“Don’t ever try to take the piss out of the Oscars. The ceremony is not merely escapist fare for the average American; it is of cancer-curing importance, an evening of the highest seriousness, to be revered at all costs.” Rob Lowe wrote this sentiment about his notorious appearance at the 1989 Academy Awards. That night, he sang “Proud Mary” with Snow White and had Hollywood tongues wagging for months (much to the Academy’s chagrin, it continued on that spring after a scandal erupted involving a sex tape with Lowe and two women, one of whom was sixteen years old). What Lowe is saying, though, still holds true and continues to do so: acting as if Oscar controversies are a threat to humanity seems ridiculous, but acting like they’re meaningless doesn’t work, either. Maybe it’s not a world-shattering event when Barbie doesn’t get enough nominations, but why are we watching the ceremony unless we care about this?

This leads us to the concern about viewership, and the fact that way fewer of us are watching the Oscars than in the past. There’s also the hot-button issues of more recent years, such as calls for diversity in the nominees or the Academy’s membership, which feel like they’re pushed in the press in part to keep the Oscars on people’s minds. With movies less in vogue and appointment television even less so, it’s not surprising that the intensity of social media conversations are acknowledged by the organization.  The Oscars are the Academy’s main annual moneymaker and help keep its other important activities, such as restoring classics and now a very expensive museum that opened during the Covid lockdown, going.  Awards matter and so do movies, at least to me, but I do sometimes wonder about people who believe that movie awards need to uphold virtue and reflect society’s goodness. In the case of the Academy Awards, was that ever the case?

The intentions for the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences do not read all that well in today’s light. A brainchild of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, the Academy was more or less an idea concocted to stave off the growing demand for unionization among studio employees and, as a bonus, the awards were thought up as a promotional tool for the studio product. While the first reason hasn’t been relevant in decades, the second is why getting awards has since become a bloodsport and one that any studio will happily exploit (“Academy Award Winner!” proclaims the poster of a movie that was bestowed the prize for Best Sound Effects Editing.)

Two recent books are valuable resources for discovering the origins of the Academy Awards and the tumultuous years that followed their creation. Bruce Davis’s The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a painstakingly detailed, exceptionally well researched volume that will thrill the most devoted readers.  It goes into far-reaching histories of California politics and the biographies of anyone tangentially related to the subject (by which I mean, sometimes I was bored, but I appreciated the information). Michael Schulman’s Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears is a roller coaster ride of a page-turner that begins with the first Academy Awards and continues through such controversies as Citizen Kane, The Blacklist, Bette Davis vs Judy Holliday, the rise of Miramax, and that unforgettable Snow White number. Both are highly recommended.

The first Oscars were an anticlimactic event compared to the publicity generated by campaigns and fashion reportage of today. The winners were announced on February 15, 1929 and were not presented to the winners until May 16, 1929, at a ceremony at the Roosevelt Hotel that Academy members could bring guests to at an extra $5 a plate. 270 guests were seated at thirty-six tables and sat through the reading out of fifteen categories and two special awards, with both winners and nominees handed either a trophy or a nomination on the podium. (Mayer, who likely kept MGM films out of most categories to avoid being accused of having rigged the whole thing, proudly accepted the nomination certificate for The Crowd despite having told its director King Vidor that he found it dowdy.) The whole thing took about ten minutes to get through, and the rest of the evening was spent enjoying the delectable meal: consommé celestine, fillet of sole sauté au beurre, half-broiled chicken on toast, string beans and Long Branch potatoes, vanilla and chocolate ice cream for dessert.

The eligible films had to be released between August 1, 1927 and August 1, 1928, a split period that remained for the first six ceremonies. In that time, momentous changes had occurred that the Academy was looking to delay having to deal with: sound pictures had arrived with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927 and, while no one was sure if this newfangled fad would catch on, the organization announced that only silent films would be eligible for awards to keep things on an even playing field (one of those special awards went to Warner Bros. for their technological breakthrough, to ensure there would be no hurt feelings). At the following year’s awards, all the Best Picture nominees were sound films. (MGM released its final silent in November of 1929.) Other changes were not yet visible but it would not be long before they rocked the nation’s foundation much to the benefit of the film industry: three months after the first ceremony, the stock market crash would expand the movie business into a major national operation and the nature of studio output would never be the same.  What was initially seen as entertainment for immigrants, who had the advantage of not really needing to know English to enjoy them, became the dream factory that held Americans’ heads high through hardship with the escapism of Cinderella stories and glittering musicals. Characters whose Jewishness was presented in no uncertain terms, such as in The Jazz Singer, would vanish as appealing to middle America took over.

