Best Picture and Director 1948

1927/28 through 1997
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Please select one Best Picture and one Best Director

Hamlet
3
7%
Johnny Belinda
2
4%
The Red Shoes
4
9%
The Snake Pit
2
4%
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
12
26%
John Huston - The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
13
28%
Anatole Litvak - The Snake Pit
2
4%
Jean Negulesco - Johnny Belinda
1
2%
Laurence Olivier - Hamlet
4
9%
Fred Zinnemann - The Search
3
7%
 
Total votes: 46

FilmFan720
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Re: Best Picture and Director 1948

Post by FilmFan720 »

Looking at this list, you have to be taken aback as to how solid, yet unremarkable, it is. There are a lot of films in here that are very strong examples of their genres, but very little really pops out as must-votes. I wouldn't oppose voting for any of these films, but in other years, I wouldn't be rushing out to vote for them.

On the list of also-rans, I agree with a lot of what people have thrown out there. I would especially endorse A Foreign Affair, one of the more interesting yet forgotten pieces of the Wilder canon, and Three Godfathers, one of my favorite John Ford films and another unfairly forgotten film.

Johnny Belinda is one of the better late 40s melodramas and The Snake Pit is probably the best of the late 40s, early 50s mental illness issue movies. Neither of these is a masterpiece, but they remain thresholds in their genres and I'm glad to see them here (and to see career nominations for their solid, yet not flashy, directors).

Powell and Pressburger are one of my favorite filmmaking teams, and their 1940s output is spectacular. The Red Shoes, though, is the one film of their I have never warmed to, and I'm heartened to see I'm not the only one here with that feeling. The film is gorgeous, and the precision of their camera is remarkable, but I have always found the story a little flat and the film has left me cold. It seems fitting that this is a film Scorsese has championed so much because it feels much in the vein of his later work: masterfully constructed, but with a few too many strings showing and no real emotional engagement. They have so many other films I wish had gotten above-the-line nominations over this one.

Hamlet is an interesting film. Of Olivier's trio of Shakespearean films, this is probably the least successful. It doesn't revolutionize the way that Henry V does, and I like the technicolor splash of Richard III as a whole better. It is certainly an interesting film, and as experimental as Henry V with its use of noir tropes and voice overs, but in the end it is just a little too cold for me. I'm glad it got recognized, and Olivier certainly deserved credit for what he was doing, but I won't vote for it here.

Fred Zinnemann might be the best "non-auteur" of the 1950s and 60s working in Hollywood, with a lot of varying, interesting, well-made films to his credit. The Search is one of his most tender films, but one of his most successful ones too. I've caught it several times on TCM, and each time I'm sucked in by a great central performance by Montgomery Clift and the wonderful use of location scouting. The story keeps me enraptured, though, and Zinnemann should get credit for blending the Italian neo-realism of the time with more conventional Hollywood storytelling. I'm glad he got a nomination here, and if I didn't know that I would probably vote for him later, I might consider throwing a win his way.

Maybe it is the Damienite in me, but I find John Huston as dull a major filmmaker as there is. Every one of his films seems to be 15 minutes too long (mostly because every scene seems to overstay its welcome) and punching me in the face with meaning. He is not my cup of tea at all. Treasure of the Sierra Madre, though, is the one place he gets everything right. It gets great performances from good actors, it zips along and is gorgeously shot. It rises pretty high above everything else on this list, and gets both my votes here.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 1948

Post by bizarre »

My Picture nominees:

* Act of Violence
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Moonrise
Spring in a Small Town
The Red Shoes


My Director nominees:

Frank Borzage … Moonrise
William Dieterle … Portrait of Jennie
Max Ophüls … Letter from an Unknown Woman
* Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger … The Red Shoes
Fred Zinnemann … Act of Violence
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Re: Best Picture and Director 1948

Post by Mister Tee »

I finally have a few minutes to weigh in here. Films not among the nominees for which I'd advocate are Force of Evil, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Red River. To continue my multi-year picking on John Ford: what I REALLY like about Red River (apart from the visuals, which are striking even on DVD) is how un-Fordian the treatment of the John Wayne character is. Ford has such affinity for authoritarians that I fear, had he made the film, Clift would have been forced to see the error of his ways and bow to Wayne's ultimate wisdom. Clift doesn't exactly emerge heroic in Hawks' film, but the Wayne character is pretty clearly seen as behaving like a jackass. I found that really refreshing.

