Podcast: Smackdown '43 Companion

Nathaniel R welcomes the panel Yaseen Ali (cinephile), Kristen Lopez (critic), Rebecca Pahle (critic) and Kieran Scarlett (screenwriter) to discuss 1943 at the movies with recommended favorites and our favorite switch-the-actresses around game. We had previously reviewed the supporting actress nominees.

We talk about the three actresses (Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lake, Paulette Goddard) in WW II women's picture So Proudly We Hail. The running time slog of For Whom the Bell Tolls which doesn't showcase Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman well, the hit play turned message movie Watch on the Rhine and its place as a "homefront" movie when the war barely touched our soil, and religious epic The Song of Bernadette which won Jennifer Jones the Best Actress Oscar. 

You can listen to the 1 hour podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

So Proudly We Hail Bernadette on the Rhine

Smackdown 1943: Gladys, Paulette, Lucille, Anne, and Katina

Presenting Oscar's Chosen Supporting Actresses of the Films of 1943.

A cruel nun, a flirtatious nurse, a gypsy rebel, a harried mother, and a wealthy hostess. It's not the elaborate start of a joke, but the nominated characters from the Best Supporting Actress race of 1943.  There was only one returning nominee (Gladys Cooper) but in the 1940s all newbie lists were common since the supporting categories had been around less than a decade! Anne Revere and Cooper would eventually become three time Supporting Actress nominees (Only 23 women in history have accomplished that feat, Octavia Spencer the most recent to join the list just last season) but for Paulette Goddard, Katina Paxinou, and Lucille Watson this was their one and only time in Oscar's golden embrace. 

THIS MONTH'S PANELISTS   

Here to talk about these five nominated turns and either agree with the Academy or crown a new retrospective winner are, in alpha order: Yaseen Ali (cinephile), Kristen Lopez (critic), Rebecca Pahle (critic), Kieran Scarlett (screenwriter) and Nathaniel R (your host here at TFE). Readers (hey, that means you!!!) form the collective final panelist each month. Okay, time for the main event... 

1943
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN 

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Best Casablanca Quotes

Tomorrow is your last day to vote on the Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1943. Casablanca wasn't nominated in that category but it took the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. In addition to being economically constructed -- those 102 minutes fly by every time (in fact, it's the 8th shortest Best Picture winner ever) -- it's got generous helpings of contenders for 'best line ever'. So I asked this month's panel to share their favorite line or exchange from that immortal classic.

Here's what we all chose...

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Vintage '43

Let's soak in some 1943 since the Smackdown is but one week ago. Here's a look into what was hot hot hot that year in many fields and categories for context...

This is the Army (1943)

Great Big Box Office Hits 

1. For Whom the Bell Tolls
2. This is the Army
3. The Song of Bernadette
4. Thousands Cheer
5. Star Spangled Rhythm
6. Casablanca
7. Air Force
8. Destination Tokyo
9. A Guy Named Joe
10. Coney Island

Oscar's Best Picture List  

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The Furniture: Mattes, Moons and Mountains in For Whom the Bell Tolls

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Sam Wood directing Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper in 1943's top picture

It can seem kind of crazy that For Whom the Bell Tolls was the top box office hit of 1943. The star power of Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper played into it, of course. So did the fact that it was an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s popular and recent novel. And there’s the obvious appeal of Cooper fighting a bunch of Fascists, a year and a half after America’s entry into World War Two.

The thing is, he doesn’t actually do all that much fighting. No one in the film does. It’s mostly a contemplative interlude on the fringes of the Spanish Civil War, a brutal vacation with a band of hardened guerrillas, a doomed love story built from trauma and consummated on the high rocks. It’s 165 minutes of memory, frustration and stasis.

It also wound up with nine Oscar nominations, including both cinematography and art direction. And the collaboration between cinematographer Ray Rennahan and the design team of Hans Dreier, Haldane Douglas and Bertram C. Granger is really the highlight of the film, even against the life-giving energy of Katina Paxinou’s Oscar-winning performance...

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