OVP: The Conversation (1974)

Film: The Conversation (1974)

Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound)

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

Harrison Ford's public persona has long been of a man who didn't really want to be a movie star.  A lot of this, I have long-suspected, is at least partially untrue (otherwise why do it, especially when he became bonkers rich & didn't really need to do it anymore...after all, his wife is also a talented actor who now rarely works).  But it is interesting that Ford's fame came relatively late.  The role that made him a movie star was Star Wars, which was released just days before his 35th birthday. For comparison's sake with some of his 1970's peers, Al Pacino at that age had several Oscar nominations and the Godfather franchise, Dustin Hoffman had been Ben Braddock & Ratso Rizzo, and Jack Nicholson & Peter Fonda had both boarded a motorcycle into legend.  Ford spent much of the 1970's balancing his time between small roles in movies and making furniture for people like Joan Didion, Valerie Harper, & George Lucas.  Ford's movie career, though, is really interesting because he appeared in a lot of interesting movies, among them Michelangelo Antonioni's controversial Zabriskie Point, and three Best Picture nominees: American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now, and today's film The Conversation.  For all of the talk about Ford at one point before Han Solo nearly quitting the industry to work as a high-profile carpenter, the more intriguing idea might be what he did in this film: taking on the role of distinctive, very handsome character actor in important auteur-driven features.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Conversation is a movie best headed into with you knowing as little as is humanly possible, so while I provide a spoiler alert on all of my reviews because I generally want to know as little as possible about all movies I'm going to, this one in particular it helps to go in blind so I'll reiterate that now.  The movie follows Harry Caul (Hackman), a man who runs a service that essentially follows people and records them for money (it is not lost on me that The Conversation, which competed with Chinatown for Best Picture in 1974, bears a striking resemblance to the Roman Polanski film as both are about private investigators who uncover more than they expected from a routine case).  Unlike Jake Gittes, Harry Caul does not advertise and is not well-known for his work.  He is, instead, anonymous to the point of unhealthy, keeping everything about him at a distance to the point his girlfriend (Garr) doesn't ever visit his apartment and he doesn't even have his own phone.  This is driven by wanting to avoid retribution, but also the very real threat of violence in his career.  Similar to Chinatown (again) there are allusions to a previous case throughout the film that the audience only understands to be too horrific to mention, and that haunt both detectives to the point they are constantly in fear of repeating it.

The Conversation is considered a landmark film, but because Francis Ford Coppola had it come out the same year The Godfather, Part II (one of the greatest movies ever made), it always feels like it doesn't get its due, and so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect headed into this-would it be a really handsome movie, one that stands up but can't compare with a picture as perfect as Godfather II, or would it be just as exceptional.  Again, similar to Chinatown, it's not clear until the last moments what's happening, and it's also not clear where The Conversation will land in that comparison.  But as the movie concludes, you realize it's also a true masterpiece.  We understand as the film ends that Harry has no idea what he's walked into, and what he's helped cause.  He assumes that the conversation between Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams at the beginning of the movie is of a couple that might be having an affair, and becomes concerned when he uncovers (while listening to the clips that he initially won't hand over to a man known as "the Director's" assistant without first meeting the Director himself) that a part of the clips that he couldn't initially hear says "he'd kill us if he got the chance."  When he meets the Director (played by an uncredited Robert Duvall) he becomes worried for the young couple's safety as it's clear Cindy Williams is the Director's wife.  But as we learn in the waning moments of the film, he's missed something on the tapes-the emphasis in Forrest's reading of the word "us."

Because as the film ends, it's a case where Frederic Forrest has murdered Robert Duvall's husband with help from his lover, leaving all of the money (and secret organization he has) to Cindy Williams, and leaving them the opportunity to end up together.  The movie's sound work is legendary (and Oscar-nominated) for a reason, as not only is the entire setup with Hackman's Harry filled with us getting whirs & blurs from the recording equipment, but also the film tells in flashback narrative things the audience will have missed.  The film clearly inspired everything from The Usual Suspects to Severance (which borrows heavily from The Conversation's score), and you see why-this is a movie that shows paranoia is justified...and cannot be resolved.  We end the movie with Harry knowing he is being watched, knowing that he can't escape or be safely private...and having to give in to that to not go mad.

