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.

1959: Ben-Hur

Even the poster is momentous!

“When the Romans were marching me to the galleys, thirst had almost killed me. A man gave me water to drink, and I went on living. I should have done better if I’d poured it into the sand!…I’m thirsty still.” – Judah Ben-Hur, discussing his unquenchable rage, Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur is perhaps the apex of the “Bigger is Better” philosophy that encapsulated many of the Best Pictures of this time frame. Ben- Hur is the sort of loud, over-the-top movie, loaded with massive sets and scenes with literally thousands of extras that would make even Michael Bay take pause. It also is a prime example of the Biblical Epic, a 1950s sub-genre that combined Bible stories with action spectacle and very long run times (like 1956’s The Ten Commandments). The two come together in Ben-Hur to create the most macho story about Jesus ever told. Of all which is a very long winded introduction to say BEN-HUR RULED IT!

Ben-Hur (aka A Tale of the Christ) is a look at what some of the other people in Judea were up to while Jesus was stirring up trouble. Charlton Heston, who never met a scene he couldn’t chew, is Judah Ben-Hur, a Judean prince. Although he was once friendly with Messala (Stephen Boyd), a Roman military commander, a rift has developed between the two due to Judea’s growing displeasure with Roman occupation. When welcoming the new Roman governor to town, Ben-Hur’s sister accidentally knocks a tile onto the governor. Suddenly Ben-Hur’s mother and sister are sent to jail and he is exiled to life as a slave rower on a battle ship. After an EPIC fight, Ben-Hur saves the life of boat commander Quintus Arrias (Jack Hawkins). Arrias adopts Ben-Hur and teaches him to chariot race. Ben-Hur finally returns to Judea after five years only to find his mom and sister are now lepers. Enraged, he challenges Messala to a chariot race (where, as Ben-Hur’s financier sheik points out “There is no law.”) Messala is killed in the demolition derby-style race, but Ben-Hur’s thirst for vengeance against Rome cannot be satiated. Throughout the story, Ben-Hur has crossed paths with an unseen peaceful figure, most notably when the anonymous man gives him water during a forced march through the desert. Finally Ben-Hur’s quasi-girlfriend convinces him to take his family to see Jesus (who is in the middle of being tried and crucified) and Ben-Hur finally learns peace. And his family is cured as an added bonus.

Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and friend-turned-rival Messala (Stepehen Boyd). According to the book Inside Oscar, one of the movie’s five writers intentionally added homoeroticism to the relationship, but Heston was left in the dark about it.

On the one hand, the events I described seem rather insane, and to a rational person perhaps they are. It is rare, for example, that faulty architecture play such a central role to a plot or the term Chariot Death Race makes its way into a highly-respected, Oscar winning film. But Ben-Hur has such a go-for-broke aplomb about it that I couldn’t help but enjoy it. Even Charlton Heston, who is frankly, a terrible actor, brings such ridiculous bravado to his role (Is he crying? Grinning? Who can tell? Why is he so damn macho all the time?!?) that it propels the story. He’s the action hero of the Biblical age.

A still from Ben-Hur’s awesome chariot race.

In all seriousness, the movie has two magnificent action sequences – the boat battle and especially the chariot race. The chariot race – which took months to plan and five weeks to film with reportedly 15,000 extras – was a marvel of its time and is still an inspiration to movies like the pod-racer chase in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The race is more than 15 minutes long and non-stop action. And yet, unlike many action scenes of the past (and present), I never got confused about what was going on. The director really does a great job of laying out the action in a logical, visually understandable manner. And the stunts are crazy. The battle of the boats – where the boats ram one another and the slaves’ revolt – is also quite exciting and a great triumph of pre-CGI special effects.

I felt remiss about leaving out Hugh Griffith, who won the Best Supporting Actor award, despite playing a very minor, and fairly racist, role.

Ben-Hur is not without its flaws. The movie is very long – 3 ½ hours, and after the chariot race – with about 45 minutes to go in the movie – really grinds to a halt as Ben-Hur goes on and on about his family’s fate. A lot of the middle could have probably been cut down to a 2:45 movie as well.

Ben-Hur is probably the closest approximation to today’s big budget blockbuster action movies to win the Best Picture award (Wings is an action movie of sorts, Casablanca is a thriller but doesn’t have a big fight scene). I’d hate to think of it as the Transformers of its day, since as noted the action scenes in Ben-Hur are comprehensible. Hearing it described as a Biblical epic made me dread this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised at its excitement and general craziness.

Trivia: Ben-Hur won 11 Oscars, a record which still stands to this day (Titanic and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King have tied it).

Other Oscars Won: Best Actor, Charlton Heston; Best Supporting Actor: Hugh Griffith; Best Director: William Wyler; Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Costume Design, Color; Best Sound, Color; Best Film Editing; Best Effects, Special Effects; Best Music (It lost Best Adapted Screenplay!)

Box Office: $37 Million (#1 for the year)
Other Notable Movies of 1959: Sleeping Beauty, North by Northwest, Some Like It Hot, Pillow Talk, Imitation of Life, Suddenly Last Summer, On the Beach, Anatomy of a Murder*, Rio Bravo, Room at the Top*, The Diary of Anne Frank*, The Nun’s Story*

*Best Picture Nominee

1948-1957: Oscar’s Third Decade – A Look Back

On The Waterfront was my favorite movie from this decade – and definitely the best poster yet

The 1950s’s Oscars – and 1950s pop culture in general – gets a pretty bad rap as white-washed, conformist and undaring. A lot of Oscar history books tend to throw out phrases like “Worst Collection of Best Picture nominees ever” (for 1956 from The Academy Awards Handbook) or “Least Deserving Best Picture Winner of All Time (For The Greatest Show on Earth from multiple sources including Alternate Oscars and The Official Razzie Movie Guide). However, I enjoyed this 10-pack of films much more than the previous decade of Oscar winners (even if none could match Casablanca). I felt that the movies began to “speed up,” by which I mean directors added more cuts and edits to make the movie feel faster as opposed to the relatively static filming styles of earlier times). Movies started to have a more modern look and feel as the science behind movie making advanced in this time period.

