1967's Oscar Nominees (inspired by "Pictures at a Revolution")

I'm sort of partial to the material covering Doctor Dolittle, mostly because I'm a sucker for stories about productions out of control and how they got there. (See also Stuart Klawans' Film Follies.)

Bonnie and Clyde vs The Graduate for me.

And 99% of ILX, obviously.

I enjoy something in all those films tho, I just think they are the 2 clearly better movies.

B&C vs the Graduate definitely but I watched In the Heat of the Night for the first time off the back of reading the book and was surprised by how strange it was - the low-key mood, the unusual cinematography and the sudden, unglamorous bursts of violence made it far more radical than I anticipated. I was expecting a straightforward procedural with a soft liberal message and it's not that at all.

If we were voting for the best making-of story, though, Dolittle would walk it. It led me to read The Devil's Candy (about Bonfire of the Vanities) and Picture (not that Red Badge of Courage was out of control but the degree of postproduction meddling was ridiculous). Nurse Detrius, have you read John Griffin Dunne's The Studio? Lots of Harris's Dolittle material comes from there. I wonder if anyone's been able to get that kind of access since The Devil's Candy - I can't imagine this kind of fly-on-the-wall reportage being written now.

never saw Doctor Dolittle (is that the original which was later remade with Eddie Murphy?) and Guess Who's Coming to Diner.

but Bonnie vs. Grad. vs. Heat of the Night >> The Graduate (if only for Katherine Ross) :)

Wonderful book. The parts discussing the compromises Poitier was forced to make are heartbreaking.

This is between In the Heat of the Night and B&C for me, the least flawed of a very flawed bunch.

agree that In the Heat of the Night gets a bum rap... among Steiger and Poitier's best work.

B&C gets the most style points but I'm with Robbie Coltrane's Cracker character in finding its romanticism facile to the point of becoming repellent.

Probably haven't seen Dolittle since I was ten, on TV.

and as we know, after Elaine discovers her mom's affair with Ben, The Graduate just isn't very good.

oh and Tracy is just lovely in Guess? and that's about all that lasts.

I've only seen the last scene of Guess and I'm thinking it must've been the Brokeback of its day. Hell, you could take everything Spencer Tracy says and presume he's talking to his son and his son's boyfriend.

'the studio' is a classic.

think i'd go 'heat of the night' -- haven't seen it in 10 years but it didn't strike me as soft-serve at the time -- or 'graduate'.

in terms of datedness, b&c's dollar-book freud takes some beating. on the other hand faye dunaway.

The parts discussing the compromises Poitier was forced to make are heartbreaking.

This is the biggest surprise of the book for me. It's no secret I've never been able to appreciate Poitier's role in Hollywood history, but this book finally makes me understand why his performances strike me as limited and frustrating. It's sort of edifying to know that Poitier himself felt so too and the reasons why burned him up inside.

Dolittle put me to sleep when my parents bought a cheap VHS version. It's one of those rare and mythical movies that even my childhood self could just not finish for being so fantastically boring.

Nurse Detrius, have you read John Griffin Dunne's The Studio?

No, but now that's up next, along with Final Cut.

The set design in GWCTD looks like it was smuggled from a "Price is Right" set.

B&C's dollar-book Freud doesn't seem so bad knowing that the only reason it was there was because they couldn't show Beatty/Dunaway in bed with Pollard like they wanted to.

I feel like polling a few other years from Oscar's history that feel somewhat microcosmic about the industry as a whole: both 1969 and 1976 seem like good candidates.

Pauline Kael's review of B&C is better art than the film.

So is the essay that contains her review of The Graduate, respective to that film.

Polling certain Oscar years would be a lot of fun. I'd add: 1958, 1989, 1994.

no doubt bonnie and clyde for me. i can see the criticism of the "facile romanticism" morbs alludes to, but i just loved warren beatty's character so much, and his sexual frustration seemed so devastating when i watched it. and oh, that death scene is one of the best i've ever seen, and really hard to watch

Beatty's impotence is pretty funny, too.

Bonnie: "Don't you never just wanna be alone?"
Clyde: (smiling) "I'm hungry. Let's get us some sandwiches."

I've been in a few of those exchanges.

Oscar years that would be no fun to poll and illuminate very little about Hollywood: 1952, 1963, 1983, 2003.

I would like to illuminate ILE's film preferences.

B&C for sure. Morbz otm about the Graduate

In The Heat of the Night

Morbz not OTM the post-Elaine sequences of the Graduate are well worth it just for the gorgeous Berkeley backdrop and Norman Fell.

someone once said the last section of the graduate is like "crepey stalker gets the girl" and it made me go hmmm

It's pretty unapologetically exactly that.

a remake from elaine's POV would be interesting

But if you shook Elaine's head you'd hear a rattle.

