Best Picture and Director 1977

[Sabin]

The Turning Point and Julia grabbed 11 nominations, Star Wars was up for 10 with a Special Award and Close Encounters was up for 8 with a Special Award. The Goodbye Girl and Annie Hall were up for 5. That's pretty much everybody, isn't it? I see that Equus and The Spy Who Loved Me were up for 3 Oscars, but it seems like for the most part, the nominations were divided up between those six films. As I look at the Golden Globe nominations, etc., I don't see much of anything that could be mistaken for an Oscar movie. I just watched the trailer for The Turning Point, and my God it looks like a bumpy ride.

[mlrg]

voted for Annie Hall and Allen

[Mister Tee]

As I said in my 1976 write-up: 1977 was a largely uninteresting year. Even many of the better films -- nominated or not – had notable flaws. If you asked me to suggest alternatives to the Academy list, I’d half-heartedly throw out New York, New York (too long and too many Cassavettes-level screaming matches, but great production design and massive energy), 3 Women (which, as Pauline Kael said, would have been better as 2 Girls – the first 2/3, with Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, is terrific, but once Janice Rule appears with her symbols, the movie takes a Jungian nose-dive), and Saturday Night Fever (which I found wonderfully engaging despite a shallow script, thanks to Travolta’s magnetism and John Badham’s lively direction).

I emphatically wouldn’t include Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which was one of the great disappointments of the year (or maybe decade). I wasn’t wild about the novel, but thought the combination of rising star Keaton and Richard Brooks (back in semi-In Cold Blood mode) would elevate it. Keaton did her best, but Brooks pitched everything to such a shrill level – and cast such a judgmental eye on Keaton’s character – that the movie felt simultaneously smug and ugly.

To the actual nominees, and more disappointment. Given how solid its reviews had been, I was shocked by how much I disliked The Turning Point; the worst best picture nominee since A Touch of Class. For me , the movie’s problems are summed up in one moment: Bancroft and MacLaine are standing onstage in the empty theatre at the end, and MacLaine’s opening line to her is “Pick a feeling” – a sentence that has begun a conversation in real life exactly never. The film was full of bum dialogue – all the characters seemed driven to over-articulate their subtext; I’ve never seen a movie where people explained their every motive so often (my brother said it was like a soap opera where they didn’t expect you to watch every episode, so they kept repeating plot points). The film had one saving grace: Baryshnikov’s dazzling leaps. I’d have sooner watched the ten minutes of that in a clip than sat through this dreariness. (And Sabin’s right: there was a period, between the Golden Globes and the DGA award, where I thought this piece of crap was going to win it all -- which would for me have topped Crash/Gladiator/maybe even Gandhi for badness)

And then there was The Goodbye Girl, which was a bit of a sleeper – it opened quietly in November, and didn’t seem any big deal. But audiences kept turning out for it, and it ended up the second biggest hit of the nominated films. Have I mentioned it wasn’t very good? Actually, I didn’t dislike the first half; it was tolerable as far as Neil Simon goes, largely thanks to Dreyfuss, who was a favorite of mine at the time. But in the second half, as Dreyfuss fell for Marsha Mason (god knows why; she was a complete pill throughout the film), things got more and more insufferable. Needless to say, even had the film maintained its first-half innoffenseiveness, I wouldn’t have wanted it on this list. But, given how bad the film turned out to be, I hated the nomination almost as much as I did the one for Ross’ other film.

And then, Star Wars. I found it hard to believe the film could possibly be much on my wavelength – an outer space adventure? But it was George Lucas, whose American Graffiti I’d found deeply special, and the reviews – especially in Time Magazine – were enthusiastic. So, I went opening day…and got more and more depressed the deeper I got into the film. This was as emotionally empty a movie as I’d ever seen, and, honestly, just not that much fun. Jaws had been shallow, but so super-charged with excitement (and humor) that it was an exhilarating ride. Star Wars was mildly amusing at best, with a dullard Mark Hamill at the center, and Harrison Ford/two robots taking acting honors by default. Yet audiences went bat-shit for it – it broke all records, made toy merchandise a lucrative side industry, even put a disco version of its main them at the top of the pop charts. There were also points during that year when I thought this was going to be the Academy choice (especially when the AFI ridiculously voted it one of the ten best films of all time); was it such a stretch for the group that had chosen Rocky only a year prior? Thank god they went another way. As, of course, will I.

