An American in Paris was the winner of the 1951 nominees for Best Picture, entirely because of the 17 minute, half a million dollar dream ballet at the very end to Gershwin's orchestral composition of the same name. That’s it. There is no other reason.
Year Eligible: 1951 (Won)
Additional audio from An American in Paris (1951)
(Explicit language, as always)
The film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, is wildly famous for Marlon Brando in a wet t-shirt, but the film is largely the very sad story of a deeply wounded and traumatized woman, played by Vivien Leigh, who only gets further wounded and traumatized during the movie. It’s considered a classic, but is it good enough to justify the emotional toll it exacts from its audience?
Year Eligible: 1951 (Nominated)
Additional audio from A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
(Explicit language, as always)
A master class in why method acting can actually make a performance less believable, A Place in the Sun is a real downer. Montgomery Clift gets typecast as a slack-jawed jerk who chases after yet another rich woman, but the twist is that, unlike in The Heiress, the woman he doesn't really care about and treats abhorrently isn’t the one he’s trying to marry. Elizabeth Taylor is beautiful, charming, and actually pretty good, in a role that makes a lot more sense than the one she had in Father of the Bride.
Year Eligible: 1951 (Nominated)
Additional audio from A Place in the Sun (1951)
(Explicit language, as always)
The final film in the 1950 Best Picture nominees, Born Yesterday start Judy Holliday giving an incredible performance as a ditzy chorus girl whose mobster boyfriend, played by Broderick Crawford, regrets forcing her to get smart. In any other year, Holliday’s performance would have still made this otherwise weirdly paced romantic comedy, with William Holden as the love interest, a serious contender for Best Picture, but the 1950 nominees were dominated by women in uniquely memorable roles. In the last episode for these nominees, will All About Eve stand the Screen Test of Time against Sunset Boulevard?
Year Eligible: 1950 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Born Yesterday (1950)
(Explicit language, as always)
David refers to King Solomon’s Mines as the movie that dares to ask, “What if Trader Horn was in color?” but what it really answers is why the character of Allan Quatermain, who was as popular and well known at the turn of the 20th century as James Bond is today, and played here by Stewart Granger, disappeared entirely from the popular imagination.
Year Eligible: 1950 (Nominated)
Additional audio from King Solomon’s Mines (1950)
(Explicit language, as always)
The Best Picture winner of the 1950 awards, All About Eve is so good that it made David do a complete reevaluation of Bette Davis, his long standing Screen Test of Time nemesis. Suzan isn’t sure that film historians are right about certain readings of this film, but doesn’t really care, because it’s absolutely fabulous. Oh, and Marilyn Monroe is in it and is both too hot and too funny for words.
Year Eligible: 1950 (Won)
Additional audio from All About Eve (1950)
(Explicit language, as always)
Good news, Screen Testers! Suzan did not, in fact, hate Sunset Boulevard, so David will not, as he threatened last week, have to stop being her friend. It seems like 1950 is shaping up to be an extraordinary year already, and Sunset Boulevard is an early lead for our hosts’ choice for Best Picture.
Year Eligible: 1950 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Sunset Boulevard (1950)
(Explicit language, as always)
The original Father of the Bride starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor may suffer a bit in light of the Steve Martin remake... even if it's maybe a better movie. As the first of the 1950 nominees, Father of the Bride has some stiff competition on its heels, and likely won't survive to be the best of the year, but it's still an enjoyable cupcake of a film, nonetheless.
Year Eligible: 1950 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Father of the Bride (1949)
(Explicit language, as always)
After last week’s episode, Suzan and David find themselves with a sense of déjà vu— another week, another boring war movie. Not even Gregory Peck’s good looks could save Twelve O’Clock High. Also, find out if the Academy chose correctly among the 1949 nominees, or if our hosts think they should have picked something else.
Year Eligible: 1949 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Twelve O’Clock High (1949)
(Explicit language, as always)
An early attempt at the “Band of Brothers” style war movie (and about the 101st airborne, weirdly enough), Battleground is something of an unwieldy mess, with unmemorable characters, no real theme, and generally a step backward in competency compared to even the silent war movies nominated for the very first Oscars. But it does have one good speech.
