Since we are a little less than two weeks away from the 90th Academy Awards, I thought I would take a little break from past Best Picture winners and focus on the nominees for this year’s top film: The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Phantom Thread, Get Out, The Post, Call Me by Your Name, Lady Bird, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. True to form, I’ve only seen one of these films in the theater at this point (Dunkirk), so we’ll look at that one first—just a few thoughts along with some reasons why each film might/might not win Best Picture. We’ll see how many of these films I can fit in before the big show!

I was so stressed out watching Dunkirk that I almost felt ill in the theater. I think this film’s real strength is its attempt at realism. It is alternately loud, quiet, lonely, and claustrophobic. There is not a lot of dialogue, and by the end of the movie I could only name a couple of the characters. However, Dunkirk isn’t about one protagonist’s search for salvation. It’s about the group of individuals—the desperate masses on the French coast and the brave British citizens on the sea. The viewer of this movie identifies by turns with those needing rescue and those bringing it. I won’t ruin the film by revealing its ending; but historically speaking, the incident chronicled in the film is often referred to as the “Miracle of Dunkirk”—so it’s a good story, very inspiring.

Why It Might Win BP

Typically, World War II films do well come awards time. I remember a few years back Kate Winslet joked that someone had told her that if she wanted to win an Oscar, she should do a WWII movie—which she did (and she won)—so Dunkirk has that going for it (so does Darkest Hour, though…). It is also gloriously filmed and, again, very realistic and very inspiring.

Why It Might Not Win BP

Dunkirk is very quiet dialogue-wise, and it’s difficult to really get to know the characters. There’s so much chaos that the characters often get lost in the mix. BP winners tend to have dynamic, memorable characters and easily quotable dialogue (well, unless we’re talking silent winners like Wings or The Artist). Dunkirk also has a bit of an ambiguous ending, which was a little frustrating to me.

It’s an old story—a man mistakes his work for his life and ends up doomed, obsessively pursuing the one whom he feels has personally thrown doubt on his ability to accomplish his job. It reminds me of the classic Moby Dick, the tale of Captain Ahab and his quest for vengeance against the white whale that has previously robbed him of his leg. Spanning years and various oceans, Ahab pursues Moby Dick mindlessly, risking his own life and those of his loyal crew, believing that he must kill the whale before it seeks him out and destroys him. Starbuck, Ahab’s first mate tries to reason with him: “Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!” Spoiler alert if you don’t know how Moby Dick ends, but Ahab doesn’t heed Starbuck’s wisdom; and all is lost.

In The French Connection, things turn out a bit differently, though like Moby Dick the film’s story revolves around one man’s obsession with what he views as a personal vendetta. “Popeye” Jimmy Doyle, the narcotics cop, has a hunch that a couple he witnesses flaunting their money at a bar are involved in something illegal. He is correct, but the lack of direct evidence for both their plan to import a massive shipment of heroin and the complicity of their French associates leads him to recklessly shadow the respectable-looking French drug smuggler Alain Charnier and his cronies. Doyle risks his reputation and the well-being of himself and his partner “Cloudy” Buddy Russo in reckless stakeouts, shadowing, and “accidental” run-ins with their targets, eventually (and mistakenly) allowing Charnier to “make him” in a botched encounter at a subway station (Charnier’s cocky, sinister wave as the train departs and leaves Doyle behind is brilliant, but chilling!). Doyle becomes a target of the French criminals; and after they try to kill him, he resorts to commandeering a citizen’s car and tears up the streets of New York as he chases the fleeing would-be assassin, barely avoiding innocent pedestrians.

Charnier’s wave is one of the creepiest moments of this film–but it might be the part that reeled me in the most!

This chase scene has gone down into movie lore; and while it is wonderfully filmed and very suspenseful, what it really shows is a man no longer in control of himself, a man who is willing to sacrifice almost anything in his pursuit of his personal enemy. Doyle shows no compassion for the mother who is hit by the sniper’s bullet that is meant for him, nor does he attempt to shelter her baby who screams in his/her carriage during the shootout. His main concern is retribution for the attempt on his life—and finding Charnier, of course. When he finally accosts the sniper on a stairway, Doyle again exhibits no thoughts other than revenge. When the fleeing man refuses to halt, Doyle shoots him in the back and kills him, which eliminates any chance of the man leading him to Charnier. Doyle never enters the train in which the sniper has left a trail of victims, several of whom had courageously attempted to stand up to him. They are not in Doyle’s thoughts. All he sees is himself and his nemesis.

