OVP: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Film: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Stars: Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston

Director: John Milius

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

To most filmgoers, certainly in the 1970's, Sean Connery was essentially James Bond.  While other actors at that point (Roger Moore, George Lazenby, even David Niven) had played the part, Connery was Bond...and he wasn't super happy about it.  Connery is not the last of the actors this year we'll profile who struggled with being taken seriously as a thespian having enormous success in the realm of action movies, but he might be the most perturbed of the bunch.  Connery is a good actor, one who even during the height of Bond was working with important directors like Alfred Hitchcock & Sidney Lumet, but all the public saw him as was 007.  Literally-Michael Caine (Connery's longtime friend) would tell an anecdote about how upset Connery would get when someone would call him James Bond rather than his real name in the streets.  So it's not surprising that after Diamonds are Forever, a massive hit for United Artists in the early 1970's, that Connery largely eschewed the role, and in 1975 made two films involving Huston (one as his costar, the other as director-star) that would stand up as attempts for Connery to be taken more seriously as an actor.  One of these, The Man Who Would Be King, would become a classic, while the other would be quickly forgotten.

(Spoilers Ahead) We're choosing The Wind and the Lion and not The Man Who Would Be King because I always choose "new to me" movies for this series, and not only have I seen The Man Who Would Be King, but I also genuinely love it, so I couldn't go in unbiased if I tried (if you haven't seen it, add it to the Watchlist).  The Wind and the Lion is a weird amalgamation of historical drama and at least (to a degree) a romantic film, based in part on a true event involving President Teddy Roosevelt.  The film follows the kidnapping of Eden Pedecaris (Bergen), a wealthy woman stying with diplomats in Morocco by Mulai Ahmed Er Raisuli (Connery), as a way to start a Civil War in his country, one that will result in the Sultan leading Morocco to be publicly shamed.  They bond in a bit of Stockholm Syndrome as Eden comes to understand Raisuli's plight, though this is told with long swaths of the film going back to DC where President Roosevelt (Keith) is in the middle of his 1904 presidential bid, and attempting to use the kidnapping as a way to win over voters to win the election.

The Wind and the Lion is a weird movie, made stranger by the fact that it's based in part on a true story (though in real life Bergen's character was a man, almost certainly changed to a woman to help aid the romantic angle, as this was in the era where a giant epic needed to have a beautiful woman for the lead to fall in love with).  Connery is actually playing a real person, one who (like Connery) would live long after the events of this film.  The problem is that the film feels cartoonish in the many cutaways to the White House.  The movie might've been able to skate by without much chemistry between Bergen & Connery (Bergen is an odd actress, in that I don't generally like her in straight dramatic roles, but she's so compelling as a classy comedic role & she's so insanely gorgeous that I always hope I will find the drama that works for me), but these diversions distract too much, and make it feel silly, even if I adored the Jerry Goldsmith score.

And Connery does work in this role, and it's not a coincidence that the actor would excel for many years in epics and David Lean-style films for the remainder of his career (even if Connery would sadly never work with Lean directly).  He plays the part with a sort of majesty, an inherent otherworldliness that he would bring to roles like The Man Who Would Be King and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, two of his finest roles that I've seen.  It's also probably why he would eventually be offered the part (and then turn it down) as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings (given the deal that Connery got, had he taken the part it might've made him the highest-paid actor in cinema history (based on the rumors that have leaked about his offer and the percentage of the profits, he may well have made upwards of half a billion dollars from the part over the course of the series).

Night Moves (1975)

Film: Night Movies (1975)

Stars: Gene Hackman, Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, James Woods, Melanie Griffith

Director: Arthur Penn

Oscar History: No nominations, though Hackman did get a BAFTA nomination so it was probably in the running.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

We're not quite done yet with our monthlong blog marathon.  While I initially wanted this to be only in June, the month slightly got away from me, and as a result I'm going to bleed into this weekend.  I owe you (after this article) five articles that I had said would be part of our month, and we'll get to all five of them by Sunday plus the kick off of our July star, which will officially end our anniversary celebration.  This is a part-time blog, after all, and I don't want to shortchange you, but I also have to admit that sometimes other priorities get in the way.  Today, we're going to move our film noir marathon firmly into the direction of neo-noir, with one of the quintessential dark detective dramas of the 1970's, Arthur Penn's Night Moves.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is focused on Harry Moseby (Hackman), who is a retired pro football player who now makes his money doing divorce cases & looking for runaways.  He finds out in the opening of the film that his wife Ellen (Clark) is cheating on him, largely because he's neglected her for his work.  Instead of tending to his marriage, Harry instead is working on his latest case, working for a drunken divorcee's daughter Delly (Griffith), who has run away from a terrible home...but her mother wants her back because she's her child support meal ticket.  This sets off a dangerous game, as we soon learn that the world that Delly has run into, filled with sexual depravity, art smuggling, & frequent murders, is far more than Harry could've bargained for.

