The DVD Report #192: January 25, 2011

Oscar went retrograde in 1973 and gave the Best Picture award to the rousing caper film, The Sting, set in the 1930s with the music of an earlier time, ragtime, which became popular all over again thanks to the film. Superstars Paul Newman and Robert Redford ensured big box office, with Redford accounting for one of the film’s ten nominations, but not one of its seven wins. In addition to Best Picture, it garnered awards for Best Director (George Roy Hill), Original Screenplay, Editing, Art Direction, Costume Design, and of course, Adapted Score (Marvin Hamlisch). There isn’t anything wrong with the film, but its big wins over much edgier fare seemed somewhat puzzling then, almost ridiculous now. Its competition included a celebrated horror film, a teenage comedy with a classic rock soundtrack and a somber Swedish film about death and dying, but they were hardly the things that Oscar was ready to embrace. Except for one later exception, it still isn’t.

Horror films were pretty much ignored by Oscar prior to 1973. Until this year, Fredric March was the only performer to win an Oscar for one, 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,and only Janet Leigh in 1960’s Psycho,Bette Davis and Victor Buono in 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Agnes Moorehead in 1964’s Hush, Hush…Sweet Charlotte were subsequently nominated. No horror film had ever been nominated for Best Picture. With ten Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Director (William Friedkin), Actress (Ellen Burstyn), Supporting Actor (Jason Miller) and Supporting Actress (Linda Blair), The Exorcist made Oscar history. While it would tie The Sting in nominations, it would win only two Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. It would take another eighteen years for a horror film would take home the top prize.

Classic rock music permeated the soundtrack of American Graffiti, a marvelously engaging comedy about the last night of car cruising in a small town by two high school buddies before they go their separate ways. The film, which was produced by Francis Ford Coppola, was George Lucas’ second feature film and the one that made everyone sit up and take notice. It also either established or enhanced the careers of its entire cast, including Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul LeMat, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips and Oscar nominated Candy Clark. The film was nominated for five Oscars in all, including Best Director, but lost them all. Its best selling soundtrack album remains popular to this day.

Sweden’s legendary writer-director-producer, Ingmar Bergman, had received two previous nominations for writing and the distinguished Thalberg Award for producing two years earlier, but had never been nominated for his direction until now. Cries and Whispers, about the sibling rivalries of three sisters at the deathbed of one of them in turn-of-the-century Sweden was the backdrop for Cries and Whispers, a New York Film Critics award winner for Best Picture the year before, but because of the oddities of film distribution, ineligible for Oscar consideration until now. The film, which starred Liv Ullmann, Harriet Andersson and Ingrid Thulin as the sisters, was nominated for five Oscars and won one for Sven Nykvist’s exquisite cinematography.

The fifth nominee, A Touch of Class, was even more retrograde than The Sting. A smarmy comedy about an illicit affair between American George Segal and Brit Glenda Jackson, the film was completely devoid of class, and had very little charm. What little charm it did have was in Jackson’s bemused performance, which seemed to say “what am I doing here?” It was enough to win her a surprise second Best Actress Oscar over four much more deserving nominees. It was the film’s only win out of five nominations.

Other films that Oscar liked this year included The Way We Were; Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams; Cinderella Liberty; Paper Moon; The Paper Chase; Last Tango in Paris; The Last Detail; Serpico; Save the Tiger and Bang the Drum Slowly, but not Mean Streets.

In addition to The Sting, Robert Redford and Marvin Hamlisch also had a hit with Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were, for which Hamlisch won two more Oscars, one for Original Score and one for Original Song, the latter shared with Marilyn and Alan Bergman. Co-starring Barbra Stresiand, whose recording of the Oscar winning title song was a career high, the film has a strong beginning and ending, with a rather wobbly mid-section. That wobbly mid-section wasn’t enough to keep it from receiving a total of six nominations, including one for Best Actress.

