2017 Academy Awards Recap

“And the winner for Best Picture is…La La Land.” Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty

“If you see something, say something.” New York City Subway safety slogan, sound advice for award presenters.

Whatever you want to say about the 2016 (2017?) Academy Awards, you can’t say they weren’t memorable.

Yes, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced the wrong winner for Best Picture, only for the mistake to be rectified a mere three speeches in. I was only half-listening when suddenly a producer blurted out “We lost, by the way” and amid a frenzy of activity and confusion, it was finally announced “Moonlight” had won Best Picture.

The moment when it all went to hell, Oscars 2017. Faye Dunaway fled the scene like she was still in Bonnie and Clyde.

So, casting aside the schadenfreude, the Oscars aren’t technically supposed to be only about movies that make a tremendous social impact or say something “important.” They are just supposed to be about the BEST movie, whatever such a subjective term entails. The Oscars have at various times – and certainly recent Best Picture winners indicate we are in one of those periods – rewarded movies about social problems and injustices (Spotlight, 12 Years a Slave). And for me personally, to have awarded La La Land in the current mood just felt so frivolous. Giving the picture to Moonlight reflects well on the Oscars. Contrast that to the social upheaval of the 1960s when the Oscars gave Best Picture to a musical four times! In the end, this was a battle between the Academy’s two favorite types of winners: Movies that tell us how important movies are (La La Land) and movies about social ills (that of course can make people involved in movies feel smugly important).  I also think La La Land peaked too soon, as there was definitely a feeling of backlash about how much praise it was getting (maybe 14 nominations were a few too many?).

But I personally, I also liked Moonlight better. Yes, the movie checked a lot of boxes for important liberal topics, but it also wasn’t preachy. It really is a well told story about a boy betrayed by those he loves, forced to navigate his way in an unfriendly world and how he responds to that. It’s quiet and intense. The most memorable scene has to be the beautiful moment when Mahershala Ali’s character teaches the young boy to swim in the ocean, like a symbolic baptism.  Someday, I’ll do a full write up for Moonlight, but for now I’ll say I think it provides a poignant look at growing up with myriad disadvantages and the painful ways a person builds a wall to protect himself.

My Official Best Picture Nominee rankings, for the record:

1. Hell or High Water
2. Manchester by the Sea
3. Moonlight
4. Hidden Figures
5. La La Land
6. Fences
7. Arrival
8. Hacksaw Ridge
9. Lion

Complete Winners List with notes where appropriate (Checkmark means I correctly picked it).

The four acting winners, Mahershala Ali, Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Casey Affleck

✔ Director: Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Best Actor: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea

✔ Actress: Emma Stone, La La Land

✔ Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight

✔ Supporting Actor: Viola Davis, Fences. Davis wisely played into the ol’ chestnut of somehow getting yourself nominated for a supporting role when you actually have leading role time

✔ Animated Feature: Zootopia

✔ Original Screenplay: Manchester By the Sea

✔ Adapted Screenplay: Moonlight

✔ Foreign Language Film: The Salesman (Iran)

✔ Documentary Feature: O.J.: Made in America

Best Documentary Short Subject: The White Helmets. This wasn’t even the best documentary short about the war in Syria (there were 3!)

✔ Cinematography: La La Land

Best Costume Design: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This was the one that really sparked the La La Land backlash and thing is, I really thought it would have been a fine choice to win. Emma Stones pastel dresses are great, admit it.

Best Film Editing: Hacksaw Ridge – This probably should have been the clue something was up with La La Land, although I personally started freaking out they’d give Hacksaw Ridge Best Picture or even worse, Mel Gibson Best Director

Best Live Action Short: Sing. Actually a really neat little movie about a middle school choir director who emotionally blackmails some of the students into lip syncing so as to improve the overall choir’s importance. It was kind of like Whiplash Jr.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Suicide Squad. Is Suicide Squad the worst reviewed movie to ever win an Oscar? While hilarious, I still think Star Trek was more deserving.

✔ Original Score: La La Land

✔ Original Song: “City of Stars”, La La Land

✔ Production Design: La La Land

Best Sound Editing: Arrival

✔ Sound Mixing: Hacksaw Ridge

Best Visual Effects: The Jungle Book (I still think Dr. Strange was robbed)

✔ Animated Short: Piper

15/24 or almost 2/3 (and exactly 2/3 in the parallel universe Beatty and Dunaway occupy)!

The show itself was pretty much a snoozer until the end, which we will never, ever forget. I thought Jimmy Kimmel did pretty well, actually, better than most recent Emcees, but the bit with the tourists was eye rolling. The running Matt Damon abuse was certainly a highlight.

2016 Oscar Predictions (aka just say La La)

Look, it’s going to win a lot, alright.

I’ve been less enthused than normal about the Oscars this year, in part because the winner has been even more glaring obvious than usual and also because I am not as enthused about said presumptive winner as most. Even looking aside La La Land, which to me was fine but not blow away, I didn’t find myself going (Lady) gaga about much of the nominees. I’ll try and get my thoughts in order better in a post-Oscar recap but I did want to get my picks on digital paper for posterity to judge my inherent wrongness. As a rule, I’m guessing if the voters saw La La Land, that’s what they picked.

Best Picture: La La Land – Like I said above, it’s a fine movie, but it also is a movie about how wonderful movies are, something Academy voters are so very smitten with right now. It just feels frivolous right now in a time when other movies like Moonlight or Hell or High Water are trying to say something about us.

My Pick: Hell or High Water.

Best Director: Damien Chazelle, La La Land

My Pick: Same. It really is a technical triumph.

