Best Cinematography 2nd Academy Awards 1930 Winner: White Shadows in the South Seas

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Now we come to the winner of Best Cinematography, White Shadows in the South Seas. Talk about a long title name! This film is about a white man concerned with how white traders are exploiting the natives in an unnamed portion of the South Pacific, filmed on location in Tahiti. It’s one of the hybrid films we’ve seen quite a few times this year, a silent film with a soundtrack and sound effects synchronized with it.

When discussing this film with my family, my dad jokingly said it sounded as if this film could’ve been made today. Indeed he was right for how timely the subject matter is regarding the influence of white ideals on native cultures. The other thing which was said is that my mother remarked, only half-joking this time, that a studio exec must have wanted to take a vacation, given that they filmed on location in Tahiti. I can’t confirm or deny her suspicions either way, but it really wasn’t exactly a hardship for the movie crew to go film in one of the most luxurious and beautiful locations on Earth.

The main plot involves the white alcoholic doctor Matthew Lloyd being the only one on the South Pacific island who gives a damn about how the local pearl divers are ruining their bodies while being forced to dive without proper equipment, all for being paid barely anything, and usually in trinkets to boot. Here we see the beginning of why this picture won in this category. The camera actually follows the pearl divers under the water, showing off the beautiful coral reefs, local wildlife, and the massive amount of bubbles caused by the divers’ actions. It’s far above what one would expect for most pictures of the day. Compare In Old Arizona, where the landscape may be gorgeous, but the camera remains completely static.

He ends up being forcibly removed by the corrupt traders by lashing him to a sailboat which is set adrift. There’s also some brilliant shots here which I assume were shot on a soundstage of the doctor struggling to keep the boat from flooding during a storm. He eventually washes up on an island which has never seen a white man before. This is where the only audible word of the picture can be heard as he calls out “Hello!” to them.

The tale surprisingly doesn’t take a dip into Mighty Whitey territory aside from a scene where Dr. Matthew revives the son of the chieftain who has drowned, which really is just more logical then anything considering the man is supposed to be a medical doctor. They hail him as a white god and set a feast for him, but he doesn’t do anything to improve the village or be better at anything the natives are already good at. There’s a lot more gorgeous scenery here from native women dancing to more shots as they gather ocean wildlife for a feast. (This includes a part where they roughly manhandle two sea turtles into canoes for the feast. I can only hope they let the poor animals go after they were done with that shot! You all here already know how much of a tender animal lover I am.)

Indeed, he brings their downfall instead. For in his greed when he sees how plentiful pearls are, he tries to signal a ship to come find him before the chief’s daughter Fayaway he’s become involved brings him to his senses. But it’s too late. The corrupt white traders, led by the man Sebastian who’d gotten rid of the doctor in the first place, sees the signal before it’s put out. They land on the island with some beautiful shots showing the ship coming to land in the shallows and the natives going out to greet them.

When Matthew tries to get them to leave the natives alone in peace, instead of bringing the “white shadows” of corruption that they’ve done everywhere else, he gets into a fight which ends in him getting shot. He lasts for several hours, during which there’s a parallel to the scene where he revives the chief’s son. There, he saw mist on his belt buckle and realized the boy was alive. Here, the boy tells his sister Fayaway to try, but when they do, there’s nothing, for the doctor has died.

The film ends with a direct parallel to the beginning, showing that the once-paradise has now become just another dirty, sleazy trading post like the one seen at the start of the film. Away from everyone else, Fayaway wears a black dress and mourns her lost love Matthew. So the message here is that white colonialism ruins everything and the white man can’t help but be consumed by greed even when surrounded by Eden. Quite a bummer of an ending!

Overall, I can see why this won Best Cinematography. The shots of Tahiti in all its glory and amazing underwater photography blow the rest of the competition clear out of the water. While the storyline will make you a bit depressed upon viewing it, this film is worth a view just for the visuals alone.