I have almost the opposite view of Julia vis a vis Sabin: I thought the first hour or so meandered, to the point I had no idea what the movie was supposed to be about, or even where the present tense was. But once the “deliver the package behind enemy lines” plot kicked in, I found it mesmerizing – and, in the case of Fonda/Redgrave’s big meet-up scene, hugely touching. The movie was well-made, albeit in a very conservative style, and it was acted beautifully across the board (it was Fonda’s best post-Klute performance, Schell was dynamic, and Redgrave was luminous). All that added up to one of the year’s best films – though in most years earlier in the decade, it would have barely registered.

Because I’d so enjoyed Jaws, I looked forward to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but I was unprepared for what I found. I don’t know what the experience of the film is for those of you who’ve only ever seen it on television. I can only tell you that seeing it in NY’s Ziegfeld Theatre (on opening day) brought me to something like movie bliss. The film, especially the last 40 minutes or so, was emotionally overwhelming (quite the opposite of the defiantly unlyrical Star Wars). There were definite flaws in the earlier portions of the film (none greater than that endless, sub-I Love Lucy sequence of Dreyfuss tearing up his front yard), but there was also wit and invention along the way, and a gripping thriller plot as Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon made their way past the military obstacles to get to their personal Bethlehem. But then that long sequence on Devil’s Tower was just movie magic at its most primitive level; when the film was over, I heard a guy beyond me say “I’m blown away”. My sentiments exactly. It had been clear from Jaws that Spielberg was a gifted filmmaker, but, for me, this film represented a great step forward.

I of course can’t vote for Close Encounters as best film, even though it was my favorite of 1977. But I can vote for it under directing, which I would have done in 1977. However, as I’ve pondered this year’s vote, I’ve come to the same position as Sabin: noting that I have multiple chances to vote for Spielberg up ahead, while, thanks to Academy stupidity, I’ll be denied the opportunity to choose Woody Allen for his greatest film two years hence; so, I want to choose Woody here.

Which doesn’t require great sacrifice, as Annie Hall was my second favorite film on the year, a wonderful artistic leap for a director/actor who’d been special to me since I’d first encountered him with Bananas. It had been a source of irritation for many of us that not even the screenwriters had nominated any of Woody’s earlier comedies (Sleeper couldn’t get in over A Touch of Class and Save the Tiger?). With Annie Hall, he made it impossible for them to deny him, as he advanced from “mere comedy” to films about the human condition that were still (for a while) wildly funny. Annie Hall was as adventurous a comedy as had been made in America in a long time – charting its main romance with scrambled time sequence, using a multitude of gimmicks (split screen, subtitles, animation) in was they’d never been employed prior. It all held together thanks to a wonderful Diane Keaton performance (she’d been around for a while, but this was her coming out party), and ended with the perfect bittersweet note. It’s still hard to believe the Oscar voters went for this movie (I’ll argue, as I did in reverse under 1976, that the fact that the other four nominees were all pretty traditional/square in technique, where Annie was the one that felt fresh and inventive, played in its favor). I won’t dissent from history’s verdict. With a nod to Spielberg (and a promissory note of votes for him ahead), I vote for Annie Hall and its director, the inimitable Woody Allen.

[Sabin]

Once again, a year in which I have missed a heavy. Herbert Ross and The Turning Point. Joining the ranks of John Ford and Francis Ford Coppola of master filmmakers whose bounty too plentiful for the Academy to award merely one for Best Picture! No, I have not seen The Turning Point. No, I likely will not. Oscar’s forgotten ballet juggernaut that was not to be. 1977 was the year that the Academy honored Annie Hall instead of Star Wars. Surely, I was not alone when Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas all presented the Oscar to Martin Scorsese and Lucas joked that he in fact had not won, and I shouted at the screen “This is true! Fuck you, Weak Chin!” Few have been less responsible for their legacy as George Lucas. The greatest thing he did was step aside and let Writers and Directors tackle the next two films. Fred Zinneman seems to be one of the more forgettable Masters who reaped the benefits of a decade ripe with creative possibilities. Julia doesn’t feel like the work of a young man, but it’s the rare literary production that feels gripping, cerebral, and stylish. I just don’t find the last act terribly engaging.