Streisand’s chief competition for the win, until Glenda Jackson’s shocking victory, was yet a third former Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, who had won her second New York Film Critics Award for her portrayal of a difficult woman going through a mid-life crisis in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. Veteran actress Sylvia Sidney received the first nomination in her long career as Woodward’s abrasive mother.

The fifth Best Actress nominee was newcomer Marsha Mason as a waterfront prostitute raising a child on her own in Mark Rydell’s Cinderalla Liberty, which was also nominated for Best Song and Best Original Score.

Sixty-three year-old Sylvia Sidney lost the Supporting Actress award to ten year-old Tatum O’Neal in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon. The Depression Era comedy was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound and O’Neal’s fellow supporting actress nominee, Madeline Kahn. Tatum’s father, Ryan O’Neal was top-billed. Tatum, though, was the film’s real star, with her category placement stirring somewhat of a controversy in retrospect, btu not then. She was a hugely popular winner.

The year’s most controversial film, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris about a young French woman’s uninhibited affair with a middle-aged American businessman, received only two nominations, for Best Director and Actor (Marlon Brando). Brando’s competition, in addition to the afore-mentioned Robert Redford, included Jack Nicholson as a sailor escorting a prisoner to the brig in Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail; Al Pacino as an a real-life undercover cop who blows the whistle on corruption with the NYC police department in Sidney Lumet’s Serpico and Jack Lemmon as a middle-aged garment factory owner on the verge of bankruptcy in John G. Avildsen’s Save the Tiger.

Lemmon’s performance was the least impressive of the lot, but he was the favorite going into the race as he hadn’t won since his first nomination in the Supporting Actor category for 1955’s Mister Roberts and although he had three subsequent Best Actor nominations, he hadn’t been nominated since 1962’s Days of Wine and Roses. Sometimes the back story counts more than the performance with Oscar voters.

The Last Detail was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Randy Quaid) and Adapted Screenplay; Serpico for Adapted Screenplay and Save the Tiger for Supporting Actor (Jack Gilford) and Original Screenplay.

The supporting actor winner was producer John Houseman in his first major acting role as the stern professor in James Bridges The Paper Chase, which was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound.

A supporting actor nomination had also gone to veteran stage actor Vincent Gardenia in his most substantial screen role to date as a big league baseball club’s colorful manager in John D. Hancock’s Bang the Drum Slowly, which starred Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro. De Niro also scored in Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough film, Mean Streets, which failed to be nominated for anything.

All films discussed have been released on DVD within the U.S.

Thsi week’s new DVD releases include Secretariat on Blue-ray and standard DVD; the Blue-ray debuts of Broadcast News; The Color Purple and A Beautiful Mind, and the Criterion standard DVD release of Basil Dearden’s London Underground featuring four of the acclaimed directors’ best films (Sapphire; The League of Gentlemen; Victim and All Night Long).

-Peter J. Patrick (January 25, 2011)

The DVD Report #191: January 18, 2011

Nowadays it would be extremely unlikely, if not outright impossible, for the year’s two “best” films to open in the first quarter of the year. Yet that’s exactly what happened in 1972.

Cabaret opened on February 13th, nine days before the previous year’s Oscar nominations were announced and The Godfather on March 24th, three days after the previous year’s ceremony, both to near unanimous adulation from critics and audiences alike. Both were instantly seen as the indisputable front-runners for that year’s Oscars. The only question was which one would win Best Picture, and what would be their token competition.

The Golden Globes as expected, awarded both, The Godfather in Drama, Cabaret in Musical/Comedy while The National Board of Review chose Cabaret. Both the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics sidestepped the issue by giving their awards to foreign language films. The NSFC went for Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which would go on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The NYFC chose Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, which would have to wait until the following year to have a shot at Oscar do to the difference in N.Y. and L.A. release dates.

The Godfather led the nominations with ten, but would win only three Oscars, albeit important ones – Best Picture, Actor (Marlon Brando) and Adapted Screenplay (Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola). Cabaret would be nominated for ten and win eight, including Best Actress (Liza Minnelli), Supporting Actor (Joel Grey) and Director (Bob Fosse).