One of the key distinguishers between the film noir of the 1940's & 50's and the neo-noir craze that would dominate the 1970's & 80's was the lack of the Hays Code.  This wasn't just a way to have more violence & nudity (which Night Moves has), but it's also a way to play with the formula.  Noir always had the bad guy get caught, the hero either live or die heroically, and the girl getting what was coming to her (either a big kiss, or if she was too evil, the wrong end of a bullet).  Neo-noir didn't have to play by these rules.  The femme fatale could get away with it, the villains might win, the detective might not be the better for it (or die trying to get to the truth).  You saw this in films like Body Heat, The Long Goodbye, and the greatest film of the era, Chinatown.

This is also the case with Night Moves, which slowly drowns Harry in this world, immersing him in a world obsessed with sex, particularly a number of leering older men driven to grave sin while lusting after a teenage Melanie Griffith (Night Moves would not be able to be made today without getting crucified on Twitter), and a duplicitous Jennifer Warren as a woman you can't pin down (it's not entirely clear even as she dies what she had planned next with a treasure about to board her ship, and a boat with only one other guy in the middle of the ocean).  The film ends in bright daylight, with Harry shot down by a man he'd assumed to be innocent but who is, in fact, part of the conspiracy he's stumbled across, and with Harry just inches away from a steering wheel that could get him home...except he can't reach it.  The film was seen as a metaphor for the end of Watergate, when a hopeless America didn't know what to think...but it also serves as a pretty shocking spin on the noir, with everything you understand being skewed enough so that by the twisty ending you can't trust anything that comes next.

1940's: The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Nightcrawler

OVP: The Sunshine Boys (1975)

Film: The Sunshine Boys (1975)

Stars: Walter Matthau, George Burns, Richard Benjamin

Director: Herbert Ross

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Actor-Walter Matthau, Best Supporting Actor-George Burns*, Best Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The 1970's were really the era of the "superstar" screenwriter.  Figures like Paddy Chayefsky, Robert Towne, Elaine May, & Woody Allen all were able to gain a level of fame simply from their work in front of a typewriter, not needing to be onscreen talent (though the latter occasionally were).  One figure like this is Neil Simon, whose many hit plays were a New York theater scene staple throughout the 1970's & made his wife, Marsha Mason, an Oscar perennial for a while.  The problem for me has always been that I never really gravitated in retrospect to Simon's work.  I get the moments that it's good (probably the best excursion for me is The Goodbye Girl), but I've never loved one of his films, and at this point I'm starting to run out of opportunities to relate to what he's making considering today's film, one of his most celebrated, just didn't click for me.  Today we're going to look at the Oscar-winning The Sunshine Boys.

(Spoilers Ahead) Though there are other characters in the picture (including cameos by Steve Allen & Phyllis Diller as themselves), this is mostly a three-man film about a legendary comedy duo Willy Clark (Matthau) and Al Lewis (George Burns) who are coaxed by Willy's nephew Ben (Benjamin) to get the vaudeville team back together for a comedy special on ABC that will net all three men a lot of money.  The only problem is that the two men hate each other, particularly Willy against Al.  We see them hash through old animosities while training for the special, including that Al left the group before Willy was ready to, and that they likely never truly liked each other even though they knew they were good together. The movie hits its climax when, after they can't pull it together in a dress rehearsal for the special, Willy has a heart attack and has to drop out.  At that point, he decides to retire, and during a reconciliation, it turns out both men are destined to end up in the same retirement home, forever linked, but now (perhaps) real friends.

The film weirdly was not a hit in 1975, despite its relatively storied legend as a success at the time, and that's likely due to its awards run.  The film dominated at the Golden Globes (Matthau, Burns, and Benjamin all won (the former two tied), as did the film itself for Best Picture), while it won four Oscar nominations, and took Best Supporting Actor for Burns.  The film wasn't intended to be for Burns initially (Jack Benny was supposed to take the part before he had to drop out due to the pancreatic cancer that would kill him before the film was even released), but Burns got the part on Benny's recommendation, and it totally rebounded his career, getting him a weird renaissance of film parts & lots of stage work for the next couple of decades.

