Screen Test of Time

Look, David and Suzan normally don’t side with musical theatre haters, but in the case of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , they’ll make an exception.

The Caine Mutiny can’t make up its mind if it is an excellent film about the stigma of mental illness, especially in the military, or an embarrassingly boring romantic class dramedy. When Humphrey Bogart and José Ferrer are around, it’s the former and at its best.

A picture postcard movie of Rome and Venice, Three Coins in the Fountain answers a question our hosts didn’t even know they had: can a movie devoid of stakes be good?

Richard Burton stars in what is quite literally Bible fanfiction that is almost so bad it’s good. Almost.

Possibly the greatest casting of all time in any movie, ever. No one but Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck could have pulled this off. But wow, did they ever.

It’s got the most famous kissing scene of all time. It’s got at least 3 different plot lines. It’s got Hawaii, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It’s got Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Donna Read, Burt Lancaster, even Frank Sinatra! Surely the 1953 champion, From Here to Eternity , will easily withstand the screen test of time and hold its Best Picture crown in retrospect… or will it?

Listen, we weren't so sure about Marlon Brando as Marc Anthony, either, but trust us, it works. Mostly. It mostly works.

Despite its reputation as a classic, Shane leaves a lot to be desired as far as our hosts are concerned. Is it because the bad guys fought for the Union? Suzan and David discuss the weird failings of Westerns where the “good” guys fought for the Confederacy, with a detour remembering their confusing experiences learning Civil War history in Georgia and Tennessee schools.

There is a reason that the 2001 Moulin Rouge exists, and it’s because this one from 1952 wasn’t good enough to make the subject closed. Is there anything more egregious than a boring movie about Belle Époque Paris and its artists?

The 1938 Robin Hood did all of this better.

Suzan is in heaven this week, because Hollywood has finally figured out how to make a good Western, and even David enjoyed High Noon . Gary Cooper stars as a deputy literally an hour from retirement who is called by a sense of duty to protect the town he’s about to leave, anyway, from a gang he put away before who are headed back to town on the 12:00 train. Cooper is a surprising choice for a West...

The Quiet Man represents a profound shift in Best Picture nominees, but it’s not necessarily a positive one. As Hollywood gets better at film making, stories with pretty abhorrent morals are more easily nestled in well directed, beautifully shot movies… which isn’t a good thing.

There is no question that Cecil B. DeMille was one of the greatest directors of all time, but giving him a pity Oscar for this nonsensical, barely acted, overstuffed story about a love triangle on the flying trapeze was not the best way to honor the guy.

Maybe it was just too soon, historically, just a few years after the end of the war, to make a movie about how some Germans might have helped the US fight the Nazis in World War II. Or maybe Decision Before Dawn is just straight up boring.

Okay, so maybe we took a 5 minute diversion to talk about the ludicrous sounding films listed in the filmographies of two of the stars of Quo Vadis , but listen, there just was not that much to say about this three hour long epic of incredible boredom.

An American in Paris was the winner of the 1951 nominees for Best Picture, entirely because of the 17 minute, half a million dollar dream ballet at the very end to Gershwin's orchestral composition of the same name. That’s it. There is no other reason.

The film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire , is wildly famous for Marlon Brando in a wet t-shirt, but the film is largely the very sad story of a deeply wounded and traumatized woman, played by Vivien Leigh, who only gets further wounded and traumatized during the movie. It’s considered a classic, but is it good enough to justify the emotional toll it exacts from it...

A master class in why method acting can actually make a performance less believable, A Place in the Sun is a real downer. Montgomery Clift gets typecast as a slack-jawed jerk who chases after yet another rich woman, but the twist is that, unlike in The Heiress , the woman he doesn't really care about and treats abhorrently isn’t the one he’s trying to marry. Elizabeth Taylor is beautiful, charming...

The final film in the 1950 Best Picture nominees, Born Yesterday start Judy Holliday giving an incredible performance as a ditzy chorus girl whose mobster boyfriend, played by Broderick Crawford, regrets forcing her to get smart. In any other year, Holliday’s performance would have still made this otherwise weirdly paced romantic comedy, with William Holden as the love interest, a serious contende...

David refers to King Solomon’s Mines as the movie that dares to ask, “What if Trader Horn was in color?” but what it really answers is why the character of Allan Quatermain, who was as popular and well known at the turn of the 20th century as James Bond is today, and played here by Stewart Granger, disappeared entirely from the popular imagination.

The Best Picture winner of the 1950 awards, All About Eve is so good that it made David do a complete reevaluation of Bette Davis, his long standing Screen Test of Time nemesis. Suzan isn’t sure that film historians are right about certain readings of this film, but doesn’t really care, because it’s absolutely fabulous. Oh, and Marilyn Monroe is in it and is both too hot and too funny for words.

Good news, Screen Testers! Suzan did not, in fact, hate Sunset Boulevard , so David will not, as he threatened last week, have to stop being her friend. It seems like 1950 is shaping up to be an extraordinary year already, and Sunset Boulevard is an early lead for our hosts’ choice for Best Picture.

The original Father of the Bride starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor may suffer a bit in light of the Steve Martin remake... even if it's maybe a better movie. As the first of the 1950 nominees, Father of the Bride has some stiff competition on its heels, and likely won't survive to be the best of the year, but it's still an enjoyable cupcake of a film, nonetheless.

After last week’s episode, Suzan and David find themselves with a sense of déjà vu— another week, another boring war movie. Not even Gregory Peck’s good looks could save Twelve O’Clock High . Also, find out if the Academy chose correctly among the 1949 nominees, or if our hosts think they should have picked something else.

An early attempt at the “Band of Brothers” style war movie (and about the 101st airborne, weirdly enough), Battleground is something of an unwieldy mess, with unmemorable characters, no real theme, and generally a step backward in competency compared to even the silent war movies nominated for the very first Oscars. But it does have one good speech.