1967's Oscar Nominees (inspired by "Pictures at a Revolution")

I think I only hated his performances, not necessarily his legacy, and now I'm seeing how the one clouded my judgement of the other.

The best scene/line in The Graduate is "You're missing a great effect here" as the tassels are twirling.

ive always liked the seduction scene and the "art talk"

at MoMA last week, Nichols quoted the MAD Magazine parody where Ben asks his parents, "Why am I Jewish and you're not?"

'in the heat of the night', that movie is really, really dope

except the murder mystery stinks

Eric, i should con you into viewing Guess once (for the ice cream scene at least) by reminding you that Isabel Sanford plays their maid.

the Graduate is the better film, but I enjoy Bonnie & Clyde more. GWCTD is no slouch, either, obv. I guess it is appropriate that '67 would be a year for zeitgeist films to be up for the top honors. I haven't seen the other two.

Doctor Doolittle is clearly the one thing that is not like the other on that list.

Point Blank smashes all of these.

my fave scene in The Graduate, however, might be the very last NOW WHAT one on the bus.

that's why i voted for it. it's not hard to love bonnie and clyde, but i think the graduate was smarter about where things were going. no blaze of glory, just a lot of wtf.

plus -- anne bancroft.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/culture/2008/03/cuar01_graduate0803.jpg

Here's where I say I'm definitely more in B&C's camp than Benjamin's.

It won't take much to con me into seeing any of these five films in the immediate aftermath of reading this book.

I know it's the boring old anti-challops, but the scuba-diving gear scene in TG is fucking awesome. I'm still voting B&C tho.

E, you're going to subject yourself to Anthony Newley?

'Tom Servo if you don't stop doing your Anthony Newley impression I'm gonna throw you against the wall...'

I'm definitely more in B&C's camp than Benjamin's

benjamin probably feels the same way.

Not only would I subject myself to Newley, I'd even subject myself to Rex Harrison.

I can't not vote for Beatty/Hackman in the end.

Just want to add to the "goddamn is this a great book" chorus. (I voted B&C.)

Really want to read that. Also do I really have to wade in here and point out the BIG difference between '67 and '68? Production Code abandoned in '68.

Doctor Dolittle was the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, according to my mom (I caught meningitis that night, she claims). She had a momcrush on Newley. Our local PBS affiliate used to run all these brittle Rex Harrison films from the '30s and '40s and seen now they're all like watching Tony Blair's dissolute misogynist twin. Favourite is The Graduate, though.

Production Code abandoned in '68.

And the result was some of the dullest nominees in the history of the Oscars, I guess.

Rex Harrison is pretty super in Major Barbara and Unfaithfully yours, and even the by-the-numbers film of My Fair Lady.

The single scene that led Beatty to cast Hackman in B&C, his only one in Lilith, is a real stunner.

And the result was some of the dullest nominees in the history of the Oscars, I guess.

As opposed to the years before '68? I dunno, man.

Or after, yeah yeah yeah.

bonnie & clyde, though in the heat of the night is not to be sniffled at. i know i'm supposed to like the graduate... but i hate it.

'68 was The Lion in Winter, though. Only one of my top films of all time and probably one of the bitchiest films since All About Eve. <3

Yeah, TLIW has by far the best Hepburn Oscar-valiadted performance.

it's middlebrow fake-classy history sitcom stuff, but she's funny.

It's the ancestor of Peter Morgan's film/stage career.

so IOW, goddamn it to hell!

This book sort of keeps getting better and better. Loved the tidbit about how excited everyone on Heat's crew was about shooting in the south for authenticity. How excited everyone was, that is, except for Sidney Poitier.

And this video contains two of my three favorite Parsons moments in B&C:

This is when Hollywood cinema starts to become a problem for me. I find the pomposity of The New Hollywood unearned. And in general, 1967-1980 reeks of two steps forward-six steps back, esp. re: the dismantling of the Production Code. Still, I'd like to read Harris' book even though the word "Revolution" immediately makes me skeptical. And like Eric, I love stories about doomed and/or clueless productions (although my fave example is the unwatchable Song of Norway).

If we're merely voting for our favorite film here, then Bonnie & Clyde for me please.

^Oh, interesting. Tell us what you like about the Production Code.

It's not about liking the Production Code. It's about the absurdity of the idea that with its dismantling we could finally talk about this, that, or the other taboo subject in film.

But after reading Patricia White on the Production Code restrictions of These Three (1936) and how it differs from the supposedly more progressive remake The Children's Hour, I could easily say I love the Production Code (in this particular instance).

See also Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape. And This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

The Children's Hour (1961)

Yeah, the quality of Hollywood filmmaking really picked up in 1980.

It's about the absurdity of the idea that with its dismantling we could finally talk about this, that, or the other taboo subject in film.

oh yes how absurd.

...

What Compromises, on HOTN, did SidPoit have to make, like?

Still, voting that.