The Godfather was the first epic gangster film, the first in which family was more important than anything else, not that it stinted on the blood-letting. Far from it, but as violent as it gets, some of the most gut-wrenching death scenes are those reserved for betrayal within the family, both the extended gangster family and the related family of the central characters, the Corleones.

Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall all received Oscar nominations for Supporting Actor, and Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Richard Castellano, Sterling Hayden and many others turned in fine performances as well.

Based on Kander and Ebb’s groundbreaking musical of the rise of Hitler, juxtaposed against the backdrop of decadent 1920s Berlin, Cabaret was based on John Van Druten’s play, I Am a Camera, itself based on Christopher Isherwood’s autobiographical book, Berlin Stories.

Liza Minnelli is Sally Bowles, the modestly talented British singer who wants to be a film star and Michael York is Brian Roberts, an aspiring writer based on Isherwood. Helmut Griem is the bisexual playboy who seduces them both and Joel Grey the master of ceremonies at the seedy nightclub in which Sally performs. Marisa Berenson is the young rich woman Brian teaches English to in order to pay the rent. If there is one complaint about the film, it’s that Minnelli is too accomplished a singer to be playing a character who can’t really sing or dance or do anything well. It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t want it any other way.

The three films that the Academy nominated to go against the two behemoths were John Boorman’s Deliverance; Jan Troell’s The Emigrants and Martin Ritt’s Sounder.

Musical film themes could still sell films in 1972 and the toe-tap inducing “Dueling Banjoes” from Deliverance was one of the most popular, but anyone expecting to see a jaunty film based on the best-selling record was in for a shock. Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox were the four friends who journey down river to devastating effects in America’s back-country. Its three nominations also included Best Director and Editing.

1972 was also the time when foreign language films were at their most popular at the box-office. The epic Swedish film, The Emigrants, about the struggle of a group of Swedish farmers to leave their harsh life and emigrate to the U.S. in the mid 19th Century, was one of the best. Followed by an equally impressive sequel, The New Land, the following year, the film was nominated for five Oscars including Best Director and Actress (Liv Ullmann).

The struggles of a family of black sharecroppers in the Deep South was the subject of Sounder, an exhilarating family film which also received nominations for Best Actor (Paul Scofield), Actress (Cicely Tyson) and Adapted Screenplay.

Other films that Oscar liked this year included The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; Murmur of the Heart; The Candidate; The Ruling Class; The Heartbreak Kid; Pete ‘n’ Tillie; Butterflies Are Free; Travels With My Aunt; Lady Sings the Blues; The Poseidon Adventure; Young Winston; 1776; Sleuth and Fat City, but not Frenzy or Child’s Play.

A surreal comedy of great charm, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, in addition to its win for Best Foreign Language Film, was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, the first of only two nominations the great Spanish writer-director Luis Bunuel received in his long and distinguished career. French writer-director Louis Malle also received his first nomination (of three) for writing Murmur of the Heart, about an unconventional French family in the 1950s. The film they lost to, Michael Ritchie’s The Candidate, provides a scathing look at modern American politics with Robert Redford as a Senatorial candidate with nothing but good looks and a quick wit to sustain him. It was also nominated for Best Sound.

A dark comedy if there ever was one, Peter Madek’s The Ruling Class garnered Peter O’Toole his fifth Oscar nomination for his delicious portrayal of the delusional British Earl who believes himself to be both Jack the Ripper and Jesus Christ. Other dark comedies included The Heartbreak Kid, nominated for Best Supporting Actor Eddie Albert and Supporting Actress Jeannie Berlin, and Pete ‘n’ Tillie, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actress Geraldine Page.

Comedy of a more refined nature was evident in Milton Katselas’ Butterfleis Are Free, which earned Eileen Heckart a much deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as the obsessive mother of a young blind man. The film was also nominated for Best Cinematography and Sound. George Cukor’s Travels With My Aunt was an Auntie Mame wannabe, that nevertheless had its moments, almost all of them involving Best Actress nominee Maggie Smith. Also nominated for Best Cinematography and Art Direction, it won for Best Costume Design over The Godfather; Lady Sings the Blues; The Poseidon Adventure and Young Winston.

