We have officially let Oscar have his say, but now it's time for me to have mine. In April, we looked at all of the Oscar nominees for the 1981 Oscars (aka the 54th Academy Awards), but while the Oscar Viewing Project is focused on what I would've picked with Oscar, we always add on a coda of the My Ballot Awards, where I make a list of whom I would've selected as my winners and nominees from the years of all eligible films.
Coming off of the high of 1957 (links to all past My Ballot Awards are at the bottom, and you'll see that while we have finished off all of the 21st Century, we're enjoying being a bit more sporadic in the 20th Century...next up after this we'll be in the 40's), I will admit that 1981 was a bit of a letdown. Though I do like all of the pictures nominated in my Best Picture field, in 1957 I was cutting movies that I genuinely loved to make sure I got the strongest Top 10 possible, while in 1981 I was actively adding new screenings to the list to try and pad out & see if there were some unidentified gems lying around (with a few exceptions there weren't and most of this was me discovering this was just not the year for me). Still, you'll see a few of the hallmarks of my favorites (westerns, film noir, & epics abound), as well as the inclusion of a few names that so far have not shown up in an My Ballot before for the actors, as 1981 is one of those years bridging Classical Hollywood (Katharine Hepburn, John Gielgud) with a new generation of stars like Kathleen Turner & Harrison Ford.
As ever, a few notes before we star-I don't always copy Oscar verbatim. This year didn't have a Best Scoring category (that was about to go the way of the dodo), but we plan on doing that from 1934 to 1984 (i.e. the full run of the category at the Oscars), so it's included here. Makeup was new to the Oscars in 1981 (Hairstyling would be added later), but we include both, along with five nominees for both it and Visual Effects, and we will also have Sound Editing as a category this year (and a good lineup was pulled together, if I do say so myself). With that said, let's begin!
Picture
Blow Out
Body Heat
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Heaven's Gate
Mephisto
Muddy River
On Golden Pond
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
Thief
Gold: Only one of these movies is officially on my 100 Favorite Films list, and therefore it's an easy call for the top prize. Raiders is just a magical adventure-completely filled with a 1950's popcorn film aesthetic, but with an elevated budget & effects, it's perhaps the best encapsulation of Spielberg's blockbuster side in one picture.
Silver: While Raiders is the only movie in my Top 100, Reds is just bubbling underneath. Warren Beatty's best directorial effort, it is a romantic, sweeping epic, one filled with brilliant performances (just you wait for the acting prizes), and one that isn't afraid to take both politics and love seriously. Truly special, and the kind of movie they simply don't make anymore.
Bronze: Finishing off the list is Body Heat, one of the last great neo-noirs before that subgenre would go out of fashion for most of the 1980's, with Kathleen Turner playing a sexy adulteress that no one can escape. Chilling mystery...in the sweatiest movie imaginable.
Warren Beatty, Reds
Michael Cimino, Heaven's Gate
Lawrence Kasden, Body Heat
Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark
Istvan Szabo, Mephisto
Gold: We're keeping the Raiders train going (I do not make any promises that's not the only train reference this article) with Steven Spielberg getting the prize. I'm obsessed with the way he continually mines his childhood for elevated classics, proving that there is greatness even in the most seemingly disposable ideas (like the Saturday action-adventure matinees).
Silver: Speaking of movies about trains (see, I told you) we're giving second prize to Warren Beatty, the actor-turned-director-turned revolutionary in Reds, a completely marvelous piece of filmmaking, combining documentary style cuts with the fictionalized story of John Reed (far before that was a commonplace trope).
Bronze: Michael Cimino spent most of his life running from Heaven's Gate (a fate one of our Best Actress nominees also associated with her nominated movie), and I'm excited to give them both a reprieve for committed, fascinating work that the public couldn't appreciate at the time. This is a movie that encapsulates the final chapter of the Classical Hollywood western...also it has a sequence with a train too.
Warren Beatty, Reds
Klaus Maria Brandaeur, Mephisto
Henry Fonda, On Golden Pond
Harrison Ford, Raiders of the Lost Ark
John Travolta, Blow Out
Gold: Warren Beatty is one of my favorite actors, and sometimes that's in spite of himself, as Beatty is a big actor, one who doesn't always allow his natural movie star charisma to flow. It's rather appropriately vain (yes, this post is about him), then, that some of his best work is in a movie he himself directed, giving us the vibrant, ill-fated politics of John Reed with such tenacity.
