Pumping Iron (1977)

Film: Pumping Iron (1977)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Katz, Franco Columbu

Directors: George Butler & Robert Fiore

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

It makes sense to start a month on the man who, more than any other this year, provided the definitive answer to "who is a great action star" with a first for our series.  In nearly seven seasons, we have never done a documentary, mostly because documentaries aren't really something you associate with the creative output of actors.  But Pumping Iron gives us both a really strong set up into Arnold Schwarzenegger, and also is one of the main reasons he became a star.  Growing up in Austria, the son of a local police chief (who was a member of the Nazi Party, something that would haunt Schwarzenegger for the remainder of his life, and would be a marked part of his celebrity donations, giving enormous sums of money to organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and making a pointed effort to focus on Holocaust remembrance and Jewish organizations in his time in the celebrity spotlight and during his political career), Schwarzenegger's first forays into the spotlight came not from acting but from bodybuilding.  While Schwarzenegger would become the most famous figure in bodybuilding due to his subsequent movie stardom, even without that work, he'd arguably become (give or take Lee Haney & Ronnie Coleman) the most significant athlete just within the sport, and a lot of that is due to his work in Pumping Iron, a documentary that nearly wasn't released due to budgetary issues, but when it was in 1977, became a surprise hit (particularly in early home video sales), and launched Schwarzenegger into acting.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie isn't really a "spoilers needed" situation because it's based in fact, but I'll issue it mostly because the movie is about the 1975 Mr. Olympia competition (and who will win), a bodybuilding feat that is pitting some of the best in this then-niche sport against each other, and we meet them and their families.  The film centers on a number of different figures, and while all of them are big names in bodybuilding (not just because of their success at the time, but also because many of them became famous after this movie came out), you see the pitfalls of the sport, and the ways that only some people get to be the best (while others get to fail in the process).  The monetary award here is clearly secondary to other things, like personal pride, and in the case of the eventual winner (Schwarzenegger) modeling contracts and an intense amount of ego in terms of being near super-human in his perfect physique.

This is the best part of Pumping Iron, a surprisingly strong and intriguing look at a deeply hyper-masculine sport at a time when men weren't being pushed to show their softer side...because the film itself shows its softer side.  We see Mike Katz playing with his kids, and then the disappointment in him when he ends up getting fourth place in the competition he'd been so proud to brag about in the previous scene.  There's Lou Ferrigno, admitting that his parents weren't proud of him initially, and he feels a constant need to push for them to succeed...even though it's clear his parents seem to adore him (whatever the outcome).  And then of course there's Schwarzenegger, who at one point talks about how bodybuilding is the equivalent to having near constant orgasms (he uses the more colorful term of "cumming" that I'm going to use only because it's funny to think a future governor spoke this way even if it might end up getting this post flagged).  But later he has a scene where he talks about missing his own father's funeral because he couldn't deal with the headspace of such actual-world realities when he is in competition mode.  It's said with the same nonchalance as he does when he talks about the sexual gratification he gets from the sport, as if they are similar statements, and not one that's quite silly and the other hauntingly devastating.  It's like watching toxic masculinity, and the damage that it causes, in real time.

But it doesn't feel like toxic masculinity, because Schwarzenegger is unfathomably charming in this.  If you think of him from some of his later action films, where he is forced to drain anything resembling life force in favor of a robotic perfectionism, you are in for a treat.  He is flirty, friendly, braggadocios, and aware that this is a fleeting moment in his life.  You can see that he knows this isn't forever, and in some ways that life isn't forever, so he's going to enjoy and win everything he can from this moment before tackling the next challenge.  It's worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of this movie, it was Ferrigno who had immediate success with the smash hit (pun intentional) The Incredible Hulk which ran for five seasons on CBS.  But Arnold's time was coming, and it would be much, much higher than Ferrigno would ever dare to jump.  We'll talk about that next Saturday.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Film: The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Stars: Russ Grieve, Virginia Vincent, Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, Dee Wallace, John Steadman

