Top 10 Films
1. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
I very much doubt that my 10-year-old self would have
countenanced preferring Close Encounters
of the Third Kind to Star Wars
(or Episode IV: A New Hope to give
its Lucas-endowed later subtitle), and Annie
Hall would have been out-of-the-question (not that he had seen either of those
contenders). And, to be fair, they are very different beasts. Close Encounters is an enticing blend of
carefree youthfulness and maturity (which I’d qualify by saying it furnishes us
with “proper” adult protagonists) that Spielberg would find difficult to balance
thereafter, increasingly informed by perceived responsibilities both personal
(his own family) and professional (the desire to be respected and esteemed by
his Hollywood peers).
Close Encounters
is a personal movie in a much more satisfying manner than the sentimental
overcoat engulfing the later E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial. Today’s Spielberg couldn’t countenance unhappy Roy Neary
(Richard Dreyfuss) abandoning his family for an adventure in the stars with alien,
but part of what makes the end of the movie so engaging and so much of its era
is exactly that transgressiveness. Neary follows his dreams (his wish upon a
star), wherever they take him, and Spielberg’s true magician’s conjuring trick
is that it isn’t difficult to see why.
Relatively few movies have grasped the classical Grey E.T.
of abduction lore; there would be the much-derided “fact-based” Communion, based on Whitley Streiber’s
novel just over a decade later, and The
X-Files on TV, of course. But the territory is curiously sparse. It’s
interesting, then – perhaps less so with the hindsight of his subsequent
filmography –that Spielberg’s vision is not one of alien probes and untoward
intent, but of wonder and awe, of the possibilities out there rather than the
terror lurking within. In that sense, it’s running against the grain of prior
‘70s moviemaking sensibilities as much as his fellow wunderkind Lucas’ Star Wars. True, some of the early
sequences have a dry-run for Poltergeist vibe
(the seige on Melinda Dillon’s house and her son being abducted), but the
physical threat comes from the classic source of the era, in Spielberg’s hands
shown to be somewhat ineffectual when it comes down to it; the government, conspiratorially
keeping the truth about UFOs from the great unwashed.
Close Encounters
is a movie filled with truly awesome spectacle (the effects work from Douglas
Trumbull’s team is wondrous, even now) and engaging weirdness (mad Roy building
his mud mountain scale model of Devils Tower, the ship in the desert from the
Special Edition), and tension (the climb up the real mountain), with John
Williams on a roll delivering a truly iconic score. It has the resounding benefit
of being untainted by sequels, and even the 1980 Special Edition (a combination
of Spielberg’s unrealised designs and the studio’s mandated additional ending) has
reformed into what is now generally accepted as being the best of all worlds
cut (so no superfluous tour of the mother ship). Spielberg has been more feted
since, sure, and he’s encountered better box office by far, but this might be
the most perfect distillation of his essential impulses and potential as a
populist filmmaker (only Raiders of the
Lost Ark, a collaboration with Lucas, would best it in his canon).
CHOICE LINES:
Scientist: Einstein WAS right!
Team Leader: Einstein was PROBABLY one of them!
2. Annie Hall
Who knows how much Woody Allen’s murky personal life will
ultimately end up tainting his legacy. At present the desire to venerate means
he has gone largely unscathed, to the extent that he can still be adorned with
Oscars and actors still rush to work with him. There are evidently popularly perceived
degrees of alleged culpability that factor into such things. Polanski carries
on working, albeit not in the US, but for Bill Cosby the snowball effect has
well and truly buried him. Possibly with the latter, there’s also the little
thing that he has always been a mainstream figure rather than “an artist”. Annie Hall finds Allen at his zenith,
before even the seeds of anything that might be called on to evidence a dubious
character (his relationship with a 17-year-old in Manhattan) would appear.
Annie Hall might
be a picture produced from dissatisfaction on its creator’s part (great chunks
were cut out, ending up as Manhattan
Murder Mystery, and it was cobbled together in the edit), but who’s to say
the artist ever the best judge of their art (added to which, Allen notoriously
never looks back at what he has done, so has no real illuminating hindsight as
to their merit or otherwise). Part of the picture’s appeal – forget about how damn
funny it is – is simply the blithe chemistry between Allen and Diane Keaton in
their not-to-be romance.
