Wesley’s Week (Dec. 4-10, 2006)

by Wesley

Those of you who know me (and if you know me, oh man, I do wish you all the best) realize that I am an entertainment industry freak, particularly regarding the 20th century show business world. Well, one of my crazed long-term goals is to watch every movie that has been nominated Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, better know as the Oscars. So far, the fruits of my labor have been focused on the early years and have resulted in me seeing all the Best Picture winners in the first 30 years of the Academy’s history save one (Hamlet in 1948, if you must know), as well as more than 90 percent of all the nominees in that same period (1928-1958).

With the holiday season now in full swing, I think it is a good time to offer my list of what I consider to be the best of those I have seen for your possible purchase. These I endorse wholeheartedly as classics from the “Golden Age” of the Silver Screen in the 1930s alone that hold up excellently some 70 years later:

1) All Quiet on the Western Front (Winner, 1930): The first truly great talkie, this moving anti-war film features incredible battlefield sequences and outstanding direction by Lewis Milestone. A deserving member of the United States National Film Registry.

2) Grand Hotel (Winner, 1932) – Greta Garbo. Joan Crawford. John Barrymore. All together in one film, acting their hearts out. The type of exquisite drama that makes you say “They don’t make them like that any more” in regret.

3) The Thin Man (Nominee, 1934) – I will probably get criticism for this, but I enjoyed this film even better than that year’s winner, It Happened One Night. Myrna Loy and William Powell, two great actors in their own right, are at their peak in this wonderful concoction mixing equal measures of wit, charm and mystery.

4) Mutiny on the Bounty (Winner, 1935) – A rousing telling of how Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) assumed leadership over the sadistic Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton), filmed partly on location on the Pacific Ocean. The 1962 remake with Marlon Brando doing an odd version of Gable’s character also received a Best Picture nomination, but it cannot hold a candle to the original even in Technicolor.

5) The Adventures of Robin Hood (Nominee, 1938) – Everything a swashbuckler could and should be, and a lot more entertaining than that year’s winner, You Can’t Take It With You. Errol Flynn deserved a Best Actor nomination as the title character, who attempts to save England from the evil reign of Prince John while romancing Maid Marian, played by Olivia de Havilland.

These are my top picks, but I also enjoyed very much The Champ, Shanghai Express, 42nd Street, I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Lady for a Day, The Private Life of Henry VIII, Captain Blood, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Naughty Marietta, Top Hat, Dodsworth, San Francisco, The Story of Louis Pasteur, The Life of Emile Zola, Stage Door and Pygmalion … just to name a few. If none of them ring a bell with you, go out and buy or rent a copy of them, and don’t forget to thank me for recommending them to you afterward.

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