Awards presented April 6, 1959
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
Gigi. Gorgeous to look at, this Lerner and Loewe musical was a valedictory to the golden age of the MGM musical, which its producer, Arthur Freed, and its director, Vincente Minnelli, had done so much to create. But it sentimentalizes Colette's classic novella and buries it in too much finery and frippery.
... when it should have gone to ...
Is this the greatest movie of all time, as the people polled by Sight & Sound in 2012 proclaimed, bumping
Citizen Kane from its long-held top spot? Some of us think it's not even director Alfred Hitchcock's best film. At the time it was released, it was received with indifference by the critics, who pointed to its slowness and lack of "Hitchcockian" suspense. Kim Novak, with her limited expressiveness, was thought to have been miscast as the object of James Stewart's obsession. But even if one grants that
Vertigo has some flaws, it is a far more impressive film than the year's best picture nominees:
Auntie Mame,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
The Defiant Ones,
Separate Tables, and
Gigi. It received only nominations for art direction and sound, but deserved them for Hitchcock, of course, and for Robert Burks's cinematography (look at the framing of the still above) and for Bernard Herrmann's score and its evocation of erotic obsession (with some hints and helps from Richard Wagner).
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