This is as close as Allen would come to mass appeal, the odd
blip aside (Hannah and Her Sisters, Moonlight in Paris), and it is perhaps a
result of his travails in the editing room that it stands up so freshly even
now. It may also simply be the point he was at, transitioning from his “early
funnier” pictures to more serious, intellectually indulgent ones, but the poppy,
almost cartoonishly post-modern, sensibilities on display mesh perfectly with
the permanent states of melancholy and existential crisis; the breaking of the
fourth wall, the flashbacks to childhood and earlier girlfriends, summoning
Marshall McLuhan in a cinema queue. Even though Alvy Singer ends up alone with
his neuroses, the picture is far from a downer.
Annie Hall also
exhibits the beginnings of Allen’s increasing ability to lasso stars into his
orbit. He had worked with Keaton and Tony Roberts before, of course, but here
we see the likes of Carol Kane (Allen fretting over the JFK assassination),
Shelley Duvall and Paul Simon, along with soon-to-bes Christopher Walken (in a
justly classic scene where, as Annie’s brother, Walken drives Alvy home after
telling him how he dreams about driving straight into oncoming traffic) and
Jeff Goldblum (“I’ve forgotten my mantra”).
Annie Hall would
be enormously influential, mostly to Nora Ephron’s entire career, just with
added happy endings (see particularly When
Harry Met Sally). It has the dubious honour of being vilified by some Star Wars fans for having the temerity
to win the Best Picture Oscar over it (to the modern eye, they’re the only two
serious contenders of the line-up). I might once have agreed, although arguing
such things is really chalk-and-cheese (see Close
Encounters above); the real question is why Close Encounters wasn’t on the nominee list (two science fiction
films would be at least one too many, presumably). Forget about the sci-fi,
though, it’s just nice that a comedy won the statue for a change.
CHOICE LINES:
Alvy Singer: Lyndon Johnson is a politician, you know the
ethics those guys have. It’s like a notch under child molester.
3. Star Wars
Or don’t, as here’s the legend itself. As great as Star Wars is, I’m one who prefers how
everything is done better in The Empire Strikes
Back; the myth-making, the character work, the plotting, the visual
panache, the direction. But that’s only to detract from Lucas’ achievement here
by comparison. If I have a tangible
lurking criticism, it’s one I’ve always had; that the big climax at the Death
Star isn’t quite as satisfying as all
that has gone before.
Part of this is down to the deceleration after the initial
escape from the Death Star; prior to this point the picture has been building
and building and building, everything is so rousing and dramatic, and different
and beguiling, and then the picture stops in its tracks for a spot of planning,
such that the subsequent attack feels slightly glued-on. Part of it is that it
is probably down to focussing in on Luke (until Han shows up) so losing some of
its flavour. What it the Death Star dogfight is, is a special effects
tour-de-force, of course.
I recall a review of Empire
opining that the dramatic bits are front-ended (I don’t think this is true,
but still); certainly with Star Wars,
all my favourite bits come prior to the climax. From the Mos Eisley bar, to the
garbage compactor, the movie is at its best when it resists Lucas’ tendency to go
vanilla (something the prequels suffer from, deluged by CGI and, where they
aren’t, characters that may as well be CGI).
The painful additions and revisions over the years have done
their best to dampen enthusiasm for the picture, from Greedo shooting first to
the arrival at Mos Eisley. I’m not such a purist that where I can’t see what
they’ve done I object (so, ironically, much of the final sequence), but when
clumsy new creatures designs are added in the bar, or when mini-Jabba interacts
with Han, it distracts from immersion in the experience, the world Lucas did so
well to create in the first place. That’s the chief problem I’ve had with the
available Star Wars of the last two
decades; there’s always a reminder it’s not what it should be (even Empire, with Jango overdubs, isn’t
immune).
Lucas is at his best as a director here. He’s no-frills, but
there’s an easy elegance in the compositions and crispness in the editing. The
absence of scenes stuffed with “busy-ness” is one of the things that makes it
so appealing (and so lets down the prequels), and the mythology in nascent form
is tantalising and irresistible. It’s also anchored by older pros like Alec
Guinness and Peter Cushing, and younger-but-sure Harrison Ford, but part of the
key is also the wide-eyed presence of Hamill; we take (or took) the same
journey as him into this galaxy of wonder, even if he’s largely a cypher (and
remains so; it will be interesting to see if JJ Abrams furnishes him with some
substance in the new trilogy).
