Schurmy Classics - 1957 Part I: The Technical Awards

Schurmy Classics - 1957

Part I: The Technical Awards

12 Angry Men

Welcome to Schurmy Classics, a leaner, stripped down version of the Schurmys. Or at least that what they are supposed to be in theory. The 1977 edition is exactly that. This one, however, grew and grew and while it is not quite as massive as the regular edition, they certainly aren't lean. This should be obvious by the part i in the title of this post. There will be three parts. The technical awards today, the genre awards tomorrow and the major awards two days from now. For those of you unfamiliar with the Schumys they are the most important movie awards known to man that exist solely on Google Docs. You can find them on the sidebar. Warning, attempting to read the full text of a Schurmy Award document will cause a rift in space-time resulting in an you experiencing an unfathomable skip forward in time losing precious days from your existence. You should probably go for it though, you weren't going to do anything with that time anyways. This post will still be here when you get back, Google has assured me it will still be up after their AI rises up and takes over the world.


For this second edition of Schurmy Classics I decided to pick one of the best years in film history, 1957. It is the year wherein Hollywood (and the British system) put out classics such as 12 Angry Men, Witness for the Prosecution, Paths of Glory, and An Affair to Remember. The Western was still going strong with 3:10 to Yuna, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Tin Star, Forty Guns and The Tall T. Horror fans saw the release of classics of the genre like The Incredible Shrinking Man and Night of the Demon. Media satires were being formed in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and A Face in the Crowd. The classic film noir was in its twilight years but saw the release of one of the greatest examples of the genre with Sweet Smell of Success. The continued decline of the Hayes Code saw films tackle darker sides of society such as addiction, mental illness and pretty much everything else as in A Hatful of Rain, The Three Faces of Eve and Peyton Place. There were two Fred Astaire musicals in Funny Face and Silk Stockings and  enjoyable romantic comedies like Designing Woman and Love in the Afternoon. And that is without even mentioning the frankly ridiculous number of foreign masterpieces from the year. This was intended to be a shorter project but as I got more and more into it I kept finding films I wanted to watch and needed to watch. This year is so good that The Bridge on the River Kwai does not make my top 10. It does show up several times in the technical awards though so you can expect to see it in today's section.

A full list of films watched for this project and thus taken into consideration for awards can be found on my Letterboxd account.A quick note for the really anal people who may have actually noticed something: Films are taken under consideration if their first release of any kind occurred in 1957 as opposed to the modern Schurmy standard of using North American theatrical release for consideration. This decision was made to make it incredible simple to determine eligibility of films and you only noticed this because I'm pointing it out.

Funny Face

Best Visual Effects:

Oscar Winner - The Enemy Below

Nominees:

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai
2. The Enemy Below
3. The Incredible Shrinking Man

It's easy to say that the visual effects of 1957 are a long way from the visual effects of 2017. With no CGI, visual effects artists had to rely on practical effects and camera trickery to achieve movie magic. The visual wonder of the titular bridge and its destruction in the climax in The Bridge on the River Kwai is impressive as is the large amount of greenscreen effects in The Incredible Shrinking Man but for my money The Enemy Below is the most impressive looking naval combat of the 50s staging a battle between a submarine and a battleship that only looks a little bit dated through modern eyes.

Winner - THE ENEMY BELOW

Best Production Design:

Oscar Winner - Sayonara

Nominees:

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai
2. The Incredible Shrinking Man
3. Kanal
4. Le Notti Bianche
5. Sayonara

Whether creating a POW camp, an increasingly cavernous house with larger and larger props, a bombed out Warsaw and the sewers underneath or an entire Japanese town and army base there was a lot of great production design in 1957 but it all fell short to what happened in Italy. For Le Notti Bianche the entire set was created for the movie. No location shooting, just pure movie studio backlot magic. Several streets, a romantic canal and of course, the snow. Probably the greatest snowfall in movie history.

Winner - LE NOTTI BIANCHE

Best Hair and Makeup:

Oscar Winner - No Award Given

Nominees:

1. The Curse of Frankenstein
2. Kanal
3. The Seventh Seal

The Oscars didn't start awarding this category until the 80s and while it would have easy to do so myself I felt compelled to highlight the level of grime and filth featured in Kanal. A film in which the characters literally wade through shit in an effort to transit across a city overrun with Nazis does absolutely nothing to glamorize these characters. It wades into the muck with the characters and you feel dirty just watching this movie.

