Best Actress in WWII: An Alternative History

by Cláudio Alves

Greer Garson earned herself five consecutive Oscar nominations during WWII. For BLOSSMONS IN THE DUST (1941), MRS. MINIVER (1942), MADAME CURIE (1944), MRS. PARKINGTON (1944), and THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945). She won the Best Actress trophy in 1942 for William Wyler's first Best Picture champion.

TIFF is almost upon us, so my Alternative Oscar History series will have to take a break. In the meantime, in this last post for a while, let’s look at the period between 1940 and 1945, the war Oscars and the actressing they should’ve honored.

After all, these are my picks, not the Academy’s, so don’t expect an avalanche of Greer Garson in the incoming ballots. The English star found an American home at MGM in the late 30s, just as WWII was breaking out in Europe with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and was AMPAS’ most beloved star with five nominations and a victory to her name. In this, she edged out Bette Davis’ four nods in the same time span. Then again, though it’s impossible to talk about Hollywood in WWII without acknowledging Davis’ work in initiatives like the Hollywood Canteen, her relationship with the Academy was a rocky one. Famously, she became its first female president in January 1941, before resigning in March. I promise I won’t hold that against her in my votes. It might actually help her case, considering how little I tend to agree with Oscar’s choices…

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Gun Crazy @75: "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun."

by Cláudio Alves

A boy loves guns, he's obsessed with them, thrilled by them, given purpose by their dangerous nature. He grows up, and the love persists. One day, the boy finds a girl who shares the same fascination. A match made in hell, they come to love each other as much as they're besotted by the firearms, falling headfirst into a romance bound to become a tragedy. Even as they embark on a life of crime, the boy refuses to kill while the girl is all too eager. It doesn't end well, but it's a horny good time while it lasts. Guns and sex, sex and death, death as love, and love is the American way – and you know what? That's cinema, baby. That's also Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy, also known as Deadly Is the Female, a B-movie masterpiece that often feels like the urtext of film noir, chronologically displaced as it might be.

Today, it celebrated its 75th anniversary – there are disputes over Gun Crazy's first release, but we're going with the January 20th, 1950 date – so let's explore what makes this violent tale such vital, essential cinema…

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A Marilyn Monroe Top Ten

by Cláudio Alves

In June, we don't just celebrate Pride. For those in the know, it's also the time to honor the immortal memory of Marilyn Monroe, born in the dying breaths of spring, June 1926. As a birthday present to her fans, the Criterion Channel organized a sampling of the actress' best films, making a delicious collection everyone should check out. Inspired by that list, here's my own selection of Marilyn's peak, her ten most excellent performances in a career, a life, cut tragically short. After all, one mustn't confuse the iconographic impact with a lack of substance beyond the surface. Too many have done that already. 

Marilyn Monroe was a tremendous thespian, so seamless that people, in her time and our own, still assume character and interpreter were one and the same. In any case, let's forego defensiveness for joyful exultation. Without further ado, here's the Marilyn Monroe top ten, in chronological order, unranked…

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Erotic Thrillers: Part 1 – The Dawn of the Eighties

by Cláudio Alves

Mainstream cinema feels more sexless than ever. Even at the height of the Hays Code's second coming, sex had a place of pride in Hollywood, often sublimated into insinuation to avoid censorship. There's art to horniness, to making the camera a conduit of erotic reverie or a purveyor of desire, want itself synthesized as form. Sexual films can also be rich texts, telling us much about the times when they were made, the culture that created them, and the audiences that either embraced or repudiated the movie. Whether prurient or intellectual, there are many ways to engage with erotic cinema, especially when carnal craving collides with violence, and annihilation that goes beyond the ecstasy of an orgasm.

Erotic Thrillers is the theme of one of the Criterion Channel's latest collections, released right in time for the You Must Remember This podcast's new season - "Erotic 90s". After tackling the 80s last year, Karina Longworth is heading into a new decade, and we're going along for the ride. For the next few weeks, we'll explore all films in the Criterion program, taking a journey from 1980 to 1996. Let's begin the adventure with a Hitchcockian riff full of fucked-up notions of gender, a postmodern neo-noir, and an unlikely message picture… 

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Almost There: Don Cheadle in "Devil in a Blue Dress"

by Cláudio Alves

Noirvember can't end without a noir-themed write-up here at The Film Experience. It falls on the Almost There series to consider a style born in shadows, that cinema which came into its own in the aftermath of war and persists in perpetual reinvention. Though it'd be nice to look back on the origins of noir, most of the classics fell outside the Academy's radar. So it's only logical to wander into the depths of neo-noir, searching for a title that embodies the best of it all, combining classical sensibilities with a modern perspective. Thus, one arrives at Carl Franklin's Devil in a Blue Dress, a 1995 adaptation of Walter Mosley's book where a 1940s-set crime drama is reframed through the centering of a Black protagonist. 

However, it wasn't the film's hardboiled anti-hero who caught the attention of awards voters. Instead, those honors befell on a supporting player – Don Cheadle in his breakout role as a dangerous man called Mouse…

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