Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

A tip for those (like me) missing Take the High Ground! -- TCM is showing it tomorrow at 4:30 PM EDT.

I can only vote in Adapted, and it's an easy choice with From Here to Eternity. Shane is also a good film, but more because of its direction than screenplay, so it's no real competition here.

The other three screenplays are respectable, but not outstanding. I honestly don't understand what appeal Roman Holiday is supposed to have beyond Audrey Hepburn.

The Original Screenplay roster is a really uninspiring slate this year. In international/non-Oscar terms, Tokyo Story of course outranks them all.

These Golden Age war films are indeed getting tiresome for me, mostly because my sensibilities are far more suited to the cynicism of the post-Vietnam era. Given that Richard Brooks was at the helm, I had hoped for something much more special from Take the High Ground!, but I think it's utterly lacking in interest. And seen today, the basic story just doesn't even make much sense -- the movie acts like the military trainees are being led by a Full Metal Jacket-level tyrant, but most of Richard Widmark's "outrageous" treatment of them just amounts to tough love.

By comparison, The Desert Rats is certainly stronger -- it's clearly operating on a more serious, realistic level, and it does have some compelling insights into life as a soldier, most notably when Burton expresses his feeling that individual lives should be sacrificed if it means success for the group as a whole. But I still don't find it terribly compelling on a plot or dialogue level to single it out for its writing.

Titanic is basically the opposite of From Here to Eternity -- the melodrama before The Big Disaster is so mundane and lacking in specificity that there is virtually zero point to telling this story, but for the fact that it's set against the backdrop of the doomed ocean liner. And so many better Titanic-themed projects, from A Night to Remember just a few years later, to the Broadway musical, to Cameron's blockbuster, simply dwarf this version in every conceivable way.

The Naked Spur would be my runner-up, though a fairly distant one. Its story goes in some compelling thematic directions, exploring questions of greed and morality in a manner similar to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But I think it has its limitations in the writing area, starting with some fairly meat-and-potatoes dialogue. I also feel that while the general arc of the story is captivating, the film is rather generously paced -- it doesn't feel as gripping as it should, given the subject matter. And I, too, think the ending -- which really pushes the romance -- feels more like a movie-movie conclusion when something darker might have felt more realistic. A worthy film, but not, for me a great screenplay.

The Band Wagon wouldn't really be the kind of movie I'd single out for writing honors either -- its triumphs, as with many musicals, are far more visual/choreographic than verbal. When I think of the film, I remember the glorious "Dancing in the Dark" pas de deux, as well as a number of musical vignettes from the final segment, and, of course, the numerous renditions of "That's Entertainment" rather than any standout dialogue or plotting. Still, it gets my vote simply for being the best overall movie on the ballot, an imaginative and entertaining musical with some appealingly bleak undertones, that sparkles with more wit and energy than any of the other nominees by far.

Tee, Hobson's Choice was a 1954 film.

The Blue Gardenia and The Man Between had separate writers for story and screenplay so they would have been eligible for Best Motion Picture Story and Best (Adapted) Screenplay, not Best Story and Screenplay (then the technical name for Original Screenplay). The same is true for The Captains' Paradise which was, in fact, nominated for Best Motion Picture Story but missed the cut for (Adapted) Screenplay.

I’m one film short in each category, so can only offer commentary, not (yet) a vote.

As substitutes under original, I’d point to two lesser-known works by famous directors: Fritz Lang’s Blue Gardenia and, especially, Carol Reed’s The Man Between. (I assume they were originals; the only two IMDB credits for each are for screenplay and story). And maybe I’ll just never get this original story/original screenplay dichotomy, but why couldn’t The Captain’s Paradise be here, too?

Take the High Ground! May be available for purchase, but doesn’t turn up at my sources (Netflix has never heard of it, and YouTube offers only one of those Click Here and Pay options).

It was a subject of some mirth among Oscar nerds that this version of Titanic won this solitary category, since it’s the one category where the James Cameron behemoth couldn’t even get a nomination. As many problems as I have with the Cameron version, it at least as a sense of the scale of the disaster. This earlier film is strictly soap opera, and could be about almost any shipwreck.

I’m guessing BJ, like me, is getting mortally sick of the many war films this category is forcing us to sit through. But The Desert Rats, I’d say, is one of the best of the bunch – a modestly gripping view of desert warfare, written and filmed with tact (even though it stops for a James Mason cameo reprising his Rommel from The Desert Fox). The story isn’t completely predictable, and, given a fairly thin field, I’d say the film merited its nomination.

My oft-expressed impatience with Westerns is based on how seldom their plots interest me – what is called “classical” style by many comes off as derivative and uninteresting to me. But The Naked Spur is something of an exception to that rule. This is a film with a number of twists along the way that caught me off-guard. I can’t say I loved it, for all that – the Stewart/Leigh relationship felt like pure movie device, and the Ryan character’s motivations were too overtly articulated (if he’d played his cards closer to the vest, the plotting would really have been intriguing). But, by Western standards, this one’s pretty strong.

Like many, though, I’d have to vote for The Band Wagon, one of the very best of the MGM musicals (I’d pick it over Singin’ in the Rain any day). It may be the most melancholy, loner-focused musical ever – starting with Astaire’s doleful By Myself, going through Dancing in the Dark (a stirringly emotional dance between two people for whom a love affair isn’t even a consideration), and culminating in a reprise of That’s Entertainment sung in such a semi-menacing tone it feels like a Brecht finale. The film seems ultimately to be about the solitude of the creative artist – a rather daring subject for a Technicolor musical.