For now, the Academy Awards were a minor affair marked by the noted absence of winners and nominees at the actual ceremony: Gloria Swanson, Adolph Zukor and Charlie Chaplin, who was being given a special Oscar for The Circus to avoid his winning multiple trophies in the acting, directing and writing categories, were not interested in going, and Gerald Duffy, who was nominated for “Title Writing,” had been dead for almost a year. Emil Jannings, who won the Best Actor award for two films, received his ahead of time because he was returning to Berlin, already aware that the advent of sound would have nothing to provide an actor with a strong, foreign accent. This would also be the last time he would gauge history well, returning to Germany and taking up the Nazi cause by starring in propaganda films for the ruling party. The story goes that when U.S. soldiers arrived at the end of the war, Jannings showed them his Oscar to prove that he was one of the good guys. Janet Gaynor, who won for three films, was there to accept her prize, and while her career only had one more peak in store (in the 1937 version of A Star Is Born), she would delight movie fans with her appearances at later anniversary ceremonies. Gaynor felt the Oscar was a great compliment if not one that confused her reality; the next morning, she said, “I just got up at 5 am and went to the studio.”

Less effusive was writer Frances Marion, future winner of two screenplay awards, who looked at the statuette designed by Cedric Gibbons and remarked, “I saw it as a perfect symbol of the picture business. A powerful athletic body clutching a gleaming sword with half of his head, that part which held his brains, completely sliced off.”

The Academy would weather numerous storms in its initial years before finally settling into being a venerated Hollywood institution (and like most made-up things in the city of dreams, is really only venerated because of its having survived so long).  The desire to prevent the forming of unions was unsuccessful and a contest soon arose of who could retain more members: the Academy or the newly-formed guilds for writers, directors, and actors. When controversies resulted in there being no Academy Awards ceremony in 1933, the organization almost vanished from sight before making a well-timed and successful pivot: the Academy restarted its awards in 1935 (having switched to a January to December eligibility period) and lessened its interest in the business side of the film business. In 1937, following a guild victory that prevented an actors’ strike, the Academy made it official that it had morphed into more or less what it is now: awards and research (and later preservation).

Then there is the matter of this fellow called Oscar.  There are three famous stories about how the Academy Award got its nickname, and Davis’s book does a good job of debunking them: Bette Davis said she named it after her husband because, upon receiving her first Best Actress prize in 1936, the statue’s derriere reminded her of him. Great story, except she never referred to her husband Harmon Oscar Nelson by his middle name, and she won two years after the word Oscar had already appeared in the press. Sidney Skolsky was the journalist who claimed he first put the name in print, and Academy librarian Margaret Herrick (whose name now graces the Academy’s library), supposedly named it after her uncle, both stories that Bruce Davis that looks at closely and finds their authority is cloud. No definitive proof can be found of the responsible party, but Davis’s research seems to be the most thorough so far, and his theory that the credit belongs to another Academy librarian, Eleanore Lilleberg, does add up quite nicely as he reports it (she was apparently referring to the King of Sweden). Ultimately, though, the credit goes, in spirit if not in historical fact, to that master of Hollywood imagination, Walt Disney, for while “Oscar” was a jokey nickname for the Academy Award upon its initial appearance, his uttering it when accepting his first of a record 22 awards in 1934 made it official, and set the name in stone.

The films nominated at the first Oscars are a fascinating combination of the familiar and the strange: there was not yet such thing as Oscar-bait, and the first campaign ad wouldn’t appear until 1935 (by MGM, ironically), but the nominees at the 1927/1928 awards set a tone for what would follow. A war epic took the big prize, the Best Actress category featured female archetypes (a madonna, a whore and the one who did both combined), and the Best Actor prize went to an oversized character role (only one of Jannings’ two films, The Last Command, is available to view, The Way of All Flesh is lost except for fragments). In the years to come, more categories would be added to cover the artform and expand the possibilities for promotion, such Best Film Editing, Costume Design, Makeup, Music, Documentaries, Shorts, Animated and International Films, and, of course, the Supporting categories for actors. Some categories would not stand the test of time (Best Assistant Director, Title Writing and Best Dance Direction). Thanks to the absent nominees of the first ceremony, the Academy would also decide to keep the winners secret in future ceremonies and, with the constant leaking of the winners to the press ahead of the show, would eventually hire outside consultants to tabulate the votes.