Best Cinematography 2nd Academy Awards 1930: In Old Arizona

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In Old Arizona was likely nominated for Best Cinematography because it was another groundbreaking film, as many of the early Academy Award contenders were. It’s easy to be as such when the genre of film for entertainment value had only been around for roughly thirty-five years at the time, while sound used as a vehicle in the mainstream had only been introduced in the previous two years. As the top of the poster advertises, In Old Arizona was the first talkie filmed outdoors at a time when all films were done inside on a sound stage in order to control the process as tightly as possible. The cinematographer made ample use of this splendorous landscape, finding as many excuses as possible to have shots outdoors.

Many of the scenes seem to have been shot purely for showing off the California desert and Utah outdoors plains where they filmed. The beginning where the Cisco Kid stops a coach in the desert shows off both the new feature of talking and the surrounding landscape. There’s one in the middle of the movie where cattle rustlers try to get the jump on the protagonist that appears to have been purposefully made just so that the filmmakers could show off the amazing cliffs that make up the backdrop. The ending is also shot in darkness and lit up at specific points by all the stage lights to make the area come even more alive to the viewer.

However, this all does come at a drawback. Dialogue is often hard to hear, having a distinctive fuzzy sound or seeming like it’s coming from far away. There’s also very little soundtrack attached to the picture, as the combination of music and dialogue hadn’t quite been mastered yet. The eponymous Cisco Kid does sing a few times, likely to further indulge the fancy microphone work. The camerawork likewise suffers a bit, for in order to record dialogue properly, the shots generally had to be still or only move a few seconds at a time, preventing any sense of dynamic movement. Considering this is a Western, a genre known for things like chase scenes on horseback, this can sometimes be painfully obvious.

While it is a strong contender for the Best Cinematography award, I just feel like the limitations of the genre with how sound was still in its infancy with using it created a situation where it was just were too confining to really let In Old Arizona show off its full potential. I will say from what I’ve seen of the other films, this one is my second-choice for how good it was. The shots of the American deserts where they filmed are simply magnificent.

Best Cinematography Nominee 1930: Our Dancing Daughters

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Now here we come to our next nominee in the Best Cinematography category, Our Dancing Daughters! It a film about the perceptions of what was still then the modern-day flapper and all the shenanigans she and her set got up to. Such a film today would probably star Emma Stone and Margot Robbie as some bubble-heads in a romcom with lots of fluff and very little substance. Considering that the budget wasn’t all that high for this picture, it’s possible even the studio didn’t think much of it at the time. Fortunately for audiences looking back on the pictures of yesteryear, this one has a bit more to it then that. We’ll discuss more of it when we get to the Best Writing nomination it also had.

This film was a rare hybrid during the transition between silent films and talkies. The latter didn’t replace the former overnight. Instead, what happened is that soundtracks finally became consistent for the first time, instead of letting each individual theatre provide its own instrumental background music, and background noises were added in. This could be done to hilarious effect at certain points, as the noises clearly didn’t have consistent rhythm and no attempt was made at making sure the dubbed portions matched up with things like lip movements. Still, it was admirable that this fading medium was trying to preserve itself by getting creative and attempting to adapt to the times.

The opening shot provides a first look at the cinematography that was to come in this picture. It opens up on a pair of shoes sitting in front of a three-way mirror, no feet in them yet. Suddenly, a pair of legs appears in them as if by magic. They begin to dance as the owner puts on a pair of underwear. They continue to do so while the camera switches to a shot showing off her lower torso, the fringe dress so popular with flappers swinging every which way. Finally, the shot is switched to one of the full-body, showing off the lovely and vivacious “Dangerous Diana”, played by Joan Crawford in the role that made her a star. The whole scene just emphasizes how full of life and fun the young flapper is, setting forth the tone of the character for the whole flick.

Another way that they hone the characterization across is when Diana is asked to dance for her friends. For one of the first times on film, there was background noise while Diana dances. The band plays and people in the crowd shout out encouragement while she takes off her outer skirt to reveal a lower one and proceeds to cavort all around the room. It would’ve been one of the first times that audiences would’ve heard the talk going on around the main character in a room just as they did in their own lives.

