THE WINNER:
Cimarron (directed by Wesley Ruggles)
The Nominees: East Lynn, The Front Page, Skippy, Trader Horn

MY CHOICE:
City Lights (directed by Charles Chaplin)
My Nominees: A Free Soul (Clarence Brown), The Front Page (Lewis Milestone), Morocco (Josef Von Sternberg), The Public Enemy (William Wellman)

The new decade was inaugurated with one of the worst rosters of Best Picture nominees in Oscar history. Aside from The Front Page, the choices for Hollywood's first official "Best Picture" (previously called "Best Production") were pious prestige films, completely unworthy of award consideration. The least deserving of the nominees for Best Picture was the academy’s final selection. Cimarron was an interminatable western epic that had been pried from the pages of Edna Ferber’s popular novel about the evolution of the Oklahoma frontier as seen through the eyes of a married couple played by Richard Dix and Irene Dunne. The film received glowing critical acclaim but remains the only Best Picture winner that was a box office dud.

I hate Cimarron for many reasons: The movie is too long, the narrative is muddy, the performances are wooden, the story is cornball and the film's attitude toward Native Americans is appalling.  You can admire the great western landscape, photographed by Edward Cronjager, but there have been so many westerns that came along later that have made much better use of outdoor photography.
 
My choice for the best film of 1930 was easy.  Charlie Chaplin's City Lights is generally lauded as the master's finest achievement, yet, the academy punished him for his refusal to move into sound films.  By 1930, he was virtually alone in his opinion that "talkies" would eventually die out.  He made two silent films in the 1930s, City Lights and Modern Times, neither of which were embraced by the bawking academy voters despite the fact that they were both box office successes.
 
City Lights is universally acclaimed as his most accomplished work, while Cimarron has long-since passed out of common knowledge. Chaplin exhibits all the reasons that we fell in love with his films in the first place. It is the work of a meticulous craftsman who spent years perfecting his films down to the last detail. It is as close to perfect as his great works ever came.

The story finds the Little Tramp in the big city.  He is almost invisible because the other citizens of the city choose to pretend he doesn't exist.  He falls in love with the only person who doesn't greet him with disdain, a blind woman (Virginia Cherrill) who sells flowers to support herself and her grandmother. Through a simple misunderstanding she thinks that The Tramp is a millionaire and looks forward to his daily visits. Through a mistaken assumption, he thinks that she won’t talk to him if she thinks that he is a penniless tramp.

He takes odd jobs to help her pay her rent. While working as a street cleaner, he saves a suicidal millionaire from drowning. The millionaire becomes his bosom pal but only recognizes the Tramp when he is drunk. So the Tramp takes advantage of the situation, and soon has enough money to pay for an operation that will cure the girl's sight. Unfortunately the millionaire is knocked in the head by burglars and it is the Tramp who looks guilty. Giving the money to the girl he leaves the city, fearing that when she regains her sight, she will be repulsed by his tattered appearance.

The closing scene is one of the most moving moments in film history.  After many month in jail, the tramp finds the girl again only this time the operation has restored her sight.  She doesn’t recognize him. She tries to give him a flower and touches his face (as “Le Violetera” sweetly plays on the soundtrack). "You?" she says, realizing that this is the kindly little man who has given her the gift of sight. "You can see now," he says. "Yes, I can see now." she replies. Happily, he was wrong. With sight, she accepts his kindness and his love. The film ends with the unmistakable smiling face of the Tramp, finally seen for his heart and not his tattered rags.

Chaplin was encouraged to turn City Lights into a talking picture in order to move The Tramp into the modern era.  He wouldn't hear of it, and in response wrote a scene at the beginning that takes place during a political speech in which the words emerging from the speaker’s mouths are unintelligible gibberish. 
 
Giving The Tramp a voice would have been a fatal mistake.  He was a character who was universal because he didn’t speak. His adventures were loved all over the world because translating his films into different languages wasn’t necessary. Also because The Tramp’s cosmic struggle for survival was something that can be understood in every culture, the Tramp stands for the little guy, those of us who struggle every day to eat and to have a roof over our heads.

