Hamlet: The Film's the Thing

English majors take perverse pleasure in writing about Hamlet, and I am no different than my melancholy Dane-loving brethren. This piece will mark the first time I’ve written about Hamlet on film, a combination of two of my loves. Laurence Olivier’s film adaptation of the play in 1948 won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor, and has played an influential role in how the play has been adapted to film since.

So, for the uninitiated, this is Hamlet in three paragraphs. William Shakespeare composed the play in 1600, and the play has remained popular for the last 410 years. The story follows the eponymous title character, a Danish prince and philosophy student in England, who his returning home to castle Elsinore after the death of his father, the King (also named Hamlet—people often forget there are two Hamlets in the play). Claudius, the King’s brother, is the successor to the throne and he has married Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. The death of his father and the hasty remarriage of his mother to his uncle cause Hamlet considerable angst—which is mistaken as madness—and he finds that Elsinore has devolved into “an unweeded garden”. Even the Elsinore sentries have noticed changes (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”), especially in seeing the ghost of the dead King haunting the castle. The Ghost King reveals that Claudius murdered him and usurped the throne. The Ghost gives Hamlet a mission: avenge his father’s death by murdering Claudius and thus restoring honor to the kingdom.

Key subplots emerge. One involves Hamlet’s girlfriend, Ophelia, with whom Hamlet has an on-again, off-again relationship. The relationship between her brother, Laertes and their father, Polonius (a champion and ill-fated hide-behind-the-curtains meddler and Claudius’ closest advisor) is shown as a contrast to the relationship Hamlet has with his parents. Another involves the investigation Hamlet makes into the Ghost’s claims, culminating in a play-within-a-play sequence where Hamlet “will catch the conscience of the King”. The major subplot involves Hamlet’s supposed madness, and audiences have debated—right along with the characters—if Hamlet is genuinely mad or if he is putting on an act or if he is both at the same time. Ophelia and Hamlet’s childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are used by Claudius to test Hamlet’s reactions, and the debate between insanity and acting, life and death is summarized in the “To be or not to be” speech—the most famous monologue ever written. Lastly, Fortinbras, the prince of Norway and foil to Hamlet, idles just off Denmark’s shores, waiting to claim the kingdom for his own.

Everything comes to a head in the final act. Hamlet comes to terms with his fate, his mortality, and the mission the ghost of his father laid out for him—“Readiness is all.” Ophelia drowns, and after Hamlet disrupts her funeral (just before this is the “Alas, poor Yorick” scene, where Hamlet holds up the skull of the court jester from his childhood—the image of Hamlet holding up and debating with a skull is the most famous image of the character), a duel with poison-tipped foils is staged between Hamlet and Laertes, and at the duel, Claudius’ hidden secrets are revealed. However, as is the case with Shakespearean tragedy, everybody dies. Only Hamlet’s close friend Horatio survives as Fortinbras claims Elsinore for Norway.

The story has been adapted to film over fifty times since the turn of the twentieth century. The adaptations range from the traditional, to the epic (Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film was entirely uncut—a rarity for a Shakespeare film adaptation—and ran over four hours), to the international (Gamlet, a 1964 Russian production that Branagh and fellow Shakespeare expert John Gielgud consider the best filmed Hamlet ever), the modern (the 2000 Hamlet with Ethan Hawke set is set in the boardroom of the “Denmark Corporation”) and to the bizarre (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas’ 1983 ode-to-all-things-Canadian comedy Strange Brew is set at Elsinore Brewery—got it, hoser?). The play has also been recontextualized as an existential comedy by Tom Stoppard. His play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, was also made into a 1990 film starring Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, and Richard Dreyfuss. (Stoppard also drastically shortened the play, staging The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, with an encore that further truncates the text.) The most popular—in terms of box-office grosses—filmic adaptation of Hamlet is the 1994 Disney animated musical The Lion King. The play has also inspired operas, music, songs, albums, fiction, poetry and episodes of television shows. Currently, FX Network’s motorcycle gang drama Sons of Anarchy is yet another outside-of-the-box Hamlet adaptation. So the most central question in a film adaptation of Shakespeare is how well his play is adapted to the medium of film. The film really is the thing.


