Old movies, forgotten awards

I don’t think I particularly like the Oscars anymore. I was never mad for them, didn’t sit up watching till midnight avoiding the news so I wouldn’t know who won what, or of later years trying to find a venue to watch them live. Awards themselves are of dubious value, award shows even more so. When Nicole Kidman pretentiously said “Art is important” to defend her going to the Oscars in the wake of 9/11, the obvious riposte, “Yes but award shows aren’t”, wasn’t mentioned. Ultimately, good work doesn’t always get awards, and awards don’t always go to good work. And as Johnny Carson (I think) said, the Oscars are two hours of entertainment jam-packed into a five-hour show.

Over the last few years Hollywood’s night of artistic self-congratulation has turned into a  night of moral self-congratulation, when stars wear dresses of a certain colour or badges to show their disapproval of an appalling mode of human behaviour that has been in the headlines mainly because it is prevalent in Hollywood, whose disapproval is strongest in hindsight. They seem to confuse wearing a designer dress of one colour instead of another as some form of activism, like those people who wear “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt regardless of how they actually treat women in real life, or those people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts and have never once gone from war to war so they can shoot people (I assume that’s what they’re supporting; it was Che’s favourite activity.)  I’m not sure how many more open secrets Hollywood can all pretend to be appalled by.

I also dislike the articles that appear discussing the films etc that should never have won the Oscar. I think they’re mean-spirited (which admittedly is spiritus temporum) and again confuses awards with the worth of a film. I of course have my opinions on films I think weren’t worthy winners but good luck to those artists. It doesn’t change anything that matters. So overall, while I will never claim to be uninterested in the Oscars, I am tending towards the disinterested. 

But I still like films. One good thing this year is the Foxtel are showing all the best-film award winners in order. I say ‘all’, it’s actually ‘a lot’ but does include the first, 1927’s Wings, through to last year’s Moonlight. There’s a lot there I’ve only ever heard about but never seen: All about Eve, The Apartment, The Deer Hunter, and those that I haven’t seen for a long time: Shakespeare in love, which I will defend to the death so sod off. I would love to have the time and wherewithal to sit and watch for several days, which is a ludicrous idea but still. It’s sobering to consider how many of these films are forgotten. But such is art - and awards. 

One film I did watch was 1930’s big winner All Quiet on the Western Front, which won Best Picture and Best Director. It’s one year older than my Dad, and like him, sometimes shaky but stands the test of time well. The acting can be wooden and melodramatic but the film itself greatly affecting. A class of young German schoolboys are implored by their fiercely-patriotic teacher to enlist in the early days of the war, and we follow them through training, battle and their deaths. (Spoiler-alert I guess - but the film is 88 years old and the novel older and WWI isn’t a byword for happily-ever-after.) Some die on the battlefield, some in the hospital. One soldier spends a night in a shell crater, watching the enemy soldier he stabbed die over the course of the hours. He goes home but find no-one understands what he’s been through, least of all the teacher who started him there. It’s following them on this journey that makes it such a moving film. The ending is devastating and the final shot haunting.

The novel was written by Erich Maria Remarque, a WWI veteran, based on his experiences in the German army. Making the film in the late 1920s meant there were plenty of veterans around to act as advisors, in particular Germans, some of whom appear as trainers in the training sequences. The battle sounds are like nothing I’ve ever heard. An old corporal, Kat, describes the sounds of different shells to the newcomers, and I think this specificity is reflected in the soundscape. This closeness to the original event I suspect gives the film a verisimilitude later films can lack, despite advances in technique.

It’s also interesting to watch a film made before Hollywood imposed the Hayes Code on itself to prevent government censorship. A French soldier is blown up leaving nothing but his hands still clinging to the wire - a memory of one of the German veterans who worked on the film. Swimming in a river behind the lines, the young German men spot some French women and bribe them with food. Bare bottoms are seen when they boys show off in the river, and it’s clear the night does involve sex, without being explicit. This sequence is at once touching and pathetic. The women are desperate for food, but the subsequent liaison is one of genuine human connection, which both parties are clearly craving. It’s a

sequence that would not have appeared a decade later for example. For different reasons it may not appear if the film were made now. (There are stories of a new version coming.) And I don’t know if it’s a reflection of German society of the novel or American society when the film was shot, but the boys are also much freer displaying physical affection towards each other. It makes them seem much younger, and their descent into the horrors of war that much more terrible.

The film, like the book, was banned in Nazi Germany for the negative picture of the war. The film was banned in Poland and France for being pro-German. Controversial in its day, still affecting now. We should all be so lucky in the work we create.