In the film’s climactic scene (spoiler alert!), once more Doyle seeks out Charnier regardless of all the chaos and bloodshed around him. Convinced the Frenchman is attempting to escape through an abandoned warehouse at the scene, Doyle proceeds on his own through the ruin. Joined by his partner Russo, Doyle stalks down the middle of a long room without cover, while Russo more wisely finds shelter in various niches. Out of the corner of his eye, Doyle sees Charnier through a doorway. However, it is unclear whether the form of the man is an actuality or a figment of Doyle’s imagination—his quest for revenge might be leading him to insanity. In further proof of this possibility, Doyle accidentally shoots and kills Mulderig, the FBI agent assigned to the case, mistaking him for Charnier. Horrified, Russo leans over the dead agent’s body, but Doyle, unfazed, hurries off through another doorway where a single gunshot is heard before the screen goes black.

Doyle later returns the wave.

At first, I thought that Doyle’s recklessness had led to his death in the film’s last seconds, but the film’s final updates on each character (given in subtitles) excludes this possibility and reveals that both Doyle and Charnier survive the film’s final scene. Doyle and Russo are transferred out of narcotics, and Charnier escapes his pursuers and supposedly returns to France. The question remains, though: who was shooting at whom with that final bullet? I have this idea that Doyle, having just murdered Mulderig and not wishing to appear insane, fires his weapon at nothing in an attempt to convince Russo that he really has seen Charnier in the warehouse; but that is mere speculation on my part. There is a sequel to the film, French Connection II (1975), so maybe I’ll have to check that out and see if it can answer some of my questions…

For Me Then…

Despite the mystery of the film’s ending, what we can take away from it is the danger of obsession and revenge—even in a situation in which the one seeking retribution is on the side of right and is pursuing those who have committed evil. Doyle unwisely allows his duty to control his life, and his neglect of self-care and his refusal to listen to the reason of his peers lead him to the brink of madness. He is unable to see the humanity that is at stake in his operation. The kids who die in the car accident, the mother murdered by the sniper, the train operator dead of a heart attack from fright—to Doyle these are all necessary casualties of his job. But is Doyle so different then from the drug smugglers who grow rich off the destroyed lives and premature deaths of those who cannot resist the temptation to get high? It’s like comparing Captain Ahab and Moby Dick–which one is really the most vindictive? I would tend to say Ahab.

Renowned for its famous car/train chase scene, The French Connection (1971, Philip D’Antoni Production in association with Schine-Moore Productions; 20th Century-Fox) is a pretty decent action film. For me, it falls into the same genre as 2012’s Best Picture winner Argo—some violence, lots of suspense, and plenty of thrills. The acting isn’t bad either. Gene Hackman is excellent as “Popeye” Jimmy Doyle, the obsessed, nearly psychotic narcotics cop who follows a hunch and uncovers a conspiracy to smuggle millions of dollars of drugs into New York—a conspiracy with, of course, a French connection.

The infamous car chase scene in moody black and white!

Overall, The French Connection was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won five: Film Editing, Writing (Screenplay—based on material from another medium), Directing for William Friedkin, Actor for Gene Hackman, and Best Picture. It did not win for Cinematography, Sound, or Actor in a Supporting Role for Roy Scheider as Doyle’s partner Buddy “Cloudy” Russo. It was another interesting year at the Academy Awards in 1972. The BP nominees ranged from Fiddler on the Roof to A Clockwork Orange (so The French Connection fell in the middle of charming and disturbing…), and Charlie Chaplin was presented with a honorary award for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century,” which was probably a legitimate award for a very innovative man, though it was couched in language that allowed Hollywood to pat its own back a bit.