They'd have to completely change the casting. Katherine Ross couldn't act her way out of paper bag.

plus she's 70 years old now, might be a little confusing for the audience

But if you shook Elaine's head you'd hear a rattle.

lolz where did you steal this line from

dimwitted coed stalked by greasy creepo, no wonder the movie was a hit

my fave scene in The Graduate, however, might be the very last NOW WHAT one on the bus.

I'm glad Eric no longer hates Sidney Poitier.

I think I only hated his performances, not necessarily his legacy, and now I'm seeing how the one clouded my judgement of the other.

The best scene/line in The Graduate is "You're missing a great effect here" as the tassels are twirling.

ive always liked the seduction scene and the "art talk"

at MoMA last week, Nichols quoted the MAD Magazine parody where Ben asks his parents, "Why am I Jewish and you're not?"

'in the heat of the night', that movie is really, really dope

except the murder mystery stinks

Eric, i should con you into viewing Guess once (for the ice cream scene at least) by reminding you that Isabel Sanford plays their maid.

the Graduate is the better film, but I enjoy Bonnie & Clyde more. GWCTD is no slouch, either, obv. I guess it is appropriate that '67 would be a year for zeitgeist films to be up for the top honors. I haven't seen the other two.

Doctor Doolittle is clearly the one thing that is not like the other on that list.

Point Blank smashes all of these.

my fave scene in The Graduate, however, might be the very last NOW WHAT one on the bus.

that's why i voted for it. it's not hard to love bonnie and clyde, but i think the graduate was smarter about where things were going. no blaze of glory, just a lot of wtf.

plus -- anne bancroft.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/culture/2008/03/cuar01_graduate0803.jpg

Here's where I say I'm definitely more in B&C's camp than Benjamin's.

It won't take much to con me into seeing any of these five films in the immediate aftermath of reading this book.

I know it's the boring old anti-challops, but the scuba-diving gear scene in TG is fucking awesome. I'm still voting B&C tho.

E, you're going to subject yourself to Anthony Newley?

'Tom Servo if you don't stop doing your Anthony Newley impression I'm gonna throw you against the wall...'

I'm definitely more in B&C's camp than Benjamin's

benjamin probably feels the same way.

Not only would I subject myself to Newley, I'd even subject myself to Rex Harrison.

I can't not vote for Beatty/Hackman in the end.

Just want to add to the "goddamn is this a great book" chorus. (I voted B&C.)

Really want to read that. Also do I really have to wade in here and point out the BIG difference between '67 and '68? Production Code abandoned in '68.

Doctor Dolittle was the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, according to my mom (I caught meningitis that night, she claims). She had a momcrush on Newley. Our local PBS affiliate used to run all these brittle Rex Harrison films from the '30s and '40s and seen now they're all like watching Tony Blair's dissolute misogynist twin. Favourite is The Graduate, though.

Production Code abandoned in '68.

And the result was some of the dullest nominees in the history of the Oscars, I guess.

Rex Harrison is pretty super in Major Barbara and Unfaithfully yours, and even the by-the-numbers film of My Fair Lady.

The single scene that led Beatty to cast Hackman in B&C, his only one in Lilith, is a real stunner.

And the result was some of the dullest nominees in the history of the Oscars, I guess.

As opposed to the years before '68? I dunno, man.

Or after, yeah yeah yeah.

bonnie & clyde, though in the heat of the night is not to be sniffled at. i know i'm supposed to like the graduate... but i hate it.

'68 was The Lion in Winter, though. Only one of my top films of all time and probably one of the bitchiest films since All About Eve. <3

Yeah, TLIW has by far the best Hepburn Oscar-valiadted performance.

it's middlebrow fake-classy history sitcom stuff, but she's funny.

It's the ancestor of Peter Morgan's film/stage career.

so IOW, goddamn it to hell!

This book sort of keeps getting better and better. Loved the tidbit about how excited everyone on Heat's crew was about shooting in the south for authenticity. How excited everyone was, that is, except for Sidney Poitier.

And this video contains two of my three favorite Parsons moments in B&C:

This is when Hollywood cinema starts to become a problem for me. I find the pomposity of The New Hollywood unearned. And in general, 1967-1980 reeks of two steps forward-six steps back, esp. re: the dismantling of the Production Code. Still, I'd like to read Harris' book even though the word "Revolution" immediately makes me skeptical. And like Eric, I love stories about doomed and/or clueless productions (although my fave example is the unwatchable Song of Norway).

