Category: Best Cinematography

Despite the disapproval of her in-laws, recently widowed Gene Tierney moves with her young daughter Natalie Wood to a seaside cottage formerly owned by a sea captain. The sea captain Rex Harrison now haunts the cottage, butting heads with Tierney until a partnership brings them together in a romance that is unable to endure on the earthly plane. It’s a sweet little tale and Tierney carries it well. Despite his generally genteel personage, Harrison is rather funny as the gruff captain. The story did bring to mind his role in Blithe Spirit, though he was the one being haunted there.  

Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White

Ten years after their last pairing, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers portray a successful, though often bickering, husband and wife song and dance team. When Ginger meets a French playwright, the duo separate so Ginger can pursue a dramatic role. There is great familiarity in how Rogers and Astaire work and dance together here that makes their roles as a married couple, perhaps especially when they are squabbling, believable. This also includes Astaire’s lovely dance with multiple pairs of shoes to Shoes With Wings On. It doesn’t make any sense at all that it is supposedly being performed on stage, but it is really a lovely mix of special effects and Fred’s dancing skills.  

Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography, Color

Based on a book written by his father, this is a depiction of the life of the early life of Joshua Waitzkin who at the age of seven was discovered to be a chess prodigy similar to Bobby Fischer. I have barely a basic knowledge of chess so have no idea how accurate the portrayal of the game is in the film, but that is fairly secondary to it being a story on how a child and the people around him deal with extreme proficiency in one skill. The film is a bit slow, but still entertaining, family friendly flick similar to any number of other films that have been made since about a child being mentored to greatness. Comparable to Akeelah and the Bee, it also features Laurence Fishburne in a mentoring role.  

Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography

Beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor, this film follows a number of military members during the first years of the war in the Pacific. It’s an epic melodrama that often feels like the story could have been made into a television soap opera both in their luridness and their predictability. As common during the epic films of the era, this film exhibits quite an all-star cast with John Wayne, Patricia Neal, Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, and Paula Prentiss. I liked that the female characters weren’t just relegated to being love interests but also showed some of the jobs women undertook during the war from nurses to plane spotters. While the battle scenes weren’t as thrilling as I’d like, the film is engaging even with its close to three hour runtime. 

Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White