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Ranking 1945 Best Picture Nominees

1945 wasn’t really the greatest year for cinema, but thankfully the Academy managed to get it right for the most part by nominating some of the best movies of the year, though they still omitted a couple of worthy pictures. Of these five nominees, one was a crowd pleaser sequel, another was a big musical spectacle, there is a Hitchcock thriller here and two highly accomplished melodramas. Ranking them was again very easy for me.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

5. Anchors Aweigh

The last placement belongs to this grandiose navy musical. But it’s still a solid film as this slate is rather competent overall. Anchors Aweigh is thinly plotted, there is no doubt about it. The cheesy dialogue was also a hurdle that it never overcame. Still, there is a lot of charming dynamic and great chemistry between Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, the former delivering amazing dances and the latter singing gloriously. The Jerry Mouse cameo scene was instantly iconic too. It’s such a well scored, endearing flick, but it really needed a better director.

4. The Bells of St. Mary’s

A perfectly solid sequel to a perfectly solid original that swept the Oscars the year prior, The Bells of St. Mary’s benefits from two excellent turns from Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman, both very likable and endearing in these roles. This was a big crowd pleaser for the time and it remains rather charming even today, but its lack of truly memorable musical numbers and an overlong runtime definitely diminished its overall impact. For all these reasons, it gets the fourth spot on this surprisingly strong list of nominees.

3. Spellbound

While certainly flawed in pacing and structure, Spellbound still remains one of Hitchcock’s most underrated directorial achievements. This film is intriguingly dreamlike in quality and fueled by gorgeous cinematography and a couple of unforgettable sequences such as the gunshot ending, the childhood flashback and a weird dream scene done by Salvador Dali. The surreal elements and its psychological thriller trappings made it surprisingly modern. The Academy took notice and nominated his movie back at a time when they respected his masterful cinematic output.

2. Mildred Pierce

Powerfully acted by Joan Crawford in her deservedly Oscar-winning performance, Mildred Pierce easily gets the second spot on this list due to its huge entertainment value. It is a noirish, twisty and highly engaging melodrama that is very emotionally engaging, complex in its character dynamics and thematically rather intriguing and dark. This film represents some of the best that Hollywood offered at a time when the melodrama was among the industry’s biggest and most accomplished genres. It has stood the test of time gloriously too.

1. The Lost Weekend

Was there ever going to be another number one for this year? This was a rare time when the best movie of the entire year ended up winning Best Picture and it truly remains one of the greatest winners in the history of the award. Billy Wilder’s directing was efficient and brilliant while Ray Milland’s central performance was his career-best and he was rightfully honored by the Academy. This was an important, surprisingly honest take on a difficult subject matter of alcoholism in an era when those difficult issues were rarely depicted on the big screen. It remains a wonderfully optimist, riveting and suspenseful drama that is also gorgeously shot and beautifully scored. It was and still is a great cinematic achievement and the only right winner.

Films That Should Have Been Nominated:

Dead of Night – A film that was a huge influence on The Twilight Zone, Dead of Night was one of the best horrors of the decade and it still remains phenomenal to this day. It was a great anthology that really worked due to great scripts and excellent technical aspects. The Academy snubbing it further proved their ignorance when it comes to this genre.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – One of the best and most satisfactory book adaptations was 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a movie that was perfectly cast and acted while benefiting from strong technicalities and a faithful, very well crafted adapted screenplay. Why this movie wasn’t nominated by the Academy is beyond me.

Leave Her to Heaven – A noir picture done in Technicolor was a rare sight, but Leave Her to Heaven really worked as it was both sumptuous and inherently dark at the same time. The film’s story surely is far-fetched, but gloriously melodramatic and incredibly memorable too. Though snubbed for this category, Gene Tierney was thankfully recognized by her amazing turn.