Oscar Follies: The First Ten Years

The first decade of the Academy Awards was a bit of a wash. Throughout the 1930s, only a few films now considered as true classics actually claimed the golden statue for Best Picture (or Outstanding Production as it was known back then), while the majority the winners from that decade are now looked upon as obscure curiosities. The more serious crime is that in the same year that the Academy was rewarding overwrought mediocrity, some of the most influential and groundbreaking films ever made went unrecognized – likely because they were not American productions. Today’s filmgoers are probably familiar with the decade’s most deserving winners like Munity on the Bounty, All Quiet on the Western Front and Gone with the Wind but what about Oscar follies – forgotten Best Pictures from the golden age of Hollywood?

The Broadway Melody (1929)

The Academy’s most highly honored film for 1929 is an unmemorable back-ender about a pair of sisters named Hank and Queenie Mahoney that come to New York City to make it big on the Broadway stage. They meet up with an established composer/dancer named Eddie who dates Hank while he is in love with Queenie, which men were apparently encouraged to do back then. Some would argue that The Broadway Melody is the progenitor to celebrated musicals about entertainers like A Star is Born, Funny Girl and A Chorus Line – but I would argue that even if that is true, it does not make the saga of the Mahoney sisters any more satisfying to sit through. One of the musical numbers in Broadway Melody was filmed and originally exhibited in a two-colour version of Technicolor, but unfortunately an introductory sixteen second clip is all that remains of the film’s colour sequence. After learning this, part of me was suspicious that that the Motion Picture Academy members of 1929 must have been utterly flabbergasted by the novelty of synchronized sound and colour when they were selecting the best picture of the year.

What should have won instead: Старое и новое / The General Line by Sergei Eisenstein or Blackmail by Alfred Hitchcock, neither of which were nominated.

Cimarron (1931)

Named for a river in Oklahoma, Cimarron is an Oscar-winning western adapted from a novel by Edna Ferber which spans from the late 1900s into the early 20th Century. For some reason, I had originally though this film was called ‘Chimera’ so you can imagine my disappointment when there was nary a Minotaur to be found. The film is the fictional biography of a restless soul named Yancy Cravat (modeled after real-life gunslinger Temple Houston), who uproots his family to settle a claim in Oklahoma where he becomes a firebrand lawyer and, a bit later on, a firebrand newspaper editor. When times get tough, Yancy abandons his family in search of new lands (as men were apparently encouraged to do back then) leaving his wife Sabra to manage the newspaper and provide for their family. Originally released during darkest days of the Great Depression, Cimarron was a critical hit and a commercial flop – which lead RKO to re-release the film in 1935 in order to recoup some of their five million dollar losses. Similar to subsequent Best Picture winners like Cavalcade (1933), Cimarron is a decades-spanning epic which attempts to encompass all the major events in the life of a family – a narrative form which can be rewarding when related through a novel and excruciating when it is adapted into a film. At the moment, Cimarron has the distinction of being the Best Picture winner with the lowest rating on IMDb.com.

What should have won instead: My choice would be M, the German-made crime masterpiece by Fritz Lang which was not nominated.

The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Not to be confused with The Great Santini or The Great Gatsby, the Oscar winner for 1936 is a celebration of frivolous extravagance and gratuitous decadence, much like the award ceremonies themselves. The picture is a garish biography of Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., who was the man behind such popular productions as Show Boat and the Ziegfeld Follies series of musical revues. If you believe the adulation heaped upon Ziegfeld in this film, you might imagine that he was the first person who came up with the idea of putting pretty girls on stage and having them dance around to funny songs. Similar enough to Ziegfeld’s theatrical pageants, the biopic based on his life doesn’t really have a tangible plot, per se. Instead, the producer’s life is used more as a framing device to spring from one elaborately choreographed musical number to the next, taking small breaks in-between to assert that Ziegfeld remained faithful to his wife even when she suspected him of infidelity. Which is complete balderdash if you ask his biographer Lee Davis, who once wrote that Ziegfeld exhibited a “need for all his adult life to sleep with the best of the beauties he hired.” If you thought that The Artist was a self-congratulatory indulgence, wait until you see the bottomless abyss back-patting that is The Great Ziegfeld.

What should have won instead: Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin which was not nominated.

Academy Award for Best PictureCimarronThe Broadway MelodyThe Great Ziegfeld