Much as we saw in the last picture, Street Angel, this one also has a romantic theme that crops up during tender moments between Diana and her beau Ben called I Loved You Then (As I Love You Now). It crops up all the time as background music between them both as an instrumental version, one sung by a chorus, a male version, female version, and one sung as a duet. All the various versions are likely due to the many situations they must cover as the love story evolves and plays out over the course of the movie. Diana and Ben must go through a lot of trials and hardships, so each version corresponds to the mood of that scene.

The last scene is also worth a mention. Ann, who has been the ultimate bitch the entire movie, is drunk at the top of the stairs as the shot switches back and forth between her obnoxious, mocking giggles at the washerwomen below and the women themselves. The shot emphasizes the long staircase several times, just begging for someone to fall down it. Sure enough, with a rather amusing sound effect on the soundtrack, Ann goes tumbling down, in a rather impressive long shot done by what had to be a stuntwoman with the heart of a gambler. When it made certain she’s dead, one of the washerwoman does a quip which then fades to black worthy of Lenny Briscoe on Law & Order as she holds up her limp wrist decked out with bracelets. “Them won’t do her no good — now.”

The shot fades away from her distraught friends and becomes a piece of society news in the newspaper announcing Diana’s return after what was sure to be a tasteful mourning period of two years. The overlay fades out, but never completely away, to a show of Diana and Ben kissing as they reunite before fading away to the classic title card of “The End”. The combined total of the two scenes is only about three minutes long, but they influence the entire tone of how the movie will end.

On an incidental note apropos of nothing, don’t look too close at Joan Crawford’s eyes in the poster above at the top of the page. Her eyes are manic and dead at the same time. Rather creepy that is. One can only guess this was caused by being dipped eighteen times trying to get the perfect shot. Or it could be that Joan Crawford just had natural crazy eyes.

Did this film deserve the Best Cinematography award? After viewing it, I’m going to say the answer is no. While it’s a fine picture for the time, and even when looking back on it today it has many fine qualities, it just doesn’t quite have that “oomph” factor that most winners do. We’ll be covering another of them the next time another review comes around. Until then, Oscar fanatics!

Best Cinematography Nominee 2nd Academy Awards 1930: Street Angel

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Now,  before we dive into this, our first nominee of 1930 in the Best Cinematography, I can hear you out there going “Cynical Oscar Fanatic! Street Angel was already nominated in 1929! How can it be appearing again the next year?” Was there a mix-up by the Academy? Two films by the coincidental same name? Have I lost my mind? (Always possible.) None of the above! I shall explain. Hearken close, fellow Oscar fanatics. Apparently, due to a fluke that first couple of years, a film could be nominated for the next award year provided it had come out within the span of two years beforehand. Since Street Angel was made in 1928, it was able to be done so. This happened a few more times throughout Academy history, as we’ll continue to see, but this was one of the most notable times it happened.

Moving right along, let’s delve into the category itself. After doing more research, I found a much better explanation for the difference between cinematography and art direction. Look at that! Even I, your humble commentator, can learn something new every day. Rather then steal it wholeheartedly, I’m just going to link you to it here. In doing a google search for this film, I was astounded by the stills for this movie, and just how good they convey the two aspects of the awards it was nominated for. Just take a look here at them.

The first shot that starts off the picture is a close-up of one of the circus performers haggling over a sausage and pulls out for a marvelously slow, 360 degrees shot of the entire surrounding landscape. It really draws forth the close, drawn-in feeling that the streets of Naples emphasize, which will later be contrasted with the more open-air feeling of the portion of the picture that takes place in the country.

The tense nature of another scene is captured nicely during the chase that begins after Angela tries to run from the police who have arrested her for theft and prostitution. At the beginning, when Angela is desperately trying to keep ahead of them, the camera is used for shots that are alternately long tracking ones combined with shorter clips that only last for a few seconds. It gives a real sense of gravity and suspense as to whether or not she’s going to get away from her captors. It only stops during the scene where she finds her dead mother, giving the audience a chance to grieve and be sad with her.

