Best Picture and Director of 1944

[FilmFan720]

Oh, how I wish that I could vote for Vincente Minnelli and Meet Me in St. Louis here, and that he had won for this over his larger, less personal films a decade on.

I fall in line with most everyone else here. Wilson is a horribly bloated film with nothing interesting to say. Going My Way and Since You Went Away are fine trinkets, and I can see how they would have appealed to voters in the 1940s, but seen today they don't offer a whole lot of interest.

Gaslight is one of my wife's favorite classic films, so I have seen it many times over the years, and it never quite draws me in as it should. The quartet of lead performances are all quite good, as you'd expect from a Cukor film, but Cukor doesn't have the right touch here. I always kind of wish the film had a more assured hand guiding it and put up against the other two thrillers on this list, it pales in comparison.

Double Indemnity is one of those rare films that is a classic both for its historical importance and because it is so much damn fun to watch. You see immediately how this film became so quickly emulated in thousand of films, but that is only half the reason to watch. Every time I revisit it, I am sucked in as if I'd never seen it before. It is nearly flawless in execution.

I probably should vote for Double Indemnity in both categories, but I didn't, and that is because I know what is coming up in the following years. This is the only chance I will really have to honor Otto Preminger, one of the great directors of all time, and it is for what is probably his best film too. Laura may not be as historically important as Double Indemnity, but it is just as watchable and striking a film. Wilder will get his share of Oscars, both real and ours, in the coming years, but Preminger really only had this one chance. I'll give him the bone.

[Mister Tee]

Laura is a terrific movie. It's such a cool, refined mystery, full of great dialogue (mostly delivered with pristine wit by Clifton Webb), elegant photography, and that achingly romantic score.

And yet the Academy saw fit to nominate a full 20 films for Drama Or Comedy Score and leave out the score for Laura.

This omission, along with the later snubbing of the great zither music for The Third Man, compete for the position of Most Mind-Bogglingly Unfathomable Oversight in the history of the music branch.

My favorite factoid about Laura: James Ellroy says an inordinate number of the cops he knows have Laura as a favorite movie, because it plays on every cop's deepest fantasy -- to have the beautiful victim miraculously come back to life.

[Greg]

Laura is a terrific movie. It's such a cool, refined mystery, full of great dialogue (mostly delivered with pristine wit by Clifton Webb), elegant photography, and that achingly romantic score.

And yet the Academy saw fit to nominate a full 20 films for Drama Or Comedy Score and leave out the score for Laura.

[The Original BJ]

There's some irony that the Academy decided to do away with the ten-wide slate in a year as bountiful as 1944, with plenty of wonderful films excluded from a mostly respectable slate of five. Meet Me in St. Louis is one of the greatest of all movie musicals, and the film and Vincente Minnelli sorely deserved spots in this lineup. Laura is one of the great film mysteries, and absolutely deserved a Best Picture mention alongside its Director bid. And, as usual, Preston Sturges got the short end of the stick -- both Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero are smart, delightful comedies, and certainly more worthy than...

...Wilson, which I think is one humongous bore. I'm not the biggest fan of biographies, but I find even recent nominees like Pride of the Yankees and Madame Curie a lot more watchable than this bloated white elephant. I actually was surprised when I came to this poll to find out Henry King was a Best Director nominee -- I'd mistakenly assumed George Cukor got his spot -- because King's work is so utterly leaden. Perhaps the worst movie to ever reach double-digit nominations.

Since You Went Away is almost like the American cousin to Mrs. Miniver, exploring a family's life on the home front during the war. And it's a solid effort, with good performances, an engrossing story that doesn't wear out its lengthy running time, and handsome black-and-white photography. I like that it feels like an attempt at something epic, but it's graceful enough that it doesn't just balloon into something BIG. Like Mrs. Miniver, it probably seemed more special in its moment than it does today, but it has its genuinely touching moments.

Mister Tee hit it right on the head with respect to Alfred Hitchcock's nom: the director manages to make a visually engaging film that takes place almost entirely in one location, and I assume voters responded to that creative feat. (I mean, he even manages to find a clever way to work in his trademark cameo!) Like most Hitchcock films, Lifeboat has a lot of merit, and its portrait of wartime panic and mob mentality is a lot more interesting to me than most of the patriotic war efforts of the period. But at times it does border on the didactic, and though the director's attempts at experimentation are admirable, I'd prefer to vote for him for a more fully successful artistic triumph.