What is notable about City Lights is the way in which the Tramp remains on the fringes of normal society. In his tattered rags no one pays him any mind, he finds that people turn their faces away from him or demand he be gone from their sight. It is interesting that the only close relationships are with people who wouldn't have the power to judge him on his appearance -- a blind woman and a man who is blind drunk.

The Tramp is a character who always struggled with acceptance and survival. Chaplin’s contemporaries like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd played characters whose struggle took place within the blue collar world; they had to work within the confines of the cosmic struggle of life. The Tramp existed on the fringes, never having a steady job (or at least, never keeping one) and did whatever he had to do to keep from starving to death.

Chaplin's Little Tramp was very much of his time.  He represented the kinds of struggles that most Americans were facing in the maelstrom of the Great Depression. Steady work was impossible to find and one does what one does to keep oneself alive. In most of his adventures, The Tramp was simply trying to muddle through, but here I think he is battling something a little closer to the bone – the search for a companion. We note that The Tramp is a fighter, a survivor whose plucky spirit and good will are the cornerstones of his being (without them he would fall into despair), yet he remains alone. It is interesting to me that his last two silent films end with him getting the girl. We know that he will continue in his struggle with the world around him, but he makes us happy to think that he won’t face it alone.

THE WINNER:
Lionel Barrymore (A Free Soul)
The Nominees: Jackie Cooper (Skippy), Richard Dix (Cimarron), Frederich March (The Royal Family of Broadway), Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page)

MY CHOICE:
Peter Lorre (M)
My Nominees: Lew Ayers (The Doorway to Hell), John Barrymore (Svengali), James Cagney (The Public Enemy), Charlie Chaplin (City Lights), Boris Karloff (The Criminal Code), Edward G. Robinson (Little Caeser), Edward G. Robinson (Smart Money),

My favorite characters in nineteen thirty-one were men who operated just outside the law.  Nineteen thirty-one was a great year for villains, from James Cagney's gun-happy Tom Powers in The Public Enemy, to Edward G. Robinson's Little "Rico" Caeser in Little Caeser, Lew Ayers gangster in the little-seen The Doorway to Hell, Boris Karloff in The Criminal Code and John Barrymore as a sinister hypnotist in Svengali Yet, in this great year for villains, the academy voters chose a man of nobility. Lionel Barrymore's performance as Stephen Ashe, an alcoholic Defense Attorney in A Free Soul trying to get Leslie Howard off the hook for the murder of Clark Gable, ended with Barrymore's character ending his closing argument by dropping dead on the courtroom floor. The performance and the movie offer only second-rate Barrymore. He had done far better before and after this film and it is a little sad that this was the first and last time that he got so much as an acting nomination (his only other nod was for Best Director for Madame X in 1929).

My first instinct was to reward Charlie Chaplin for his work in City Lights but I feel that I've given him credit by rewarding his film so it came to a choice between James Cagney for The Public Enemy and Edward G. Robinson for Little Caeser.  Both of these actors defined their careers by playing violent psychopathic gangsters. But rather than choose a gangster, I'm splitting my decision and choosing Peter Lorre's pathetic child murderer in Fritz Lang's unforgettable M.

With limited screen time, Lorre creates a character that is despicable beyond reason. His Franz Beckert is an unassuming man with a sweet face who walks the streets fully aware of the chaos that he is creating.  His community is in an uproar, someone is killing their children and no suspect can be identified.  We see Beckert carry out his crimes, leading children to their doom using candy, toys, whatever means he can and kills them for no other reason then an inner compulsion. As the movie opens we follow a child from a playground and into town where she has a fatal meeting with Franz as he buys her a balloon. We never see a murder, we never see a body but the way director Fritz Lang signals a child's death is chilling. We see a series of eerie shots: an empty playground were she was playing; her empty chair at the dinner table; her ball rolling into a clearing and finally the balloon briefly caught in the power lines.  The last image gives you chills.