Denzel Washington, Fences

Best Actor: Denzel Washington, Fences

My Pick: This is really a two horse race between Denzel’s enunciated acting and Casey Afleck’s mopey acting. Both were top notch. I prefer Affleck but I’m not upset by Denzel.

Remember this picture for the rant about Costuming below

Best Actress: Emma Stone, La La Land

My Pick: Same. Natalie Portman is top notch in Jackie, but Stone really does possess a radiance throughout La La Land that is the highlight of the movie.

Mahershala Ali, a practitioner of Resting Sad Face

Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight

My Pick: Same

True story in that I found this picture by Googling “Viola Davis Snot Fences”

Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis, Fences

My Pick: Same.

Zootopia might be the actual best movie of the year, truth be told

Best Animated Feature: Zootopia

Best Original Screenplay: Manchester by the Sea

Best Adapted Screenplay: Moonlight

Best Cinematography: La La Land

Best Costume Design: La La Land  – People are freaking out about this one being the sign La La Land is overly praised but I actually really like the clothes, especially Emma Stone’s parade of pastels. The yellow dress in the poster is particularly unforgettable. Costume design doesn’t always have to go to Elizabethan-set palace movies.

Best Documentary Feature: OJ: Made in America . I have no idea honestly I am Not Your Negro feels topical (as does 13^th I suppose) but everyone saw OJ and talked about OJ in some for this year.

The poster for Joe’s Violin

Documentary Short: Joe’s Violin. Too many Syria movies (3!) cancel each other out. Joe’s Violin, the story of a holocaust survivor who donates his violin to a school for at risk youth is bittersweet and hopeful, wheras the other four are numbing endurance tests of suffering.

Film Editing: La La Land

Foreign Language Film: The Salesman (Iran) – seems like a topical FU to world events, although I’ve heard people lost their minds over Toni Erdman (Germany)

Makeup and Hairstyling: Star Trek Beyond. Suicide Squad being an “Oscar Winning Film” sure would be funny, but seems unlikely. The third option is for a small foreign movie, so why not go for the one with aliens with funny ears and foreheads.

Original Score: La La Land (DUH)

Original Song: “City of Stars”, La La Land – a toughie since La La Land is nominated twice! “City of Stars” is the centerpiece number however (over Emma Stone’s solo “Audition”).

Production Design: Ooooh, this one IS hard. Is La La Land’s freeway and literal soundstage enough to overcome Hail Caesar’s old-timey soundstage? Nope. (To be fair, there is the bridge and the planetarium, right?) La La Land.

Animated Short : Piper (The Pixar one about a bird). I HATED these this year, btw. Piper however, was pleasant.

You should see the IMDB picture for this (NSFW)

Live Action Short: Silent Nights, a Danish movie about a charity worker who falls in love with an immigrant who isn’t exactly as above board as he first seems. I liked this one because it was not preachy or black-and-white in terms of its story and had some very complex character development in 20 minutes.

Sound Editing: La La Land, I guess?

Sound Mixing: Hacksaw Ridge. C’mon, war movies always do well in this category, right?

Visual Effects: La La Land. JUST KIDDING. Although I can’t believe it wasn’t nominated for the part where they literally danced into the stars. Doctor Strange.

1973: The Sting

 Note the Rockwell-esque poster and the sweet tag line.

Chicago was a right town then. The fix was in. The dicks took their end without a beef. All the Wall Street boys wanted to make an investment for us. Even had marks looking us up, thinking they could beat the game…Yeah, kid, it really stunk. No sense in being a grifter if it’s the same as being a citizen. – Henry Gondorf (Paul Newman), The Sting.

The early 70s Best Pictures were obsessed with crime. From 1971 to 1975, movies about crime – and more often than not with criminals as the lead characters – won the Best Picture trophy. While most of these movies were dark, in 1973, smack dab in the middle of this crime spree, a different sort of crime movie won – The Sting. Far more lighthearted than its neighboring Best Pictures, The Sting is a caper film, where the bad guys are quite likable, just desserts are served, the stakes feel low key and a general jolly mood permeates the film.

Henry Gondorf (Paul Newman) and Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) just looking dapper as all get-out

In 1930s Chicago, Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) is a low level grafter, conning people out of small amounts of cash and blowing it as fast as he can steal it. Hooker and his partner, Luther, swindle the wrong man, an errand boy for the banker/numbers runner, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw, who was also a villain – Henry VIII – in 1966 Best Picture A Man For All Seasons). Despite the relatively low sum of money Hooker and Luther stole, Lonnegan refuses to take any petty insult sitting down. He has Luthor killed and puts a contract out on Hooker. Hooker teams up with Henry Gondorf, a wisened con man who has been out of the game because one of his grifts went wrong. Together the pair organize a crew to take Lonnegan down.

Paul Newman in the hilarious poker scene of The Sting

The Sting falls into one of my favorite types of movies – cool people doing cool things.  Robert Redford and Paul Newman, along with director George Roy Hill, had first teamed together in the wildly successful buddy western Butch Cassidy and the Sunset Kid, and The Sting is partly an excuse to let the two men play off each other. Newman is one of my all-time favorite actors and he shines through the role. There’s an extended scene on a train where Newman first meets Lonegan, playing a rich bookie who is purposefully irritating in order to get under Lonnegan’s skin and draw him into the con. Newman shines in the comedic role, bringing funny chops to the character.

The story in The Sting is secondary to the atmosphere and coolness of the characters. The movie has several twists – like any good grift should – and the first time through they come off as exciting and shocking. Watching the movie again, some of the holes start to appear. The subplot about Hooker being marked by Lonnegan’s assassin and its ultimate resolution doesn’t really make a lot of sense once the assassin is revealed and the flimsy explanation as to why the assassin didn’t take out Hooker sooner is put forth. Similarly, part of Gondorf’s plan to unseat Lonnegan involves Hooker, under an alias, getting close to Lonnegan to lure the rich man in. How could the assassins Lonnegan has paid to follow Hooker not realize Hooker is consorting with their boss?