The French Connection is based on a non-fiction book with the full title The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy, written by Robin Moore and published in 1969. The book (and very loosely, the film as well) tells the story of real-life New York narcotics cops Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, who were responsible for breaking up a trans-Atlantic drug smuggling ring in 1962. The “French Connection” was the name given to the drug-trafficking route that began in the 1930s and went from Turkey to France to Canada to the United States. This drug trade reached its peak in the 60s and 70s when it accounted for 80-90 percent of the heroin that found its way into the U.S. The 1970s brought an increase in illegal drug use by Americans; and both government-sponsored programs and deaths of celebrities (like Janis Joplin in 1970) were less than effective in stemming the tide of abuse. In our own times, the “opioid crisis” still rages as politicians, medical personnel, and parents all struggle to find a solution to our culture’s drug addiction.

Popeye and Cloudy find what they’re looking for.

For me, one of the most poignant scenes in The French Connection shows the aftermath of a car crash in which several young people are killed. It isn’t very clear in the film whether or not the incident is drug-related; but with the film’s reliance on the drug trade for its plot, it seems to me that there has to be a connection (no pun intended). There’s a lot of politicking and policing in the film—lots of staking out and chasing the bad guys—but the reality of what happens when people use illegal drugs falls into the background a bit. In my opinion, seeing the prone, bloody bodies of the crash victims really illuminates the deeper tragedies of rampant drug use in our society. Illegal drugs kill, and those who traffic in them don’t give a rip–and I for one am not sure which is more heartbreaking.

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

In honor of the start of the Olympic Games this weekend, I would like to offer a few thoughts regarding dreams and destiny in light of this week’s BP winner, Patton. The real George S. Patton led a remarkable life, and we get a pretty good glimpse of it in the film that chronicles some of the highlights (and lowlights) of his armed service during World War II.

A couple of times in the film, Patton shares with other commanders that he believes he has had previous lives. Shortly after he arrives in North Africa, he has his driver take him and General Bradley to the ruins of a Carthaginian city and reminisces how he was present when the Romans destroyed the city more than 2,000 years earlier. Later when another military leader comments, “You know, George, you would have made a great marshal for Napoleon if you had lived in the 19th century,” Patton replies, “But I did.” Despite these rather far-fetched beliefs Patton possessed, the general’s sense of his destiny is pretty remarkable. Granted, he is also quite pompous and doesn’t especially excel in following orders, but there’s just something inspiring about someone who completely believes in himself/herself.

Patton reminiscing about his Punic War experiences in a former life.

Along with his belief in reincarnation and his past success, Patton evinces conviction that his present life is destined for greatness. When he encounters setbacks on the field of combat or in his military career (for instance, after he’s “benched” for slapping a soldier who is suffering from combat fatigue), Patton frequently expresses frustration and even seems dumbfounded that everything isn’t working out totally smoothly since, of course, his fate is to be a legendary military hero. Still, the film’s viewer tends to gravitate toward Patton’s viewpoint that he undoubtedly was born into this world to leave a gigantic impression on it.

For Me Then…

I love real-life stories about ordinary people who aspire to and achieve greatness. Patton is a bit different in that he never seems to have been ordinary. I don’t believe in reincarnation, so I don’t subscribe to the idea that Patton was extraordinary in the 20^th century because he had had several “practice runs” at greatness in past lives. However, I do believe that his confidence in his abilities along with his conviction that there was a reason for his existence in his time and place—regardless of the setbacks and challenges he encountered—contributed to his remarkable achievements. There is a fine line between self-confidence and pride, I think, but possessing the former probably gives one a bit of an edge in life, a boost of assurance that propels one to dare more, and thus to reach for more. In that way, one’s dreams can propel one to one’s destiny—something we see a lot of come Olympic time.

Quite a change from last week’s film, the PG-rated Patton (1970, 20th Century-Fox) took home seven Academy Awards for its ten nominations: Art Direction, Sound, Film Editing, Writing (Story and Screenplay–based on factual material or material not previously published or produced), Directing for Franklin J. Schaffner, Actor for George C. Scott as General George S. Patton, Jr., and Best Picture (it failed to win in the Special Visual Effects, Cinematography, and Music [Original Score] categories). There’s a funny story about the film’s screenplay. Francis Ford Coppola, who ended up winning an Oscar for Patton (as well as another Oscar for The Godfather and three Oscars for The Godfather II), researched the great general and wrote a screenplay for the film. However, the powers that be didn’t like much of Coppola’s creativity (for instance, the film’s opening scene in which Patton gives a colorful speech in front of a gigantic American flag), and he was fired from the project. A few years later, while working on The Godfather (1972), Coppola had an inkling that he was about to lose his job with that film as well. However, his script for Patton was resurrected and made into a BP winner, earning him his first Academy Award and cementing his job with The Godfather (at least, that’s how Coppola sees it)—as well as his place in film history.

