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

1966: A Man For All Seasons

The original poster for A Man For All Seasons, another of the great Oscar posters that is significantly more exciting than the movie it is advertising.

“You’re a constant regret to me, Thomas. If you could just see facts flat-on, without that horrible moral squint… With a little common sense you could have made a statesman.” – Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Wells) to Thomas More (Paul Scofeld), A Man for All Seasons

Is A Man For All Season the Oscariest movie of all time?

Consider its traits: Period piece. True Story. British. Moralizing. Tragic ending. I don’t think in 1966 it exactly fit the ideal of a Best Picture – look at all the musicals that had just preceded it, not to mention Oscar’s rare dip into action films like Lawrence of Arabia (albeit a British true story action film) – but none of the 1960s movies would feel as at home in a Best Picture race today than A Man for All Seasons, a movie possibly well ahead of its time in its total squareness. This picture, while not bad or anything outside of being a trifle dull, is certainly one of the more fuddy-duddy pieces to take home the trophy from this period, similar to recent winners that have led to Oscar’s lambasting as out-of-touch (well, that and the race thing).

A ragged Paul Scofeld is tortured for his beliefs, but wins an Oscar and keeps his smug sense of superiority, in A Man For All Seasons

A Man For All Seasons is the true story of Saint Thomas More, a man who gave his life to keep his conscious clean (sorry for the spoiler for the true story of a man who lived 400 years ago). When the movie opens, More (Paul Scofield) is the rare honest judge in England’s corrupt political system. More could be a bigger player, but he refuses to compromise his conscious and take bribes or give favors to the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, King Henry VIII, lacking a male heir, wishes to divorce his wife and marry a new one. The Pope refuses to annul the marriage, even though Henry has found a clever legal loophole to have it tossed aside (his wife was married to his brother previously). Henry dissolves the Catholic Church in England and starts the Church of England, with himself as head. More, who has become a Cardinal, hopes to escape Henry’s wrath by simply not saying anything about the marriage or Henry’s power play. Because of More’s status, Henry won’t let the matter rest, using a series of sycophants and suck-ups to coerce either an acceptance of the marriage or to get More to speak out against it (which would be viewed as treasonous and leave More open to a death sentence). More is imprisoned and ultimately betrayed by a former subject whose career he refused to help advance (a very young John Hurt). More, sentenced to death, finally denounces Henry’s actions in a stirring speech that seems too dramatic to be real, but apparently did happen (according to the attached documentary on the DVD).

I would be remiss in not mentioning Orson Welles as the corrupt Cardinal Wolsey who sold his soul for riches and meatloaf.,

Much like Sound of Music rested on Julie Andrews’s shoulders, Scofield carries A Man for All Seasons. I like that the movie isn’t so conventional as to have More brazenly speak his mind from the outset. He is actually kind of cowardly in his plan to not say anything and skate away unnoticed. He’s not so much a rabble rouser as an overwhelmed man trying to stay out of the fray while not sacrificing his morality, which is a different take on a commonly told story. Scofield has a weary, but smart aleck, nature to him that at least keeps him interesting, even though the character is in fact kind of a dick (he’s often smug and belligerent to people who are trying to help him). The rivalry between More and Henry is interesting in that Henry is hardly in the movie at all, save for one notable, lengthy scene between the two. The conflict exists, but we’re not sure how much is Henry’s doing and how much are people moving about trying to please their unknowable master. I liked the characterization of Henry – he’s a boisterous, unstoppable force whose so used to getting his way that he laughs off any perceived flaw and is so feared as to have all his followers readily agree with him. It really shines a light on the danger of extreme power possessed by Henry.

King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) and Thomas More (Paul Scofield). Despite being the central conflict of A Man For All Seasons, this is the only scene the two share.

