1967 - Doctor Dolittle

Hurricane Irene swept through New York City on the weekend and it looks like we got lucky. Kat and I in particular hardly noticed a thing. As the top of the hurricane hit, the bulk of the wind force seemed to come in from a north-easterly direction. Rather fortunately, the windows in our apartment face south and west. I imagine the other side of the building felt the barrage considerably more. By the time the wind changed direction as the tail end of the hurricane arrived later on Sunday, its strength had weakened and the rain had all but stopped. It could not have been a more convenient chain of events.

As the stores reopened and the subway trains began to roll again, I watched the final nominee from 1967's Best Picture competition is...

Doctor Dolittle
Director:
Richard Fleischer
Screenplay:
Leslie Bricusse
(based on the novels by Hugh Lofting)
Starring:
Rex Harrison, Samantha Eggar, Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough, Peter Bull, Muriel Lander, William Dix, Geoffrey Holder
Academy Awards:
9 nominations
2 wins, including Best Song (Talk to the Animals)

In the English seaside town of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, local Irish merchant Matthew Mugg (Newley) introduces a naive young boy named Tommy Stubbins (Dix) to the greatest animal doctor who ever lived. Doctor John Dolittle (Harrison) began his career as a regular medical doctor, but soon tired of human contact, preferring to spend time with animals instead. With no apparent formal training, Doctor Dolittle simply switches specialties and becomes a veterinarian and, thanks to the teachings of his pet parrot, he has now learned nearly 500 animal languages and can freely communicate with the dozens of animals in his care.

When Dolittle is delivered a Pushmi-Pullyu, a rare beast akin to the llama except for its two heads, the three friends trot off to the local circus to share it with the world. After a horrible misunderstanding in which two men mistake a seal for an old woman and then witness Dolittle throw it into the sea, he finds himself in court up against an unsympathetic judge (Bull) who sentences him to an insane asylum. Matthew and Tommy aid his escape and, along with the judge's pretty but brusque niece Emma (Eggar), the four set sail in search of the wandering Sea-Star Island as well as Dolittle's ultimate find, the Great Pink Sea Snail, a creature most experts believe to be mythical.

Doctor Dolittle is very much a children's movie. It's silly, fantastical and plays like a pantomime. The central conceit itself, that of a man who can converse with animals, is obviously pretty ridiculous. Peppered throughout are several childish gags, including a horse with glasses reading from an eye chart. While it would not be unfair to label this picture as immature, that is not necessarily a criticism. It's just that you may need to still have your baby teeth to get the most out of it. I mean, what ten-year-old wouldn't like a story about a giant pink sea snail? Curiously, though, with such a clever and witty rhyming scheme, the lyrics seem decidedly advanced for the little ones to truly appreciate. The Academy certainly appreciated them, however. They awarded Talk to the Animals their Best Song award.

Visually, it is an impressive film. With some aesthetically pleasing locations and a host of interesting designs, Doctor Dolittle at times is genuinely majestic. It also scored an Oscar for Special Visual Effects, and while there are indeed some effects worthy of oohs and aahs, some of the puppetry is afflicted with a slight case of lifelessness. However, the most incredible feat of the film is undeniably the animal wrangling. Kudos to the trainers who succeed in eliciting charmingly anthropomorphic performances from their pets. Animals of all shapes and sizes adorn the set, often dozens at the same time. I shudder to think of the clean-up that was required afterwards. It must have been a smelly set.

Now, what can I say about Rex Harrison (pictured) and his talky singing? It may have worked well for him in My Fair Lady, perhaps due to the loquaciousness of the lyrics he was given to perform, but it falls rather flat here. The effect is similar to watching a rehearsal, so much does it take away from the numbers' musicality and from Harrison's otherwise delightful performance. Anthony Newley - who is also known for his musical collaboration with Doctor Dolittle's composer and screenwriter, Leslie Bricusse - delivers an amiable performance as the Irish charmer. Also watchable is a young (well, younger) Richard Attenborough as the circus owner, Mr. Blossom.