Patton is one of those World War II Best Picture winners, though the film focuses more on the title personage than the conflict itself. George S. Patton, Jr. was born in California in 1885 on what would later become Veterans Day (November 11). Early in his life, he determined to become a military hero and follow in the footsteps of his ancestors who had fought in the Revolutionary War and Civil War. He was a West Point graduate and an Olympian, finishing fifth in the pentathlon at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Well-known for his skill with a sword, Patton nonetheless distinguished himself by leading the first American armored vehicle assault during the U.S. Border War with Mexico during that country’s revolution in 1916. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Patton was assigned to lead the American Expeditionary Force tank corps. He studied the new war machines and tactics for their use and effectiveness—and excelled. But in WWII, Patton earned his long-desired fame as a war hero, playing major roles in the Allied invasion of Sicily and in commanding the 3rd U.S. Army as it rolled through France and into Germany, capturing 10,000 square miles of German-held land in the span of a 10-day march in 1945. Just a few short months after the close of WWII, Patton broke his neck in a freak car accident while returning from pheasant hunting. During the 12 days of hospitalization that followed, he vacillated between joking and frustration, sadly telling his wife that he supposed he wasn’t “good enough” to have the honor of dying in battle like his ancestors had. General Patton passed away in his sleep on December 21, 1945, of pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure caused by the injuries he sustained during the car accident. A staunch believer in reincarnation, Patton doubtless anticipated a glorious return to the battlefield in some future life.

The real General Patton.

Had he been right about being reborn into another life, Patton might have had additional opportunities for war glory in the 1970s as the Vietnam War plodded on for the first half of that decade. President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the war with an invasion of Cambodia only stoked the furor of protesters at home, many of whom were college students. In the same year Patton was released, four protesters at Kent State University in Ohio were killed by National Guard troops. So as we begin the tumultuous decade of the 1970s this week, we are continuing a trend of unrest we saw in the 1960s. While the 60s gave us such delightful films as My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, we also got In the Heat of the Night and Midnight Cowboy—indications of social discontent, disruption, and disease. With the 1970s, we will see more dark and disturbing films—The Godfather films and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, to name a few—but I think the value in watching these movies comes in the insight they can provide into our history, helping us to understand what people were thinking and feeling in the not-too-distant past. For that reason, I’m looking forward to sharing this upcoming decade of films with you all. Thanks in advance for reading!

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

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! I got no connections to share between football and Midnight Cowboy. Too bad Dallas isn’t playing tonight; that might have made for a better transition. As it is, I just finished a report on Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus Complex, and that happens to be much more applicable to this week’s film than the football game most of us will indulge in shortly.

Freud became convinced that every one of us feels sexual attraction to our mothers and jealousy and hatred for our fathers between the ages of three and six. Gross. I’m not a super big advocate of this theory, but Freud believed that a child’s normal progression through this phase of life determined how he or she functioned and related to others as an adult. If a child never emerged from his or her Oedipal stage, he or she would likely suffer from a wide array of neuroses later in life.

While the protagonist in Midnight Cowboy, Joe Buck, doesn’t demonstrate a passion for his mother and hatred for his father, he definitely exhibits issues that probably stem from experiences he endured in his unstable childhood. The film briefly shows a young Joe being dropped off at his grandma’s house by two women, one of which presumably is his mother. Some reviewers of the film have suggested that the women in Joe’s family are prostitutes, but that is not completely clear in the film. If that is the case, though, Joe’s childhood was perhaps even more tenuous. Whatever the occupational status of Joe’s absent mother and promiscuous grandmother, the film makes sure that its viewers realize that Joe’s grandmother has involved the young boy in inappropriate sexual activities in which both she and her various beaus have participated. Adult Joe never hints that he thought these activities were wrong, but he does share with his new friend Ratso that he is still angry at his grandma for dying without preparing him for her loss. Clearly, then, Joe holds some love for his grandmother, even though she was a major contributor to Joe’s unbalanced adulthood.