The problem is that the film doesn't really earn any of those Oscar nominations.  The Art Direction is interesting (I love the chaotic lived-in nature of Matthau's apartment, particularly against the orderly nature of Burns' house with his daughter), but it's not all that noteworthy.  The acting is just okay-the film is meant to be heartfelt & funny, but it's really neither of those two things and the premise wears thin.  Matthau is better than Burns, as he's the more experienced actor, but plays the script (which is dated even for 1975) as being a curmudgeonly Jewish comedian that borders into stereotype.  Burns is okay in the role as Al, but it's not acting and sometimes it's hard to tell if he's just got his comic timing off or if he was genuinely missing a line.  It's likely that Hollywood, entranced by the charming comedian getting his big moment-in-the-sun decades after he first became famous with his beloved wife Gracie, couldn't resist giving him a trophy even if there was far better work to pick from in 1975.

OVP: Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Film: Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Stars: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack O'Halloran, Sylvester Stallone

Director: Dick Richards

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Sylvia Miles)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Chinatown is one of my favorite movies (as I get older, it becomes basically impossible to corner my favorite films to more than 4-5 films as it genuinely changes based on the day, but know this would be in contention for the crown).  I have not, however, spent a lot of time focusing on the films that came after the success of Chinatown, and honestly hadn't really thought about the strange history of the neo-noir film in the 1970's, which Chinatown was obviously the crown jewel of, but featured a number of films, some starring very important actors.  That's the case with Farewell, My Lovely, filmed in the wake of Chinatown (which you can tell based on the way the movie is shot), and starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe, a role that the actor was taking on for the first time & feels born to play (he is the only actor to have played the part, which saw actors as diverse as Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner & Elliot Gould take on the role, twice).  While Mitchum is well-cast, the movie itself struggles, not just in comparison to Chinatown, but also in trying to match that film's pacing & plotting twists.

(Spoilers Ahead) Mitchum's Philip Marlowe is hired by bank robber Moose Malloy (O'Halloran) to try to find his old girlfriend Velma, whom he hasn't seen since he got arrested.  Marlowe starts chasing down Velma, initially thinking she's a woman that has been locked up in an asylum, but this appears to be an imposter.  The real Velma we only learn in the last minutes of the film is Helen Grayle (Rampling), the trophy wife of a wealthy local judge.  As the film goes, we learn that Helen was a prostitute who helped with the bank robbery that Moose had perpetrated, though she didn't go to jail for it, and has been slowly killing everyone that is connected with her past in hopes of erasing it, getting to restart her life of privilege with her rich, oblivious husband.  The film ends in a giant shootout on a boat, where pretty much everyone except Marlowe ends up getting shot, and he lives to see another day as a detective, once again wisened by the streets.

That's the plot in a nutshell.  One of the defining characteristics of film noir is that it has a lot of story-there are tons of twists & turns, frequently characters, especially beautiful women you shouldn't trust, & where you start is never where you land.  This is what I love about it-it requires you to expect the unexpected.  But Farewell, My Lovely doesn't handle the extra plot well enough because it seems to be so obsessed with Chinatown.  In some ways this works-the music by David Shire is properly moody & delicious, and the cinematography is gorgeous and I'm surprised wasn't nominated for an Oscar that year.  But while Chinatown's difficult-to-comprehend plot is anchored by three strong performances (as well as Roman Polanski's precise direction), Farewell, My Lovely doesn't have actors ready to gloss over the movie's constant twists, oftentimes throwing in too many characters at once (which makes them difficult to track, and more importantly, difficult to vest into).  This isn't because these aren't great actors (Charlotte Rampling, Harry Dean Stanton...come on, this is a good call sheet), but they aren't able to elevate the material.

This is particularly true for Sylvia Miles, the one Oscar nominee from the film.  Miles is famous in some sections of Film Twitter for delivering two tiny performances that got nominated for an Oscar (her combined Oscar nominations make up less than 13 minutes of screen-time, less than any of the eight women she competed against at either of her Oscar ceremonies), but this isn't one of those mind-blowing cameos that you can't stop raving about.  She gets two scenes, the first as a relatively capable drunk attempting to mine booze from Marlowe (no matter what danger the information she's sharing will bring to her), and the latter scene is a throwaway moment, a return to a character that only left an impression because there's so few women in this movie.  Miles has no bearing on the plot, and honestly feels like the sort of role that people mine meaning from because she's so distinctive, not because she's giving something radiant.  Personally, I would have much rather one of the many women giving sensational turns in Nashville have gotten a third Supporting Actress nod from that film rather than a blink-and-you'll-miss-it return for Miles here.