Ultimately, Doctor Dolittle is a fluffy, silly movie, which makes it all the more surprising that it made the Best Picture shortlist. Mind you, they loved their musicals back then, so perhaps it's not as surprising as it would be if it were to happen today, but still a little puzzling.

1964 - My Fair Lady

Okay, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. My predictions for the Best Actor and Best Actress categories, followed by the big one, Best Picture.

Up In The Air's George Clooney had the edge up until recently, but now it seems that the Best Actor Oscar will probably end up in the hands of Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. I expect Colin Firth to also receive a nomination for his role in A Single Man, and Morgan Freeman should pick up a nod for portraying Nelson Mandela in Invictus. Barring any upsets, the fifth spot will most likely go to The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner.

Best Actress was almost wide open until a couple of weeks ago when Sandra Bullock seemed to take the edge for The Blind Side. The woman with the most acting nominations of all time, Meryl Streep, is looking fairly certain to add to her collection for Julie & Julia. Two newcomers should also pick up nominations, Gabourey Sidibe for Precious and Carey Mulligan for An Education, leaving one oldcomer to take the final slot, Helen Mirren for The Last Station.

Despite a fair amount of discontent with the Academy's decision to raise the number of Best Picture nominees to ten, I actually like the idea. For one thing, it certainly makes this predicting game a lot more interesting. If there were only five nominees, this year would be quite simple. Avatar, The Hurt Locker and Up In The Air (one of which will win), joined by Precious and Inglourious Basterds. Up will now have the chance to become the second animated film to be nominated for the top prize. The last four positions are a little vague, but let's go with Invictus, An Education, A Serious Man and District 9. As with most of the other categories, I have several alternatives, but I'll stand by these predictions for now.

In a rather exciting coincidence, I was notified this week of my success at being cast as Col. Pickering in My Fair Lady, one of two productions in which I will be performing at the Allenberry Playhouse for their summer season. How I'm going to keep up this project while I'm in Pennsylvania for two and a half months, I'm not sure. But that's another story. Last night, I completed the list of Best Picture nominees from 1964 by watching My Fair Lady with a slightly different perspective...

My Fair Lady

Director:

George Cukor

Screenplay:

Alan Jay Lerner

(based on the stage musical by Lerner & Loewe, and the play "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw)

Starring:

Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White

Academy Awards:

12 nominations

8 wins, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Harrison)

A classic film adapted from a classic stage musical adapted from a classic play, My Fair Lady is indeed a classic tale. Professor Henry Higgins (Harrison) is a pompous and elitist phonetics expert, able to pinpoint a speaker's geographical background based on their dialect. Disgusted by the way in which Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn), a Cockney flower girl, butchers the English language, Higgins makes a bet with fellow linguist Colonel Pickering (Hyde-White) that he can transform her into a refined lady with an eloquent upper-class accent within six months.

My Fair Lady is jam packed with oodles of familiar songs to get your toes tapping - Wouldn't It Be Loverly?, The Rain in Spain, Get Me To The Church on Time - to name a few. And although these numbers are a lot less gratuitous than those from Mary Poppins, the story is still a little slow to progress, the whole film coming in at a tad under three hours. Most of the drag is near the beginning, giving way to a more entertaining latter half.

As with any musical, the contrived convention of characters bursting into song for no apparent reason is taken for granted, but there a few instances in My Fair Lady that seem to take that practice one step further. The opening of the Ascot scene is particularly surreal. And in more than one scene, the extras freeze mid-motion in unison, a pretension that probably looks fabulous on stage, but seemed somehow odd here.

Nonetheless, both cast and script combine to create some wonderfully witty moments. Rex Harrison, despite his renowned speaking style of singing, is charmingly cheeky as Higgins. Such a perfectly dry sense of comic timing. And the lyrics he gets to deliver are sublimely clever. Who thinks to rhyme 'Budapest' with 'ruder pest'? The exquisite Audrey Hepburn is quite simply a delight as Eliza, even if her singing voice is dubbed. She's so magnificently annoying before her transformation, eliciting from me an involuntary cringe each time she screeched, "I'm a good girl, I am!" And even though I know less than nothing about fashion, her gown at the Ascot (pictured) is absolutely stunning. And that hat! Later, in the ball scene, her hair seems to defy gravity. The hair and make-up and costume departments really went to town on Ms. Hepburn.