When we watch Angela fall in the circus when she becomes nervous of the police sniffing around, it’s followed all the way through without pulling away save for a quick shot that was likely used to mask the stunt performer and cushion used to soften the landing, showing just how devastating the blow is going to be. One interesting use of sound by way of including it in the cinematography in this early film is the repeating whistle of ‘O Sole Mio’. Gino first whistles it to Angela, and after the two become a couple, it becomes their theme song, perhaps one of the first romantic couples on film to ever have one designated for them. The two often whistle it back and forth to one another in the film as a way of sounding their love to one another, the most heartbreaking instance being where Angela whistles it to Gino as she is being led away to prison so that he won’t suspect his new fiance won’t be there in the morning.

During the final scene, the camera follows them throughout another tense chase scene as Gino seeks to catch up to his former fiance and kill her. Here there are foggy, dark streets that serve as a backdrop making it intentionally harder to see and identify with the two figures as one pursues the other, again in long tracking shots that follow first Angela and then Gino. Light is suddenly restored once they enter the church where Angela’s picture hangs, a light fixed directly on it from a source we cannot see, that causes Gino to snap out of his murderous rage and desire to kill the woman he once loved.

Over the course of the film, it becomes apparent just how important these shots are to the whole composition of the film. The mood is captured perfectly through the usage of these shots, allowing the audience to really connect with the tale as Angela tries to find a new life with her love Gino while avoiding the past that keeps threatening to catch up to her, and send her away to prison. While I may not like the whole madonna-whore complex of the movie, and expressed a lot of dissatisfaction with it in my last video, I can’t deny that it looks very lovely on film. Was it good enough to get the award that year? No, I don’t think so. While it is a beautiful picture, it’s just not the stand out of the year for me. That one is yet to come.

Up next time on Watching The Oscars: Joan Crawford’s breakout film Our Dancing Daughters. Until next time, Oscar fanatics!

2nd Academy Awards 1930

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Pictured above are the award winners for Best Writing, Best Actress, and Best Actor for the second Academy Awards ceremony. From left to right, Hans Kraly for The Patriot, Mary Pickford for Coquette, and Warner Baxter for In Old Arizona.

Two significant events had happened since the first Academy Awards. The great and terrible Wall Street Crash of 1929 had happened five months after the first show. It would greatly influence the tone of films that the American public wanted to see. When the world was already depressed and going hungry, no one wanted to see gritty realism on the screen that ended in sadness. They wanted escapism and lots of it! The second was that the Motion Picture Production Code aka the  Hays Code, the informal but very rigid self-enforced code of what could be shown on the screen, was adopted in 1930. Though it wouldn’t be strictly enforced until 1934, it would already start having an influence on what could or couldn’t be shown on the screen, and would have a lasting influence for over 30 years until 1968.

The categories were reduced from twelve to seven, partially due to the advancement of the talkie, which was soon to make categories like Best Title Writing obsolete, and partially due to the fact that the process was still being streamlined. Despite this, there were twenty-nine films nominated as opposed to twenty-five the year before due to putting more films in each category.

Keep in mind, the awards were still just that to most people in the film industry: just another awards show that didn’t have merit over any others. Indeed, due to the change of not announcing the winners beforehand like in the first awards show the year beforehand, some of the actors and actresses nominated were even unaware that they had been nominated and weren’t even invited to the ceremony. In fact, oddly enough, there was no “official” nominees that year, so the list I’m going off of is technically an unofficial one created by examining what records the judges used for each category.

Alright, now that we’ve all gotten the history out of the way (thank you for coming to my TED Talk), we’ll start off next time with the first nominee for Best Cinematography, a film which we’ve actually already examined in the previous year: Street Angel!

Outstanding Picture Winner 1st Academy Awards 1929: Wings

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Now here, at long last, we’ve got the last award winner of the very first Academy Awards! How many of you thought I’d actually stick with it long enough to get to this point? Not many I’m betting. There’s several times where even I thought about giving up this project, but you know what? I’m not doing this for anyone but me. So I’ll continue on as long as doing reviews brings me satisfaction. So there you go. So here’s Wings, the winner of the Outstanding Picture category, and by default, best picture of the year.

