red Balloon is a truly puzzling winner, for the reasons others have given. Unlike the balloon movie that won in the adapted category, Red Balloon isn't anything embarrassing -- in fact, it's a perfectly charming, buoyant little movie. But it's a short film, and one without virtually any of the elements we typically associate with stand-out writing (interesting dialogue, layered characters, a plot). Its triumphs are almost entirely visual/aural.

The Ladykillers is a lot of fun, beginning with the daffy old lady character who's oblivious to everything but gets by out of the goodness of her heart, and extending to a storyline that takes a simple set-up and finds surprising ways to let Guinness and company's plan keep getting out of hand, to increasingly violent and comic ends. It has a lot of elements for which you could praise the writing (memorable characters, funny dialogue, narrative invention), and I can certainly understand people voting for it. But given its main competitor, I just think The Ladykillers ultimately feels a bit lightweight by comparison.

It's gotten to the point where I wonder if even Italiano is getting tired of how often I've voted for Fellini in this category, but I'm firmly in the La Strada camp this year. The film begins with a sense of wonder and magic, a crystallization of the elements film scholars would come to identify as Felliniesque, and snowballs to an ending of great emotional power. I pretty much view the film's last act as the stuff of great tragedy -- the big disaster, the parting of the central couple, Quinn hearing that song and learning of Masina's fate, and the final scene on the beach -- a seemingly inevitable progression of events that nonetheless sneak up on the viewer with huge resonance. One of the director's finest hours, and my clear choice.

[Big Magilla]

The Wrong Man was 1957 in L.A.

[The Original BJ]

The Adapted Screenplay lot is indeed pretty grim -- "no" seems to me a perfectly acceptable alternative to voting.

I agree that a lot of the best alternates were genre fare, and as a result weren't taken seriously as award vehicles at the time. But you could have cobbled an entirely different slate out of The Searchers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Killing, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The Wrong Man, a collection of movies that have held up quite better than their more "serious" nominated counterparts.

Around the World in 80 Days isn't just a completely indefensible screenplay winner -- it's the kind of movie you want to force people to sit through any time they lament today's Oscar victories in comparison to the more "honorable" winners of the past. I think it's just dreadful, a series of silly set pieces strung together in an almost interminable fashion, with so little in the way of basic entertainment value along the way. Even among a lousy field, it's still the worst of the lot, and one of the worst winners ever in this category.

And I don't think Friendly Persuasion is all that much better. I find the whole movie utterly stiff, as if all the actors involved are struggling to keep a straight face while delivering such clunky dialogue. (I agree that the "thees" and "thous" are just really hard to take seriously.) And the tone is just all over the place, with way too much (not funny) cornpone humor at the top, and some actually laughable melodrama near the climax. And this one, too, just goes on forever.

I'm not familiar with the play that inspired Baby Doll, but it seems that it has been expanded significantly for the screen, so much that Tennessee Williams even gets an "original screenplay" credit on the movie. So, unlike some other screen adaptations of his work, I'm less inclined to write it off in this category for essentially being a filmed play. However, I AM going to write it off for being one of the worst things Williams ever wrote. I'm usually a fan of his reckless sense of high drama, but here the material seemed to be all hysterics and virtually zero story, like a lesser writer trying to ape the superficial qualities of Williams without mimicking the depth or narrative control.

I think Lust for Life deserved 3 of its 4 Oscar nominations -- but certainly not this one. I do think the scenes between van Gogh and Gauguin crackle with some solid dialogue exchanges ("You paint too fast!" / "You look too fast!"). But I think much of the rest of the movie vacillates between dull-as-dishwater lifelessness and scenes of totally over-the-top melodrama. Although the actors and visual design of the movie elevate it somewhat, the script is pretty uninspired biopic stuff, and unworthy of consideration.

That leaves Giant, I guess. I'm even less enthused about voting for it here than I was in Best Picture, simply because I think the screenplay is the root of most of the movie's problems. It's definitely bloated narratively, and the writing can often be heavy-handed, especially in its treatment of racism. But I can still get caught up in the epic sweep of the movie's dynasty saga, find the story's themes about time passing and mores changing to be moving, and admire the film's complicated portrait of mid-century Texas, which does a pretty interesting job exploring how the culture of one of America's most singular states built up over the years. It's hardly a banner choice, but it's the most tolerable of the options this year.

