The Oscar Project

Tempest (1928)

A Joseph M. Schenck Productions Film. Distributed by United Artists.

Ivan Markov (John Barrymore) is a peasant soldier under Bolshevik reign. His dream is to reach the rank of officer, something he achieves in the first half of the film amidst a display of ability (the words excellent and perfect are used pretty frequently). It’s as a part of this that he meets Princess Tamara (Camilla Horn), the royal daughter of the Czar he serves. What begins as infatuation very quickly turns into obsession as Tamara spurns him and Markov aggressively pursues. The film is classified as a romance, but in many ways, it watches more as some sort of sexual thriller.

The first thing to know about this film is that the script is really not very good. It’s full of convenient and blatant plot devices, coincidences and really stunted dialogue. The second thing to know is that it has lady-issues. A part of me says 1928, but none of the other films I have seen so far have had this exact sense of woman as commodity. Not just that, but the film devotes a good forty minutes to justifying Markov’s behaviour (which is all in all pretty sexual predator), like it’s a-okay that he violates Tamara’s boundaries, space and privacy. He forcefully kisses her, invades her bedroom (and her bed), touches her things and the script tells us this is okay too because she’s infatuated right on back (she just doesn’t know it).

There’s a part of me that thinks, in the hands of a better writer, you could have a really interesting film. Markov’s obsession with rank could make a seamless transition to his obsession with the princess. He’s reached officer and, by being infatuated with Tamara, it’s another way of climbing up a social ladder and a society that disparaged him for so long. That said, I think that would be a very different film than what this one was trying to be.

So thematically the film isn’t good, but it does have some pretty great elements. The performances are generally solid, Barrymore continues to have an excellent profile and honestly, the location and the costumes all hit it out of the park, so if nothing else, it’s worth the watch for that alone. The birthday party in particular is wonderfully shot, from the dancers to watching the events through the glass. Camilla Horn also wears some pretty ace dresses as the princess and later as a sort of political refugee.

Rating: 6 / 10

Director: Sam Taylor

Writers: George Marion Jr. & Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko

Cast: John Barrymore, Camilla Horn & Louis Wolheim

Nominations: Best Art Direction (won)

7^th Heaven (1927)

A Fox Film Corporation Film. Distributed by Fox Film Corporation.

7^th Heaven really swept up at the first Oscars. It was nominated for the most awards, and won three out of five of them. It’s interesting, because the film is very much a romance, with any other genre really sitting on the bench. That’s not to say it isn’t a great film, because it is.

Diane (Janet Gaynor) and her sister are prostitutes, living in a slum-like apartment in an unnamed city. After an incident goes pear-shaped with a wealthy relative, Diane’s tyrannical sister tries to kill her. Diane is rescued by Chico, a sewer-worker who dreams of becoming a street cleaner. He takes her in, and, after being mistaken for a couple and Chico receiving a promotion as a result, the pair decide to live together to reap the benefits of their fake marriage – one being Diane’s assumed protection, and the second being Chico’s new job. In true cinematic conventions, here begins a pretty sweet love story as the two fall for each other in spite of social standing, war and tragedy.

The film is wonderfully directed by Frank Borzage, and the cinematography is really world-building and all-encompassing (keep an eye out for some of the staircase scenes and the rooftop one early in the film – at the risk of sounding horribly cliché, both are visual feasts). Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell are kind of glorious together as Diane and Chico. The chemistry is tangible and when they fall in love, you believe it, which is a feat for a film in any age. Plus, as a couple aesthetically, they look great (I mean, really, speaking of visual feasts).

Farrell is strong as Chico too – he walks a fine line between charming and obnoxious, but always manages to fall on the best side of it. That said, Gaynor is the star of this film, as she is in Sunrise – she builds a character that’s blossoming under Chico’s kindness. Her fragility at the start of the film, a battered woman, is so beautifully portrayed, which makes her strength and her growth throughout the narrative a joy to watch and to be a part of.

7^th Heaven probably isn’t for everyone – it’s heavily romantic, even though the First World War features greatly towards the end. It is though a beautiful piece of cinema, and very character-oriented, and, actually, very much about female strength and growth, which isn’t something regularly featured in late twenties cinema.

Rating: 8 / 10

Director: Frank Borzage

Writers: Austin Strong, Benjamin Glazer

Cast: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell & Ben Bard

Nominations: Outstanding Picture, Production, Best Director, Dramatic Picture (won), Best Actress in a Leading Role (won), Best Writing, Adapted Story (won), Best Art Direction

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

A Fox Film Corporation Film. Distributed by  Fox Film Corporation.