Going My Way is a rather lovely movie that celebrates the goodness in human nature. The relationship between the kind-hearted Crosby and the wise Fitzgerald is beautifully rendered by the actors (and Leo McCarey) and the musical numbers are full of enough gentle humor to make them both fun and dramatically resonant. And that last scene -- with Fitzgerald and his mother -- is a total lump-in-the-throat home run. The film is another of McCarey's deeply humanist works, and the writer-director's guiding hand keeps the picture from dipping into the mawkishness that such material could have easily provoked in a lesser artist. It's easy to see why the Academy went for something that goes down as easy as this, but in the end I'll cast my vote for something with a little more edge.

I don't have the problem that Mister Tee does with Gaslight -- I found it had enough macabre humor for my taste, and I didn't think it ever dipped into pretension because of that. In particular, Charles Boyer's performance has a menacing wit to it, and Angela Lansbury's coquettish maid is a hoot. And at the center of it all is Ingrid Bergman's powerful work as a woman struggling not to lose her mind, even as those around her conspire to drive her insane. The film is also a nice change of pace for George Cukor, who even rivals Hitchcock this year with the type of film the master of suspense did so well. It was not, though, as tantalizing a thriller as the two remaining films from this year’s ballot…

Laura is a terrific movie. It's such a cool, refined mystery, full of great dialogue (mostly delivered with pristine wit by Clifton Webb), elegant photography, and that achingly romantic score. On a strictly plot level, the mid-film reveal is startling, and beneath the surface there's a rich subtext that explores the various characters' differing levels of obsession with the title character. This is certainly the best place to vote for Otto Preminger (at least in the Director category), and I'm very much tempted to do so for giving this entrancing mystery such expert pacing, visual grace, and unsettling power, but...

Double Indemnity is on the ballot, and I have to vote a straight ticket for both the film and Billy Wilder. I first saw the film on the big-screen at the Egyptian Theatre, and I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It's got such a deviously constructed plot, full of so many hugely memorable moments -- Phyllis emerging in the towel and then walking downstairs with the anklet, Phyllis hiding behind the door to Walter's apartment, the aforementioned car horn blare, Walter finding unexpected company at the back of the train, the discovery of the witness in Keyes's apartment, a wounded Walter speaking into the recording device, and so on. And my god, the dialogue! The film is a total master class in hard boiled language, with too many delicious lines to mention. Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is the screen's great femme fatale, MacMurray's Walter Neff is a marvelously cynical anti-hero, and Robinson's Keyes is wonderfully energetic change of pace from the actor's tough guy gangster roles. And throughout, Billy Wilder (and his cinematographer) bathe the film in such haunting shadows they turn Los Angeles into a doom-filled nightmare of a place. I find the movie nearly impossible to resist in every way, and while many have lovingly (and sometimes successfully) attempted to capture this film's blend of crime and romance, Double Indemnity remains a high-water mark for the noir style that countless imitators have never equaled.

[Reza]

Voted for Double Indemnity & Otto Preminger.

My picks for 1944:

Best Picture
1. Laura
2. Meet Me in St. Louis
3. Double Indemnity
4. Gaslight
5. Since You Went Away

The 6th Spot: Lifeboat

Best Director
1. Otto Preminger, Laura
2. Vincente Minnelli, Meet Me in St. Louis
3. Billy Wilder, Double Indemnity
4. Alfred Hitchcock, Lifeboat
5. Fritz Lang, The Woman in the Window

The 6th Spot: George Cukor, Gaslight

[Mister Tee]

Ah, thank you for a comparatively easy one.

While I'd agree that Laura and Meet Me. in St. Louis are notable omittees, my greater advocacy would be for the one-two punch from Preston Sturges, Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. The former probably had the better chance of the two with with Academy, given its semi-serious subject (some of us noted a few years back the thematic resemblance Flags of Our Fathers had to it). But Morgan's Creek will always be my favorite, for its greater number of laugh-out-loud-moments, and for its sheer "they smuggled this past the censors how?" audacity (an exchange that encapsulated both -- Norville: Sure I remember the dance. You said you had fun, there, Trudy. Trudy: Well, I did, Norville...but some kinds of fun last longer than others, if you know what I mean) The writers, as always, came through for Sturges, but the Academy at large preferred its comedy more at the benign, twinkling Barry Fitzgerald level. Too bad.

Not that I dislike Going My Way. In fact, I have an affection for it I can't really defend intellectually. I first saw the movie at quite a young age (it was part of the Catholic family's standard film curriculum), and always warmed to it. (In a way I never quite did to The Bells of St. Mary's. If you'd been raised by the steel-ruler nuns I was, you'd have trouble with a movie enshrining them, too) Crosby is light on his feet and charming, Fitzgerald is, indeed, a delight, and the Too-Ra-Loo-Ra finale is an emotional killer. I don't think it's an ignoble winner.

