Re: Best Screenplay 1948
Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2016 2:18 am
This is another very solid lineup -- the 1940s were much stronger for the kinds of movies Oscar likes than the 1950s, I think. Among alternates, I'd probably advocate most strongly for Letter From an Unknown Woman and The Lady from Shanghai.
The Search is an absorbing and moving postwar drama, which avoids a lot of the potential for hokiness that the set-up (cute child and G.I. bond) could have involved. I especially like the fact that the experiences of Clift's character don't cause him to "learn" something -- the film dwells more in the haunting realities of wartime life than reductive character arcs. Still, the story is a bit on the simple side, and not as much of an emotional knockout as what the Neorealists were turning out in the same era.
A Foreign Affair is an interesting genre mash-up -- portions of the film's plot feel like a cousin of The Third Man, with its evocative depiction of war-ravaged Germany, and suspenseful plot sequences. But other aspects of the movie are straight-up romantic comedy, with the kind of witty dialogue typical of most Wilder efforts. I think the screenwriters do a very solid job of keeping the movie's story elements cohesive -- I'd be hard-pressed to argue whether or not this was more a Marlene Dietrich movie or a Jean Arthur movie -- but as others have said, Billy Wilder's career has much higher peaks.
If ever a movie felt both dated and still somehow biting, it's The Snake Pit. It clearly comes from a different era of psychology, and yet as a time capsule of how those suffering from mental illness were treated in this era, it remains quite horrifying to watch. When evaluating this as a script, I'd probably make the argument that the narrative isn't quite a structural wow -- it's more successful in terms of individual scenes than as a plot with real drive -- but a lot of those moments are memorable ones, and de Havilland's character is a richly detailed creation.
Johnny Belinda is the kind of movie where if you summed up the plot elements (deaf/mute adult, rape, unwanted pregnancy), you'd assume you were in for something really overwrought, like a Nova Scotia-set Peyton Place. And yet the script navigates these highly dramatic subjects in a manner that I think is quite thoughtful and sensitive, digging into many characters' lives in a well-rounded manner, and creating a portrait of a community that feels detailed and lived-in. I'm going to give the script a lot of credit for how much it gets right when you could imagine this material going very wrong.
But I view this award as basically a gimme for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which excels as a gripping suspense narrative, a fascinating character study of one man's descent into madness, and a rich thematic exploration of the effects greed has on human beings. The whole script is shot through with a bleak sense of cynicism -- cynicism which, as in The Maltese Falcon, was often laced with laugh-though-it-hurts irony -- and it's beautifully plotted up to its perfect final scene. You can see the movie's influence in so many contemporary films -- everything from Fargo to A Simple Plan to There Will Be Blood -- and that legacy helps make it my clear choice for Best Screenplay this year.
The Search is an absorbing and moving postwar drama, which avoids a lot of the potential for hokiness that the set-up (cute child and G.I. bond) could have involved. I especially like the fact that the experiences of Clift's character don't cause him to "learn" something -- the film dwells more in the haunting realities of wartime life than reductive character arcs. Still, the story is a bit on the simple side, and not as much of an emotional knockout as what the Neorealists were turning out in the same era.
A Foreign Affair is an interesting genre mash-up -- portions of the film's plot feel like a cousin of The Third Man, with its evocative depiction of war-ravaged Germany, and suspenseful plot sequences. But other aspects of the movie are straight-up romantic comedy, with the kind of witty dialogue typical of most Wilder efforts. I think the screenwriters do a very solid job of keeping the movie's story elements cohesive -- I'd be hard-pressed to argue whether or not this was more a Marlene Dietrich movie or a Jean Arthur movie -- but as others have said, Billy Wilder's career has much higher peaks.
If ever a movie felt both dated and still somehow biting, it's The Snake Pit. It clearly comes from a different era of psychology, and yet as a time capsule of how those suffering from mental illness were treated in this era, it remains quite horrifying to watch. When evaluating this as a script, I'd probably make the argument that the narrative isn't quite a structural wow -- it's more successful in terms of individual scenes than as a plot with real drive -- but a lot of those moments are memorable ones, and de Havilland's character is a richly detailed creation.
Johnny Belinda is the kind of movie where if you summed up the plot elements (deaf/mute adult, rape, unwanted pregnancy), you'd assume you were in for something really overwrought, like a Nova Scotia-set Peyton Place. And yet the script navigates these highly dramatic subjects in a manner that I think is quite thoughtful and sensitive, digging into many characters' lives in a well-rounded manner, and creating a portrait of a community that feels detailed and lived-in. I'm going to give the script a lot of credit for how much it gets right when you could imagine this material going very wrong.
But I view this award as basically a gimme for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which excels as a gripping suspense narrative, a fascinating character study of one man's descent into madness, and a rich thematic exploration of the effects greed has on human beings. The whole script is shot through with a bleak sense of cynicism -- cynicism which, as in The Maltese Falcon, was often laced with laugh-though-it-hurts irony -- and it's beautifully plotted up to its perfect final scene. You can see the movie's influence in so many contemporary films -- everything from Fargo to A Simple Plan to There Will Be Blood -- and that legacy helps make it my clear choice for Best Screenplay this year.