Our hosts weren’t thrilled with The Song of Bernadette, a largely fictionalized biopic about a saint, but their main complaint is that it’s longer, even, than the Left Behind movies. Also, Suzan thinks it’s not Catholic enough, while David is really annoyed at what watching it has done to his YouTube recommendation algorithm.
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Song of Bernadette (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
Ostensibly a biopic about one of the most important scientists of all time, Madame Curie is more a love letter to her husband, Pierre, than the story of the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in not one but two different categories. Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon do their usual comfortable romance thing, and their personal chemistry is fine, while the movie seems entirely disinterested in the chemistry going on in their lab… or her life, at all, in the 28 years she lived after he died.
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Madame Curie (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
The third and final antifascist film of the 1943 nominees, Watch on the Rhine doesn't, in fact, star Bette Davis, despite what the poster would have you believe. Paul Lukas is brilliant as a great dad who is literally antifa, and this is his movie through and through. A great supporting cast and snappy dialogue buttress this movie that, despite interference from the Hays Office, manages to effectively convey its still all too timely message.
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Watch on the Rhine (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
Our hosts are finally free of their nemesis, Ernst Lubitsch after this week’s Heaven Can Wait (not to be confused with the film of the same name from 1978)… or are they? Suzan is pretty sure that this awkward shaggy dog story that infuriated David is the last of the Lubitsch nominees, but she’s thought that before.
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from Heaven Can Wait (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
For Whom the Bell Tolls, on paper, seems to have all the ingredients of a great film: it’s got Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, and a merry band of anti-fascists, all in Technicolor! What could possibly go wrong?
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
Despite the tagline “Home is where you hang your guests!” The More the Merrier thankfully does not turn out to be the second movie in a row to focus on a hanging. This Jean Arthur vehicle frustratingly restricts its usually brilliant lead in a muddled film that can’t decide if it’s a screwball comedy about a DC housing shortage during World War II or a romantic comedy about the type A career woman saved from a boring future by a sudden romance with a brooding new acquaintance.
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The More the Merrier (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
Signing off last week, our hosts were justifiably nervous about the nooses swinging from the tree in the poster for this week’s movie, but The Ox-Bow Incident turns out to be an excellent, if extremely dispiriting film. Henry Fonda turns in another excellent performance as a working class hero, alongside an ensemble of interesting and unique characters.
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Ox-Bow Incident 1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
Our hosts have called a lot of movies weird over the last two and a half years, but The Human Comedy, starring Mickey Rooney and is neither very human nor a comedy, may be the weirdest one, yet. And it’s not even close.
Year Eligible: 1943 (Nominated)
Additional audio from The Human Comedy (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)
After a longer than expected hiatus, David and Suzan are BACK, with one fantastic movie!
Year Eligible: 1943 (Won)
Additional audio from Casablanca (1943)
(Explicit language, as always)