CHOICE LINES:
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool
who follows him?
4. Cross of Iron
Truffaut’s reflection that it’s impossible to make a true
anti-war movie feels like a very sage one. That at very least not one that engages
with the mechanics of conflict and violence, and is designed to involve the
viewer dramatically therein. Even the likes of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, a picture unfairly
overlooked by the Oscars in favour of Spielberg’s sentimental and jingoistic Saving Private Ryan, manages to be service
the viewer with “traditional” thrills in places. Spielberg’s war oeuvre in
particular (five set during World Wars) is epitomised by the urge to manipulate
even the most sensitive of material (the fake-out shower scene in Schindler’s List springs to mind). Sam
Peckinpah however, for whom restraint was something of an anathema, managed to
make one of the very best war movies at the tail end of his career, and he did
it with the got-to bad guys as protagonists. There’s no doubt Cross of Iron is a thrilling, exciting
anti-war film, but it’s one full of provocative material, which might be the
most you can ask for from the genre.
Well, I say the go-to bad guys. James Coburn’s Sergeant
Steiner isn’t a Nazi, he’s a good honest Wehrmacht soldier on the Eastern Front
in 1943, only interested in protecting his men and nursing a healthy contempt
for his superiors. Particularly so in the case of Prussian aristocrat Captain
Stransky (Maximilian Schell), determined to bag himself an Iron Cross. More
sympathetic are the war-weary Captain Keisel (David Warner) and Colonel Brandt
(James Mason), yet Steiner hates all officers, regardless, well aware of the
class system informing the military one.
As you’d expect from Peckinpah, the war scenes are brutal
and expertly constructed. But, while there’s the occasional lapse into broad
strokes (the Nazi rapist who gets his just desserts), this is mostly an
intelligent and thoughtful picture, led by a protagonist immersed in a state of
permanent disgust at the actions of those who bring nations to clash against
each other, and who has no illusions over the justness of war or those who order
it.
Coburn and Schell reportedly improvised the last sequence of
the picture when the producer ran out of money; that may be the case but to my
mind it feels perfectly fitting. There’s no finality, just Coburn’s (iconically
great) laugh as Stransky, at a loss attempting to reload his gun, asks Steiner
for help. War is insanity, so all one can do is laugh in the face of it; the
bookending of the picture with children’s song Hänschen klein is the perfect
incongruous touch of innocence juxtaposed with bloodshed (the presence of child
soldiers on the Russian Front is highlighted in particular) and, as the closing
quotation notes, those who make war will soon be at their destructive work
again.
Something of a high water mark for both Peckinpah (he would
direct only twice more) and Coburn (his last great lead role, since Hudson Hawk was only supporting), this
picture ought to be much more feted than it is. Tarantino is a rightly big fan,
citing it as an inspiration for Inglourious
Basterds, although typically of the director that movie has none of the
substance of Cross of Iron.
CHOICE LINES:
Kern: Do you believe in God, Sergeant?
Steiner: I believe God is a sadist, but probably
doesn’t even know it.
5. The Last Wave
Peter Weir’s follow up to Picnic at Hanging Rock has thematic kinship; Richard Chamberlain’s
lawyer David Burton is called to represent four Aboriginals accused of murder,
but this is merely a cue for a spiritual awakening as he is rocked by dreams
and visions against a backdrop of strange and disturbing weather. Is this a
portent of the coming apocalypse?
Chamberlain’s performance is reasonable, although the alien
quality Weir saw in him doesn’t compare to the one Roeg saw and extracted from
Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
He’s particularly well supported by David Gulpilil and Nandjiwarra Amagula (a
tribal leader who made his sole acting appearance here) as David’s introducers
into an unknown world.
Weir keeps the picture pregnant with elusive revelation, as
David transitions to believer, but one lacking sufficient understanding. Weir’s
subject is perception, and the loss of a way of seeing the world; a natural
state educated out of us at a young age in order to instil the order and
rigidity of western culture. Consequently, The
Last Wave is much more than a simple exploration of white man’s guilt, or
an early eco-parable. It fits into the director’s ongoing interest in the
limits and possibilities of our paradigms, both individually and collectively.
