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Ranking 1942 Best Picture Nominees

1942 was not a great year for Hollywood and the Academy’s slate fared even worse. They did snub some rather strong movies in favor of bloated biopics and dated WWII propaganda pictures. This slate is among the Academy’s least well-known due to many forgettable flicks these days, but a couple are actually underrated gems. The winner was also pretty solid.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

10. Wake Island

In the midst of World War II, it is to be expected that Hollywood would produce so many war pictures. Wake Island is one of those. This is a typical US WWII propaganda picture that has a slapdash story, weak characterization and inferior direction. The movie looks good and its ending is admittedly quite effective, but it is overly patriotic and thus quite dated when all is said and done. It gets the worst spot on this list due to it being basically a propaganda movie with no story to speak of.

9. 49^th Parallel

49th Parallel is a British WWII movie that excelled in the strong action-adventure elements and accomplished technical aspects. The problem here is twofold. One is the the foolish idea to excessively humanize the Nazis and portray them as the protagonists while the other is the subpar acting from a couple of performers, Laurence Olivier being the most egregious with his terrible accent and hammy performance. It is quite possibly the strangest movie on this entire slate.

8. The Pride of the Yankees

The Pride of the Yankees is a pedestrian biopic about an uninteresting sports figure that features a reliably excellent, but repetitious performance from Gary Cooper playing his usual shtick of an all-around swell fellow. The third act is definitely moving, but the rest of the story is uneventful to a ridiculous degree. It was nominated for a staggering amount of Oscars this year, thus signaling the Academy’s bias for biopics from the onset of the awards. It’s not a bad movie for sure, but it’s a rather redundant, forgettable affair nonetheless.

7. The Magnificent Ambersons

This placement is personal, I admit that. But this is my list and I find Orson Welles’ movies quite overrated. I also do not care for stuffy period dramas with a huge character count and gossipy melodrama. This is one of those pictures. It is cinematic, yes. The production design and cinematography are particularly gorgeous. But I simply did not care for any of these characters and I found the film overplotted and dull at the end of the day. This type of material fares much better in the written form.

6. Yankee Doodle Dandy

James Cagney deserved his Oscar win for this film as he was magnificently charismatic and his dancing skills were top-notch. However, Yankee Doodle Dandy is your standard biopic and musical with rather forgettable songs and a tone that is overly goofy at times. It is very well made and well-acted across the board, but for a movie of this caliber, I expected much more. Cagney basically carries this entire project on his very capable shoulders as without him it would have been utterly forgettable.

5. The Pied Piper

The Pied Piper is, unlike most movies of the time, a more lightweight take on a WWII story. The result is this endearing, pleasant flick that is far from original, but solid nonetheless. The runtime is overly short and the technical aspects aren’t all that great, but the acting is terrific and the movie’s light tone and likable characters are a delight. Monty Woolley was particularly strong here and he deserved his Oscar nomination. 1942 was a year that got quite a lot of WWII pictures into the Best Picture race and this was one of the best.

4. Kings Row

Kings Row is memorable for featuring the most iconic role in Ronald Reagan’s career, but otherwise is a rather underrated, underseen picture that deserves more love. Yes, it goes heavy with twists and turns and some of the darkness is toned down significantly, but it still remains one of the most grim and brutal tales during this period. The ending was particularly emotionally powerful. It’s a type of story that you would never think would have been made back in the forties, but somehow they did it and the results are quite good.

3. The Talk of the Town

The Talk of the Town is a charming comedy starring excellent Ronald Colman, expectedly rascally Cary Grant and wonderful Jean Arthur who is just as lovable here as she always was. This is an unexpectedly fun and endearing flick that would never be nominated today, but during this period the Academy did respect comedies more, so it got in. The core plot is overly convenient and far from plausible, but at least the performances are strong across the board and the characters’ dynamic was excellent.

2. Random Harvest

Random Harvest tells the story about amnesia and how devastating it can impact one’s love life. While the core story is totally implausible and overly melodramatic, the movie was elevated by Herbert Stothart’s beautiful score, fantastic directing from Mervyn LeRoy and wonderful performances from both Greer Garson and Ronald Colman. Slow pacing aside, this is a gorgeously sumptuous, immensely strange and moody romance that hits you right in the heart, especially in its beautiful finale.

1. Mrs. Miniver

Yes, I would actually put the Best Picture Winner at number one. Mrs. Miniver is definitely not a great movie, but for this inferior slate it takes the first spot. While the emotional manipulation on display here was excessive and the storyline is only solid, the acting performances are so amazing that they elevate the material at hand effortlessly. May Whitty is so memorable, Teresa Wright is excellent and Greer Garson is iconic in such a well-written, fantastic role. The movie may have lost a lot of the appeal for modern viewers, but it remains underrated and it deserves more respect for the many things that it does right. There are so many memorable, emotional moments in this movie that do make it worthy of this placement.

Films That Should Have Been Nominated:

To Be or Not To Be – I could have included movies like ‘Bambi’ in this section, but I chose to focus on material that could have easily been recognized, but did not. This comedy is Lubitsch at some of his funniest. The Academy usually loved his output, but this one they ignored, which is a shame. It’s a diverse comedy in types of humor present and it’s superbly scripted.

Now, Voyager – Now, Voyager is a touching movie that deals with parental abuse and is still relevant in that subject matter. Bette Davis here delivered a truly outstanding, layered performance in a very difficult role. The movie is excessively melodramatic, but undeniably impressively mounted all-around.

The Palm Beach Story – The Palm Beach Story is a screwball comedy directed by Preston Sturges and starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea. It is a movie that does have a silly ending, but most of it was well made, witty in dialogue and quite sophisticated in its script. The performances are also excellent.