If we're merely voting for our favorite film here, then Bonnie & Clyde for me please.

^Oh, interesting. Tell us what you like about the Production Code.

It's not about liking the Production Code. It's about the absurdity of the idea that with its dismantling we could finally talk about this, that, or the other taboo subject in film.

But after reading Patricia White on the Production Code restrictions of These Three (1936) and how it differs from the supposedly more progressive remake The Children's Hour, I could easily say I love the Production Code (in this particular instance).

See also Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape. And This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

The Children's Hour (1961)

Yeah, the quality of Hollywood filmmaking really picked up in 1980.

It's about the absurdity of the idea that with its dismantling we could finally talk about this, that, or the other taboo subject in film.

oh yes how absurd.

...

What Compromises, on HOTN, did SidPoit have to make, like?

Still, voting that.

Yeah, the quality of Hollywood filmmaking really picked up in 1980.

Um, 1967-1980 isn't my periodization. That's the story the New Hollywood and its acolytes want everyone to believe, that from Bonnie & Clyde to Heaven's Gate (or Jaws in other estimations) we had some sort of cinematic paradise and that Hollywood films were soooo much more demonstrably worse or regressive after that. If you buy that reasoning, more power to ya, sweet cheeks.

And Scorsese, for one, really DID pick up after 1980.

oh yes how absurd.

Glad that's cleared up.

Um, 1967-1980 isn't my periodization. That's the story the New Hollywood and its acolytes want everyone to believe, that from Bonnie & Clyde to Heaven's Gate (or Jaws in other estimations) we had some sort of cinematic paradise and that Hollywood films were soooo much more demonstrably worse or regressive after that.

jesus, i think people overate the new hollywood cinema but you've strawmanned the shit out of this. leave it to the pros.

Look, it's enough to say that Hollywood produced more crap than good films before and after the Production Code, m'kay?

I don't buy that they were markedly worse after 1980 (I like Spielberg, after all), but I don't buy that they were so great in the period immediately leading up to 1967 either -- the auteurist heyday of the '50s had pretty much run out of gas.

I don't blame the Production Code for crappy, toothless Hollywood movies. I blame the fact that most of what topped the box-office charts during that time were crappy, toothless Hollywood movies.

hollywood has always, always produced more crap than good. you can argue about percentages if you want to. but this question is not about 'was hollywood in 1971 better than in 1946?'; it's about 'was hollywood in 1971 better than in 1965?'

yes, i reckon.

and it's also about, were 'taboo' subjects discussed more after the end of the code. unquestionably that's a yes, however flawed things were in practice.

people vastly overrate classic hollywood 'auteurs' imo -- very marginal differences in approach with most of 'em -- but the system functioned better than now in terms of acceptable minimums. shame about the racism etc.

In any case, I don't love Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because it is said to have directly ended the influence of the Production Code. I love it because it's a fucking fantastic movie that couldn't have been made as it was made even two or three years earlier.

It is not a fantastic movie, it's a very fine film of a fantastic (if arguably misogynist?) theatre piece.

That moany more great Hollywood films were made before '67 than after seems obvious.

And yet, I guess I kinda know where you're coming from in a sense. I don't have the book handy right now, but I remember something in Michael Gebert's "Encyclopedia of Movie Awards" declaring the exact moment when Old Hollywood truly died: Oct. 26, 1962 -- the day Whatever Happened to Baby Jane premiered and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were depicted as two shrill drag queen wannabes.

In other words, at least Old Hollywood had women's pictures. New Hollywood was for the boys alone.

I mean, if you buy that. Which I don't. But if you do.

xpost and Morbs presages that very point

How can Virginia Woolf be misogynistic if it's about four men?

Because it isnt?

Oops, my mistake. I was thinking about Oleanna.

That many more great Hollywood films were made before '67 than after seems obvious.

Wishful thinking. Michael Bay and Tom Cruise movies just seem louder.

Maria von Trapp right through to the danger zone

no-one has seen even a tiny fraction of hollywood's output, stop fronting with that shit.

It's funny we're arguing this because weren't the '70s also the era of the most rampant Golden Age Hollywood nostalgia?

Eric, you may be confusing Albee w/ Tennessee Wms on that score, tho it's possible neither of them knows much about women.