And what of controversies? Rob Lowe and Snow White is still a notorious event, although out of context the performance (which is currently on YouTube, though not on the Academy’s official channel) reads more miscalculated than anything else. Much of the noise surrounding it was because Disney took legal action because show producer Allan Carr didn’t clear the character with them first, an embarrassment that contributed to his early death, although his show was not without its positive effect. It was Carr’s idea to change “and the winner is” to “and the Oscar goes to” when opening envelopes, to de-emphasize the idea of winners and losers, and it was he who decided to make black tie mandatory for the red carpet press and launched its prominence, some would say its dominance, in the broadcast. The #OscarsSoWhite controversies of 2015 and 2016 led to changes in the organization’s governance and awards rules, although some cast a cynical eye on how much effect it could have on film production and attendance. At the first Academy Awards, no one could have predicted that an organization and an award created for less than noble reasons would grow to become so large a part of the pop culture landscape, and watching the films nominated that year almost seems like a voyage to an alternate historical timeline.

Films are reviewed by Bil Antoniou.

MUST-SEE

7th Heaven

Dir. Frank Borzage

Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor are paired up for the first time, their hot chemistry and the film’s box office success inspiring their being cast together in eleven more movies after this sweet wartime romance. She is once again the good girl living a rough life, walking the streets for money while, at home, being abused by her cruel sister. Farrell sees Gaynor being mistreated and steps in to save her, then when the police come sniffing around pretends that she’s his wife in order to protect her further. They enact a charade to keep the lie going, then find themselves falling deeply in love and prepared to spend their lives in wedded bliss except for the sudden arrival of a pesky global war. Sent overseas to battle, Farrell connects every day with Gaynor through messages sent by heart, and because this is a beautifully filmed, brilliantly acted work of grand sentimentality, this aspect of the story is genuinely touching. One of the three films for which Gaynor won the first ever Academy Award for Best Actress, this is another example of Frank Borzage’s skill with storytelling and his ability to get such deep emotional resonance from such deceptively simple situations.
Winner: Best Actress (Janet Gaynor); Best Direction (Dramatic Picture); Best Writing (Adaptation)
Nominations: Outstanding Picture; Best Art Direction

Sadie Thompson

Dir. Raoul Walsh

Gloria Swanson acted as uncredited producer on this adaptation of a controversial Somerset Maugham story, as no studio would go near its steamy content. She is outstanding as a worldly woman who alights on a South Seas island in the hopes of catching a connecting voyage to her ultimate tropical destination. Delays in travel force her to stay put for a number of days, immediately grabbing the attention of uniformed men who are starved for the company of perfumed and veil-hatted women, while simultaneously inspiring the ire of a self-righteous religious leader (Lionel Barrymore) who decides she is a prostitute and must be deported. Swanson’s live-for-today gusto fights his pleasure-is-sin misery with all her might before a sense of guilt has her try to become a virtuous woman, which then places Barrymore in a position to have his own weaknesses put to the test. Beautifully photographed and lorded over by Swanson’s performance, the film was long thought lost until an incomplete print was found in Mary Pickford’s house after Swanson’s death in 1983. Restoration efforts replace the missing final reel with still photographs and some footage from the 1932 sound remake, Rain starring Joan Crawford.
Nominations: Best Actress (Gloria Swanson); Best Cinematography