1934 - The Gay Divorcee

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Let's take a look now at another contender for 1934's Best Picture prize...

The Gay Divorcee
Director:
Mark Sandrich
Screenplay:
George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost and Edward Kaufman
(based on the Broadway musical "Gay Divorce" by Dwight Taylor, Kenneth Webb and Samuel Hoffenstein)
Starring:
Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore
Academy Awards:
5 nominations
1 win, for Best Song

After an impossibly adorable meet-cute in London, famous dancer Guy Holden (Astaire) is besotted by fellow American Mimi Glossop (Rogers). She, however, is entirely uninterested in him. After a second chance meeting, Mimi, still impervious to Guy's charms, reluctantly accepts his phone number. Excited, Guy waits impatiently by the phone for weeks to no avail.

Meanwhile, Mimi is in the midst of attempting to secure a divorce, employing the services of a somewhat incompetent divorce lawyer Egbert Fitzgerald (Horton), who also happens to be Guy's best friend, unbeknownst to Mimi. On Egbert's advice, Mimi agrees to travel to Brightbourne, a seaside resort where Egbert has hired a guileless Italian (Rhodes) to act as her lover, hoping this will convince Mimi's husband to grant the divorce. Unaware that Mimi is in fact the mysterious woman that Guy hasn't stopped talking about for weeks, Egbert invites Guy along to Brightbourne, causing an inevitable spanner in the works.

Yet another romantic comedy from the not-so-short list of 1934 Best Picture nominees, The Gay Divorcee finds its humour by engaging that classic farcical trope, the misunderstanding. And it does it rather successfully, eliciting some solid laughs from its audience. It is also unashamedly musical. Of course, what else would you expect from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? But unlike some of the other films with which it competed for the Academy's top honour, this picture doesn't try to surreptitiously insert gratuitous musical numbers into an otherwise naturalistic style. The Gay Divorcee, by contrast, wears its musical style on its sleeve. There are larger-than-life dance numbers and emotional solos, and people break into song and dance for no particular reason.

Despite its liberal serving of music and choreography, however, many of the songs seem irrelevant to the story. Some, even, are clearly just filler - silly interludes with no other purpose than to entertain. (So, I suppose this film is also guilty of gratuitous musical numbers, after all.) One such culprit is the picture's featured song, The Continental. It may have won the Academy's first ever Best Song award, but from my perspective, the lyrics and melody are a little bland, and considering it's not a particularly well-known song today, it evidently didn't stand the test of time. Thankfully, though, the song is followed by a grand dance sequence that is pure delight.

What is perhaps most disappointing about the film's soundtrack is that only one song from the original Broadway musical made its way to the screen - all the more astonishing when you realise that Cole Porter was the composer and lyricist of the stage version. His classic Night and Day is the sole number that survived the adaptation, and it shines as the most memorable song in the film.

Fred Astaire's agility and charisma are on full display, as you would expect from such a spectacular showman. His tap dancing prowess is especially phenomenal, and his ability to make it appear so easy is simply astounding. He seems amazingly comfortable when he moves, obviously enjoying himself. Together with Ginger Rogers, the couple (pictured) are elegant and graceful, divine to watch. The same cannot be said for their costar Edward Everett Horton. While he is a delightfully funny and amiable actor, his vocal and movement skills leave much to be desired. He seems awkward and uncomfortable in his only song, a silly and superfluous duet with a pre-famous Betty Grable. Paving the way for Rex Harrison, Horton half speaks the lyrics and is often out of time. Erik Rhodes and Eric Blore, both reprising their roles from the Broadway musical, deliver playfully entertaining performances as the clueless Italian would-be lothario and the eager British waiter, respectively.