Nominated for five Oscars including Best Actress, Diana Ross, Sidney J. Furie’s Lady Sings the Blues was expected be a hit based on its subject, jazz great Billie Holliday. What no one expected was that contemporary singer Ross would prove to be a dramatic force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately her subsequent acting career did not measure up to this one piece of brilliant work.

One of the most successful of the numerous disaster films of the era, Ronald Neame’s The Poseidon Adventure was nominated for eight Oscars and won one for Best Song, “The Morning After”. It also won a Special Oscar for Best Visual Effects, which did not have its own category at the time. Shelley Winters was nominated for her performance.

An historical drama, Richard Attenborough’s Young Winston was a bit stuffy in portraying the relationship of American born Lady Jennie Churchill (Anne Bancroft) to her famous son (Simon Ward), but was good enough to secure three Oscar nominations including Best Original Screenplay.

A far more satisfying historical film was Peter H. Hunt’s 1776, the musical about the writing of the Declaration of Independence filmed with much of its Broadway cast intact, including William Daniels as John Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson and Howard Da Silva as Ben Franklin. It was nominated for Best Cinematography.

Four directorial comebacks were notable this year. Writer-producer-director Joseph L. Mankiewcz, a four time Oscar winner received his tenth and final nomination, his first in eighteen years, for directing Sleuth, which also received nominations for Best Actor nominees Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, as well as Best Score. Writer-producer-actor-director John Huston, who had already been nominated thirteen of his career total of fifteen times, and won twice, was not nominated for Fat City, but the film did garner a Supporting Actress nomination for Susan Tyrell. Five time Oscar nominee and Honorary Oscar winning director Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t as lucky. His Frenzy, despite receiving rave notices, wasn’t nominated at all. Nor was Sidney Lumet’s film of the Broadway hit Child’s Play (no relation to the Chucky films) for which James Mason was runner-up to Sleuth’s Laurence Olivier at the NYFC voting for Best Actor. Lumet’s films would receive Oscar’s full attention in each of the next six years.

Most of the films discussed were released on DVD in the U.S., though several are now out of print and sell for outrageous prices if they can be found at all. Several such as The Emigrants; Pete ‘n’ Tillie; Travels With My Aunt; Young Winston and Child’s Play have never been on DVD. Child’s Play was never even released on VHS.

New DVD releases this week include the Australian hit, Animal Kingdom,and the psychological horror film, Buried,starring Ryan Reynolds.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 18, 2011)

The DVD Report #190: January 11, 2011

The 1971 Oscars continued the trend of the previous few years in trying to walk a fine line between the innovative and the tried and true. On the one hand, the Best Picture nominees included Stanley Kubrick’s fabulously futuristic A Clockwork Orange and Peter Bogdanovich’s nostalgic, but frank, The Last Picture Show and on the other, the reverential film version of a beloved stage musical, Norman Jewison’s Fiddler on the Roof,and the latest historical epic, Franklin J. Schaffner’s Nicholas and Alexandra. In the middle, we had the exciting modern cops-and-robbers chase film, William Friedkin’s The French Connection, which won.

The tough cops played by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider in The French Connection were still something of a novelty at the time, making them seem to be no better or no worse than the bad guy, the elusive heroin smuggler played by Fernando Rey, who they were chasing. Whether you sympathized with the good guys here or not, you couldn’t help but be awed by the high energy displayed, especially in the famous car chase on the streets of New York. Nominated for eight Oscars, it won five including Best Picture, Director, Actor (Hackman), Adapted Screenplay and Editing. It lost Supporting Actor (Scheider), Cinematography and Sound.