To those actually nominated:

I don't love but don't dislike most of the field. Ultimate winner Hamlet is probably the one I care about least, and, to be honest, the one about which my memory is least clear, since I haven't made the commitment to sitting down and watching the whole thing in many years. One suspects the Academy was wowed more by the pedigree of the project than by actually loving it (as opposed to Olivier's Henry V, which I think gives alot more pleasure and probably engendered actual enthusiasm). But Hamlet is, you know, a pretty great play (something that can oddly slip one's mind when viewing it simply through its lofty academic reputation), and the middle section always carries me away, including here.

I like Johnny Belinda all right, but I can see by the way people have spoken of it here and in earlier threads that others respomd to it more viscerally than i do. I like all the performances, and find it a very watchable film, but I have no particular excitement about it.

I may line up pretty well with dws on The Red Shoes: I find it a conceptually fascinating piece, and, as always with P&P, admire the visuals. But I wouldn't rank it among my top five from the team. The story gets a little schematic and predictable for me; its striving for the mythic makes it less interesting to me. Anton Walbrook gives a very enjoyable Impressario from Hell performance, but I like his nuanced work in Colonel Blimp a good bit better.

I'll speak up a bit for The Snake Pit, which I think can be under-appreciated for its level of sophistication on the subject matter. Obviously the whole crazy-people-in-asylum part has dated. But the earlier part of the flm -- where de Havilland's neuroses are seen developing bit by bit, layer by layer -- shows a deeper knowledge of psychology than any other US films of the era. Even a decade later, Three Faces of Eve was successfully peddling the old "one traumatic event caused the whole thing"; The Snake Pit understands how event piles upon event to create a person's psycholoigcal profile. (It calls to mind Mary Tyrone's devastating speech from Long Day's Journey -- "None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize them, and, after they're done, they make you do other things, until at last everything comes between you and what you want to be, and you've lost your real self forever") For summoning up that spirit -- and for, for me, deHavilland's greatest performance -- I've always been fond of The Snake Pit, and make it my runner-up.

But I think Treasure of Sierra Madre reigns this year -- best of the nominees and of all films released in 1948. It's got a great "Nothing more to lose" beginning, and then it turns ever darker (though leavened with humor along the way). It's got Bogart's most atypical and scary performance (well, along with In a Lonely Place), and Walter Huston's most breezily delightful one. It's got Alfonso Bedoya's indelible "Badges" scene. And it's got Huston's eye for the landscape and for his characters' shifting relationships. Maybe it's not quite as good a film as The Maltese Falcon, but it's certainly one of Huston's great triumphs, and he deserved the prizes he got for it and the one Olivier snatched away.

As for The Search -- it's an honestly moving, unsentimental effort that no doubt moved war-weary audiences. Why it showed up as lone director may have been mostly a matter of geography; it's a European-set film with a European director, and that may have cut against it in the big category (given that history tells us Olivier -- a virtual Hollywood citizen by then -- was even begrudged his actor win by many). Anyway, I see other Zinnemann films up ahead that will compete for my vote, so I see no need to cite him here for his fine but not extraordinary work.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 1948

Post by dws1982 »

Voted for Johnny Belinda and Jean Negulesco. Negulesco's career otherwise didn't yield a great deal of interest, but I think Johnny Belinda is one of the great films of its era, one of the few (or maybe the only) that I would probably have voted for in all four acting categories.

Of course, by that statement, you can probably surmise that Hamlet, Sierra Madre, and The Snake Pit (Anatole Litvak is similar to Negulesco for me, although Litvak was better overall, and had two genuine masterpieces as far as I'm concerned--Mayerling and Decision Before Dawn) don't do a great deal for me. I do like The Red Shoes, although it's not one of my go-to P&P films.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 1948

Post by Reza »

Voted for Hamlet and Jean Negulesco

Best Picture
1. Hamlet
2. The Red Shoes
3. Red River
4. Johnny Belinda
5. The Pirate