Director/star Laurence Olivier’s version of the film has made very lasting impressions on how Hamlet has been interpreted on screen. His credentials for bringing Shakespeare to screen were firmly established four years earlier, delivering a very well regarded and Oscar-nominated Henry V. With the tone of that play being patriotic, Olivier was instructed by Winston Churchill to make Henry V a piece of morale boosting propaganda for British soldiers during WWII. Unsurprisingly, with Hamlet being a post-war picture, the film favors the psychological aspects of the play over the political aspects. In fact, Olivier is heavily indebted to film noir in bringing his adaptation to life.

Rich chiaroscuro imagery fills the screen, and the deep focus cinematography (another 1940’s stylistic hallmark) by Desmond Dickinson is crisp and crystalline. Black and white is the perfect film stock for Hamlet, with its light and dark contrasts creating a perfect visual metaphor for the themes of duality—good vs. evil, sanity vs. insanity, life vs. death—the story contains. The light and dark color scheme extends to the costumes of the actors, none more effective than Olivier’s as Hamlet. He is almost always wearing black, his hair is platinum blonde, and his makeup is chalky—making Olivier look one step closer to the grave. Olivier’s costume design for Hamlet has proven tremendously influential, and Branagh reprised the look for his Hamlet in 1996.



Olivier is also indebted to German expressionism and gothic horror—especially in his set design. Elsinore Castle is enormous in the film. Often, Hamlet is alone on screen and his solitary figure set against the labyrinthine hallways and spacious rooms of the castle suggests a man lost within his own mind. One could easily imagine a horror film like F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu being staged on this set. The gothic look of the castle is especially effective in the scenes where Hamlet is speaking with the Ghost. Olivier really used production design to his greatest advantage in presenting his visual adaptation of the play.

Olivier errs in his screenplay. All film versions of Hamlet (save, of course, for the unabridged Branagh version in 1996) or any Shakespeare play face difficult decisions about which parts of the play need to be excised when crafting the screenplay. Shakespeare-adapting screenwriters face an unenviable and difficult task when it comes to choose which lines to leave in and which lines will be eliminated. Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s longest and richest plays, is arguably the most difficult to adapt successfully. Olivier’s version cuts almost half the dialogue. Yet his cardinal sin in the adaptation comes in the narrated prologue to the film, where after the “So oft it chances in particular men” speech from Act I, Scene IV, Olivier offers his thesis to Hamlet’s character. He reduces Hamlet’s tragic flaw thusly: “This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.”

I feel that anyone can interpret Hamlet in any reasonable way they choose, and Olivier was an authority on Shakespeare, but reducing the play to simply being about “a man who could not make up his mind” is a gross oversimplification. In fact, Olivier’s interpretation borderlines on erroneous, as Hamlet does make up his mind—but the character is far more concerned with making the morally right decision instead of acting rashly. In fact, only when Hamlet acts rashly—such as his murder of Polonius, mistaken for Claudius eavesdropping behind Gertrude’s curtain—do his actions lead to tragedy. I always feel that by the end of the play, Hamlet becomes confident in his fate and secure about the actions he will take to resolve it, a far cry from a man racked with indecision.

Olivier also omits any mention of both the pair of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Fortinbras. Olivier makes this choice to focus on the psychological intensity of the lead role, but in doing so, loses key scenes that flesh out the character of Hamlet. Hamlet’s scenes with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the second act of the play give the audience the most insight into the personality of Hamlet before his father’s murder, and the scenes also contain some of the most humorous moments of the play (humor is non-existent in this film version of Hamlet, as Olivier chopped most of the gravedigger sequence too, leaving out the fantastic joke about who is the “master builder”—“a gravedigger—the houses he builds last ‘til doomsday”). Gone with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is Hamlet’s famous dismissal of them—the “What a piece of work is man” speech.