Harrison Ford's role is a key component & a crucial part of this story, even if he's only in about three scenes.  He plays the Director's assistant, and plays him with a level of bureaucratic cool that you kind of just assume he's a jackass (also according to most reports, Ford played him as gay which kind of comes across in the way he's super bitchy in a way you don't find a male character in the 1970's, even if there's no hint of this other than him wearing a stylish green suit in one scene that Ford bought with his own money), one who has gotten to this position through being absurdly handsome and honestly it's the sort of character you assume you don't need to pay attention to as the movie progresses.  Because I am writing this about Ford, though, I was paying attention, and it gives you a whole other angle here.  Ford's Martin Stett is the only figure in the film who 100% knows everything that's going on we learn as the film goes by-he works for the Director, but he's also clearly aware of the affair, and given that he's still working for Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams in the end, it's possible he orchestrated all of this in connection with them.  The paranoia seeps into the actual film...was this all a setup to use Harry, kill the Director, and give the young couple everything they wanted?  Only Ford's Stett, who calls Hackman in the end to tell him he's being watched, knows for certain, and makes him the true antagonist of the picture.  Ford is good in this, and as we'll talk about next week, that layered acting ability didn't totally diminish when his visage started to adorn the postered walls of teenage boys, but as I said above-it's hard not to think of Ford in the same way we think of someone like Robert Duvall or John Cazale, someone who added extra layers to already great movies, as a supporting character actor, while watching The Conversation.

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

Oldest Living Oscar Nominees

With the passing of Olivia de Havilland earlier this week, obviously we lost a film legend.  We also lost the answer to a lot of longevity questions when it comes to the Oscars.  De Havilland got her first nomination in 1939 for Best Supporting Actress (for Gone with the Wind), her first Best Actress nomination in 1941 for Hold Back the Dawn, and her first win for Best Actress in 1946 for To Each His Own.  This meant that de Havilland was the earliest (not to be confused with oldest, though she was that too) living Best Supporting Actress nominee, Best Actress nominee, and Best Actress winner.  With her death, I honestly didn't know the answer to who was next in line for these three titles (though I had a correct guess for Supporting Actress), and so I figured it was time to do some research, cause I don't let Oscar trivia questions go unanswered.  Below you will find for the directing and four acting categories who are chronologically the earliest (again, not oldest) living nominees and winners.

Best Actress

Nominee: Leslie Caron (1953) for Lili
--Runner-Up: Carroll Baker (1956) for Baby Doll
Winner: Joanne Woodward (1957) for The Three Faces of Eve
--Runner-Up: Sophia Loren (1961) for Two Women

As you can tell, de Havilland's death truly put an end to the 1940's in terms of Best Actress, as there were no nominees after her that are still with us until 1953 with Leslie Caron, who was nominated twice but never won (I feel like considering her place in especially Golden Age musicals, possibly alongside Mitzi Gaynor the only real figure left from that era's biggest films, that she should get an Honorary Oscar, and post-haste as she's 89).  Baker, who was just 25 when she was cited for Baby Doll, is next up, though you have to go to 1957 for a living winner with Joanne Woodward (who has been very ill health for quite some time now), and then Sophia Loren (who has another movie coming out later this year).

Best Actor

Nominee: Sidney Poitier (1958) for The Defiant Ones
--Runner-Up: Michael Caine (1966) for Alfie
Winner: Sidney Poitier (1963) for Lilies of the Field
--Runner-Up: Gene Hackman (1971) for The French Connection

Best Actor winners tend to be older than the other three categories, so it's not shocking to me that we have to go back further to find living recent winners here.  Technically Poitier is actually his own runner-up for Lilies of the Field, but I figured that wasn't fun to track so we're going with Michael Caine three years after Poitier's landmark win.  Unlike the Best Actress field, all of these men already have Oscars, though Caine is the only one that still works in film.

