1971 Oscar Watch

1971 is a pretty weak year but that's almost a good thing because The French Connection probably wouldn't win in any other year.  I always say that The French Connection is one of the coolest Oscar winners of all time.  More often than not Oscar movies can be boring, long or boring and long but whenever someone complains about that you can point to The French Connection and say, yeah, well there was one year where they just voted for the coolest movie.

You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

5. Nicholas And Alexandra is a 3 hour movie about the relationship between Russian Tsar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra.  Their marriage is unpopular with the Russian people and blah, blah, blah.  Every category seems to need a movie like this.  I watch The French Connection and A Clockwork Orange and then I get to the last film which is a 3 hour movie I have no interest in watching.  There are some brief moments of something when Tom Baker shows up as Rasputin and starts chewing the scenery but that's not enough to save this over bloated epic.

4. Fiddler On The Roof is another movie that's 3 hours long that certainly didn't need to be.  What is it with the Oscars and movies that are way too long.  Check out The French Connection, it's a tight hour and 45 minutes with very little filler.  Every time there was a pregnant pause in this film I wanted to throw something at my TV.  It's not a bad film, just a bloated one.  It's based on the stage musical about a poor Jewish milkman who wants to find suitable husbands for his five daughters.  There are some boisterous songs and some remarkable choreography but about 5 songs too many.

3. The Last Picture Show is a film about a small town in Texas.  The best thing that director Peter Bogdanovich did with this film is shoot it in black and white because it gives the movie a timeless feel.  If it were in color, I doubt it would have been as highly regarded as it is.  When you watch a movie like Peyton Place or Picnic you notice the sexual undertones of the film.  There's a quaintness to the movie but underneath all the dialogue is just a layer of sex that they can't be explicit about.  This is a movie set in a small town during that time period but since it's made in the 70s they can be more frank and have scenes with nudity and sex.  Everyone in this town seems obsessed with sex.  The young kids who are graduating high school are focused on losing their virginity and the old people in the town and reminiscing about when they were love starved teens.  It's an ensemble drama so it's hard to talk about the plot without talking about every character and their relationship to everyone else but it is a pretty good movie.  I don't refer to it as a classic but it's good.

2. A Clockwork Orange is Stanley Kubrick's ultra violent and beautifully shot ode to gang rape and rehabilitation.  There's a lot of themes in this film but I'm sticking to these guys love rape.  Malcolm McDowell stars as the leader of a gang that goes around beating people up and raping women until he is incarcerated and forcibly rehabilitated to the point where he gets physically ill when he is around violence.  This is a movie that I don't particularly like but respect the hell out of.  It's technically brilliant but it's also a hodgepodge of ideas.  Everything is thrown at the wall here and some stuff sticks and other stuff doesn't.

1. The French Connection is a movie that is all killer, no filler and now that I force myself to watch so many overlong and dull costume dramas and period pieces, this movie is refreshing as all hell.  Gene Hackman plays a New York City police detective trying to catch a big fish in the world of heroin smuggling.  This movie is tight and doesn't meander or waste time.  There's that awesome car chase in the middle and one of the best endings for a film of this genre.

Nicholas And Alexandra and Fiddler On The Roof are out immediately.  The Last Picture Show and A Clockwork Orange are good but I can't really say that they are Best Picture level.  Thing is though, neither is The French Connection.  It's a great movie and an awesome choice but it wouldn't have won in a stronger year.  Looking over the other years of the 70s, I could only see voting for it in 1973 and 1978.  In 1978 I would gladly take it over The Deer Hunter and in 1973 I would have voted for it over The Sting but I would have probably picked William Friedkin's other movie The Exorcist in that year.  The French Connection is a bad ass movie and a nice change of pace from traditional Oscar fare.  This is akin to something like The Rock winning Best Picture in 1996.  It's just really cool that it won but you can't argue that the win is really a result of a weak year.

Oscar Winner: The French Connection

My Vote: The French Connection

GABBY Winner: The French Connection

Best Actor

5. Walter Matthau is one of my favorite actors of all time but his performance in Kotch was not exactly Oscar worthy and I'm wondering why he got nominated for it.  He did appear in this, Plaza Suite and A New Leaf this year so maybe this was more a nomination for an impressive year.  This film was directed by Jack Lemmon, his only directorial effort, and he cast his long time friend and co-star Matthau as an old man with a gift for gab.  His family wants to put him in a nursing home so he runs away instead and forms a friendship with another runaway, a pregnant teenager.  I love Matthau but I never believed him in this role.  It was a mixture of the makeup and the performance but I never truly felt that he was as old as the character.  Which is odd because a few years after this he would star in The Sunshine Boys and is absolutely perfect as an old man.

