I'm not sure how much more I understand about editing after watching Howard Hawks' Sergeant York, the 1941 winner of the Academy Award for best editing. (No that's not a misspelling in the poster I've chosen. It's just the French spelling.)
In fact, I feel pretty certain that the film won the Oscar for editor William Holmes largely on the basis of a comparatively few nicely edited battle scenes in the film's second half. I say "comparatively few" because, despite the poster, this is not mostly a World War I movie. It's mostly a story about a guy living in rural Tennessee, and only gets to France fairly deep into its second half, and only for maybe 20 minutes of a 2 hour and 14 minute film.
Winning the Oscar certainly did not open any doors for Holmes. Although he edited 52 films in the 14 years leading up to his win, including Dark Victory, he cut only two films after that. You'd think maybe the Academy Award was just the crowning achievement on a legendary career that was approaching its conclusion, but Holmes was only 37 when he won his Oscar, and he lived to be 73. There's a story there, but Wikipedia doesn't tell it and I don't care enough to dig any deeper on my own.
The editing during these war scenes is, indeed, good. I noticed specifically what seems like a forward-thinking decision to cut shots a little shorter than had been the norm, creating a sense of frenzy that is how most of us would definitely feel if caught in a firefight. I would say these were Oscar-worthy scenes especially if the competition in 1941 was not great.
However, there's something about the year 1941 you should note. What has, for much of the time since then, been considered the greatest film of all time was also released in 1941. It's #5 on my Flickchart. I'm talking, ladies and gentlemen, about Citizen Kane, whose editing by Robert Wise was also nominated -- and certainly beats the editing in Sergeant York by a country mile. Then again, Citizen Kane got accustomed to disappointment that night, as it won only one of the nine Oscars for which it was nominated (best original screenplay) and lost the best picture statue to ... How Green Was My Valley. Yawn.
But back to this film. During all the scenes not set in France -- some at boot camp, most in the valley on the Tennessee-Arkansas border where the title character has lived all his life -- I tried to focus on anything the editor might have been doing that really pushed the craft forward. I didn't find it. I suppose there are winners of Academy Awards that do so for some particular stretch of superlative technique. I would not, for example, be surprised to see that the best cinematography Oscar had gone to many a man (I'm not sure if that award has ever been won by a woman) for a few outstanding sequences in one film, not for how he shoots shot-reverse shot conversations.
I did notice one other scene that was nicely edited, in a modest way, that reminded me of a similar shot in last month's movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood. This shot was of hunters and dogs chasing wild turkeys, with the action cutting back and forth between the dogs pursuing the turkeys and the hunters pursuing the dogs (albeit just to keep up with them). It sort of reminded me of the nicely edited horse chase in Robin Hood.
Overall, the movie is pretty corny, but I guess I should not be surprised by that either. It's based on a real World War I hero who received numerous accolades for his feats in battle. Because this man was a conscientious objector (and also a great shot), he combined both ruthlessly efficient killing power with a tendency toward mercy, with the latter in larger supply, and that resulted in the saving and capturing of as many of his enemies as he killed. Probably more.
I was in some ways reminded of Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge while watching this, though of course the only reason for listing the reminders in that sequence was because I saw the newer film first. Both films feature a deeply religious war hero, though York had to come by his faith only after a lot of rabblerousing, carousing and drinking that initially made him a bit of a community menace. The character in Hacksaw saves a lot of his own men while York saves a lot of Germans, though implicitly, also his own men by ending the fighting before the Germans had a chance to kill them. Although I do not love Sergeant York by any stretch of the imagination, I do like it considerably better than Hacksaw Ridge.
I said it was corny, and that includes the scenes back home with York and his love interest, played by Joan Leslie, who I did not otherwise know. Their scenes are played in pretty broad strokes as she alternates between playing the demure target of his affections and a woman weeping over his imminent departure for the war. He's trying to buy a plot of land for them to live on, and this is played with a fairly high cheese factor, with gobs of heartland sentimentality.
I also thought it was pretty funny that Gary Cooper was playing a man who was about 20 when he was sent off to war. Cooper was 40 when he made Sergeant York. I'm sure they could have gotten someone a lot closer to the appropriate age, but the studio star system at this time had an emphasis on proven names over up-and-comers. Maybe today he would have been played by Timothee Chalamet. Anyway, the character has a "gee whiz mister" quality to him that makes it seem similar to his character from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. (I also thought a bit of Forrest Gump.)
My last comment on the film is that it also stars Walter Brennan as the town pastor, who may not have been someone I knew about much except they always talk about him on Filmspotting when guest Michael Phillips comes on, because Michael has done a Walter Brennan impression for them before. (They also talk a lot about another Brennan film, Rio Bravo, which they all love.) Just from hearing the Phillips impersonation -- he may have only done it once, and may now be regretting it for the amount of times they mention it -- I enjoyed watching Brennan here.
Sorry, one more: I noticed in the credits that John Huston was one of four credited screenwriters.
In April I'll watch my second movie for this series that I've already seen, the 1946 best editing winner The Best Years of Our Lives, which will take us from World War I this month to World War II next.
No comments:
Post a Comment