1973 Oscar Shouldabeens

1927/28 through 1997
Reza
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Post by Reza »

I've had the dvd of Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers lying around for more than a decade and I kept avoiding it. Finally watched the film and it was such an unsettling yet amazing experience. I think I need to watch it again to get a full understanding of what goes on. Nevertheless I've placed the film and Ingrid Thulin's remarkable performance on my list below.
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Post by Okri »

I liked Scarecrow quite a bit when I first saw it. I haven't seen it in years, but I was always surprised to see how underrated it was.
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Post by Sabin »

Two things:

1) Tatum O'Neal is a lead. It doesn't matter who is so clearly outstanding. She is a co-lead if there ever was one. If it's more one person's story in 'Paper Moon', then it's Tatum O'Neal's. First image in the film. She drives it forward. Best Actress.

2) Why is 'Scarecrow' not regularly cited as one of the greatest movies of the 70's let alone one of the greatest entries in the canons of Al Pacino and Gene Hackman? Pacino especially had a great year with 'Serpico' also but while that film feels textbook in the best possible way, 'Scarecrow' comes to life with one of the actor's most subtle, improvisatory, and perfect roles. Hackman also seems to fully inhabit the role where usually it just feels like he dominates it and moves forward. It's like 'Midnight Cowboy' with fewer visual tricks that take you out of the film. I really loved this film.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Well, that didn't last long. I took it away from Streisand and gave it back to Woodward.

Even though the film hasn't aged well, it was a very brave role for Woodward to play following an equally brave performance in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds the year before. Call the temporary award to Streisand a tribute to Sydney Polalck whose death last week caused me to think more fondly of The Way We Were than I probably should have.
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Post by Reza »

--Big Magilla wrote:I hate to answer a question with a question, but why haven't you?

Ha Ha! I knew you were going to ask this question.

I put Tatum in support simply because I did not want to remove any of the 5 leads I have mentioned. Tatum would be my 6th choice in the lead. Better she gets into the supporting category than be left out totally. Stupid reasoning for sure but then the Academy has made far greater mistakes. And she gets to win as well!




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Post by Big Magilla »

I hate to answer a question with a question, but why haven't you?

Looking over other people's choices, it looks like no one has. I t does look like others have considered Christie and Ullmann so maybe they are better choices than Mason and Jackson. I dunno, but O'Neal couldn't possibly compete in such heady company.

Anyway, in films where the focus stays on the child like Jackie Cooper in Skippy, Dean Stockwell in Kim and Hayley Mills in Tiger Bay and Pollyanna I consider them the clear lead, but in others where there are more than one person's story being told like How Green was My Valley, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Paper Moon and The Piano, I follow tradition and give preference to the adult actors in lead and the kids in support. The same holds true for established stars and up-and-comers, never an issue at the time with Robert Mitchum and George Peppard in Home From the Hill, but suddenly one for Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford for today's "I want it all now" generation.
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Post by Reza »

Why haven't you considered Tatum O'Neal in the lead category?
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Post by Big Magilla »

Yes, as I noted in the DVD section, Woodward's perfromance no longer impresses the way it did then. Oddly enough, Streisand's, whose performance I merely liked, has gained in stature over the years.

To be honest my favorite performance is Ellen Burstyn's in The Exorcist, but with two later wins for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Requiem for a Dream, I think she has enough awards.

I also liked Marsha Mason's performance in Cinderella Liberty, but Jackson barely makes it in as the fifth nominee.

I considered Julie Chrisite in Don't Look Now, but her role is really quite short, and Liv Ullmann in The New Land, but that role is really a continuation of the one in The Emigrants for which I previously nominated her.

On another day my nominees might be Burstyn, Christie, Streisand, Ullmann and Woodward with Ullmann or even Streisand winning - I'm not sure I've come to a final decision on this one.
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Post by Reza »

--Big Magilla wrote:Neither Jack Lemmon nor Glenda Jackson deserved Oscars in 1973, but I thought I could understand Jackson's nomination for keeping a straight face through some of the most atrocious dialogue of the decade and for holding her head high while wearing the most hideous wig since Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indmenity. Joanne Woodward should have won.

Maybe you need to re-evaluate Jackson's performance (forget the wig and the atrocious dialogue). It is an incredibly witty performance. And come to think of it the wig actually made her look pretty.

You also now have a different viewpoint on Woodward's performance and I noticed that you switched your win to Streisand below.




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Post by Big Magilla »

Neither Jack Lemmon nor Glenda Jackson deserved Oscars in 1973, but I thought I could understand Jackson's nomination for keeping a straight face through some of the most atrocious dialogue of the decade and for holding her head high while wearing the most hideous wig since Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indmenity. Joanne Woodward should have won.

