- TCM schedule – Feb. 17: “31 Days of Oscar” continues with seven Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award contenders and six Oscar-nominated/-winning titles revolving around U.S. politicians and, at times, their wives and hussies. Included are Kapo and The Best Man.
TCM schedule – ‘31 Days of Oscar’ Day 17: 7 Best Foreign Language Film contenders and 6 titles centered on U.S. politicians
Turner Classic Movies’ 2025 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Monday, Feb. 17 – Presidents’ Day in the United States – with the airing of seven Best Foreign Language Film contenders/winners, in addition to four titles featuring Oscar-nominated American politicians – from the boundlessly corrupt to the saintly halo wearers – and two featuring the nominated wives of (at some point in life) U.S. presidents. (See further below the TCM schedule on Feb. 17. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Below are brief comments about each TCM presentation.
Loves of a Blonde (1966)
An exemplar of the Czechoslovakian New Wave, Milos Forman’s romantic comedy-drama Loves of a Blonde traces the ups and downs in the relationship between a small-town shoe-factory worker (Hana Brejchová) and a piano-playing soldier (Vladimír Pucholt, who would mostly set acting aside to become a physician).
Forman would win two Best Director Oscars: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984).
The Virgin Spring (1960)
Set in medieval Sweden, director Ingmar Bergman and screenwriter Ulla Isaksson’s stark drama The Virgin Spring chronicles a knight’s merciless revenge on the men who raped and murdered his young daughter.
The Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film of 1960, The Virgin Spring received one other nomination: Best Costume Design – Black and White for Marik Vos. The superb camerawork by frequent Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist (Winter Light, Cries and Whispers), however, was bypassed.
Bergman regular and future two-time Oscar nominee Max von Sydow (Pelle the Conqueror, 1988; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, 2011) stars as the knight. Birgitta Pettersson, who had a brief career from 1954–1961 (followed by sporadic comebacks) is his daughter.
Among the The Virgin Spring’s other cast members are Birgitta Valberg (seen in Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, Shame) and another Bergman regular, Gunnel Lindblom (The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, etc.).
Kapo (1959)
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers), who co-wrote the screenplay with Franco Solinas, Kapo was nominated for the 1960 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. As mentioned above, the winner was Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring.
American Susan Strasberg stars as a young Jewish Frenchwoman who becomes involved in a mass escape from a Nazi concentration camp. Also in the cast of this Italian-French-Yugoslavian co-production – representing Italy at the Oscars – are Laurent Terzieff and future Best Actress nominee Emmanuelle Riva (Amour, 2012).
The Burmese Harp (1956)
Kon Ichikawa’s World War II drama The Burmese Harp was one of five titles nominated for the first competitive Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. After World War II and prior to the 1957 ceremony, non-English-language film were handed noncompetitive Honorary Awards.
Ichikawa himself would remake The Burmese Harp in 1985.
Babette’s Feast (1987)
Gabriel Axel’s evocative late-19th-century-set drama Babette’s Feast became the first Danish film to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
In the flawless cast: Stéphane Audran (Les Biches, That Obscure Object of Desire) as a mysterious French gourmet cook and political refugee, and veterans Birgitte Federspiel (the female lead in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet) and Bodil Kjer (Elly Petersen, Jenny and the Soldier) as the two elderly Jutland residents who hire her.
Denmark’s “Oscars,” the Bodil Awards, are named after Bodil Kjer and fellow actress Bodil Ipsen.
Mon Oncle (1958)
Jacques Tati’s masterwork, Mon Oncle is just about everything a movie comedy should be: Funny, clever, great-looking*, entrancing. Tati himself stars as the titular character in this Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and New York Film Critics Circle winner.
A plus: The marvelous canine cast.
* Cinematography by Jean Bourgoin; production design by Henri Schmitt.
