Director: William Dieterle
Production Company: Warner Bros.
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Top Billed Actors: Paul Muni, Josephine Hutchinson, Anita Louise
IMDb Rating: 7.4
*Best Picture Nominee*

Won 3 Oscars:
Best Actor - Paul Muni
Best Writing (Adapted) - Pierre Collings, Sheridan Gibney
Best Writing (Story) - Pierre Collings, Sheridan Gibney
Nominated for 1 more:
Best Picture

Plot: A guy discovers germs and scientists spit in his face. Once the guy proves his discoveries, people stop being suckas and start washing their hands.

William Dieterle's second of three films in the Project, The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) is what catapults the director into prominence with Warner Bros. Sure he directed a Best Picture nominee the year before (A Midsummer Night's Dream) but Pasteur won three major awards, including Paul Muni's only Oscar. The other two awards make a little history as this is the first time that someone (two people in this case) has won two Oscars for the same film. Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney each received both the Screenplay and the Story awards. This confused me at first as I thought the Story Oscar was what we now know as the Original Screenplay Oscar. However, the Original Screenplay did not come about until 1940. In 1940, there was a split between Adapted and Original. The Story Oscar is, I guess, just for the overall narrative of the movie. It sticks around until 1956. This means that there was a time when there were three writing categories at once - Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, and Story. This gets confusing.

So this movie received two writing Oscars. Let's delve a little into the writing to see why. First of all, this is a very focused biopic. In my movie-watching experience, this is kind of an oxymoron. Most biopics cover unnecessary details about the subject's youth or old age. The only link between the scenes that are being presented is the main character. This movie, however, gets it right in that it goes from one major discovery to the next. We are introduced to microbes and how the world is ignorant of the potential harm they can do. Then, we go to the countryside and see the discovery of the cure for anthrax. Then we fast forward again and see Pasteur hard at work to try and cure rabies. Frivolous moments are nowhere to be found and the story is all the better for it. We don't see the history of Pasteur as a young man nor do we see him fall in love with his wife. The focus of the film is on these scientific discoveries and that's where it stays. This focus is helped by the wonderful performance of Muni. I've liked Muni since he first showed up in this Project, so much so that I selected the movie he starred in as the 'should have won' Best Picture for the 6th Awards. He's only 40 years old in this movie, but he plays the elderly man so well. He also gets many Oscar-worthy monologues, which always increases one's chances at the award.

Although I do like the overall story structure and the juicy monologues delivered from Muni, the writing does fall flat a few times throughout the feature. The scientists play the villain so blatantly, it is hard to imagine anyone acting like that. To keep the story on track, it seems like the writers were forced to get rid of any ambiguity. The Dr. Charbonnet character is so obviously ignorant of germs, it almost feels like an educational video, like "this is what you shouldn't do when preparing for a medical exam." Also, the romance between Donald Woods' character and Anita Louise's, Pasteur's daughter, is shoe-horned in the story. Overall, it's probably a good thing that there wasn't too much romance between the two per my praise of how focused this movie is, but I could have done with either more of it or none of it at all. Something that has nothing to do with the writing which lessens the impact of the film is the lack of music. The score is hardly present, which makes the movie feel like a relic of the past, as if it were made four years prior.

Overall, the writing is mostly superb and complements Paul Muni's strong performance as the titular character. The obviousness of the scientists' ignorance is grating after a while and the awkward silences between scenes takes away from the experience.
My Score: 7/10

Director: Jack Conway, Robert Z. Leonard (fill-in)
Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Top Billed Actors: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver
IMDb Rating: 7.8
*Best Picture Nominee*

Won 0 Oscars
Nominated for 2 more:
Best Picture
Best Film Editing - Conrad A. Nervig

Plot: An alcoholic lawyer gets friend-zoned so hard. He deserves this as he keeps helping the husband of the woman he loves, despite his wish to be with her.

And we're off! The first entry for the 9th Academy Awards batch, which honors films from 1936, was actually released in 1935. It was released around Christmas 1935, so my guess is that it was released a week later in the Los Angeles area, which is part of the criteria for the Academy Awards. On the heels of MGM's David Copperfield (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935) indicates David O. Selznick perhaps had an obsession with Charles Dickens. There is even some shared actors between the two movies, which includes Edna May Oliver, Elizabeth Allan, and Basil Rathbone. The star here, howeverm is Ronald Colman, who shaved off his trademark mustache to play Sydney Carton (the same was true for Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)). Another note (pun intended) is that the trailer above and the credits features the piece Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse, which is the march that The Ohio State University Marching Band plays when performing 'Script Ohio.' This piece has a special place in my heart as I performed with that band for four years.

As you could tell, the trivia to the movie isn't all that exciting. The movie itself is pretty good, however. Colman is a fantastic Carton. He could be sober and romantic or drunk and brash, but he is always endearing. He totally dominates the scenes opposite Allan (and pretty much any other actor). I recall being so enthralled by Colman during Arrowsmith (1931) and he is officially on my list for movies to be excited for when his name appears as a top billed actor. Although Colman may overshadow everyone else in the movie, there are still some great moments overall. The final shot that pans to the sky is cinematically sound and the music, which contains a lot of classical pieces of music, is also fitting. The narrative is also crisp and very engaging, especially for someone who has never read the book (like me). The characters and scenarios in London and Paris are introduced throughout the first half of the movie, and when the plot really gets going, its easy to care about the fate of France and, ultimately, the fate of Carton.

As I allude to above, Colman outshines everyone else on screen. The acting from nearly everyone not named Colman is below average, even when comparing the performances to others during this time period. This was Blanche Yurka's first movie since the silent film era and it really shows. She is very demonstrative with her gestures in the courtroom scene and it plays very hammy. Her sidekick has the most annoying laugh in the history of cinema. I recognized the voice right away and when I confirmed my hunch of who she was, I felt kind of proud. I am of course talking about the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Her name was Lucille La Verne and she does the laugh of the Queen (after she transforms into the old witch) in every scene she is in. It makes absolutely no sense. There is also a lack of chemistry between Allan and her husband, Donald Woods. As I mentioned above, I have never read the book, but I would think there should be some conundrum for Allan to choose between both her suitors. As a viewer of this movie, I was just perplexed as to why Allan's character wanted to be with Woods' character when Colman was always there for her.

Overall, I'm glad to at least be acquainted with this classic narrative. Colman turns in an excellent performance amidst mostly poor ones, but there is enough momentum in the story to keep this going.
My Score: 7/10