There’s talk that the motion picture we honor tonight may win a Nobel Prize–Louis B. Mayer about All Quiet on Western Front, Best Picture of 1930

 

Two of the eight Best Picture nominees this year are the epitome of middlebrow fare, films done in good, civlized taste, fearing to upset the viewrs with a more audacious and candid treatment of their tortured subjects. Very much in the tradition of Masterpiece Theater, they are both be British: The Imitation Game and The Thoery of Everything.  The star of the latter, Eddie RedMayne, is considered to be the frontrunner–the actor to beat.

Redmayne is not my choice:  I’d be much happier if Michael Keaton (Birdman) and especially Bradley Cooper (American Sniper) win!

 

The Message’s the Thing

 

Historical and political factors have always influenced the types of films and performances winning the Oscars.  In other words, the social context, zeitgeist, and message are far more influential than the film’s artistic quality in determining the nominees and particularly winners.

 

From the first year, ideological considerations were taken into account. Carl Laemmle, head of Universal spent over one million dollars to film Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.  A group of German schoolboys who enlist in the army at the outbreak of WWI and become disillusioned as they face the reality of combat.  The American Legion and other organizations were concerned about the sympathetic portrayal of Germans, but the movie became both a critical and commercial success.

 

It was a prestige production: Lewis Milestone directed and  Broadway’s noted playwrights, Maxwell Anderson and George Abbott, wrote the screenplay.  All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for four awards and won Best Picture.  When Louis B. Mayer handed the Best Picture to All Quiet, he solemnly said: “There’s talk that the motion picture we honor tonight may win a Nobel Prize.”

Indeed, the League of Nations could make no better or nobler ambassador for peace than All Quiet or Warners’ pictures of the eras.  Prime among them was Disraeli, for which George Arliss, billed as “the first gentleman of the talking screen,” and promoted by the studio as an important history lesson.  Same could be said for the 1937 Oscar winner, The Story of Emile Zola, which, as noted also evidenced morality, respectability, and good taste, all the requirements–and qualities–that Will Hays, head of the industry’s self-censorship board, lectured about at the 1929 show.

 

 

Citizen Kane

 

Arguably no other film in American history than Citizen Kane shows the intimate and intriguing interplay between inner studio politics and outer societal politics.  The reception of Orson Welles’s masterpiece by the Academy, film critics, and the lay public illuminates once more the complex interplay between film
s, studio intrigues, and the politics of American society. 

 

Contrary to popular belief, the merits of Citizen Kane were recognized at the time, though not as fully as they should have been. It was gossip columnist Louella Parsons who began spreading the rumor, after seeing an advance preview, that Citizen Kane was “a repulsive biography” of her employer, William Randolph Hearst (played by Orson Welles).  Hearst accepted her view at face value, without even seeing the movie, but because there was nothing libelous about it, all he could do was to demand that RKO shelve the movie and threaten to withdraw the support of his press empire from Hollywood.  There was some talk to can Citizen Kane, and its release was postponed a number of times until it finally opened in May 1941.  RKO had problems convincing theaters to book the movie, and Hearst’s newspapers’ boycotting the ads didn’t help either.

 

Citizen Kane received mostly good reviews, though it failed commercially across the nation.  At Oscar nomination time, in January 1942, shortly after the United States declared war on Germany, Citizen Kane was not exactly overlooked by the industry.  The film was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, and Orson Welles received three nominations, as co?screenwriter (with Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Director, and Actor.  The cinematography, editing, music, sound, and art direction also received nominations.

 

But the competition for Best Picture in 1941 was extremely intense: Citizen Kane was in contest with no fewer than nine other pictures: Blossoms in the Dust (four nominations), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (seven), Hold Back the Dawn (six), How Green Was My Valley (ten), The Little Foxes (nine), The Maltese Falcon (three), One Foot in Heaven (one), Sergeant York (eleven), and Suspicion (three).  With so many good films in the race, it was inevitable that the Oscars would be spread among several films and that some excellent films would leave the ceremony empty-handed.

 

To the Academy’s credit, the winning film, John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, sweeping five awards, might not have been a landmark in American film history, but it was an exquisitely executed movie with a strong visual component, in addition to having more acceptable values and a more traditional morality than Citizen Kane.  Ford’s movie was chosen for various reasons: its popular ideology, cherishing the sacredness of the family (after all, the country was at war) as well as its aesthetic merits and fine acting.    

 

Citizen Kane, by contrast, was dumped because of its downbeat, pessimistic message, Hearst’s power in Hollywood, and Welles’s s status as an outsider.  There is no doubt that Citizen Kane’s cinematic merits were not sufficiently recognized at the time, not just because of the dispute with Hearst, but also because its innovations were revolutionary, well ahead of their time. Furthermore, Welles was young, twenty?six, and a newcomer in Hollywood; Citizen Kane was his very first movie.

 

Ironically, the film’s most controversial element, its screenplay, was the only category honored by the Academy.  At the same time, William Wyler’s The Little Foxes was another distinguished movie that lost out in each of its nine nominations. And John Huston’s directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon, another classic of its kind, also failed to receive any award.