Beckert doesn’t appear in the story with any significant time for the first 45 minutes.  He is seen mostly in fleeting glances and we see the back of his head as he writes a taunting letter to the newspaper. We see him buying a balloon for the little girl who will soon turn up missing - in a chilling moment, his shadow falls across his wanted poster as he looks down at her.

Though we only see him in small doses at first, it is primarily to give us the same point of view as the townspeople. He's so normal and so sweet-looking that we would never suspect that he is capable of such evil. We hear conversations about this monster - whom everyone assumes must have escaped from an institution - and he reciprocates in an effective moment when he looks into his mirror and pulls down the corners of his mouth in order to see himself as the monster he is projected to be. There are only fleeting glimpses into his madness, especially in a later scene when he gazes into a shop window and thinks he sees his victims staring back at him.

Beckert only occupies have of the film because most of the action involves the police and the general public who argue over the problem. They make silly accusations amongst themselves, they make false accusations based on fear and public hysteria. In the fear and confusion they jump to conclusions, fight one another and point fingers. The Police employ the criminal underground for help and soon we see that both the cops and the criminals in this community work pretty much the same way. In the end when the criminal world catches Franz, they don't bother the courts they decide to work as a kangaroo court and punish Beckert themselves.

The irony is that with all the paranoia in this community, the man who identifies Beckert is a street balloon vender who is blind. The man overhears him whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" which has become the killer’s calling card. He recognizes the tune that Beckert was whistling when he bought one of his victims a balloon.

In a filthy basement, Beckert is surrounded by hundreds of accusing ugly, dirty faces. In a brilliant shot, Lang pans across a sea of faces as they glare at him. This is where Lorre's performance really comes to life. Fearing his own life, he falls on his knees and proclaims the torment in his brain that makes him commit such unspeakable acts and screams as he proclaims "Who knows what it is like to be me?"  This sniveling little man who brought about a reign of terror now begs for his own life.

Peter Lorre was only 26 at the time and this was only the third film in which he appeared. His performance is small but unforgettable. For years after he would be typecast as the villain, usually in supporting roles in films like The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. He had a voice, a stature and a bug-like facial structure that would pigeonhole him for the rest of his life and made him the favorite target of impressionists and cartoonist. After working for Fritz Lang, Lorre left his native Germany (he was born in Austria and was Jewish) and fled to Paris and then to America in 1935. He would become a dependable actor even if he remained in the role of sneaky, underhanded fools.

It was in Germany that he did his best work mostly because he got to play the lead. In Hollywood it was hard to find a wide range of leading roles.  He starred in smaller parts and rarely had a lead (He played the lead in the Mr. Moto series). But M would be his defining work because it is so effective (though it is limited). It was so effective that Joseph Goebbles, Hitler's Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda used the film and Lorre's performance (and especially his speech about the uncontrollable murderous torment in his brain) as an example of the fearful Jew.

Lorre is well known today as one of the most dependable character actors in the history of the movies. He never received an Oscar nomination but I think that if he had, it would have been for Supporting Actor (though who would have supported in this film?) Looking at Lorre's performance again recently it suddenly struck me why he's so perfect for the role. You have to see this man through the eyes of a child. He has the girth of a jolly old elf, the large eyes of a doll, he has a soothing voice. He has a round fleshy face and his manner isn't quick, it is very polite. We see that his very being is his trap because we as adults understand how an adult is smart enough to trap a child - we know the warning signs. I would imagine the media hoopla after Beckart was captured and the neighbors who would say "Such a quiet man, he always kept to himself".

THE WINNER:
Marie Dressler (Min and Bill)
The Nominees: Marlene Dietrich (Morocco), Irene Dunne (Cimarron), Anne Harding (Holiday), Norma Shearer (A Free Soul),

MY CHOICE:
Marlene Dietrich (Morocco)
My Nominee: Silvia Sydney (An American Tragedy)

Sixty-two year-old Marie Dressler was Hollywood's least likely star. She was heavy-set with the girth of a prison matron and the face of a bloodhound but after a long success of Vaudeville, she became a box office star thanks to her performance as Tillie Banks in Chaplin's Tillie's Punctured Romance. In 1930, George Hill hired her to play the lead in an adaptation of Lorna Moon's novel "Dark Star", which he re-titled Min and Bill. Dressler played Min Divot, a bullish seaport innkeeper who ends up taking the role of mother-eagle to a PYT whose mother is a worthless drunk. Dressler occupies the role like an old pro but knowing what a delightful comedienne she was, it's hard to watch her play such a sour character. You know she has the chops the play the role but there are happier, much more substantial performances elsewhere. To watch Min and Bill is to understand why this film is all but forgotten today.