Best Supporting Actress

Nominee: Angela Lansbury (1944) for Gaslight
--Runner-Up: Ann Blyth (1945) for Mildred Pierce
Winner: Eva Marie Saint (1954) for On the Waterfront
--Runner-Up: Shirley Jones (1960) for Elmer Gantry

Scratch the above comment-Shirley Jones is also living and obviously in the same league as Caron & Gaynor in terms of classic Hollywood musicals (truly random aside, but I remember many years ago seeing an interview with Jones & her husband Marty Ingels where he let strangers that were there for a yard sale of some sort hold Shirley's Oscar-I can't have imagined this, but have never found the interview...any ideas internet?). Blyth actually ties Angela Lansbury for runner-up as Lansbury was nominated in 1945 for The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Up until quite recently Joan Lorring who was nominated that year for The Corn is Green was also alive (she died in 2014) and the other two women nominated that year both lived into the 1990's, so this field might have a record for longevity at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominee: Don Murray (1956) for Bus Stop
--Runner-Up: Russ Tamblyn (1957) for Peyton Place
Winner: George Chakiris (1961) for West Side Story
--Runner-Up: Joel Grey (1972) for Cabaret

There are no provisos here for runners-up.  Don Murray is not only one of the longest-lived Supporting Actors ever, he's also one of the rare ones to have been nominated for his screen debut.  Also, with Tamblyn alive, maybe I should stop pointing out a lack of classic actors from major Hollywood musicals not being alive, but that we should still consider Caron for an Honorary Oscar-who wouldn't want to watch her thank Fred and Gene in the same speech?  Looking ahead here, it's weird to think that just eight years behind Joel Grey is Timothy Hutton, who was so young when he won for Ordinary People that he's not even sixty yet.

Best Director

Nominee: Claude Lelouch (1966) for A Man and a Woman
--Runner-Up: Norman Jewison (1967) for In the Heat of the Night
Winner: William Friedkin (1971) for The French Connection
--Runner-Up: Francis Ford Coppola (1974) for The Godfather, Part II

Admit it-when I typed Coppola for Godfather II, at least half of you said "wait, what about the first one?" before you remembered Bob Fosse won that year for Cabaret.  Looking at this list, I had never put together that Lelouch was so young when he made A Man and a Woman (I loved this movie, and will surely have to see it again before we do the 1966 OVP, but when I saw it in college I found it intoxicating), being not even 30 when he was nominated for an Oscar for the film.  With the exception of Jewison (whose last film was 2003's The Statement with Michael Caine & Tilda Swinton), all three of these men have made movies in the past five years, though Coppola has threatened frequently to retire.

Scarecrow (1973)

Film: Scarecrow (1973)
Stars: Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Eileen Brennan, Ann Wedgeworth, Richard Lynch
Director: Jerry Schatzberg
Oscar History: No nominations, but it did win the Palme d'Or
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're taking a mild detour in our conversation about the films of 1973 today.  This film is, indeed, from 1973, but it is not Oscar-nominated.  I keep a list of every Oscar-nominated film that I've never seen, but also on the list is every Palme d'Or winner I've never seen, and I didn't fact check, so we'll have this as one of our five 1973 movies this week (the last one, I promise, will close with an Oscar nominee).  It's a good question as to why this wasn't nominated, though.  At the time, Al Pacino & Gene Hackman were major stars, and had certainly gotten Oscar's blessing.  Two years prior Hackman had won Best Actor for The French Connection and the year before this came out Pacino had gotten his first citation for The Godfather (which he had to have at least been close to winning for).  What was it about Scarecrow that kept Oscar at bay, but made Cannes give it the top prize?  Let's find out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about two drifters: Max (Hackman), a hot-tempered felon who is just out of prison, and Lion (Pacino), an immature guy (but in an endearing way) who seems to view the world with a weird sense of innocence and hope.  The two set off on an adventure to Philadelphia, where Max has socked away enough money that they can start a carwash together, but in the process they meet multiple women including a girl Max woos at a bar (Brennan) and then another who seems like she might be a more permanent love interest named Frenchy (Wedgeworth).  Max gets into a fight with Frenchy's ex-boyfriend at a bar, which lands them in a prison farm for a month, and on that prison farm Lion, abandoned by Max who blamed him for the arrest, is sexually assaulted by a man who claimed he was trying to be his friend.  Afterwards, Lion is angry and no longer sees the world as a place of hope, and their roles are reversed, with Max now trying to keep Lion happy.  This ends badly-Lion ends up having a breakdown and is institutionalized, with Max, now seeing him as his one true friend, vowing to get him out one day and paying for him to get better.