Over on the adaptation side, like BJ, I have to advocate for Stalag 17 – a taut thriller wrapped inside a POW camp chronicle. Have you noticed, lately, that the Oscars have been presenting screenwriting nominees with all-visual/no dialogue scenes? (As if determined to prove screenwriting is more than dialogue.) Stalag 17 has a great such moment – the shadow-of-the-lightbulb/Johnny Comes Marching Home sequence – that would fit right into that framework: it’s done without dialogue, but it’s clearly a screenwriter’s idea. And the highlight of the film.

I’d also throw in a word or two for Hobson’s Choice, but of course it might not be eligible. I’m not all that enamored of The Big Heat – 50s noir has never appealed to me the way the 40s vintage did, and I find the film a bit rancid.

The Cruel Sea is my missing entry this year, and I have only myself to blame: it was on TCM within the last few years, but before we’d begun this screenplay round, and I didn’t find it compelling enough to DVR. I’ll of course be on the lookout for it.

I’ve discussed the remaining films on the list relatively recently, in the picture/director thread, so a brief recap is all they merit.

Shane has just never floated my boat. It’s a Western, of course, but to my mind a Western with delusions of grandeur (that grandeur being a trap George Stevens fell into quite a bit after his war experiences). The film had, get right down to it, a rather simplistic plot, but the creators seemed to feel they’d fashioned something on mythic level. I possibly should look at it again, but the prospect bores me no end.

Lili is, as BJ succinctly notes, a one-song musical. The film is pleasant enough, but utterly flimsy.

Roman Holiday, as I noted in the original story thread, has never struck me as more than a mild diversion.

And From Here to Eternity remains a very special film to me – a seminal effort in bringing me to the world of grown-up films. It may not be quite as great a movie as I thought it was in 1965, but it’s still an intelligent, gripping film with a wide assortment of memorable characters, and moments – right up to that closing image – that will be with me my whole lifetime. It would be my easy vote…if not for the fact I can’t vote here yet.

I don't think the writers did a particularly good job with the Adapted slate. Given how well it did overall, it's pretty surprising Stalag 17 couldn't crack this lineup -- in terms of both plot and dialogue, it runs circles around much of the slate. And Pickup on South Street and The Big Heat are both clearly better than most of the actual nominees as well.

At one point during The Cruel Sea, one of the characters remarks about how boring life on a ship is. My thought was -- you said it, not me! Wartime men at sea movies are pretty much the definition of Not My Thing, and I found this one virtually insufferable from beginning to end. I can't fathom how it was singled out for its screenplay.

I see that Lili managed to WIN the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay, and I don't much know what to say about that. The plot is extremely thin, centered around a love triangle that's too ho hum to generate much interest. And it doesn't feel like much effort went into crafting it as a musical either -- the filmmakers just wrote one song, inserted it into the narrative whenever they wanted a musical number, and called it a day.

I'm not a Western-phobe, but I don't get the praise Shane receives in many circles as one of the all-time classics of its genre. The title character is just a giant black hole at the center of the movie who we never really learn anything about, and the story just doesn't add up to very much for me on either a narrative or thematic level. I could accept the recognition in a category like Cinematography; absolutely not in Screenplay.

Roman Holiday would be my runner-up, but a fairly distant one -- I must admit to being surprised it's tied for the lead in our voting. Having already voted it the Story prize, I have no need to select it here as well. (Thanks to Magilla, though, for explaining the credit situation -- now having seen Trumbo, my thought when I looked at this race was, I thought Ian McClellan Hunter had nothing to do with Roman Holiday at all?)

But the point is moot anyway, because From Here to Eternity is on the ballot, and that's my easy choice. Here is a film full of well-drawn characters, whose stories parallel and intersect in a beautifully structured script, brimming with emotional power. The screenplay does a wonderful job detailing its player's lives on the level of individual drama, while also examining how seismic global events actually affect the day-to-day existence of otherwise very average people. And on a scene-to-scene basis, the dialogue is sensitive yet clear-eyed, giving the movie a lot more bite than many '50's romantic weepies. A thoroughly deserving winner in my book.

Original

Take the High Ground! is obscure for a reason. It's a standard boot camp film, of interest primarily to soldiers who trained at Fort Bliss in the 50s and 60s.

Titanic is basically a solid soap opera intermingled with the events of the sinking of the luxury liner. It really doesn't deserve its win.

The Desert Rats is a decent war movie but there are two better choices here.

The Naked Spur was one of the best realistic westerns of the era, perhaps the best of the Anthony Mann-James Stewart collaborations.

Even better, though, was the clever screenplay put together by Comden and Green for The Band Wagon. It gets my vote.

Adapted

The Cruel Sea was a rousing war film, but it was one war film too many this year.

Lili had a sweet and tender story at its heart, but there wasn't all that much to it.

Roman Holiday was a well-written expansion of the Oscar wining story, but one screenplay award is enough.

Shane remains one of the best westerns of its era but the best screenplay was the multi-layered From Here to Eternity which deservedly won the Oscar.

Best of the overlooked adaptations were Pickup on South Street and The Big Heat.

Done.

Would it be possible to rename the thread "Best Screenplay 1953," so that it shows up alphabetically in order along with all the others?

I find it virtually impossible to find things when I go back and search unless I put all the threads in alphabetical order.

I'm filling in for Kellens who is busy today but wishes, as do I, to get this going again. It's been four months since we last had one of these polls.

We last did the Best Motion Picture Story in November. What's funny, at least to me, is that the Academy changed the name of the Motion Picture story Oscar winner from Dalton Trumbo's front, Ian McClellan Hunter, to Trumbo in its records and on its website but left McClellan as the writer of record for the Screenplay award which he didn't win.

In the interim Warner Archive has released the last of our nominees to find a home on DVD. Take the High Ground was released on February 16th.