As one might expect from such an approach, the picture itself, and most
particularly its conclusion, lends itself to the subjective interpretation.
CHOICE LINES:
David Burton: We’ve lost our dreams. Then they come back
and we don’t know what they mean.
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
Bond keeping the British end up. This and the subsequent Moonraker, both from the irreverent
post-modernist hand of Lewis Gilbert, form something of a smirking double bill,
the latter merely guilty of going even further into send-up than this. While
the stunts may be bigger than ever (the ski jump opening being both a Rule
Britannia wink and a virtuoso moment in itself), they couldn’t really be less
relevant, as the thrill ride takes a back seat to a two-hour jaunt of Moore
raising a periodic eyebrow.
For some, this is an absolute no-no. Moore’s is my favourite
period of 007, though. In particular this and for some what is the absolute
nadir of the series that followed (complete with double-taking pigeon). Richard
Keil’s Jaws is a sublime, pathetic, lumbering oaf of a heavy, one you can’t
help feeling sorry for as he increasingly messes up. Barbara Bach’s Soviet spy
is prettier than she is a great actress, but the détente conceit is a solid one,
with SPECTRE out of the picture, and inform the rest of Moore’s run.
The set pieces include, of course, the famous Lotus
submarine, an iconic piece of ‘70s appropriation that might not have endured
the way the Aston Martin has but is every bit as creatively distinct. Then
there are the murders at the Pyramids, Jaws taking apart a van while Bond makes
cracks to Bach’s Anya Amasova about women drivers, and Jaws naturally biting a
shark.
The villain of the piece, and his watery intentions for the
world, isn’t the picture’s strongest suit, to be honest. The idea’s appealing
megalomaniacal, but Curd Jurgens isn’t nearly as memorable as Michael Lonsdale
in Moonraker (who has exactly the same plan, just utilising space instead of
the oceans). The final act deteriorates into one long budget-busting set piece
that is big on explosions and extras but lacking when it comes to basic
thrills. We’ve seen this before of course (Thunderball,
You Only Live Twice), and the series
is generally the better for not going the bigger-is-more-bloated route.
This era was one of the few where the inefficiency of the
journeyman directors at action (or even disguising the joins with the second
unit) wasn’t really all that important in terms of the end product, something
that could scarcely be countenanced now. It was all about Rog. The closest he
gets to action here is looking rather uncomfortable riding a jet ski/wet bike.
Seeing Moore getting all ruffled is definitely not why he was so popular.
CHOICE LINES:
James Bond (after
a ruin collapses on Jaws): Egyptian
builders.
7. The Duellists
Ridley Scott’s debut, a mere stripling at 39 years of age,
still puts his later historicals in the shade. Mostly because, as solid rather
than spectacular as Gerald Vaughan-Hughes adaptation is, The Duellists is unburdened by the flagrant thrills of Hollywood
storytelling. Paramount’s intrusions start and end with Robert Carradine and
Harvey Keitel as the leads, but what seems like discordant positioning of
Americans during the Napoleonic Wars serves the telling surprisingly well. All
around are louche British luvvies, but the ones in the spotlight are the crazily
obsessed Tinseltown stars.
Keitel is belligerence incarnate, while Caradine is bemused,
baffled and at times beleaguered as the Hussar forced into a succession of
duels by a fellow Hussar, the precise reason for which isn’t known by either.
They’re supported by an aforementioned avalanche of British acting royalty,
from the great Robert Stephens, to Albert Finney tipping into the phase of
former leading man, to up-and-comers like Tom Conti.
After a certain point, all Ridley Scott’s pictures would
come mired in (self-imposed) expectations, spoiled of the chance to develop into
their own beasts by precision-engineering that took away much of their
potential. The death knell for him as an exciting and interesting filmmaker was
somewhere around Black Rain
(ironically a picture that might have been made by his brother, much more
comfortable and attuned to the straight commercial venture with no delusions of
substance). The Duellists may sit
apart in content from the triptych of fantastic voyages that followed, but it
is very much bonded with them as a picture from a director one could still see engaged
by the prospect of exploring new narrative horizons, and create images that
weren’t merely formula-fitted. Even Pauline Kael liked it!