Intellectually more compelling, Alex, the anti-hero of A Clockwork Orange, played by Malcolm McDowell, was more in tune with the times even if the film was set in a futuristic Great Britain. Based on Anthony Burgess’ acclaimed novel, this was Kubrick at his sardonic best, a message film whose message was at variance with the beautiful, if brutal, world it encapsulated. A scathing satire on society, the film was considered shocking in its day, but the source novel has long since become required reading in many high schools. Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Editing, it won none.

The slow death of a Texas town was at the heart of The Last Picture Show, which provided breakthrough roles for newcomers Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd and Sam Bottoms, and attention grabbing ones for an older generation of previously taken for granted actors, notably Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman and Eileen Brennan. Johnson and Leachman won Oscars for their sensitive performances and Bridges and Burstyn were nominated, but the entire cast is unforgettable. The film had been nominated for a total of eight Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography.

At three hours, Fiddler on the Roof was a bit longer than it needed to be, but the rousing film version of one of Broadway’s best loved musicals was a satisfying production with a charming central performance by Topol, recreating the role of Tevye, which he had played on the London stage. Norma Crane makes a fine Golde, while Molly Picon is a bit over the top as Yente the matchmaker. Nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor (Leonard Frey as Motel the tailor) and Art Direction, it won three for Cinematography, Sound and Scoring.

Slow and ultimately tedious, Nicholas and Alexandra chronicles the lives of the last Czar of Russia and his family as they are besieged, captured and eventually executed by the Communist revolutionaries. The acting, though flawless, is kind of bloodless despite the overwhelming enormity of the characters’ situations. Newcomers Michael Jayston, Janet Suzman and Tom Baker (as Rasputin) had he leads, but Irene Worth was the standout as the Queen Mother. It was Suzman, though, who received the film’s sole acting nomination out of six nods including Best Picture, Cinematography and Score. It won for Art Direction and Costume Design.

Other films on Oscar’s radar included Sunday Bloody Sunday; Mary, Queen of Scots; The Go-Between; McCabe & Mrs. Miller; Klute; The Garden of the Finzi-Continis; The Conformist; Carnal Knowledge; Summer of ’42; Straw Dogs; The Hospital; Death in Venice and Bedknobs and Broomsticks,but not Harold and Maude.

The most high profile film outside of the Best Picture nominees was John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday which earned nominations for Best Actor (Peter Finch), Actress (Glenda Jackson), Director and Original Screenplay. It’s a richly observed character study about a businesswoman and a male doctor who share a bisexual lover (Murray Head) who leaves them both. Finch and Jackson have never been better and Head is perfectly cast as their shallow young lover. Peggy Ashcroft as Jackson’s mother and Besssie Love as the voice of her telephone exchange operator provide solid support.

Jackson was having quite a year after her first Oscar win. She received even greater acclaim for TV’s Elizabeth R in which she played the 16th Century British monarch, and was in three other major films. First up was Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers opposite Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky. Then came Russell’s film version of Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend as the leading lady who breaks her foot so Twiggy can go out and become star. On the heels of that came Charles Jarrot’s Mary, Queen of Scots, in which she again played Elizabeth I. That film would be nominated for five Oscars, including Best Actress (Vanessa Redgrave), Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound and Score.

“The past is another country” intones Michael Redgrave as he narrates Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between, about a forbidden love between the proper Julie Christie and rogue Alan Bates, with Dominic Guard as Redgrave’s character at 13 in the title role of the messenger drawn into the illicit romance. Margaret Leighton received her only Oscar nomination for her formidable portrayal of Christie’s disapproving mother. Christie, herself, was nominated instead for Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller; in which she plays a canny bordello madam opposite Warren Beatty. Hers was the film’s only nomination.

Prostitution also paid dividends for Jane Fonda, who won her first Oscar for her soul shattering portrayal of a high priced hooker who is the prey of a stalker in Klute. Donald Sutherland had the title role of the detective who does his best to protect her against her would-be killer. The film was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay.

An Oscar winner Best Foreign Film, as well as a nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay, Vittorio De Sica’s beautifully filmed The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is about an idyllic world shattered by the advent of World War II. Dominque Sanda, Lino Capolicchio and Helmut Berger star in this tale about an isolated Jewish Italian family who refuse to believe that harm will come to them despite events swirling all around them.