Robert Redford (center) and Lonnegan (Robert Shaw, right) show off the 30s sensibilities of this 70s film.

I really like the sets and the ambiance of the films. All the grifters talk in carny code and never spell out what they are talking about (once you know the intricacies of the con, you can probably figure most of it out). I like the style of the characters, from Newman’s suspenders to Redford’s dazzling suits. As noted, it’s cool people, being cool. Director Hill also employed a lot of 1930’s ambiance, from cinema techniques popular in 30s films to bookending scenes with title cards reminiscent of Normal Rockwell paintings from the Saturday Evening Post. The air of nostalgia is undercut by the overall crookedness of the characters – both good and bad – and the fact the whole movie is about the corruption of the times (and the present day).

I like the Sting for its look and feel and the fun story it tells. It feels like a strange pick for Best Picture, both in its time and even now, when most Best Pictures are serious and have more of a morality message attached. Perhaps the movie succeeded because it was a breath of fresh air, a palate cleanser, in an otherwise dark time, both culturally and at the movies.

Other Oscars: Best Director (George Roy Hill); Best Original Screenplay; Best Art Direction – Set Direction; Best Costume Design; Best Film Editing; Best Score

Note: Total Oscar count is really indicative of nothing – each award is voted separately and either you win Best Picture or you don’t – but it is striking to me that The Godfather, maybe the greatest movie ever, won 3 Oscars and The Sting, a fine movie but not the greatest of all time, won 7.

Trivia: The 46^th Academy Awards are notorious for a streaker running across stage, right before the presentation of Best Picture. It has long been rumored that the stunt was planned.

David Niven is the guy with clothes, Robert Opel is the one without

Box Office: $156 Million (#1 for the year)

Other Notable Movies of 1973: American Graffiti*; Cries and Whispers*; The Exorcist*; A Touch of Class*; Robin Hood (Disney); Papilon; The Way We Were; Magnum Force; Last Tango In Paris:  Live and Let Die (first Roger Moore as James Bond); Paper Moon;  Day For Night; The Paper Chase; Save the Tiger

*Best Picture Nominee

1972: The Godfather

Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone; Note the ever present puppet strings in the logo

“I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life, I don’t apologize, to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool dancing on the strings held by all of those big shots. That’s my life, I don’t apologize for that. But I always thought when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the strings.” – Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), The Godfather (also explaining The Godfather’s ever present and otherwise random logo with the marionette strings)

What really needs to be said about The Godfather?

1972’s Best Picture is one of the most celebrated and famous movies of all time. It’s a complex and nuanced movie that weaves together family drama and crime thriller, all while offering social commentary on the American dream and 20^th century society. It’s filled with magnificent performances, led by the often imitated Marlon Brando as the mumble-mouthed Mafioso don who deep down is a family man trying to provide a better life for his children.

Don Vito Corleone (Second from left) and his three sons, Sonny (James Caan), Michael (Al Pacino) and Fredo (John Cazale)

The Godfather begins in 1945. Don Vito Corleone (Brando) is the head of a powerful crime family. He has four children, including oldest, quick tempered Sonny (James Caan), and youngest, Michael (Al Pacino), plus surrogate son and family lawyer Tom (Robert Duvall). Michael is a returning war hero who is disdainful of his family’s illegal and violent life. When Vito resists urges from other crime families to begin running drugs, an attempt is made on his life and the rest of the family (both personal and professional) are put in jeopardy. Michael, angered by his father’s shooting, retaliates by killing the mastermind behind attempt, The Turk, plus the Turk’s bodyguard cop. Michael must flee to Italy to escape prosecution. Vito, recovered but badly weakened, gives control of the family to Sonny, who in turn is killed. Vito manages to broker a peace between the families so Michael can return to the US. Michael reunites with his girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton), lying to her that the family is going legitimate, all while taking over his father’s operations and plotting revenge.

Don Corleone is finally shown respect from someone asking for a “favor” in the Godfather’s opening scene

The Godfather is filled with incredible, iconic moments. Much like Casablanca 30 years earlier, the movie opens with a very long set piece (in this case Vito’s daughter’s wedding), that establishes all the principal characters, their relationships to each other and their motivations. The movie opens with a long, single take of an Undertaker, disingenuously asking Vito for help in taking revenge against two men who had attacked the former’s daughter. The Godfather is insulted by the request, since the Undertaker has continuously shown little respect for Vito or his lofty position, until now, when he needs a “dirty deed” taken care of. Vito finally agrees to do so in exchange for a favor. We understand the Godfather’s place as a highly-feared outsider who we still count on to fulfill our darkest desires, and Vito’s own desire to belong to the society that shuns him.

The Godfather is probably most famous for Brando’s performance. What’s surprising when watching the film is that Vito is probably in only half the movie.  Aside from a few standout scenes, Vito is recovering from gunshot wounds for a long period of time. But he’s such a strong presence when he’s in the film that he is what stands out most. He is always impeccably polite, almost a kindly grandfather with some peculiar verbal ticks, but he still radiates an air of danger when scolding his children for showing disrespect. The scene where he calmly negotiates peace between the families, while still subtly promising to reign down holy hell if something should happen to Michael is a personal favorite.

One of the few scenes between Pacino and Brando

More than Vito, the movie is about Michael’s descent into the corrupt and dark world of the family business. At the movie’s start, he is openly scornful of his family, telling Kay how much their actions disgust him (he’s even late to his own sister’s wedding!). By the end of the movie, he’s shut Kay out of his world after having all his enemies brutally killed (in the film’s famous closing show, the door is literally closed on a distraught Kay as she realizes Michael is the Godfather now). I really enjoyed the few scenes between Vito and Michael, both because they come from two tremendous actors, but also on the themes they convey: the relationship between a father and son and two businessmen immersed in their trade.