OVP: Tommy (1975)

Film: Tommy (1975)

Stars: Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, Paul Nicholas, Jack Nicholson

Director: Ken Russell

Oscar History: 2 nomination (Best Actress-Ann-Margret, Best Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Ann-Margret-click here to learn more about Ms. Ann-Margret (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the mid-1970's, Ann-Margret's career had taken some interesting turns.  By 1975 she was only 34, but that was considered a bit older back then than it would be today, and so in theory her days as a sex kitten/symbol were waning, if not gone.  Ann-Margret had a very successful nightclub act (oftentimes incorporating George Burns), but her film career was acknowledging that she was aging, and that she wanted to expand as an actress & play against type.  As you've seen throughout our year devoted to famous sex symbols, playing against type was usually a disaster for actresses most famous for their appearance, but Ann-Margret defied that, openly finding parts that skewed or countered her glamour without it affecting her popularity.  She had one of her biggest successes in this style of "deglam" role (as it would be known in the mid-aughts) with Tommy, which won her her second (and to date, final) Academy Award nomination.

(Spoilers Head) Tommy is, for those who are not familiar, a rock opera (give or take The Wall, the most famous of the era's rock operas), which was a subgenre of film/musical theater that hit its popularity peak in the 1970's.  It focuses on Tommy (Daltrey), who as a child saw his mother Nora (Ann-Margret) and her new lover Frank (Reed) accidentally kill Tommy's father, who has returned from war after being presumed dead.  As a result, Tommy goes deaf-mute-blind, and neither Frank nor Nora can get him out of this state.  Eventually Tommy turns to pinball, and though he cannot see or hear the sounds, becomes something of a novelty attraction since he can feel the machine, and as a result is the greatest player in the world.  Tommy eventually breaks out of his near catatonic state to be able to speak, see, & hear, and develops a Christ-like following, but that wanes when it appears as if he doesn't have anything to offer his followers, and when he makes them like he was (deaf, mute, & blind) so they appreciate life more, they attack him, killing Frank & Nora, and eventually Tommy is left, finally free of his parents & his influences, and embraces a state of nirvana at the same place where he was conceived at the beginning of the film.

I...am surprised at how cogent that plot summary sounds, because Tommy is anything but cogent.  There are repeated detours throughout the movie to be able to have psychedelic musical numbers, and to capitalize on some of the rock cameos in the film.  Tina Turner, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and even (in a Carnal Knowledge reunion) Jack Nicholson all show up in various roles, getting their own songs.  The film's roots are firmly in the anti-establishment & being critical of their parents' generation (Clapton's preacher leads a parish that deifies Marilyn Monroe as a god, an indictment on celebrity-worship), but they also have the obvious overtones of drug use, particularly Turner's "Acid Queen."  

The cameos are fun initially, and certainly in a "WTF" way, but I will admit that other than Nicholson's (which I didn't know was coming), I found them a bit overlong and increasingly un-fun, which is how I'd describe Tommy as a whole.  The music is great ("Pinball Wizard" continues to hold up 45 years after the fact), but it keeps underlining the same points-every chorus seems to repeat one too many times, and the fat on the film is plentiful when it needs some leaning up.  The movie's motif is also dated, and its message is warped in retrospect considering so many of the "rebel acts" in this film would eventually become the establishment.  In 1975 the Who might have represented counterculture revolutionaries, but in 2020, a Millennial (like myself) knows people like the Who, Tina Turner, & Elton John as figures who become mega-millionaires that are so ingrained in corporate culture they literally headlined the Super Bowl, the most conventional of commercial American inventions.  As a result, the movie reads as false in its message, even if I understand its impact.

Ann-Margret's nomination was likely a result of both her taking on an atypical role and the dearth of good roles for women in 1975 (generally considered to be one of, if not the, worst years for Best Actress).  Her role here is intriguing, but eventually it just becomes exploitive, and I don't know what she's getting at.  It's obvious that director Ken Russell wanted to trade on Ann-Margret being the fantasy of a generation of young men by both deeply sexualizing her (there are multiple scenes in the film where it appears the actress is in the throes of an orgasm), and then skewing that sexualization (one of those orgasmic scenes, she's writhing in a puddle of baked beans & mud).  It's less of a work of acting and more a performance piece, and I left admitting that I saw something of note, but not necessarily of value.