4. Peter Finch earned his first Oscar nomination for playing a gay doctor in Sunday Bloody Sunday.  He won on his second nomination for Network but died before he could accept the award.  First off, I did not like this movie, I found it unbearably dull.  Secondly, calling him a lead is generous.  The film mainly focuses on Glenda Jackson who is sleeping with Murray Head (the guy who sang 'One Night In Bangkok') and he is also sleeping with Firth.  I suppose it was groundbreaking at the time to show a same sex relationship but the movie is just really dull with a lack of complications.  To Finch's credit, he plays the character very straight.  That might sound like faint praise but gay characters at this point were usually either villains, psychos or limp-wristed comic relief so it is nice to see a gay character played like an actual human being.

3. Topol delivers a big, broad and joyous performance as the poor milkman, Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof.  At times it is a bit too theatrical like he's playing to the back row of a sold out Broadway show.  He played the character on stage but it was Zero Mostel who originated the role and watching Topol play the role only made me long for Zero in the part.  Director Norman Jewison felt that Zero would have been too broad in the film adaptation so he went with Topol.

2. George C. Scott just won the Oscar last year for Patton and famously refused it and wanted to withdraw his nomination.  Wouldn't it be hilarious if he won two years in a row?  Then Marlon Brando sends Sacheen Littlefeather to accept his award the next year.  I can't vote for Scott because he just won for a better performance but I almost like his role in The Hospital a bit better.  He's still bigger than life but he has some more subdued moments where he really gets to the soul of the character.  Also, this movie is insane.  It's a satirical look at the inner workings of a hospital written by Paddy Chayefsky.  A doctor sneaks into a dead patient's bed to have a snog with a nurse only to be given a drug that kills him by a nurse who thought he was the patient.  That's how the movie starts and there's also a vigilante murdering people in the hospital, all with the incomparable George C. Scott at the center.  I can't vote for this but it's a great movie that you should watch.

1. Gene Hackman would not have won this Oscar in a stronger year but his performance as Detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection is still iconic.  He even said in his acceptance speech that he should probably thank his car for the award.  The action and the editing is the real star of the show but Hackman holds it all together with his tough and unrepentant in his ways cop.  It's a really great character because you could imagine another actor playing him too dirty and the story would change to be a Bad Lieutenant style movie.  Doyle is not a great man, he's fairly racist and doesn't have a problem with using excessive force or bending the rules but Hackman never for a moment lets you think that he is anything other than the hero of this film.

Much like Best Picture, Hackman wins this by default.  It's not an incredibly strong category and he is not only a big fish in a small pond, he's kind of the only fish.  I can't vote for George C. Scott because he just won last year, I can't vote for Finch or Matthau because I didn't like their movies.  I suppose I could vote for Topol but I would much rather have seen Zero Mostel in the part.  Nobody could play Popeye Doyle like Hackman.  I was about to say he's one of the weaker winners of the decade but he's actually right in the middle.  This decade had Scott, Brando, Finch and Nicholson but also had winners like Richard Dreyfuss, Jack Lemmon and Art Carney.  I would also rank him a notch above Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.

Oscar Winner: Gene Hackman

My Vote: Gene Hackman

GABBY Winner: Gene Wilder for Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory

Best Actress

5. Vanessa Redgrave plays the title character in Mary, Queen Of Scots and if you think for a second I would be voting for this then you haven't read much of these blogs.

4. Janet Suzman plays the empress Alexandra in Nicholas And Alexandra and much like Redgrave this is just not something I can get excited about.  The film has its moments but there was nothing exceptional about Suzman's performance.

3. Glenda Jackson just won the Oscar last year and is going to win again in 1973 so there is no way I can vote for her performance in Sunday Bloody Sunday but I would rather have her win than either of the two costume dramas.  I suppose she's fine in the film, I just found the movie really boring.  A guy is having an affair with a woman and a man at the same time.  I kept waiting for complications or a plot to start but nothing really amounted to anything.

2. Julie Christie plays an opium addicted brothel owner in McCabe And Mrs. Miller.  This is a western directed by Robert Altman so everybody talks at the same time, it's slowly paced and it feels like you're watching somebody's home videos.  I was not a fan of this film but I did like it more than other Altman films.  It also stars Warren Beatty who is an actor I have little respect for.  Christie is a standout though.  She's exceptionally good in the role, I just wish the movie was as good as her performance.

1. Jane Fonda plays a prostitute involved with a detective on a missing persons case in Klute.  She's moonlighting as a hooker to support her acting and modeling career but one of her former johns goes missing and an obscene note to her is found in his home.  Fonda is only slightly unbelievable in the role at times but for the most part she really seems to know this character.  She was my vote in 1969 for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? so this is my second vote for her.

