Oscar nominations: William Dieterle (director), Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg (screenplay), Paul Muni (actor), Anton Grot (art direction), Russell Saunders (assistant director), Max Steiner (music), Nathan Levinson (sound)
William Dieterles The Life of Émile Zola was a follow-up to his highly successful biopic The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), with actor Paul Muni in another story about a Frenchman of principle and enlightenment overcoming prejudice. At the beginning Zola struggles to establish himself as a writer, until the publication of Nana, his sensational novel about a prostitute. Success follows success, and Zola is set to enjoy a prosperous old age when he is visited by the wife of Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer falsely accused of spying for the Germans and sent to Devils Island. Zolas conscience is pricked and, in a big set piece tailor-made for Muni, he reads out his famous article JAccuse to a newspaper editor. In a typical Warner Brotherss montage sequence, the newspaper staff gather around to listen, presses spew out the article, and people rush to buy the paper.
The film won an Oscar for Best Picture and its underlying seriousness is impressive. Yet though Dreyfus was the victim of anti-Semitic prejudice, not once in The Life of Émile Zola is the word Jew uttered. Evidently, Warner Brothers feared that in 1937, with the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, pictures about anti-Jewish feeling would inflame the very prejudices they were designed to expose. EB
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1930s
MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937)
U.S. (Paramount) 91m BW
Director: Leo McCarey
Producer: Leo McCarey, Adolph Zukor
Screenplay: Viña Delmar, from the novel The Years Are So Long by Josephine Lawrence
Photography: William C. Mellor
Music: George Antheil, Victor Young, Sam Coslow, Leo Robin, Jean Schwartz
Cast: Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi, Fay Bainter, Thomas Mitchell, Porter Hall, Barbara Read, Maurice Moscovitch, Elisabeth
Risdon, Minna Gombell, Ray Mayer, Ralph Remley, Louise Beavers, Louis Jean Heydt, Gene Morgan
In this one-of-a-kind masterpiece by one of the greatest American directors, Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi play Bark and Lucy Cooper, an elderly couple faced with financial disaster and forced to throw themselves on the mercy of their middle-aged children. The childrens first step is to separate the two of them so that the inconvenience of hosting them can be divided. Gradually, the old peoples self-confidence and dignity are eroded, until they submit to an arrangement whereby one of them will stay in a nursing home in New York, and the other will go to California.
Leo McCareys direction in Make Way for Tomorrow is beyond praise. All of the actors are expansive and natural, and the generosity McCarey shows toward his characters is unstinting. He demonstrates an exquisite sense of when to cut from his central couple to reveal the attitudes of others, without suggesting either that their compassion is condescending or that their indifference is wicked, and without forcing our tears or rage (which would be a way of forfeiting them). There is nothing contrived about McCareys handling of the story, and thus no escaping its poignancy.
Two examples will suffice to indicate the films extraordinary discretion. During the painful sequence in which Lucys presence inadvertently interferes with her daughter-in-laws attempt to host a bridge party, Lucy receives a phone call from Bark. Because she talks loudly on the phoneone of several annoying traits that McCarey and screenwriter Viña Delmar dont hesitate to give the elderly couplethe guests pause in their games to listen. Their reactions (not emphasized, but merely shown) mix annoyance, discomfort, and sorrow.
The last section of the film, dealing with the couples brief reuniting and impromptu last idyll in Manhattan, is sublime. McCarey keeps us aware of the sympathy of outsiders (a car salesman, a coat-check girl, a hotel manager, a bandleader), but never imposes their reactions on us through superfluous reverse shots. Meanwhile, Lucy and Bark are constantly shown together in the same compositions. In its passionate commitment to their private universe, Make Way for Tomorrow is truly, deeply moving. CFu
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1930s
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES (1937)
U.S. (Walt Disney) 83m Technicolor
Producer: Walt Disney
Screenplay: Ted Sears, Richard Creedon
Photography: Maxwell Morgan
Music: Frank Churchill, Leigh Harline, Paul J. Smith
Cast: Roy Atwell, Stuart Buchanan, Adriana Caselotti, Eddie Collins, Pinto Colvig, Marion Darlington, Billy Gilbert, Otis Harlan, Lucille La Verne, James MacDonald, Scotty Mattraw, Moroni Olsen, Harry Stockwell
Oscar: (honorary awardone statuette, seven miniature statuettes)
Oscar nomination: Frank Churchill, Leigh Harline, Paul J. Smith (music)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves begins with a slow zoom to a huge castle, where the wicked Queen queries her magic mirror with the immortal words, Mirror mirror, on the wall, whos the fairest one of all? The answer, of course, is her virginal rival Snow White, soon to be the target of her vanity. Like the classic Brothers Grimm story Snow White is based on, you are instantly pulled into this magical and sometime scary world. Yet at the time Hollywood considered Walt Disneys first foray into full-length feature animation something of a folly. Who would sit through a ninety-minute animated film?
Needless to say, Snow White answered that rhetorical question by becoming one of the biggest hits in the history of cinema, solidifying Disneys claim as the worlds foremost animation studio. In fact, advancing the stake was one of Walt Disneys own stated goals for the film. He had already broken the cartoon sound barrier with Steamboat Willy, and a few years later brought animation into vivid color. Snow White was merely the next step forward both artistically as well as financially: feature films meant more box-office sales.