Director: Wes Craven

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Independent horror films had their biggest heyday in the New Hollywood era, with movies like Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Halloween dominating the box office & cultural landscape.  This led to new voices in horror, including our director today, Wes Craven.  The Hills Have Eyes is actually Craven's second movie after his surprise hit The Last House on the Left, but this was made with a bigger budget, and spawned a proper horror franchise.  I will own that of all of the titles this month, this was the one I was most dreading given that it was Craven's ode to Texas Chain Saw, a movie I actively hated.  After watching, I was right to be concerned...though Hills is a much better picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in rural Nevada, in the true middle-of-nowhere, where a family decides not to heed the warning of a local gas station proprietor Fred (Steadman) and instead go "the scenic route" when they promptly have troubles with their camper (as an active road tripper, sticking to the main road is always a good idea).  Stuck, their dogs run off, one of them is killed, and strange things start to happen in the dark.  It turns out, they're being stalked by a family of maniacal cannibals, and as cannibals are wont to do, they start to kill the family, and in one case rape beautiful Brenda (Lanier), the family's daughter.  When they kidnap their baby Katy, the family sets off to try to find them, eventually killing most of the cannibals (save for two of the women), but in the process half of the people they started the journey with are dead, and the living are forever scarred.

The movie does a better job than Texas Chain Saw of humanizing these figures, both the victims and the killers.  In Texas Chain Saw, it felt on a lot of levels like we were watching a snuff film, one where the only purpose was mutilating the bodies of young people for sport & shock.  That's not the case for Hills Have Eyes, where the cannibals are given a structure to their family hierarchy, and while the victims are all two-dimensional, they have a dimension, even if by the end I was less rooting for them to survive (save the baby and the surviving dog, both of whom I was actively rooting for) and more just wanting the madness to stop.

Craven doesn't give this enough of his trademark humor, but he bestows on us a strong sense of intelligence, especially with the ways that the cannibals are eventually undermined by the out-of-their-league family they're tormenting.  The performances aren't good, but they're raw, and the horror feels very lived-in.  Leave it to Master of Horror Wes Craven to improve upon a film regarded by many (though not me) as a classic.  I will say that I didn't actually like this movie, because I hate this kind of movie (where it feels like you're just watching torture porn after a point), but I can objectively say this is well-made.  I just never want to see it again.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

The Late Show (1977)

Film: The Late Show (1977)

Stars: Art Carney, Lily Tomlin, Bill Macy, Eugene Roche, Joanna Cassidy

Director: Robert Benton

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June 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.

In the 1970's, as I've mentioned in some of our recent reviews, neo-noir came into popularity, but very briefly.  I think because there are a trio of major classics of the era that came out at about the same time (The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and Night Moves...reviews listed below), it makes it seem like there were more films in this time frame that were part of the neo-noir movement than there actually were (i.e. it was not like the 1940's and 50's where it seems like we got a new movie every weekend).  But we did get a few deep cut titles, and some got critical acclaim.  Our movie today was actually cited for an Academy Award, for Best Original Screenplay, but it stars a pair that feels so unlikely in the noir setting you'd be forgiven for assuming it's a spoof.  Lily Tomlin & Art Carney, both fresh off of major Oscar success themselves, are not, in fact, playing The Late Show for laughs.  Though the film has comic elements, it ends up being largely a straight-film...somewhat to its downfall.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers on Ira Wells (Carney), an aging, unwell private detective who meets a kooky actress named Margo Sperling (Tomlin) at the funeral of his recently deceased friend Harry Regan (Howard Duff, a staple in 1940's noir, plays the part in a cameo and in a nod to the films of which it's based).  The two are like oil-and-water, or in this case patchouli & musk, as Margo is a free-thinking hippie to Harry's rough-and-tumble PI, but the two click, and are drawn together after they witness a murder (and nearly die in the process).  This opens up a seedy underbelly to the death of both Harry and the man they saw die (who kidnapped Margo's cat, who despite some close calls makes it through the film unscathed), leading up to a giant showdown late in the movie that will leave them both in each other's lives, likely forever.

The film is an odd juxtaposition because of the actors.  Tomlin, Carney, and Bill Macy (best known as Bea Arthur's husband on Maude) are all the leads, but they are all largely-known today for their comic work, principally in television.  I obviously am watching this in retrospect, and so wasn't subjected to the trailers at the time or the marketing for the movie (or the fact that, at least for Carney, this was during a rare period where Hollywood turned him into a leading man, though this was one of the few dramas that he made), but it feels off-putting to me to watch them, as you're kind of begging for a laugh.  This wouldn't be a problem if they were good, but the movie itself is too formulaic to be of that much interest.  The script presents a very generic story that could easily have been left on a desk in an RKO producer's office in the 1940's were it not for the modern touches Tomlin brings.

