- TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” series continues on Feb. 13 with eight Best Cinematography Academy Award contenders and five Oscar-nominated/-winning features revolving around “ladies of the night.” Titles include Cries and Whispers, Black Narcissus, Klute, and The Sin of Madelon Claudet.
‘31 Days of Oscar’ on TCM: Day 13 offers 8 Best Cinematography contenders and 5 titles centered on ‘ladies of the night’
Turner Classic Movies’ 2025 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Thursday, Feb. 13, with the airing of eight Best Cinematography contenders (including the Black-and-White and Color subcategories), in addition to five titles revolving around “ladies of the night”: Those born to the profession, those forced into it by circumstances, those who chose it because the pay was good. (See TCM’s Feb. 13 schedule further below. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Below are brief comments about each TCM presentation.
Cries and Whispers (1972)
One of Ingmar Bergman’s most effective and most unsettling dramas, Cries and Whispers is also one of the greatest-looking movies ever made. Sven Nykvist deservedly won the Best Cinematography Academy Award for the year 1973.
Also that year (or rather, in early 1974), the Swedish-language Cries and Whispers found itself shortlisted in the Oscars’ Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay categories. It lost in all three to George Roy Hill’s The Sting, written by David S. Ward.
That’s how it goes.
Having said that, bloody murder that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Actors Branch failed to nominate Harriet Andersson in the Best Supporting Actress category.
White Shadows in the South Seas (1928)
The chief reason to check out W.S. Van Dyke’s White Shadows in the South Seas is Clyde De Vinna’s Oscar-winning cinematography.
Monte Blue, as an alcoholic white doctor, and newcomer Raquel Torres, as a local girl named Fayaway, are the leads in this South Seas-set Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release about the White Man’s abuse (the titular “white shadows”) of Polynesian pearl divers. Robert Anderson is the fair-skinned villain.
White Shadows in the South Seas was MGM’s first release with synchronized music and some sound effects.
The Naked City (1948)
Winner of two Academy Awards – Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (William H. Daniels), Best Film Editing (Paul Weatherwax) – Jules Dassin’s crime drama is both intriguing and a bit disappointing. One key part of the problem is Oscar winner Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way, 1944), who can’t quite come up with a believable characterization as an investigative police detective.
But if the leprechaunish Fitzgerald is your cup of thespian tea, do check out the one-in-seven-million story depicted in The Naked City.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
Albert Lewin’s The Picture of Dorian Gray deservedly earned Harry Stradling that year’s Best Cinematography – Black-and-White Academy Award. Unfortunately, the Production Code-era film lacks the spirit of Oscar Wilde’s fantastic novel, though Oscar nominee Angela Lansbury is fine in a small role as one of Hurd Hatfield’s victims.
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
One of the relatively few three-strip/three-color feature films of the 1930s, Michael Curtiz’s The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex serves as a showcase for both Bette Davis, hamming it up as the British queen, and the Oscar-nominated color cinematography of Sol Polito and W. Howard Greene.
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Vincente Minnelli’s great-looking period musical Meet Me in St. Louis helped to elevate both the genre and Judy Garland’s stardom.
Curiously, Minnelli, Garland, and the film itself were all bypassed at the Oscars, though Meet Me in St. Louis was shortlisted in four categories, including Best Cinematography – Color (George J. Folsey).
Besides, Margaret O’Brien was given the Academy’s Juvenile Award.
National Velvet (1944)
TCM’s great-looking print should help to make Best Director Oscar nominee Clarence Brown’s National Velvet more entertaining than it would have been otherwise, as its chief point of interest is Leonard Smith’s Oscar-nominated color cinematography.
National Velvet ended up winning two Oscars: Best Supporting Actress for Anne Revere (Joan Lorring should have won for The Corn Is Green; else, Ann Blyth for Mildred Pierce) and Best Film Editing for Robert J. Kern.
Black Narcissus (1947)
Among its many positive elements, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus offer New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress winner Deborah Kerr (also for I See a Dark Stranger / The Adventuress) in top form and Oscar-winning color cinematography (Jack Cardiff) and art direction (Alfred Junge).
The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)
A troubled production that was drastically reshot, Edgar Selwyn’s The Sin of Madelon Claudet earned Helen Hayes her first Academy Award.
Hayes’ isn’t in any way a great performance – not even a good one – but, despite her theatricality, she does her have moments. As for the movie, it’s unadulterated melodrama that would be an overall embarrassment if it weren’t for its narrative and technical creakiness, which helps to turn it into a work of historical interest. As such, The Sin of Madelon Claudet – in which Hayes’ character is a social victim, not a “fallen woman” – is very much worth a look.