This isn’t simply the year that the Academy honored Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. This is the year that they did so when they had perfectly viable alternatives. They could have gone for Star Wars. They had a far more crowd-pleasing romantic comedy to choose in Neil Simon’s and Herbert Ross’ The Goodbye Girl, which the Golden Globes preferred to Annie Hall as a movie, as a piece of writing, and the prospect of choosing between Diane Keaton’s sublime title character and Marsha Mason’s obnoxious human sharpei was too much for them so the allotted it a tie. And while Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the first glimpse of signature hush-and-awe Steven Spielberg that audiences would come to know and love, there are many opportunities to vote for Spielberg in the future but there is only once chance to vote for Woody Allen’s direction of Annie Hall.

[Big Magilla]

Four out of five, the number of Best Picture and Best Director nominees I agree with, ain't bad, but this 50th anniversary Oscar year is best remembered for the blockbuster Star Wars and the emergence of Woody Allen as a filmmaker to be reckoned with.

If Jaws was the first summer blockbuster of note, Star Wars, two years later, as Mister Tee has often reminded us, was the one that began the trend from which there hasn't been an escape since.

I personally found Star Wars to be an absorbing, transformative experience even if its arguably best scene was cribbed from The Searchers and some of its lighter moments form 1950s TV series like Flash Gordon. Nevertheless I was quite pleased to see a science fiction film finally achieve a level of respect from the Academy that was denied previous masterworks such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Forbidden Planet and The Incredible Shrinking Manand going further back in time, Metropolis and Things to Come. It was not, however, the be-all and end-all its legion of fans have long considered it to be.

Woody Allen had shown sparks of wit and genius in such previous films as Love and Death and Sleeper, but Annie Hall was the first of his films in which everything worked, especially the charm of Diane Keaton in the title role. While I now deem it the year's best film in retrospect, it was not my favorite at the time. I preferred two other films, one of which was nominated for Best Picture and Director and one which wasn't.

The one that wasn't was Luis Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire, but if you're looking for a Hollywood film, how about Richard Brooks' Looking for Mr. Goodbar? Taken from Judith Rossner's best-seller which was in turn taken from a real life New York murder of a few years earlier, the film, which was brilliantly acted by Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Richard Kiley, Tom Berenger and Tuesday Weld, had two things going against it. One was the decision of the film-makers to give Keaton's character a deformed back as an excuse for her promiscuity, something that wasn't in Rossner's book and really undermines the story. The other was the decision not to film in New York because of the then exorbitant cost of doing so. The book, which used the city as a secondary character in the same way that Midnight Cowboy did, suffers from its move to a no-name city that was really an amalgam of San Francisco and Los Angeles, two cities which are so completely different they hardly belong in the same state. Despite all that, Brooks' direction is up there with his fine work on In Cold Blood and other works and he gets from Keaton a performance that is ten times better than the safer one Allen got.

The film I liked a lot which was nominated was The Turning Point which with its eleven nominations seemed to have more of an opportunity to win than it actually did. I generally abhor so-called women's films, can't stand 'em, but there are some - Random Harvest; Now, Voyager; The White Cliffs of Dover; The Valley of Decision - that I think hold up as well as any films from Hollywood's Golden Age. The Turning Point is in that realm as long as it sticks to its drama. As a ballet film, it is no Red Shoes. Anyway, it's still a better film than Ross' The Goodbye Girl which gave him a rare two out of five nominees for Best Picture.

The Goodbye Girl was one of the least sufferable films of the numerous ones made from Neil Simon's plays, thank mainly to the lead performances of Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason, but, oh, that kid!

I liked Julia more for its flashback sequences involving Vanessa Redgrave's title character than Jane Fonda's interaction with Jason Robards, although both were excellent as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, respectively. It was nice to see that Fred Zinnemann still had it years after most of his contemporaries had ridden off into the sunset.

Obviously with two of his films nominated for Best Picture, someone had to replace him in the Best Director line-up. Given his continuing early popularity, I suppose it was no surprise that Steven Spielberg was picked to fill that slot, but I found his Close Encounters of the Third Kind to be total drivel.

I doubt either Annie Hall or Woody Allen need my vote, so I'm voting instead for my original choice for Best Picture (The Turning Point) and giving Herbert Ross my vote for Best Director, although I wish Richard Brooks had been an option.