Without Fortinbras, Hamlet loses his most important foil. In the play, Fortinbras seeks to conquer the kingdom of Denmark to revenge his father. His firm decision making and swift action stands out in complete contrast to Hamlet’s brooding and inquisition. In many ways, Shakespeare shows audiences Fortinbras as the man that Hamlet should most emulate—one who honors a dead father by taking action to avenge him. If Olivier’s Hamlet is tragic because he is a man who can’t make up his mind, wouldn’t Olivier’s interpretation of the character be enriched by showing a foil to him? Wouldn’t Fortinbras, the man of action, further illuminate Hamlet’s crippling indecision? Though Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Fortinbras are small roles, they are crucial to understanding the character of Hamlet, and with their omission from the film, Olivier missed an opportunity to make his film stronger.

The worst parts of the film involve Gertrude. Eileen Herlie, the actress who portrays her, does a fine job, but Olivier is very much caught up in the Oedipal and Freudian interpretations of Hamlet that suggest the character’s inability to act stems from unfulfilled sexual desires toward his own mother. Herlie was 28 when she played Gertrude—in contrast to Olivier, who was 41, a full thirteen years her senior—and the age disparity in the ages of the actors shows that in casting a Hamlet much older than a Gertrude, a sexual conquest is possible. In the scenes where Hamlet confronts Gertrude, Olivier is dominant and physically imposing toward Herlie and one can easily imagine that if Olivier was a bit more perverse in his interpretation, Hamlet would rape Gertrude.

I don’t entirely discount Oedipal and Freudian interpretations of Hamlet—there is enough evidence in the text of the play to make a compelling case for that point of view. I always feel that Hamlet’s anger toward his mother is born not out of unrealized sexual desires or jealousy toward Claudius, and instead from an extreme distaste toward Gertrude’s behavior. Hamlet is angry at his mother because he feels that she does not at all honor her late husband’s memory and affection toward her—if she ever felt that way at all—by jumping immediately into a marriage with her husband’s brother. In fact, Hamlet harbors suspicions that Gertrude may even be a co-conspirator to the King’s death.

Still, a mother-fixated Hamlet has pervaded filmic adaptations since. In Italian Franco Zeffirelli’s (who helmed the definitive, very excellent traditional film version of Romeo & Juliet in 1968) 1990 version of Hamlet with Mel Gibson as the prince and Glenn Close as the queen, he basically goes where Olivier didn’t quite. The Hamlet/Gertrude scenes in that film are even more sexually suggestive, and when Gertrude dies, a sweat-drenched Hamlet falls on top of her, suggesting post-coital actions. Also notable is that Close was cast primarily on the strength of her man-eating role from Fatal Attraction (Gibson was chosen because of his work in Lethal Weapon as the madman, suicidal cop Martin Riggs), and that again there is an unbelievable age disparity between the actors playing Hamlet and Gertrude. This time, Close’s Gertrude is the older actor, though she is only 11 years older than Gibson, a disparity more believable in a sexual partnership than the age divide between a mother and son. No matter the disparity, rare is the modern Hamlet interpretation that doesn’t include a sexual element between Hamlet and his mother. Rarer still, is an actor cast who is closer to Hamlet’s actual age—around twenty (I always imagine Hamlet as a full-of-himself, pseudo-intellectual college sophomore).

Grievances aside, it is important to remember that whenever Shakespeare is presented on screen, it will always reflect the interpretations the filmmakers have of the text. No director, screenwriters, or actors will ever get things completely right. The fun in watching a film based on Shakespeare is in the debate over what details and interpretations the viewer agrees or disagrees with, and for all I dislike about Olivier’s Hamlet there is also much to admire.

The Ghost King is spectacularly rendered. The play within the play, as always, provides excellent meta-commentary on the audience that is currently experiencing Hamlet, and Olivier makes the scene work as a commentary on audiences watching a film. The duel at the climax of the film is rousing and excitingly staged (when watching the film, keen-eyed Star Wars fans will undoubtedly notice Peter Cushing, the indelible Grand Moff Tarkin in the 1977 original film, here in his first film role as Osric, the courtier who referees the Hamlet/Laertes duel and delivers the line, “A hit! A very palpable hit!”). Olivier’s delivery of the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy doesn’t disappoint.