Even cracks in the Production Code had almost killed the romantic comedy by 1950. Now we have sex comedies, very unfortunate.

ethasn you fucking dipshit, no kidding, we're talking about the good stuff we've seen and making educated guesses on the crap.

ethan is also arguing against people who would rather see a bad movie from a perceived golden era than a good movie from a perceived overpraised/cool era

OK now I'm completely confused about the terms of the conversation here. But part of what I was getting at is that the Production Code was not federal law. It was not mandated that all films/producers adhere to it. So the American film landscape pre-1967 was much more varied that New Hollywooders proclaim (oh and strawman, my ass - do you know how many times that story gets repeated, esp. in film school?). Does that mean that more people flocked to see Maniac instead of Maytime? Of course not. But Hollywood wasn't the only game and that reality allowed a film like Mom and Dad (1945) to become ridiculously successful.

And when it comes to homosexuality, which always falls victim to the tyranny of evidence, to what extent didn't the classical Hollywood cinema "discuss" it?

As for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, oooh doggies! I cannot think of any pre-1967 film with more arch, unnatural, wince-inducing dialogue. That film's rep completely baffles me.

Morbs, FREE DOM AND ETHAN is NRQ, not ethan.

I mean, the extent to which people fetishize the good old days of "sophistication", "wit" and artillery-style "crafstmanship" is usually every bit as arrogant as the mass of cinephile fratboy-fanboys who will never tire of the taste of Scorsese's cock.

If you regard it as a filmed play (as I do), it won't gall as much. I don't mind Long Day's Journey Into Night either.

Morbs, FREE DOM AND ETHAN is NRQ, not ethan.

Oops, I knew that. I was going to bring up Sirk because of it, but refrained.

well, arch and unnatural is what Virginia is all about. xxxxp

But if taboo-breaking was what cinema is all about, Preminger would be recognized as king.

The Production Code ensured subtext (from filmmakers who knew how to supply it, at least).

(yeah it's nrq; same shit, different shitter)

Morbs OTM.

So is Woolf supposed to be like The Bald Soprano then?

ethan is also arguing against people who would rather see a bad movie from a perceived golden era than a good movie from a perceived overpraised/cool era

And that ain't me, babe! I've seen every Joan Crawford film of the 1930s and 95% are godawful. I've seen Maytime (biggest moneymaker of 1937) and, um, Maniac is easier to sit through. I've seen buckets of mind-numbingly bad obscure musicals that should have remained in whatever vault they were rotting in. I'm a Mill Creek Entertainment junkie so I've seen enough Poverty Row crap for a lifetime.

I adore the classical Hollywood cinema, But you won't catch me calling it a Golden Age. Or any other era, for that matter.

And fwiw, my two favorite films are form 1973 and 1970.

Oh and after Sirk, Preminger WAS king.

And that ain't me, babe! I've seen every Joan Crawford film of the 1930s and 95% are godawful. I've seen Maytime (biggest moneymaker of 1937) and, um, Maniac is easier to sit through. I've seen buckets of mind-numbingly bad obscure musicals that should have remained in whatever vault they were rotting in. I'm a Mill Creek Entertainment junkie so I've seen enough Poverty Row crap for a lifetime.

The fact that you've sat through them all doesn't exactly dissuade me from my notion that you get off on the era.

this "subtext" thing is more or less an invention of post-70s academia so far as i can tell. never seen audience studies to back it up, just "enlightened" readings.

And there ya have the tyranny of evidence.

This all said, I'd be very interested to see your take on this book, KJB. I don't think it's drunk on the Kool-Aid of easy riders and raging bulls, and even though it takes totally defensible potshots against SOME aspects of Old Hollywood (most of the Dolittle material, though it's rarely used as a strawman IMO), it doesn't needlessly fawn over the supposedly obvious greatness of B&C or The Graduate.

im not sure what 'tyranny of evidence' means. but i've not seen contemporary readings of sirk that notice what crazy radical ideas he snuck into his films. they came later, in the '70s. unless someone has counter-evidence. so in other words, if those films had a subtext, who read it at the time?

But part of what I was getting at is that the Production Code was not federal law. It was not mandated that all films/producers adhere to it.

Nobody stops the studios from making NC-17 films either, and yet here we are.

I don't think it's drunk on the Kool-Aid of easy riders and raging bulls

Sold! I'll get on it ASAP.

if those films had a subtext, who read it at the time?

Gay people, for one.

as i say, i've never seen evidence of that... though haven't look too hard because i don't think sirk's films are very good. moving the goalposts a bit, i don't think saying "well they DID deal with that, but it was all SUBTEXTUAL" is a super argument. audiences will get what they'll get from a film.

sirk begfan to get attention in the late 60s not because of the gays but because he was a former leftist with brechtian connections (yawn) from back in the day.

xpost Did they have a choice? It's not like they had such comprehensive representation otherwise, at least not until the post office were finally allowed to delive them their physique pictorals.