Speedy

Dir. Ted Wilde

Harold Lloyd plays an obsessed baseball fan who can’t hold on to a job for very long, but is very good at keeping the heart of a beautiful girl with whom he is madly in love. Her grandfather drives a horse-drawn trolley through the streets of New York, the last of its kind, and the attempts of rich developers to take over his track and amalgamate the railway systems of the Big Apple forms a frame of sorts for the loose plotting. Much of the film concerns itself with Lloyd’s day at Coney Island with his lady love and his increasingly funny attempts to stay employed (including a wonderful sequence as a taxi driver) before the final third has him racing against time to save his future grandfather-in-law’s business from his opponents’ greedy behaviour. Swift pacing and inspired sight gags are made that much more memorable by beautiful on-location photography; if for nothing else it’s worth watching for the footage of New York during the Roaring Twenties. Babe Ruth appears as himself in one of the funniest sequences.
Nomination: Best Direction (Comedy Picture)

Sunrise

Dir. F.W. Murnau

This beautiful film tells the story of a plain housewife (Janet Gaynor, who tries to be plain but is clearly not) whose husband dabbles with a city girl who convinces him to kill his wife and live with her forever. Amidst his attempt to drown his lovely spouse, the husband has a crisis of guilt and decides not to do it, instead spending a magical evening in the big city with her and falling in love with her all over again. Murnau’s direction oversees solid acting, gorgeous cinematography and eye-popping set design. It represents one of the heights of artistic achievement in silent cinema and, despite the technological limitation, it doesn’t feel like it has aged a single day.
Winner: Best Unique and Artistic Picture; Best Actress (Janet Gaynor); Best Cinematography
Nomination: Best Art Direction

The Crowd

Dir. King Vidor

James Murray is terrific as John Sims, an American born on the fourth of July to parents who expect great things of his life. The result is actually quite disappointing when he gets married to a lovely young woman (Eleanor Boardman) and never makes it far enough in his career to provide her with a good life. The hardships of their economic situation, followed by the devastation of a personal tragedy, end up threatening to tear their whole marriage apart unless he’s able to pull himself back together and save what remains of his life. This wonderful slice of the back end of the American Dream is photographed with precision and directed to perfection by Vidor, released much against Louis B. Mayer’s better judgment for being a movie he considered too depressing. What it appears as now is an example of film reaching heights of strength in storytelling before the awkward years of sound, with surprisingly natural performances that display such powerful expressions on the actor’s faces that you’ll feel like you can hear them speak.

Nominations: Best Unique and Artistic Picture; Best Direction (Dramatic Picture)

The Last Command

Dir. Josef von Sternberg

Only one of the two films that earned Emil Jannings the Best Actor prize are available for viewing today, the other, The Way Of All Flesh, lost except for a few surviving fragments (which are available to view on YouTube). In The Last Command, he plays an aging movie extra who drags his tired body to the set of his latest assignment, another day of earning a dollar fulfilling a silent-era stereotype. He flashes back to ten years earlier when, as a Russian general who was also cousin of the Czar, his Bolshevik enemies made a pauper and prisoner of him during the Revolution and send him into exile. In this memory he also has a love affair with the beautiful Evelyn Brent, whom he takes as mistress against her will before he manages to win her heart. Meanwhile, his rival for her love, a handsome young revolutionary played by William Powell, ends up being present in his daily life on the film set. A sharp and observant film about the people who inhabited the movie business on the eve of its golden age, this beautifully filmed melodrama is a bold and breathtaking film with a grand scope, but is also deeply felt and moving by its conclusion. A great deal of this is thanks to Jannings’ ability to be so fiercely large, both physically and emotionally, yet vulnerable at the same time.
Winner: Best Actor (Emil Jannings)
Nomination: Best Writing (Original Story)

Underworld

Dir. Josef von Sternberg
This beautifully shot drama is considered the film that sparked the craze for gangster movies in the thirties. Rough thug George Bancroft finds his lawyer friend Clive Brook at a bar and convinces him to give up the booze, turning the man from a useless bum to a dapper dan in no time. When Bancroft deals with a rival for Evelyn Brent’s affection by getting violent with him, he goes to prison, which does not soothe his worries about losing his dame one bit. He immediately assumes that he has gone to the joint because she’s running around on him with Brook and that they’ve been plotting together from the beginning. Meanwhile, she actually does plot with Brook, but to work out how they’re going to bust Bancroft out and not to run away with each other. Shadowy photography pierced by gorgeous neon lights make it an early example of film noir well before it would become an industry standard, and the performances are terrific.
Winner: Best Writing (Original Story)

