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“All the King’s Men” won the Best Picture prize in 1949, appropriately closing the book on the decade of socially conscious dramas hogging all of the attention. Somewhere, an eight year old Mike Medavoy sat in a dark theater watching and said, “I’m gonna grow up and produce a lifeless remake of this film. That’s what I’ll do.”
The 1950’s were kicked off with “All About Eve” earning a record breaking 14 nominations and narrowly pipping “Sunset Boulevard” to the top prize. Again, the selection was appropriate as the two show business stories represented the new decade that would be considered a new “Golden Age of Hollywood”. As per usual, the Academy couldn’t fit all of the masterpieces into one show so the following missed the cut but are worthy of your time.
1949 – “Jour de Fête” (Jacques Tati)
Jacques Tati’s first feature came four years before his international breakthrough, “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” and doesn’t feature that titular character that would become his trademark, but it does feature all of the great things you would expect from a Tati comedy. Chiefly, that entails a lovable protagonist bumbling through his day to day life oblivious to the changing world around him and the effects his interactions have on it.