Jack Lemmon, on the other hand, gave one of his most wrenchingly awful performances in Save the Tiger and won, as I've said before, because of his commitment to the film which he personally schlepped around from college to college prior to its theatrical release and for his mea culpas after making a spectacle of his drunken self at the Golden Globes. Things like that won Oscars back then.

I will echo what Damien and Mister Tee said about Paper Moon. Whoever said it wasn't a critical success is nuts. Maybe it was Bogdanovich who wasn't personally praised as high as he was for The Last Picture Show. Tatum O'Neal was considered an Oscar front-runner from the get-go. The only question was which category she would be placed in. There was even talk of reinstating the special award given sporadically to child actors, discontinued after Hayley Mills' win in 1960.




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Post by flipp525 »

If Tatum O'Neal had been appropriately nominated in the lead category, I actually think she could've won that as well. The only real threat would've been from Joanne Woodward who was simply fantastic that year as Rita, the Ice Queen in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams and had the New York Film Critics Circle Awards award for Best Actress in her cache. In my mind, that would've made the supporting race a toss-up between Madeline Kahn and Sylvia Sydney (Best Supporting Actress -- National Board of Review, USA, Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, as well as BAFTA and Globe nominee). If the latter had lost to Kahn or one of the other nominees, there might even have been enough goodwill left over to nominate her 15 years later for her excellent performance in Beetlejuice. Sidney and Keaton both deserved nominations that year.
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Post by Mister Tee »

--Reza wrote:
--Mister Tee wrote:(Which possibly cost Madeline Kahn a supportng prize, and gave us one of the worst best actresses in history)

Poor Glenda Jackson! Her win is still receiving brickbats 33 years on.

They'll never offset the pain she provided me that night (in tandem with the equally horrific choice of Lemmon for his "these kids today!" old-fart movie).

Glenda Jackson was a completely deserving best actress winner...in 1970.




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Reza
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Post by Reza »

Mister Tee wrote:(Which possibly cost Madeline Kahn a supportng prize, and gave us one of the worst best actresses in history)

Poor Glenda Jackson! Her win is still receiving brickbats 33 years on.
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Post by Mister Tee »

Actually, Damien, I think the view of the 70s as a golden age became more prevalent once it was replaced by the 80s, which was a clearly and vastly inferior decade.

I'd make two arguments about the 70s (and I think they're largely what prompted Kael's claims): First, the films, finally freed from the production code, were at last dealing at a level of intellectual honesty which had always been present in European films but which had been absent (or at least constrained) in even the better American films. Second, partly because of this, but also because of the collapse of the old studio system and the general dislocations of post-assassination/Vietnam America, we had an inordinate number of films that seemed to address immediate issues in a way the government and press avoided. In a sense, films from Bonnie and Clyde to Raging Bull were to America in the 70s what The Daily Show and Colbert are today -- the counterculture's place to gather. And these films were absolute mainsteam hits -- The Godfather was an obvious phenomenon, but even films we'd now consider way offbeat or filled with unknowns (MASH, Taxi Driver, The Last Picture Show) were either significant hits or blockbusters. The films from the 50s et al. you cited in the NY Film Critics' thread were, by contrast, considered minor and throwaway upon release, and were only elevated after the fact by auteurist critics.

And, to semi-rebut your list of '74 clinkers, I'd offer Badlands, Thieves Like Us, The Three Musketeers, The Sugarland Express, Daisy Miller (yes, I'll defend it), Claudine, California Split, Scenes from a Marriage, Amarcord -- all over and above the year's main Oscar contenders, but films for which I had great affection. As you say, there's always plenty of junk out there, and it's a matter of whether you concentrate on the donut or the hole.

To address Sabin's original point: whoever said Paper Moon wasn't a hit wasn't around at the time or has no memory. It wasn't a critical smash at the level of Last Picture Show (few films are), but it was warmly received. And Tatum O'Neal was in fact for most of the year touted (by critics) for the best actress trophy, not supporting. But Paramount's advertising -- in the apparent conviction voters would never go for a moppet in lead -- inssited on the lower-echelon nomination. (Which possibly cost Madeline Kahn a supportng prize, and gave us one of the worst best actresses in history)
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Post by Damien »

Sabin wrote:The featurette states that it was not a critical hit at the time, which mystifies me and only adds to my contempt for anybody who bemoaned filmmaking in the 70's at the time.

I don't know why the featurette would say that. Paper Moon was both a critical and popular success.

But again, Josh, you've only been sampling the wheat of the 70s. Going to the movies then meant being subjected to a lot of chaff.

It's funny though -- I'm reading Agee on Film. And James Agee is constantly bemoaning the state of movies at the time he was writing film criticism, the early 40s -- the "Golden Age of Hollywood" -- and bitterly complaining how far the state of the art had fallen in the past decade.

Another observation. It's 20 years later and I still have not heard anyone be fool enough to make the claim that the 80s was a great decade for cinema. Truly the most wretched 10-year-span in film history.
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