Last week we got hardcore mobsters in The Godfather. This week we get softcore (if there is such a thing) con artists in The Sting (1973, Universal-Bill/Phillips-George Roy Hill Film Production; Zanuck/Brown Presentation; Universal). The Sting is kind of a mixed bag. I thought it might be funny, and it is—at parts. Then I thought it might be risqué and violent, and it is—at parts. Finally, I thought it might be sad, and I won’t give away any specifics here, but it is a bit sad—in parts—as well.

Robert Redford and Paul Newman in The Sting.

The Sting was one of the two leading contenders at the 1974 Academy Awards (the other major contender that year was The Exorcist—yikes!), both of which received ten nominations (followed by The Way We Were with six nods). The Sting came out the big winner of the night, taking home seven Oscars, but it is notable that neither one of the night’s two favorites won any acting awards. The Sting nabbed statuettes in the following categories: Music (Scoring: Original Song Score and Adaptation -or- Scoring: Adaptation), Art Direction, Writing (Story and Screenplay—based on factual material or material not previously published or produced), Costume Design, Directing for George Roy Hill, Film Editing, and Best Picture (it failed to win for Cinematography, Sound, and Best Actor for Robert Redford as Johnny Hooker).

There are several quite interesting points to draw out about the 1974 Academy Award nominees and winners (besides the fact that a streaker ran across the stage right before the BP winner was announced!). First, The Exorcist became the first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture. Forty-five years later, there are no less than four sequels/prequels to the original movie, and Fox just wrapped up the second season of its TV drama of the same name this past December. Gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

Second, The Sting’s Best Picture victory meant that Julia Phillips became the first woman to win the Academy’s most prestigious Oscar as the film’s co-producer (she shared the award with her then-husband Michael Phillips and producer Tony Bill—the trio purchased the screenplay for The Sting for a mere $5,000!). If you’re feeling like indulging in an interesting read, Phillips wrote two books chronicling her time in Hollywood (including her struggles with illegal substance abuse): You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (1991) and Driving Under the Affluence (1995), both of which at least sound rather creative.

Third, Tatum O’Neal starred in 1973’s Paper Moon with her real-life father Ryan O’Neal and became the youngest person to ever win an Oscar—she was 10 years, 148 days old when she took home her Academy Award for Actress in a Supporting Role. No one has loosened her grip on this record, although a couple of child actors/actresses have come close. In 1993, Anna Paquin nearly stole the record when she won Actress in a Supporting Role for The Piano; but she was “older” at 11 years, 240 days. I suddenly have the sense that I haven’t accomplished enough in my “long” lifetime…

Lastly, in 1974, Edith Head won the Oscar for Costume Design for her work on The Sting. She had been born in San Bernardino, California, right before the turn of the century (as in, she was born in the 1800s!). She seems to have been quite the academic, earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in letters and sciences from Berkeley and her Master of Arts degree in romance languages from Stanford by 1920. For a short while she taught French, Spanish, and art at an all-girls school in La Jolla, California; but after answering an ad for a sketch artist for Paramount, Head embarked on what would become one of the most illustrious careers anyone has ever had in Hollywood. After a few years as design assistant, Head became Head of Design (no pun intended) for almost 30 years at Paramount, after which she moved to Universal (for whom she worked on The Sting). Out of the more than 1,100 films she worked on, some of Head’s most famous credits include Roman Holiday (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), and six Best Picture winners: Wings (1927/28), Going My Way (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), All About Eve (1950), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and The Sting. By the end of her career, Head had accumulated 35 Academy Award nominations and won eight Oscars—more than any other woman to this day. The Sting was her final Academy Award win, which makes her story pretty fitting for this particular post.

Edith Head with just a few of her Oscars.

For more thoughts on The Sting and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!