Silver: Harrison Ford's turn in Raiders of the Lost Ark is his best stuff, a totally from scratch icon that feels filled with swagger, sex appeal, and just the right amount of hero to keep you cheering for him in every corner of the picture. If this wasn't in a bottle (we decide all of these awards based totally on merit in the moment, and not if they won elsewhere), I'd give him the gold because I don't think he'll win somewhere else (Beatty probably will), but a silver for such a turn is hardly anything to scoff at (part of the reason I feel Oscar should be more judicious with his nominations, which I anticipate he'll still get 1-2 more of at least).
Bronze: Klaus Maria Brandaeur's work in Mephisto is two-pronged, as it's both giving you a performance of a man, one whose life onstage continues to echos his real life (and vice versa) while it's perpetually channelling the movie's ending in every chapter. Really strong stuff in a fascinating picture.
Faye Dunaway, Mommie Dearest
Katharine Hepburn, On Golden Pond
Diane Keaton, Reds
Meryl Streep, The French Lieutenant's Woman
Kathleen Turner, Body Heat
Gold: Diane Keaton is not known for drama now (I honestly don't know what modern audiences would associate her onscreen persona with it's been so long since she was really good in a movie), but at one point she oscillated better than any actress in Hollywood between her Oscar-winning comedic chops in Annie Hall to her breathtaking, romantic leading woman work in something like Reds (for my money the best performance of 1981 in any category).
Silver: We're following her with maybe the second best performance in any category (in a relatively weak year, the three best lineups I assembled, imho, were Actress, Score, & Sound Mixing), that of Kathleen Turner as the sultry seductress in Body Heat, a movie she steals entirely as she announced (this was her big-screen break) that she was about to own the 1980's onscreen.
Bronze: Finishing it up we have another two-pronged bit of work, though more literally so than Brandauer's as Meryl Streep is playing two different women in The French Lieutenant's Woman, a movie she famously disliked but is one of my all-time favorite pieces of work from her, particularly her haunted onscreen harlot (hey, they said it first).
Paul Freeman, Raiders of the Lost Ark
John Gielgud, Arthur
Rolf Hoppe, Mephisto
Jack Nicholson, Reds
Mickey Rourke, Body Heat
Gold: Like Keaton, Jack Nicholson is so far away from our modern day interpretation of him in Reds that it almost feels like a cheat to give him the top prize for such a turn (this is no one's go-to reference, including mine, for the best Nicholson performance). But what Nicholson does here, charismatic cruelty ("Poor Jack" "Poor Gene"..."You're a lying Irish whore from Portland")...it's barbaric, and it's sensational as he smolders through every moment.
Silver: Wit and timing, that's John Gielgud in most roles but who would've guessed that pairing him with Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli would result in his best work? In a year where Oscar was giving out statues to senior citizens like tic tac's, it's Gielgud's sardonic butler who is the most satisfying, because of all of the work it's the most earned.
Bronze: Mickey Rourke's breakout in Body Heat (fun fact-he had a small cameo in Heaven's Gate so he's in two Best Picture nominees here) isn't much more than a cameo, so why can't I stop thinking about it? He knows everything that happens, and because he's oozing sex appeal (just like Kathleen Turner) he's perhaps the only man in this movie with more than one brain cell.
Karen Allen, Raiders of the Lost Ark
Colleen Camp, They All Laughed
Madeline Kahn, The History of the World, Part 1
Maureen Stapleton, Reds
Shelley Winters, SOB
Gold: You think I'm going to give it to the entire Reds cast and not also hand it over to Maureen? Oscar never did it, but I'm going to-a full four-picture acting sweep, as her Emma Goldman is one for the ages, filled with a verve and tenacity that would be the real life anarchist's trademark. Stapleton such a rich actress, adds a texture of wisdom to this film about the naiveness of revolt.
Silver: Raiders trades off with Reds once again as I give my silver to Karen Allen, taking what easily could've been a girlfriend role (and would basically be just that in the next Indiana Jones picture), and gives us a heroine worth rooting for (and one that is both sexy and smitten with our Indy...just like we are with her).