Hamlet is very much an Oscar anomaly—no other direct interpretations of a Shakespeare play have matched its Best Picture win, and the film isn’t typical of the late 1940’s cinema more beloved by Oscar. In fact, as stated previously, Olivier’s Hamlet is far closer to film noir—a genre nearly completely ignored by the Academy—than at all like the socially conscious pictures that reaped the majority of Academy acclaim. The film’s Best Picture victory is significant in that it was the first entirely British production to claim Oscar’s top prize, and since then Great Britain has by far been the most dominant foreign country in terms of actors and filmmakers receiving awards and nominations (Olivier himself was honored fourteen times by the Academy: nine nominations as Best Actor and winning for his role as Hamlet, once as Best Supporting Actor, once as Best Director and one Best Producer award for Hamlet along with two Honorary awards).

Shakespeare would also continue to provide fodder for Best Picture winners. Film versions of Romeo & Juliet were nominated for Best Picture previous to Olivier’s Hamlet (George Cukor’s 1936 version) and after (Zeffirelli’s 1968 film), and twice has the play been reimagined and awarded Best Picture. West Side Story (for my money, this is bar none the greatest reimagining of any Shakespeare play in any medium) famously updated Romeo & Juliet set amongst New York street gangs in the 1950’s—first a Broadway musical then film. The film won 10 well-earned Oscars. Tom Stoppard contributed to the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love—which offered fictional speculation to the motivations behind Shakespeare composing his most famous romantic tragedy—and lifted many scenes verbatim. Shakespeare in Love took home 8 Oscars.

Olivier’s Hamlet took home four statues, and is proof positive that the medium of film has been very kind to the Bard indeed.


DETAILS

Hamlet (1948)

Director: Laurence Olivier

Starring: Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Eileen Herlie, Basil Sydney, Peter Cushing*

Studio: Two Cities (Universal handled the U.S. distribution of the film)

Total Oscars: 4 (Best Picture, Best Actor—Laurence Olivier, Best Costume Design—Black & White, Best Art Decoration/Set Decoration—Black & White) out of 7 total nominations (Best Director—Laurence Olivier, Best Supporting Actress—Jean Simmons, Best Score)
*The very famous and prolific Christopher Lee has an uncredited role as a spear carrying soldier


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Rebecca: One From the Master

Inarguably, Alfred Hitchcock is one of the greatest directors that ever lived. I’d have him on a shortlist with about three or four others—for arguments’ sake, lets lump him along with Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg—to round out a top five. Like Kurosawa and Kubrick (and both Scorsese and Spielberg were given their Oscars long after they had done most of their best work), Hitchcock was never awarded Best Director, despite helming such classics as Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Notorious (the one with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman—not the recent biopic about the Notorious B.I.G.) and The Birds. Rebecca, though an excellent picture, is probably firmly in the middle when it comes to Hitchcock’s filmography, but the film had the advantage of being a David O. Selznick production. By the time the Academy Awards ceremony honoring the best films of 1940 rolled around, Selznick used his considerable clout to secure the Best Picture Oscar for Rebecca.

Now, I haven’t seen every picture that was up for Best Picture the year Rebecca won. I do know though that it was up against some more traditional Oscar fare. The Philadelphia Story—with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Best Actor Oscar winner James Stewart (whose Oscar was almost certainly a make-up award for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)—was a nominee. The Great Dictator—Charlie Chaplin’s satirization of Adolf Hitler—was also nominated. John Ford—the most honored director by the Academy with four Best Director Oscars—had two films in the running, The Long Way Home and The Grapes of Wrath (for which Ford took home his second Oscar). The Grapes of Wrath—with its John Steinbeck source material, iconic performance from Henry Fonda, and timely subject matter (America, after all was coming out of the Great Depression)—would seem like the most likely winner. Selznick proved to be a master campaigner, as Rebecca was completed and ready for release in 1939, but he did not want Hitchcock’s film to compete against Gone With the Wind. He cannily realized he had two prestige pictures on his hands, and delayed Rebecca’s release to become the first producer to win Best Picture two years in a row (and he certainly wouldn’t be the last to use this trick to garner Academy attention).