“We romanticize these people—make movies about ‘em—and they’re nothin’ but heartless scum.” This statement by fictional New York District Attorney Arthur Branch (from the incomparable Law & Order) regarding the mob pretty much mirrored my own thoughts the first time I sat through The Godfather. However, having spent the better part of the last few weeks on this past year’s films, I have to say I’ve found a new respect for Coppola’s masterpiece—even though I’m not yet to the point of finding enjoyment in it. For me, The Godfather contains a lot of “thrill violence”—horrifyingly bloody scenes just for the shock of them. I’m not into that. Yet, underneath all the murders is a story centered around two men: one struggling to come to terms with aging and his decreasing relevance, the other trying to find his place in the world without resorting to the livelihood of his kin. At its core, then, The Godfather is about family.

And families are complicated.

Two Godfathers: Michael and Vito.

Don Vito Corleone is “the Godfather,” the patriarch of the family, the head of the family’s business, the leading mobster of the city. Michael Corleone is the youngest son, the war hero, the college boy. Vito doesn’t want Michael to have the life of a mob boss, and Michael doesn’t seem to even consider the family business. But when Vito barely survives an assassination attempt, Michael has a change of heart about getting involved in the violence (spoiler alert!) and even volunteers to assassinate two of the men who were responsible for the hit on his father. Though Michael protests that his desire to kill the conspirators is “not personal” but “strictly business,” it is clear to the film’s viewers that Michael’s motive is intensely personal: his family takes precedence above everything else. He later repeats this idea to his incompetent brother Fredo: “Fredo, you’re my older brother, and I love you. But don’t ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever.”

Like his father before him, Michael puts his family before all else, but that propels him into a life of deceit, crime, and outrageous violence—all characteristics that he in his former life as a World War II military hero had presumably fought against. Before his death, Vito expresses again to Michael how he had never wanted such a life for Michael and how he had “worked [his] whole life…to take care of [his] family.” He continues, “And I refused to be a fool dancing on a string held by all those – big shots. I don’t apologize; that’s my life. But I thought that…when it was your time that – that you would be the one to hold the strings.” In their shared devotion to the Corleone family, Vito and Michael are inextricably linked. The future that Vito intended for Michael (a life outside crime) is not to be his fate. Ironically, Michael does “hold the strings” by the end of the film, having eliminated his most powerful rival dons and earned the loyalty of his father’s cronies. Michael has become the puppet master. His professed love for his family notwithstanding, the youngest Corleone son is more ruthless and conniving than his father, not even hesitating to order (and then observe) the death of his traitorous brother-in-law. That’s pretty “scummy,” if you ask me.

For Me Then…

The Corleone family.

What I’ve been pondering most from this past week’s viewing of The Godfather is just to whom the title refers. I had always assumed it meant Vito, the Godfather at the film’s opening; but it could very well refer to Michael, who is portrayed as almost the ultimate Godfather at the film’s close—stoic, brutal, unreachable, unknowable (even to his wife Kay to whom he coolly lies regarding Carlo’s death). Why this matters really comes down to the concept of fate. Was it Michael’s destiny all along to rule the Corleone family? Could he have escaped the life of a mobster, or is the pull of the family unit so much stronger than anything else that there’s just no chance for him to lead a “normal” life? I think The Godfather indicates the latter statement. From the opening wedding scene, the family reigns supreme—Vito establishes this rule when he insists the traditional family picture will not be taken until the entire family is present. It’s admirable to be so devoted to one’s family, but in this film bonds of kinship are like blood oaths: just by virtue of their birth, Corleones have signed a lifelong pact to promote the family’s interests at whatever cost. This type of unquestioning, morally bereft family loyalty might be even more disturbing than the film’s pervasive violence.

For such an iconic film, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972, Albert S. Ruddy Production; Paramount) only took home three Academy Awards out of ten nominations: Actor for Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, Writing (Screenplay – based on material from another medium), and Best Picture. It failed to take home a statue for Best Supporting Actor even though three members of the film’s very male cast were nominated in the category: Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, James Caan as Sonny Corleone, and Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen. The Godfather lost its remaining nominations (with the exception of Costume Design) to the night’s other most nominated film, Cabaret, which won eight Oscars for its ten nominations (including Sound, Film Editing, and Directing for which The Godfather was also nominated).