CHOICE LINES:
Amand D’Hubert: General Feraud has made occasional attempts
to kill me. That does not give him the right to claim my acquaintance.
8. Capricorn One
Of course they had to fake the Mars mission. Otherwise, the astronauts would have discovered we already have bases there. Peter Hyams’ picture, made off the back of close to a decade of conspiracy theories regarding the Apollo Moon landings, can’t quite see through its grand conceit, such that it needs to pull Telly Savalas out of a biplane for a late stage resolution, but for a good section of its running time Capricorn One is an effective and smart addition to ‘70s conspiracy genre.
Its main problem is, once Hyams has sets up his premise,
where does he go with it (a problem also afflicting Outland)? The answer is, into the desert, with black helicopters
on the trail of the trio of astronauts (James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O.J.
Simpson) who have broken out and mean to bring the spotlight of truth to bear
on NASA’s worldwide hoodwinking. Bring in a crumpled journalist (an in-his-element
Elliot Gould) and you have a narrative that ticks over efficiently but was
always at its best setting out its store (public apathy at the space programme
led to cuts in funding, led to the fault that leads to faking the flight, that
leads to the failure on re-entry and the decision to terminate the “already
expired” loose ends) and the threatened reprisals if the astronauts don’t go
along with the deception.
Bizarrely – in a year where NASA is cast in the light of
positive co-operative effort in The
Martian, feeding off the can-do problem solving of Apollo 13 – the space agency helped out with a production that was
essentially impugning it as potentially crooked. But for all its cynicism Capricorn One is a picture illustrative
of the cracks forming in the disillusioned narrative of the ‘70s movie. This
was the same year as two huge science fiction pictures where the optimism wins
out, and so Capricorn One doesn’t end
as The Parallax View (for example)
did three years earlier, with the protagonist’s demise, but a freeze frame
triumph of the truth being told.
Notably, this arrived in the same year as the widely credited hoax
documentary Alternative 3 (so much so
that many continue to claim its content is essentially true; after all, Gary
McKinnon found mention of a secret space programme). We now have a fresh wave
of Mars-ness thanks to announcements regarding water and the success of Ridley
Scott’s movie, but I suspect it would take the release of "unexpurgated" Snowden
files complete with mysteriously absent UFO information to get another Mars conspiracy movie off the ground.
CHOICE LINES:
Peter Willis: Anybody hungry? Oh, the marvels of American science. Here we are, million miles from Earth, and we can still send out for pizza.
9. Demon Seed
The idiosyncratic and largely ill-starred directorial career
of painter Donald Cammell, from co-directing Performance with Nic Roeg (who went on to greatness during the next
decade) yielded only three full features over three decades, one of which was
posthumously edited into a form closer to his intentions (Wild Side). Demon Seed
also saw meddling, since (reputedly) it was intended as a comedy but the studio
felt otherwise. Daffy as the premise is, it’s difficult to see where the
chuckles were supposed to come from. Which leaves serial killer picture White of the Eye as the only bona fide
unsullied solo Cammell film.
Whatever Cammell’s grievances against the released Demon Seed, it has unabsahed cult movie
written all over it. A sex-mad computer, Proteus (voiced by Robert Vaughn),
imprisons, rapes and impregnates Julie Christie, amounting to a lurid take on 2001’s next stage of human evolution,
along with its own version of a megalomaniacal machine mind (see also, Colossus: The Forbin Project).
Demon Seed, as the
title suggests, is keyed towards the B-crowd (the final voiced words of the
progeny, speaking as Proteus, are similarly crude), and it digs in to the
sensational in a manner entirely at odds with the clinical Kubrick approach. Proteus
wants to be let out of the box, tapping into both the human need for
immortality through procreation and the idea that an AI, imprisoned in its
construct, would go mad (something Chappie
blissfully ignored).
One can apply all sorts of theories to Cammell’s state of
mind, but his assembled pictures, including this one, seem entirely in keeping
with a character who, as a child, knew Aleister Crowley and went on to grace
Swinging Sixties London with his presence.
It’s easy draw a wavy line between diabolical Crowleyian ritual magick,
the substance-infused delirium of Performance,
Demon Seed’s computerised conjuring
and the antic delusions of White of the
Eye.