(That sed, I'm definitely in the camp arguing on behalf of subtext.)

An example of a film that's ALL subtext and no text: Far From Heaven.

Imitation of Life and Written on the Wind don't require examination of subtext to be entertaining; that's what's been lost after years of graduate theses written on Sirk. I mean, there's a reason why his films were massive box office hits.

It's not like they had such comprehensive representation otherwise

I don't know. Do the careers of the great priss queens like Franklin Pangborn or Clifton Webb count as representation? There's a good essay in Cinema Journal about the "open secret" of Webb's career.

What about William Haines? Cary Grant (check his Tijuana Bible)? The MGM musicals (Steven Cohan's Incongruous Entertainment is superb on this)?

What counts as evidence of homosexuality?

An example of a film that's ALL subtext and no text: Far From Heaven.

Game, set and match.

far from heaven was an ok exercise de style.

Do the careers of the great priss queens like Franklin Pangborn or Clifton Webb count as representation? There's a good essay in Cinema Journal about the "open secret" of Webb's career.

yea exactly, there's a good essay *many decades later* explaining how something nobody perceived was actually a thing.

arguing that that state of affairs was better seems weird. things aren't perfect now, of course, but there's a kind of process of projection onto the past going on here imho.

yea exactly, there's a good essay *many decades later* explaining how something nobody perceived was actually a thing.

Don't be mad just because Larry Kramer said every American president up to and including Abraham Lincoln was gay.

something nobody perceived

Nobody perceived it? Absolutely nobody? Do you honestly believe this?

maybe this is what you mean by 'tyranny of evidence', but... that kind of thing needs evidence! not a very radical proposition.

even then, as i say, people will project what they want on to a film. maybe they'll be able to read x-character as 'gay', but there's quite obviously going to be massive parts of that that just won't be, could not be put on screen.

(and sure enough things did not change overnight in 1967, but are you really arguing that it's better to deal with things 'subtextually' than not. i think denby agrees with that.)

and sure enough things did not change overnight in 1967

Hence, as I'm just getting to in the book, Beatty and Penn backing out of the original script's fairly explicit acknowledgement of Clyde's homo- or bisexuality. While Harris doesn't cut either any slack, he also points out that 1966 was the year that Time Magazine could print out-and-out antigay vitriol and sell it as journalism without anyone batting an eye.

are you really arguing that it's better to deal with things 'subtextually' than not

But to what extent were Franklin Pangborn's characters subtextually gay? Did these characters NEED to say "Yo, I am homosexual. Now let's get on with some Sturges slapstick!"? Did they NEED to passionately kiss other men in the first shot? Yet again, what counts as evidence? And what does it mean to perpetually require such evidence?

Look, I'm not being naive here. I'm not saying that millions of Americans were hip to homosexuality or whatever pre-The New Hollywood/1967/Stonewall. But we have diaries and letters and photographs that even predate cinema which offer the kind of evidence you seem to require. It's not for nothing Tom Waugh called his remarkable book of pre-Stonewall gay male photography Hard To Imagine. But there's your evidence?

Now what?

But there's your evidence. (period)

Did these characters NEED to say "Yo, I am homosexual. Now let's get on with some Sturges slapstick!"? Did they NEED to passionately kiss other men in the first shot?

actually i don't know! i'm not a gay guy in the 1940s. i think if i were, i would maybe not want to be in such a homophobic society whose popular culture was unable directly to address large parts of my experience or the obstacles i faced. having elements of gay eroticism in certain parts of the culture a la tom waugh would maybe not make up for that? idk.

waugh's book is not exactly a work on audience response.

(sidebar: were there characters in '30s films who were 'subtextually black?')

'the studio' is a classic.

think i'd go 'heat of the night' -- haven't seen it in 10 years but it didn't strike me as soft-serve at the time -- or 'graduate'.

― FREE DOM AND ETHAN (special guest stars mark bronson), Friday, April 24, 2009 9:53 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark

knew i could trust u ~~~ heat of the night by a mile for me

tyranny of evidence'

I keep reading this as 'tranny of evidence'

do not get the love for In the Heat of the Night, which I thought was okay but rather boring, and the murder mystery element of it was very "um duh"

having elements of gay eroticism in certain parts of the culture a la tom waugh would maybe not make up for that?

