1940 – Women in War
This movie seemed like nothing more than a hastily made propaganda film. The visual effects were not particularly good, the story was dull, and the film quality has not aged well. I mean, the film always seemed to be really out of focus, as if the only existing copies have not been cared for, let alone carefully restored. Unfortunately, this didn’t help me as I was watching specifically for the visual effects. I have a feeling that the effects might have looked better and might have been more impressive if the picture were just sharper.
But that only accounts for part of my problem with the effects. The rest is that there weren’t many effects to even speak of. Most of the film focused on the soap-opera-like relationships within a group of Army nurses. But there were two scenes where visual effects were required. One was near the beginning, where an enemy airplane was dropping bombs, attempting to sink the transport ship with the nurses aboard. The second was the bombing of a village where some of the nurses become trapped.
So first, let me talk about the air raid. The effects looked… cheap. For the most part, it was just the obligatory water explosions. The transport ship was never hit, and all they had to do was spray some water up into the air. There was one mildly interesting shot where the camera was in the sky, looking down on the ship. We can see the airplane fly across the screen, the water explosion next to the boat. But both the airplane and the boat looked like toy models. And the water explosion, as seen from above, looked like it was composited into the image, and not very well. Other movies in 1940 did it better.
And then there was the bombing of the village. This was a little more impressive, but only a little. From what I can tell, yes, they did actually blow up a few buildings. But those explosions seemed to be accompanied by common, garden variety fireworks. Really, the looked like 4th of July fireworks with shooting sparks. It just looked bad. And again, I have to compare these effects with other films that were nominated the same year, and these effects just weren’t as good. Consider the effects of movies like Foreign Correspondent and the is no real competition.
The only other effects I can think of that are of note are a simple stunt of a man falling through a balcony railing, and then later, some falling debris in a cellar that doesn’t land on anyone. There wasn’t anything to really write home about, and with a total of fourteen films nominated for Best Visual Effects in 1940, I think I would have just left this one out of the running. True, the sound effects were also considered part of the same category, but again, the sound effects didn’t really stand out to me either. I don’t know… Maybe I’m missing something.