As a result, the novelty is watching comedic actors playing drama, and it doesn't work.  They try to foist a love story between the two, but they have nothing in common, and have far more chemistry as friends than as a romantic entanglement (it doesn't help that it's almost entirely Tomlin flirting, more so trying to convince the audience of the romance than anything else).  That this film involved Robert Altman (who produced it), one of the most organic screenwriters of the era, and is so formulaic (and not in a fun way), just feels off.  The film isn't bad, but it's decidedly a missed opportunity.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, 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: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, 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, Le Samourai, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

The American Friend (1977)

Film: The American Friend (1977)

Stars: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gerard Blain

Director: Wim Wenders

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Throughout the month of June (and apparently a little bit of July), 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 bled a little bit into July with our film noir series, but it is now coming to an end for 2022 with our June Film Noir celebration.  It's possible we bring this back next year (I love doing it, but it's a lot of work & we're getting deeper and deeper cuts each season), but if we don't, I think ending in 1977 feels right for what we've covered this past month.  While neo-noir became a mainstay in the 1980's, really Body Heat and Blade Runner (both of which we've already covered, links are at the bottom of the article) kind of ushered in a new era of neo-noir, and while the genre would dominate the 1980's, it would be more something you'd catch in independent or emerging cinemas than in major blockbusters like Chinatown.  It seems fitting, then, that we finish with one of the great experimental filmmakers of the 1970's & 80's, Wim Wenders, and one of his most noted films, The American Friend.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based off of the novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith, one of the novels Highsmith wrote about Tom Ripley (who modern audiences know as a character played by Matt Damon & John Malkovich).  Here he's played by Dennis Hopper, perhaps the most typecast actor for playing a boiled sociopath (given Hopper's on and offscreen choices through the years).  After he is mildly snubbed at an auction by a man named Jonathan Zimmermann (Ganz), who dislikes Ripley based on reputation (he is a criminal), Ripley decides to ruin Jonathan's life by tricking him into thinking his leukemia has worsened, and that he is soon going to die.  Worried about his wife and son, and what will be left for them, Jonathan takes on Ripley's assignment of becoming an assassin for hire, getting a lot of money but in the process giving up his humanity.  The two become friendly toward the end of the movie, with Ripley now seeing Jonathan as something of a vain extension of himself, but in the final moments, despite the fact that he will soon die, Jonathan gets his revenge on Ripley, abandoning him at a beach with a burning car & no way home.

The movie's plot involves some twists and you need to pick up on certain moods, but it's not as complicated as one might expect in the moment considering Wenders, who is not afraid of abstract cinema, is at the helm.  It helps that the film is acted by two performers at the top of their game.  Hopper, at this point in his "wilderness" phase between Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now!, where he was making some of the most fascinating independent cinema of the 1970's.  His acting here is perfect for Ripley, playing him as a charming, demented man who is willing to destroy another human being over a handshake.  Ganz is excellent too.  Though he is widely-regarded as one of the greatest actors in his adopted country of Germany (he was born in Switzerland), he rarely made high-profile English-language films, so if you're unfamiliar check him out here, in Wings of Desire and Downfall (the latter of which he should've gotten him the Oscar on a silver platter).  He plays Jonathan as someone who has never really contemplated what will happen once he's gone, and as someone who slowly realizes how foolish his impetuousness was.

Everything about The American Friend works-the writing, the directing, the acting, but nothing works quite as well as the cinematography.  I watched this on the BluRay edition of the Criterion disc (word-to-the-wise-it is currently July, which means Barnes & Noble is doing its half off sale, and I suggest not just shopping for a new disc there, but buying one you've never seen as cold-buying and watching a Criterion disc is one of the great joys, and it rarely doesn't pay off), and so I saw a high-quality print of the movie that might not have worked to the same degree on streaming...and I was stunned.  Every scene was a painting, mixing moody & bright lighting, oftentimes in the same shot, and using bright blues & reds in ways that just sing off the screen.  I found myself taking photos of Dennis Hopper in a Marlboro Man silhouette or two chasing cars, their reflections mirrored in a shallow pool of water they're cascading through, as I was watching, almost as if I was on a vacation and was struck by the beauty of my surroundings.  It's something to behold, and even if you're not a huge noir fan, I suggest checking it out for the cinematography alone.