A second Italian film nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist was also about the dark events leading up to World War II as weak-willed public servant Jean-Louis Trintignat becomes a dupe for the fascists. Dominque Sanda was again used to good effect as one of Tringtigant’s lovers, the wife of the dissident professor he is ordered to assassinate.

Generally considered a misfire, Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge, written by Jules Feiffer, starred Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel as sexually confused young men in the fifties and sixties. It nevertheless provided Ann-Margret with an outstanding supporting role as one of their conquests. Previously considered something of a lightweight, she not only won an Oscar nomination, but used the role as a springboard to decades of interesting characterizations, mostly on TV.

A box-office sensation, Robert Mulligan’s Summer of ’42,about the sexual awakening of a teenager played by Gary Grimes, made an overnight sensation of former model Jennifer O’Neill as the object of his affection. Nominated for four Oscars including Best Original Screenplay, Cinematography and Editing, it won for Best Score.

Nominated only for its score, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs was a highly controversial film about a peaceful man, played by Dustin Hoffman, who resorts to violence when his home is invaded and his wife, Susan George, is raped.

Loud and noisy, and more offensive to some sensibilities was Arthur Hiller’s The Hospital, which inexplicably won a Best Original Screenplay for Paddy Chayefsky. George C. Scott, the year after refusing an Oscar, was nominated for another one for lead performance.

Sumptuously filmed with a career high star turn by Dirk Bogarde, Luchino Visconti’s film of Thomas Mann’s celebrated novel, Death in Venice, failed to be nominated for anything other than Best Costume Design.

One of Disney’s best loved mixed media films, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, directed by Robert Stevenson, gave Angela Lansbury a rare starring role in a big budget film. Nominated for five Oscars including Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Score, Song (“The Age of Not Believing) and Special Effects, it won for the latter.

A box-office flop at the time, but a cult sensation soon after, Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude starred Ruth Gordon as the full of life 80 year-old who brings young Bud Cort out of his shell. Both Gordon and Cort were nominated for Golden Globes, but Oscar ignored them.

All filsm discussed except The Go-Between; The Music Lovers and The Boy Friend have been released on DVD in the U.S.

New DVD releases include current Oscar front-runner The Social Network and the 20th Anniversary edition of former winner, Dances With Wolves, both on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 11, 2011)

The DVD Report #189: January 4, 2011

Twenty-five years after the end of World War II, Patton seemed to be the last major Hollywood film we’d see about World War II. Little did we know, then, that forty years later they would still be making them. It seemed then, that this would be the last time to honor a film about the war.

Critically, Franklin J. Schaffner’s film stood firmly in the middle between Oscar’s other four 1970 Best Picture nominees, with Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces and Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H on the plus side and Arthur Hiller’s Love Story and George Seaton’s Airport on the minus.

George C. Scott had the role of his career as the controversial World War II general and deserved every award he won including the Oscar he refused. Nominated for a total of ten Oscars, the film won seven including Best Picture, Director and its Original Screenplay.

Jack Nicholson solidified his star standing with his brilliant performance as an upper-class dropout in Five Easy Pieces, which was the year’s big winner with the New York Film Critics, winning Best Picture, Director and Supporting Actress Karen Black. Oscar nominated it for Best Picture and Supporting Actress, but substituted Actor and Original Screenplay for Director.

One of the most irreverent films ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, M*A*S*H was set during the Korean War, but its sensibilities were very much in tune with the nation’s growing anti-Viet Nam war sentiment. It was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Director and Supporting Actress Sally Kellerman. It won for Adapted Screenplay.

The year’s biggest box-office hit, Airport,has not aged particularly well, but it was liked well enough at the time to land ten Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Supporting Actress Helen Hayes, Supporting Actress Maureen Stapleton and a slew of technical awards, Only Hayes won, setting a new record for the most years between wins – 38.