Marlon Brando in his most memorable role as Don Corleone.

One of the most memorable moments during the 1973 Academy Awards (and in the entirety of Academy history) occurred when Marlon Brando was announced the Best Actor winner. Brando had declared earlier that he would boycott the awards ceremony and sent a little known actress named Sacheen Littlefeather to read a letter on his behalf. Littlefeather, who also happened to be the president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, was not received very cordially by those present at the ceremony when she took the stage and waved away the Oscar for one of the most memorable performances in all of cinematic history. Due to “time restraints,” Littlefeather did not read Brando’s entire letter, but you can read the full text here: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/movies/bestpictures/godfather-ar3.html. Basically, Brando felt that “the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing him as savage, hostile and evil.” Brando continued, “I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother’s keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.” The Academy Awards as social platform is nothing new (à la this year’s ceremony in particular), but employing a strategy of not showing up in order to make a statement about something you believe in is kinda unique. Like Brando himself, I suppose. His Vito Corleone is nothing short of brilliant, after all. No one else could have played that role to such perfection.

Sacheen Littlefeather at the Oscars with Brando’s infamous rejection letter.

As shocking as parts of The Godfather are, the film is still so convincing in some ways that a pretty popular search on Google is if the movie is based on a real story. The simplest answer to that question is that The Godfather (the film) is based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel of the same name, which might have taken some inspiration from real-life mob families and organized crime environs. Puzo, whose writing career was a struggle prior to his most famous novel, confessed, “I’m ashamed to admit that I wrote The Godfather entirely from research. I never met a real honest-to-God gangster. I knew the gambling world pretty good, but that’s all.” After the famous film came out, real-life gangsters, said Puzo, “refused to believe that I had never been in the rackets. But all of them loved the book.” Is that a good thing? Let’s move on…

1972 was a year that would change America forever, though that wouldn’t be completely apparent until a few years later. The year of The Godfather was the same year that a group of men called the “White House Plumbers” broke into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. The event would provide a name for one of the most notorious and tragic scandals in the American Presidency and lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. It is no wonder, then, that films rich in corruption, violence, and intrigue found precedence in the 1970s since their contents mirrored the reality of the world into which they were released—even if their creators originally intended them as fiction.

For more thoughts on The Godfather and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!

Hello, Everyone!

Thanks for all the support over the past week or so as I marathoned the BP nominees and made myself vulnerable to mockery when I posted my Oscar picks! I didn’t do too bad this year with my predictions. I should have gone with my gut and picked Get Out for Best Original Screenplay, but The Shape of Water‘s win for BP was a little surprising with all the previous success of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, so I don’t regret my guess for BP too much. I’m not too thrilled that The Shape of Water has joined our BP family, but we won’t be seeing it again for almost a year, so I won’t worry about it right now. The next BP we will deal with is a big one: The Godfather (1972). I’m taking a short blog break this week to recover from Oscar mania and reevaluate the status of the ever-present thesis, but then I’ll be back and we’ll dive right into the drama of the Corleone family.

Best regards,

Sarah

Welcome to the biggest day in Hollywood!

In honor of the show tonight, I thought I would provide a peek into some of my predictions for this year’s awards. Disclaimer: I have an awfully bad track record for picking Oscar winners, so don’t bet anything based on what follows here!

Best Actor: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

My earlier post this week for Darkest Hour raved a bit about Oldman’s performance, so I probably don’t need to gush anymore here. But man, he is just so, so, so convincing.

Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Profundity of F-word use aside, McDormand gives a solid, memorable performance as a tormented, justice-thirsty mother in Three Billboards. She’s been winning everything this awards season, and tonight will probably not be any different.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I think Best Supporting Actor is the most up-for-grabs of the acting awards this year. That being said, Rockwell’s character in Three Billboards is at times repulsive, pitiable, humble, and courageous, which is a nice achievement in acting, I think.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Allison Janney, I, Tonya

Like Oldman and McDormand, Janney has been taking home a lot of hardware this year. I haven’t seen I, Tonya yet, but from the clips I’ve viewed of Janney’s performance, she is just electric.

Animated Feature Film: Coco

No one can dispute the genius of Disney and Pixar, especially when this film was in active production for over six years. That’s dedication.

Original Score: Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water

I would much, much, much rather see Hans Zimmer win for Dunkirk. For all his brilliant, memorable scores (Gladiator, Inception, Pearl Harbor, The DaVinci Code, etc.), Zimmer has only won one Oscar so far in his career–for 1994’s The Lion King–so it’s about time the Academy recognizes his ingenuity again. I would also be fine with John Williams winning for the iconic Star Wars score (again); he hasn’t won since 1993’s Schindler’s List. However, I think The Shape of Water is “trending” these days, and Alexandre Desplat is not without talent either.

Original Song: “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman

Hands down, The Greatest Showman is my favorite film to come out this year, so my pick is a bit of a sentimental favorite. But, “This is Me” did win the Golden Globe in this category, so here’s hoping it will win again tonight! Keala Settle’s performance of this song at the show tonight is one of the moments I’m most looking forward to! And if you haven’t seen this film yet, it is still holding strong in theaters, so GO!!! It’s just simply a lovely, lovely movie; and any words I write here will not do its songs justice.

Adapted Screenplay: James Ivory, Call Me by Your Name

This is a consolation prize of sorts for a BP nominee that will not win the Academy’s biggest award. I ran out of time to see this one, but it has gotten some buzz, and I think it won’t go home completely empty-handed.

Original Screenplay: Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, The Shape of Water

This is a tough one. I think any of the five nominees in this category could win. Personally, I think Get Out should win this award (although Lady Bird might sneak in and snatch it too); but if I’m correct about who wins BP tonight, I think the Academy will give this one to The Shape of Water.

Best Director: Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

This one could also go a number of different directions. This category screams the Academy’s new mantra of diversity, so it’s a bit of a guess which way Academy voters went in their voting. That being said, The Shape of Water is so unique that that fact alone might tip voters in del Toro’s favor for this award.

Best Picture: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Here we go, the big one. I could be very wrong about this. Less than two months ago, Three Billboards had all the momentum, winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama Motion Picture, the SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, and the BAFTA for Best Film. However, The Shape of Water comes into tonight with the most nominations and is more artsy and unique, so it shouldn’t be too offhandedly dismissed. Then again, if we learned anything from last year, it’s that the number of nominations doesn’t mean too much when it comes time for the night’s final award. Get Out could steal BP too; in my mind, it is a much better film than both Three Billboards and The Shape of Water; but its horror movie status may have deterred some viewers from really considering it. There is also a contingent that feels Dunkirk has a shot at BP, but I think that is a little bit of a stretch given its lack of dialogue and unknowable characters. Finally, I wouldn’t mind seeing Darkest Hour win. I think that’s even more unlikely than Dunkirk as BP, though; but it’s a nice film with a good story and solid acting. For Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, and Call Me by Your Name, I think the game is over. But you just never know with the Oscars. Stranger things have happened.

Enjoy the show, Everyone!

On the eve of the big show, I trekked to a neighboring town in order to catch one of the final showings of this film (in order to write up my last quick review of a 2017 BP nominee—almost got through all of them!). The Shape of Water is another big frontrunner in the race for Best Picture, leading the field of nominees with a total of 13 nominations (one short of the record held by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land). To be honest, I found this film raunchy and not even close to the caliber of the three films that are tied for the record 14 nominations. The Shape of Water is basically the story of a mute woman named Eliza who falls in love with an amphibian-man because she is so lonely that she feels he is the only one who doesn’t see her as flawed. Its theme of valuing someone for who he/she is on the inside seems admirable—until one remembers that the amphibian-man really is a non-human (and is limited in his  communication with/understanding of Eliza) and the basis for the odd couple’s romantic relationship is a few short scenes in which they share hard-boiled eggs and music during Eliza’s lunch breaks. The film is really that odd.