Year Eligible: 1949 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Battleground (1949)
(Explicit language, as always)
The winner of the 1949 awards, All the King’s Men is an interesting example of how a good movie can be made by accident… but can a film be accidentally great?
Year Eligible: 1949 (Won)
Additional audio from All the King’s Men (1949)
(Explicit language, as always)
The Heiress is the second movie in 3 weeks where producers tried to make Olivia de Havilland "ugly" to win an Oscar. De Havilland plays, rather unconvincingly, a wealthy young woman in the mid-1800s courted by a gold digging Montgomery Clift as the ur-f*ck boy, who runs away and abandons her the minute her abusive jerk of a dad threatens to take away her inheritance. Despite its many flaws, once she is allowed to be an actual adult in the last 20 minutes of the film, Hell hath no fury like Olivia de Havilland scorned, which just might be worth the preceding hour and a half… maybe.
Year Eligible: 1949 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Heiress (1949)
(Explicit language, as always)
Based on a serialized novel that was printed in Cosmo, A Letter to Three Wives is an absolutely bonkers film about an off-screen narrator running off with the husband of one of her so-called best friends, and then sending all of them a letter telling them to guess which one. Really. It is really about that. Really. It is really about that.
Year Eligible: 1949 (Nominated)
Additional audio from A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
(Explicit language, as always)
The Snake Pit, based on the autobiographical book of the same name, is the story of one woman’s experience inside a mental institution, and the treatment, both cruel and sympathetic, she receives at the hands of the mental health industry. Olivia de Havilland stars in one of those roles the Academy loves— typically pretty and elegant woman wears slightly less makeup and has somewhat disheveled hair for 2 hours and it’s considered oh-so-brave! Also, David and Suzan reveal their pick for the Best Picture of 1948— and it’s not the Academy’s.
Year Eligible: 1948 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Snake Pit (1948)
(Explicit language, as always)
For decades after its release, The Red Shoes remained the most popular dance film ever created, surely for the 20+ minute dream ballet sequence toward the middle of the film. But the rest of the movie’s plot, equally infuriating for its sexist love triangle and abuse apologia disguised as artistic genius, is a nightmare.
Year Eligible: 1948 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Red Shoes (1948)
(Explicit language, as always)
Johnny Belinda, a movie named first for an infant child barely seen in the film and secondly for the so-called main character onto whom everyone around her projects their own feelings and presumptions rather than just let her express herself, begins the long and frustrating history of the Academy’s effusive celebration of able actors portraying disabled characters in Inspiration Porn.
Year Eligible: 1948 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Johnny Belinda (1948)
(Explicit language, as always)
This week, David and Suzan do what they do best: passionately tear a Shakespeare film adaptation to shreds. This time, it’s the 1948 winner, Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. And we do mean Laurence Olivier’s, as he directed, starred in, produced, and even added text to this dour slog that, for some reason, became the gold standard for 20th century adaptations of the play, and is largely responsible for why so many people hate it.
Year Eligible: 1948 (Winner)
Additional audio from Hamlet (1948)
(Explicit language, as always)
The nominees for 1948 start strong with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a classic that deserves the designation, starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim Holt as itinerant Americans searching for their fortune in 1920s Mexico. A stellar supporting cast, breathtaking on-location sets, and excellent direction from John Huston (The Maltese Falcon) make this a top notch flick. It’s the first movie of the year’s nominees, but it’s already the one to beat.
Year Eligible: 1948 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
(Explicit language, as always)
Take Cary Grant, cast him as a literal, from heaven, with supernatural powers angel trying to seduce the wife of a stuck up, cold, neglectful bishop, and then throw away any lascivious or even interesting ideas that inspires in you when you consider it, and you’ll have the shockingly lifeless The Bishop’s Wife. It’s definitely not the Best Picture that should have been for 1947, but find out what was in this episode!
Year Eligible: 1947 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
(Explicit language, as always)
It's the unusual movie where the child actors at the beginning of the film have a better handle on their characters than the adult actors who play them for the rest of it, but this adaptation of Dickens's Great Expectations holds that distinction. Unfortunately, it makes the rest of the movie a tremendous letdown, and the film takes a confusing turn for the worse when its horribly miscast leads take over, and it muddles key elements of the novel's plot with unnecessary changes.
Year Eligible: 1947 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Great Expectations (1947)
(Explicit language, as always)