Last week, in response to my alternate Oscar polls, my old law school roommate texted me to the effect that they sure don't make movies like that anymore. I'm translating for your benefit — his comment was earthier and far more succinct.
But I got to thinking about it and decided there's a lot of truth in them thar hills. The 1960s saw the demise of the studio system, the end of the production code (whereby filmmakers self-censored their product), the rise of the French then American New Wave directorial styles with their handheld cameras, improvised dialogue and, more to the point, explicit themes, as well as the drift away from classical Hollywood continuity editing. Tastes changed, mores changed.
Not to mention Hollywood's Mount Rushmore of postwar directors — Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder — all lost their way, artistically and commercially, in the mid-1960s, allowing a new crop of directors less beholden to the old ways (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, etc) to take their place.
But to a degree, the notion that they don't make em like that anymore is also an illusion. Sturgeon's Law states that "90% of everything is crap" and believe me, if Turner Classic Movies with its deep-dives into the past has proved anything, Hollywood made more than their fair share of lousy movies back in the day.
The difference is, we have to wade through the 90%-of-everything-is-crap on our own nickel whereas time has done the hard work for us with old movies. You know what I mean? We pretty much all know Citizen Kane is the best movie of 1941, but who can say with any certainty what the best movie of 2022 is? I think it takes ten years at least, and even better, twenty, to really get a sense of what was built to last, what was overlooked, and what was empty hype.
No point beyond that. Just (1) they don't make em like that anymore, but (2) keep your eyes peeled and your mind open for the good ones they do make.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I started listing my favorite performances in a Western and the list went on forever — it's probably my favorite genre. So I whittled it down to the top five (no slight intended if your favorite didn't make the cut).
In chronological order:
John Wayne (The Searchers)
Walter Brennan (Rio Bravo)
Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
William Holden (The Wild Bunch)
and
the dog in Big Jake.
Lot of great acting there, but the dog is the only one in the bunch I'd trust to do my taxes. If you've seen Big Jake, you know what I mean. And if you haven't, well, let me just say, John Wayne as an animal trainer makes Cesar Millan look like a crazy cat lady.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I've said it before, which has never stopped me from saying it (or anything else) again — Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music gives the greatest performance by an actress in a musical in the history of Hollywood. The only real challengers in my mind are Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria.
Okay, so I like Julie Andrews.
That said, does that make The Sound of Music the best movie of 1965? Well ...
I have some problems with The Sound of Music. The supporting work of Eleanor Parker and Christopher Plummer — two actors I really like, mind you — is hammy in the extreme. And Ben Wright (as the cranky Nazi) acts like he's parachuted in from an episode of Hogan's Heroes.
Worse, the storyline — a sweet romance between a young novitiate and a father of forty — never meshes with the subplot of the looming Nazi Anschluss. It's not that you can't mix romance and politics — the love triangle in Casablanca, for example, is inextricably intertwined with the anti-fascist politics of its main characters — but in The Sound of Music, one has nothing to do with the other. Maria and the Captain will or won't fall in love regardless of what happens to Austria, and the movie is really over when the wedding bells ring and the nuns sing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria."
But then you've got to get all those kids over the Alps to America so the movie grinds on for another thirty minutes. Can't they just buy tickets on the Concorde and be done with it?
Still, I've never warmed to the movie's top two competitors (at least among the alternate Oscar crowd). Doctor Zhivago, an epic tale of romance during the Russian Revolution, is well acted but neverending; and Roman Polanski's Repulsion, starring Catharine Deneuve as a sexually-repressed woman who turns homicidal over a long weekend, is just a bit too arty for my tastes.
That leaves Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles's take on Falstaff and Prince Hal, which is brilliant but nobody, not even Welles fans, has ever seen it. And while the music in the Beatles' Help! is fantastic, the story is ... wait, is there a story?
So I'm going with The Sound of Music. But I'm not making a fuss about it.
Feel free to disagree with me. You always do!
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I started to write something about the casting of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (instead of the play's Broadway star, Julie Andrews), the subsequent hiring of Marni Nixon to dub Hepburn's singing, and the resulting crisis of authenticity in Hollywood that eventually led to Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin "singing" in Paint Your Wagon, but it all got too convoluted for a short introduction to the 1964 alternate Oscars. I mean, when you tie the Beatles, Vietnam and the civil rights movement to the demise of the Hollywood musical, you've really wandered into the weeds.
Instead, let me just say 1964 was a great year for movies, and any one of about twelve films from that year would have been a better choice for best picture than anything that came out in 1965. But that's the luck of the draw.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Tonight at 8 PM Eastern, Turner Classic Movies is showing Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of ornithological horror, The Birds — an apocalyptic tale of mother nature's revenge on the human race. Or as we refer to it in the 21st century, "Thursday."
If you haven't seen it, well good God man, what are you waiting for?
Richard Brody, film critic for the New Yorker magazine, had this to say about the film's star, Tippi Hedren:
[The Birds and Marnie] feature the performances of Tippi Hedren, which are not only the ultimate Hitchcock performances but—and especially that of “Marnie”—among the very best in the history of cinema. Nobody would mistake Hedren for Bette Davis in theatrical craft, but, of course, the cinema isn’t theatre, and the measure of performance is, rather, an aura, an expressive radiance which is sometimes even more present in varieties of inexpressivity, repression, opacity, which is exactly what Hedren delivers.
I completely agree with the sentiment that "cinema isn't theatre" — it's why I prefer Bogart to Olivier, and just about anybody to Meryl Streep, even the much undervalued Tippi Hedren.
I rewatched The Birds (and Marnie) the other day and while I think the growing cult of Marnie has overrated that picture (too much pop psychology, not enough story), the assessment of Tippi Hedren as an actress, especially in The Birds (reversing Brody's verdict), is spot on. Instead of playful and flirty in the opening scenes of The Birds — which is apparently how some critics want her to have played it — Hedren comes across as self-involved and maybe just mean enough to make you think the birds are reacting to her. I mean what kind of jerk uses innocent birds as props in an adolescent prank? No wonder the birds are miffed — she's the straw that broke the proverbial camel bird's back.
It's as if Majorie Taylor Greene showed up in Bodega Bay full of performative tomfoolery and flocks of left-wing birds (flying in left-hand circles, no doubt) launched a counterattack on humanity in retaliation. They've stood all they can stand and, like Popeye the Sailor, they can't stands no more. I'm cheering for the birds!
Of course, the person the birds really should have been attacking was Alfred Hitchcock. I love me some Hitchcock as you well know, but what he subjected Tippi Hedren to should have ended his career (never mind the sexual assault allegation which should have landed him in jail.) I guess you can argue a good director does whatever is necessary to get the performance he wants but a better one wouldn't have to. I think actors succeeded in Hitchcock's films not because of his antics but in spite of them, and when the star of a great motion picture almost gets her eyes pecked out to satisfy the sadistic whims of a warped, frustrated old man (no matter how great a director), she deserves some sort of medal.
But that's neither here nor there. Ultimately, the only thing that counts is what ended up on the screen, and I think what ended up on the screen in the case of Tippi Hedren is great — or anyway, unforgettable which is pretty much the same thing. She earns my vote for best actress of the year.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
1962 ranks with 1939, 1946 and 1959 as one of the greatest years in movie history ...
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
Posts
