1946: Margaret Rutherford in "Blithe Spirit"

Each month before the Supporting Actress Smackdown, Nick Taylor suggests alternatives to the actual Oscar nomination ballot.

by Nick Taylor

For me, Dame Margaret Rutherford sits alongside the likes of Judi Dench and Edith Evans and (insert your favorite British actress/Mark Rylance here) as quintessential examples of British thespians transitioning to remarkably rewarding screen careers later in life, long after establishing their bonafides onstage. What’s recognizable about their screen presences is seemingly integral to every role, though they’re rangier in affect and character-building than one might give them credit for. They almost always deliver, and even when they don't, there's still enough happening in their work for a desperate viewer to latch onto. It takes talent for Rutherford to be compelling enough in The VIPs that you wonder if her performance deserves to be in a better film instead of scraped with the rest of the heap.

It’s also worth noting for the context of Blithe Spirit that Noël Coward wrote the role of Madame Arcati specifically with Rutherford in mind...

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75th Anniversary: The 1945 Oscars Revisited

by Baby Clyde

Bob Hope and the 1945 winners

The war was over and finally Hollywood could get around to more important matters like giving Joan Crawford an Oscar.

It had been a pared down ceremony for the preceding few years with tuxes and ballgowns discouraged. Even the statuette itself had been made from plaster rather than gold plated bronze but at the 18th Academy Awards, which took place at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre 75 years ago today, the glamour was back and there was no one more glamorous in town than 20 year veteran Joan. She skipped the ceremony...

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Interview: Ferenc Török of "1945" on making a Western about the aftermath of WW2

by Murtada Elfadl

On a summer day in 1945, an Orthodox Jewish man and his grown son return to a village in Hungary while the villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk's son. The townspeople – suspicious, remorseful, fearful, and cunning – expect the worst and behave accordingly. The town clerk fears the men may be heirs of the village's deported Jews and expects them to demand their illegally acquired property back.

In the new film 1945 director Ferenc Török tells the story of a society trying to come to terms with the recent horrors they’ve experienced, perpetrated, or just tolerated for personal gain. Based on the short story ‘Homecoming’ by Gábor T. Szántó and shot in gorgeous black and white cinematography, 1945 is a historically detailed drama that plays like a ticking clock Western. We recently spoke to Török in New York.

MURTADA ELFADL: I’m curious about the inception of the project. How did you come about it?

FERENC TÖRÖK: I read the short story by Gabor in 2004. It was visual without too much dialogue, but I thought there wasn’t enough for a feature. The timing especially was good - 1945 in the summer, after the war. It takes place in only a 2-3 hour span of time, like an old greek drama, Antigone or something. Like a western. I’ve always wanted to make a movie in real time with different points of view from different characters like a Robert Altman movie.

You mentioned westerns, I thought of High Noon while watching because of the ticking clock structure...

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