Why It Might Win BP

It’s definitely different, that’s for sure; and a lot of people call this difference “creativity.” The acting is fine. The setting is quite intriguing. The plot has a couple of inventive twists and turns. Plus, The Shape of Water‘s mix of fairy tale and fantasy appeals to a lot of people.

Why It Might Not Win BP

As with some of the other movies we’ve looked at this week, I still have questions about The Shape of Water—most of which I can’t pose here because they would give away the ending. I will say that I wasn’t convinced that the relationship between Eliza and the amphibian-man was based on much more than sexuality, which only reinforces the fact that the amphibian-man is an animal (of sorts) and Eliza (along with other characters) often acts like one, which is a turn-off to some viewers (like me). Furthermore, the plot is unrealistic; and it just seems to me that in the times we are living in right now, Academy voters might opt for a film they see as more true to life, one which attempts to address current social issues.

I don’t like horror movies. At all. However, Get Out is almost more of a psychological thriller than a horror movie. It’s definitely creepy (the entire time) and violent (at parts), but its premise is so fascinating that it’s hard to look away from the screen even during the more disturbing parts of the film. Plus, the emphasis on race ends up being more complex than just white vs. black, which I appreciated. In short, this film greatly exceeded my very low expectations for it—and it even has some pretty funny moments mixed into the eerie suspense!

Why It Might Win BP

There’s been a bit of buzz lately that Get Out has a pretty legitimate shot at taking home the Academy’s biggest prize on Sunday. Before I had actually viewed the film, I was one of the doubters scoffing at the idea of a racially fueled horror movie winning BP. Now that I’ve seen it, though, I have to say I wouldn’t be totally shocked (or horrified) if this film wins. For one, it is just super complex in a really good way. I don’t want to give away too many details, so I’ll only say that the script and the plot are so tight that every little detail ends up mattering in the end. Get Out challenged my mind, and that really matters to me as a film viewer.

Why It Might Not Win BP

Horror movies rarely do well at the Oscars, 1991’s Best Picture winner The Silence of the Lambs being the most notable exception. That historical fact aside, I still have some lingering questions that Get Out did not answer for me, which is unfortunate because its story is so engrossing. The film builds and builds in suspense and complexity, but resolves its conflict much too quickly and easily for all the complications it creates in the first two-thirds of the movie. And, without revealing too much, I feel the ending takes away a bit from some of the deeper points the film seems to want to make (but, honestly, that was okay with me because it made the film less scary!).

Lady Bird is this year’s coming-of-age BP nominee. Despite the fact that it features teenage drinking, drug use, and sex, it does create an interesting dialogue about parent-teen relationships. More than that, though, Lady Bird is about identity: what makes each of us who we are? Is it our names, our places of origin, what crowds we roll with, or something else entirely? Parts of this film are quite clever—especially the banter between the mother and daughter characters—but other sections come across as a bit ridiculous (the end of the film is particularly unsatisfactory).

Why It Might Win BP

In racking my brain for a reason why Lady Bird could be the next film to be placed on my BP shelf, the main thing I could come up with was that the movie reminds me a bit of Gilmore Girls (though darker), which was more than a little popular in its day (and even nowadays). There is something endearing about Lady Bird’s (the character) interaction and struggle with her parents. Plus, the acting isn’t bad, and the script can even be termed “delightful” at a few parts.

Why It Might Not Win BP

To me, there is not really anything that especially sets Lady Bird apart from other films of the same genre. It’s the tale of a poor-ish, odd-ish girl trying to find her way into adulthood, and I think I’ve seen more than a few films with that storyline. Ultimately, Lady Bird is not going to be able to compete with an emotional rollercoaster like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri—a mother reeling from the murder of her teenaged daughter trumps a mother struggling to let her daughter grow up, in this case.