[Mister Tee]

I’ve been avoiding writing about 1956, because 1) I think it was a generally underwhelming year; 2) it took me a while to get around to the iTunes Bold and the Brave; and 3) in the other category, where I’d long ago seen all five, I find it majorly difficult to care about any of the contenders.

Because I didn’t care for the year overall, I don’t have much to offer as alternates, except some genre pieces. Under adapted, I’d advocate for The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Killing, and especially Invasion of the Body Snatchers – though we know such a film would never have scored with the Academy back then.

Forget about explaining the Oscars giving Around the World in 80 Days their screenplay award -– how in hell did the NY Film Critics pick it? Did they just see the name S.J. Perelman and assume it must be witty? Did they want to long-after-the-fact honor Perelman’s contributions to the Marx Brothers films? Or did they truly want to salute whoever concocted those tiresome Cantinflas routines? Around the World isn’t just an unworthy best picture winner; it’s a drawn-out, dreary bore that has one counting the minutes (or Days) long before the climax. And this isn’t just a decades-later retro-judgment: I saw the movie in a theatre, during a national re-release in 1968, and even by then found its Oscar victories incomprehensible.

Baby Doll has always felt to me like a Tennessee Williams parody –- anyway, a parody of the philistine idea of him, as someone obsessed with the sex lives of crude rural dwellers. From the start I have a problem with any movie giving so much screen time to those dueling hambones, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach, and the usually solid Mildred Dunnock running around in a fright-wig didn’t help much. I like most of the Williams-inspired movies of the period, but this one never appealed to me even a little; one viewing was all I’m ever going to give it.

As BJ occasionally reminds me, I never posted in the 1956 film/director thread, so I may not have discussed Friendly Persuasion prior to this. My feeling about the film is pretty basic: I find it stultifyingly dull and often cringe-worthy –- all those “thee”’s and thou”’s make me want to run out of the theatre screaming. And the whole “I’m a pacifist, but, by gum, sometimes a man’s just got to fight” storyline doesn’t thrill me, either. It took me multiple efforts to finally get through this; once I’d checked it off on the list, I opted to never think of it again.

It’s illustrative of how grim this category is, that I’ve eliminated three other contenders before I get to Lust for Life, a movie I find faintly ridiculous. I’m certainly not averse to a movie, even a Hollywood one, about van Gogh -– he’s the rare artist whose life is interesting enough it justifies biopic treatment. But I find the movie almost hysterically over the top, and the writing is much to blame for that.

Which leaves me with Giant, which is hardly my idea of quality screenwriting, but at least it tells a story that has some interesting twists and turns (along with a fair number of hokey ones). The evolution of Bick Benedict (and Texas around him) unfolds in sprawling, engrossing if not profound fashion -- typical Edna Ferber. But then, maybe tangential but constantly intriguing, there’s the Jett Rink strand of the plot. I’m not sure if Jett is a complex character, or if it’s simply the fact James Dean plays him that makes him seem so…but, in among the otherwise stodgy plotting and characters, Jett stands out as a singular, spellbinding creation: is he unfairly maligned by the Benedicts; or is Bick right to be suspicious of him from the start? Thinking that through is the most memorable part of this film; it provides the epic with undertones unusual for the genre. And it’s just enough to get my vote in the lame category.

Original has even fewer alternatives; Lang’s Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is the only one I can think of.

So, all these years on, I finally see The Bold and the Brave. And what an odd movie it is. First off, it must have been made on the super-cheap –- there are random extras/day-players, but, really, only four actors carry 90% of the film. Second, it’s the exceedingly rare movie of its time to be actively hostile to a character expressing religious conviction; the Preacher character is obviously maddening on a human level, but he’s not an ogre -– his views and repression seem honestly held -– yet the film, through the Wendell Corey character, clearly nudges us to dislike/condemn him. Strange. The film overall is pretty weird: it has these separate plot lines –- Corey’s a kept man and coward, Preacher’s repressed, Rooney’s a fun guy eager to make a big score -– but it’s hard to say they fit together in any way; they’re sort of “resolved” in the final sequence, but they don’t seem to form any coherent story –- they just co-exist. (Oh, and a footnote Damien would have loved: the (egregious) title song was co-written by Rooney and Ross Bagdasarian – better known as David Selville, of Alvin and the Chipmunks.)