Ratso and Joe attempting to survive the harsh world they live in.

Teenaged Joe is super sexual—the only images we see from this time of his life involve him and his girlfriend Annie making out at a drive-in movie and then being pursued and assaulted by a gang of boys about Joe’s age. Joe’s inability to protect both Annie and himself leads him to feel inadequate even though in his memory Annie repeatedly reassures him that he is the best and the only one she loves. Joe seems to not have dealt with Annie’s being committed to an asylum after the gang attack; and after Annie’s exit from his life, Joe seems to have never had a sexual relationship with a woman that didn’t involve the transfer of money.

As an adult, Joe leaves Texas, the locale of his troubled childhood, and heads to New York City to start over. He is naively optimistic that he will find great success there as a hustler, sleeping with rich women who will pay him for his services. Joe seems to think he is a modern Casanova—the only thing he excels at is having sex. It’s not much to base a life on, and Joe and Ratso find themselves cold and nearly starving to death as they discover one tortured soul after the next on Joe’s mission to establish his hustling reputation. During one such encounter with a possible expert pimp, the man tells Joe that he must be lonely because everyone he meets in the hustling business is desperately lonely. Joe denies this, but deep down he knows it’s true.

Joe in the middle of some self-reflection.

Joe fills the emptiness in his life with his relationship with Ratso—a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship. This is perhaps the most fulfilling and real relationship Joe has ever had. Ratso doesn’t need Joe to be sexy or theatrical; the two young men just need each other to survive the brutal world in which they live. (Spoiler alert!) The preeminence of this fraternal relationship becomes evident when Joe finally has his break as a hustler and chooses to abandon his new “career” and take Ratso to Florida and fulfill his dying wish. But Joe resorts to violence to get the money for the trip, and Ratso’s death upon reaching the Sunshine State leaves Joe alone again—possessing a new opportunity to start over (NOT as a hustler), but struggling with a familiar loneliness. Freud would have had a heyday with this film.

For Me Then…

I think Midnight Cowboy makes a couple of interesting points. First, the world is harsh. The only comfort Joe finds in the whole movie is the camaraderie he creates with Ratso, another person who just barely exists on the margins of society. Other than that, the world is cold, unfriendly, and unsympathetic. Second, the film shows the dangers of unrestrained sexuality. It can be argued that the film promotes the free love of the 1960s, but its psychologically maimed protagonist and depressing resolution point out the emptiness of using sex as a way to find meaning and purpose in one’s life. Sex isn’t the same thing as love. While Joe might think he’s the best lover the world has ever seen, he isn’t very familiar at all with the concept of love. For me, that’s the most tragic aspect of this film. For all its emphasis on the glories of sex and the supposed freedom of engaging in intimacy with whomever one desires, all the film can offer its viewers in the end is loneliness.

In the mid-1960s, a Newsday columnist named Mike McGrady came up with a pretty wild idea. Convinced that Americans had become mired in a “cultural morass,” McGrady recruited 24 of his fellow Newsday staff members to compose a novel as a type of experiment. Each person would write one chapter—that way the book’s style and language were sure to be inconsistent. Additionally, the new work would lack a sustained plot, character development, and any “social insight.” “True excellence in writing will be blue-penciled into oblivion,” McGrady warned the team. Instead, the emphasis would be completely on the sexual content of the novel in order to prove that “any book could succeed if enough sex was thrown in.” The team’s final result was published in 1969 as Naked Came the Stranger, with authorial credit given to one Penelope Ashe, “a demure Long Island housewife.” The racy book’s first edition sold in the thousands, and interest in the novel’s author soared almost to a frenzy. By August 1969, the real minds behind Naked Came the Stranger had decided to come clean to their countrymen. In a highly anticipated interview on The David Frost Show, Frost introduced “Penelope Ashe” and shocked his audience when a single-file parade of male news writers marched onto the stage. Not too surprisingly, sales of Naked Came the Stranger soared after that. McGrady went on to write a book about the whole fiasco, entitled Stranger than Naked, or How to Write Dirty Books for Fun and Profit.