I of course would be remiss in not mentioning the (in)famous horse’s head sequence

It is hard to realize now just how much The Godfather has influenced crime movies that have come since. We all have a short-hand understanding of organized crime’s inner workings, hierarchy and codes of honor, thanks in large part to the Godfather’s influence. The French Connection created the template for police procedurals and The Godfather created a similar template for crime movies. Whereas The French Connection put the spotlight on the chaos of maintaining law and order, so does The Godfather show the rules behind organized crime.

Trivia: One of my favorite pieces of Oscar trivia revolves around The Godfather. When Marlon Brando won the Best Actor award, he declined it, citing Hollywood’s racist depiction of Native Americans, as well as an ongoing conflict between Native Americans and the US government over the former’s treatment. To accept the award, he sent Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather, dressed in traditional Apache garb.

Yep.

Other Oscars: Best Actor (Marlon Brando); Best Adapted Screenplay

Box Office: $133.7 Million (First for the year)

Other notable films of 1972: Cabaret*; Deliverance*; The Emigrants*; Sounder*; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Notable to Mr. Robot fans, at least); The Poseidon Adventure; What’s Up Doc? ; Conquest of the Planet of the Apes; Play It Again, Sam; Blacula; 1776; Behind the Green Door

*Best Picture Nominee

1971: The French Connection

You put a shiv in my partner. You know what that means? Goddammit! All winter long I got to listen to him gripe about his bowling scores. Now I’m gonna bust your ass for those three bags and I’m gonna nail you for picking your feet in Poughkeepsie. – Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman), showing compassion and professional competency, The French Connection

In the early 1970s, the Oscars celebrated a lot of cops and robbers, even if it wasn’t always so easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad. From 1971-1974, the Best Picture trophy went to some sort of crime tale variation, beginning with the hard edged police procedural The French Connection. Even though it’s somewhat dated today, The French Connection was revolutionary for its time with the frank depiction of ruthless and aggressive cops who break as many laws as the criminals they chase. The movie employs an almost documentary-style filmmaking technique with grainy, hand-held footage to create the sense of “you-are-there” realism that is the hallmark of procedural cop shows like Law and Order today.

Cloudy Russo (Roy Scheider) and Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) on stake out, just the happy cops you could meet.

Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner Buddy “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider), two New York detectives working the drug detail, spot a pair of suspicious character at a bar that Doyle believes are drug dealers, due to their association with a suspected criminal bankroller. They begin obsessively tracking the couple – who by day run a diner. Meanwhile, Alain Charnier (Fernando Ray), a wealthy Frenchman has persuaded a French movie star to use the latter’s fame to help Charnier smuggle heroin into New York. Charnier does in fact plan to sell the heroin to the diner owner, proving Doyle’s suspicions correct. The cops, aided by their much hated federal friends, begin tracking the suspects. When the trail seems to go empty, Doyle is pulled off the case, but Charnier sends an assassin after him, leading to the film’s famous car versus train chase scene and a final confrontation between cops and crooks.

Fernando Ray as the suave drug smuggler Charnier, once again outsmarting Doyle

The poster for The French Connection tells you a lot about the movie. The gritty shot, shockingly violent for a movie poster, shows Doyle shooting a fleeing criminal in the back, the man’s face captured in dying agony. Without much context, it’s hard to know who the good guy in the scenario is (the poster even tells us that Doyle is “bad news”). The chase scene itself starts with the hitman missing Doyle by pure luck and killing an innocent bystander. Several other people die throughout the chase along with untold property damage (Doyle essentially steals a car to give chase).  It should be noted the chase is the most famous part of the movie and an absolute triumph of tension and excitement that was unmatched for its time.

A still from the famous car chase scene in the French Connection

The French Connection was made at a time when America’s trust in authority was rapidly deteriorating. Popeye represents the sort of brutal, authoritarian nature of peace-keeper that is represented in that systemic distrust. He is racist, violent and alcoholic, breaking rules and endangers others with impunity. Solving crime is not about upholding law and order but merely one side of a game that Popeye will do anything to win. Popeye is one of cinema’s first Maniac Cops, the reckless rule breakers who always have a beef with their by-the-books captains and the soft system that lets criminal punks get away with so much. The formula was lessened over the years with the more cartoonish Dirty Harry (who actually also debuted in 1971) and Lethal Weapon series, among others. By the end, Doyle mistakenly kills a federal agent and shows no regret or emotion. Unlike traditional crime movies, the system is broken. The cops fight incessantly amongst themselves and with other organizations in a battle of egos. Doyle is outsmarted at nearly every turn by the criminals. In the film’s conclusion, the criminals most responsible for the crime end up receiving the least amount of punishment.

Hackman won an Oscar for playing Doyle but I don’t think he’s that good in it. Even though he’s ostensibly the lead, he disappears for a large period of time and he isn’t really the driving action of the film, which is far more plot centered than character centered. Doyle is pretty two dimensional in a lot of ways – he’s a bad boy with a badge—and I didn’t think he was all that memorable, although again, this is watching the film 45 years after it was made, when the character type he originated has really been run into the ground.

The French Connection has a lot of interesting things to say about the criminal justice system. It uses the shabby-chic stylings that made Midnight Cowboy so impactful and gritty. In today’s world, where so many of its troupes and innovations have been copied ad nauseam, a lot of its message and innovations have been lost to modern viewers.