That was just an example of hardcore (!) evidence (for some; others would no doubt still poke holes in it and rightfully so perhaps). My point is that Franklin Pangborn's demeanor was evidence enough. So was Clifton Webb's as Leonard Leff's Cinema Journal piece makes VERY clear (although you might feel differently).

waugh's book is not exactly a work on audience response.

Well, that's debatable, esp. since so much of it concerns amateur photography. Certainly Otis Wade was audience to the men he photographed in a 1938 locker room ('hard to imagine?' more like 'boggles the mind!').

(sidebar: were there characters in '30s films who were 'subtextually black?')

An excellent question. I dunno really. The 1934 Imitation of Life springs to mind although I'm not sure how subtextual race is in that film. Can one say that race is subtextual to some of the characters but not the audience? Perhaps Richard Dyer's White would offer some clues for other films. Jezebel (1938) maybe?

Beyond subtext, one of Haskell's points in From Reverence to Rape is that the screwball comedies of the 1930s gave women a mobility they lacked in 1970s cinema when they hadn't disappeared altogether in the spate of New Hollywood buddy films.

Certainly subtext is at play here too. Was the end of Stella Dallas (1937) really sad for all women in the 1930s?

OK, I just finished reading the sequence involving the shooting of Spencer Tracy's climactic speech and I'm fucking tearing up ... for a movie that I'm positive I'll think is laughable and ridiculous whenever I actually get around to seeing it.

It's really the classiest moment in a vulgar film.

arguing that that state of affairs was better seems weird.

for myriad reasons, the peaks of the art were more frequent.

just finished reading the sequence involving the shooting of Spencer Tracy's climactic speech and I'm fucking tearing up

but not at the scene itself? it's all about the Bazinian doubling of the Kate-Spence real-life relationship.

nuthin kills a thread like "Bazinian doubling"

Should be getting this book from my library any day now...really looking forward to reading it.

I've seen the scene itself, and to the extent that I doubt it would have much power without knowing or being aware of the backstory, yeah, I guess it's a Bazinian double.

well, the original audience knew some of it as Tracy was dead before it was released, and were aware of T&H's 25-year partnership onscreen if not off (and I'd guess the savvier movie-mag readers knew that too).

Heat is on TCM right now, caught the greenhouse slap.

How savvy? Harris floats the possibility/probability that, respectively, Tracy/Hepburn were not hetero.

I don't believe those Tracy homo rumors; and, yeah, the scene isn't half as poignant without knowing it's a perfect obit moment.

I don't believe those Tracy homo rumors

Me neither; but you know me ... I don't even believe the Paul Newman homo rumors.

i'll send you some remixes Paul did

And now we get to the Kael vs. Crowther fites. OK, this book does seem a little bit flattering to pre-standing notions of modern cinephilia.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

In the end, I went with my favorite, though the making of Bonnie & Clyde is probably the least interesting story in the whole book.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Without having seen it, I find myself wishing Dinner had managed maybe one or two more votes.

the extent to which people fetishize the good old days of "sophistication", "wit"

we know you don't admire those qualities even w/out the quotes!

nice xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

?

Found this used for $7! I'm fighting sleep just to make it to the next page. Very gripping throughout choked with tons of amazing stories/factoids. Bout 1/4 of the way through and I have some reservations. But overall, fantastic book! Thanx for the tip, Eric H.

Great, though I imagine you're going to really loathe the section describing the Oscarcast that year. Harris really lets the facade drop and comes out cheerleading for the new gen.

Very entertaining book.

Finally got tired of waiting for my local library to get a loaner copy of the Harris book, bought a copy Friday.

OK I've finished this and I thought the cheerleading was actually quite muted (save for the very last paragraph). Or rather, it comes through less in any specific statements of Harris' than in the structure of the book, i.e., what he chose to leave out. The truncated epilogue creates the illusion of a revolution more than anything in the book. So reading it was an absolute pleasure. It's only now, recollecting the argument in its entirety, that I feel snippy. In short, revolution my foot.

I rewatched most of these films while reading. Don't need to see The Graduate for a long time again since I've taught it so many damn times. But basically, my order of preference hasn't changed:

Bonnie & Clyde
In the Heat of the Night
The Graduate
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - I want to like it more than The Graduate and Spencer Tracy deserved the Oscar no matter how much it would have set back the, um, revolution. But ugh, even on purely dramatic terms, it's insufferable.
Doctor Dolittle - A complete nightmare. This cannot be the same Richard Fleischer who directed one of the tightest thrill rides ever, The Narrow Margin! Could any two narrative films be more different? And the "songs" were godawful! I must be familiar with another version of "Talk to the Animals" because this one made no impression whatsoever. More than once, the musical notes surrounding the closed captioning were seriously the only way I knew a "song" had started. I admit with no guilt that I fast-forwarded the last third or so (right past those charming natives). And the pink snail money shot! Sadness. Still, the precise extent to which this film represents "old Hollywood" should have been explored a bit more in the book.

