Perhaps the best thing about 1939 is that it brings our hosts the final Ernst Lubitsch film they will have to watch! After loathing every other film by the prolific director, will Greta Garbo in the title role upset the streak of poor ratings for Lubitsch, or is even she unable to salvage a film that was marketed only with the two words “Garbo laughs!”?
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Ninotchka (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
Frank Capra’s classic is considered the ultimate story of a Washington insider taking on the corrupt political machines holding Congress hostage, thanks to an absolutely brilliant performance by Jimmy Stewart in the titular role.
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
The first of the nominees that both of our hosts have already seen, The Wizard of Oz is getting some scrutiny neither of them had ever given it before. Will the classic starring Judy Garland hold up to our hosts’ critical evaluation, or will David and Suzan pull back the curtain to reveal it’s not so wonderful after all?
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Wizard of Oz (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
Editor’s note: Screen Test of Time would like to apologize for the brevity of this week’s episode, but there really wasn’t much to say about Goodbye, Mr. Chips. We assure you that next week we will be back with a very long episode.
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
The first of the sick bed tearjerker dramas to be nominated for Best Picture, Dark Victory is another in the list of movies where if people just talked to one another, there would be no story. Starring Bette Davis, some incredibly forgettable guy, the only real tragedy here is an underused Humphrey Bogart. Oh, and Ronald Reagan is in it.
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Dark Victory (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
The basis for the much more widely seen remake starring Cary Grant, Love Affair starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer was a difficult one for our hosts to grade. Moments of brilliance abound, but they are so disconnected from an unbelievable overall story, that it’s hard to know what is important is in this melodramatic romance.
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Love Affair (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
On this week’s episode, David and Suzan discuss the structure of Gothic storytelling, the perils of adapting a too long book into a too short movie, the merits of War and Peace and 10 Things I Hate About You to 1939’s Wuthering Heights.
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Wuthering Heights (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
After nearly 2 years of counting down the weeks to film’s most legendary year, 1939 is off with a bang… and some surprising controversy! For the first time in a long time, our hosts find they deeply disagree. Will David and Suzan come to a compromise, or will Stagecoach be the rare SToT movie with a split score?
Year Eligible: 1939 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Stagecoach (1939)
(Explicit language, as always)
At last, 1938 is over! Our hosts have finally completed the last year of nominees before Hollywood’s “Best Year” with this week’s movie, The Citadel, and the good news is David doesn’t regret using the Bengal Lancer card earlier. But which flick deserved the Oscar for 1938?
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Citadel (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
This week on Screen Test of Time, the 1938 film adaptation of Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller takes Suzan utterly by surprise because… she kind of likes most of it? Luckily, David assuages her conflicted feelings over enjoying a movie with such a misogynist foundational narrative, by pointing out the movie’s one huge, self-annihilating flaw.
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Pygmalion (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney don’t have the greatest track record here on Screen Test of Time, and they co-star in Boys Town, a biopic about a priest who started a literal incorporated town for homeless boys cum bad-kid-goes-good fairytale.
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Boys Town (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
Ahhh… at last, our hosts can breathe a sigh of relief before hitting play on this week’s movie, You Can’t Take It with You. With the Screen Test of Time proven Frank Capra at the helm, and Jimmy Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, and Jean Arthur in front of the camera, what could possibly go wrong?
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio from You Can’t Take It with You (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
This movie should be called Four Daughters (and an Embarrassment of Baxters). Four pretty, almost indistinguishable adult women with some level of musical talent, their music professor dad (played by Claude Raines), and their spitfire spinster aunt basically make life miserable for a bunch of men in this disjointed soap opera.
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Four Daughters (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
Tyrone Power and Alice Faye are back in Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and better than ever… which isn’t saying much. The musical numbers may swing, but the plot will rock you to sleep.
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio: “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” sung by Alice Faye from Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
When asked what 2 movies he would take with him on the ark, Orson Welles replied that La Grande Illusion would be one of them (and couldn’t name the other). Our hosts are happy to report that they don’t question his decision. A war movie with no battles, a film that is not about racism and anti-semitism but addresses them better than any film they’ve watched so far, and a clear inspiration for countless films to follow, La Grande Illusion is a masterpiece, even through the lens of the Screen Test of Time. (It was so good, Suzan made popcorn— though, as David makes clear, she has a rather unusual definition of “popcorn movie.”)
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio: “A Long Way to Tipperary” and “La Marseillaise”, from La Grande Illusion
(Explicit language, as always)
Errol Flynn and Olivia Havilland return to the podcast in the ur-Robin Hood movie from 1938. The second Oscar nominated movie fully in Technicolor, it’s David’s grandfather’s favorite movie ever. Suzan, however, makes a case for the Disney animated version and, yes, even the much maligned Kevin Costner adaptation as improvements over the classic. Still, it’s a fun romp through Sherwood Forest, chocked full of fantastic action scenes, with Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone rounding out a great cast.
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
An extraordinary film-- not in the sense that it's excellent-- but that it constantly teeters on the precipice of disaster, held only together by the strength of Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, and Clark Gable. On paper, Test Pilot is a frankly ludicrous story about an ace test pilot, the woman he meets after he crash lands on a farm and then marries the next day, and his best friend, who end up in an unconventional ménage à trois— as in “household of three,” not the other way… maybe?
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio: Test Pilot (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
1938 is off to a rough start-- one movie in, and our hosts have already broken the glass on the Bengal Lancer Clause*… sort of. Suzan does sum up the entire movie in one sentence, but mostly our hosts talk about how great 2015 was for movies that weren’t even nominated for Best Picture. Spoiler warnings for The Wire, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Magic Mike XXL.
*For those who haven’t heard Ep. 47: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, the eponymous clause can be invoked only once a calendar year, when a movie is just too egregious to warrant a review
Year Eligible: 1938 (Nominated)
Additional audio: Jezebel (1938)
(Explicit language, as always)
Another in the “musical drama distaster film” genre of San Francisco, this week’s movie is a fictional telling of the family of Mrs. O’Leary, whose cow, for at least a century, was held responsible for starting the Chicago Fire. Starring Tyrone Power, Alice Brady, and Alice Faye, Chicago is a movie so chock full of the worst Classic Film offenses that David made up a bingo card for it. It’s also the last film of 1937, so find out if the Academy’s winner holds up!
Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)
Additional audio: In Old Chicago (1937)
(Explicit language, as always)
Another in the weird 1930s trend of "hilarious" comedies about divorce, The Awful Truth, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, is the film equivalent of a bottle of champagne that's been left open for three days.
Year Eligible: 1937 (Nominated)
Additional audio: The Awful Truth (1937)
(Explicit language, as always)