Largely thought to be the greatest silent film ever made, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a masterwork of cinema. It relies almost entirely on the visual and uses this to produce a beautiful work of expressionism. Ultimately a story of redemption, the film focuses on a country man who, after becoming infatuated with a woman from the city, intends to murder his wife. The husband, played by George O’Brien, realises his error, but only after the first attempt on his wife’s life.

The story itself is pretty melodramatic, but director F.W. Murnau does a wonderful job offsetting that by infusing the film with a real undercurrent of malice. There’s an anger to it from the start, a lot of that coming from the city woman, and it’s a representation of cinema generally on how this film shapes your mood. You feel for both man and wife – you feel his rage and her betrayal and then the tenderness of the relearned love. O’Brien’s grief towards the end swinging back around to a newly-directed malice, bringing the film to a great narrative cycle.

This is helped in part to some pretty exceptional performances. Janet Gaynor and O’Brien between them are given no lines of dialogue at all, so there’s a lot riding on the expression within their faces and movements, and both do sterling jobs of this. . Gaynor in particular gives a wonderfully harrowed and broken performance as the wife. Margaret Livingston too is strong as the manipulative and deceitful city woman, and the way she moves is so interesting – almost like a huntsman spider, and the implications of that alone is pretty wonderful.

That being said, the hero of Sunrise is the cinematography. Visually, this film is sublime.  The landscape shots and the use of shadow is as close to flawless as you can get with cinema, and the mobility of the camera work lends not to jerky hand-held shots, but instead to beautiful tracking of characters. Not only that, but the layering to define motive and express character thought is so clever and interesting and lends so much to the narrative and development of character. See what I mean at the caps below.

All in all, it’s pretty hard to fault this film, and it’s one that everyone should watch if they get the chance.

Rating: 10 / 10

Director: F.W. Murnau

Writers: Herman Suderman, Carl Mayer

Cast: George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor & Margaret Livingston

Nominations: Unique & Artistic Production (winner), Best Actress in a Leading Role (winner), Cinematography (winner), Art Direction

Sadie Thompson (1928)

A Gloria Swanson Pictures Film. Distributed by United Artists.

Sadie Thompson was a bit of a revelation for me. I went in with little knowledge of the film, bar a flimsy familiarity of the concept (one which is really quite dated). Sadie Thompson, played spectacularly by Gloria Swanson, a woman of questionable background, arrives on the island of Pago-Pago to start a new life. As a base for military men, Sadie enjoys the attentions until local extremist missionary, Davidson, played by Lionel Barrymore, takes issue with it. He lashes out at her with a little too much relish, in a desperate attempt to send her back to San Francisco. It all culminates into a series of pretty intense confrontations.

There’s a lot to like about this film. It deals with some controversial issues for the time – particularly corruption in the church which, at the time, was a pretty big no-no cinematically. Male dominance, patriarchy and controlled sexuality are also portrayed in a negative light. This is done particularly through Davidson’s extreme efforts to quash Sadie, but also in the effect it has on the slew of strong supporting characters, particularly Dr. McPhail (Charles Lane) and Sergeant Tim O’Hara (Raoul Walsh).

The film is held up by some pretty wonderful performances. Gloria Swanson as the title character is a powerhouse performer. She’s alternately flirty, seductive, feisty, angry and vulnerable (plus she has a pretty awesome swagger). She’s a total star in this film and steals every scene she’s in.

Lionel Barrymore as Davidson is great too. He plays a man who’s really on the edge, a missionary with old values in a new world, and Sadie’s provocation (intentional and not) pushes him over it. He becomes crazed, taking a little too much pleasure in his pursuit and then condemnation of Sadie. There’s a stand-out moment where he forces her to kneel in front of him which lends itself to a sexual charge from Barrymore’s Davidson. It’s both beautifully enacted, and really pretty creepy.

The whole film is beautifully shot too, with some wonderful uses of shadow and angles that works together with a pretty compelling script. The film is silent, so dialogue is done only through title cards, but, compared to other films I’ve watched so far, it relies in no small part on lip reading from the audience. Mostly in the fact that Swanson as Sadie swears quite a bit through the film, but as it wasn’t on the title cards, it didn’t affect the censorship during the release.