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, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

OVP: The Turning Point (1977)

Film: The Turning Point (1977)

Stars: Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine, Tom Skerritt, Leslie Browne, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Martha Scott

Director: Herbert Ross

Oscar History: 11 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress-Shirley MacLaine, Actress-Anne Bancroft, Supporting Actor-Mikhail Baryshnikov, Supporting Actress-Leslie Browne, Original Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Shirley MacLaine-click here to learn more about Ms. MacLaine (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are jumping 16 years into Shirley MacLaine's career this week (really, MacLaine is one of those actors we should probably return to someday for this series as she's had such a long career in movies) to 1977.  In the years after The Children's Hour, MacLaine had what were probably the peak years of her fame.  She got another Oscar nomination for Irma la Douce, replaced Marilyn Monroe in What a Way to Go! and was winning opposite Michael Caine in Gambit (an underrated movie).  By the 1970's, though MacLaine's star wasn't nearly as bright as it had been.  Sweet Charity bombing at the box office (today we consider this one of MacLaine's signature roles, but at the time it was a massive flop) cost her dearly, as did the low-rated & quickly-cancelled TV series Shirley's World and between 1972-77 she didn't star in a single narrative film.  Instead she found success in other venues, including her Oscar-nominated documentary The Other Half of the Sky and a series of sold-out concerts she did in London & New York.  But it wasn't until 1977's The Turning Point came along that MacLaine had what would be considered a "cinematic comeback," one that would kick-start a terrific second act for the actress that would dominate the next decade at the movies.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Turning Point is a film that is ostensibly about two women who used to be rivals at a prominent ballet company: Deedee (MacLaine), who got pregnant early in her career and quit to start a family with Wayne (Skerritt), and Emma (Bancroft), a one-time great prima ballerina who has not been able to retire from the ballet despite her best days clearly being behind her.  Deedee's daughter Emilia (Browne) is accepted into Emma's ballet company, and quickly becomes a star, repeating the paths of both Emma (by standing out quickly) and her mother (by romancing her costar Yuri, played by Baryshnikov).  As the film continues, Deedee struggles with her daughter, who clearly favors the path of Emma & wants to emulate her, and with her long-standing jealousies with Emma, whom she begrudges for potentially taking away her chance at stardom.  This culminates in the two women having a rooftop fight where they air their grievances, with Deedee admitting that she still thinks about the career that might have been, and Emma (after fighting this assertion for much of the film) admitting that she encouraged Deedee to get pregnant so that she wouldn't be competition for the titular part in Anna Karenina they were both up for.  The film ends with Emilia becoming a prima ballerina like Emma, and both women rekindling a broken friendship, understanding that Emilia will have regrets about her life no matter what she does next.

The film is at its best when it's trying to talk about this lost youth, a universal topic (no one appreciates their youth until it is over), and one that MacLaine & Bancroft both embody.  Their rooftop argument is the best part of the picture, and it gives it a life that (quite frankly) it's lacking in the remainder of the movie.  MacLaine is good at capturing that worry that she made the wrong decision, that fear that she made a decision not because it was the correct one, but because it was the easy one.  Bancroft, too, captures this-she lived MacLaine's dream, even if she knew it would eventually fade as she got older, and has to now accept that her time in the spotlight is done.  These two are at their best when they are playing off of each other, two actresses that never really got past their prime (even if they're playing characters that feel their greatest moments are memories).