The movie tends to have flaws in plotting. Several plot threads are never explained or resolved. At the beginning of the movie, More’s daughter is being courted by a young lawyer, but More’s refuses to give his OK to the marriage because the lawyer had denounced the Catholic Church for its rampant corruption. Sometime later, we learn they are married with no explanation for why More changed his mind. In another scene, we learn Henry is making everyone take an oath of loyalty (or disloyalty to the Catholic Church) and More explains to his daughter they could still feasibly take it and not violate their conscious, depending on what the wording of the oath is. In the next scene, More is in jail, since apparently there were no loopholes in the oath, although we never get to hear the damn thing to know what the objectionable language was or how More’s daughter escaped similar imprisonment.

There are two ways to view A Man For All Season’s Oscar win. On the one hand, it seems like a reaction to the changing youth culture and nascent counter culture by rewarding a traditional movie that favored old-time values and stoic virtue. Conversely, it is a movie that champions the rejection and repudiation of corrupt authority (albeit in favor of a second corrupt authority), which actually feeds into the emerging counter-culture. Could A Man For All Seasons have actually inspired the anti-war protest and hippie mantras of the coming years? Hardly likely, and yet A Man For All Seasons ends up a pale reflection of the tidal wave of anti-authority sentiment to come.

Other Oscars: Paul Scofield, Best Actor; Fred Zinnerman, Best Director; Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Costume Design; Best Cinematography;

Box Office:$28.35 Million (Fourth for the Year)

Other notable Films of 1966: Alfie*; The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming*; The Sand Pebbles*; Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?*; The Bible: In the Beginning$; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Grand Prix; Blowup; The Endless Summer; Georgy Girl; The Fortune Cookie; Batman;

*Best Picture Nominee

$Top Box Office ($34.9 Million)

1965: The Sound of Music

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? – Mother Abbess and the Nunnery Chorus, The Sound of Music

How do you solve a problem like The Sound of Music? Without a doubt one of the most beloved musicals of all time, The Sound of Music is also not unfairly derided for being so painfully square and milquetoast. In the past, I’ve gotten some blowback for making fun of the “threatening” gangsters and their finger snaps in West Side Story or the general unlikability of My Fair Lady, but I swear I really do like musicals and this might be a shocker but… I REALLY LIKE THE SOUND OF MUSIC. I have thought about this damn movie for two weeks now trying to figure out why. At times it is as cheesy as a Full House episode. But I also laughed at a lot of the jokes (the children bursting into tears after Maria passively aggressively shames them for their pranks is a personal favorite). And is there a song in this movie that ISN’T a well-known standard by this point? I dare you not to sing along with “Doh-a-deer-a-female-deer.” I think The Sound of Music is the apex of the big-budget, big spectacle BIG Hollywood movie musical.

The original poster is not nearly iconic as the one on the Blu-Ray

Maria (Julie Andrews) is an apprentice nun at the local Saltsburg nunnery, flunking out of Nun U due to her irrepressible nature and poor time keeping skills (she’s late to prayers because of the musical lure of the hill). Her Mother Superior devises a clever way to get rid of Maria without actually firing her – sending her off to be a nanny for a group of unruly, motherless children of rich naval captain Georg Von Trapp. Despite Von Trapp’s totalitarian rules, the seven Von Trapp children – ages 5 through 16 (going on 17), have left a swath of nanny destruction not to be equaled in Austria until the Nazi invasion (sadly just a few short months away from the point where the movie begins). Maria wins the children over through kindness, a refusal to rat them out for their Dennis-the-Menace level pranks, and by teaching them to sing and play. Maria also wins over the heart of Captain Von Trapp, who kicks his gold-digging, child-hating fiancé to the curb in favor of Maria. But just as true love looks to have won the day, the Nazis invade Austria and the family is Von Trapped with only their singing to save them.

The Von Trap children look saintly, but they are a handful

The Sound of Music is very hokey and yet also very charming. Fans rightly give Julie Andrews a lot of credit for carrying the movie. She isn’t just a wonderful singer but has a million little humanizing touches, like when she falls down while singing “I have confidence” and then immediately jumps back to her feet to prove her point (unscripted, according to IMDB) or her looks of exhaustion and exasperation during the choruses of “My Favorite Things” while she tries to keep the kids singing. In a script where the characters are one-dimensional, these touches make her far more life-like. Andrews did not win Best Actress for The Sound of Music (Andrews won the previous year for Mary Poppins, playing a nanny who is nearly Maria’s polar opposite and lost this year to Julie Christie in Darling).