We've discussed Wilson in other threads recently. I don't have the affection for it Magilla does; it felt like a fairly standard biopic, and glaringly omitted many of the blots on Wilson's record (like the Palmer raids). Henry King is a guy who kept getting invited to the Oscars in this period, almost entirely on the size rather than achievement of his films.

Since You Went Away is almost touching in its obvious desire to be something more than a homefront soap opera. The occasional leave-the-characters-behind-and-expand-the-canvas scenes are interesting, but don't give the film the grandeur Selznick no doubt had in mind. What works best is the most obvious: playing on our emotional attachment to likable characters and their fear of/actuality of losing those close to them. The railroad station scene has been often imitated, but still maintains an emotional kick.

I've never seen the Brit version of Angel Street. I'd like to think it more resembles the play, which is much lighter on its feet than Cukor's film, with a good bit more humor. This nominated version feels too self-serious for me; it seems to fancy itself a serious deep psychological study, and, by taking that tack, it diminishes alot of the penny dreadful fun of the story. Laura would have been a far more deserving mystery-based story to nominate.

Not, though, as deserving as Double Indemnity, the one true classic of this bunch, and a movie I've taken so much pleasure in so many times that I can recite chunks from memory. ("There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. 45 miles an hour" "How fast was I going, officer?" "I'd say about 90") The plot is noir at its finest, and provides breathless moments (Stanwyck blowing the car horn one of the most indelible). But it's also a great relationship movie, with the frosty but can't-be-resisted attraction between Stanwyck and MacMurray matched to the cranky/jokey but deep affection between MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson (in maybe his best performance...he rarely got so many funny lines, and he delivered each one with aplomb). It seems like, ever since, people have been trying to re-create this sort of movie, which tells you it was something very special. It gets my vote without a second thought.

My feeling about best director matches what we've got so far (a 3-3 tie). I like Wilder the best, and voted for him, but Preminger's finest hour in Laura deserves respect as well, and I can't feel bad about any votes that go his way.

Oh, and, Magilla: I daresay Hitchcock's nomination was largely for the technical feat of making a movie cinematic even while confined to such a small space. He got a similar nomination for Rear Window (though that was a far better film), and Teshigahara was also nominated for such an accomplishment.

[Big Magilla]

I may be jumping the gun but with Hurricane Sandy about to pund the shore a few miles down the road, I have no idea if I'll have power tomorrow or the next day or ten days from now for that matter, so here we go...

Most conspicuous by their absence from Oscar's compact list of five are Meet Me in St. Louis and Laura.

I actually like all five nominees, though Gaslight; Since You Went Away and Wilson make the bottom half of my ten best list for the year. Taking their place are the afore-mentioned Double Indemnity and Laura as well as the not eligible until next year The Keys of the Kingdom.

I first saw Wilson some time in the early 1960s and found it a fascinating study of recent history not taught in schools. It may have been around the time of the second Mrs. Wilson's death when the newspapers made reference to her allegedly running the country while he was recovering from his stroke. It still holds up today better than most Hollywood biographies of the era.

Since You Went Away was Selznick's attempt to make the Gone With the Wind of the WWII homefront. It succeeds in length, if not contenet. Claudette Colbert delivers one of her best performances, but she is overshaodwed by Selznick's protege and future wife Jennifer Jones as her eldest daughter.

Gaslight comes closest to making my top five, but it's still just the second best version of Patrick Hamilton's Angel Street, filmed to near perfectoin four years earlier by the Brits with Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard.

Going My Way was a great crowd-pleaser and box-office champ, but pales in comparison to its sequel, 1945's The Bells of St. Mary's

Double Indemnity however still holds up better than its one official remake, a forgettable TV version, as well as its many imitations including 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice and 1981's Body Heat. It gets my vote.

My choice for Best Director is the non-nominated Vincente Minnelli for Meet Me in St. Louis. In his absence, I'm tempted to vote for Billy Wilder for Double Indemnity but Wilder will have other chances. I'm voitng insted for Otto Preminger who came into his own with Laura and never quite matched it.

Alfred Hitchcock's nomination for Lifeboat has always been a puzzle to me considering how many times he was overlooked for much more substantial work. Henry King doesn't do anything with Wilson that any other director would do. Leo McCarey (Going My Way, like Wilder, will have another chance next year.