Oscar Nomination Predictions 2021

Here we are once again, awaiting the announcement of the coveted Oscar nominations. It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since the last one, but that's probably because it hasn't been. The elongated 2020 season has accordingly created a slightly abbreviated 2021 season. But there was still plenty of time for filmmakers to release some entertaining and award-worthy movies.

I've still got a lot to catch up on, but my favourites so far include Being the Ricardos, CODA and Tick, Tick... Boom, all three of which could quite reasonably see their names on the Best Picture contenders list (and potentially several other categories) come Tuesday. Another film I really enjoyed this season is The Harder They Fall, though I expect that may struggle to get nominated for anything. Its best shot is Best Original Song, but even I haven't predicted it securing that nod.

Dune and The Power of the Dog are poised to be the nomination leaders and my predictions reflect that. West Side Story and Belfast will likely see a strong showing, too. As for the rest of my guesses, we'll see how it all pans out. If you're interested in assessing my powers of Oscar prognostication, here are my nomination predictions for the 94th Academy Awards.

Before I sign off, though, here's something to look out for when the nominees are announced in a little over 24 hours. For the last two years running, one of the Best International Feature (formerly Best Foreign Language Film) nominees has also found itself on the Best Documentary Feature shortlist - Honeyland in 2019 and Collective in 2020. Surprisingly, it had never happened prior to that, and perhaps even more surprisingly, it's likely to happen for a third year in a row, thanks to Denmark's Flee. And although I've only pegged it for those two nominations, there's a decent chance it'll pull a third citation for Best Animated Feature, which would make it the first film to receive nods in all three of those categories. Never thought I'd get this excited about a Danish animated documentary, but that's the effect the Oscars have on me, I guess.

1935 - The Informer

Happy New Year! Awards season is beginning to ramp up and there are a lot of exciting titles in the running, barely any of which I've seen as yet. I did get the chance to watch Encanto with my family the other night and thoroughly enjoyed it. No doubt we'll be hearing its name mentioned when the Best Animated Film nominations are announced. And with new films from Oscar-bait directors Anderson, Branagh, Campion, McKay, Scott and Spielberg, among many others, I'm looking forward to potentially adding some new favourites to my all-time list.

For now, let's begin the new year with one more of 1935's Best Picture contenders...


The Informer
Director:
John Ford
Screenplay:
Dudley Nichols

(based on the novel by Liam O'Flaherty)
Starring:
Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster, Margot Grahame, Wallace Ford, Una O'Connor
Academy Awards:
6 nominations
4 wins, including Best Director and Best Actor (McLaglen)

It's 1922 in Dublin during the Irish War of Independence and Irish outcast Gypo Nolan (McLaglen) wanders the streets in a melancholy state. He stumbles across a poster offering a £20 reward for the capture of one of his old friends, Frankie McPhillip (Ford), with whom he fought against the British. Gypo's girlfriend, Katie (Grahame), dreams of escaping her troubled life in Ireland, but moving to America doesn't come cheap. In fact, rather coincidentally, two tickets to America cost exactly £20. No points for guessing what happens next.

The Informer is a keen study in guilt, specifically the behaviour of a reluctant snitch. Director John Ford knows how to create tension and he expertly conveys the anxiety Gypo feels. Taking place over the course of a single evening, the story moves at a slow and very suspenseful pace. Joseph H. August's photography is stunning, a fine example of film noir cinematography, despite the film not really falling into the film noir genre. The moody lighting streaking across the fog, along with some superb shot composition, makes for some captivating visuals.

The performances from most of the cast are perhaps more melodramatic than average for this era - and I'm not just talking about the atrocious Irish accents. Nonetheless, despite McLaglen's overacting, he ended up winning the Best Actor Oscar. If I had the vote, I undoubtedly would have voted for any of the three nominees from Mutiny on the Bounty over McLaglen. I wonder if those three did in fact split the vote, allowing McLaglen to slip through. Then again, overacting wasn't as distasteful back then, so maybe the majority of Academy voters genuinely appreciated McLaglen's performance. For my money, Preston Foster (pictured) was the standout. Maybe he was aided by a more stoic character but he seemed to be less melodramatic than the rest.

The film garnered six nominations, though not for cinematography, sadly. Its main rival was Mutiny on the Bounty, which happened to be nominated in exactly the same six categories. The Informer was the big winner on Oscar night, taking home four awards, the most of any film that year. But Mutiny on the Bounty had the last laugh by taking out Best Picture.

1935 - The Lives of a Bengal Lancer

The Emmys, television's equivalent to the Oscars, begins voting today to select its nominees. One of the perks of all the (tiny) parts I played on American TV shows over the last few years is that I got to join the Television Academy, allowing me to vote in the Emmys. And oof, I thought it was difficult finding time to watch movies. The sheer volume of Emmy-eligible content is entirely overwhelming. It would be literally impossible to watch every episode of every show vying for a nomination, so if you have any recommendations of shows that I absolutely shouldn't miss, please help me whittle down my shortlist.