Andrews is so often mentioned and beloved that most overlook Christopher Plummer, playing Captain Von Trapp. Plummer is often bemused at the happenings and really funny in the role. At times he’s even suave, like when he’s trying to dodge Nazi’s.

Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) isn’t so bad

That said, sometimes the hokiness of the Sound of Music is too overbearing. The fact that all the children, ranging from ages 5 to 16 (going on 17) are scared on thunder and run to Maria for comfort is eye rolling (leading to the “My Favorite Things” song, which has inexplicably become a Christmas standard). The “Goodnight” song at Von Trapp’s Ball, when all the children sing a final, perfectly harmonized “Good night” and the listening audience replies with a reflective, also perfectly harmonized “Good Night” is also groan-inducing.

I’ve always found it funny that the biggest movie of the 1960s – the decade renowned for its counter-culture and anti-authority – was one as puritanical and conventional as The Sound of Music. And this isn’t just a case of the Academy being stodgy and behind-the-times when giving out awards. The Sound of Music was the highest grossing movie ever up to that point. Whatever was going on in 1965, the Sound of Music clicked for everybody. And despite its hokey nature, it still clicks today.

Other awards: Robert Wise, Best Director; Best Sound Mixing; Best Film Editing; Best Score

Box Office: $163 million (#1)

Other Notable Films of 1965: Doctor Zhivago*, Thunderball, Cat Ballou, What’s New Pussycat?, The Greatest Story Ever Told, For a Few Dollars More, The Sons of Katie Elder, Help!, Darling*, Ship of Fools*, A Thousand Clowns*

*Best Picture Nominee

1964: My Fair Lady

I like the original My Fair Lady poster mainly because Henry Higgins appears to be a serial killer

“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.” – Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), My Fair Lady

“She’s so deliciously low. So horribly dirty.” – Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), master of compliments, My Fair Lady

Oh boy, here we go.

I’ve been putting off My Fair Lady for a while now, because a.) I had seen it before, about 15 years ago; b.) I didn’t really care for it then; c.) I know I’m in the minority who hold this opinion. Everybody seemingly loves My Fair Lady. I will say I think the songs are pretty great. Rex Harrison as the stiff, stuck-up Henry Higgins is pretty great (although viewing his portrayal now in 2015 has been irrevocably altered by years of Stewie on Family Guy). But the story is a real clunker that goes on forever and Harrison has zero chemistry with Audrey Hepburn, whose Eliza Doolittle careens wildly from imbecile (at one point she is scared of a bathtub!!!!) to class conscious social liberator. But here we go, My Fair Lady…

Audrey Hepburn’s most famous look from My Fair Lady is not her triumph at the gala but at the disastrous first outing at the race track. This had to be 60’s inspired, right?

Set in turn of the 20^th Century England (1912 according to IMDB), My Fair Lady begins with the hoity-toity linguist Henry Higgins studying the low-class flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn, although she was (in) famously dubbed in most of her singing). Higgins explains, via song (the delightfully mean spirited “Why Can’t the English Learn to Speak), that classes division is based foremost on those who can properly speak a given language and those who cannot. Reflecting on her low social standing, Doolittle asks Higgins to teach her proper English (really proper enunciation and etiquette…Despite Higgins own assertions, it is manners that ultimately change Doolittle’s social standing). Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), a visiting academic staying with Higgins, makes a gentleman’s bet with the latter that Higgins cannot transform her in six months. After much arduous training and a near-disastrous tryout at a racing forum, Higgins successfully presents Eliza as an unknown member of European royalty at a gala. Higgins is delighted by his victory but Eliza feels treated like a piece of property and longs for respect and love from her teacher.

