I have decided to name my
choice for Best Picture for the year of the first Academy Award (1927) My
criteria is that I can only use films that are on the 1001 list. To make it a
little easier on myself, I am using the rules of the first Academy Award and name
a winner for Best Picture (won by Wings for 1927-1928) and Best and Unique and
Artistic Picture (won by Sunrise from 1927-1928). I'll see if I want to continue
doing it for other years.
And the nominees from all the entries from every edition
of 1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die released in 1927 are...
Metropolis
Sunrise
The General
The Unknown
The Jazz Singer
Napoleon
The Kid Brother
And the winner for the Best Picture of 1927 is…The
General
The General
I'm a big Buster Keaton fan so I'd feel
a little bad not going with The General for this one. It may be the best comedy feature film of silent cinema. Funny,
poignant, exciting and crafted by a genius at the top of his game, I'd be hard
pressed not to go with this film despite some other great films from this year.
The General
And the Award for Unique and Artistic
Picture of 1927 is...Napoleon
Napoleon
This was a difficult choice.
I'm still not sure I'm doing the right thing in taking the more consistent
film Sunrise out of the slot it won in the first place! Fritz
Lang's Metropolis might
have snagged this award for me if the field had been weaker. No...no...I'm
sticking with Napoleon. There is so much greatness in this film
with it's epic storytelling, editing and the way Gance used a cast of thousands
so effectively...maybe even more so than D. W. Griffith before him. The way the
story is presented could only have been done as a silent. The film would have
had to have been too slowed down to accommodate dialogue. I guess this was one
less hurrah for silent epic cinema. The version I saw was enhanced greatly by
the score from Carmine Coppola.
There are frustrations in that
there are certain parts that could have been edited in the middle...Napoleon
appears too noble and Godlike throughout and we see the rise of Napoleon...but
wouldn't it have been nice to see the fall? I know Gance had planned to make
subsequent Napoleon movies that never came to be...but it's still
frustrating. Napoleon gets my award anyway.
Napoleon
An interesting exercise. Of course by excluding off-list movies there might be an even better suggestion, but I would be tempted to make the same limitation.
ReplyDeleteI was never that infatuated with Gance' Napoleon. The Renoir version, a few years later, I few far easier to watch. Yet you have to respect the scale of the project.
Got the Artistic award I would stick with Sunrise and have The Unknown as my runner up.
I’m a big Chaney fan, but The Unknown seemed a little fragmented to me. Maybe I saw a cut version. And yes, several years I would choose off-book movies. I can’t argue with your choice of Sunrise. Wings from this year is a very good action film. I think it was a worthy first Best Picture winner.
ReplyDelete