Sunday, June 18, 2017

1946: The Lost Weekend

I'm starting to write this by looking at the list at the bottom. When this started, there were several movies that I had to sit through that drove me insane. I was really looking forward to watching Grand Hotel and Cimarron weigh down the bottom of the list. After eighteen movies, they really shouldn't remain in the top ten, and only a few places above Gone With the Wind. It looks like so many of the classic movies of the forties didn't win the Oscar.

So what was good about The Lost Weekend? It shows the dark side of alcohol (until the last two minutes, that is) and more of a reality of alcoholism. Perhaps it was one of the first to really do so.

A bartender has a pretty good line in speaking about a shot of whiskey. "One's too many and a hundred's not enough."

The best part is when the main character, Don, gets caught stealing a purse, he gets kicked out of the bar. The piano man at the bar starts to sing, "Somebody stole a purse... everybody!" and then the rest of the bar sings along as he gets kicked out. That was pretty good. I think we're probably getting pretty close to the having the technology to have similar scarlet songs follow around criminals

But I didn't care for Ray Milland. The Wikipedia article on The Lost Weekend states that "The film was intended to have no musical score, but preview audiences laughed at what they considered Milland's overwrought performance." As far as I'm concerned, the score didn't cover his Oscar winning performance enough.


NEXT WEEK: 1947 - The Best Years of Our Lives

Oscar Project Rankings:


  1. Casablanca (1944)
  2. It Happened One Night (1935)
  3. All Quiet on the Western Front (1931)
  4. Rebecca (1941)
  5. Mutiny on the Bounty (1936)
  6. You Can't Take It With You (1939) 
  7. Gone With the Wind (1940)
  8. The Life of Emile Zola (1938)
  9. Grand Hotel (1933)
  10. Cimarron (1932)
  11. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
  12. Broadway Melody (1930)
  13. The Lost Weekend (1946)
  14. Going My Way (1945)
  15. How Green Was My Valley (1942)
  16. Wings (1929)
  17. Mrs. Miniver (1943)
  18. Cavalcade (1934)

Saturday, June 10, 2017

1945: Going My Way


It's a... nice movie. But it's not particularly interesting.

The first thirty minutes were not great. I had to stop to take a nap so that my nap wouldn't be during the next thirty minutes. But it got a bit better from there.

This movie is about a Catholic priest. One of the subplots is about him working with a bunch of boys as he turns them into a choir. It was all innocent, and I'm sure that viewers in 1944 thought nothing of it. But watching it in 2017, especially after the Oscar winner from a few years ago, Spotlight, there were some bits that are a bit cringeworthy.

Another of the subplots, one that ties in with the boys later, involves Father O'Malley's music. O'Malley, played by Bing Crosby, is a song writer. Going My Way isn't just the name of the movie but it's the name of the song he wants to sell. The funny thing is that it isn't that great of a song. In fact, that's acknowledged in the movie with the music publishers not thinking much of it either. But it's featured twice and the movie is named after it.  But then he sings another of the songs O'Malley wrote, "Swinging on a Star." It's a much more fun song, and one that has survived. So since it's a better song, how about naming the movie after that one? And feature it twice instead of the other?



One good thing about Going My Way is that it wasn't predictable. All throughout the movie I though I knew what was going to happen next and which direction the various subplots were headed. I was just about always wrong. So it's got that going for it, which is nice. I would have rather watched Double Indemnity, which was nominated. It looks like I'll get a film noir fix with the next movie.





NEXT WEEK: 1946 - The Lost Weekend

Oscar Project Rankings:



  1. Casablanca (1944)
  2. It Happened One Night (1935)
  3. All Quiet on the Western Front (1931)
  4. Rebecca (1941)
  5. Mutiny on the Bounty (1936)
  6. You Can't Take It With You (1939) 
  7. Gone With the Wind (1940)
  8. The Life of Emile Zola (1938)
  9. Grand Hotel (1933)
  10. Cimarron (1932)
  11. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
  12. Broadway Melody (1930)
  13. Going My Way (1945)
  14. How Green Was My Valley (1942)
  15. Wings (1929)
  16. Mrs. Miniver (1943)
  17. Cavalcade (1934)