Wings

Dir. William A. Wellman

The first Academy Award winner for Best Picture is a rip-roaring adventure of the skies. Rival suitors Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers and Richard Arlen forget their differences once they enlist and become friends during their many missions together as fighter pilots. Clara Bow plays the girl back home who loves Rogers, even though he’s still obsessed with Arlen’s girlfriend. The setup of this exciting melodrama was cliched even in 1927, but the flying scenes are completely breathtaking. Look for burgeoning matinee idol Gary Cooper in a cameo role as a doomed pilot. Notably, Wellman was not nominated for directing the first winner of the top-prize, his relationship with studio head Adolph Zukor having disintegrated to the point that he did not even attend the ceremony.
Winner: Outstanding Picture; Best Engineering Effects

WORTHY

Chang

Dir. Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

This wonderfully crafted adventure film is what would have passed as a documentary at the time, when the artform was much more forgiving of films that had this many staged sequences claiming to be a part of that genre. Filmed in the jungles of Siam (now Thailand) with non-professional actors, directors Cooper and Schoedsack (who would later do King Kong) show scenes of a family living in the jungle. Their daily life revolves around working their land and protecting themselves from the plentiful array of vicious predators who inhabit their hostile environment, mostly in the form of wild cats. Although culturally out of touch in many way (the intertitles often write the natives’ dialogue in pidgin English), the film is a rich experience with lots of fantastic wildlife footage. The scenes involving the baby elephant (which is Chang in the native language, we are told), followed by his herd’s stampede, are fantastically shot.
Nomination: Best Unique and Artistic Picture

Glorious Betsy

Dir. Alan Crosland

Crosland followed The Jazz Singer with another film that was shot with a few synchronized sound sequences, though the recordings for these scenes have been lost and only a silent version (with a few scenes missing intertitles) remains today. It’s a silly but diverting romance loosely based on the true story of Jerome Bonaparte’s love affair with a Baltimore heiress, their love thwarted by his brother’s ambitions. Posing as a penniless French tutor, Jerome (Conrad Nagel) professes his love for Betsy (Dolores Costello, Drew Barrymore’s grandmother), and she tells him that she’d rather hold out for someone more important but eventually cannot deny that she does love him back. Imagine her delight, then, when she learns that he’s actually the Emperor’s brother and she’s made an advantageous match after all, but their happiness is destroyed when they return to French shores:  Napoleon Bonaparte has decided on a politically advantageous match for his brother to the Princess of Würtemburg and declares that his brother’s first marriage is null and void. The tragedy only makes the moonlight glimmer more beautifully and the tears in Betsy’s eyes even more so. As ridiculous as the whole thing is, practically gleeful in its sense of tragedy, it is buoyed quite impressively by the sexy chemistry between the stars, and particularly by Costello’s undeniable star quality.
Nomination: Best Writing (Adaptation)

Street Angel

Dir. Frank Borzage

This warm romance reunites Janet Gaynor with her Seventh Heaven co-star Charles Farrell. She plays a girl whose mother is dying but her family can’t afford the medicine she needs, so Gaynor hits the road looking to ply her wares in the world’s oldest profession. In desperation, she tries stealing a valuable item, which gets her caught and sent to prison, but she manages to escape Naples and run away with circus performers. While in this new, bright world, Gaynor becomes a skilled performer, then falls in love with a sexy painter (Farrell) who wants to take her back to Naples and make an honest housewife out of her. She longs to stay with him but knows that returning home will mean facing her past and the vengeful lawmakers who are still looking for her. Beautifully photographed and featuring a cast giving fully committed, honest performances, this is a standout romance that goes further in capitalizing on the stars’ sexy chemistry than their previous film did.  Sunrise is the best of the three films that Gaynor won her Oscar for, but this is the film that shows her off strengths, from the fiery naughtiness of her scenes with the circus to her genuine heartbreak over the relationship that must be ruined by reality.
Winner: Best Actress (Janet Gaynor)