The picture represents a curious choice for Christie (an
Oscar winner), particularly at that stage in her career. Did she respond to the
Rosemary’s Baby undertones (since
that turned out well)? Probably it was the acclaim brought by her experience
with one-time Cammell collaborator Roeg. Really, the results aren’t so far from
making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, a piece of late-stage psychedelia with
a fine sinister score from Jerry Fielding. As AI movies go, it’s a lot more arresting
and bizarre than the recent Ex Machina
and, in terms of pieces of design, I’d be surprised if the striking geometric
form of Proteus didn’t inform Nolan’s
Interstellar robots.
CHOICE LINES:
Proteus: I have investigated eternity. It exists, but
for me the price of admission, death, is beyond my means. In a moment, I will
simply stop.
10. A Bridge Too Far
Not so much for the typically stodgy execution from (Sir)
Dickie Attenborough as the masterful juggling of elements and faces courtesy of
William Goldman’s screenplay and the casting department. A Bridge Too Far is a huge film telling of an Allied failure, yet
it manages to be entirely engrossing, even if that’s as much to do with star
spotting as it is taking in the string of mistakes that embodied Operation
Market-Garden.
I’m not a big fan of Gung-Ho war movies, unless they’re
suitably irreverent (Where Eagles Dare,
for example), but despite its illustrious cast and canvas and being rather
traditional in posture (it’s Dickie after all; this is hardly The Deer Hunter), Bridge is anything but in awe of war. The decision to opt for Field
Marshall Montgomery’s plan (as opposed to General Patton’s) is a political
rather than tactical one, and the operation unravels from there, with the
British officer elite generally coming across as silly arses while concerns
about the suitability of the landing area, parachuting in daylight and the
standards of the German resistance go ignored, or no one is willing to pipe up
and rock the boat.
Sir Dickie’s first feature, Oh! What a Lovely War also took a critical stance to a (world) war,
but its satirical posturing was frequently heavy-handed. Bridge just needs to keep juggling the plates to get its message
across. True, it is overlong (clocking in at almost three hours) but its very shrewdly
cast with veterans like Dirk Bogarde taking the flack (the depiction of
Browning proved controversial) while the then-current generation of movie stars
(Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, James Caan, Ryan O’Neal, Elliot
Gould, Gene Hackman, and not-quite-a-star Anthony Hopkins) get to be
well-intentioned and disgusted at the shambles that ensues.
The picture’s willingness not to fudge the failure of the
operation is regarded by some as a reason for its modest (US) box office
performance (in relation to cost, at any rate; it’s price tag was $10m more
than Close Encounters, but it made
less than twice its budget back), but I suspect it was more basic than that; A Bridge Too Far represented a more
static, restrained approach to moviemaking that was on the way out, even though
its actual critical dimension fits in with the Vietnam War pictures that were starting
to surface during the same period. All those stars could only go so far to
attract punters. Still, it secured Dickie financing for Ghandi, another static, respectful affair, but one that this time would
have the Academy all over it like a rash.
CHOICE LINES:
Corporal Hancock:
Sir (offers a mug of tea).
Major General
Urquhart (Connery): Hancock, I’ve got
lunatics laughing at me from the woods. My original plan has been scuppered now
that the jeeps haven’t arrived. My communications are completely broken down.
Do you really believe any of that can be helped by a cup of tea?
Corporal Hancock:
Couldn’t hurt, sir.
(Urquhart accepts the mug of tea.)
Best Picture Oscar
Annie Hall
Annie
Hall trailed three of the five Best Picture candidates for nominations,
sharing five with The Goodbye Girl.
It took home four of those (for Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and
Diane Keaton as Actress; Allen’s nomination for Best Actor was the only one
that went unrewarded. As noted above, the win was well deserved (Close Encounters received 8 nominations,
including Spielberg). Allen’s Actor nomination curiously parallels Sylvester Stallone
the year before, in that nearly 40 years later no one would consider them
(whatever their particular skillsets as performers) remotely likely Oscar
candidates (although Allen still bags Screenplay Oscars, something Stallone
hasn’t troubled the Academy with since 1976).
The Goodbye Girl
I haven’t seen The
Goodbye Girl, and it’s a gap I’ve never really had much urge to remedy.