What likely got this film the win, to be perfectly honest, are the special effects in it of the magnificent air battles that go on throughout the picture. It’s astounding to watch them even all these years later and know that there were actual stunt pilots who were making the crafts seemingly careen out of control and crash onto the ground. A standout is the shot where David’s plane flies headlong into a house in the French countryside at top speed. Amazingly, despite all the controlled chaos, there were no deaths and only one injury throughout the entire filming process, showing just how meticulous the planning was.

The story by comparison is pretty standard war story fare, to the point where Pearl Harbor seems to have made use of many of the elements seventy-four years later, though admittedly much more poorly then this one does. Say what you will, but at least the characters in this one are well-rounded and sympathetic. The scene where David says goodbye to his parents and later one when Jack visits them as a returning war hero knowing he accidentally killed their son are especially tender and poignant, really driving the emotion home even all these years later. Some things never change and the emotions of those left behind during war are some of them.

Honestly, if there’s one element who feels out of place in this picture, it’s Clara Bow. For those who don’t know, Clara Bow was the original “It Girl”, the one people went to the movies to see simply because she appeared in a picture. She was a bonafide superstar. I mean, just look at this alternate poster for the movie. She’s not even the main character and there she is smack dab in the middle of it as if the film is all about her!

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While this did mean she got plenty of roles, it didn’t always necessarily mean they were good. While Wings was at least a picture of substance, Bow’s role in it doesn’t really add a whole bunch of detail. You could take her out and almost nothing would change. By her own admission, she said, “Wings is…a man’s picture and I’m just the whipped cream on top of the pie”. That’s really what it feels like. She’s just there to be the cute girl-next-door and not much else. You could cut her part out entirely and only lose one side of the love quadrangle and maybe five minutes tops of comedy.

It doesn’t help that she also seems to be there to play down the amount of homoerotic subtext in the movie. Now granted, this tends to happen a lot in war movies or movies with war-like settings on a whole. Dramas on a whole where emotions run high tend to make romance blossom even on a sub-textual level. But here it is rather evident. Jack and David’s obsession with fighting over David’s girl Sylvia seem more to be there to keep them from fighting over each other.  The tension that leads them to often bicker and fight can easily be read as sexual tension, particularly in the scene where they beat the crap out of each other before deciding they’re friends. Plus, their ending scene together where Dave lies dying is chock-full of subtext between their dialogue about how their friendship is the most important thing to each other as they sit there holding each other tight, the way that two lovers are often portrayed in modern pictures when one of them is dying. (“Friendship.” Riiiiight) Then there’s the flat-out kiss on the lips. In fact, this was the second kiss between two men on film. (First was likely in 1916’s Intolerance made over ten years earlier.)

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Alas, it would also be the last for quite some time due to the Hays Code being adopted in the next year and prominently coming to the forefront of cinema by 1934, though that’s a different issue we’ll talk about later as it comes more to the forefront of censoring movies.

But the real question here is did it deserve to win Best Picture? Aside from the shots of the planes being shot out of the sky, which is admittedly the strong point of the picture, is there enough here to warrant being the best picture of the year? I’d say so. While a picture today that won the award based solely off its CGI would be panned as being a gimmick, this one has a gimmick that works to its full advantage. This picture is big, loud (in a manner of speaking considering it’s silent), and designed to be spectacular in the same way a circus act is. It might be gimmicky, but considering that gimmick involves daring stunts through the air, it works. The story might lack a little bit in the way of heart the way the other big contender of 7th Heaven in this category might have, still, I believe what it does have helps it to stand up as indeed the pinnacle of movie making that year.

Alright, Oscar fanatics, that officially wraps up the first Academy Awards of 1929! We’ll be starting on with the next year when I return with 1930! At least, the first awards show of 1930. I’ll explain more when I return. Until then, keep on watching and enjoying some classic cinema!