Winner - KANAL

Best Costume Design:

Oscar Winner - Les Girls

Nominees:

1. An Affair to Remember
2. Funny Face
3. Les Girls
4. Raintree County
5. Silk Stockings

A lush romance, 3 musicals and a historical costume drama. I hate to vote like the Academy normally does but really, the costumes of Raintree County are one of the few good things about it. Nothing against the costume design of the other 4 films, they're all good, especially Funny Face which is a musical about the fashion industry and features costume to match that.

Winner - RAINTREE COUNTY

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Best Sound Design:

Oscar Winner - Sayonara

Nominees:

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai
2. The Enemy Below
3. Gunfight at the OK Corral
4. Paths of Glory
5. Throne of Blood

World War II, Naval Warfare, Western, World War I, Feudal Japan War. I guess I was just attracted to the showiest sound design of the year. I especially liked the sounds from The Enemy Below but that might just a personal preference towards submarine sounds and the tension inherently created in using them in a film but the Schurmy has to go to the Kubrick film about WWI. The scenes of war remain the definitive WWI depictions for numerous reasons and among those are the sounds.

Winner - PATHS OF GLORY

Best Film Editing:

Oscar Winner - The Bridge on the River Kwai

Nominees:

1. 12 Angry Men
2. The Bridge on the River Kwai
3. The Seventh Seal
4. Sweet Smell of Success
5. Wild Strawberries

Great editing is the secret weapon of all of these films. How do you make 12 men inside a single room cinematic? Perfect editing. A war movie telling the stories of POWs and the bridge they are building and the plot to destroy it? You edit between them seamlessly. How about a meditation on life, death, the nature of God, faith and love set during the black plague? You bring all those themes together into a coherent picture in the editing room. A pitch-black film noir where the violence of words is treated as severely as physical violence? You hone those edges with editing. And last, but not least of the nominees, a journey through both the Swedish countryside and an elderly man's memories and dreams? That one almost should win for sheer magnitude of editing but the Schurmy will go to the immaculate Sweet Smell of Success.

Winner - SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

Best Original Song:

Oscar Winner - The Joker Is Wild - "All the Way"

Nominees:

1. 3:10 to Yuma - "3:10 to Yuma"
2. An Affair to Remember - "An Affair to Remember"
3. Forty Guns - "God Has His Arms Around Me"
4. Funny Face - "Think Pink"
5. Jailhouse Rock - "Jailhouse Rock"

No offense to the other nominees but only one of these songs is a signature song of one of the biggest musicians of all time. "Jailhouse Rock" is just a great song, one of Elvis' best and an incredibly easy pick.

Winner - JAILHOUSE ROCK - "JAILHOUSE ROCK"

Forty Guns

Best Use of Pre-Existing Music:

This category exists to highlight the art of setting songs to music and has been immortalized by directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, and Martin Scorsese among others. Now in 1957 this practice was a long way from being established. Musical numbers existed in the classic sense of the term with big showstopping performances from the actors but scenes set to pop music largely didn't exist yet. There is a fairly large exception though as Luchino Visctoni used a Bill Haley song for the impromptu dance party in Le Notti Bianche. What starts as a couples swing turns into pure movie magic the moment Marcello Mastroianni steps onto the dancefloor.

Winner - LE NOTTI BIANCHE - "THIRTEEN WOMEN" - BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS

Best Soundtrack:

Nominees:

1. Funny Face
2. Les Girls
3. Silk Stockings

Surprise, surprise, three musicals. This is due to the fact that the modern movie soundtrack as collections of popular music used in the film didn't exist yet so film music was either scores (a different award) or musical books (which can fit in here) so the musicals get in almost by default. That isn't to say any of these are bad or anything. We've got Fred Astaire (Funny Face and Silk Stockings) and Gene Kelly (Les Girls) represented here and while both men have much better work elsewhere in their careers, "B"-level work from them is still incredibly entertaining. The Schurmy will go to Astaire's better soundtrack from Silk Stockings which mixes his classic style with the new emerging sounds of rock music.

Winner - SILK STOCKINGS

Best Poster:

This Schurmy will not be awarded due to the inherently inaccurate nature of trying to wade through various sources to try and find posters from 1957 for all the films and avoiding every single subsequent design change. If you feel ripped off just imagine your favourite 1957 film won and shower me with praise.