The film is grim, as you can tell, and was not a hit at the time, which likely made it harder for Oscar to bless (Pacino's other movie that year, Serpico, was a huge hit and much friendlier with AMPAS).  It's also a bit dated, to be honest.  The film runs rampant with homophobia, with Richard Lynch's Riley the only outwardly "queer" character in the film (though there's an element to Max & Lion's friendship that could be read for some Celluloid Closet code), and of course he's the film's rapist.  Additionally, the only thing the female characters are expected to provide is cleavage, and it does have that aura of a Seventies film that the only important things that happen are to people who are miserable.

But this isn't a bad film by any stretch, and the leads are great.  Hackman is probably a bit better, getting the simpler role but making it sing.  There's something weird about seeing the more collected Hackman playing the hothead and Pacino getting the sweet novice (a few years later, these roles surely would've been reversed), but it works for Hackman, whose Max has a sense of entitlement and anger at the world that informs his worldview, but feels well-earned.  Pacino is good, though not quite as good as he'd be consistently at the time-it's hard to grade an Al Pacino performance that's solid but not groundbreaking when you know that there's roles like Michael Corleone and Sonny Wortzik just sitting around within a year or two ready for the taking.  But this is definitely a film that I get why it was both critically-lauded and commercially-unsuccessful...even if I'm kind of in the middle on both.

BAFTA Nominations ≠ Oscar Nominations: Part 2

Where we last left off, we had discussed the actors who had most been rewarded at the BAFTAs but persistently snubbed by the Oscars, and we were all a bit ticked off on Dirk Bogarde and Mia Farrow’s behalf’s.

Now, though, let’s investigate the actors that Oscar did in fact have something of a crush on, even though BAFTA was far more impressed.  Just like before, here are the tiebreakers:

1. If an actor received multiple nominations for different films in the same year, that counted as less for the rankings.

2. If the actor won a BAFTA Award for one of their performances.

3. If an actor received their nomination as a “British Actor” rather than the more all inclusive category.

10. Simone Signoret

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Room at the Top, Ship of Fools)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 4 (Casque d’Or, The Crucible, The Deadly Affair, Games)

Winner? 1 Oscar (Room at the Top) and 3 BAFTA’s (Casque d’Or, The Crucible, Room at the Top)

Closest She Got to Another: Most likely none…if I had to pick one, maybe Deadly Affair?

Signoret is one of those foreign film actors that BAFTA became obsessed with during its early run, giving her multiple nominations for films that are little seen in the United States even now, much less when they originally ran, so Oscar probably didn’t notice aside from his two films that he nominated the French leading lady for.  I put Deadly Affair as most likely just because it did quite well with BAFTA, and had a lot of Academy favorites above and below the title (James Mason, Maximilian Schell, Sidney Lumet, Paul Dehn, Freddie Young) and sometimes that’s what it takes to get a nomination.

9. Gene Hackman

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (The French Connection, Unforgiven)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 3 (Bonnie and Clyde, I Never Sang for My Father, Mississippi Burning)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (The Poseidon Adventure, The Conversation, The French Connection II, Night Moves, Superman)

Winner? 2 Oscars (The French Connection, Unforgiven) and 2 BAFTA’s (Dual win for French Connection/Poseidon Adventure and Unforgiven)

Closest He Got to Another: The Conversation

Hackman is one of only two actors to show up on our nominated but royally-missed actors at the Globes and the BAFTAs, and what’s even more bizarre is that three of his films at the BAFTAs (and three of his films here) didn’t get nominated.  Perhaps I’m underestimating the power of The French Connection II, since Hackman got Globe and BAFTA nominations for both, but I feel like he had a better shot for the Best Picture-nominated The Conversation.  The BAFTAs kept him in favor of Dustin Hoffman in Lenny and Art Carney in Harry and Tonto (who inexplicably won the Oscar) and the Globes skipped Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, so while everyone had a precursor to tout, Hackman had more.