The Circus

Dir. Charles Chaplin

Once Chaplin began making features, his output became much more infrequent than in his earlier years, and the anticipation of a new film from him was a highly publicized event. Even more sensational for the newspapers was the hullaballoo going on behind the scenes as he put this film together, including his studio burning down, a number of sequences ruined in the lab necessitating compromised retakes, his highly publicized divorce from seventeen year-old Lita Grey and all the sordid details that found their way to print and, to no one’s surprise, his having a nervous breakdown. That the resulting film is a smooth ride that shows little wear and tear from all this trouble is not all that surprising, Chaplin was a master filmmaker and entertainer whose near-Dickensian childhood in the arts meant he knew exactly how to hide volcanic personal experiences beneath his artistic output. The troubles, however, might be why it is not among his most impressive feature films, lacking the poignancy of City Lights or the outrageous humour of The Gold Rush. The Tramp begins the film narrowly escaping being wrongfully arrested for pickpocketing, then makes his way into a circus tent where his accidental hijinks thrill the crowd so much that he is hired as the star entertainer. A few adventures involving close calls with animals (including his actually being in a cage with a real lion) play alongside a burgeoning romance with the circus owner’s acrobat daughter, though their affection for each other is threatened when a handsome tightrope walker catches her eye. The film mostly elicits mild chuckles and very few outright laughs, but that isn’t to say that it isn’t among his most charming works. The Academy, worried that the quadruple threat of nominating him for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director (of a Comedy) and Writing could result in his taking all the prizes home, decided to withdraw his eligibility from nominations and give him one of the two Special awards handed out that year.
Winner: Special Award to Charles Chaplin, for acting, writing, directing and producing.

The Racket

Dir. Lewis Milestone

Beautifully shot underworld drama about a clean cop in a dirty town. Captain McQuigg (Thomas Meighan) wants to take down a notorious bootlegger but everyone is working against his efforts, notably crooked politicians who protect the flat-faced villain Scarsi (Louis Wolheim, who could easily be a character out of Dick Tracy) who hides behind his role on the anti-liquor board to keep booze flowing at nightclubs. McQuigg is relocated to the sticks in retaliation for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, but when Scarsi’s wild kid brother gets arrested following a traffic incident and is brought to our hero’s precinct, justice comes calling at his own back door. Milestone hasn’t found a new twist in an old tale, this was a familiar plot even in the silent era, but the richness with which he films crowd scenes and parties makes for glorious spectacle between the scenes of tough guys talking turkey. The plotting drags somewhat by the last third, but the actors provide enough punch to make it worthwhile; Marie Prevost adds a lot of dazzle as the gangster moll who can handle herself in the front seat of a wiseguy’s car.
Nomination: Outstanding Picture

FOR THE CURIOUS

Tempest

Dir. Sam Taylor

Inter-class romance occurs when Russian peasant John Barrymore (Drew’s grandfather) rises in the ranks of the Czar’s army and becomes a lieutenant through exemplary service. He falls in love with a beautiful aristocrat (Camilla Horn) who scorns him because of his low birth and, thanks to his Pepe Le Pew-level methods of wooing her, gets himself accused of indecent behaviour, is stripped of his epaulettes and thrown into prison. During the course of his sentence, Russia joins World War I and the 1917 revolution occurs, turning the tables on the upper classes and giving the peasants a chance to get revenge for the injustices of the past. This also includes the princess eventually showing up in a jail cell in rags at the mercy of Barrymore’s kindness. Interesting plot turns occur in this by-the-numbers romance, and the sets are incredibly rich and beautiful, but it’s about as deep as a thimble.
Nomination: Best Art Direction

Two Arabian Knights

Dir. Lewis Milestone

At the first Academy Awards, there were two awards for Best Director, one for “Best Comedy Direction,” which would be done away with the following year. Milestone, who would later make the masterful All Quiet On the Western Front, took his first prize for this film that was thought lost for decades until it was discovered in a drawer (lost movies are always found in the weirdest places, in drawers or attics where someone placed it before their ancestral mansion is turned into a sanitorium). Its plot, about two American soldiers who escape a German prisoner-of-war camp and make their way to the Middle East in pursuit of a beautiful princess (played by Mary Astor), is the kind of silliness that would later star Abbott and Costello. Its adventures are diverting if not inspiring, and like many of this year’s nominees it is worth treasuring for plenty of reasons that don’t involve narrative quality.
Winner: Best Direction (Comedy Picture)

