1979 Alternate Oscars

I wrote this nearly five years ago about the films of 1979:

As I look at my list of movies from 1979, I find it interesting just how many of them — Apocalypse Now, Manhattan, North Dallas Forty, All That Jazz, even the robot in Alien — were about the destructive nature of what we now call toxic masculinity. So, of course, the Academy (always with a finger on the pulse of its own product) gave all the Oscars to the movie about toxic feminism, Kramer vs. Kramer. Pee-yew!

Okay, I exaggerate. But Kramer vs. Kramer is, at its heart, comfort food for men in need of reassurance when what they desperately needed was a cold, hard slap in the face.

For years, I had Woody Allen's Manhattan down as the best picture of the year (I first saw it forty years ago, the summer I turned eighteen), but in revisiting it recently, I saw not the wistful romance I remembered but the uncomfortable story of a sweet seventeen year old girl (Mariel Hemingway) who finds herself in the clutches of a creepy, balding homunculus twenty-five years her senior (Woody Allen). Woody works overtime to remake the girl in his own crabbed, misanthropic image, but — good for her! — she wriggles free of his grasp at the last minute. The cinematography (Gordon Willis) is gorgeous, the Gershwin music sublime, and maybe I'm just cranky because both Mariel Hemingway and I are now old enough to be the girl's grandparents, but I don't find this stuff amusing anymore.

To that I would add:

The story of a seventeen year old girl seduced by an older man could be a fine movie (see, e.g., 2009's An Education, starring Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard in the Mariel Hemingway and Woody Allen roles, respectively) if the movie knew that's what it was about. Which I'm 99% sure Manhattan doesn't. Which is perhaps why Woody Allen was horrified when he saw the first cut of it, begging the studio to bury it.

Joan Didion saw through Manhattan immediately. That's why she was a genius. Me, it took a little longer.

These days I prefer Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (the original theatrical release, not the bloated director's cut Apocalypse Now Redux). Based on Joseph Conrad's brilliant novella Heart of Darkness, this tale of the Vietnam War is a violent, funny, profane, and always exciting study of the dark underbelly of our best intentions.

I, too, love the smell of napalm in the morning, especially if it smells like waffles and bacon.

You might also try Alien, the sci-fi horror classic which introduced one the all-time great monster villains, as well as the greatest kickass heroine of movie history, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley.

Or how about a pair of my favorite comedies, Monty Python's irreverent satire of religion, Life of Brian, and the screwball odd couple comedy, The In-Laws. Don't forget to serpentine!

But whatever you pick, you can't go wrong. It was a great year for movies!

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 ✱.