Think The Crown meets Dunkirk meets Downton Abbey, and you’ll be somewhere close to Darkest Hour. However, the above description does not include the fact that Gary Oldman is just unbelievable as Winston Churchill. Unbelievable in a good way, that is. It’s like he IS Churchill. It’s astonishing! Besides Oldman, who should be a no-brainer for Best Actor, the rest of the cast is solid; the movie is beautifully shot; and the story varies between endearing and inspiring. Darkest Hour, even though dealing with the ever-daunting task of retelling a World War II story, is especially refreshing after last night’s viewing of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Just imagine—dialogue can be effective and moving without the F-word every five seconds, old white men can be inspiring, and dedication to one’s country despite political differences with others is the honorable way to go. Who knew! (Please note my sarcasm.)

Why It Might Win BP

You just never know with a World War II flick. Darkest Hour has class, probably the best acting performance of the year, and a storyline that we should never tire of hearing: good defying evil. The film is personal, national, global, and worthy of more credit than it’s received so far. Personally, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t share some sort of admiration for the great Winston Churchill.

Why It Might Not Win BP

Dunkirk. Much of Darkest Hour revolves around this miraculous historical event, but it deals with it in a completely different way from Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster. Where Dunkirk is infinitely detailed from the point of view of the soldiers stranded on the beaches of France, Darkest Hour focuses on Churchill’s perspective of Britain’s predicament in the spring of 1940. Dunkirk is a sweeping account of the event; Darkest Hour is the psychological, emotional toll it takes on one man who finds himself in power during Britain’s, well, darkest hour. Darkest Hour would perhaps have more of a chance at BP had Dunkirk not been released in the same year; but as it is, I found it rather fascinating that both films tackled the same topic in such different ways. That being said, this film is smart (like 2012’s Lincoln), probably too smart to entertain the casual viewer. In a side-by-side comparison, it would most likely end up in the shadow of Dunkirk‘s scope and verbal simplicity–though it isn’t likely that either WWII film will appeal to the Academy as much as the blatant shock value of Three Billboards. What a shame.

With seven Oscar nominations and a big Golden Globe win for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Three Billboards is a frontrunner in this year’s BP race, and I was quite curious to see what all the fuss is about. The acting is good—Frances McDormand is very convincing as the mother whose grief over her daughter’s unsolved murder leads her to embark on a personal crusade to motivate the police to find the killer. The plot is decent and has my brain whirling a bit at the moment, but this film is not for the faint of heart (or weak of stomach—it’s got me feeling a bit nauseous at the moment). It’s pretty intense and rather gruesome at parts—and the language is atrocious—but it doesn’t shy away from current issues such as race, police brutality, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. Surprisingly, in a film so focused on retribution, the most meaningful moments are those with hints of forgiveness and reconciliation. I liked those parts.

Why It Might Win BP

Three Billboards is raw, dark, disturbing, and in-your-face. It tells a good story, but it nearly makes its viewer ill in doing so. It promotes women “socking it to” incompetent men who have abused them (for those who live under rocks, mistreated women standing up for themselves is pretty much the theme of every evening newscast these days). Gone are the glorious sweeping epics of Braveheart and Gladiator (alas!); in their wake, we get this kind of F-word-crazed, shock-happy tale of morbidity and near-madness. This is exactly the kind of film that has been doing well awards-wise in recent years.

Why It Might Not Win BP

If Three Billboards has a weakness (in the Academy’s eyes), it’s difficult to pinpoint it. There are some confusing moments in the plot; and some of the dialogue, especially early in the film, is difficult to understand. But I don’t think either of those two issues will really hinder the success of this film on Sunday. In my mind, the only thing that can prevent Three Billboards from winning BP is if it is simply eclipsed by a more beautiful story—for, let’s face it, Three Billboards tells a compelling story, but it is not lovely.