OK this book obviously hit me a bit harder than I imagined. I had a dream last night in which I won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1967! (I have no clue for what film.) I must have been very young too because a lot of people treated me like a kid, saying things like "Aw, I can see your movie star face coming in now." (!!!)

Warren Beatty was using a cheesy cardboard sign to push me out of the auditorium to get me to go to a party with him. Annoyed, I said "What the hell are you doing? I want to stay and talk with my well-wishers and fans." "Fine!" he said all snippy and walked away from me in a huff.

I woke up with my heart beating very rapidly.

Wtf???

wow, you upset George Kennedy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikk0xfbtVKM

http://filmexperience.blogspot.com/2009/07/were-1967-1979-oscars-most-fascinating.html

that kind of speculation ... man, baseball geeks are nowhere as nerdy as Oscar geeks.

I've read about a third of this book... I wish I'd seen Hoffman play that crippled German transvestite off-Broadway.

also, Katie Hepburn talking about how helpful blacks were in the jungle, what a loony old New England biddy

Fun re-read, this thread. Especially the part where Kev seems to argue gay people were better represented in the era of Franklin Pangborn than the era of Pink Narcissus and Paul Morrissey.

oh c'mon, surely he was talking about films the public actually saw?

First the meltdown on the gay thread, now picking fights here. Everything okay, eric h?

Fine, I just think the notion that Franklin Pangborn is anything other than an embarrassment (albeit a necessary embarrassment) is bizarre.

he's hilarious in those great comedies you hate

This was a ferociously entertaining book... and it was as close to a "revolution" as Hollywood gets, given how his clucking over B&C ousted Bosley Crowther, the death of the Production Code, the way copying The Sound of Music by producing mega-musicals killed at least one studio, etc.

Poitier is the tragic hero of this book. I wonder why he didn't want to play Othello on TV, really? Insecurity about his chops?

I'd read a few things about Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts before, but lordy ... her howling like a dog and doing underwearless handstanda in front of Jimmy Stewart...

Yes, when it comes down to it, this was the most compulsively entertaining read on moviemaking I think I've ever cracked.

Some of the old/new guard pairings were a hoot... Jack Warner to Beatty: "What the fuck's an homage?!"

"That was a three-piss picture!"

Yeah, I read this earlier this month -- in about a week, which is quick for me. Hard to put down.

However, it failed to inspire me to rent Dr Doolittle.

LOL!

Yes, when it comes down to it, this was the most compulsively entertaining read on moviemaking I think I've ever cracked.
― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Monday, September 28, 2009

OTM. I re-read Easy Riders, Raging Bulls afterward and it was clearly the lesser book.

While acknowledging the impact of Bonnie and Clyde, etc, PAAR is less in love with the era's mythos than Easy Riders is about his.

Yep. The scale of it helps, too: the time frame is narrower and that helps keep things focused. But Harris is just a better writer, flat out.

Harris' empathy helps too. Who comes closest to receiving Biskind's pity in Easy Riders -- Hal Ashby? Bob Evans?

However, it failed to inspire me to rent Dr Doolittle.

I actually made a project out of it and watched all five movies before reading the book. (Only one I had seen before was The Graduate.) Liked Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, and The Graduate to varying degrees. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was terrible but fascinating as a historical artifact, while Dr. Dolittle was just a slog. Not even the sight of Rex Harrison serenading a seal in a bonnet was worth it, though it was on Netflix On Demand, so at least I didn't have to spend any money on it.

Rex was ill-equipped to be a movie star after a career as a Shavian stage comedian.

The only role in which he's at all bearable is as the composer in Unfaithfully Yours.

no, he's good in Major Barbara, Cleopatra, and even that ossified film version of MFLady.

(I am still kicking myself for not seeing him in Shaw's Heartbreak House on Broadway in the early '80s.)

This book really holds up.

OK this book obviously hit me a bit harder than I imagined. I had a dream last night in which I won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1967!

lol so much @ this

i watched guess who's coming to dinner for the 1st time -- it's not bad. tracy is great & its fun imo to watch almost every character pair off and have their own lil convo abt whats goin on, etc

graduate > b&c btw

I should poll Hepburn's Oscar-nominated performances.