While Dressler got some love from the academy, my choice for Best Actress wasn't so lucky. Marlene Dietrich recieved only one Oscar nomination in her career in Josef Von Sternberg's Morocco, an adaptation of Benno Vigny's novel "Amy Jolly". This film was a milestone in Dietrich career because this was the film that introduced her to American audiences.

I don't think she could have had a better introduction. Von Sternberg had guided her film career and made her an international star and he made no less of an impression in the states. Morocco shows Dietrich at her most daring. Not just content, but in completely baring her soul onscreen. She plays Amy Jolly, a cabaret singer who has arrived in Mogador by steamer ship from Paris. What we notice right away is something sad and it is easy to surmise that she is running away from something back home.

She arrives in Mogador just as The Foreign Leginionnaires are stopping through, rowdy and looking for wine, women and song. She gets a job working in a nightclub for the portly Lo Tinto (Paul Porcasi) and on her first night marches into the main room sporting a tuxedo and drawing boos from the crowd. But she wins the crowd over with her fearlessness, her smokey singing voice and her daring presence - she kisses a female patron on the lips.

In the audience is tall and handsome Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) who isn't like the men he has marched into town with - he actually has a brain and a heart.

One night she is defended by one of the soldiers when the audience starts to get rowdy. He is Tom Brown (a young and handsome Gary Cooper), just another soldier on the way through, but to Amy he seems to be the first man who has ever defended her. Naturally, the two find romance. But there is a problem. The two realize that while they are in love, the current world situation won't allow them to be together. She breaks off the relationship and tries again and again to convince herself that she doesn't really love him. She even goes so far as to start an affair with an aristocrat (Adolf Menjou). But Amy can't control her heart and in the end she goes after Tom. In an unforgettable scene she takes off her shoes and heads off across the desert to be with him.

Normally in a movie so character-driven, an ending like that would seem phony but I have never found anything phony about Marlene Deitrich. Here was a woman who orchestrated every single facet of her onscreen (and off-screen) image. That is no better orchestrated than in Morocco in which she has an incredible ability to be so fearless yet so vulnerable almost at the same time. We see in Amy that she has spent her adult life being treated as an object of lust. She doesn’t trust men because they have rarely been anything to her but a leering eye. Her surroundings won't allow for such sensitivity but she allows herself only what is necessary to sustain her heart. When she falls in love with Tom, it is the first time that anyone has loved her for her and she is conflicted.

In the era before the Production Code, Morocco shows us Dietrich at her most fearless. This is the film in which she marches into the cabaret in a tux and plants a kiss on a female guest. Her wardrobe isn't simply a parade of outfits to display her legs but a series of different looks that calculate her fearlessness. It made her irresistible because she never fit the mold of the predictable starlet, all dresses and love-starved whining. Dietrich was a combination of lady and sex symbol - if you wanted her, you felt that you had to earn it.

I think that Morocco is the film that defines her as an actor. It is her best remembered film and the only performance for which she received an Oscar nomination. Her brilliance in Morocco is her ability to use her sensuous body as a survival tactic in a man's world. You sense that she has used it to keep herself alive but her sad eyes suggest a weariness, a hope for something better, some sense of freedom that is eluding her. In Tom, she seems to view a better future but one that would remove her method of survival and leave her open and unguarded. That may have given her academy attention for this film but left her out of the loop playing harder-edged characters in Shanghai Express, Dishonored, Desire and Destry Rides Again. I think they feared her, I think they feared her strength, professionally, sexually, physically and emotionally, she was someone they weren't comfortable with because she was unlike anything they had ever seen.

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