The problem with The Turning Point is that much of the film is not centered around these two women, but instead their relationships with Emilia.  Browne's Oscar nomination is kind of notorious at this point because she's considered such a leaden actress, but this belief is not incorrect upon my visiting the picture.  There are times where you almost think she's doing this weird avant-garde character work (like when she randomly affects a Russian accent in a drunken bar scene), but that's not the case-it's just wooden & mechanical.  One could say the same for Baryshnikov, but he's asked to do less work than Browne in keeping the film afloat, and he also has a magnetism (particularly in the dance sequences) that is impossible to ignore.  Browne doesn't stand out as a dancer in the same way (she's talented, but you don't see why she's a great rather than just as good as the rest of the chorus line), and she brings down huge chunks of the movie.  Neither Bancroft nor MacLaine can elevate her scenes, and honestly, she makes you question whether these two women should've been included in Oscar's lineup at all considering they can't pull off their scenes with Browne.

As a result, I'm mixed on The Turning Point, a movie that infamously was cited for 11 Oscars but won none.  The rest of the tech awards are a mixed bag.  The cinematography for the dance sequences is impressive, though so magical & outside the rest of the picture it honestly feels a bit cheap to give it a full nomination (it'd be like nominating only half the film).  The sound & editing are in the same boat-great dancing, the rest not as much, though what I will say for the editing is that they do a great job of hiding that Bancroft is not an actual dancer (strangely it was MacLaine who in real life trained in ballet, not Bancroft whose character is the great talent in the picture).  The Art Direction might be my favorite of the tech nominations-you do get a sense of the opulent grandeur of the stage, and unlike the other tech nominations, it doesn't feel like it's lacking in the scenes not directly associated with the dancing, as all of the homes & dressing rooms feel like reflections of the actual characters.  This is all to say, it's less the film was snubbed by not winning a single Oscar & more that the film was simply over-rewarded in a year that, to be fair to Oscar, didn't have a lot of obvious contenders beyond the two alien odysseys & Annie Hall.

OVP: Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Film: Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Stars: John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller, Joseph Cali, Paul Pape, Donna Pescow
Director: John Badham
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actor-John Travolta)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Every week on the blog we pick a different theme for the reviews we highlight during the week, typically with an Oscar slant, and as you can see by this picture only receiving one Oscar nomination, this is a week devoted to Best Actor (in a lovely coincidence, we'll also be doing our 2005 Official OVP Best Actor ballot this week).  John Travolta in 1977 became one of the youngest men ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar at the age of only 23.  Travolta's career took a lot of turns, being super hot for a few years, then falling completely apart before the comeback of Pulp Fiction, and then another few years of movie stardom before it would once again subside (he's in another ebb right now but he's a well-liked comeback king, so I suspect he'll eventually make it back).  Today we'll take a look at that first nomination, in a film that changed the movie & music of the 1970's, Saturday Night Fever.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Tony Manero (Travolta), a young man who works a thankless job at a local hardware store and lives with his parents.  Manero, though, is a gifted dancer and escapes from the doldrums of his life by performing nightly at a disco club, picking up women & earning admiration from onlookers.  Tony is set to compete in an upcoming dance competition with Annette (Pescow), but dumps her to dance with Stephanie (Gorney), a dancer who is considerably better than Annette.  Stephanie & Tony initially don't start out romantically involved, but eventually start to elevate their relationship.  Meanwhile, Tony and his friends continue to engage in more reckless behavior, picking fights with local gangs and doing dangerous stunts on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, until at one point one of the friends, despondent over consistently being mocked by his buddies & his pregnant girlfriend, accidentally kills himself while performing one of the stunts.  This results in Tony trying to salvage his (by then fractured) relationship with Stephanie, and perhaps strive for a different life for himself.

If you know anything about Saturday Night Fever, you know the soundtrack and what Travolta looks like doing a disco move in his skin-tight white suit.  It's one of the most iconic images of the 1970's, and over 40 years later, has the kind of pop culture cliche where everyone knows what you're referencing if you stick one arm in the air in a confident strut.  This isn't just a throwaway aspect of the film-Travolta's dancing is mesmerizing, and the songs are terrific.  Instant classics like "Stayin' Alive," "Night Fever," and "How Deep is Your Love" are played throughout the movie with flare, and it's criminal that forgettable music from The Rescuers and The Slipper and the Rose somehow bested such gigantic hits, and ones used brilliantly in the movie (personally, I'd struggle to not fill all five of the Best Song slots with numbers from Saturday Night Fever).