OK, so three things bug me about My Fair Lady. First off, Harrison and Hepburn have ZERO romantic chemistry. When Hepburn sings wistfully to herself of potential romantic feelings for Harrison (“I Could Have Danced All Night”), the emotions come from out of nowhere and are frankly a little gross. Higgins has up to this point been a sexless prissy egomaniac who doesn’t deserve anyone’s love and the thought of the two of them matched up just doesn’t work for me. Attempts to reform Higgins later in the movie don’t work either. Perhaps not surprisingly, My Fair Lady was writing by the same people who did Gigi, another movie with troubling sexual politics.

Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn are not a love to last through the ages

Second, the movie ends on an abrupt, ambiguous and frustrating note. Higgins and Eliza have seemingly parted ways for the last time. Higgins walks home singing “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” while trying to convince himself that he’ll be better off without her. Back home, Higgins listens to a recording he made of Eliza. Suddenly Eliza appears in person and he (comically?) demands his slippers. The end. WTF? No redemption. No change. It’s so abrupt and maddening to me.

Rex Harrion’s charmingly fussy Henry Higgins

Third, the movie is just way too long. There is a painful extra story about Eliza’s ne’er-do-well absentee father who steals money from everyone, only to end up miserable when he is bequeathed a fortune. You could have cut his whole role from the movie, shaved off 45 minutes (of a 3 hour movie!) and really only missed the catchy “With a Little Bit of Luck” song.

As noted, I really liked the songs for this movie and found them quite catchy. Rex Harrison is also very funny, if not nearly as endearing-in-his-stuffiness as I think he’s supposed to be. The best scene is the aforementioned racetrack sequence where Eliza tries out her new elocution. She annunciates clearly but continues to use slang to discuss her belief her aunt was murdered (“It is my belief they done the old woman in”). It is one of the few times I didn’t find Hepburn grating.

Other Awards: Best Actor (Rex Harrison); Best Director (George Cukor); Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Decoration/Set Decoration, Color; Best Costume Design, Color; Best Sound; Best Music

Box Office: $72 million (third for the year)

Other notable movies of 1964: A Hard Day’s Night; Goldfinger$; Mary Poppins*; A Fistful of Dollars; A Shot in the Dark; Viva Las Vegas; Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)*; Becket*; Zorba the Greek*; Man’s Favorite Sport?

*Best Picture Nominee

$Top Grossing Film of the Year ($124.9 Million)

1963: Tom Jones

The original Tom Jones poster. Not everybody loves it (or him), despite claims to the contrary.

“It is widely held that too much wine will dull a man’s desire. Indeed it will… in a dull man.” – Narrator explaining the hero’s actions, Tom Jones

Tom Jones is probably one of the most forgotten of Oscar movies, and for fairly good reason. Although clearly a ground breaking film in some regards (at least in terms of Oscar winners), it is also very badly dated in 2015 and also falls under the most dreaded of Best Picture stigmas: stuffy period piece. A tale of rural heredity woes and 18^th century parody doesn’t seem like a particularly enticing film for good reason – it is not. Still, the times in 1963, they were a-changin’ and in many ways Tom Jones is a reflection of those changes, even while rooted firmly in another era.

The modern Tom Jones poster, whose variations grace most DVD covers. A lipstick kiss! What a scoundrel!

Tom Jones begins with a strange, silent-movie style prologue, where the fantastically wealthy farmer Squire Allworthy (George Devine) finds a newborn baby in his bead. Ferreting out that the baby is the bastard child of two of his servants, Allworthy sends the parents away and opts to raise the baby, christened Tom, as his own. Twenty years later, Tom (Albert Finney) is a bored philandering youth who takes little seriously. Despite his many amorous conquests, Tom truly loves his neighbor, Sophie Western (Susannah York). Sophie’s father and Tom’s adopted cousin conspire to have him removed from Allworthy’s good graces for various reasons (Sophie’s father doesn’t want his daughter involved with a poor man, the cousin is looking out for his inheritance) and Tom is sent packing, penniless, to London. On the road, he encounters a set of wacky characters and adventures until learning Sophie has run away to escaped a planned marriage to a horrible bore. Tom conspires to win her back.

