Best Picture #31: Gigi (1958)

Gigi is kind of an odd choice for Best Picture--one of those outliers that doesn't seem to fit with the typical fare that the Academy tends to go for. It has some of the hallmarks: it is pretty to look at, especially the set design, cinematography and locations in Paris. Its cast is made up of some famous Continental actors like Maurice Chevalier, Jacques Bergerac, and Eva Gabor.
But while it is a musical, it's no Sound of Music or West Side Story. The songs are not memorable, and barely feel like songs. The actors will randomly start speaking in rhyme, and then segue into singing that sort of half feels like it's still speech. The story isn't the highlight, either--it's about a playboy bored with the game of love and a girl raised to be a high-end courtesan but not yet entered "the life" coming to discover they've found something more genuine in each other. There is kind of a big age difference between them (she's probably 16 and he's mid-30s), which might squick some people today, though the actors did a good job of making the connection and its evolution seem as not-creepy as they could manage.
Not bad by any means, and hardly a painful watch as some previous have been, but certainly not one of the more memorable Best Pictures.
Watched: March 3, 2019

Best Picture #30: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

The Bridge on the River Kwai on the one hand does a spectacular job of showing the messiness of wartime; there is a lot of moral gray and nobody really comes out on top. On the other hand it's yet another movie based on a novel that was "drawn from" real life but changed or fudged fact for the sake of narrative, so while it tells a compelling story it should not be counted as history and probably does a disservice to all involved.
This is the first time either of us has seen Alec Guinness in anything other than Star Wars, though we knew he was a renowned actor before that and Obi Wan Kenobi was just kind of a throwaway role for him. He won Best Actor for this role, and we very quickly concluded he does a great job playing a guy who has subtly gone mad. He plays a British officer who has been taken prisoner with his unit and they are being forced to build the titular bridge. He desperately tries to keep up his principles in the face of the hardships, which leads to him to willingly collaborate in helping the Japanese build the bridge in order to prove some point in his own mind about English superiority even though in reality they are helping the enemy. He also starts to see the bridge as his own personal legacy--again, blinding himself to the bigger picture to the point that when his allies show up to blow up the bridge he betrays them.
I don't think this movie would have gone down as well had it been made during or post-Vietnam; a war movie full of moral ambiguity about traipsing around the Southeast Asian jungle might have struck a few unhappily sensitive chords.
Watched: February 10, 2019

Best Picture #29: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

We are really in the era of upbeat stories now. This is my favorite Jules Verne book so I was actually looking forward to seeing the movie version. For the most part I was not disappointed. Starring David Niven as Phileas Fogg, Mexican comedian Cantinflas as Passepartout, Robert Newton as Detective Fix, and Shirley MacLaine as Aouda, (and most of the rest of Hollywood cameoing in one way or another) it's the story of a very proper English gentleman who in 1872 makes a wager to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days or forfeit his fortune. Hijinks ensue.
Niven makes a really good Fogg; his only flaw was his total lack of chemistry with MacLaine, even at the end when they've decided to marry. Interestingly, in some countries Cantinflas was given top billing over Niven, and he really does steal every scene that he's in. There's an entire very lengthy sequence in Spain that is not in the book added just to showcase him, which includes a hot air balloon flight, flamenco dance, and a bullfight. Even though the movie is already really long (this is the same year The Ten Commandments came out, so it was the era for ginormous epics), I can't complain too much because the whole thing was very entertaining.
There are of course the inevitable uncomfortable stereotypes about non-Western people, though to be fair I think the filmmakers were embracing negative stereotypes-played-for-laughs about literally all the places Fogg visits (Including England with the exaggerated stiff-upper-lip-ness of the Reform Club members and white America with the idiotic guy in California blithely trying to get two foreign nationals to vote in the local election for mayor and the gun duel over nothing Fogg fights with a cowboy in the back of a moving train). Probably the grossest insults are having a blue-eyed white woman play Aouda, who in the book is half-English and half-Indian but in the movie is supposed to be an Indian woman only educated in England, and the feather headdress-wearing, burning-people-at-the stake Native Americans straight out of a 50s Cowboys and Indians serial. But overall it was a fun romp in the vein of other classic road trip movies I've enjoyed like The Great Race.
Watched: January 13, 2019