That said, Saturday Night Fever is a solid movie, but way more serious than I expected.  Despite its flashy outfits & rebel youth spirit, this is a serious drama, one with few moments of extended comedy.  Travolta is excellent as Tony Manero-you don't get a nomination that young, especially the only nomination for the film, without being really good, and he brings a sense of youthful entitlement to a troubled, but under-the-surface decent young man.  The scenes where he stays silent, his moments of tortured gallantry (when he wishes his life would be less complicated), are really fine acting, and give you a sense as to why Travolta would be such a versatile presence in the movies in the decades that follow.  One has to wonder how different her career had been if Oscar had also noticed Donna Pescow giving a riveting performance as the forgotten Annette in the film.  She plays the young woman, clearly over-her-head but willing to put herself in increasingly dangerous circumstances (with tragic consequences) because she's hopelessly in love with Tony, and willing to change anything about herself to be with him.  Travolta became a superstar, Pescow became a Disney Channel mom-thus is occasionally the curse of being a near-miss with Oscar.

OVP: A Special Day (1977)

Film: A Special Day (1977)
Stars: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni
Director: Ettore Scola
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Marcello Mastroianni, Foreign Language Film-Italy)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Sophia Loren-click here to learn more about Ms. Loren (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


By the end of the 1960's, Loren's career was still in pretty good shape, but the actress seemed intent on slowing down.  Her second marriage (she was married twice to film producer Carlo Ponti) had resulted in the birth of her two sons, and Loren was content with making less movies as she raised them.  However, public demand for Loren didn't dissipate, even after her longtime director Vittorio de Sica died in 1974 (Loren appeared in his last film, The Voyage, and would star in eight movies helmed by de Sica, and they would act together in several more).  For our last film I wanted to pick what is critically the final really important film in Loren's career, at least as a leading woman, to date-A Special Day, an unusual movie from the late 1970's that while she received top billing, frequently is more associated with her costar Mastroianni due to his getting the Oscar nomination for playing opposite of her.


(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place over the course of one day in May 1938, during which time Hitler made a state visit to Rome and appeared publicly with Mussolini.  The event drew incredible crowds, but within the fictional confines of this movie, two people stay home: Antoinetta (Loren), a taken-for-granted mother whose husband treats her like garbage & whose six children dismiss her, and Gabriele (Mastroianni), a former radio announcer who has been fired because he is gay.  The film unfolds with the two forming an unlikely bond (Antoinetta's myna bird has floated to his window, and they meet because she goes to his apartment to catch it), in the process discussing their lives, sexuality, and their divergent politics, which clearly shift over the film as Antoinetta, who makes scrapbooks devoted to Mussolini, starts questioning the indoctrination she's encountered during the fascist regime.

The film is my favorite "genre" (if that's the word for it) of movie, one where two strangers briefly meet, and though they are not together long (the police take away Gabriele toward the end of the picture to be imprisoned in Sardinia), they have a profound impact on each other's lives.  For the most part, it sticks to the best parts of this genre-we see them slowly reveal things they've thought but never said (not just Gabriele's sexuality, but also Antoinetta's broken marriage & dreams), while also forming a bond that neither will be able to shake.

The problem for the film (and for me), is not Loren, who I think is great in this part, but instead Mastroianni.  He's an actor that I richly admire, and thought totally should have won an Oscar nomination for 8 1/2 (and quite frankly, I haven't seen a performance better than his in 1963), but his performance as gay feels like it's being rewarded more for its "bravery" rather than its authenticity.  I didn't like that the crux of the film is the two making love, and while critics have tried to salvage this by saying it was about more than sex (and instead about two people being together in an unforgiving time), it makes it feel like his sexuality, which his character is about to pay an ultimate price for (likely his life, certainly his freedom), is so fluid as to be dismissed.  It's very much a "have your cake and eat it too" situation with the character's sexuality, and as Mastroianni doesn't bring any sort of dimension to his sexuality in the film, so I left kind of at odds with the character, and with the ending.  There are great elements of the film, and Loren is really good (it's likely because 1977 was such a strange Best Actor year that he got in instead of her, as also Best Actress was crazy competitive), but the ending kind of took away some of my love for the picture.