Unfortunately, the last 8-minute reel of the film is now lost, but the restoration company did a pretty good job piecing it together with remade title cards and stills from the film. You do lose some of the dramatic impact though, because the climactic confrontation is lost. That being said, I could write essays on this film. It’s wonderful and has so much happening for it that makes it feel ahead of its time. It’s a highlight for me from this year.

Rating: 8 / 10

Director: Raoul Walsh

Writers: W. Somerset Maugham & Raoul Walsh

Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Blanch Friderici, Charles Lane & Gloria Swanson

Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role & Best Cinematography

The Racket (1928)

A Caddo Company Film. Distributed by Paramount Pictures.

The Racket, released 1928, is kind of an odd one. It was presumed lost for a long while, and was only rediscovered when the producer, Howard Hughes passed away. After that, it was restored and aired again for the first time in 2004. In that way, it was a pretty cool thing to be able to watch. The film focuses on young cop, Police Captain James McQuigg (Thomas Meighan) who has a stand-off against local gang overlord, Nick Scarsi (Louis Wolheim). In the process of this he ends up uncovering police and government corruption. The film is pretty action-packed, full of shoot outs, car chases and scantily clad ladies, and focuses on the solid good-beats-out-bad trope.

It’s a tried-and-true formula now, but back in 1928 this must have been a pretty exciting piece of cinema. Meighan’s great as the stoic ‘good cop’ and has awesomely nuanced expressions (something I learnt quickly in silent cinema is an actor’s the tendency to, you know, over-express). Wolheim’s great too, and not just for his excellent angry turtle face. He’s believably intimidating, domineering and nasty – a real black-hat, which is something they show off pretty liberally here in the costuming. 

It’s really Marie Prevost as the eye-rolling, revenge-seeking nightclub singer, Helen Hayes, who steals the show though. Humiliated by Scarsi early in the film, a lot of the events leading up to the climactic standoff are implemented by her. She’s stupidly beautiful too with one of the most expressive faces I’ve seen in cinema. Prevost is also one of those great Hollywood tragedies that kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth (You can readup on it over here).

All in all, The Racket’s not a masterwork of cinema, but it’s a pretty entertaining film for the duration. Especially if you’re a lover of gangster-flicks, this is a great one for the repertoire.

Rating: 6.5 / 10

Director: Lewis Milestone

Writers: Bartlett Cormack

Producer: Howard Hughes

Cast: Thomas Meighan, Louis Wolheim & Marie Prevost

Nominations: Outstanding Picture, Production.

The Crowd (1928)

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Film. Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

This was actually the first film I watched from this year’s Oscars, and I guess was in some ways the film that started me off on this whole thing. It was probably a good thing all in all too – The Crowd is largely regarded as one of the triumphs of silent cinema and, watching it back now, it really still stacks up.

The film wastes no time introducing us to John Sims, who we watch grow from infant to boy to man. As a boy, his father praises him without restraint, telling him that he’ll be something in life, whilst John preens under the praise and yet shows little skill at anything in particular. John’s father dies abruptly when John’s a boy, and the film flashes forwards to John as a young man moving to the city, equally idealistic and full of self-importance. He meets and marries Mary in the space of a few days, and together they have two children whilst John works at a menial job without promotion or recognition.

The film’s focus lies in John, but also in Mary, covering milestones across their lives together and the unravelling of his character from ambitious, big-dreamed and egocentric to ultimately another lost soul in a big city. It’s interesting because for a film pushing 85, it’s thematically still totally relevant. John’s desire to separate himself from the masses and his expectation that this would come to him without ever having to work for it is hugely reflective of society in any age. It embodies the average developed-world man who grows up being told he’s special only to realise, ultimately, that he’s not. Of course it’s not just that. The film is a study in loss and grief, of the turbulence of a marriage built on unsteady foundations; it’s about shifting self-image and changing self-worth, and in all of these ways thematically it succeeds.

It’s melodramatic, sure, but it’s got a lot going for it that kind of lets you forgive that. The cinematography for one is gorgeous and photographic; the performances all wonderful, and the score (created in 1981 by composer, Carl Davis) does wonderful things at capturing the shifting moods of the film. This one is definitely worth the watch.

Rating: 8.5 / 10

Director: King Vidor

Writers: King Vidor & John V.A. Weaver

Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray & Bert Roach

Nominations: Best Director, Dramatic Picture & Best Picture, Unique & Artistic Production.