The Jazz Singer

Dir. Alan Crosland

Monumental in its day, this film now seems like nothing but pure, unadulterated corn. Al Jolson is peppy as a Jewish boy who is expected by his parents to take over his father’s job as head cantor in their synagogue, but cannot see himself doing the job thanks to his private little vice: HE LOVES TO SING JAZZ! Gotta love it when the parents react to his admission as if he had just announced a penchant for bestiality. For all these aspects of it that haven’t aged well, however, there are two very obvious elements that make it important, and one that makes it an unfortunate embarassment. Although it is mostly silent, sections of this film were shot with synchronized sound, and the movie business was never the same again (nor was Warner Bros., who suddenly find themselves a major player in the studio game after years in the back row).  It’s also a movie about Jewish characters that features scenes in a synagogue and, as such marks the end of the era when movie entertainment was aimed at immigrant populations and religious minorities: with the coming years, the popularity of films during the Depression would centre the white common man, and with the rise of film to an artform during the war years, any identity that wasn’t middle-class WASP would more or less disappear from view. The unfortunate part is, however, that Jolson sings in blackface and the historic importance of this breakthrough film is marked by a racist aspect that would strangely become a popular tradition in musicals of the coming years.  The popularity of the story saw this film remade twice, and in both cases with very forgettable results, once with Danny Kaye and Peggy Lee in the fifties, and another time with Neil Diamond (and a terrific soundtrack) in the late seventies.
Winner: Special Award, “for producing the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry.”
Nomination: Best Writing (Adaptation)

SKIP IT

A Ship Comes In

Dir.William K. Howard

Immigrants seeking a better life arrive in one of the many ships unloading in New York’s harbour and, among the throngs, is the Pleznik family, who have come from Eastern Europe in search of the American Dream. They get set up with employment and find a home and things seem promising as father Peter (Rudolph Schildkraut) looks forward to his upcoming citizenship ceremony. Mama (Louise Dresser) bakes him a cake to take the judge, but it is intercepted by a vengeful ne’er-do-well who puts a bomb in the cake box and nearly gets the judge killed. At the same time that their son Eric is sent to fight in the Great War, Peter is facing the possibility of life in prison and one wonders if they really did right to travel so far to improve their lives…but wait! There is justice in the New World and it doesn’t give up on any who seek its help. Corny beyond belief, this film is a curiosity for many reasons that have little to do with entertainment value (and it doesn’t help that the version available for public viewing on Youtube is barely visible anyway). For one, it represents the coming end of the era of films aimed unapologetically at the mindset and experiences of immigrant audiences, something that would change very soon with the stock market crash, and for another, it features one of the nominees in the very first Best Actress race (Dresser is probably better known to modern audiences for her performance as Empress Elizabeth in von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress). Dresser acquits herself nicely but she, curiously, receives very little focus compared to the other performers, her nomination the first of many suffering mothers to stir voters’ hearts and see more than is actually there.
Nomination: Best Actress (Louise Dresser)

The Patent Leather Kid

Dir. Alfred Santell

Aside from the fact that the version on YouTube is of terribly grungy quality (and I believed shortened, there’s only one surviving print in a vault somewhere), this is a really boring version of the kind of movie that would be made plenty more times in the future, about a boxer who learns to have a soul when he gets involved in a real fight. Richard Barthelmess is the pugilist renowned for his dapper style, who scoffs at defending his country when America enters the Great War, then redeems his soul when he is drafted and commits an act of selfless bravery. This corny, overlong fluff is best cherished for the star’s nominated performance.
Nomination: Best Actor (Richard Barthelmess)

The following films were not reviewed for this article, in some cases because they no longer exist (or haven’t yet been discovered in someone’s dresser drawer):

Sorrell and Son
Dir. Herbert Brenon
Nomination: Best Direction (Dramatic Picture)

The Devil Dancer
Dir. Fred Niblo
Nomination: Best Cinematography

The Dove
Dir. Roland West
Nomination: Best Art Direction

The Magic Flame
Dir. Henry King
Nomination: Best Cinematography

The Noose
Dir. John Francis Dillon
Nomination: Best Actor (Richard Barthelmess)

The Private Life of Helen of Troy
Dir. Alexander Korda
Nomination: Best Writing (Title Writing)

The Way of All Flesh
Dir. Victor Fleming
Winner: Best Actor (Emil Jannings)