The 6th Spot: Portrait of Jennie

Best Director
1. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, The Red Shoes
2. Howard Hawks, Red River
3. Jean Negulesco, Johnny Belinda
4. Vincente Minnelli, The Pirate
5. Laurence Olivier, Hamlet

The 6th Spot: William Dieterle, Portrait of Jennie
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Re: Best Picture and Director 1948

Post by The Original BJ »

Magilla cited many of the notable also-rans, though I'd also add Letter From an Unknown Woman (both an emotional powerhouse and gorgeously visualized by Ophüls), The Lady from Shanghai (less of a triumph than Welles's two nominees this decade, but still very strong) and The Pirate (one of Minnelli's most underrated musical gems, and one that Damien held in high esteem as well.)

But all in all, it was a solid field, and I find something to admire in all of the nominated efforts.

The Olivia de Havilland performance alone makes The Snake Pit worth remembering, but the movie that surrounds it isn't nothing either. Looking back, its take on mental illness may seem dated...but that paradoxically might add to the film's power, as we look at the events in the hospital and recoil at how badly patients were treated in those days. The film's narrative does lag a bit for my taste -- I could have used a bit more in the plot department -- but it has a lot of individual moments of power. Anatole Litvak wasn't any kind of major director, but he made a few worthy films, this one included, and he deserves credit for the fact that, even after all these years, the movie still has an edge to it.

As with Henry V, Laurence Olivier with Hamlet helps me overcome some of my resistance to Shakespeare on film with a solid enough visual effort behind the camera. In this case, the black-and-white photography and haunting images cast an appropriately ghostly pall over the proceedings. And the cast is strong as well, with the director himself turning in one of his most memorable performances as the tragic hero. I can't say I take to the film as the Academy did -- some of the cuts leave the story feeling a little truncated, and the absence of much of the play's humor makes this version feel a little chilly. (I kept waiting for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to show up!) But it's well done, though it definitely doesn't rank among my favorite winners, even of this era.

I find The Search to be a solid enough movie, but Fred Zinnemann does make for a bit of an odd lone Director candidate. He has a pretty decent track record behind the camera, but even in his best films, he doesn't display the kind of singular talent that typically gets nominations without one's film making a mark in the main race. I think this movie's portrait of war-torn Europe is well-visualized, and the relationship between Montgomery Clift and the boy is sensitive and touching, so it's not as if his nomination is anything offensive. But there are several better opportunities to pick Zinnemann in the years ahead, so I have no problem passing him over here.

It's also peculiar that The Red Shoes was the Best Picture nominee to be OMITTED in Best Director; given their film's truly eye-popping visual beauty, Powell/Pressburger seem like they'd have been recognized in tandem with the movie. But this movie had a strange Oscar haul overall, puzzlingly excluded from Cinematography but recognized for its writing? That doesn't seem to make sense. The film's strength is in its tech elements, and the way the directors craft such grandly cinematic sequences from them. I think the Red Shoes ballet is a dazzling piece of filmmaking, the tragic climax grandly operatic, and the final performance of the ballet incredibly poignant. But I don't think the offstage story rivals the onstage one -- the central love triangle isn't the most innovative -- and though I love many parts of The Red Shoes, I'll be voting for a movie whose whole is more consistently successful.

Johnny Belinda is another one of those movies (like The Song of Bernadette), where I read the premise and thought, oh boy, I know exactly what kind of melodrama I'm going to be in store for here...only to be surprised by the intelligent manner in which the cast and filmmakers presented this story. So much of this has to do with Jane Wyman and the delicate way in which she creates Belinda, never trying to win easy sympathy from the audience because of her character's affliction. And the way the film handles the subject of rape (and its ripple effects) feels honest and even a little bold for the era. Plus, the film's portrait of a small town Canadian fishing village feels realistic and lived-in, with memorable supporting turns by Bickford and Moorehead -- you really get a sense of what it would be like to live in this remote environment, and how that would impact the story's characters. I can't say I find Jean Negulesco's work terribly special -- he got one of those "your movie got nominated for eleven other awards, so I guess you get one too" nods -- and overall, I don't think the movie is memorable enough to edge into win territory.