La Strada (1954)
Although she played some tough characters during her career – see Alberto Lattuada’s Without Pity, her evolution in Renato Castellani’s …And the Wild Wild Women – Giulietta Masina is best remembered for her sentimental Chaplinesque characters in Federico Fellini’s La Strada and Nights of Cabiria.
The former title, also featuring weak (and dubbed) performances by Americans Anthony Quinn (Mexican-born) and Richard Basehart, won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ first competitive Best Foreign Language Film award.
All the King’s Men (1949)
The love affair between a significant chunk of the American voting population and populist mobster-fascists is hardly anything new, as can be attested by Robert Rossen’s political drama All the King’s Men, winner of the Best Picture Academy Award at a time when the far-right House Un-American Activities Committee was wreaking havoc in Hollywood.
Best Actor winner Broderick Crawford stars as Willie Stark, based on Huey Long (Louisiana Governor 1928–1932; U.S. Senator 1932–1935). In her film debut, Mercedes McCambridge deservedly was named Best Supporting Actress.
Robert Rossen, soon to be blacklisted, was bypassed in the Best Director category. The winner was Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player James Stewart became a major star and Oscar nominee thanks to his performance in director Frank Capra and credited screenwriter Sidney Buchman’s idealistic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a Columbia Pictures release about a slow-talking, slow-thinking small-town bumpkin who ends up saving the Washington establishment from itself.
Just don’t feel too bad if you find yourself rooting for corporate whore and Best Supporting Actor nominee Claude Rains.
The Best Man (1964)
Set in the mid-1960s, a time when an adjudicated sexual assaulter and convicted felon could never have ascended to the White House, director Franklin J. Schaffner and screenwriter Gore Vidal’s classy drama The Best Man* stars future Oscar winners Henry Fonda (On Golden Pond, 1981) and Cliff Robertson (Charly, 1968) as political rivals vying for their unnamed party’s nomination.
A Cold War populist, Robertson is also a World War II vet, which, in a militaristic society, is a major plus. Oh, but wait. While in close contact with all those other guys in uniform while stationed in Alaska there was maybe a special one who… You get the picture, especially if you’ve seen Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent.
* Based on Gore Vidal’s Tony Award-nominated 1960 play that had starred Melvyn Douglas and Frank Lovejoy.
Also featured in the play: Former Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star Lee Tracy, whose career was derailed in the mid-1930s, and who made a brief Oscar-nominated big-screen comeback in The Best Man by reprising his role as a former U.S. president.
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Raymond Massey received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for hamming it up as Abraham Lincoln in John Cromwell’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois, based on Robert E. Sherwood’s play also starring Massey.
Not helping matters in this overlong drama: Future Oscar winner Ruth Gordon (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968) is wasted as Mary Todd Lincoln.
Sunrise at Campobello (1960)
Handled by stage director Vincent J. Donehue, Sunrise at Campobello screams theater! in just about every scene.
Bypassed at the Oscars, Ralph Bellamy reprises his Broadway performance* as polio-stricken future U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while Greer Garson received her seventh and final nod for her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt, fake teeth and all.
Garson lost to Elizabeth Taylor for BUtterfield 8. She had previously taken home the Best Actress Oscar statuette for Mrs. Miniver (1942).
* Ralph Bellamy and Mary Fickett starred in former MGM head Dore Schary’s 1958 Tony Award-winning play.
The Gorgeous Hussy (1936)
Clarence Brown’s romantic political drama The Gorgeous Hussy overstays its welcome by a good 20 minutes while telling the story of Washington boardinghouse owner’s daughter Margaret “Peggy” O’Neill and her friendships, infatuations, and/or marriages to the likes of U.S. Senator-turned-President Andrew Jackson (“Uncle Andy”), Virginia Senator John Randolph, Navy purser “Bow” Timberlake, and Secretary of War John Eaton.
