21 Days Til Oscar

For the next twenty-one days we'll be sharing little trivia items as we count down to Hollywood's High Holy Night and surveying each category though we're not ready for the latter part just yet. Sound fun?

 Guess who's the only famous director to ever win exactly 21 nominations? That's Billy Wilder, pictured above with his bounty from The Apartment (1960). He won nominations in Picture, Director, and in the Writing categories over his very long directorial career which stretched from the French language Mauvaise Grain (1934) to the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau comedy Buddy Buddy (1981). His career total: 6 Oscars and a Thalberg!

The only director more celebrated in terms of total nominations in multiple categories is Woody Allen with 24 career nods, the huge bulk of which are for Best Original Screenplay (where he's nominated again this year for Blue Jasmine). Billy Wilder is also in second place in terms of total Best Director nominations with 8 though he shares that honor with Martin Scorsese (nominated again this year as well for The Wolf of Wall Street). First place is William Wyler (Ben Hur) with an incredible 12 Best Director nominations. Wyler is unlikely to ever be overthrown with his nearest living and working rivals so far behind him (Scorsese with 8, Steven Spielberg & Allen with 7 each and all of them senior citizens).

Some Like It Hot (1959) was nominated for 6 Oscars but not Picture or Actress, damnit

What's your favorite Billy Wilder movie?
It's an amazingly tough question since the man made Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Some Like It Hot (1959), and The Apartment (1960) all of which will regular pop up on "Best Movies Ever" lists. 

Double Indemnity (Pre 'Body Heat' Post Coital)

Hit Me With Your Best Shot Episode 4.8

Double bourbon is fine, Walter."

As a baby cinephile in the 1980s I grew up with Body Heat (1981) as my noir of choice. Before I had any biblical knowledge of my own, I was utterly enthralled by Kathleen Turner's come-hither challenge and roaming hands, William Hurt's 'not-too-smart' insatiable lust and that broken window in a sticky Florida summer. For reasons that seem immature/absurd now, I avoided Double Indemnity for many years afterwards feeling 'I'd already seen it'. Never mind that Body Heat was less a remake than an "inspired by" or that Body Heat's reign as the Best of the Neo Noirs does nothing to diminish the bewitching "rotten to the core" vortex of Double Indemnity's scheming plot and sexual shenanigans.

Different noirs for different eras. But the long shadow that Body Heat cast on my early views of this entire genre is probably why my choice for this week's "Best Shot" is this seemingly minor one from Billy Wilder's 1944 classic. 

Seemingly.

This shot occurs at the end of a long "love scene" early in the picture between Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck --  the collected Best Shot articles have many insightful comments about this unimproveable star turn) and Walter (Fred MacMurray) as they dance around their sexual and murderous desires. The scene is filled with talking in the shadows -- I could watch Stanwyck plot silently and minimistically for another two hours on loop --  and three bits of physical intimacy, an arm grab, a kiss and a 'comforting' embrace. The scene is then interrupted by a narrative flashforward. When we return to the scheming duo, they're presented to us like so. Phyllis side-eyes her willing rube, gazes at her hands (a repetitive gesture... just how much blood is on them?) and stands up to leave with this bit of disingenuously banal needinees...

will you phone me?

Double Indemnity has many gorgeous shot compositions involving diagonal shadows and I love all of them. But its visual prowess and ideas extends beyond venetian blinds. This is an atypical shot in the film's visual composition because, despite the square frame, it's very horizontal... as befits a post-coital tableau.

Yes, they've 100% just had sex even if they're still in the same clothes as before the flash-forward. We've never seen Walter with his guard this down though Phyllis, inscrutable Phyllis is still the exact same woman. Sealing the deal of this scene's brilliance for me is the costuming and cinematography: Phyllis has never before been clothed in such a tactile way (fuzzy sweaters must have equalled instant boners back in the 40s and 50s); and the lighting choice is provocatively counterintuitive since it's Phyllis, the not so innocent and virginal, who is bathed in soft light while Walter in shadow.

P.S. A runner up...

This shot, from the final confrontation between Phyllis and her conquest, could inspire novels out of context it's such rich and decadent. In context, which is what we should be talking about, it's a triump of both Art Direction and Cinematography; that same living room, which we've returned to multiple times, never feels as sinister in any other shot. The composition also allows Walter's shadow to enter the frame before him, which is telling, and then has both the regretful man and his dark shadow in frame, both separated. It's also my favorite example of Double Indemnity's great use of venetian blind shadows -- usually involving Walter -- and the diagonal tension they bring to each of his scenes withough the film having to resort to anything as crude as canted camera angles.