Julie starts out an unnervingly tense stalker movie – I actually stopped it a few times, because the dread of watching the character being unable to escape her husband made me physically uncomfortable. As Pauline Kael once wrote in another context, It’s certainly suspenseful, but the suspense isn’t necessarily pleasurable. Then, the movie switches course in its final reel, becoming an early version of Airport ’75, with the stewardess forced to take over the flight controls. Viewed from 2015, this whole sequence seems hilarious because of the extreme sexism: they ask so many other people before they settle on Doris, you half-expect they’d have given the job to a blind man before they’d take their chance with a woman.

The Red Balloon is a pleasant, sweet enough trifle -– as others have noted, basically a short subject. And a silent…so voters, while possibly thinking themselves daring for picking such a film, were actually indulging conservative impulses.

I presumed La Strada would dominate here, and it’s a perfectly reasonable choice. But I can’t say I love the film. I love the performances (Masina’s in particular), and the story is certainly moving. But I have difficulty with movies that are so out-front allegorical – that seem to be proclaiming their Deep Significance at every moment. I know for many people this is an out-and-out masterpiece. But I just don’t respond that fully.

So I’ll vote again for the Ealing crowd. I think The Lady Killers is one of their finest achievements – a beautifully structured piece (right up to the last, perfect plot point), full of surprises and funny in a giddy-making way throughout. I’d easily vote for the film over any of the five nominated best pictures, and it’s my ultimate choice here.

[ITALIANO]

I won't vote in Original - I haven't seen The Bold and the Brave yet. But Julie must be one of the most puzzling mominees ever in this category... I mean - I must admit that it's an enjoyable experience if one is in the right mood - but only as a sort of guilty pleasure! It's a woman-in-danger thriller - the whole movie is Doris Day trying to escape from crazy husband Louis Jourdan. This in itself wouldn't be necessarily bad - but the film gets more and more absurd, and it ends with Day - who's a flight attendant - trying to land a plane after the pilot has been killed! It's all very funny - and I can even imagine that at the time it must have been considered reasonably suspenseful, and was maybe a box-office hit - but really, if one thinks how many great American thrillers failed to be considered by the Academy, the fact that this very minor thing got two nominations is a mystery. The three other nominees are, of course, very good - though I'm not even sure that today The Red Balloon, which is a short, would be eligible. It's a nice sweet little movie, and many remember it with affection, but I see it as more a director's than a writer's movie (and not only because it is essentially a silent).

In Adapted, I'm the one who picked Friendly Persuasion - not because it's an especially edgy piece of (screen)writing, of course, but because in a not-extremely thrilling field, it's I think the most correct and most balanced script, with a genuine sympathy for its characters and their environment.

[Big Magilla]

Original

Julie is one of the most stupefying dumb thrillers of all time. There has to be something better than this drivel. Unfortunately this was not a good year for original screenplays. The only one I can think of for a substitution is Panama and Frank's Danny Kaye comedy, The Court Jester.

The Bold and the Brave is standard World War II drama. It should be replaced as well, but with what?

The Red Balloon is a delightful, mostly silent 32-minute short. Ordinarily I don't think ti would stand a chance, but considering the competition it actually won over two more deserving nominees.

The Ladykillers is one of the last and best of the British farces of the 1950s.

La Strada, however, is the clear choice here.

Adapted

This was a great year for adapted screenplay. Among those Oscar ignored were The Searchers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Written on the Wind, Tea and Sympathy, The Bad Seed, Anastasia, The Man Who Who Knew Too Much, The Rainmaker and The Killing. Of the actual nominees, the sprawling Giant was the best with Lust for Life and Friendly Persuasion deserving of honorable mention.

One can understand the mindset of the voters who went gaga over Michael Todd's then new insertion of many familiar faces that he persuaded to appear in the newly coned term of "cameos" in the monumental Todd-A-O epic, Around the World in 80 Days, even to the point of voting it Best Picture even though it didn't deserve it, but what in the world made them think the screenplay was worthy of consideration, yet a win in such a competitive year? It was, however, a better choice than the nonsense that was Baby Doll, the worst film made from a Tennessee Williams play in an era of some really great ones.

[Precious Doll]

Original: La Strada
Adapted: Baby Doll

Omissions: Written on the Wind, Bigger Then Life, Tea and Sympathy, The Bad Seed, The Harder They Fall, The Searchers, Patterns, Anastasia & The Court Jester for something lighter.

[Big Magilla]

I thought we had agreed to do Motion Picture Story the week before Screenplay because the story comes first.

[Greg]

This could be a great place to debate "Screenplays are more than dialog," unless, everyone, like me, has not seen Sans Dialogue.

[Kellens101]

What were the best screenplays of 1956?