Meanwhile, here's another picture in contention for the 1935 Best Picture Oscar...

The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
Director:
Henry Hathaway
Screenplay:
Waldemar Young, John L. Balderston, Achmed Abdullah, Grover Jones, William Slavens McNutt

(suggested by the novel by Francis Yeats-Brown)
Starring:
Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone, Richard Cromwell, Guy Standing, C. Aubrey Smith, Kathleen Burke, Douglass Dumbrille
Academy Awards:
7 nominations
1 win, for Best Assistant Director

The recalcitrant Lieutenant McGregor (Cooper) is serving in British India with the Bengal Lancers, soon joined by newcomers Lieutenants Forsythe (Tone) and Stone (Cromwell), the latter being the son of the unit's colonel (Standing). The Lancers are attempting to prevent a potential incursion led by Mohammed Khan (Dumbrille), but their individual loyalties to the regiment are tested at every turn.

The Lives of a Bengal Lancer is often classified as a war movie yet, in truth, it doesn't feature a lot of actual war. There's really only one battle scene, appearing right at the end of the film, though it's so spectacularly staged, including some impressive stunt work, that it makes up for the prior lack of thrilling combat. That said, there's plenty of adventure and drama, so it certainly remains a gripping yarn, if a little clichéd at times, exploring the conflict between military loyalty and individual morality. There are several sequences involving subordinates disobeying orders in an attempt to save their fellow soldiers from doom. Indeed, one of the main relationships in the story, that of the stereotypical military dad who doesn't know how to show emotion and his largely incompetent son who just wants to make his dad proud, is representative of the struggle between military discipline and humanity.

This film also lays claim to being the genesis of the "we have ways of making you talk" trope, often spoken by a villain excited by the thought of torturing the hero. The original line here is actually "We have ways to make men talk" and it's a testament to the excellent (and Oscar-nominated, by the way) script. Despite some of the situations and characters feeling a bit trite, the dialogue is top-notch. Subtext abounds and expository speeches are avoided, and I'm a sucker for a script that doesn't spell everything out all the time, so this was right up my alley.

I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but the entire cast is impressive. Perhaps I'm harbouring a latent prejudice that old movies must necessarily contain over-the-top acting so it's always a surprise when they don't. I mean, to be fair, these films obviously can't compare to the naturalism of modern acting, but it's never quite as terrible as I imagine it's going to be. Either that or I'm just getting used to the ham. In any case, the ensemble here is genuinely pleasant to watch, with Franchot Tone being the standout, in my opinion. He supplies most of the comic relief for the film, but it's all an understated tongue-in-cheek humour and not at all slapsticky. Sadly, though, none of the cast were nominated for Oscars. Of the picture's seven nominations, it only walked away with one award, namely Best Assistant Director.

1935 - Ruggles of Red Gap

One of the things I miss about living in L.A. (and New York, for that matter) is the prevalence of revival cinemas. Being the home of Hollywood, there was never a shortage of film events to attend and I particularly loved going to see classic movies at the New Beverly and the Egyptian, among many others. The options in Sydney for this type of thing are limited at best, though with new movies relatively scarce in the last 12 months, many mainstream cinemas here have been adding older classics to their rosters, so there's perhaps a larger selection than usual right now. In my younger days, however, I lived near the spectacular Orpheum, where I managed to see 70mm prints of Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia. I also saw midnight screenings of the original Star Wars trilogy at the Randwick Ritz, which, along with their current prolonged retrospectives of Charlie Chaplin, Pedro Almodovar and Nicole Kidman films, have several Bette Davis vehicles scheduled in the upcoming weeks and months. There's a handful of Best Picture nominees in there, so I may catch one of Davis' films on the big screen to begin the next year of review.

First, though, I'll need to finish 1935's crop of nominees, which includes...

Ruggles of Red Gap
Director:
Leo McCarey
Screenplay:
Walter DeLeon, Harlan Thompson, Humphrey Pearson

(based on the novel by Harry Leon Wilson)
Starring:
Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, ZaSu Pitts, Roland Young, Leila Hyams
Academy Awards:
1 nomination
0 wins

This awards year was a bit of a Laughton-fest. Charles Laughton stars in yet another nominee, this time as an obedient and experienced British manservant named Marmaduke Ruggles. While in France, his employer, the Earl of Burnstead (Young), regrettably loses Ruggles in a poker game to a newly wealthy American couple, Effie (Boland) and Egbert Floud (Ruggles; that's Charlie Ruggles the actor, not Marmaduke Ruggles the character, obviousy). So off Ruggles goes to the Flouds hometown in the American West, where both Ruggles and Egbert have trouble adjusting.

Perhaps it's a little reductionist to label Ruggles of Red Gap as a classic fish-out-of-water story, but it certainly presents that way. That said, the fish doesn't actually get out of the water until about thirty minutes into the film when Ruggles finally arrives in America. And soon after, there is admittedly a deeper theme underlying the shenanigans. It's really about a man finding his own worth and not just succumbing to his lot in life.

