Ten years ago (how time flies!), Katie-Bar-The-Door and I trekked down to the American Film Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland, to watch a 70mm presentation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I first saw 2001 upon its initial release in 1968 at the age of seven, and have seen it many times since.
At the AFI showing, the film's star, Keir Dullea, spoke, signed autographs, posed for pictures and chatted one-on-one with the audience.
When my moment to talk to Dullea rolled around, I skipped the usual question about the ending of 2001 and instead asked him what he thought of as his best work, the performances he hoped people would seek out.
He blinked and said, "Nobody's ever asked me that before!" And he gave it some thought and then really got into it. These are the four movies he recommended:
The Hoodlum Priest (1961) — The pet project of its star, Don Murray, The Hoodlum Priest is the true story of Father Charles "Dismas" Clark, a Jesuit priest in St. Louis who ministered primarily to ex-cons — fighting to convince a hostile society to offer these men a second chance, and fighting the men themselves to take that chance when they got it. Dullea, in his first film role, plays one such ex-con, Billy Lee Jackson, a callow youth fresh from two years in the pen. Clearly influenced by the film noir movement, The Hoodlum Priest offers no happy endings, no easy answers. Fate puts Billy Lee Jackson through the wringer, and Dullea must have relished playing such a juicy part right out of the box.
David and Lisa (1962) — Dullea won a Golden Globe as most promising newcomer for his portrayal of a mentally ill young man who falls in love with a fellow patient in this intense, kitchen-sink-style drama that often plays like an early draft of Ordinary People. In recommending the picture, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times noted "the psychiatric definitions are vague and elusive in this film, and, therefore, the whole situation of conflict must be taken on verbal trust. But the visual aspects of mental patients are strongly presented by Mr. Dullea and by dark-haired Janet Margolin, who plays the schizoid girl." Dullea also won the best actor trophy at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
The Fox (1967) — As the film opens, two women (Sandy Dennis, Anne Heywood) struggle to run a farm during a bitterly cold Canadian winter. Along comes a handsome drifter (Dullea) — a predatory fox in the proverbial henhouse — sparking jealousy and stirring their loins, with the two women eventually realizing that what they really want is each other. If it sounds like the plot to a D.H. Lawrence story, it is, a novella published in 1922 between Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Almost chaste by today's standards, this was racy stuff back in the day (a theater owner who showed it in Jackson, Mississippi, was convicted of violating the state's obscenity laws). In a four-star review, Roger Ebert called The Fox "a quiet, powerful masterpiece" and wrote that this was Dullea's best performance since David and Lisa.
Paperback Hero (1973) — Dullea admitted that this was an obscure, off-the-wall choice, one I'd have to track down on YouTube or something, but it turns out to be the most fun of the bunch, a sad, rambling, nutty little gem. Four years before Slap Shot, Dullea plays a semi-pro hockey star, a loutish, beer-swilling womanizer who fancies himself a gunslinger out of the Old West. He's having a fine ol' time, at least until the team folds and he has to figure out what comes next — nothing good, I'm afraid. I imagine the dreams of all young men are inherently delusional if you cling to them long enough. In 2006, the Toronto International Film Festival selected Paperback Hero for Canada's equivalent of the National Film Registry.
But, that said, if you're only going to watch one Keir Dullea movie in your life, it has to be 2001: A Space Odyssey, right? The story of man's ascent from ape to god (with a timely assist from a mysterious monolith), 2001 is still the most beautiful, mind-blowing — and challenging — science fiction film ever made. And Keir Dullea is the calm eye at the center of this cinematic storm. Highly recommended, a film so iconic, Greta Gerwig spoofed it at the beginning of this year's smash hit Barbie.
And now on to the alternate Oscars of 1968. Vote well.
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 ✱.
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 ✱.
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