Outstanding Picture Nominee 1st Academy Awards 1929: 7th Heaven

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Now we come to the second nominee in the Outstanding Picture category, one that I’m sure we’re all familiar with after my many reviews, 7th Heaven. This was the most nominated picture at the 1929 Academy Awards with five nominations. This wasn’t one of the categories it won, but let’s take a look and over-analyze this film for the last time!

Now looking at all the categories this was nominated for tends to emphasize why this film ended up in this category: Best Art Direction, Best Adaptation, Best Actress, Best Director, Dramatic Picture, and Outstanding Picture. All those added up together show just how strong of a picture this is. This film easily could have been just filled with the usual romantic cliches that were tired and old even back in the 20s. But instead something special was created.

Between the chemistry between the two leads that is well-acted, the creative cinematography that gives a real sense of purpose to the picture, tight editing that makes sure not a single frame is wasted, and a story that can be at the very least entertaining even if it’s not the most original, it provides a recipe that allows the viewer to be immediately sucked in and held captive for the entire movie. It can easy match any of the movies that were nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.

What comes through in this picture more then anything else is the sense of hope that is so prevalent. Despite the hardship that both characters go through, through things like physical abuse and the horrors of World War I, the sense that they will be able to earn their happy ending is never lost. You truly believe that the two of them will end up together for no other reason than it is simply meant to be. Optimism like this seems to be lost in a great many of today’s pictures. Happy endings are scoffed at as being for naive children and instead a gritty “realism” penetrates most movies today. Endings aren’t thought up because they fit, instead characters seemed to punished for no other reason besides slamming the viewer’s head into the concrete with how tough and horrible the real world is.

Me personally? I much prefer the endings like this one where Chico comes home blinded but still alive to the woman he loves, allowing them to continue their lives together. It’s a bittersweet ending, but with far more emphasis on the ‘sweet’ then ‘bitter’. Sometimes, a little bit of hope is what we could all use in this world.

But did it deserve the top prize? While it’s definitely better then The Racket, when comparing it with the winner Wings, I’m left with puzzlement inside as to whether or not it deserved the prize. Wings is a fantastic picture, no doubt, but there’s a heart to 7th Heaven that the other picture seems to lack for part of the time. On the other hand, Wings was such a cinematic achievement in the way it filmed air battles that it’s hard not to see why it wouldn’t win Best Picture simply for pushing the limits of what could cinematically be done at the time. It’s a hard toss-up, but at the end of the day, I think that Wings ekes out the victory here just a little bit over 7th Heaven. Next time, we’ll discuss it as the final movie from the 1929 Academy Awards!

Outstanding Picture Nominee 1st Academy Awards 1929: The Racket

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Time for our final category before we bid a fond farewell to the first year of the Academy Awards. Last is the Outstanding Picture category,  a precursor to what would be consolidated by combining this and the Best Unique and Artistic Picture category as just Outstanding Picture starting the following year. Today we look at The Racket, another early prototype in the film noir genre like Underworld, the film I talked about some time ago was.

This film introduces other aspects that would become staples of the genre: the one last honest cop in the city, the corrupt city officials that the gangster has wrapped around his finger, and the friendly rivalry between cop and gangster. The film stars Thomas Meighan as Captain James McQuigg, who with a name like that you can be sure that he’s the hero of the picture. His foe is a mobster named Nick Scarsi, played by Louis Wolheim in a role more typical of his typecasting then the turn he took playing a comedic role in Two Arabian Knights, which we discussed some time back. Apparently, Wolheim once wanted to get his broken nose fixed with some plastic surgery so he could play more heroic and romantic roles, but the studio prevented him. I’d say it was a wise choice. With a mug like that, he was born to play bad guys and gangsters.

The story is a fairly straightforward one: McQuigg wants to catch Scarsi, but every time he’s this close to getting his man, Scarsi uses his connections to fly the coop again. Surprisingly, McQuigg and Scarsi are rather amenable to each other despite being on opposite sides of the law. Scarsi goes from having a warning shot fired at McQuigg to chatting him up in a friendly tone and inviting him to the speakeasy he owns for a party to celebrate his kid brother’s birthday in the span of about two minutes.

