Best Picture Winners: 1931 - 1932

Cimarron (1931)

Not very highly thought of today as one of Oscar’s wisest choices, Cimarron is actually a highly entertaining early form of the Hollywood Epic. Spanning over 35 years in the life of a family of settlers in Oklahoma, Cimarron boasts impressive production values and an enthusiastic lead performance by Richard Dix.Yancey Cravat (Dix), an adventurer and explorer by heart, takes his wife Sabra (Irene Dunne) and young son to settle in Osage, Oklahoma near the turn of the nineteenth century. Already something of a celebrity, he sets up shop as an attorney and newspaper publisher and vows to discover the murderer of the previous publisher. Later he will be involved in a deadly shootout, come to the defense of a woman of ill repute, and abandon his family for years on end. Meanwhile, his wife, at first regretful of her decision to leave the comfort of her well-off family in Wyoming, comes to love her life in Osage, and must raise her two children in a town and time when bad hombres will take literal pot shots at street vendors just as a “joke.”Leonard Maltin, in his Classic Movie Guide, claims this film has aged poorly, partly due to Dix’s “overripe” performance. I couldn’t disagree more. While Dix does go overboard, thundering and flailing about in a courtroom closing scene, most of the time he is charming, charismatic, and convincing as a man nearly everyone seems to love and respect. Even a notorious outlaw, while roaming the unsettled lands looking for goods to pilfer, gives Cravat and his family a pass. If we’re to accept such massive admiration for one individual, then Dix’s choices while playing Yancey seem valid. He smiles, speechifies, gestures, laughs heartily, and basically plays a larger-than-life character in an overall effective manner. Only such an effective interpretation could make us still feel for this guy during the times he leaves his family without keeping in touch with them.By contrast Dunne’s Sabra is the anchor of the family, not wanting to leave the town of Osage and the life she has made there. She struggles to keep the family together and the paper running, resulting in her own celebrity status. The ultimate fate of her character is a delightful surprise.Add to the aforementioned strong supporting performances from Edna May Oliver and George E. Stone, and Cimarron, while not a great film, is nevertheless an entertaining early form of the Hollywood Epic.

Grand Hotel (1932)

Grand Hotel is one of only two Best Picture winners (the other being Driving Miss Daisy) in Oscar history where the director was not nominated. In the case of Grand Hotel, the reason for such an oversight is most likely due to its all-star cast: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore. This is certainly a “stars” picture, the kind of film that Robert Altman would later excel at: an extraordinary cast in overlapping stories that ultimately come together in a haunting climax.At the Grand Hotel in Berlin, where, “Nothing ever happens,” Baron Felix von Geigern (J. Barrymore) plans to steal some jewelry from ballerina Grusinskaya (Garbo.) Before the theft, Geigem has time to flirt with Flaemmchen (Crawford), who’s been hired by desperate businessman Preysing (Beery) as a temporary secretary, and to make friends with Otto Kringelein (L. Barrymore), a dying former employee of Preysing who wants to live the good life in the time he has life. The film chronicles how these characters interact for the next twenty four hours or so.The joys in this film are numerous: the excellent performances, the chemistry among the key characters, the snappy dialogue, the sumptuous production design, the fluid camera, etc. Each character is distinct and not a stereotype. John Barrymore, who just three pictures ago had played the villainous Svengali, this time out plays the charismatic ladies’ man and it’s easy to see him as a matinee idol of the silent days. Garbo runs the gamut from depressed to joyous. Lionel Barrymore is heartbreaking as the common man trying to enjoy the things his meager wages previously prohibited. But it’s Joan Crawford’s turn as the temp in search of a better life that steals the film – her first flirtatious encounter with Geigern, her sympathetic dance with Kringelein, and her reaction to a tragic turn of events give her ample moments to shine, and she never disappoints. Even though each character goes through some change during Grand Hotel’s running time, Crawford seems to have the most dimensions to play and her role is the richest because of it.A truly great film, Grand Hotel is certainly a deserved recipient of the Academy’s highest honor. An unbeatable cast brings this multi-faceted story to life and is highly recommended to fans of Golden Age cinema.