There is a modicum of American patriotism exuding from the picture, too. Ruggles recites Lincoln's famed Gettysburg Address almost as if he's hearing the words "all men are created equal" for the first time, which contributes to the film's definite vibe of moral superiority over Britain's class system. But I'm not sure comparing Ruggles' situation to slavery is all that fair. Plus, of course, the irony that the only black person in their circle is a literal servant seems to be lost on everyone involved. But if we were to pick apart the problematic themes in films of this era, we could be here a while.

This is one of three 1935 Best Picture contenders Charles Laughton appears in and it's such a refreshing change of pace for him. As Javert and Captain Bligh, he brilliantly encapsulates the hard-nosed and unlikable authority figure, so it's wonderful to see him have some fun with a character on the other end of the spectrum. He's endearing and funny as Ruggles, particularly when he's smiling drunk (pictured). His support cast are also fantastic, especially Roland Young as a nobleman with a lost soul, and Leila Hyams as the charming and age-inappropriate love interest of said nobleman.

Ruggles of Red Gap belongs to a relatively short list of films whose Best Picture nod was its sole Oscar nomination. This phenomenon occurred a bunch of times in the 1930s, but it's been almost seven decades since the last time it happened, which was for 1943's The Ox-Bow Incident.

1935 - Les Misérables

This year's extended Oscar season finally wrapped up at the end of April and, while my prediction result was fairly average for me (17 correct out of 23 categories), my prediction about my predictions was pretty spot on. I figured I'd struggle with a few up-in-the-air categories and, indeed, I didn't succeed in the crap shoot that was the Best Actress race. I did, however, peg the similarly unpredictable Best Film Editing category, but that was essentially my only success from those unsettled races. On the other hand, I surmised that this might be the first time in six years I correctly identify the Best Picture winner, and that prophecy was indeed fulfilled, thanks to Nomadland.

While we wait (a slightly shorter amount of time than usual) for the next Oscar season, let's take a look at another nominee from the Best Picture race of 1935...


Les Misérables
Director:
Richard Boleslawski
Screenplay:
W.P. Lipscomb
(based on the novel by Victor Hugo)
Starring:
Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke, Rochelle Hudson, Frances Drake, John Beal
Academy Awards:
4 nominations
0 wins

Not to be confused with the Hugh Jackman-Russell Crowe musical version (also nominated for Best Picture) or, for that matter, any other adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic novel, this one stars Fredric March as the 19th century French peasant Jean Valjean, who is sent to the galleys for stealing bread. While there, he encounters a humourless by-the-books guard named Javert (Laughton). Upon release, Valjean struggles to re-enter society until a kindly bishop (Hardwicke) gives him a break. Several years later, living as Monsieur Madeleine, Valjean owns a factory and has become so well-loved among his peers that he is offered the mayorship of his adopted town. But Javert, now a police inspector, is suspicious of the new mayor and may uncover his secret past as a convict.

For modern tastes, this adaptation of Les Misérables is quite stagey and contrived at times, which is perhaps something you'd expect from a musical, but alas, this version has no songs. The most egregious artificial moments, however, occur fairly early on in the film with the latter half achieving a somewhat more realistic tone. Still, it was made in the 1930s, so... well, cheese was the name of the game.

Despite all the artifice in the story's execution, Victor Hugo's source material, having clearly stood the test of time, is obviously gripping enough to keep the film entertaining, even at its most cheesy. Oddly, though, Eponine's death (sorry, spoiler alert) is mostly glossed over, a missed opportunity for a melodramatic moment, one that the famous musical adaptation would later accomplish perfectly. This film also inexplicably changed Valjean's prison number to 2906, instead of the novel's 24601, which is much catchier, though its catchiness may again be due to the Broadway musical's legacy.

But enough of these unfair comparisons to the evocative power of music. This picture is indeed very watchable, thanks in large part to some genuinely compelling performances. Fredric March as Jean Valjean is often touching, though in the first section of the film, his character seems to be perpetually confused in a rather overwrought fashion. In fact, as Valjean the pauper, March seems to have chosen to embrace the stereotype, then later, as Valjean the respected member of society, the portrayal becomes more naturalistic.

Opposite March is Charles Laughton, typecast as the stoic prig (indeed, this was the same year he played Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty), and he is exceptionally powerful as Valjean's ruthless nemesis Javert. In a standout role is Frances Drake (pictured above, with March), who makes the most of her relatively small but showy part as the jealous Eponine, despite her eyebrows being drawn all the way to her ears.

The film didn't win any Oscars from its four nominations. Along with Best Picture, it was cited for Cinematography and Film Editing, which are both well deserved since the film is beautifully cinematic. You'd think the director should have gotten recognised for that, too, but Richard Boleslawski sadly missed out. His deputy, Eric Stacey, however, did get a nod in the now defunct Best Assistant Direction category.