McQuigg arrests Scarsi’s lieutenant, but he’s out so quickly he’s still even able to attend the the party going on at the speakeasy. This is where we’re introduced to another staple of the gangster genre: the vamp. In this case, the vamp is mixed in with the chanteuse and gold digger tropes, making her for a fairly interesting character. She becomes involved with Scarsi’s younger brother, mostly for less then altruistic reasons, saying she’s going to “dig and dig deep” when accused of being a gold digger by Nick.

McQuigg gets reassigned to the boonies for having pissed off Scarsi and his political connections one too many times. This turns out to be fortunate, for Joe, the younger Scarsi, ends up in a hit-and-run accident. McQuigg takes the opportunity to draw Scarsi in by pissing him off when arrests Joe. There’s some humorous bits here with a bunch of reporters hanging around the station who keep making quips and that McQuigg keeps making use of to manipulate his foe. After some back and forth while stuck in the women’s section of the jail, Helen, the singer from the nightclub, turns against the Scarsis when Joe leaves her high and dry as he calls off their engagement, deciding to help bring them down. This comes in handy when Scarsi shoots a police officer stone-cold dead in the middle of the station.

There’s a cub reporter who identifies Nick and who Helen helps by tricking Scarsi into confessing. Scarsi seems to think that his connections will help him get out of this scrap once again, but he’s overestimated his importance to them. One last staple of the genre is introduced: silencing the man who knows too much. One prominent example I can think of in recent fiction is Zalachenko the washed-up Russian spy defector from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, who seems to think he’s far more important to the Swedish government then he actually is. Much the villain does as in that book/film series, Scarsi demands that his political connections clean up the mess he’s in, despite it being far too big for anyone to cover up. Instead, in both cases, the problem is solved by simply killing the person instead.

The film ends on a bittersweet note, for while Scarsi is dead, the political machine behind him is still in place, and McQuigg has not gained anything that he was hoping to achieve, instead merely being exhausted and stressed out after all his efforts have come to naught. This will become very typical for gangster film endings, where the very most you can hope for is still being alive after achieving your goals against the bad guys.

Was this film worth the Best Picture prize? I’d say no, for while it is entertaining enough, especially in the aspect that it was one of the forerunners for what would become an entire genre of film, the other two in this category are far superior in quality, storytelling, and overall presence. It’s one of those pictures that seems to have been placed in the category mostly so that they could say they had a full roster of films to choose from that year, even if the others are clearly much stronger contenders.

Best Unique and Artistic Picture 1st Academy Awards 1929 Winner: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

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Now we come to the winner of Unique and Artistic Picture, the award given out only once at this first Oscars and never again. I’m glad it was done this way, for Sunrise deserved an award just to recognize the sheer beauty of this masterpiece. While The Crowd is a good film and Chang is one that deserves all the scathing criticism one can muster,  Sunrise outclasses both of them by far. It’s more then just a film. It’s a work of art. It has stood the test of time, being just as relevant today as it was when it was first made in 1927.

The real heart of this movie is in two areas. One is the lack of title cards. As the film moves on, there’s fewer and fewer until the last half hour has none at all. Without dialogue as a crutch to rely on, the audience is forced to dig deeper, and watch more carefully what’s going onscreen. The emotions that come across therefore can hit the audience a little harder then they might otherwise. Moments like the fright of the Wife when she realizes her husband means to kill her, the Man coming to the realization in the church of how badly he’s betrayed his marriage vows, and the anguish of the Man at the end of the film when he thinks his wife has died all come across so plainly one can feel as though they actually are hearing words that are never explicitly told to the audience.