Other Oscars: Best Director (William Friedkin); Best Actor (Gene Hackman); Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Editing

Box Office: $51.7 Million (2^nd for the year)

Other Memorable Movies of 1971: A Clockwork Orange*; Fiddler on the Roof$*; Diamonds Are Forever (James Bond #7); Dirty Harry; Billy Jack; Carnal Knowledge; The Last Picture Show*; Bedknobs and Broomsticks; Klute; Shaft; THX1138 (George Lucas’s first film); Harold and Maude; Straw Dogs; Nicholas and Alexandra*; Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssssss Song

*Best Picture Nominee

$Top Box Office: $75.6 Million

1970: Patton

An iconic scene makes for an iconic poster

“Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” – General George Patton (George C. Scott), motivational guru, Patton

Following the low budget Midnight Cowboy, the Academy returned to appreciating grand epics with the 1970 Best Picture, Patton. Based on the real-life, hard-nosed World War II General George Patton, the movie boasts some of the most realistic large-scale military battles filmed to up to that point. Patton also had a tremendous performance by George C. Scott who brought depth to a virtual cartoon character with enough ego to make him nearly unlikeable. The 1970s Best Pictures tend to favor men of low character or in a low social status but Patton bucks that trend by following a genuine war hero, although one with an ego as big as a tank.

Another moment from Patton’s amazing opening speech, a sanitized version of his speech to the third infantry before the Battle of the Bulge

Patton starts in 1943 with the U.S. suffering a crushing defeat in Tunisia (which the film chalks up to poor British leadership).  General George Patton, brash, outspoken, eccentric and strict is called to lead the tank squadron and restore US victory. Patton immediately clashes with the British, in particular the egotistical General Montgomery who is the leader of the African campaign. Patton is exceedingly old-fashioned and views war as the ultimate test of manhood and his path to a great destiny. He is enraged by the political games played between the US and England as they fight the Germans. He and Montgomery clash over their respective plans to take the Italian island of Sicily, with Montgomery’s plan ultimately being chosen, although it falters for exactly the reason Patton predicts. Patton leaves his second in command, the humble General Omar Bradley (Karl Malden), to face heavy fire while he races around the island in order to beat Montgomery in capturing a strategically significant town. Along the way, he creates a public relations nightmare by berating and smacking a shell-shocked soldier (not to mention endangering lives by pushing his men into unfavorable battle positions). Patton is sidelined because of the incident but given a second chance by Bradley, who has been promoted above him, to lead a tank squadron into Germany.

Patton’s lack of sympathy for men scared in the face of conflict is one of the way’s the movie tries to show him in a less than sympathetic life. This really happened, by the way.

I was slow to warm up to Patton, as I thought the movie started very slow and clunky, but finally picked up pace about thirty minutes in. Patton’s strange antics, from quoting history and poems and espousing his belief in reincarnation, not to mention his outsized ego, are so bizarre that they take a while to sink in. The movie sticks with this characterization throughout to the point we as the audience accept it as Patton’s nature.

The very beginning of the movie is Patton’s best and most famous scene, with Scott giving a long motivational speech to the troops behind a gigantic American flag. It’s a great scene that won Scott his Oscar for Best actor, with about one hundred memorable quotes.  The movie’s biggest flaw is that it tries too hard to tell us how great Patton really is. In fact, the movie repeatedly cuts away to German headquarters where German generals heap praises on the man and openly predict on how Patton’s next move will spell certain destruction for them.

Just so we don’t look at George C. Scott the whole time, here’s Patton’s one-time friend, turned commander, General Omar Bradley, portrayed by Karl Malden.

Patton is very similar to the 1962 Best Picture, Lawrence of Arabia. Both feature eccentric but brilliant men who thrive in unorthodox but ultimately successful methods to wage war but are ultimately undone by their own arrogance and inability to function within the political regime controlling the war effort.  It’s interesting that a movie that popularizes a war general would fare so well in the anti-war climate of 1970. Francis Ford Coppola said in the introduction to the film included on the DVD that as co-writer, he strove to include both criticism and praise of Patton in the film, which likely balanced out some negative reaction to it. Patton also stands out as an anti-authority outsider, which likely held appeal to the counter-culture. The true villain of the film is the political machine that constantly fouls up Patton’s plans and stops his dreams of glory and victory. The same authority, a contemporary viewer might say, is who had involved US in the quagmire of Vietnam and was trying to stamp out his or her own individuality. It is also likely the film appealed to older voting members of the Academy who viewed the heights of World War II with a renewed appreciation in contrast to the floundering Vietnam War effort and were more likely to go with a conservative choice following the victory of the very liberal Midnight Cowboy the previous year.

As noted George C. Scott was given the Best Actor Oscar but became the first person in history to decline the award, citing his disdain for the awards process and claiming that acting was not a competition. Scott’s decline of the award would be overshadowed by a far more spectacular rejection of the acting trophy a mere two years later.

Other Oscars: Best Director (Franklin J. Schaffner );  Best Actor (George C Scott)(declined); Best Original Screenplay; Best Film Editing; Best Sound; Best Art Direction

Box Office: $61.7 Million (4^th for the year)

Other Notable films of 1970: MASH*; Love Story*$; Five Easy Pieces*; Woodstock; The Aristocats;  Little Big Man;  Airport*; Beneath the Planet of the Apes; Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; The Great White Hope;

*Best Picture Nominee

$Top Box Office Draw: $106.4 Million

1969: Midnight Cowboy

Even the poster is a bleak departure from what past movie posters had been.

