Women abandoning husbands and children for careers and fathers and sons bonding in the absence of a mother were hardly new to Hollywood in 1979. Films of the late 20s and early 30s were rife with such plots. What was new in 1979 was the sheer number of women in America who were putting careers ahead of family and men who were learning to be domestic. Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer tapped into that in a big way, being embraced both by the public and the Academy. It was so embraced by the Academy that they honored it with nine Oscar nominations and five awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor (Dustin Hoffman) and Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep). Eight year-old Justin Henry had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor as their son, and Jane Alexander picked up her third nomination for playing their friend and neighbor.

Its competition included two other domestic dramas, a war picture and a bizarre musical.

Probably the most fun was had by Peter Yates’ Breaking Away, a rare film that had audiences standing and cheering at the end. Set in Bloomington, Indiana, Dennis Christopher starred as a local bicyclist who along with friends Dennis Quaid and Jackie Earle Haley was looked down upon by the snobby well-to-do students at Indiana University. Paul Dooley and Best Supporting Actress nominee Barbara Barrie provide outstanding support as his parents. Nominated for five Oscars in all, it won for Best Original Screenplay. Dooley won the National Board of Review for Best Supporting Actor.

An unlikely heroine, and an unlikely star, Sally Field had broken out of her long time cutesy pie mold with TV’s harrowing Sybil a few years earlier, but Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae was her first major dramatic screen role. As the young mother and textile worker who helps organize for the union within her shop, Field is completely riveting. She’s also quite convincing in the home life scenes with Beau Bridges as her husband. Nominated for four Oscars in all, it won for Best Song “It Goes Like It Goes”, and for Field’s astonishing performance.

Nominated for eight Oscars, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now went home with two, winning for Best Cinematography and Best Sound. The film, which was adapted from Joseph Conrad’s classic novel, Heart of Darkness,moved the story forward several decades to the Vietnam War. Martin Sheen was the protagonist, Oscar nominated Robert Duvall the war crazed Lt. Colonel who loves “the small of napalm in the morning” and Marlon Brando the totally nuts Colonel Kurtz. Although the film is riveting for most of its length, the last section involving Brando’s character, which should have been its strongest segment, seems like an anti-climax. Still, the film is an experience well worth having.

The same cannot be said for Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, the open-heart surgery musical, with Roy Scheider as a mirror image of Fosse. Jessica Lange played the angel of death, while Leland Palmer and Ann Reinking were among the many women in his life. Lots of people loved this thing, including members of the Academy which granted it nine Oscar nominations including Best Actor and four wins, all in technical categories.

What puzzled me most about the acclaim for this wretched affair is that its nominations and wins came at the expense of a truly great musical, the film version of Hair. Milos Forman’s film was richer, bolder and bursting with great songs and stupendous choreography, but it wasn’t a major success. By 1979, hippies were considered passé and the nudity which helped make the stage show such a phenomenon more than a decade earlier was toned down and no longer shocking. Still, for anyone who bothered to see it, it was a much more rewarding experience than watching Scheider smoke, do drugs, hallucinate, have a heart attack and go through that vivid open heart surgery.

Other films that Oscar liked this year included The China Syndrome; Manhattan; Being There; La Cage aux Folles; Starting Over; The Rose; The Black Stallion; Agatha and The Tin Drum.

Benefitting from the timeliness of a real life nuclear incident just after the film’s opening, James Bridges’ The China Syndrome was a terrific film about the cover-up of a nuclear plant accident. Jack Lemmon as the whistle blower and Jane Fonda as the photogenic TV reporter who proves to be more than just another dumb blonde are both terrific and totally deserving of their Oscar nods. Michael Douglas is also quite good as Fonda’s cameraman. The film earned a total of four Oscar nominations.

Considered by many to be Woody Allen’s best film, Manhattan, surprisingly received just two Oscar nominations, for Allen’s screenplay and for Mariel Hemingway’s performance as Allen’s teenage paramour. Another well received comedy, Hal Ashby’s Being There also received just two nominations, for Peter Sellers’ starring role as a simple gardener unexpectedly thrust into the limelight and for Melvyn Douglas’ portrayal of a Washington power broker. Douglas’ performance won him his second Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

A surprise nominee for Best Director, Edouard Molinari’s La Cage aux Folles also picked up nods for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design. Jerry Herman’s musical adaptation of the farce set in a Parisian transvestite club became a smash Broadway hit several times over. It was even remade by Mike Nichols some years later as The Birdcage.

Burt Reynolds was the star of Alan J. Pakula’s Starting Over, but it was Jill Clayburgh as his kooky new girlfriend and Candice Bergen as his even kookier ex-wife who Oscar favored with nominations.

Bette Midler, long a popular concert performer and record star, was finally given her first starring role in a dramatic film, Mark Rydell’s The Rose, in which she played a self-destructive singer modeled after Janis Joplin. The film received a total of four nominations including those for Midler as Best Actress and for Frederic Forrest as Best Supporting Actor.

Mickey Rooney made one of his umpteen comebacks as a horse trainer in Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion. The film, which earned Rooney his fourth acting nomination, was also nominated for Best Editing and won a Special Achievement Award for Best Sound Editing.

Vanessa Redgrave was marvelously cast as Agatha Christie in Michael Apted’s Agatha, about the mystery writer’s eleven day disappearance in 1926, but Dustin Hoffman was miscast as the reporter who pursues her. Nevertheless the costumes were exquisite, and they were nominated for an Oscar.

A profoundly moving film, Volker Schlondorff’s The Tin Drum about middle-class passivity in the wake of Hitler’s rise, deservedly won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film as well as a slew of international awards.

All films discussed been released on DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include David O. Russell’s The Fighter featuring the Oscar winning performances of Christian Bale and Melissa Leo and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter with Matt Damon as well as the Blu-ray debuts of Louis Malle’s Au Revoir, Les Enfants and Edward Yang’s Yi Yi.