Helen Hayes’ second Oscar, in the Best Supporting Actress category, was for George Seaton’s Airport (1970).
BUtterfield 8 (1960)
Following a tracheotomy, Elizabeth Taylor won her first Best Actress Oscar for playing a hard-drinking, emotionally unbalanced New York City call girl in Daniel Mann’s BUtterfield 8. (The title refers to her upscale area’s phone exchange/prefix.) Becoming enmeshed with married wealthy executive Laurence Harvey doesn’t help matters any.
Two of Taylor’s Oscar competitors: Deborah Kerr for The Sundowners (her sixth and final nod) and Melina Mercouri – as a livelier, happier sex worker – for Never on Sunday (her one and only nod).
Two other actresses who won Oscars for their work in Daniel Mann’s movies of the preceding decade: Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba, 1952), Anna Magnani (The Rose Tattoo, 1955). Susan Hayward (I’ll Cry Tomorrow, 1955) and Paul Muni (The Last Angry Man, 1959) were nominated.
Elizabeth Taylor’s second – and well-deserved – Best Actress Oscar would come her way six years later, for Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Klute (1971)
During the height of the Vietnam War, antiwar activist Jane Fonda won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of an upper-echelon New York City call girl in Alan J. Pakula’s crime drama Klute. Politically, Fonda’s Oscar was both understandable and welcome (or at least acceptable); but when it comes to what’s on screen, that year belonged to Glenda Jackson for Sunday Bloody Sunday.
Fonda, for her part, delivered more impressive performances in two titles for which she was nominated: The Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) and The China Syndrome (1979).
Primrose Path (1940)
As one of the members of a family of Production Code-stifled sex workers, Ginger Rogers finds romance with Joel McCrea in Gregory La Cava’s Primrose Path. Marjorie Rambeau received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, but the most memorable performance in the movie is that of Queenie Vassar as the grandmother/ex-lady of the night.
That year, Ginger Rogers took home the Best Actress Oscar for Sam Wood’s Kitty Foyle.
Anna Christie (1930)
Greta Garbo’s Oscar-nominated sound debut, Clarence Brown’s creaky Anna Christie chronicles the (un?)romantic yearnings of the title character.
Really, how romantic can your dreams be when the object of your affection is unwashed Charles Bickford? Even Gavin Gordon – Garbo’s leading man in that year’s Romance, for which she was also nominated* – was a better mach.
* The Academy Awards’ third year (1929–1930) marked the last time actors could be shortlisted for more than one performance.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule on Feb. 13.
‘31 Days of Oscar’: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 13
4:15 AM Cries and Whispers (1972)
Director: Ingmar Bergman.
Cast: Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann, Harriet Andersson.
95m6:15 AM White Shadows in the South Seas (1928)
Director: W.S. Van Dyke.
Cast: Monte Blue, Raquel Torres, Robert Anderson.
85m8:00 AM The Naked City (1948)
Director: Jules Dassin.
Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart.
96m10:00 AM The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
Director: Albert Lewin.
Cast: George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed.
110m12:00 PM The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Director: Michael Curtiz.
Cast: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland.
106m2:00 PM Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Director: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Judy Garland, Tom Drake, Margaret O’Brien, Mary Astor, Leon Ames, Lucille Bremer, Marjorie Main, Harry Davenport, June Lockhart, Henry H. Daniels Jr., Hugh Marlowe, Chill Wills.
113m4:00 PM National Velvet (1944)
Director: Clarence Brown.
Cast: Mickey Rooney, Donald Crisp, Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Revere, Angela Lansbury, Juanita Quigley, Jackie Jenkins, Arthur Treacher, Reginald Owen, Norma Varden, Mona Freeman.
125m6:15 PM Black Narcissus (1947)
Director: Michael Powell.
Cast: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson, Kathleen Byron, Esmond Knight, Sabu, Jean Simmons, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, May Hallatt.
99m8:00 PM The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)
Director: Edgar Selwyn.
Cast: Helen Hayes, Lewis Stone, Neil Hamilton.
74m9:30 PM BUtterfield 8 (1960)
Director: Daniel Mann.
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher.
109m11:30 PM Klute (1971)
Director: Alan J. Pakula.
Cast: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi.
114m1:30 AM Primrose Path (1940)
Director: Gregory La Cava.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Joel Mccrea, Marjorie Rambeau.
93m3:30 AM Anna Christie (1930)
Director: Clarence Brown.
Cast: Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, George F. Marion.
89m
“TCM Oscar Movies: Best Cinematography, Sex Workers” notes
“31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Jane Fonda Klute image: Warner Bros.
“TCM Oscar Movies: Best Cinematography, Sex Workers” last modified in February 2025.