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