Tom Jones (Albert Finney) and his one true love, Sophie Wilson (Susannah York)

Tom Jones is without a doubt the most risqué best picture up to this point in time. Where a lot of Best Pictures like All About Eve or From Here to Eternity hinted at sex or perhaps had couples rolling around in bathing suits, Tom Jones shows lovers under covers. It is also the first (and only?) Best Picture winner to have both an incest joke and a joke about snorting opium. But it is also incredibly boring. After the strange silent opening, the movie “properly” starts with a very long fox hunt scene. Although technically very good (and realistically gory), the scene goes on and on. A lot of jokes, like Sophie’s father’s drunkenness and Tom’s unstoppable libido, are beaten into the ground. Also, Tom is supposed to be a rakish but charming youth, but many of his actions, particularly his endless skirt chasing, make him really unlikable. He comes off very poorly in today’s world. The best scene is one where Tom and one his many amours, starving after a long journey, eat a ton of food, while trying to romance each other.

Tom at the dinner romance scene. The actors ate so much during filming that they were sick for days.

The movie makes a lot of strange choice that I assume were very popular in the day but just feel weird now. There are a lot of self-referential bits and characters making a remark and literally winking at the camera/audience. One, where Tom throws his hat on the camera as he walks by to help hide the nakedness of a companion, is pretty clever, but the rest are just distracting and annoying. It is also weird to see Albert Finney, known mostly for playing the aging curmudgeon in movies like Annie or Big Fish, as a young and jolly chap.

I don’t think many people remember Tom Jones and for good reason – it is a very forgettable Oscar winner. To me, the most interesting thing about it is to examine the shifting cultural standards the film clearly represents. However, Oscar must not have been too happy with this win, since the next batch of winners is among the most conservative and family friendly.

Trivia: “What’s New Pussycat?” singer Tom Jones took his name from this movie; This movie had three best supporting actress nominees (Diane Cilento, Edith Evans and Joyce Redman) but all lost to Margaret Rutherford in The VIPs.

Other Oscars: Best Director (Tony Richardson); Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Music Score

Box Office: $37.6 Million (4^th for year)

Other Notable Films of 1963: Cleopatra$*; How the West Was Won*; It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; The Sword in the Stone; The Birds; From Russia With Love; Bye Bye Birdie; The Great Escape; 8 ½; Lilies of the Field*; America, America*

$Top Box Office Draw – $57.7 Million

*  Best Picture Nominee

1962: Lawrence of Arabia

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

The best of them won’t come for money; they’ll come for me. – T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia is one of those movies where at first I wasn’t sure what I thought about it, bordering on maybe not even liking, but the more I thought about it, the more it really grew on me. It has a little something for everyone in retrospect. A very strange movie that feels like it set the course for the modern action epic, it also features clear influences from the French New Wave style of filmmaking and a nearly impenetrable lead character, whose motives are purposefully murky, often to a frustrating degree.

Peter O’Toole as TE Lawrence and Omar Sharif as Sharif Ali, who becomes the moral center of the movie and my favorite character

Like other classics Citizen Kane or La Bamba, Lawrence of Arabia starts with its lead character’s death, in this case an unintentionally funny motorcycle accident (more on this in a bit). At Lawrence’s funeral, a reporter tries to get quotes from famous people about the man, only to get several murky responses (I actually had to rewatch the funeral scene after the movie to piece together who was at the funeral and how their recollections differed from the “reality” of the movie). We then flash back to Lawrence’s early days as a misfit officer during World War I, stationed in the outcast African theater of the war. Lawrence is assigned to inspect the efforts of Arabian Prince Faisal (the decided non-Arabian Alec Guinness, last seen in Bridge on the River Kwai and of course much later seen as Obi Wan Kenobi). The British are hesitant to provide significant aid to the Arabians against their common foe (and Arabian colonizer) the Turkish Empire because the British don’t want an independent Arabian kingdom. The Arabians themselves are hampered by infighting amongst their own tribes, symbolized in the form of Sharif Ali (Omar Sharif), who kills Lawrence’s initial desert guide, because the rival tribesman drank from Ali’s well.

