1947 – Green Dolphin Street (WINNER)
When this movie started, I‘ll be honest, I didn’t have high hopes, but boy was I ever wrong! The visual effects team for this film came through with flying colors. The movie was a spectacle of special effects! After the first few minutes, I settled in for a drama with a few rear-projection shots, a few beautiful matte-paintings, and some clever compositing. What I got was a period soap opera with a healthy dose of adventure thrown into the mix.
Where to start? Well, the movie had all those standard tricks of the trade, and they were all beautifully done. There were some gorgeous matte-paintings that looked incredibly real, though if I’m being critical, a few of them looked very much like paintings, like the nunnery up on the island mountain with the thin stretch of sand leading to the mainland. There were also some nice projection shots of the giant galleon, the Green Dolphin.
But the real highlight of the movie’s visual effects was the earthquake sequence that went on for nearly five minutes. Not only did they do some masterful blending of rear-projection and live action, they also used scale models and a crew of stunt people. The scene really woke me up and surprised me. I might even go so far as to say that the sequence was nearly on par with some of the practical effects done today. Just amazing!
The sets on which the actors were standing were clearly rigged to shake violently, putting them on unstable footing. Cracks opened up in the ground and swallowed stuntmen whole. Other fissures gaped open, leaving huge sections of the ground to fall away into the abyss. Toppling trees fell on people. These effects were particularly well-done. Bubbling geysers shot up through the dirt. Smoke and steam rose up into the air. A mountainside crumbled to the earth, releasing a flood of water that destroyed a river valley. The flood waters rushed upon floating lumber boats, destroying them and the people sailing on them. It was an incredible sequence!
But there was so much more than that. One effective little scene in which the dainty Margarite, played by a very young Donna Reed, had to climb up a rocky shaft as tidal waters rushed into the pit beneath her. That was a cool effect, though you could sometimes tell that she wasn’t climbing, so much as crawling horizontally through a tube. It was still cool.
I can understand why this movie won the Oscar for Best Special Effects. It really deserved it. The sheer number of effect shots made it stand out as a winner. I ended up really enjoying the movie, despite my original misgivings. I’m glad I misjudged this film. I’ll have to try to keep a more open mind in the future!