8. Sir Ralph Richardson

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 1 (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 1 (The Heiress)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (The Sound Barrier, Doctor Zhivago, Khartoum, The Wrong Box, Lady Caroline Lamb)

Winner?: No Oscars, but he won the BAFTA for The Sound Barrier

Closest He Got to Another: Doctor Zhivago?

It has been many, many years since I last saw Doctor Zhivago and I have never seen Greystoke, so the next two observations are more “on-paper” than anything else, but considering how popular Zhivago was with the Academy, it’s safe to assume that Richardson’s next nomination probably would have come from that movie.  It should be noted, though, that the acting branch wasn’t wild for the film-despite major precursors for different actors (Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Ralph Richardson, and Geraldine Chaplin) it only got one Oscar nomination, and oddly for none of those four actors (it was for Tom Courtenay).

I will also say that I wonder, had he still been alive, whether Richardson would have been a threat for winning with Greystoke.  The 1980’s were the peak of “old age” Oscars (something we see less and less of today, particularly with more and more people winning Honorary Oscars at the Governor’s Ball), and names like Henry Fonda, Don Ameche, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, and Jessica Tandy all took home Oscars in the twilight of their careers.  Had they had another speech to enjoy from the witty Richardson, perhaps his name would have been on that list.

7. Lord Laurence Olivier

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 3 (all of these counts are just for acting, as clearly Olivier won nominations for other things during his career) Richard III, The Entertainer, Sleuth

Nominated for Just Oscar: 7 (to be fair, the bulk of these were before the BAFTA Awards existed) Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello, Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (Carrie, The Prince and the Showgirl, The Devil’s Disciple, Term of Trial, Oh! What a Lovely War)

Winner?: Olivier won one acting Oscar for Hamlet and picked up two BAFTA’s for Richard III and Oh! What a Lovely War

Closest He Got to Another: Carrie, probably

This is of course a tad bit ridiculous, as Olivier scored just as often with the Oscars as BAFTA and he’s one of the most rewarded men in the history of the Best Actor category.  That said, of course, he still had a relatively strong following in his native land, and especially during the 1950’s (when Olivier wasn’t as en vogue with Oscar) he seemed to do quite well.  Carrie was my selection more because it was one of the only films here that Oscar noticed, giving it Best Art Direction and Costume nominations, and Olivier’s costar was Oscar winner Jennifer Jones, so a film with two Academy favorites had to at least have been on the radar of Oscar.

6. Peter Finch

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Sunday Bloody Sunday, Network)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (A Town Like Alice, Windom’s Way, The Nun’s Story, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, No Love for Johnnie)

Winner? 1 Oscar (for Network, the only posthumous Oscar for acting until Heath Ledger) and 5 BAFTAs (A Town Like Alice, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, No Love for Johnnie, Sunday Bloody Sunday, and Network)

Closest He Got to Another: Probably none-maybe The Nun’s Story?

Finch was one of those British actors who got so big in his native country that Oscar had to notice one time or another, and they did, late in his career.  By that point, though, thanks to the split British Actor categories, his place on this list was cemented.  I’ve always been curious what would have happened if he hadn’t died before Network.  He didn’t have an Oscar, so they may have just given him the trophy anyway (Howard Beale is a character not to be denied), but his fellow nominees, particularly costar William Holden and Best Picture lead Sylvester Stallone both look really strong for the win on paper if Finch didn’t have some sympathy factor in his direction.  Either way, I think that The Nun’s Story was his best shot of the misses, not because of his performance per say, but because the film, which was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, is the only one I can guarantee the bulk of the Academy saw in that year.

Julie Christie with fellow snubee
Dirk Bogarde

5. Julie Christie

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Darling, Away From Her)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 2 (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Afterglow)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (Billy Liar, Doctor Zhivago, Fahrenheit 451, The Go-Between, Don’t Look Now, Finding Neverland)

Winner? She has one Oscar and one BAFTA, both for Darling

Closest She Got to Another: Tough call-maybe Billy Liar?

