Best Motion Picture Story 1938

1927/28 through 1997
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What was the Best Motioin Picture Story among the 1938 nominees?

Alexander's Ragtime Band (Irving Berlin)
1
9%
Angels With Dirty Faces (Rowland Brown)
6
55%
Blockade (John Howard Lawson)
0
No votes
Boys Town (Eleanore Griffin, Dore Schary)
4
36%
Mad About Music (Marcella Burke, Frederick Kohner)
0
No votes
Test Pilot (Frank Weed)
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 11

Big Magilla
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Re: Best Motion Picture Story 1938

Post by Big Magilla »

Looks like I forgot to comment on Mad About Music which was an early, OK at best, Deanna Durbin vehicle. Much better was the same year's That Certain Age with an original story by F. Hugh Herbert and the uncredited Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.

Durbin and Jackie Cooper make a wonderful team in that, with good support from Irene Rich, John Halliday, Nancy Carroll, Jackie Searl and more. The less said about the contrived crush 16-year-old Durbin has on 37-year-old Melvyn Douglas the better, but the let's-put-on-a-show plot is a lot fresher and more fun than it would be in all those manic Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musicals that began with the following year's Babes in Arms. How Mad About Music wound up with four Oscar nominations and That Certain Age just two, is mystifying.
The Original BJ
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Re: Best Motion Picture Story 1938

Post by The Original BJ »

This is a pretty uninspiring roster. (One that really didn't need to be expanded to 6 nominees.)

The Academy had a serious soft spot for Deanna Durbin movies during this stretch, and it's an enthusiasm I don't share. I found Mad About Music close to intolerable -- a silly plot line, made even less fun by the film's hokey attempts at humor. I've been desperately trying to get the film's main song, the insufferable "I Love to Whistle," out of my head for a whole week now.

Magilla is totally right -- "muddled" is about the best word to describe Blockade. It apparently takes place during the Spanish Civil War, but you wouldn't necessarily know that, because the film never mentions the location, nor the political points of view of anyone involved. What's left is a totally generic drama about "defending one's homeland against the enemy," whatever that means, with a lot of sloppy storytelling along the way.

Test Pilot has one sort-of compelling angle, which is that it's essentially structured as a love triangle, with the homosocial bond between Gable and Tracy's characters one leg of that triangle. But on the whole, it's a pretty slight affair, with rather low stakes -- yeah, the men are constantly putting themselves in danger, but mainly for the reason that, dammit, they just HAVE to fly! There just isn't much real substance here.

Alexander's Ragtime Band has a great songbook, but that's about it. The story is about as standard showbiz as it gets, and though the production numbers carry the movie along in a manner that makes it watchable enough, choosing such a ho-hum bit of narrative as a story winner would be ridiculous.

In this context, Boys Town isn't such a bad choice. Its true-life inspiration of course makes it not a wholly original story, but it's certainly one of better constructed pieces of writing craft on option. The movie's sensibilities aren't totally in sync with mine -- I'm way too much of a cynic to accept its thesis that there's no such thing as a bad boy. But Tracy's Father Flanagan is portrayed as a man of innate goodness who's genuinely just trying to do his best to improve the lives of the kids under his care, and the script pulls off some decently moving moments without tipping too much into schmaltz.

But Angels With Dirty Faces is much more my style. It's a crime drama with a pretty solid emotional underpinning, with its story of two friends who start in the same place, but take very different paths in life. It's a story that captures the grime of street life, but also contains some thoughtful ruminations on the nature of religion and its value (or lack thereof) to individual lives. It's not, perhaps, a wildly imaginative movie -- I wouldn't even say it's the peak of Cagney crime movies of the era -- but it's simply the most engaging and complex piece of writing on this ballot, and gets my vote.
Big Magilla
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Re: Best Motion Picture Story 1938

Post by Big Magilla »

The story line of the Spanish Civil War drama, Blockade, is rather muddled and undeserving of awards recognition.

It's the star power of Clark Gable and Myrna Loy that makes Test Pilot worth watching, not its by then clichéd story.

I'm not sure what Irving Berlin's story contribution was to Alexander's Ragtime Band. The plot basically serves to connect songs from his immense catalogue as did so many other features through the years from Holiday Inn to Easter Parade to There's No Business Like Show Business and White Christmas.

This is really a contest between two films that were very popular in their day and for many years thereafter as they became TV staples from the 1950s to the 1970s. Angels With Dirty Faces and Boys Town are the prototype of films that have been done again and again since, but remain fascinating to watch because they were and are class acts beginning with their writing. I give a slight edge to Boys Town as did the Academy.
Big Magilla
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Best Motion Picture Story 1938

Post by Big Magilla »

The poll is open.
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