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Though Louis B. Mayer created the Academy Awards as a union-busting enterprise and a bid for further studio control, they're now considered the highest honors in Hollywood. Studios put millions into Oscars campaigns for their films and stars, and Oscars commentary has become an industry in and of itself. In the Internet age, the Academy Awards now generate iconic viral moments like the memorable "La La Land" and "Moonlight" mix-up in 2017.

Even as we recognize their insignificance, it's difficult not to get invested in the outcome of the Oscars. However, as Oscar voters are fallible people, they don't always get it right. Remember when "Green Book" inexplicably won Best Picture in 2017, mirroring the "Driving Miss Daisy" controversy in 1990? The history of the Academy Awards is filled with instances of voters having very bad taste and having very good taste -- though, of course, taste is subjective.

Indeed, some Oscar winners are best left gathering dust.

The Awful Truth

Blu ray

Criterion

1937 / 1:33 / 91 Min. / Street Date April 17, 2018

Starring Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy

Cinematography by Joseph Walker

Written by Viña Delmar

Edited by Al Clark

Produced and directed by Leo McCarey

Thanks to Louis Armstrong and his fellow geniuses, the Jazz Age transformed a generation and dominated pop culture for close to two decades; Vanity Fair and Life recorded the nightlife of hot-to-trot sophisticates while early risers followed the seesaw romance of a willowy flapper named Blondie Boopadoop and her paramour Dagwood Bumstead, a lovesick Dick Powell wannabe.

It was Powell who helped popularize the uptempo rhythms pervading the fast and loose musicals of the era, in particular Paramount’s raucous output which flaunted hot jazz on the soundtrack whether it starred Crosby as a college crooner or W.C. Fields as a double-dealing misanthrope. Even Norman McLeod’s Alice In Wonderland began with a bouncy...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937) is showing February 13 - March 15, 2017 in the United Kingdom in the series The Rom Com Variations.Leo McCarey’s 1937 screwball classic The Awful Truth is the epitome of a sub-genre dubbed by philosopher Stanley Cavell the “comedy of remarriage.” In the film, husband and wife Jerry and Lucy Warriner (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) succumb to their marital suspicions and embark on an easier-said-than-done divorce. He returns home from an unspecified dalliance, complete with fake Florida tan (ever the gentleman, he bronzes so as to save Lucy the embarrassment of getting asked why her husband looks pale after spending time in the sun), but upon his arrival, Lucy herself is nowhere to be found. She must be with her Aunt Patsy, Jerry assures his guests, that is until Aunt Patsy (Cecil Cunningham) shows up sans niece.

Gone Girl is a cynical movie. No doubt. It features two sociopaths working out their deeply troubled marital issues in the public eye with just the right amount of bloodshed. Yet in more than a few ways, it could be an unofficial remake of The Awful Truth, Leo McCarey’s 1937 screwball comedy where two assholes realize that they want to stay married. The movie opens with Jerry Warriner (Cary Grant, naturally) lying to his wife about a trip to Florida (complete with sunlamp sessions at the gym and fake letters). When his wife Lucy (Irene Dunne) returns home later than expected, and with her debonair singing instructor in tow, Jerry can’t believe her story of a broken down vehicle. He’s furious. She finds out he was lying about visiting the Sunshine State, and mutual divorce proceedings commence. They both want to keep the dog. The rest of the film involves Lucy’s engagement to the...