I easily give my enthusiastic vote to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and John Huston. The movie is such a pleasingly cynical thing, a dark (but very humor-filled) tale about greed and betrayal that still feels fresh and relevant today. In many of his films (The Maltese Falcon is another), John Huston showed such a gift for moving narrative along, presenting his story in the most compact but gripping manner, delving into fascinating character psychology while keeping the audience on the edge of their seats throughout. This gift is on full display in Sierra Madre, which just barrels along toward its tragic conclusion. The film might contain my favorite Humphrey Bogart performance -- his against-type descent into insanity here is a marvelously disturbing piece of acting -- and Walter Huston's joviality provides the perfect counterpoint. This was another movie with a puzzling Oscar record, winning a number of major awards, but missing out on a nod for its star as well as nominations in every below-the-line category (you'd think Johnny Belinda might have had one or two to spare). But at least it won the prizes it did, and I'll vote to add Best Picture to that Director win.
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Best Picture and Director 1948

Post by Big Magilla »

Hamlet schmamlet. There were at least thirteen better films to choose from this year including the other four nominees as well as Red River; Fort Apache and The Search which should have been in the top five along with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Red Shoes. In addition to Johnny Belinda and The Snake Pit[/I,] I would also cite I Remember Mama; A Foreign Affair; The Naked City; Easter Parade; Portrait of Jennie and Key Largo as being worthy of consideration ahead of Olivier's truncated Shakespeare adaptation.

It's not that Hamlet is a bad film, it's actually pretty good for what it is, although one sympathizes with poor Ethel Barrymore having to present the Best Picture award to Olivier when she considered her brother John to have been the best Hamlet of the twentieth century. Fortunately for her, Olivier wasn't there and Robert Montgomery accepted the award in his behalf.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a film I return to every few years and find nuances I never did before. In addition to the legendary performances of Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, there are excellent performances as well from the under-valued Tim Holt; the under-utilized Bruce Bennett and Tim's father Jack Holt in what today would be called a cameo. This was John Huston's best work until his posthumously released film of James Joyce's The Dead and the best film of a very good year for film.

Who was the better director of westerns, Howard Hawks or John Ford? Ford for me, although this year Hawks' Red River trumps Ford's Fort Apache but just barely. Both are films that should be seen every now and again to remind us what great moviemaking was often about. Red River is the film that proved once and for all that John Wayne could act as well as that Montgomery Clift was the new actor to be reckoned with. Fort Apache not only gave us Wayne again at the top of his form, but Henry Fonda in a great character performance that proved to be his last on screen role for seven long years.

The Red Shoes is a ballet movie for people who don't like ballet movies with as brilliant a use of color of one would find in any film, rivaling the color cinematography of Powell/Pressburger's triumph with Black Narcissus the year before.

The Search was an unforgettable social drama of the plight of the misplaced orphans of World War II with another great performance from Montgomery Clift, a strong no-nonsense supporting one from veteran character actress Aline MacMahon and two remarkable performances by opera star Jarmila Novotna as the mother in search of her son and Fred Zinnemann's impressive find, Czech child actor Ivan Jandl, who spoke no English but performed his role by rote. Jandl's own life story would make an even more compelling film. At three he came down with polio and was thought never to be able to walk again, but proved the medical establishment wrong. He auditioned for Zinnemann in his world-wide search and won his role over thousands of others, resulting in a special juvenile Oscar at 11, only to be forbidden to leave the country to accept the award by the Communist regime in charge. Later denied admission to acting school because he had accepted an award from the West.,he later found a few jobs around the periphery of show business, and even got to meet Novotna again in 1985. He died alone in his apartment two years later of complications from diabetes at age 50.

Johnny Belinda is a first-class production that rises above its obvious soap opera roots thanks to the splendid acting of Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford and Agnes Moorehead, making it one the few films to receive acting nominations in all four categories. The Snake Pit may feature antiquated ideas about mental illness, but the central performance of Olivia de Havilland is alone worth a recommendation.

The directors' branch chose well with Huston and Zinnemann, but as meticulous as the direction of the other nominees was, Litvak, Nuglesco and Olivier take a back seat in my estimation to Hawks, Ford and Powell/Pressburger.

I voted for Treasure of Sierra Madre and Huston.

By the way, I enabled re-voting in the poll so if you make a mistake you can change your vote. Hopefully it will be used for that purpose and not for any shenanigans.
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