The whole history of Naked Came the Stranger can be seen as quite humorous, but I find it pretty tragic as well—for it would seem that Mike McGrady was correct in his opinion about the American culture of his day. This week’s Best Picture winner, Midnight Cowboy (Jerome Hellman-John Schlesinger Production; United Artists), is also a product of 1969. It should come as no surprise then, really, that the same populace that devoured Naked Came the Stranger elevated the X-rated Midnight Cowboy to Academy glory. The film is vastly disturbing. I never want to see it again, and I would not recommend it to anyone else. If you have a hankering to see the iconic “I’m walkin’ here!” scene, just look it up on YouTube. Besides the nudity and heavy sexual content of the film, the repeated images of child molestation, teenage rape, and homosexual prostitution are enough to earn Midnight Cowboy a place on the horror movie shelf, in my opinion. The trash can might be a better option, though…

Jon Voight as Joe Buck and Dustin Hoffman as Ratso freeze in NYC.

In a year of tight competition among Oscar contenders, Midnight Cowboy finished with three wins out of seven nominations, taking home statues for Writing (Screenplay—based on material from another medium), Directing for John Schlesinger, and Best Picture. It failed to win for Film Editing, Actor for Jon Voight as Joe Buck, Actor for Dustin Hoffman as Ratso (I admit, Hoffman is phenomenal in this film), and Actress in a Supporting Role for Sylvia Miles as Cass (a ridiculous nomination since she’s in the film for maybe ten minutes).

What really struck me about Midnight Cowboy right from the get-go is just how contemporary it seems. This film could have easily passed for an Oscar BP contender in any year over the past decade or so. Brutal and dark—we keep seeing these films show up around awards season: this year’s Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, last year’s Manchester by the Sea, 2004’s Crash, 2000’s American Beauty, just to name a few. These types of films are made to shock us, which they usually do. But they couch their disturbing subject matter and images under the “reality clause,” claiming to enlighten us to the true conditions of the world, while blinding us to the actuality that we are paying to immerse ourselves in crap—and often enjoy it.

Whether he reacted to it in the right way or not, Mike McGrady realized he was in the midst of a cultural crisis in the groovy 60s and tried to wake people up to the fact that they were in a war over morality. Ironically, he gave the people the very junk that he was demonstrating against and ended up profiting from the pollution of people’s minds. Just as McGrady’s culture yo-yoed from Woodstock to the launch of Sesame Street, put Armstrong on the moon but buried the first known American victim of AIDS—all in the same year—we also slog through a cultural and spiritual tug-of-war for our attention and values. I’m not a fan in the least of Midnight Cowboy, but perhaps its lasting value for me is to remind me of the dangers of esteeming what society esteems. Just because a film wins an award doesn’t make it worthwhile entertainment.

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

Spoiler alert! The most disturbing scene in Oliver! comes near the end of the film when Nancy attempts to reunite Oliver with Mr. Brownlow, the kindly older man who had previously rescued Oliver from street life with Fagin and his gang of pickpockets. Wanting to keep Oliver under his control, the ruthless Bill Sykes beats Nancy to death when he sees that she has disregarded his wishes. The film version of Oliver’s story provides a brief (non-verbal) expression of guilt and possible regret on the part of Bill; but with Bill’s death and the conclusion of the film following hard upon Nancy’s murder, there isn’t enough time for Oliver!’s audience to reconcile the violence they have just witnessed—regardless of how joyful we can presume Oliver’s future life will be.

Since watching Oliver! this past week, I’ve been pondering exactly why I never seem to be able to get to the end of the musical with an overwhelmingly positive feeling. It’s more like that “pit-in-the-stomach” feeling one gets at the end of West Side Story, instead of the elation and hope of The Sound of Music. I’ve come up with a couple of reasons why I just can’t move around Nancy’s death to Oliver’s happiness like the film wants me to.

First, Bill and Nancy both allude to the fact that they were raised as Fagin’s little lackeys. They must have known each other, then, for a decently long time and seem relatively devoted to each other. It’s clear that Nancy loves Bill, despite his flaws and his violent tendencies; and when she tries to get Bill to confirm that he loves her as well, he gruffly replies, “I live with ya, don’t I?” Tragically, Nancy’s tenderheartedness places her in dangerous proximity to Bill’s volatile emotions and swinging fists. Her compassion is admirable, but her choice to stay with Bill is unwise—even though they probably share a strong bond based on past childhood suffering and the present need for survival as adults. So, it bothers me that such a relationship can be smashed to bits in seconds when Bill doesn’t get his way for once–but I’m also uncomfortable with the fact that the relationship has gone on as long as it has.