Jane Fonda wins by a wide margin for me as Glenda and Julie already won and I hated the other two movies.  So we have Jane Fonda against two people who already won and two people I would never vote for.  I'm glad Jane won this one, I have an issue with her winning her 2nd because she beat Jill Clayburgh but this one is legit a good decision.

Oscar Winner: Jane Fonda

My Vote: Jane Fonda

GABBY Winner: Ruth Gordon for Harold And Maude

Best Supporting Actor

5. Leonard Frey has one standout number in Fiddler On The Roof but it's the most boring song in the film.  He's adequate in the role, not bad, not great, his character is supposed to be ineffectual so I suppose he does a good job of not being too memorable.

4. Richard Jaeckel plays Paul Newman's brother in a film Newman directed with an unfortunate title, Sometimes A Great Notion.  Throughout the film he stays mostly in the background, not doing that much, and I kept wondering what led to an Oscar nomination.  Then he has a scene where he gets trapped under a log in the water.  I kept thinking he was going to have a big and dramatic death scene but he's basically just like, 'Hey buddy, I'm trapped under a log'.  Then he has a final moment that is really well done with him trapped under water and Newman trying to save him.  The scene is really intense but most of the credit goes to Newman's reactions and direction.  I still don't know how he got nominated for this.

3. Ben Johnson plays Ben The Lion, the old man who basically runs the town and delivers bits of wisdom in The Last Picture Show.  This is a total veteran nomination and win.  They voted for the oldest guy.  Johnson is fine in the film and performs his role exactly the way it needs to be played but he doesn't do much in the movie.  He has one scene where he chastises the boys for playing a prank on one of the slow kids and then he takes them fishing where he has a monologue about how things change but stay the same.  Many older actors could have played this part just as well.

2. Jeff Bridges got his first Oscar nomination as the popular high school quarterback who proves to be an inadequate lover in The Last Picture Show.  He's dating Cybill Shepherd but her mother sees him as a guy who will just get her pregnant and tie her down.  Whereas Johnson plays a part that a lot of older actors could have handled, Bridges plays a part that could have gone to a number of handsome younger actors but he brings something to the role that is unique.  He is very good in his scenes where he displays himself as a popular jock who thinks he has the world figured out but even better in his scenes where he proves that he is really just a kid.  His love scenes with Shepherd are wonderful moments of teenage awkwardness that Bridges makes incredibly believable.

1. Roy Scheider plays Popeye Doyle's partner in The French Connection.  That's really all he does.  He doesn't have many scenes by himself and for most of the film he just follows Hackman around while they do police things.  He's never anything truly amazing in the movie but he does provide good support for Hackman and is entirely realistic in his performance.

What a weak category.  In a situation like this I can't blame them for picking the oldest guy.  Ben Johnson won but he really doesn't do much in the film.  He dies off screen about an hour into the film and you kind of forget about him.  Since it's such a weak year I'm voting for my favorite actor.  That would be Bridges but since he's so young and going to win eventually my vote goes to Scheider.  In 1971 I wouldn't be able to look into the future and know that he deserved an Oscar for Jaws and All That Jazz but I could blame a French Connection sweep and have him win an Oscar due to the film's popularity.

Oscar Winner: Ben Johnson

My Vote: Roy Scheider

GABBY Winner: Jack Albertson for Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory

Best Supporting Actress

5. Margaret Leighton plays a ... sorry I dozed off for a second because I had to think back on The Go-Between.  This has all the excitement of a Masterpiece Theater episode and stars Julie Christie and Alan Bates as a couple who want to be together but can't because of their social statures.  Leighton is the cranky old lady who...sorry, I passed out again.

4. Barbara Harris is the best part of a weird little movie.  I'm hesitant to call Who Is Harry Kellerman And Why Is He Saying These Terrible Things About Me? a bad film because it is interesting, it's just not very good.  The movie is like a disjointed experimental film a college student would make but in the middle of it Harris shows up as a ditsy actress.  She really only has about 10 minutes of screen time but she stands out in the film.  I always liked her in films like Freaky Friday and A Thousand Clowns, she was also one of the only things I liked about Robert Altman's Nashville but I can't vote for someone who gives a good monologue in a bat-shit crazy film.

3. Ellen Burstyn plays Cybil Shepherd's mother in The Last Picture Show.  It's implied that she basically has sex with everyone in the town including Ben The Lion, who owns most of the establishments.  She has a few good moments in the film including one with her daughter and one with Timothy Bottoms after Ben's funeral but if I was going to vote for someone from the film it's gonna be Cloris Leachman.