“I ain’t a for real cowboy. But I am one helluva stud!” – Joe Buck (John Voight), selling his brand, Midnight Cowboy

You would be hard pressed to find two more different films than 1968 Best Picture winner Oliver! and the 1969 winner Midnight Cowboy. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find two more different films than Midnight Cowboy and any of the 41 Best Picture winners that came before it. Midnight Cowboy is the ultimate line of demarcation between the glitz and glamour and happy endings of “classic” Hollywood and the gritty, arty and shocking New Hollywood that followed. Purposefully made cheap, with an emphasis on human degradation that the social problem movies of the 40s and 50s would never stoop so low to touch, Midnight Cowboy is painful and shocking but also deeply moving thanks to the wonderful performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.

Voight is Joe Buck, a dim-bulb dish washer in a dead-end Texas town. Buck moves to New York with practically nothing except a career plan to become a gigolo (or “hustler” as he calls it) to all the rich, lonely women he’s heard about. Due to the plan’s numerous and obvious flaws, Buck is soon homeless and starving on the street. After getting conned by the slimy and crippled Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo, Buck is taken under Ratso’s wing. The pair live in a condemned tenant building without heat, running cons to occasionally eat and earning money by Joe turning tricks for a gay clientele. A chance encounter at a weird, Warhol-esque party leads Joe to a big score and the chance to finally become a big-time hustler. But Rizzo, who has been dogged by a nagging cough throughout the movie, is deathly ill and begs Joe to help him get to Miami.

Ratso Rico (Dustin Hoffman) helps clean up Joe Buck (John Voight), just one example of the characters’ real affection for each other.

Midnight Cowboy is a bleak movie. It’s not even really a “social ill” movie like Lost Weekend or The Best Years of Our Lives where a specific issue could be identified as the cause of the protagonist(s)’ distress and a solution offered. Instead, everything is wrong. Society is uncaring. Our two heroes have done nothing right and live with dirty dreams and constant screw ups. But through the bleakness, and maybe because of it, there’s some very affecting moments. The bond Joe and Ratso develop through the course of the movie is among the most touching relationships in cinema. They snipe and belittle each other, but underneath we see their real concern and affection. For example, Ratso tells Joe that the latter literally smells terrible and will never make it as a hustler because of this, but in the next scene we see Ratso help Joe con his way into cleaning his clothes.

The famous final bus scene in Midnight Cowboy will break your heart ten times over

The performances of both Voight and Rizzo are outstanding. Rizzo is essentially a nasty, unlikable guy, but Dustin Hoffman makes him so sad that we finally pity him. The scenes where the proud Rizzo finally has to beg Joe for help to get to Florida (he is deathly afraid of being sent to a pauper’s hospital) and the real terror he shows are painful to watch. Ratso’s dreams of being a big shot chef and lady killer in Miami with Joe by his side will rip into your heart. Voight brings an aw-shucks naivety to Joe, who is a likeable guy because he’s so nice, even if he is incredibly stupid.

Whereas many contemporary Best Pictures were big and straightforward, this movie is neither.  There are lots of purposeful ambiguities to the story that weren’t found in traditional Best Pictures: Joe comes from a very traumatic past, where he was abandoned by his mother and possibly raped but these details are revealed only in dreams, giving the audience little concrete confirmation about what happened to him and what he’s running from. I like how the movie weaves the characters dreams and fantasies into their realities, moving without any kind of transition, a different kind of cinematic storytelling than had been seen before.

Midnight Cowboy is famously the only X rated movie to ever win Best Picture, but that piece of trivia comes with a few caveats. First, the X rating was originally supposed to be used for upscale pictures only adults could see but got co-opted after the fact by the porn industry and took on a whole different meaning later, after Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture. Second, the movie was re-rated as an R just two years later without any edits or cuts. It still earns a “Hard R” designation, make no mistake.

Other Awards: Best Director (John Scheslinger); Best Adapted Screenplay

Box Office: $44.8 Million (2^nd for the year)

Other Notable Films of 1969: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid*; Easy Rider; Z*; The Wild Bunch; True Grit; On Her Majesty’s Secret Service;  Hello Dolly!*; Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice; The Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; Paint Your Wagon; Alice’s Restaurant; Once Upon a Time in the West; Anne of the Thousand Days*

*Best Picture Nominee

1968: Oliver!

For a decade of creativity, the 60s had some dopey movie posters, frankly. Also, I’m not really sure Oliver! was more than a musical.

– For your talent is employable, so make your life enjoyable. A world with pockets open wide awaits your whim to grope inside. – Fagin discusses career options, Oliver!

Oliver! fits squarely in the mold of the 1960s Best Picture – British, musical, period piece with lavish costumes, sets and production numbers. The movie freely focuses on style over substance, and despite a thin plot (especially compared to the Dickins book on which it’s based), the lavish and fun song and dance numbers make this one of my favorite musicals, both among Best Pictures and all movies.

Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger and Mark Lester as the tastefully dirty Oliver. Wild was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but I’m fairly certain the Academy meant to nominate his dope hat.

Based loosely on Charles Dickens novel and, more directly, a Broadway musical, Oliver! is about a poor workhouse orphan (Mark Lester) in 19^th century England. After Oliver dares asks for more gruel for dinner, the workhouse owner sells him to an undertaker to lead funeral processions. Oliver runs away and is taken in by an army of boy pickpockets, led by the adult Fagin (Ron Moody) and lead boy, the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild). Fagan is also a fence for the dastardly thief Bill Sykes (Oliver Reed), who lives with the kind-hearted bar-maid, Nancy (Shani Wallis). Oliver, who is oblivious to what it is that pickpockets actually do, is taken by Dodger on a training run but ends up captured by rich Mr. Brownlow, who taken by the boy’s charm and innocence, takes Oliver in. Fagin and Sykes are concerned Oliver will rat out their criminal enterprise and conspire to kidnap him back under the “Snitches get stitches” doctrine.