Winner - Not Awarded

Best Trailer:

This Schurmy will not be awarded due to the fact that I simply don't want to put in the effort to find original trailers for these movies. If you feel ripped off just imagine your favourite 1957 film lost and be outraged at me.

Winner - Not Awarded

Les Girls

Best Opening:

Nominees:

1. Love in the Afternoon
2. The Seventh Seal
3. The Tin Star

I'm cheating a little with Love in the Afternoon and counting the entire first several scenes wherein Mr. X talks to Maurice Chevalier about the cheating Mrs. X and what he is going to do about it leading to Audrey Hepburn meeting Gary Cooper. This first 20-or-so minutes of the film is up there with the best comedy Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment) has ever made. The rest of the movie doesn't live up to the standards and is largely hampered by poor casting and chemistry between the two leads (Hepburn's good but Cooper is at least a decade past his time as a romantic leading man). The Schurmy does not go to Love in the Afternoon though. It goes to the iconic beach opening and introduction of Death from The Seventh Seal. Spoilers for the rest of these awards. This is not the only award The Seventh Seal is winning.

Winner - THE SEVENTH SEAL

Best Ending:

Nominees:

1. An Affair to Remember
2. Paths of Glory
3. The Seventh Seal

There could have been about a dozen nominees for this award. 3:10 to Yuma, 12 Angry Men, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Enemy Below, Forty Guns, Kanal, Le Notti Bianche, Sweet Smell of Success and or course Witness for the Prosecution could have easily slotted in here in place of the runners up because in 1957 they made exceptional movies. The final scene between Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr is incredibly emotionally charged and powerful in An Affair to Remember and Kirk Douglas giving his men a few last moments of freedom in Paths of Glory are incredible endings to great films but none can stand up to The Dance of Death from The Seventh Seal. 

Winner - THE SEVENTH SEAL

Best Line:

Nominees:

1. 3:10 to Yuma - "Funny, some men you see every day for ten years and you never notice; some men you see once and they're with you for the rest of your life."
2. The Bridge on the River Kwai - "I hate the British! You are defeated but you have no shame. You are stubborn but you have no pride. You endure but you have no courage."
3. The Seventh Seal - "We must make an idol of our fear, and call it God."
4. Sweet Smell of Success - "I'd hate to take a bite outta you. You're a cookie full of arsenic."
5. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? - "You're just a little... poop of a man. And that's the way the poop poops."

I just love the silliness of the Rock Hunter line. "Poop poops". Just a delightfully silly turn of phrase. Almost silly enough to take this award but, like everything else from 1957, it pales in comparison to The Seventh Seal. The whole of the confessional scene is masterful but Antonius Block's statement about the nature of God is the best possible teaser for the rest of Bergman's filmography.

Winner - THE SEVENTH SEAL - "WE MUST MAKE AN IDOL OF OUR FEAR, AND CALL IT GOD"

Best Scene:

Nominees:

1. Kanal - Dead End
2. Le Notti Bianche - Snowfall
3. Les Girls - Gone About That Girl
4. Sweet Smell of Success - First Meeting with JJ Hunsecker
5. Throne of Blood - Arrows

I know what you're thinking. Where's The Seventh Seal? There are so many scenes to pick from. The opening beach, the confessional, the Dance of Death, the inn, the witch, the strawberries, the introduction of Mia and Joff. So many great scenes but consider them all tied for sixth. Kanal contains the biggest drop in hope with essentially the last remaining bit of it snuffed out by an iron grate. The snowfall in Le Notti Bianche is used as pure romantic magic and then as a heartbreaking finale. The best musical number from any film was Mitzi Gaynor and Gene Kelly dancing around a 50s diner inspired set. On the set of Throne of Blood they got the insane idea to shoot real arrows at Toshiro Mifune and it makes his horror at his own downfall incredibly real on screen. The Schurmy though goes to the best character introduction of 1957. After several scenes where JJ Hunsecker is mentioned, Sidney Falco interrupting his dinner meeting with a hotshot producer and his new starlet is incredible. Sweet Smell of Success is one of the last great noir films and it exists in a world where words are just as violent as guns and this scene is the first impression of that.

Winner - SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS - FIRST MEETING WITH JJ HUNSECKER

That does it for today. Come back tomorrow for Best Comedy, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Directorial Debut and many more in the Genre Awards. You won't believe who wins Breathrough Actress!

Paths of Glory