Loren would continue working & being in the public eye, though not always for things she wanted to be there for.  Five years after A Special Day she'd spend a brief stint in prison for tax evasion (charges that would eventually be cleared), and would turn down major TV roles, most notably the part of Alexis on Dynasty that would eventually revitalize Joan Collins' career.  She'd become the first celebrity to launch their own fragrance line (something everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Paris Hilton has done in the years since), and become an "ageless icon" of fashion with her eyewear line.  She'd go on to the biggest hit of her career in Grumpier Old Men, get a Globe nod for Pret a Porter with Julia Roberts, costar in the all-star cast of Nine, win an Honorary Oscar, and have yet another potential comeback later this year with The Life Ahead.  Unlike Jayne Mansfield & Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren is an actress whose career came with a lot of chapters.  Next month, we're going to encounter the only possible person who could succeed Loren in our series, an actress whose career also had a lot of chapters, one of which involved Sophia.

OVP: Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Film: Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Stars: Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleeson, Mike Henry
Director: Hal Needham
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

With the recent death of Burt Reynolds (in a fast-moving world, I still think "within the last year" should qualify as recent), I caught for the first-time ever a retro screening of Smokey and the Bandit.  As someone who has seen a few of Reynolds's pictures, but not most of his most important ones, I wanted to do a retrospective of Reynolds at the time on the blog, but never got around to it.  In an odd conundrum, if you look at our most recent articles about Reynolds, you'll see we've discussed his strange associations with two unusual Hollywood deaths more than we have his films in 2019.  Though I don't think I'll have time to get to a Reynolds retrospective again this year (he'd make a great future Star of the Month), I did want to get my thoughts out about one of his most famous film roles, the Bandit, in the much-loved 1977 car-chasing flick.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Bandit (Reynolds), a local driving legend, who is recruited to drive a truck full of bootleg Coors to a party in Atlanta, Georgia (truly random fact I didn't know before I saw this film-Coors Beer was illegal to distribute east of Oklahoma before the mid-1980's, making it something of a high-end commodity on the East Coast at the time).  Bandit has to make it across the country in 28 hours in order to secure his payment of $80,000, and works with his partner Snowman (Reed), who will drive the truck while Bandit stays in front in his Trans Am, ready to distract any police officers who might try and pull over the vehicle & confiscate its illegal contents.  Along the way, Bandit runs afoul of Buford T. Justice (Gleeson), a bombastic Texas sheriff whose son Junior (Henry) was meant to marry Carrie (Field), who has by happenstance been picked up as a hitchhiker/runaway bride by Bandit.  The movie progresses with our heroes (Bandit, Snowman, & Carrie) continually outwitting Buford and Junior as they successfully get to Atlanta, beer-in-tow.

The movie is about as subtle as a jackhammer, and is not for those who are hoping for high cinema (I find it mildly amusing that we're having Cleo from 5 to 7 and Smokey and the Bandit featured in back-to-back reviews this week as you couldn't find two movies more divergent).  The film is silly, slapstick fun, and feels at home in the same vein as Animal House or Airplane!.  This is decidedly not my cup-of-tea, and I'm not compelled to see the sequels (which are famously atrocious...Field herself called the follow-up the worst movie she ever made), but it's not a bad movie.  Reynolds & Field have a natural chemistry that works in the picture, her down-home champagne and him bootleg whiskey.  Gleeson, a comic legend for a reason, stands out in his supporting role as Buford T. Justice more in-hindsight because every 80's villain would borrow from this picture, but I will admit that it was Field & Reynolds I enjoyed the most in the film.

The movie surprisingly won one Oscar nomination in its era, for Best Film Editing, and I get where this is coming from even though some of the other movies that year (Star Wars and Close Encounters) were landmarks in editing instead of just enjoyable.  The car chase sequences are a delight-combined with a rip-roaring soundtrack (particularly Jerry Reed's "East Bound and Down"), The well-structured chases do not seem repetitive, making the action just good, easy fun.  The politics of the film are atrocious (racial & sexual, in particular), to the point where you almost want to knock off most of the points that are earned by the chemistry between the two leads, but unlike Airplane! I didn't feel like they overwhelmed the movie.  Smokey inspired an endless parade of terrible sequels and ripoffs, but the original is pretty amusing, and an indication as to how Reynolds became such a big star in the first place.