Yeah, the quality of Hollywood filmmaking really picked up in 1980.

Um, 1967-1980 isn't my periodization. That's the story the New Hollywood and its acolytes want everyone to believe, that from Bonnie & Clyde to Heaven's Gate (or Jaws in other estimations) we had some sort of cinematic paradise and that Hollywood films were soooo much more demonstrably worse or regressive after that. If you buy that reasoning, more power to ya, sweet cheeks.

And Scorsese, for one, really DID pick up after 1980.

oh yes how absurd.

Glad that's cleared up.

Um, 1967-1980 isn't my periodization. That's the story the New Hollywood and its acolytes want everyone to believe, that from Bonnie & Clyde to Heaven's Gate (or Jaws in other estimations) we had some sort of cinematic paradise and that Hollywood films were soooo much more demonstrably worse or regressive after that.

jesus, i think people overate the new hollywood cinema but you've strawmanned the shit out of this. leave it to the pros.

Look, it's enough to say that Hollywood produced more crap than good films before and after the Production Code, m'kay?

I don't buy that they were markedly worse after 1980 (I like Spielberg, after all), but I don't buy that they were so great in the period immediately leading up to 1967 either -- the auteurist heyday of the '50s had pretty much run out of gas.

I don't blame the Production Code for crappy, toothless Hollywood movies. I blame the fact that most of what topped the box-office charts during that time were crappy, toothless Hollywood movies.

hollywood has always, always produced more crap than good. you can argue about percentages if you want to. but this question is not about 'was hollywood in 1971 better than in 1946?'; it's about 'was hollywood in 1971 better than in 1965?'

yes, i reckon.

and it's also about, were 'taboo' subjects discussed more after the end of the code. unquestionably that's a yes, however flawed things were in practice.

people vastly overrate classic hollywood 'auteurs' imo -- very marginal differences in approach with most of 'em -- but the system functioned better than now in terms of acceptable minimums. shame about the racism etc.

In any case, I don't love Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because it is said to have directly ended the influence of the Production Code. I love it because it's a fucking fantastic movie that couldn't have been made as it was made even two or three years earlier.

It is not a fantastic movie, it's a very fine film of a fantastic (if arguably misogynist?) theatre piece.

That moany more great Hollywood films were made before '67 than after seems obvious.

And yet, I guess I kinda know where you're coming from in a sense. I don't have the book handy right now, but I remember something in Michael Gebert's "Encyclopedia of Movie Awards" declaring the exact moment when Old Hollywood truly died: Oct. 26, 1962 -- the day Whatever Happened to Baby Jane premiered and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were depicted as two shrill drag queen wannabes.

In other words, at least Old Hollywood had women's pictures. New Hollywood was for the boys alone.

I mean, if you buy that. Which I don't. But if you do.

xpost and Morbs presages that very point

rong year, silly

Not really -- B&C is a linchpin of the essay.

I think the Netflix series of Five Came Back is released tomorrow.

the 4K Criterion of The Graduate on Blu Ray is a thing of absolute beauty. not having seen it for a good 10-15 years or so i'd not thought of it as an especially good looking film, nor particularly well photographed. couldn't have been more wrong.

Some of it is (intentionally) grotesque--the first party scene, the wedding--but I agree that there's soft-focus stuff that's beautiful: Elaine leaving for Berkeley, the zoo, the "April Come She Will" sequence.

'67 best-ofs, including Mama Cass's

http://lwlies.com/articles/best-film-lists-of-1967/

I threw together my best-of for L'boxd; Weekend came closer to making it than any of the Oscar nominees.

1. PlayTime
2. Point Blank
3. Belle de Jour
4. Mouchette
5. Le Samouraï
6. The Red and the White
7. David Holzman’s Diary
8. Titicut Follies
9. Bedazzled
10. Wavelength
11. The President’s Analyst
12. The Two of Us

I had BDJ and Weekendp on my '68 list:

Playtime (Jacques Tati)
La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard)
Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
Point Blank (John Boorman)
Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki)
Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston)
La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer, France)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson)
Love Affair; Or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dusan Makavejev)

Reflections is close for me, Brando possible best actor (if not Marvin or Tati)

doctor doolittle is *the worst*, yet it contains cinema's greatest minute pic.twitter.com/nZRgY3Db9b

— Neely O'Horror (@_katiestebbins_) September 17, 2019

otm

have we rethought these?

I don’t think I was here for the first round, but those numbers look about right to me (still have never seen GWCtD, though).

The vote distribution almost perfectly parallels how the book views the films, I'd say--#2 and #4 could maybe add a couple of more votes each. Still think '75 would make a great sequel: two popular critical successes (Dog Day and winner Cuckoo's Nest), two sprawling auteur films (Nashville and Barry Lyndon--great ones, before the debacles that mark the turn of the decade), and, pointing the way to the future (and a greater film than almost all the massive box-office fare that follows), Jaws.