The troubled Bill Sykes.

Second, the arrangement Fagin has with the young street children is also a bit hard for me to swallow. Fagin obviously uses the children for profit—the risk is theirs, but the “earnings” are his. Well, mostly. Fagin does fill a massive void in the children’s lives: that of father figure. Fagin provides food, lodging, and an adult supervision/guardianship of sorts. Minus the fact that he encourages crime (for survival, I guess), he gives the little pickpockets a home and a kind of stability in a pretty intense and uncertain world.

There are other options, though, for the children in Fagin’s keep. They could go to an orphanage—but, oh wait, we first see Oliver in an orphanage; and it’s dark, dingy, and run by corrupt adults who also look to profit from the children in their protection. Oliver is literally sold by Mr. Bumble, the ridiculous man who runs the orphanage, into the keeping of the Sowerberry family, who are just as rotten as the Bumbles. At least Fagin seems to care about the well-being of his band of thieves—or is it just that he wants the stolen items they bring him in order that he can fill his secret treasure box in preparation for his old age? Like the Nancy/Bill relationship, I’m not too fond of the Fagin/orphans relationship either. Is there no good solution to childhood in poverty?

Fagin and Dodger in cahoots.

For Me Then…

I think maybe my main issue with this film is how it deals with the problem of evil. For all the catchiness of songs like “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” and “Be Back Soon,” there’s still the discomfort in seeing the child thieves exploited with no assurance of a better future at the end of the film. Instead, though he wrestles earlier with the possibility of turning his life of crime into a respectable one, we see Fagin join forces with The Artful Dodger to continue their petty crimes to their mutual profit. I guess this is better than Dodger getting nothing for all his efforts, but the pair just throws the possibility of an honest future away. The notion of abandoning evil and turning to good almost becomes a joke at the close of the film. Although Fagin and Dodger are two of the most likeable characters in the film, again in my mind I go back to Nancy and Bill and the bloody scene at the bridge. Their start in the underworld of London came under Fagin’s tutelage in the arts of such “harmless” petty crime, and the results were far from mild for them in the end.

A few years ago, I stood in the wings backstage for my high school’s performances of Oliver! As a backstage manager, my job entailed raising and lowering the curtains, hauling huge (and not-so-huge) set pieces across the stage, attempting to control the craziness of dozens of cast members entering and exiting scenes, and monitoring the whereabouts and productiveness of my half of the backstage crew. It was simply awesome—stressful, of course, but so, so much fun. So when I popped in the film version of Oliver! the other night, all these wonderful memories flooded back. What a lovely film!

“Please sir, I want some more.”

The last musical to win Best Picture during the “golden age” of film musicals, Oliver! (1968, Romulus Films, Ltd. Production; Columbia) marked a farewell to BP-winning movie musicals for 34 years, until Chicago took home the Academy’s highest honor for 2002. In a year that witnessed the invention of Hot Wheels, the beginning of the sketch comedy television series Laugh-In, the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the election of Richard Nixon as President of the United States, Oliver! truly reflects its place in history by achieving a mix of lighthearted fun and violent tragedy. Nominated for 11 competitive Academy Awards, Oliver! won five: Art Direction, Sound, Music (Score of a Musical Picture—original or adaptation), Directing for Carol Reed, and Best Picture. The film failed to win in the following categories for which it was nominated: Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Writing (Screenplay—based on material from another medium), Actor for Ron Moody as Fagin, and Actor in a Supporting Role for Jack Wild as The Artful Dodger (Moody and Wild are both fabulous in this film, by the way!). Oliver! was also awarded an honorary Oscar, which went to Onna White for “her outstanding choreography achievement.”

The novelist Charles Dickens in the later years of his life.

Based on the Broadway play that debuted on January 6, 1963, Oliver!’s original source is the 1837 novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist was Dickens’ second novel, published in monthly installments in Bentley’s Miscellany during what proved to be a very trying time in Dickens’ life. He had just become a new father the month prior to the start of Oliver Twist’s publication; and just a few months into the new serial, his beloved sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, who lived with Dickens and his wife Catherine, died quite unexpectedly. In the midst of one difficult time in his life, then, Dickens hearkened back to another: his late childhood, perhaps the most formative period of his existence (He continued to pull inspiration from this great trial of his life in future novels such as David Copperfield and Great Expectations.)