The other is in the deliberate decision to mask the identities of the Wife, the Man, and the Woman from the City into the personas of the everyman. Though they are given the names Ansass and Indre in the screenplay, in the movie proper, they aren’t given names. This allows them to function as being more of an idea of the identities of humanity, allowing the audience to project their own experiences onto the film and these characters. The title cards at the beginning of the film sum it up best. “This song of the Man and his Wife is of no place and every place; you might hear it anywhere, at any time. For wherever the sun rises and sets, in the city’s turmoil or under the open sky on the farm, life is much the same; sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet.”

The film is such an astounding piece of art that I would definitely put this on any “[Insert Number Here] Movies to See Before You Die” lists that often float about the net. I think just seeing how many awards it was nominated and won for show best just how impactful this film was and continues to be.

Best Unique and Artistic Picture Nominee 1st Academy Awards 1929: Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

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Now we come to the second picture nominated for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, often shortened to just Chang. Now we come to a point where the values of the day just stick in my craw. I’ve defended a lot of the values of the day: blackface, whitewashing people of color, and stereotyping the dialogue of blacks with phonetic African-American Vernacular English accents. But one thing I will not and cannot condone is the treatment of live animals being slaughtered onscreen for the supposed “entertainment” of the masses. This is something that has not aged well at all and I will make no excuses for their decision to kill animals just to make what was supposed to be a good film.

Chang is “supposedly” a documentary about the life of a villager living in the jungle of what still then known as Siam. I say supposedly because most of the time, the filmmakers manipulated things as much as they could for the sake of drama so that the film could be more interesting. To this end, they had their main star of the film, who was also their translator and one to suggest filming in the first place, do things like trap animals and then release them so that they could get actual footage of the animals being shot on-camera. This results in a delightful little film in which we spend time following the man around shooting tigers and leopards willy-nilly while the filmmakers did things like put a tiger and goats in a pen to see what would happen or allow the young children of the man to do things like yank a bear cub around and hold it in the air by its leg while moving it from one crate to another.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t find this film interesting so much as horrifying. I am a great animal lover, so to watch the casual slaughter of big cats, bears, and snakes in the name of supposed “progress” to drive home the theme of man trying to tame parts of the jungle was sickening. All the while I couldn’t help thinking how endangered these animals are today thanks to men like this shooting them left and right because they couldn’t coexist. I couldn’t wait for the film to be over so I could stop watching the massacre that was appearing on-screen.

The main story arc of the film is trying to trap a group of Chang, using what I found out is indeed the actual Thai word for elephant. All the elephants used in the film were tame ones already used by the people to help work, so any scenes containing them were staged. First, the man captures a little baby, prompting the enraged mother to come, and destroy his home on stilts. The destruction wasn’t a shot they were planning, it just happened as the course of pissing off a mama pachyderm, so they just kept the camera rolling.

The villagers band together to take down a giant herd. There’s an admittedly cool shot where the elephants destroy the village which they apparently accomplished by creating a scale model which they let the baby calves trample over. But even these impressive shots are ruined with the dialogue of “mastering the elephants” and “turning them into slaves.” Knowing in this modern day and age just how intelligent these magnificent creatures are, seeing a narrative where their spirits are supposed to be deliberately broken for the mastery of man, including shots of them strapped into torturous vices where they couldn’t move their heads or front legs is horrific. I don’t care if these shots were deliberately set up or that they only lasted for about thirty seconds. Imprisoning elephants for any length of time was far too long.

Overall, I hated this film. I hated the slaughter of animals for entertainment, the narrative of man trying to master animals to prove their superiority in trying to tame nature, and I hated the fact this all came about because somehow audiences in the 20s thought that this made some jolly good fun to see at the cinema. Thank God that American Humane started being on-set to monitor animals being treated in a decent manner starting in 1940. I suppose until we reach that year I’ll just have to cringe each time I see animal cruelty on screen.

So should this film have won Best Unique and Artistic Picture? HELL NO. It has aged the most horribly out of every single one of the films I watched for the entire year of 1929. Considering that’s a list of twenty films, that says something. I hated it and will likely never rewatch it again. If you absolutely feel the need to watch this film, make sure to go cuddle your pets afterwards and donate some money to the WWF afterwards. It will make you feel so much better.