I've watched Bonnie & Clyde every few years over three-plus decades--from an initial "Huh?", it gets better every time I go back to it, and Harris's book helped that along a little more. But I still would have voted for The Graduate, which is part of my movie-going DNA.

the whole 1960s was a horrid decade for mainstream american movies. but 1965–68 were probably the worst years of all. maybe the nadir of the commercial american cinema (the early '90s, excepting some shining indie films, were pretty bad too).

excepting experimental films (which is hard, because warhol, baillie, brakhage etc. were on fire this year), i guess these are my favorite films of 1967 in roughly descending order...

Point Blank
David Holzman's Diary
Two for the Road
Bonnie and Clyde
Portrait of Jason
In the Heat of the Night
In Cold Blood
The Fearless Vampire Killers
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Cool Hand Luke
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
The Legend of Lylah Clare

most of these are pretty flawed films, but all have something to recommend them.

i left off hellman's 'the shooting' because it wasn't released until a few years later. if it counts, put it after portrait of jason.

i should have said those are my favorite AMERICAN films.

also dr. doolittle really is an atrocity.

I couldn't finish rewatching Two For the Road a few months ago.

yeah, that's a pretty good list but I didn't like Two for the Road either.

Stanley Donen also did Bedazzled that year, which is nominally British but was produced by Donen and Fox; whatever it is, it's not much more British than 2ftR.

Who's That Knocking at My Door was technically '67, although just a film festival screening. That'd be on my list, probably Titicut Follies, too, even though Wiseman got much better. It was a dire year:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_1967

the dirty dozen was much better than any of the Oscar-nominated American films from this year, IMHO.

(tho' i do like in the heat of the night, the graduate and bonnie & clyde well enough)

i love reflections in a golden eye more than any of these films with the exception of Point Blank

Stanley Donen also did Bedazzled that year, which is nominally British but was produced by Donen and Fox; whatever it is, it's not much more British than 2ftR.

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Sunday, February 12, 2012 8:29 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's true, but like you said somehow bedazzled is considered a UK film b/c of financing.

in honesty i haven't seen 24tR in a few years. i remember being very impressed by it -- thinking its resnais-inspired scrambled timeline and elliptical editing was both virtuosic and put to good purpose. but i may just have come in w/ low expectations.

as a sort of supplement to his book, Mark Harris has a biweekly Film Comment column on '67 in film

Blowup (Dec '66) first up

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cinema-67-revisited-blow/

Harris on Preminger and Ritt's topical race movies

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cinema-67-revisited-hurry-sundown-hombre/

thought you were gonna post that terrible Beatty-Kael piece

rong year, silly

Not really -- B&C is a linchpin of the essay.

I think the Netflix series of Five Came Back is released tomorrow.

the 4K Criterion of The Graduate on Blu Ray is a thing of absolute beauty. not having seen it for a good 10-15 years or so i'd not thought of it as an especially good looking film, nor particularly well photographed. couldn't have been more wrong.

Some of it is (intentionally) grotesque--the first party scene, the wedding--but I agree that there's soft-focus stuff that's beautiful: Elaine leaving for Berkeley, the zoo, the "April Come She Will" sequence.

'67 best-ofs, including Mama Cass's

http://lwlies.com/articles/best-film-lists-of-1967/

I threw together my best-of for L'boxd; Weekend came closer to making it than any of the Oscar nominees.

1. PlayTime
2. Point Blank
3. Belle de Jour
4. Mouchette
5. Le Samouraï
6. The Red and the White
7. David Holzman’s Diary
8. Titicut Follies
9. Bedazzled
10. Wavelength
11. The President’s Analyst
12. The Two of Us

I had BDJ and Weekendp on my '68 list:

Playtime (Jacques Tati)
La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard)
Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
Point Blank (John Boorman)
Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki)
Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston)
La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer, France)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson)
Love Affair; Or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dusan Makavejev)

Reflections is close for me, Brando possible best actor (if not Marvin or Tati)

doctor doolittle is *the worst*, yet it contains cinema's greatest minute pic.twitter.com/nZRgY3Db9b

— Neely O'Horror (@_katiestebbins_) September 17, 2019

otm

have we rethought these?

I don’t think I was here for the first round, but those numbers look about right to me (still have never seen GWCtD, though).

The vote distribution almost perfectly parallels how the book views the films, I'd say--#2 and #4 could maybe add a couple of more votes each. Still think '75 would make a great sequel: two popular critical successes (Dog Day and winner Cuckoo's Nest), two sprawling auteur films (Nashville and Barry Lyndon--great ones, before the debacles that mark the turn of the decade), and, pointing the way to the future (and a greater film than almost all the massive box-office fare that follows), Jaws.