Straight Down The Link...
Aliston Tooey on Phyllis' spidery web
Amiresque "drive thru beer!"
Antagony & Ecstasy on Stanwyck's unparalleled femme fatale triumph
Cinesnatch this week's film coincides with some Best Picture Oscar revisionism here
Entertainment Junkie loves Stanwyck's satisfaction
Film Actually 'the stillness speaks volumes'
The Film's The Thing 'a messy bit of business in Aisle 3"
I Am Derreck on Walter's double secret life
Pussy Goes Grrr the scorpion and the frog
Victim of the Time considers the 'ugliness' of Double Indemnity
We Recycle Movies talks LA Architecture and venetian blinds

.... or see all the stills in chronological order

Next Week, Wednesday May 8th:
David Lean's Summertime (1955) with Katharine Hepburn in Venice. Join us by selecting your own choice for "best shot"

Visual Index ~ Double Indemnity's Best Shot(s)

From the moment they met it was murder."

The fact that Barbara Stanwyck never won a competitive Oscar could drive anyone to the deadly deed!

For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot we asked fellow denizens of the web to look at Double Indemnity with us. If you click on any of the still's selected as "Best Shot" after the jump it'll take you to the corresponding article, eleven of them in total.  This movie is a stone cold fox. 

Click to read more ...

The Morning After

We always need a bit of time to recuperate. We'll be wrapping this year's Oscars up tonight through Wednesday. But for now... chilling. It's the morning after.

We've all seen this stone cold classic photo of Faye Dunaway the morning after her Oscar win for Network but Framework was kind enough to share more photos (and other Oscar types) in a slideshow gallery  and I did a little more searching too.

More "Morning After" after you click including Best Scene Steal and 2 Greedy Gretchens.

Click to read more ...

Distant Relatives: The Apartment and Sideways

Robert here w/ Distant Relatives, exploring the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Nice Guys Who Don't Finish At All

Consider the Romantic Comedy as made for men. In this day and age, the genre is so associated with being poor in quality and aiming only for a female demographic, you could easily forget that they used to make 'em good and with male protagonists. Of course, Hollywood making movies by men for men shouldn't be a surprise. And even today, most romantic comedies made to appeal to women are made by men (which is one small part of why they're so bad). That said, the male hero of a Romantic Comedy is quite different from the male hero of any other kind of movie. "Nebbish" is the word that comes to mind. Possibly also "schmuck." Both 1960's The Apartment and 2004's Sideways subscribe to this setup. Both Jack Lemmon's C.C. Baxter and Paul Giamatti's Miles are serious sad sacks, and both films play hard with the "nice guy finishes last" dilemma painting our heroes as upstanding men smeared merely by the actions of their peers, those cads who would seek to give all men a bad name. But the reality in both cases isn't as simple, and these films know it.

 

As The Apartment opens, C.C. Baxter is one of many nameless office clerks. But what sets him apart is a sly deal he's cut for himself. By lending out his apartment for the affairs and liaisons of his superiors, he's set himself up to ascend the corporate ladder with ease. The rub comes when he discovers that Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) the adorable lift operator for whom he pines has been regularly visiting his apartment with his boss, cad of cads, Mr. Sheldrake. In Sideways, Miles too is one of the nameless lonely who trips through life toward increasingly vanishing dreams. He's a writer but not quite fit for success. He's a wine connosieur but not quite enough to be a pro. When his friend Jack suggests he open a wine store, he scoffs. When Jack compliments his writing, he shrugs it off. By comparison, Jack isn't particularly talented in anything other than picking up women which he does... lots. Jack and Miles head for California wine country on a two-man Bachelor Party for Jack where Jack anticipates and finds plenty of tail. Miles, not anticipating it, finds Maya (Virginia Madsen), perhaps his perfect woman.

Turning a Blind Eye to the Not-So-Nice Guy

So what happens to our nice guys? Does C.C. Baxter steal Miss Kubelik away from Sheldrake? Does Miles woo Maya without complications from Jack? First they must overcome a truth of themselves that the women in their lives are sure to discover, and that we the audience slowly come to realize after their charming patheticness wears off. These two nice guys aren't all that nice, not really. Oh they're not terrible people or anything. Theirs are sins of omission. Heck, theirs are lives of omission. Miles and Baxter don't do anything bad because they don't do anything, period. If they seem like nice guys it's often only by comparison. Under the looming shadow of Jack and Sheldrake, Miles and Baxter seem perfectly gentlemanly, but they are really enablers of the behaviors of the men whose lives they seem to eye with jealousy. Not that they want to lie to and betray women. They'd just prefer to not finish last. But they've given up the race, conceded victory to the cheaters and stopped caring about who gets used up on the way to the finish line.

 

With both of these films ending on an ambiguous note, it can't definitively be said that these are stories of the guys who get the girl. More accurately perhaps, these are stories of guys who, with the help of the women they want, come to understand and overcome their own timid failings. They realize that their inaction is in fact approval of all the action being gotten around them. In what may be a telling difference of expectations after forty-four years of cinema, Baxter is asked by his film to make major alterations to his life and abandon his sly apartment deal. Miles isn't expected to overtly reject Jack or any element of his life, just to understand, and to make a choice. Whether the choices these men make eventually finish them ahead (or at least not last) in the race of life is unknown. But at least they come to learn the difference between being a good person who fails and being an ambivalent person who fails to try.

 

Other Cinematic Relatives: Cyrano de Bergerac (1950/1990), The Graduate (1968), Broadcast News (1987), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)