Bronze: I have seen Clue more than I have any other movie, and I love every bit of it. If you'd told me that Colleen Camp was capable of what she does in They All Laughed, though, I would've, well, guffawed with the rest of you (if you will). Her fast-talking, man-chasing, ambitious country singer is the entire reason to see this movie, and she steals it from actors as diverse as Ben Gazzara, John Ritter, & screen legend Audrey Hepburn. Bravo Yvette, bravo.
The Fox and the Hound
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Mephisto
On Golden Pond
Thief
Gold: One of the strangest lineups I think I've ever assembled (this is a weird list, right?), in a year with very few adapted screenplays it's beyond easy to declare Mephisto our champion. Richly layered, borrowing from Cabaret but more so bringing it to startling, shocking reality, it gives us the tale of Faust over-and-over-and-over again...until even the audience wonders if they could fall for it.
Silver: As I said, I disagree with Streep both about her work and about the plot structure of The French Lieutenant's Woman, giving us two versions of John Fowles' novel, both informing the other, and giving us the paths of tragedy (and fate) with different final destinations.
Bronze: We're concluding this with the most quotable of these five movies ("you old poop" "you're my knight in shining armor"), On Golden Pond is one of those movies that it's so hard to separate myself from, it reminds me so badly of my grandparents (whom I miss more every year), but it's also fine even without an emotional attachment, a feel-good look at the complicated relationships that come from loving someone we didn't choose.
Blow Out
Body Heat
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
Time Bandits
Gold: If you're keeping track, we're now 5-2 (this was the real Barbenheimer race for me) with Reds taking down Raiders once again with a lyrically stunning piece of writing (if you're going to put Eugene O'Neill as a character in your work, you need to come prepared for the lesson), endlessly quotable while still structured in an interesting way.
Silver: Coming behind it are the sexy come-on's of Body Heat. Made very much in the vein of Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, complete with some ready-baked Dashiell Hammett-style rejoinders ("You aren't too smart, are you?...I like that in a man"), this is a truly witty piece of filmmaking between the steam heat of the premise.
Bronze: We'll finish with one more quotable bit of movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. You'd be forgiven for thinking the script isn't the best aspect of this, but that's like saying that Star Wars isn't script-driven...despite the fact that you can't stop saying lines while you're watching. Really engaging fun.
Blow Out
Heaven's Gate
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
Thief
Gold: Complete with John Williams' iconic score (we'll get there in a second), the sound work in Raiders is just beyond belief, dialogue shouted and whispered and such care put into making sure you know this is "elevated" beyond the Charlton Heston-style adventure pictures that inspired it.
Silver: Whenever a movie is about the craft that features it, I tend to be a sucker for its My Ballot placement (it's why I nominated Super 8 for makeup and The Dressmaker for Costume), and that's surely the case for Blow Out, a film whose early moments literally are about finding the right sound to put into the picture. The care that we get with making this aurally perfect is maybe the movie's best stylistic choice?
Bronze: We're not far behind with Thief, though, a movie that starts off the template of Michael Mann movies having just impeccable auditory design, as the silences are so crisp to contrast the whirling saws and drills that title character James Caan brings to his craft.
Blow Out
Dragonslayer
Excalibur
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Thief
Gold: We're sticking to the same three medalists (don't give me that look-I at least wasn't too AMPAS lazy with picking the same 4-5 nominees as both of my also-ran's are different in Mixing vs. Editing), and the gold stays the same. The opening of the Arc of the Covenant and the rolling of the boulder at the beginning are incredibly memorable scenes that you could know just from the sound alone.
Silver: Thief's first image that you recall when you leave it is a sea of smoke and fire with churning drills & saws cutting through a gigantic vault. It's rare that a movie is known for its sound work, but that's true of many of Mann's pictures, and here we get very specific stuff around what makes James Caan's style so special.
Bronze: Another scene that you can't deny is the one of John Travolta recording the car crash that sets the entire movie into motion, which we relive over and over with carefully constructed sound cues, understanding not just how important it is for the story...but how key it is to the authenticity of every picture.
Chariots of Fire
Gallipoli
Heaven's Gate
On Golden Pond
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Gold: Not that there was ever any doubt we'd get there eventually, but after 15 My Ballot nominations, four of them silver (i.e. just barely missing), we finally get John Williams his first outright win for this project, as there is no denying the caliber and iconography of those blasting trumpets.