The power Selznick accrued after his massive victory with Gone With the Wind was formidable enough to secure the Oscar for Rebecca, which was a film unlike any of the dozen Best Picture winners before it. About the only thing Rebecca had in common with the previous winners was that it was adapted from a famous novel. Rebecca was the first film to be helmed by a British director to win Best Picture, and it certainly has a tone more typical of British productions than American ones. The film is undeniably dark, and it has Gothic sensibilities Tim Burton would envy. Hitchcock filled the film with all sorts of subtext about female identity and gender roles—themes he would return to again and again in his films—and the dialogue is laced with sarcasm and black humor. Nearly every film that won the Best Picture Oscar before upheld noble virtues, honesty and individualism (and even the most daring of the previous winners—All Quiet on the Western Front—doesn’t have a trace of irony and sarcasm). Most of the nominees following Rebecca would do the same for decades. Hitchcock’s picture is an Oscar anomaly, as it swims in malfeasance, lies and a lack of identity.

The story—adapted from Daphne du Marnier’s novel of the same name—centers on a nameless female protagonist (Joan Fontaine) and the widower she marries, Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). (* Forgive me for launching into an entertaining digression here on Joan Fontaine—she is the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, and they had a lifelong feud. At age nine, de Havilland made-up a will that said “I hereby bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, since she has none.” When both sisters were up for the Oscar for Best Actress in 1941, Hitchcock directed Fontaine to an Oscar win in Suspicion. As Fontaine went to collect her Oscar, she brushed right by the extended hand of de Havilland. On the sisters, Hitchcock once mused that he’d love to see the sisters in a film together, if only for the entertainment value provided by their feud. But back to Rebecca…) Maxim lives in a grand old mansion—Manderley (another Selznick picture, another named house)—and he soon expects the new Mrs. de Winter to fill the role held by the late Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca. The head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), adored Rebecca to the point of obsession, and isn’t about to cede control of Manderley over to the new wife smoothly. Mrs. Danvers also kept many secrets for her former mistress, such as an affair with her “cousin” Jack (George Sanders, in an acidic role that is a prototype of the reptilian character he would perfect—and win a Supporting Actor Oscar for—in All About Eve as Addison de Witt a decade later), which precipitated the decline of the relationship between Maxim and Rebecca. Ultimately, Rebecca’s presence consumes the new Mrs. de Witt, and the young bride uncovers the many secrets hidden within Manderley’s walls.

Lack (and fear of) female identity is the central theme of the film. Though it isn’t incorrect to assume the lack of an identity for the Fontaine character (whose proper name is never revealed in the film, she is referred to as Mrs. de Winter or in the screenplay as simply “I”) is a device in which to have the viewer, in essence, assume the role, her subjugation is more reflective of Hitchcock’s attitudes toward women. Hitchcock is famous for creating memorable roles for actresses, yet those characters are often soulless, mistreated or a canvas on which men paint their obsessions. Joan Fontaine’s role—though perfectly acted—manages to be all three at once.

Maxim is clearly obsessed with her beauty. His reasons for marrying her involve admiration for her outside appearance. It quickly becomes clear that Maxim has little to no interest in actually knowing his new bride. Mrs. de Winter is mistreated by nearly everyone in the film—from the aristocratic widow who hires her as a travelling companion early in the film, to the staff at Manderley, and Maxim himself who lies about his true nature when Mrs. de Winter confronts him. Finally, is there anything more soulless than being a character without a name? I completely see the value in having the audience assume Mrs. de Winter’s role in the film—it’s quite suspenseful to be in the dark along with a protagonist, thus making us even more desperate to uncover the mysteries of the story—but the character is ultimately treated as if she were formless putty. She can assume no shape of her own; outside hands—usually a man’s—must create one for her. Mrs. de Winter is merely a prop for Hitchcock to toy with.

Many of Hitchcock’s women have makeovers within the film, and the makeover scene is most telling of the director’s attitude toward Mrs. de Winter. She manages to stage a costume ball at Manderley, and in an effort to please Maxim, Mrs. de Winter wears the dress of Caroline de Winter—an ancestor Rebecca previously dressed up as. Hitchcock implies that the only way Mrs. de Winter can have any sort of life is by imitating a ghost. When Maxim sees her, he is rejected—he knows that his new bride is no substitute for the old one. A ghost (two, if you really look at it) has more power and personality than a live person. At this point in the film, Mrs. de Winter is contemplating suicide (and basically encouraged to do so by Mrs. Danvers), but a twist in the plot keeps the story moving forward. The poor girl can’t even end her life on her own terms—she only exists to be manipulated by the story and the director who unfolds it.