The third decade of Oscars also had a much more eclectic “something for everyone” nature to their themes and styles than what came in the previous decade. Most Best pictures from 1938-1947 were divided into the dual themes of either World War II or social ills and most (except for the extravagant Gone With the Wind) were middle-to-low-budget affairs, due to World War II cutbacks and the nature of the stories (a movie about alcoholism, for example, doesn’t need elaborate sets of shots of epic grandeur). From 1948-1957, the themes, styles and budgets of the Best Picture winners are all over the place. We start with a sparse recreation of a classic stage play, then move back to social ills with All the King’s Men, but on a larger scope than your Lost Weekends and Gentleman’s Agreements. Then we hit some lavish, big-budget, all color extravaganzas before heading to the smaller personal stories of On the Waterfront and Marty before going bigger than ever before in shooting style and budget with Around the World in 80 Days and the Bridge on the River Kwai.

 

	Corrupt Authority /Society	Small Scale	Epic/Big Budg	World War II	Social Ills	Sex	Modern Times	Gross
1948: Hamlet	X	X				X		$3.25M (17)
1949: All the Kings Men	X				X	X	X	$3.5M (10)
1950: All About Eve						X	X	$3.6M (7)
1951: An American in Paris			X				X	$4.5M (6)
1952: The Greatest Show on Earth			X				X	$14M (1)
1953: From Here to Eternity	X		X	X	X	X	X	$12.5M (2)
1954: On the Waterfront	X	X			X		X	$4.5M (14)
1955: Marty		X					X	$2M
1956: Around the World in 80 Days			X					$23M (2)
1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai	X		X	X			X	$17.1M (1)

 

A few interesting common themes do emerge. In almost every one of these movies – even the seemingly incongruous Hamlet – there is a corrupt society or authority figure. Whereas the World War II era of movies showed a decided trust in leadership, the McCarthy Red Scare and perhaps other factors clearly altered the public’s faith in those who were supposed to guide them.

Did the public’s fear of Communism lead to so many Best Pictures about corrupt or broken authority and leadership?

Movies also began to look back on World War II with a more introspective, less rah-rah perspective then presented during the actual time of the War. Both Best Pictures dealing with World War II in this decade have bullying, corrupt and foolish leadership (Interestingly, From Here to Eternity was released at the tail end of the Korean War, a war considerably less popular and triumphant than World War II). Did the passage of time allow those who lived through the war to reconsider it, as appeared to happen in the 1920s and30s with movies dealing with World War I? Did the greater ambiguities and indecisive outcome of the Korean War change the public’s overall perception of war?

Alec Guinness deluded Colonel Nicholson is a huge departure from the dignified leaders of the 40s

Another interesting note is the overall alignment between commercial and Oscar success. Between 1948 and 1957, 7 out of the 10 winners were in the top ten for their respective year’s box office and two were the number one movie for the year. Compare that to the past decade’s winners, when no Best Picture winners made their year’s top ten .There is a not altogether unfair assumption that today’s Oscar’s are out of touch with popular appeal, but that certainly did not appear to be the case in the late 40’s and 50s.

Here’s how the collective themes of the third decade stack up to the last ten Best Picture winners.

	Corrupt Authority /Society	Small Scale	Epic/ Big Budg	World War II	Social Ills	Sex	Modern Times	Gross
2004: Million Dollar Baby		X					X	$216M
2005: Crash	X				X	X	X	$98M
2006: The Departed	X?						X	$90M
2007: No Country for Old Men							X	$171M
2008: Slumdog Millionaire	X?						X	$378M
2009: The Hurt Locker		X					X	$49M
2010: The King’s Speech								$414M
2011: The Artist		X						$133M
2012: Argo								$232M
2013: 12 Years a Slave	X							$187M

 

Period pieces are generally considered good Oscar bait and while this is true for technical categories like Art Direction (aka sets) and Costumes, this assumption clearly holds no water the 1940s-50 Best Picture winners or in today’s winners. In fact, even though the last four Best Picture winners could be considered period pieces under a rather broad definition (a movie set 30 or more years in the past where the look, dress and actions of the characters purposefully reflect the given time period), none of those movies really represent the haughty Merchant Ivory type fair that people really think of when describing a period piece (Calling Argo a period piece for example seems strange but it technically fits the definition).

Those sideburns are definitely period piece

Strangely, despite our increased distrust of big government, few Best Pictures of the last yen years represent a broken society or authority. (12 Years a Slave and Crash being the obvious exceptions. Slumdog Millionaire is a strange case in that the broken society is what ultimately provides the hero the keys to success. ) In fact, Kings Speech and Argo present government leaders and agencies working hard for the common good.

SEX! SEX! SEX! It’s on everybody’s minds in the 50s

Another interesting note: While we typically think of the 60s as the advent of the sexual revolution and increasing depictions of sexuality on the screen, a surprising number of the 1950s Best Pictures deal with sexuality in some form, usually with at least a hint of scandal to them (dating back to Hamlet, where Olivier intentionally gave emphasis to Hamlet’s obsession with his mother’s sex life). Several of the Best Picture winners had affairs between unmarried people or extramarital affairs. Meanwhile, one could argue the last decade’s collection of Best Picture winners are among the least sexy – and sexless – collection of movies ever assembled.

…well, maybe not hers