A sappy, old-fashioned romance that added four letter words and plenty of sex to give it a modern feel, Love Story was a pre-sold hit. A novel based on the screenplay was a phenomenal best-seller earlier in the year. Audiences flocked to theatres to see how Ali MacGaw and Ryan O’Neal measured up to their impressions of the book’s young lovers. AMPAS members liked them both enough to nominate them for Oscars along with John Marley as MacGraw’s father, as well as for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and Score. It won for the latter.

Other films that Oscar liked included Ryan’s Daughter; Women in Love; Fellini Satyricon; My Night at Maud’s; Lovers and Other Strangers; I Never Sang for My Father; The Great White Hope; Diary of a Mad Housewife; The Landlord; Tora! Tora! Tora!; Darling Lili; Scrooge and Woodstock.

Nominated for three Oscars, and winner of two, David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter was the least successful of the director’s epics. The main problem was that the story of a cuckolded Irish schoolteacher was too slight for the grandeur Lean and team accorded it. Another problem was the casting of Robert Mitchum as the teacher. Audiences just couldn’t accept one of the screen’s greatest he-men in such a role. Sarah Miles as the errant wife and John Mills as the town fool fared better, the former securing a Best Actress bid and the latter winning in support. Also singled out for praise was Trevor Howard as the local priest, and Freddie Young’s Cinematography which accounted for the film’s third nomination and second win.

The battle of the sexes among the British elite was the subject of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, filmed by Ken Russell with Alan Bates, Oliver Reed and Best Actress winner Glenda Jackson in a breakthrough performance as the sculptress Gudrun. Nominated for four Oscars including Best Director, Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay, Jackson’s was the film’s only win.

Visually stunning, Fellini Sayricon was director Federico Fellini’s interpretation of Petronius’ first century novel written under the patronage of Emperor Nero. Hedonistic and bizarre as it was fascinating, it won the Italian master his third Best Director nomination.

Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s had been an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film the year before. This year the legendary French writer/director received a nomination for his screenplay for the deft romance.

One of the year’s brightest comedies, Cy Howard’s Lovers and Other Strangers won an Oscar for Best Song, “For All We Know”, an enormous hit for the Carpenters. It was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor Richard Castellano. Beatrice Arthur, Gig Young, Bonnie Bedelia and Michael Brandon also starred.

Melvyn Douglas received his second career nomination and his first as Best Actor for Gilbert Cates’ I Never Sang for My Father in which he played a difficult 80 year-old man with an emotional stranglehold on his middle-aged son, Supporting Actor nominee Gene Hackman. Robert Anderson’s adaptation of his play was also nominated.

James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander reprised their Tony award-winning Broadway roles in Martin Ritt’s The Great White Hope to Oscar nominations and Carrie Snodgress came out of nowhere to land a nod for Frank Perry’s Diary of a Mad Housewife.

An Oscar winner for editing In the Heat of the Night, Hal Ashby emerged as a director of note with his first film, The Landlord, which earned Lee Grant a Supporting Actress nomination.

A dramatization of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Richard Flesischer’s Tora! Tora! Tora!, co-directed by Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda in its Japanese sequences, was nominated for four technical awards and won for its Special Effects.

Blake Edwards’ critically lambasted World War I Julie Andrews- Rock Hudson musical, Darling Lili, was liked well enough to earn three nominations for Best Score, Song (“Whistling Away the Dark”) and Costume Design. The recipient of better reviews and stronger box-office, Ronald Neame’s Scrooge with Albert Finney in the title role was nominated for four: Best Score, Song (“Thank You Very Much”), Costume Design and Art Direction.

The year’s most successful musical and only musical Oscar winner was the documentary, Woodstock, which was nominated for Best Editing and Best Sound and won for Best Documentary.

All films discussed except Diary of a Mad Housewife have been released on commercial DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include Howl with James Franco as Alan Ginsberg and the 20th Anniversary edition of Ron Howard’s Backdraft. Both are available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 4, 2011)