Eight Oscar-winning movies

MORNING LIST

Waiting for 93e Oscars ceremony which will be held on the night of April 25-26, at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, we offer a selection of eight films among the hundreds that, over the decades, have been distinguished with the prestigious statuette. Romantic comedy, morbid fairy tale, thriller, epic fresco: a festival of masterpieces.

“New York-Miami” (1937): what if it was the opposite?

Like a palindrome, it would be better to read the French title upside down since it is a trip from Miami to New York that Peter Warne and Ellen Andrews undertake. The first, a broke and sarcastic journalist, has just been fired from his job; the second, capricious and stubborn, flees from her father, a rich and perceptive man who disapproves of her forthcoming marriage with a nightcap; 2,000 kilometers by Greyhound bus and car will not be too much to bring our heroes together, played by Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert née Emilie Claudette Chauchoin, in Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne) in 1903.

The film collects the premieres. First screw ball comedy, a wacky genre stemming from the talkative, and based on dialogues delivered with a machine gun, it can also be seen as one of the matrices of the road-movie and the comedy of remarriage. It was also the first feature film to win five major Oscars (best film, best director, best screenplay, best lead actors).

Despite the playful tone, Frank Capra loses nothing of the humanist and social fiber that permeates most of his work: great attention paid to secondary characters, simple and sometimes miserable people, and to the equitable relationship between the two protagonists. to reverse gender stereotypes.

Despite his marble pectorals, Peter Warne has a moral high ground; Ellen’s frivolity is but a screen – as thin as the blanket that separates them at night in motel rooms – to the passion she confesses to him unvarnished or shameless. Philippe Ridet

“New York-Miami”, American film by Frank Capra. With Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly (1 h 45). On CanalVOD, LaCinetek, UniversCiné.

“Rebecca” (1941): a present haunted by the past

The first film shot in the United States by Alfred Hitchcock was also the only one of its author to obtain an Oscar. It should also be noted that when the supreme award was granted to a feature film in Hollywood, it was above all a question of distinguishing its producer, in this case David O. Selznick.

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