Mrs. Danvers herself has her identity subjugated. Throughout the film, it is implied she is a lesbian (you can thank the Hays Code for not allowing any sort of mention of homosexuality to be overtly mentioned into films). In Rebecca’s most fantastically creepy scene, Mrs. Danvers gives Mrs. de Winter a tour of Manderley. The housekeeper has kept her mistresses bedroom completely intact as if it were a holy shrine. Mrs. Danvers especially fawns over Rebecca’s old undergarments and negligees, at one point holding them to her cheek. It is revealed that Rebecca even called Mrs. Danvers by a pet name, “Danny” (and I think it is also notable that Mrs. Danvers’ first name also remains unuttered), which is about as subtle as a piano being dropped from a skyscraper in implying a Sapphic relationship between the two women. Mrs. Danvers’ relationship with Rebecca is portrayed as an obsession and predatory in nature. Hitchcock shows the character not an iota of sympathy. Mrs. Danvers is the clear villain of the film, and her lesbianism (yeah, I’ll push Mrs. Danvers right on out of the closet) is made the source of her madness.

In Rebecca, women are feared. In many ways, the strongest female character in the film doesn’t occupy a single frame. Rebecca haunts the whole film (from the first line “Last night, I dreamt of Manderley…”) to the moment when her fate is revealed (I don’t mean to spoil it for you, but Rebecca dies under malicious circumstances at the hands of a man). The more we learn about Rebecca, the more we learn that she had a mind and a personality of her own—and one that frequently clashed with Maxim’s ideal—and feel free to substitute Hitchcock himself here—of what a wife is expected to be like. Is it any surprise that she is dead?

Fear of women by suppressing their identity shows up time and again in Hitchcock’s work—from the neglected girlfriend Grace Kelly plays in Rear Window, the tormented and objectified Kim Novak in Vertigo and the misguided independent Janet Leigh played in Psycho, who represents the point at which female heroines were given no guarantees to even make it to the ending of a movie. (Oh, and let’s not even mention the whole bevy of “mother” and gender issues raised in Psycho—that’s another blog entry for another time.) Hitchcock’s attitudes towards women undoubtedly led to a period of inspired and unparalleled creativity in filmmaking—and Rebecca is the launchpad for these obsessions—but is his attitude a healthy one?

In the end, we have the might of David O. Selznick to thank for immortalizing Rebecca with a Best Picture Oscar. Selznick provided the platform on which Hitchcock became established in Hollywood. It’s fair to say that without Rebecca, we never would have got the superlative output of films Hitchcock made in the 1950’s. And perhaps I’m being a little too harsh on the director. By all accounts he was a loving husband and father to a daughter. I do think his films offer a peek into his subconscious, and also reflect the darkness in our own.

In a decade that would be haunted by war, death and evil, the Best Picture winners of the 1940’s would each be a litmus test to the darkness man holds within. If the great theme of the 1930’s films was there’s no place like home, Rebecca suggests that home is no place one would want to be. Oscar rarely flirts so aggressively with the dark side, and while none of the films in honored in the decade would be as bleak, Rebecca is the first Best Picture winner to scrape beneath the surfaces of the simple morals of the previous decade to find only ash and decay.


DETAILS

Rebecca (1940)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, George Sanders (and look out for Hitchcock’s signature cameo toward the end of the film near a phone booth after Sanders makes a call)

Studio: Selznick International Pictures (distributed by United Artists)

Total Oscars: 2 (Best Picture, Best Cinematography), out of 11 nominations (Best Director—Hitchcock, Best Actor—Olivier, Best Actress—Joan Fontaine, Best Supporting Actress—Judith Anderson, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction (Black & White), Best Editing, Best Score, Best Special Effects)

NEXT BLOG: How Green Was My Valley