José Ferrer, Cyrano de Bergerac

as Cyrano de Bergerac

Won: Academy Award - Best Actor • Golden Globe Award - Best Actor (Drama)

With it's unusual title and a goofy looking, oft-smirking main character bearing a giant honker of a nose while draped in doublets and feathered hats, at face value I had thought Cyrano de Bergerac to be some sort of cartoonish caper B-movie instead of the verbose tragic dramedy it revealed itself to be. Edmond Rostrand's story veers into an array of different directions, but the tale itself remains an intelligible and compelling piece of drama, all the more perpetuated by José Ferrer's magnetic work as the eponymous character.

Louis Calhern • The Magnificent Yankee

as Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Magnificent Yankee is our first toe-dip into 1950, and it's undoubtedly a residual remnant of the decade which preceded it - it is a prestige, feel-good, stage-rooted biopic that plays to nationalist tendencies. In this case, this is a biopic focused on Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Justice whom I suspect few in 2016/2017 are familiar with. Yet more broadly, the concept of an entire film dedicated to the life of a Supreme Court Justice is baffling to me, and in this particular film's case, there's a heavy air of irrelevancy that looms over tale and performance.

1950: 23rd Academy Awards