Silver: The only mention in this entire article of the movie that would win Best Picture from Oscar (which I just found to be fine), I'm not stupid-I know that Chariots of Fire deserves mention here, and in most years would've deserved a win. That combination of classic (a piano) with the modern (a synthesizer) feels at home for a movie about defying convention and what we thought was possible.
Bronze: Okay, Best Score is the best lineup here (apologies to Sound & Actress), because again, in most years On Golden Pond would've been a threat for the win, and here it's barely getting on the medal stand (Gallipoli & Heaven's Gate are also really terrific too...pretty proud of this quintet). I loved the way the film uses a melodic solo piano accompanied by the sounds of nature (i.e. the loons) to establish the familiar, but heartfelt places we'll go with this picture.
The Fox and the Hound
The Great Muppet Caper
Pennies from Heaven
Gold: The musical was starting to die by the late-1960's, so by the 1980's it was basically six feet under. As a result, you'd be smart to assume that in this era, they were turning their camera toward nostalgia to see if what was old was new again, which is what Pennies from Heaven does so well. The musical numbers in this, particularly Christopher Walken tap-dancing to "Let's Misbehave" are showing that even if the musical was dead, love for it was still achievable.
Silver: Speaking of reaching back to Classical Hollywood, the vocal stylings of Pearl Bailey were the key to The Fox and the Hound, the rare hit for Disney in the 1970's and 80's before a singing mermaid would rescue the studio from oblivion. Bailey's warmth adds as a level of emotion to the picture.
Bronze: Though it's hardly as good as some of the other editions of the Muppet films, the score to The Great Muppet Caper is still filled with charming ditties, my favorite being the expositional "Hey a Movie!"
"Best of Friends," The Fox and the Hound
"Endless Love," Endless Love
"For Your Eyes Only," For Your Eyes Only
"The Inquisition," History of the World, Part 1
"Kentucky Nights," They All Laughed
Gold: I already slipped in my reminder that this is written in a vacuum, so I should also throw in the second reminder I try to put in here-it's not a case where I have to love the movie if I'm nominating a terrific element of it in a tech category. That's certainly the case with the perfectly-wonderful "Endless Love" from the truly dreadful Endless Love. Great song, terrible movie, and a tune that finds a way to match the best of the picture.
Silver: Sheena Easton was a 1980's pop queen, so much so that she broke the rare James Bond threshold (at one point it was quite difficult to land for a Bond theme song), but she rightfully did as the smoky, smooth melodies of For Your Eyes Only is the best part of the movie.
Bronze: If you've ever cried at The Fox and the Hound, it's not just the story, but also the soulful, heartfelt pleading of Pearl Bailey's "Best of Friends" that gets you in love with it. The way she proclaims "you're breaking all the rules," knowing what is to come. That's acting through singing, and what elevates a great movie song to be essential-to-the-movie.
Escape from New York
Excalibur
Heaven's Gate
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
Gold: The only one of the 12 matchups between Raiders and Reds in this article where neither of them end up winning the gold medal, and that's because of the incredible grandeur on display in Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. Bigger isn't always better, but this gives a sense of the West dying by making sure it feels like it truly came alive one last time, authentically and with cities seemingly sprung from the ground.
Silver: That said, I'm not totally past Raiders getting another victory here, as it comes in with the Silver. The rock in the opening, of course, is the most important (as is some brilliant work with the trains and location scouting), but everything here feels like we're walking into a movie confident it will be immortalized into a theme park ride someday (meant as a compliment).
Bronze: We finish off with Escape from New York, a truly weird movie but one that plays with the Big Apple's iconography in fascinating perversions & twists. Wholly unique, and a movie that deserves its cult following.
Blow Out
Body Heat
Heaven's Gate
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
Gold: I've made a few jokes about the quality of 1981 as a whole, so I want to be very clear-when it comes to movie moments (of all time) you'd be hard-pressed to have one that feels as important to how my vision of the cinema is shaped quite like Diane Keaton walking down a train platform, looking for Warren Beatty, a camera confidently capturing love effervescing from her in the best scene in Reds (and one of the most romantic scenes I've ever seen in a movie).
Silver: Vilmos Zsigmond is responsible for some of the most beautiful onscreen imagery of the 1970's & 80's (he's nominated twice here, as he also did Blow Out), but the way that he captures the realistic majesty of the Old West in Heaven's Gate is jaw-dropping...see this on the biggest screen you can find.