Fagin (Ron Moody, center) holds career day in “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.” The parasol was never not a hot commodity.

There were a lot of things I liked about Oliver! I thought that the music was great throughout. The movie has a lot of famous, recognizable songs, such as “Food Glorious Food” and “Consider Yourself”. Most of the production numbers, especially “Consider Yourself”, are grandly shot and sprawling through entire London neighborhoods with hundreds of singers and dancers. The smaller numbers, mainly “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” and “Reviewing the Situation”, both sung by Fagin, have intricate choreography and are also very catchy.

The story itself is kind of flimsy. Oliver, despite being the title character, feels like a supporting player (and a very dumb one at that). He disappears for long sections of the movie that focus more on Nancy, Bill and Fagin. Even most of the musical numbers he’s in find him more of an on-looker who we cut to occasionally to see his dumb-struck reactions while Dodger, Fagin and others perform. The movie really downplays the relationship between Oliver and Brownlow, which is weird considering it’s the basis of Oliver’s redemption and ultimately the movie’s happy ending. Much more time is given to the resolution of Fagin’s story – he gets a whole song to spell out his future while Oliver has 30 wordless seconds at the very end.

Despite Bill Sykes (Oliver Reed’s) sweet muttonchops, Oliver! did not win best makeup and hair styling (possibly because the Award wasn’t created until 1981).

The movie has a very strange shift in tone between its first and second parts. The first part is very light and fun. Fagin seems more like a kooky eccentric than any kind of real danger, and seems to show real affection for his pickpocket brigade (I suppose one could argue this is just Oliver’s naive interpretation of his master). Sykes comes off as a gruff rogue who doesn’t say much but doesn’t seem like a truly bad guy (apart from the thieving). However, things take a very dark turn in the second half with Sykes suddenly becoming a homicidal maniac and a very real, very blood death changes everything towards the end of the movie. I was really shocked by the death and violence at the end of the movie because it was totally opposite the tone and characterizations presented in the first half (and which belies the movie’s G rating!).

Oliver! is my favorite of the eight Hollywood Musicals to win Best Picture. I really enjoyed the songs and production numbers and despite the two-and-a-half-hour run time, the movie didn’t drag for me like My Fair Lady. This is the end of an era for both musicals and Best Pictures, symbolized by the movie’s own dark turn towards its finale. Another musical wouldn’t win Best Picture until 2002 and the awards themselves began to favor darker, more adult movies in the coming years.

Other Oscars: Best Director (Carol Reed); Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture; Best Art Direction; Best Sound

Box Office: $37.4 Million (7^th for the year)

Other Notable Films of 1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey$; Charly; Funny Girl*; The Love Bug; The Odd Couple; Bullit; Rosemary’s Baby; Planet of the Apes; Night of the Living Dead; The Lion in Winter*; Rachel, Rachel*; Romeo and Juliet*; Yellow Submarine

*Best Picture Nominee

$Highest Grossing Movie: $56.7 Million

1958-1967: Oscar’s Fourth Decade -A Look Back

	Musical	Historical Epic	Lavish Setting	British	Social Injustice
1958: Gigi	X		X
1959: Ben-Hur		X	X
1960: The Apartment
1961: West Side Story	X
1962: Lawrence of Arabia		X	X	X
1963: Tom Jones			X	X
1964: My Fair Lady	X		X	X
1965: The Sound of Music	X		X	X-ish
1966: A Man For All Seasons		X	X	X
1967: In the Heat of the Night					X

 

This poster for Lawrence of Arabia really tells you all you need to know: Handsome man in white, lots of desert.

The Oscars fourth decade (1958-1967) is the start of the “traditional” Best Picture with the sorts of lavish costume dramas, period pieces and BRITISH-ness from the ten winners that dominate what we think of when we think of a “Best Picture type” today. It’s very notable that in a decade revered for its social consciousness and upheaval, only 3 of the 10 best pictures take place in the contemporary time period. It’s like the Academy – and perhaps moviegoers as a whole—looked to the escapism of movies for comfort from trying times.

None of this nonesense

Unique to this time period is the Academy’s absolute adoration of big musical spectacles. Before 1958, only two musicals ever won Best Picture. In this ten year stretch, 4 out of the 10 winners were musicals. In the next 50 years, we’ll only see two more musicals win. Oddly, aside from the success of the winners, the 60s are viewed as the decline of the Hollywood Musicals and you can probably count the successful musicals released between 1970 and 2000 on your fingers. Does this mean the Academy was behind the times? Regressing into the past to avoid the harsher realities of the present – both in terms of what was going on in the world and the struggles and changes within the filmmaking business? Or were they caught up in the zeitgeist and awarded the statue to the “right” winner – West Side Story, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music are all much-remembered and well-loved to both audiences of their time and today’s fans.

Lots of jazz hands

The other major trend, carried over from the last decade, was the prominence of historical epics and the triumph of a movie’s “big-ness” that was used to compete with television. Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia are two the most visually stunning and exciting Best Pictures ever. Even the non-epics like Tom Jones and A Man for All Seasons use their big budgets and location settings of movies to employ elaborate sets and costumes unlikely to be seen or appreciated on television at that time, perhaps another reason that period pieces fare so well among Best Pictures in this period.

One cannot deny the British influence over this time period (as with a lot of things in American culture – it was the British invasion, after all). From 1962-1966, four of the five Best Pictures are set in England and The Sound of Music, despite being in Austria, has a predominantly British cast and feel.

All hail the Union Jack!