As a child, Dickens experienced some situations similar to that of his protagonist in Oliver Twist. Forced to work in a factory when his father (and the rest of his family with him) was thrown into debtors’ prison, young Dickens found himself part of the lower rungs of society, having to live and work among some very rough personages. It is most likely this horrifying time in his life that led Dickens to consistently evoke pity for the downtrodden and hope for the exiled of society in his great works of fiction. We see this sympathy for the lower classes in Oliver! in the characters of Nancy, Fagin, and maybe even a little in Bill Sykes. Well, maybe. I must be feeling optimistic today since I get to talk about Dickens. He’s a personal favorite of mine!

Oliver and The Artful Dodger in Fagin’s lair.

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

Most obviously, this film is about racial prejudice: The white cops in Sparta, Mississippi, misjudge the intelligent black police officer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who happens to be in the wrong town at the wrong time. But there’s a lot more than just racial tension fueling the plot of In The Heat Of The Night. We find out really early in the film that Ralph, the diner counterman, dislikes the novice policeman Sam for some reason (and hides pie from him every night, which is pretty funny). Delores has an aversion to the sultry Southern summer evenings, but loves to parade around in the buff, which causes everyone problems. Her brother Purdy hates anyone who might get his teenage sister pregnant. Gillespie dreads being alone when he goes home. The mayor abhors drama. And, oh yeah, basically all of these people are racists, at least at the beginning of the film when Virgil Tibbs (MR. Tibbs) is just one more young black man they derogatorily refer to as “boy.”

However, Virgil surprises many of the residents of Sparta. He is clever, resourceful, and determined to bring Mr. Colbert’s killer to justice. But as Gillespie points out, Virgil is also a racist. The biggest draw for Virgil to continue investigating Mr. Colbert’s murder is that he can “stick it to” the white cops who can’t solve the crime without him—that, and he’s pretty sure the aristocratic, white cotton company owner, Endicott (the man who believes he’s still running a Southern plantation), is the murderer. Virgil can hardly wait to ruin that old jerk who still has black people hand-picking cotton for him and serving his guests lemonade. Yet just like the white Southerners (spoiler alert!), Virgil is mistaken in his racial profiling. Endicott is innocent—at least of Mr. Colbert’s murder.

Virgil and Gillespie, the distance between them notable.

For all the tension and racially provoked violence of In the Heat of the Night, the most brutal incident in the film, the murder of Mr. Colbert, occurs before the film opens and isn’t even motivated by prejudice—nope, just by good old greed and the drive to cover up another wrong that’s been committed. I won’t get too specific here since that would take away from the “whodunit” premise of the film! Suffice it to say, the film makes an excellent point about race by veering away from using race as a motivating factor in the story’s main crime. Strip humanity down to its core—take away all the outer indicators of race, sex, economic or social status, etc.—and we see that all people are essentially the same in their motivations. How many characters fall prey to lust in the film? And how quickly does lust lead to the necessity of lies and/or crime to conceal earlier wrongdoing? It doesn’t matter if someone is white or black, educated or not, rich or poor. We all do things we know are wrong; and when shame or fear take hold of us, our inhibitions to do wrong oftentimes decrease, and evil spirals out of control.

For Me Then…

I find it interesting that of all places Virgil is from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. In the Heat of the Night features kind of a brotherly love between Delores and Purdy, but their love for each other is colored with suspicion, bitterness, and jealousy. (Spoiler alert!) While we do end up seeing a positive relationship between “brother” policemen, one white and one black, the geographical distance between them (which they both repeatedly emphasize) gives rise to another truth the movie promotes: Since the murder has nothing to do with race and everyone in the film is bigoted in some way, it becomes clear that racism isn’t limited geographically. It’s pervasive, living within people’s hearts. We can make laws, participate in demonstrations, and so on, but these are all outer attempts at a cure for an internal problem. Racism will endure until people allow God to change their hearts.

Virgil and Gillespie, not so very different after all.