And the Winner Is — 1932/1933

Our family is working our way through Oscar winners and whichever nominees take our fancy. Also as they are available, since the early films can be hard to find. For 1932 we were excited to see so many nominees available. 

This was an unusual year because they hadn't regularized when the awards would take place. This meant that standards about which year something came out were still rather loose.

BEST PICTURE

Grand Hotel remains a classic masterpiece as the first all-star Hollywood epic with many high-powered stars of the early 1930s. The episodic film is set at Berlin's ritzy, opulent art-deco Grand Hotel, and tells of the criss-crossing of the lives of five major guests whose fates intertwined for a two-day period at the hotel. Its ensemble cast of stars were occupants of a between-wars German hotel, all struggling with either their finances, scandals, health, emotional loneliness, or social standing in multiple storylines.

Filmsite

This is the movie where Greta Garbo's famous "I want to be alone" line originated. An all-star cast acts their hearts out in this mother of all melodramas. We thoroughly enjoyed this very good movie which can hold its own against stories of today. I especially enjoyed it as a look at life, from waiting for a new baby to someone preparing to leave this mortal coil. And lots of things in-between!

I will add that we were all quite concerned about the fate of Adolphus the dachshund. Our rating - 5 stars out of five. Definitely watch this one.

NOMINEES

Searching for headlines at any cost, an unscrupulous newspaper owner forces his editor to print a serial based on a past murder, tormenting a woman involved.

If I hadn't already seen Ace in the Hole I'd have been blown away by this scathing indictment of yellow journalism. Once you got past the first set ups of the hard bitten reporters and managers, the story was riveting.

An amorous lieutenant is forced to marry a socially awkward princess, though he tries to keep his violin-playing girlfriend on the side. My heart was wrung by the story of the woman whose 20-year-old scandal was raked up to provide higher circulation. The daughter's final speech was tremendous, as was Edgar G. Robinson's final speech.

Grand Hotel deserved to win but this was our favorite of the other nominees. Our rating - 3-1/2 stars.

When Colette introduces her husband Andre to her flirtatious best friend, Mitzi, he does his best to resist her advances. But she is persistent, and very cute, and he succumbs. Mitzi’s husband wants to divorce her, and has been having her tailed. Andre gets caught, and must confess to his wife. But Colette has had problems resisting the attentions of another man herself, and they forgive each other.

This is very French and also before Hollywood's self-imposed code that monitored sexuality and immorality onscreen. As you can tell from the fact that the husband is happily playing around with another woman in a popular screwball comedy from Ernst Lubitsch, who was on his way to becoming the king of clever, romantic comedies. Before there was Cary Grant, there was Maurice Chevalier but even he couldn't save this.

We were mystified at how this got nominated. There's precious little of Ernst Lubistch showing and it seemed tedious. Our rating 2 stars.

An amorous lieutenant is forced to marry a socially awkward princess, though he tries to keep his violin-playing girlfriend on the side.

We enjoyed this a lot more than One Hour with You, although both films starred Maurice Chevalier and were written/directed by Ernst Lubitsch. This was also our first movie starring Claudette Colbert who was a huge star in this era. It was early in her career but she lit up the screen.

Light, frothy fun and you can tell it was pre-Code which is also interesting.

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey when they are held hostage by a warlord during the Chinese civil war.

A visual treat beginning with Marlene Dietrich and her wonderful acting and costumes. This was a real period piece in more ways than one, set during the Chinese revolution and featuring several actors we know from watching other Oscar nominees. As the final film of our 1932 nominees review it was a great way to end those movies. Grand Hotel definitely was the correct winner but this was a notable contender.

Our rating 3-1/2 stars.

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All the Oscar viewing is here.