Joan Crawford is disappointingly wan as the willful Peggy. The rest of the cast doesn’t fare much better: Lionel Barrymore as Jackson, Melvyn Douglas as Randolph, Robert Taylor as Timberlake, and Crawford’s then real-life husband Franchot Tone as Eaton.
The only The Gorgeous Hussy cast member to be shortlisted for the Academy Awards was Beulah Bondi as Jackson’s petticoated wife Rachel. (Check out the scandalous Petticoat Affair.) Gale Sondergaard deservedly won that year for Anthony Adverse.
And to think that the Petticoat Affair could have been avoided had MGM’s Lionel Barrymore taken the trouble to check out what George Arliss had to endure in Warners’ Alexander Hamilton, released five years before The Gorgeous Hussy.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule on Feb. 17.
‘31 Days of Oscar’: TCM schedule (EST) on Feb. 17
7:00 AM Loves of a Blonde (1966)
Director: Milos Foreman.
Cast: Hana Brejchová, Vladimír Pucholt, Vladimír Mensík, Ivan Kheil, Jana Nováková.
88m8:30 AM The Virgin Spring (1960)
Director: Ingmar Bergman.
Cast: Max Von Sydow, Birgitta Pettersson, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Pettersson, Axel Düberg, Allan Edwall.
87m10:00 AM Kapo (1959)
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo.
Cast: Susan Strasberg, Laurent Terzieff, Emmanuelle Riva, Didi Perego, Gianni Garko.
116m12:00 PM The Burmese Harp (1956)
Director: Kon Ichikawa.
Cast: Rentaro Mikuni, Shoji Yasui, Jun Hamamura, Taketoshi Naito, Ko Nishimura.
116m2:00 PM Babette’s Feast (1987)
Director: Gabriel Axel.
Cast: Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle, Jean-Philippe Lafont, Vibeke Hastrup, Hanne Stensgaard, Gudmar Wivesson, Lisbeth Movin.
105m4:00 PM Mon Oncle (1958)
Director: Jacques Tati.
Cast: Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie.
120m6:00 PM La Strada (1954)
Director: Federico Fellini.
Cast: Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart, Aldo Silvani.
115m8:00 PM All the King’s Men (1949)
Director: Robert Rossen.
Cast: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, Mercedes McCambridge, John Derek, Shepperd Strudwick, Anne Seymour, Katherine Warren, Paul Ford.
109m10:00 PM Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Director: Frank Capra.
Cast: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Thomas Mitchell, Guy Kibbee, Eugene Pallette, H.B. Warner, Beulah Bondi, Harry Carey, Ruth Donnelly, Astrid Allwyn, Grant Mitchell, Jack Carson.
130m12:15 AM The Best Man (1964)
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner.
Cast: Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Margaret Leighton, Edie Adams, Shelley Berman, Lee Tracy, Ann Sothern, Gene Raymond, Kevin McCarthy, Richard Arlen, Mahalia Jackson.
102m2:15 AM Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Director: John Cromwell.
Cast: Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon, Mary Howard, Minor Watson, Alan Baxter, Howard da Silva, Dorothy Tree, Elisabeth Risdon.
110m4:15 AM Sunrise at Campobello (1960)
Director: Vincent J. Donehue.
Cast: Ralph Bellamy, Greer Garson, Hume Cronyn, Jean Hagen, Ann Shoemaker, Tim Considine, Zina Bethune, Alan Bunce, Lyle Talbot, Herbert Anderson.
143m6:45 AM The Gorgeous Hussy (1936)
Director: Clarence Brown.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, Melvyn Douglas, James Stewart, Alison Skipworth, Beulah Bondi, Melville Cooper, Louis Calhern, Gene Lockhart, Clara Blandick, Sidney Toler.
102m
“TCM Schedule: Best Foreign Language Film, Politicians” notes
“31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Broderick Crawford and Mercedes McCambrige All the King’s Men image: Columbia Pictures.
“TCM Schedule: Best Foreign Language Film, Politicians” last modified in February 2025.