Lawrence and Sharif debate the decision to take Aqaba by crossing an impenetrable desert – and look pretty in doing so

Lawrence devises a crazy scheme to help the Arabs overtake the Turkish stronghold of Aqaba by approaching the town from an uncrossable hellish desert. Lawrence wins the respect of the Arabic army when he completes the torturous desert march, including rescuing a man believed lost in the desert. Lawrence leads the army in overtaking the town but becomes troubled by the violence of war, along with losing one of his two teenage charges to quicksand (!) as he returns to Cairo to tell his superiors about his victory. Lawrence engages in a guerrilla warfare campaign against the Turks and develops fame and notoriety when an American reporter writes about him to try and stir US interest in entering the war. Lawrence becomes increasingly unhinged between wild flights of violence, his ever-growing ego and a sincere desire to lead the Arabs to an independent state.

The future Obi Wan Kenobi, Alec Guinness, plays an Arabic prince, despite being British. Ah, Hollywood.

Even though Lean seems to be making a case against the manly hero of war trope, there are some really cool parts of this movie that seem exactly like they belong in manly men-of-war type films. The quote that starts this essay, when Lawrence, going bonkers from his ego and the terrors of war, leads to an awesome moment where Lawrence’s army cheers his arrival like a crowd pushing a boxer forward into a title fight. Of course, it turns out the men Lawrence thought would come for him actually did come for the money, but he seems to take little notice, until the mercenaries take part in a huge bloody slaughter.

The movie’s attitude towards violence is strange and reflects Lawrence’s own conflicted stance. Certain up-close scenes of violence are avoided almost to the point of comedy. When Ali shoots Lawrence’s initial guide, we see Ali shoot and then the guide’s gun fly towards Lawrence’s at an impossible angle (especially considering the guide looked to have been a good twenty feet away from Lawrence when he was shot). But as the movie progresses, Lawrence, Lean or the viewer (?) become more comfortable with blood until Lawrence stands covered in blood along with his mercenary army following a slaughter of a Turkish brigade.

Unlike most historical pieces we’ve encountered, Lawrence of Arabia offers practically zero background on Lawrence, the Arab revolution or even the larger picture of World War I. The viewer is just thrust into Lawrence’s life at the time of World War I and we’re off to gain our own footing.

Lawrence of Arabia was directed by David Lean, who also won an Oscar for the exotic war picture Bridge on the River Kwai. Lawrence is less openly satirical then Kwai but still carries undercurrents of anti-War sentiment as it examines the effects of Lawrence’s violent actions on himself and those intimately acquainted with him (they all grow to loathe him and Lawrence arguably loathes himself) and those who see him only from a distance (and see him as a hero). Much like Kwai, Lean fills Lawrence of Arabia with beautiful shots to capture the torturous landscape, until you practically feel the blistering heat coming off the screen (if you want to see camels running, then this is the movie for you by God).

Lawrence of Arabia continues the trend of inching toward modern action epics, first noticed in Best Pictures Ben-Hur and Bridge on the River Kwai. But it’s moral ambiguity towards its characters, including its hero, make it almost an art-house deconstruction of such action films and heroes. A challenging movie (and not just because of its three hour run time), its well worth seeing.

Trivia: Lawrence of Arabia does not contain a single line of dialogue spoken by a woman.

Other Oscars: Best Director (David Lean); Best Art Direction; Best Cinematography; Best Score; Best Editing; Best Sound;

Other Notable Films of 1962: The Longest Day*; The Music Man*; The Miracle Worker*; Mutiny on the Bounty*; To Kill a Mockingbird; Gypsy; The Manchurian Candidate; Dr. No (first James Bond movie)+; Lolita; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?; Days of Wine and Roses; The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; State Fair;

*Best Picture Nominee

+Not released in U.S. until 1963

Box Office: $44.8 Million (#1 for the year)

1961: West Side Story

The fire escape imagery has become iconic and forever linked with West Side Story

I’ve just kissed a girl named Maria,
And suddenly I’ve found
How wonderful a sound
Can be!
Maria! – Tony, West Side Story

West Side Story, 1961’s Best Picture, is a much-loved, but fairly ridiculous movie. I mean that in a nice way because I really did enjoy watching this movie and hummed several of the songs for days afterwards, but, alas, this is a movie that has not aged very well. The fully bonefied love-child of the Hollywood Musical and the Socially Conscious picture (thus making it the very perfect Best Picture winner of its time), West Side Story, a modernized retelling of Romeo and Juliette blended with troubled youth hysteria and Broadway glitz, seems like it might have been shocking by the standards of 1961. But today, watching tough guys pirouette through the streets in menacing fashion all feels rather silly.

Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood), the modern day Romeo and Juliet, sing “Tonight” on the aforementioned fire escape

In a hardscrabble patch of contemporary New York City, the Jets, a teen gang of nogoodniks run the streets but are facing encroachment from a Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks. Tony (Richard Beymer) is a Jets founder who has left the gang for the upward mobile career path of candy store clerk, but is implored by current leader Riff (Russ Tamblyn) to help set the terms for a “rumble” to establish supremacy between the Jets and Sharks. At the local youth center dance (a neutral ground the gangs use for the negotiations), Tony immediately falls in love with Maria (Natalie Wood), the sister of Sharks’ leader Bernardo (George Chakiris). Awkward. Overcome with love, Maria makes Tony promise to stop the rumble all together, but when Tony tries, a simple fist fight turns into a knife fight and both Riff and Bernardo are killed (Bernardo by Tony, in fact. Doubly Awkward.). Tony and Maria decide to run away together but are separated first. When Tony believes Maria has been killed, he walks through the streets demanding the Sharks kill him. He finally finds Maria alive but is shot as he runs to her and dies. Maria chides both sides for their endless cycle of violence and both gangs carry off Tony’s body.

A lot of fun has been poked at West Side Story over the years. Anytime gangs snap their fingers in menacing form or have impressively choreographed tough guy walks (even Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video pays homage to the knife fight), those parodies are springing from West Side Story. The fight scenes are some of the most ridiculous, choreographed nonsense ever put on celluloid. But there are also a lot of affecting parts to West Side Story. The central love story between Tony and Maria in particular is moving, and their all-encompassing young love captures the same manic enrapture of Shakespeare’s inspirational lovers.

Bernardo and the Sharks in one of their “tough guy” choreographed dance routines.

The movie’s songs are pretty stupendous and several – “I Feel Pretty”, “Maria”, “In America” – have become standards and the movie provides appropriate dance numbers to match. Natalie Wood is a very good actress most of the time, but her Puerto Rican accent borders on embarrassing in parts. Neither Wood nor Beymer sang their own songs in this movie, and even though it was standard Hollywood practice at the time (and will show up again in a future Best Picture) it still feels like something of a cheat.

The movie’s central theme is muddled between a plea for racial tolerance and a plea to “fix” troubled youth and often both are explained with dialogue that’s a little too on-the-nose. In one groaner of an exchange a shopkeeper asks the Jets: “When do you kids stop? You make this world lousy!” to which a Jet replies “We didn’t make (the world), Doc.” In fact, the Jets have a whole song about how the buck for their problems keeps getting passed around. Later, when Maria is verbally berating both Jets and Sharks she screams “All of you! You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets, or guns, with hate,” which certainly doesn’t lack or subtlety.

I don’t mean to tear West Side Story down because I really did like it for the most part, but there is a very square quality to this movie. It’s essentially the guy who thinks he’s the coolest in the room but everything has moved on and now he just seems over-the-hill. See it for the romance and the songs, but be warned you’re also getting some unintentional comedy.

Other Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris)*; Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno); Art Direction*; Cinematography; Costume Design; Director (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins); Editing; Original Score; Sound

Other Notable Movies of 1961: Fanny*; The Guns of Navarone*; The Hustler*; Judgment at Nuremburg*; The Parent Trap; The Absent Minded Professor; El Cid; La Dolce Vita; 101 Dalmatians; Splendor in the Grass; Breakfast at Tiffany’s; The Misfits

*Best Picture Nominee

Box Office: $43 Million (#1 for the year)