Was the Academy out of touch? It’s well worth noting that the majority of the Best Pictures in this time frame were among the top ten financial grossers for their respective years of their release. The Sound of Music was the highest grossing movie of all time for a long period following its release. So it’s not as if the critical and commercial aspects of the Academy were as misaligned as they were today, when we have some of the lowest grossing Best Pictures ever. Even today, many of the winners are very highly thought of by some if not all – West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Sound of Music, in particular. Hindsight has left many critics to question some of the Oscar choices – notably choosing In the Heat of the Night over Bonnie and Clyde and The Apartment over Psycho – but both those winners are very strong, in my opinion (There really is no defending Tom Jones, however), and it was impossible to know, for example, that Psycho would create a whole new genre of film.

Filmmaking was about to undergo a significant upheaval in the 70s and that is reflected in the Best Picture winners of that time period. For the Oscars in the late 50s and 60s, the Best Picture was about celebrating epics and style over social issues and “small” pictures.

1967: In the Heat of the Night

1960’s posters remain awesome

“You’re pretty sure of yourself, ain’t ya Virgil. Virgil…that’s a funny name for a boy who comes from Philadelphia. What do they call ya up there?”

“They call me MISTER Tibbs!”

– Rod Steiger and Sydney Poitier, In the Heat of the Night

In the decade known for its rising social consciousness, the Academy Awards waited until 1967 to actually honor a movie dealing with any sort of topical injustice in the racially charged murder mystery In the Heat of the Night. As a movie dealing harshly with a prejudiced and hostile police force, it still resonates strongly today after several years of awarding lighter period pieces. The movie wraps its message around a tense murder mystery to mixed results but remains powerful because of its social awareness and the tremendous performances by its two lead actors.

Virgil Tibbs (Sydney Poitier) and Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger) form an uneasy partnership to solve a murder, In the Heat of the Night

In Sparta, Mississippi, a prominent northern businessman is found murdered in the middle of the night in an alleyway. Lacking any real suspects, the racist police immediately arrest Virgil Tibbs (Sydney Poitier), an out-of-town African American man waiting alone at a train station. Tibbs reveals he is actually a Philadelphia homicide detective. Sparta’s police chief, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), is quick to get Tibbs out of town, but the latter ends up staying, in part to rub his education and experience in the racist police department’s face but also out of a genuine desire to see justice served. Gillespie, new to the job and himself a lonely outsider, is under pressure from the town to solve the murder and not lose the cash cow of the murdered man’s promised factory.  As the investigation continues, Gillespie and Tibbs develop a begrudging respect and friendship for one another, even as racial tension in the town continues to simmer.

Tibbs (Sydney Poitier) faces mortal danger from racist townsfolk, In the Heat of the Night

In the Heat of the Night is really made by the performances of Poitier and Steiger (who won Best Actor for the his portrayal of Gillespie, even though Poitier was the real star and went on to make two sequels.) Poitier was one of the biggest stars in the world at the time and was already the first African American to win a Best Actor Award (sadly the second wouldn’t come for nearly fifty years!). Both men are very charismatic and likeable in their roles. Steiger, who played Marlon Brando’s big-shot brother-with-a-conscious in On the Waterfront, has the difficult job of playing a deeply flawed and racist man who still elicits out sympathy. The scene early on where he is forced to admit to Tibbs that he needs his help shows real vulnerability and makes the character sympathetic in a way that is hard to pull off. Steiger moves Gillespie away from the cliché of the bumbling sheriff into a real, conflicted human being who learns to change. Poitier is also very compelling and gives Tibbs enough flaws to make him relatable and not a boring superman, particularly his hubris, which leads him to finger the wrong suspect and repeatedly gets him in real danger from the locals.

Sydney Poitier slaps Larry Gates in the most famous scene from “In the Heat of the Night.” Poitier reportedly had it written in his contract that if Gates slapped him, his character would return the insult.

The movie also has a strong message regarding various forms of racism – from the institutionalized distrust that leads to Tibbs initial arrest to the straight forward hateful language and physical danger that Tibbs faces throughout the whole movie.  In the Heat of the Night doesn’t blink at its depiction of Sparta (a fictional town) as insular and hostile to outsiders with a police force of mostly lazy and incompetent men. Even Gillespie, usually likable, isn’t immune from spouting the N-word or noting that Tibbs could be working in a cotton field like many African Americans in the town. The most famous scene in the movie comes when Tibbs confronts a racist plantation owner. The owner slaps Tibbs who immediately slaps him back – almost as a reflex – leading to a firestorm across the town.  Towards the end, Tibbs is refused service from a racist diner owner and you can see the defeat in his body language as he lets the slight pass because he is running out of time to solve the murder and doesn’t have the energy to fight one more ignorant townsperson.

It’s good the characters and actors are so compelling, because the story isn’t all that great. The solution to the mystery – specifically how Tibbs solves it – takes a real leap of faith that Tibbs just happens to guess a couple of facts correctly and is lucky enough to come to the right place at the right time to catch the culprit.

1967 is considered a watershed year for movies with the emergence of youthful, experimental and commercially successful works like Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. Compared with these two In the Heat of the Night is probably not the worthy Best Picture winner. That said, I think it’s still a really, really strong movie, particularly as an actor’s movie and certainly of the three, the one that tries the hardest to confront a serious issue. Also it’s a rare Best Picture to be an action murder mystery and is a rare movie to successfully blend a compelling genre action yarn with real social issues.

Other Oscars: Rod Steiger, Best Actor; Film Editing; Film Sound; Best Adapted Screenplay

Box Office:  $24 Million (12^th for the Year)

Other Notable Films: Bonnie and Clyde*; The Graduate*$; Dr. Dolitte*; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner*;  The Jungle Book; You Only Live Twice (James Bond); The Dirty Dozen; To Sir, With Love; Camelot; Cool Hand Luke; Two For the Road;

*Best Picture Nominee

$Top Grossing Picture: $104 Million