2. Cloris Leachman plays the wife of the gym teacher in The Last Picture Show who starts having an affair with one of his students.  She is introduced as the loneliest and saddest woman and it is only when she starts secretly dating a younger man that she slowly begins to become herself.  Then she disappears for a lot of the movie as the young man starts dating a girl his own age and gets married.  Then she comes back in the final scene of the film and has a terrific scene where she tells him off.  Leachman is really great and has probably the best character arc of the film.  She is one of my favorite actresses from the films she did with Mel Brooks going to her role as Maw Maw on Raising Hope.

1. Ann-Margret was one of my first crushes as a young man and this movie was probably the reason.  I didn't watch Carnal Knowledge when I was a kid but I did watch Bye Bye Birdie and Grumpy Old Men which started the infatuation and I distinctly remember seeing a picture from this film in a book about 70s film that my mom had.  None of that is pertinent information and in hindsight I'm sorry I brought it up.  Point is, she is a gorgeous and talented woman that I absolutely adore in pretty much everything she's in.  Watching this movie now makes me want to travel back to younger me and tell him to stash a copy of this film under his bed because Ann-Margret is naked throughout most of this.  She's also very good in the film, I don't want to base this whole segment on her appearance.  The film is about Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel as two guys college students who discuss sex a lot and we see how their relationships develop over the years.  Nicholson talks about his dream girl near the beginning of the film and the woman he's describing seems unlikely to exist until we meet Ann-Margret and she seems perfect for him (or anybody).  Problem is, she's a little older than he is and Jack has no intentions of ever marrying her but she's getting to the age where she wants a serious commitment so Jack basically just uses her for sex.  She has a terrific final moment in the film and matches Jack beat for beat in all of their scenes together.

I can't argue with Cloris Leachman winning the Oscar, she is fantastic in the film and an actress who deserved an Oscar in her career.  She should have been nominated for Young Frankenstein or High Anxiety and continues to give great comedic and dramatic performances well into her 90s.  Much like Best Supporting Actor, I'm blaming a vote split and picking Ann-Margret.  Why?  Well, I liked her movie a little better and she was more important to her film.  Leachman frames The Last Picture Show but all of Carnal Knowledge can be focused on Ann-Margret's scenes.

Oscar Winner: Cloris Leachman

My Vote: Ann-Margret

GABBY Winner: Ann-Margret

Best Director
William Friedkin wins Best Director which was a great decision at the time.  The French Connection is the coolest movie nominated and Friedkin did a great job of orchestrating the whole thing.  That car chase, the scene in the subway, that ending, everything about this movie is just so damn cool and tight.  In hindisght, this was probably Stanley Kubrick's best chance at a win.

Best Original Screenplay/Best Adapted Screenplay
Paddy Chayefsky wins the Original category for The Hospital which is a great script and best choice in the category that included Klute and Sunday Bloody Sunday.  In the Adapted category they gave it to The French Connection which was also the best choice in a category that included A Clockwork Orange and The Last Picture Show.

Best Original Dramatic Score/Original Song And Adaptation Score
I always heard that that Summer Of '42 was a seminal coming of age film.  I didn't care for it but the music in it was nice and won an Oscar.  I would have picked Isaac Hayes and his score for Shaft.  There is absolutely no surprise that Fiddler On The Roof wins for Original Song And Adaptation Score over the beautiful music in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.  But I would pick an original musical over a Broadway adaptation.

Best Original Song
Not only does The French Connection win 5 Oscars this year but Isaac Hayes wins Best Song for the theme from Shaft.  The rest of the category was filled with forgettable tunes from Bedknobs And Broomsticks, Kotch and Sometimes A Great Notion.  The Carpenters's theme from Bless The Beasts And Children is a sentimental favorite but there was no beating Shaft.  "Who's the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks' is now an Oscar winning lyric.  That's just rad.

Best Sound
Have I mentioned that musicals always win this category?  Fiddler On The Roof beats the subway trains, police sirens, gun fire and car crashes in The French Connection.  What sound designer had an uncle in the Academy to allow Kotch a nomination?

Best Costume Design/Art Direction
Nicholas And Alexandra wins both of these technical categories that normally go to period pieces and costume dramas.  It beat the lesser costume drama Mary, Queen Of Scots.

Best Cinematography
Fiddler On The Roof wins a fairly run of the mill category.  The black and white cinematography in The Last Picture Show gets nominated as does the gritty New York City streets of The French Connection.  Then there's the typical fare like Nicholas And Alexandra and Summer Of '42.  Fiddler does look beautiful and is worthy of the win.

Best Film Editing
The French Connection rightfully wins this category over the just as worthy A Clockwork Orange.  What editor had a brother in the Academy to earn Kotch a nomination?

Best Special Visual Effects
Bedknobs And Broomsticks beats When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth for its visual effects.  No complaints here.  I've never seen When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth but the trailer makes it look like a laughably bad film.

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