1975 is where we're going to leave Ann-Margret.  The actress who took the sex symbol role and found a way to not only transform it in the 1970's, but to win industry accolades for her work, did make more worthwhile movies, and was a star for much of the 1970's with films like Joseph Andrews and Magic (and at one point, despite being 37, was considered for the role of Sandy in Grease), before eventually doing most of her career work in TV movies and guest appearances.  Next month, we will look at one last actress, a contemporary of Ann-Margret's whose career mirrored that of a classic sex symbol...even if it also seemed to hallmark the end of the trope.

OVP: Hester Street (1975)

Film: Hester Street (1975)
Stars: Steven Keats, Carol Kane, Mel Howard, Dorrie Kavanaugh, Doris Roberts
Director: Joan Micklin Silver
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Carol Kane)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I read a blog frequently where the author's pet peeve is when the Best Actress race is declared "weak," as he argues persistently that the Best Actress race is never "weak" if you look hard enough.  While I don't entirely agree with him (axiomatically if there are strong years for Best Actress there inevitably have to be "weak" years for the category), I do agree in the sense that the actual lineup of Best Actress nominees should never be "weak" as there is never a year where there aren't five very strong, exceptional performances given by women.  You just occasionally have to look a bit harder than the Academy is willing to do, so you end up with a lineup that underwhelms when you could have had something better.  Occasionally, though, the Academy steps greatly outside their comfort zone principally because they don't seem to have much of a choice, and that's what happened in 1975, a year that was considered so poor by many members of the film community for women that Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn even suggested they cancel Best Actress as a statement (to which eventual victor Louise Fletcher retorted to Burstyn, "why don't you suggest that in a year where you're competing").  Oscar's lead actress nominees that year included  a performance from a former "sex kitten" in a rock opera, a French actress no one had heard of before the nominations, a supporting performance being elevated as a lead, and strangest of all, an unknown character actress in a very tiny film about the Jewish immigrant experience at the turn-of-the-century.  That film was Hester Street, that nominee was Carol Kane, and that is our film of today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film itself is so odd not because Oscar ignores historical epics (he doesn't), but because the film itself is incredibly specific and a bit niche, to the point where it's difficult to find the Academy, which usually goes for more universal-experience films, discovering a foothold in the movie.  The film follows the story of Jake (Keats, who was quite fetching in the film, something I didn't know before the movie started), who has been having an affair for years with Mamie (Kavanaugh), but is married to a traditional Jewish woman named Gitl (Kane).  Gitl moves in with him in the United States, but is very leery of New York and rigid in trying to assimilate and adjust her customs.  As a result, Jake becomes frustrated and abusive with her, more openly parading Mamie in front of her while a tenant in their house, Bernstein, becomes ensnared with Gitl.  Eventually Gitl grows confident enough in herself to leave Jake and marry Bernstein, and that's how the film concludes.

The movie itself is not great.  The film works too broadly, frequently working in brushstrokes of characters rather than letting us into the film.  It seems like Jake was forced to marry Gitl in the old country, but it's hard to imagine they had a particularly solid relationship previously-one wonders why he even sent for his wife and son, quite frankly, and didn't just abandon them as it seems like this is something that better reflects his character.  Gitl is an interesting creation as a character, primarily because so little is known about her as she goes through the film, even after she is "freed" toward the end of the film by tradition.  Kane, who has the most expressive eyes of any actor in the world, is not an actor of limited talents, and I have always liked the fact that such a specific actress gets to call herself an Oscar nominee, but I'm disappointed that her ability to pitch unusual comedy and play broader emotions with such conviction (such as rage and passion) are not on-display in likely the only nomination she will ever receive.  Here she's too reserved for most of the film-she plays the part, but it's too full of tics and the character doesn't give her enough chance to emote.  There's subtlety, and then there's boredom, and I feel like Kane falls prey to the latter far too often in the film.

The movie is incredibly short, and in my opinion, pretty straight-forward.  The only really interesting dynamic it pushes out to the audience is whether or not traditionalism or new-thinking is better, and the film weirdly tries to condemn both, neither siding with the "do what you want" philosophy nor picking one, but instead making Gitl leave behind her traditions and have Jake condemned to a life of poverty.  All-in-all, it's a weirdly convoluted message from a film that seems sure it's giving you a moral.  As a result the film is a failure, but it's so atypical of most films of the 1970's that it's almost worth the view just to catch a film that is completely out-of-the-box for the Academy to honor.  If you've seen it, chime in on your thoughts, and if you haven't, we all have thoughts on that 1975 Oscar race-with more traditional contenders like Faye Dunaway, Marilyn Hassett, and Glenda Jackson all an option, what was happening in the water to pick Kane, Ann-Margret, and Louise Fletcher?  Share your hypotheses in the comments!