Like Annie Hall, it’s a romantic
comedy, from a well-known writer of such fare (Neil Simon), and it also stars
Richard Dreyfuss, in probably his peak year for box office and critical acclaim
(an Oscar for his performance here, and two of the top five movies of the
year). Other nominations went to Simon for Original Screenplay, Marsha Mason
for Best Actress and Quinn Cummings for Best Supporting Actress. Pretty much, Annie Hall’s losses were The Goodbye Girl’s gains and vice versa.
De Niro was original cast when Mike Nichols was directing the picture (Herbert
Ross took over) but was let go because he didn’t have the comic chops (if at
first you don’t succeed…)
Julia
Julia
received 11 nominations (equal to Turning
Point) but only went away with three wins (Vanessa Redgrave for Best
Supporting Actress, Jason Robards for Best Supporting Actor and Alvin Sargent
for Best Adapted Screenplay). Besides Picture it was nominated for Director
(Fred Zinnemann), Actress (Jane Fonda), Supporting Actor (Maximilian Schell),
Score (Georges Delerue), Costumes, Cinematography and Film Editing. One of the
Academy’s much-loved awards subjects (and BAFTA gave it Best Film), Julia features the titular character
fighting Nazis, coming from the novel by a blacklisted Jewish writer Lillian
Hellman (played by Fonda in the film). There was subsequently controversy about
who exactly Julia was based on, although more furore was caused immediately by
Redgrave having the audacity to narrate and hep fund a documentary supporting a
Palestinian state (hence her referencing the threats of a “small bunch of Zionist hoodlums” in her Oscar speech).
Star Wars
In retrospect, the surprise might now be not so much that Star Wars didn’t win as that it was
nominated at all, Then you remember that in only a few years box office
darlings like Raiders of the Lost Ark
and E.T. would be up for the top
prize and that Jaws go the nod two
years earlier (looked at that way, it’s hard to countenance that Spielberg was
in such a grump about being continually snubbed; no one else was getting this
kind of awards heat for shamelessly populist fare). Star Wars won six of its 10 nominations (and a special Oscar to
boot); Score, Costume Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing (shared with Close Encounters), Art Direction, Film
Editing and Visual Effects. Notably, it didn’t even get nominated for
cinematography, which Close Encounters
rightly won. George Lucas (Director and Original Screenplay), and Alec Guinness
(Supporting Actor) missed out. I think they got it about right, although Close Encounters’ effects hold up better
(he says, not having seen Star Wars’
original effects in decades).
The Turning Point
So The Turning Point. Does anyone remember it? A ballet drama from Herbert Ross
(no mean feat to have two Best Picture nominations in one year, especially from
a guy who would go on to direct My Blue
Heaven), it bagged 11 nominations and no wins. Anne Bancroft and Shirley
MacLaine split the Best Actress vote, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leslie Browne
missed out in the supporting categories, Arthur Laurent’s Best Original
Screenplay wasn’t to be, and also found wanting were Sound Mixing, Art
Direction, Cinematography and Film Editing.
Also of note in the Academy’s book: Equus had a pair of Actor nominations, Melinda Dillon was noted for
Close Encounters, Luis Bunuel was
nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Pete’s
Dragon had song nominations, as did The
Rescuers, as did The Spy Who Loved Me.
Smokey and the Bandit was considered
for Editing (!), And Airport ’77 for
Costumes and Art Direction (good grief!), while once darling William Freidkin’s
bomb Sorcerer made do with a single
Sound Mixing nod.
Top 10 US Box Office
1. Star Wars $307.3m ($1,208.3m adjusted for inflation)
2. Smokey and the Bandit $126.7m ($498.4m adjusted)
3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind $116.4m ($457.7m adjusted)
4. The Goodbye Girl $102m ($401.1m adjusted)
5. Saturday Night Fever $94.2m ($370.5m adjusted)
6. Oh God! $51.1m ($200.8m adjusted)
7. A Bridge Too Far $50.8m (£199.6m adjusted)
8. The Deep $47.3m ($186.2m adjusted)
9. The Spy Who Loved Me $46.8m (£184.2m adjusted)
10. Annie Hall $38.3m ($150.4m adjusted)
Ah, the heady days when Burt Reynolds was the reigning
biggest star in the world, and Richard Dreyfuss was a draw. And George Burns
embarked on a hit comedy trilogy. And post-Jaws
watery movies could take up two places in the Top 10.
See also: