The Broadway Melody 1928/9

The Film:

Charles King and his lovely girls!

One of the first proper full-sound, full-plot Hollywood film musicals - heralding a new style and new genre of film that its studio, MGM, became very good at creating (and made an absolute fortune from!)

Several studios had been trying out bits of sound in movies by using musical performances for several years (technically, that's really all that The Jazz Singer did!) and by 1929 they were filming longer and longer musical sequences. However, The Broadway Melody was the first of these films to have sound throughout and also have a fully realised plot.

It made an absolute fortune at the box office and was easily the biggest hit of the year. People hadn't seen (or heard) anything quite like it before and they loved it! The technology, artistry and imagination behind MGM musicals, along with those of other studios, started here and then went into overdrive - meaning that The Broadway Melody was already looking dated by the time its sequel was released six years later.

It is now one of the lowest rated Best Picture winners on IMDB. We were very curious to find out whether it really deserves its 6.3!


The Ceremony:

A slightly more formal ceremony than the first one

The Awards took place on 3rd April 1930 at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel. It was the first ceremony to be broadcast (on radio) and also the first where the winners didn't know until the night if they had won.

It had a slightly higher profile than the first Awards, but fewer Oscars were given out - only seven, each of which went to a different film.

This ceremony took place a long time after the movie season it was honouring - and so it was agreed that the next ceremony would be moved forward to November, meaning that there were two ceremonies within one year (although the next one was honouring a whole different one year period!)

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Best Director went to British Director Frank Lloyd (who would win again in a few years). He was nominated for three different films but won for The Divine Lady, a film about Lady Hamilton.
Best Actor was Warner Baxter and Best Actress was the legendary Mary Pickford, one of few silent film megastars that was critically acclaimed for any talking roles!


What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

The Broadway Melody wasn't the only MGM Musical vehicle to be nominated this year - the other was Hollywood Revue, now most famous for introducing the song "Singin in the Rain". It had a few technicolor sequences going for it, and also featured Bessie Love and Anita Page (and Joan Crawford, among others) but it was just a variety show with no plot so was always going to lose out to MGM's other nominee!

The other nominees were crime drama Alibi, western In Old Arizona (for which Warner Baxter won his Oscar) and historical drama The Patriot (now lost).

The technical achievements and box office success of The Broadway Melody probably justify it winning against these particular films, for all its faults!


Our Verdict:

This was always going to be my sort of film far more than Andy's. I love Hollywood Musicals. I've got shelves of them and could go on about them at great length given half a chance. I already knew quite a lot about this film and had seen some of the musical numbers before, but never the whole thing.

I'm very glad to have finally watched it, and I enjoyed it. But it's not a good film. Not by MGM's standards even half a dozen years later. Andy drifted off and picked up his laptop within about 15 minutes, leaving the film in the background. It kept my interest a little more, but mainly because I had a lot to critically compare it to.

The Mahoney Sisters show what they can do.
(Unfortunately, it's not much!)

Some people who are very dismissive of the film talk about the clunky editing, the static dance numbers, the long gaps without dialogue or background noise etc. I didn't mind any of that - those things were of their time, they were still experimenting with sound and music. Put those in their historical context and they are impressive. For example, the opening scene at (what I presume is) a Tin Pan Alley office is, by modern standards, an absolute mess with so many different people talking and singing and strumming all at the same time. By 1929 standards it's a technical triumph!

These two were both big MGM stars.
Unfortunately only one of them could act!

The bigger problem, in my view, is that the script isn't anywhere near as good as it could have been and the acting and performing is very ropey in parts. They'd been putting plays on Broadway for years before they could film any of them - I would have thought they could have got this part right!

The two female leads were plucked from the MGM books and had both previously been picked as "Baby Stars" of the 20s. Bessie Love is by far the best thing in the film. She's not the greatest singer in the world, but she's got great comedic timing and a lot of sass and warmth. I really liked her throughout the whole film. Anita Page however seems to have got by in silent films on her looks, and hadn't quite worked out how to do anything much else. Giving her an all talking all singing part probably wasn't the best move.

The characters were also meant to be this great act that wowed people all over America and were destined to be Broadway stars. So you'd think the actors playing them would be able to perform brilliantly as a duo. But they don't.

Making the most of the last few years before
the Hays Code kicks in!

There are a few good comedy moments between them (with Bessie carrying Anita throughout!) - including rather a lot of them running about their apartment in their underwear for no discernible reason! (only a few years before Claudette Colbert's ankle caused an uproar!) And the plot itself isn't too bad, if it had been written better (for example, we only know that society man Jock is a dodgy bloke because we are told this, not because of anything we see him do or say...)


The big musical numbers are really what it's all about. They are actually pretty good - there just aren't enough of them.

Probably the most successful musical number in the film!

There are a couple of nice ballads, and a great little performance of The Boyfriend (as long as you get past the fact that Bessie and Anita don't blend well).

Other than that, we get a well-staged version of the title track - including an extraordinary tap solo in ballet shoes en point! (She turns up about 1 minute into this clip.)

The most talked about musical number in the film -
the priest has just back flipped his way down the aisle!

The other big number is The Wedding of the Painted Doll (one of several songs that get an airing in Singing in the Rain). It's an odd song even without the visuals, which just make it even odder. The tumbling priest is probably the best bit, but there's so much going on that it basically becomes a blur! This number was originally filmed in technicolor, but that version is now lost.

So - all in all, it was an interesting film, a thing of its time, worth watching for a musicals fan like me. But a bit of a slog in parts and really not as good as I thought it would be.

The Broadway Melody may not have exactly stood the test of time, but it provided a template for lots of similar - and much much better - musical films in over the next few decades. It's a shame really that it was this one that won the Oscar, rather than 42nd Street a few years later - a film that presents pretty much the same idea but with far greater success! It's also one of the films that inspired arguably the greatest movie musical of all, the shockingly un-nominated Singing in the Rain. Several of the songs from The Broadway Melody are on its soundtrack. And, of course, there were three more Broadway Melody films. The last is Broadway Melody of 1940 and it contains quite possibly the best three minutes of anything ever put on film ever. And however clunky the 1929 version was, if it led to this it deserves every award going. Click and enjoy!

Wings 1927/8

The Film:

Clara and Gary getting a much better billing
than their screentime warrants!

The film that is officially recognised as the first Best Picture winner. It's a two hour epic war film set in the First World War - which was only a decade before the film was made!

It is most notable for the spectacular dogfight scenes which really are quite extraordinary, especially considering the technical limitations of the time. Most of the people flying the planes had actually seen action in the war which adds a strong touch of authenticity to the whole thing. The Director, William A Wellman, based the film on his own experiences on the front line.

There were thousands of extras and a budget of about $2 million - and you can see all of this up on the screen. There's also the blatantly box office chasing casting of the magnificent (and very under-used) Clara Bow, as well as one of the earliest examples of product placement when it is clearly revealed that Gary Cooper's last bit of chow was made by Hershey.


The Ceremony:

The Academy Dinner (with Awards thrown in as an added extra!)

May 16th 1929 at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

It couldn't be further from the 89th Awards this year. It was a small, private dinner with 270 guests and a ceremony that lasted about 15 minutes. The winners were informed months in advance that they had won. There were only twelve categories - and many of them (such as the Acting awards) didn't specify a particular film but rather gave the award for a general body of work.

Other Notable Winners That Night:

The other famous winner of the night was Sunrise, which we watched last week. There were also two best directors - Lewis Milestone for "Two Arabian Knights" won the comedy award and Frank Borzage won the dramatic award for 7th Heaven. I know very little about either of these films, but apparently they are both still out there somewhere.

Emil Jannings won Best Actor and Janet Gaynor (more about her in a bit....) won Best Actress. Good bits of information to know for Pub Quizzes or Pointless endgames!

Out of the twelve awards given, Sunrise and 7th Heaven took three each (sort of, because they both counted for Janet Gaynor who won her award for starring in both of them!)


What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

The other two nominees in this category were 7th Heaven (which won Best Director, Best Actress and Best Screenwriter) and The Racket (a controversial Chicago crime movie which was long thought lost until one surviving copy was found in Howard Hughes' collection - it's currently a museum piece only).

Without having seen the other two pictures, I'm still fairly confident that what we watched was more than worthy of its award!


Our Verdict:

I'd been meaning to watch Wings for years - for much the same reasons as I've seen Birth of a Nation and Battleship Potemkin. It's one of those classics of film history! However, the length of it and the subject matter has always put me off. I wasn't that keen on the idea of watching a load of planes silently flying around and shooting at each other for two hours, however technically brilliant they were.

I was wrong. The film was so much more than that. And it was great fun!

Dogfight!

So - let's start with the dogfights. There are about four key set pieces interspersed throughout the film and they really are quite stunning. It's hard to get your head around the idea that they are recreating events from only ten years previously and to really put into context the technical limitations of the time. They hadn't really worked out how to synchronise sound and film yet, and their movie cameras will have been great big cumbersome things with a limited supply of electricity. And yet Wellman managed to both choreograph and film some technically brilliant sequences. Andy pointed out that the first big fight looked like it was almost scene for scene the same as the battle at the end of the first Star Wars film. A little googling reveals that George Lucas used scenes from Wings as placeholders when filming his battle scenes! The version we had also had most of the gunfire and some of the crash fires coloured in, which was a nice historical touch.

Maverick and Goose - oops, sorry, Jack and David!

The dogfights were only part of the film. There is also what turns out to be a really rather good story attached to it involving a love triangle, an unrequited admirer and what turns out to be a strong and tragic buddy relationship (one of the many reasons I could find in the film for why Top Gun is a derivative pile of nonsense!). Jack and David go from love rivals and enemies to flying partners and friends - and it all ends in tears with a beautifully tender (and quite shocking for the time) fraternal kiss.

NB: Sorry, not sorry for the slight spoiler there - the story has been copied so many times that if you didn't see that one coming you'll probably need spoilers!

Gary's off for some figure eights before chow - it's going
to end in tears!

 The film also introduces the world to Gary Cooper. He's only in it for about three or four minutes, being half-friendly half-macho, but he makes a big impression and gets himself noticed enough to secure his film career (and two future Best Actor Oscars!). He's not interested in the silly superstitions that Jack and David has, and he won't take any lucky charms with him when he flies. And then he just nips out for a bit of practice before dinner - and I don't need to tell you the rest, do I?

Gary Cooper also made quite an impression in other ways - particularly on Clara Bow, with whom he had quite a steamy affair (apparently!) during filming. And who can blame either of them!

Clara in a very revealing pre-Hayes Code moment

Clara Bow was very clearly hired because her name on the poster was going to mean big Box Office returns. She said as much herself, and the script really doesn't make enough of her. She plays Jack's unrequited love interest who also joins the war effort and, among other things, rescues Jack from the excesses of Paris so that he turns up for duty on time. She plays her part well (although the make up artist could have been a bit more careful with her decidedly not "on fleek" eyebrows which distracted me several times) but they run out of things to do with her halfway through the film and then she disappears until the end. She does show rather more flesh than the Hays Code (which came in a couple of years later) would approve of and adds humour and heart to the story. It's a shame she didn't have a bit more to do!

Bubbles!!

 In terms of humour (and pre-Hays Code shenanigans) there is a technically clever scene where Jack gets rather drunk on champagne in Paris and can see bubbles coming out of everything - including Clara and another female rival when he shakes them! The bubbles are superimposed on the film really cleverly, especially the big bubble that covers Jack's face until he pops it!

If your name's Herman and you sound German but you want to
fight for Uncle Sam, you'd better get yourself one of these!

And there are also some great comic moments near the beginning of the film where they are signing up for training and a man of German origin, called Herman (of course!) manages to convince the officers that he is American through and through by showing off his rippling muscles and his Stars and Stripes tattoo! He doesn't fair too well in training (the wonderfully named Gunboat Smith plays a sergeant who really has it in for him) but he becomes an engineer and does his bit.

This sort of leads me on to my last point - one that Andy made. This film is so very clearly not anti-German. The German Major plays fair and any shots of his men in or out of their flying machines portray them as no different to our heroes. In this film it is War itself that is the bad guy and there are no real winners or losers, just casualties. I don't know if this is true of other such war films which were made before the Nazis came along - although I kind of suspect it might be. We've got "All Quiet On The Western Front" coming up in a couple of weeks, so I'll have to see.

Overall, we really enjoyed Wings. It deserved its Oscar (although Sunrise deserved one too!) and really should be watched by more people. More than anything else it shows that a good script, good casting, great directing and fearless stuntmen completely wipe the floor with the formulaic nonsense that Tom Cruise strutted around in nearly sixty years later!

Clara playing gooseberry (not really....)

Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans 1927/28

The Film:

A 1927 silent film directed by F W Murnau and starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor (who won
Best Actress that year) and Margaret Livingston. It is a romantic drama about a man torn between two women.

90 years on this film is still considered to be one of the absolute classics of silent cinema - one of the reasons why it is available on Bluray. It is an example of German Expressionism that employs lots of groundbreaking effects (for the time) and makes great use of symbolism to tell the story.

For the first Academy Awards only, two Best Picture awards were given. Sunrise won for "Unique and Artistic" film - Wings (next on our list!) won for Outstanding Picture. People tend to class Wings as the ultimate winner that year - but we're going to watch both and make our own minds up!


The Ceremony:

May 16th 1929 at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

It couldn't be further from the 89th Awards this year. It was a small, private dinner with 270 guests and a ceremony that lasted about 15 minutes. The winners were informed months in advance that they had won. There were only twelve categories - and many of them (such as the Acting awards) didn't specify a particular film but rather gave the award for a general body of work.

Not quite as glizty as it is now - not a dinner jacket or ball gown in sight!

Other Notable Winners That Night:

The other famous winner of the night was Wings, which is next on our list. There were also two best directors - Lewis Milestone for "Two Arabian Knights" won the comedy award and Frank Borzage won the dramatic award for 7th Heaven. I know very little about either of these films, but apparently they are both still out there somewhere.

Emil Jannings won Best Actor and Janet Gaynor (more about her in a bit....) won Best Actress. Good bits of information to know for Pub Quizzes or Pointless endgames!

Out of the twelve awards given, Sunrise and 7th Heaven took three each (sort of, because they both counted for Janet Gaynor who won her award for starring in both of them!)


What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Having watched Sunrise I can definitely say that I'm glad it won the award - Wings is going to have to go some to deserve being "officially" remembered as the first winner!

However, I haven't seen the other nominated films - "Chang - A Drama of the Wilderness" and "The Crowd". They are still both out there somewhere, so maybe I'll look them up some time.


Our Verdict:

The happy couple!

Where to start....(other than at the beginning, which we have done!).

We sat drinking Negronis on a warm June evening and watched a very well restored Bluray version of the film. I knew a bit about the plot beforehand, and about the general style of the film, but that was it. I really didn't know what to expect.

George is getting upset....

The first twenty minutes or so were very melodramatic - lots of deep stares and furrowed brows and a rather sinister murder plot. But then Janet Gaynor turns it all around and it becomes (at least temporarily) a really lovely love story. There are some wonderful early examples of long tracking shots and some very clever (for it's time) special effects. There's great use of sound effects in an otherwise silent movie - and there are hardly any Title Cards but you sort of don't notice (until one pops up right near the end) because the acting carries everything without words.

Drunken pig!

There are some really good humorous moments - including a
headless statue and a drunken pig (the pig is quite magnificent!). And the drama is well filmed as well, particularly the last 20 minutes played out on the lake in near darkness.

Janet and one of her sideways glances!

And there is Janet Gaynor. (I think Andy is a little bit in love with her after watching this!) She has the most amazing eyes - very important in silent movies - and such a lovely way of being (not just acting - "being") throughout the film. It is very fitting that she will be remembered for being the first ever Best Actress winner.





Overall then, a really good place to start on our trek through 90+ films. Sunrise is on Youtube (as well as being on DVD/Bluray for about a tenner!) and I strongly recommend it....it's fab!

Introduction - The Challenge....

I've always been a bit of a Movie Buff. I like watching them, reading about them, and I particularly enjoy films about them - whether they are documentaries (my favourite being the 11 hour history of Film Musicals!) or actual films about films (which is why I'm looking forward to number 85 on my challenge!). I always want to answer film categories on Pointless, and I recently managed to name every one of the Oscar winning actors on a picture round - including Greer Garson and Jean Dujardin.....

So I was quite surprised that it was my husband Andy who, rather casually, suggested last week that we should try to watch every Best Picture Oscar winner in order. I didn't need to think twice.

Challenge Accepted!!!

Strictly speaking there have been 89 Oscar ceremonies, which means 89 winners - but in the first year the categories were rather unusual and included both "Outstanding Picture" and "Unique and Artistic Picture". Records tend to go with just the first of these ("Wings"), but I think both should be remembered so have included it as our first picture. It's called "Sunrise" - which means we start with Sunrise and end with Moonlight! (although I suspect there will be at least one more film to include by the time we get there).

I am aware that we are going to have to endure some pretty ropey stuff along the way. And I don't mean some of the forgotten or dated winners from the 30s and 40s. Despite being a fan of Musicals, I have an irrational hatred of Gigi so I'm going to spend 1959 wishing I was watching Liz and Rock instead. And, with a couple of notable exceptions, the 1990s are going to be hard-going. Andy has also insisted that, when we get to Return of the King, we have to watch the whole trilogy in its extended form. So that's going to pad out the 2000s quite a bit....

However - there's a long way to go until we get there!

I've already got 1927-1933 set and ready to go and, so far, haven't come across any of the 90 films that aren't either available to buy on DVD for about £5 or in the public domain and up on Youtube in good condition.

Can't wait to get started....