Bronze: Speaking of movie moments that define me, Harrison Ford replacing that idol and running from a boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark is basically shorthand for modern cinema it's so iconic, but it also precedes a picture that is teaming with confident looks at landscapes and well-lit movie sets.
Body Heat
Excalibur
Heaven's Gate
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
Gold: Sometimes a movie character can be summed up in one outfit. Though they're borrowing a bit from Secret of the Incas (every person should see this movie not because it's good but because you kind of won't believe how similar to Raiders it is...seriously-add it to your Letterboxd list) in terms of Indy's main look, the movie itself is filled with wonderful touches, and of course, you can't beat that weather-beaten fedora.
Silver: I love when a character is telegraphed through their costume choices (a good costume designer is the best thing a screenwriter can ask for), and that's true through pretty much every person in Excalibur, including the sexualized beauty of Helen Mirren's Morgan le Fey or the creepy modernity of Nicol Williamson's Merlin.
Bronze: Beauty and extravagance are key to great costume work, but so is authenticity and character design. Look at the way that Diane Keaton's Louise changes her style as the film progresses to match her politics, or the sea of breezy white linen that she, Nicholson, & Beatty wear to contrast the beautiful beach scenes (giving us even more visual beauty in Reds).
Body Heat
Mephisto
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
Thief
Gold: Our final matchup between Reds and Raiders will end in a draw as Raiders makes it 6-6 (if you want a tie-breaker, Raiders both won Best Picture and took 2 gold medals to Reds' one in the categories they were pitted against each other, so it should take the victor's circle). The action scenes at the beginning and end of this are what do it. The boulder chasing scene, in particular, is a textbook definition of great editing (you see it from four angles to underscore immediately what Ford is up against).
Silver: Reds, despite its length (i.e. "what's edited?") comes in next, and a lot of that isn't just in the way that we see the romance play out in true long-form fashion so you're invested by the end, but also in the way that it achieves its realism through the then-unique documentary-style touches that Beatty's picture utilizes.
Bronze: The way that the tension unpacks in Thief again shows just how confident Michael Mann was as a filmmaker from the beginning, his movie giving us not just character work from Caan & Weld, but also keeps the audience invested in the act of the thefts that are the centerpiece of the story (even while much of it is being talked about more than seen).
An American Werewolf in London
Clash of the Titans
The Evil Dead
Excalibur
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Gold: The premiere year of this category for Oscar (we'll do it for the entirety of the project as movies have had makeup since the beginning), the Academy got it exactly right, and with a horror movie to boot! An American Werewolf in London is a combination of creepy makeup effects, hyper-realistic terror, and just a touch of sex appeal to keep you on your toes.
Silver: The Evil Dead hardly has any sex appeal (we'll leave that for the bronze medalist), but it's very much playing with the concept of creepy makeup as it moves about the (literal) cabin. I am not always into the over-stylized looks of Sam Raimi, but I cannot deny it when he does it well, and this is genuinely terrifying demonic possession, aided in large part by the grotesquerie of the makeup.
Bronze: Unlike Oscar, I always make a point of showing that you can make movie stars beautiful and still achieve impressive makeup and hair work. That's certainly true in Excalibur, where Helen Mirren's high ponytail and overly dramatic eyes are just one example of the film using desire in all of its looks to give us the lust that consumes a tale that's centered around literature's most famous adultery.
An American Werewolf in London
Dragonslayer
Excalibur
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Superman II
Gold: Everything comes together perfectly in Raiders of the Lost Ark, from the incredible face-melting makeup to the miniature work & practical effects (especially during the gigantic opening rolling rock sequence). Spielberg was as inevitable in this category once as James Cameron, and with good reason.
Silver: Sometimes effects are truly grand, unstoppable but housed in movies that don't really deserve something that impressive (looking at you, Transformers movies). Other times they are subtler, like the glowing green hues and impressive wizardry on display in Excalibur, a marvelous example of using a budget for all it's worth to advance your tale.
Bronze: Finishing off our 1981 is Dragonslayer, a movie whose entire story lives and dies off of whether the audience is enraptured by the titular beast. The special effects team ensures it is, using then-cutting edge computer technology combined with puppetry and gigantic set pieces to make a creature not just real, but full of characteristics to distinguish itself.