Julie Christie is such an iconic, beautiful actress of the 1960’s (…good reference, says Jessa), that you forget that she’s also one of Oscar’s most enduring actresses, being one of the few performers to score a nomination in four separate decades of her career.  It’s easier to make the argument that she came close to winning a second Oscar or BAFTA than to say she was on-track to get another nomination with Oscar (and quite frankly, if she was going to get another one I think it would have been for 1975’s Shampoo over any of the films that she got for BAFTA), but if I had to take a guess it’d be for Billy Liar.  The film was a hit and made Christie a star (she would have made it for supporting actress at Oscar, rather than lead like BAFTA, as they didn’t have supporting yet), but if the Academy hadn’t been so enamored with Tom Jones (which took 60% of the nominees in that category that year), Christie may have made it.

4. Shirley MacLaine

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 3 (The Apartment, Irma la Douce, Being There)

Nominated for Just Oscar: (again, for acting only) 2 (Some Came Running, The Turning Point)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (The Trouble with Harry, Ask Any Girl, What a Way to Go!, Being There, Postcards from the Edge, Steel Magnolias)

Winner? 1 Oscar (Terms of Endearment) and 2 BAFTAs (Ask Any Girl and The Apartment)

Closest She Got to Another: Postcards from the Edge

If you look at the Globes and BAFTA lists together, Mia Farrow is clearly the actor who was most screwed out of an actual nomination at some point in her career, making second place on both lists.  If you look at the people Oscar actually blessed with nominations, though, it’s hard not to feel like MacLaine was royally snubbed.  She topped the Globes list and manages to be the highest-ranking non Brit on this list, so you have to continually ask-what did Oscar have against MacLaine?  It doesn’t seem like it would have been the politics (Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda regularly got nominated during the same period).  You don’t hear a lot about her being particularly difficult to work with (and again, Brando was nominated).

Either way, Postcards seems to be the biggest miss-Diane Ladd did some interesting work in Wild at Heart, but it seems stunning that the more traditional MacLaine didn’t make it instead.  Perhaps there was category confusion (she was lead with BAFTA, after all)?  That’s about the only thing I can think of to explain it.

3. Dame Maggie Smith

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Room at the Top, Ship of Fools)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 2 (Othello, Travels with My Aunt)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (Young Cassidy, Death on the Nile, Quartet­-though the one from 1981, not the recent one, oddly enough, A Private Function, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini)

Winner? 2 Oscars (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, California Suite) and 5 BAFTAs (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Private Function, A Room with a View, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini)

Closest She Got to Another: None of these films, but she’s been very close before

Smith is one of my all-time favorite actresses of any era, and you don’t get enough chance to write about her in film anymore, so I relish the idea of doing so here.  The first really noteworthy thing about this list is that she’s made two films with the same name (Quartet, both of which landed her a precursor nomination and neither of which won her an Oscar nod)-can anyone think of another actor that’s done that without it being a remake/winking cameo?

Like Julie Christie, it’s easier to make an argument that Smith was closer to another Oscar win (A Room with a View, where she was fighting it out royally with Dianne Wiest and pulled off both the Globe and the BAFTA) than another nomination, particularly for these films.  You may recall she was definitely in the running for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and many people (including myself) expected her to score a nomination for that movie over Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook.  Perhaps the lack of a BAFTA nod should have been a telling sign to us all to look elsewhere?

Delliott with his Room with a View costar Judi Dench

2. Denholm Elliot

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 1 (A Room with a View)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (A Doll’s House, Saint Jack, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Trading Places, A Private Function, Defence of the Realm)

Winner? No Oscars, though he did pull off back-to-back-to-back wins for Trading Places, A Private Function, and Defence of the Realm (and A Room with a View was his fourth in that series, which he missed for but considering the film scored almost everywhere else, you know he was close).

Closest He Got to Another: You tell me.

The Denholm Elliot thing escapes probably a lot of us (well, me at least)-I hadn’t realized quite what a star the actor was in his native Britain before he managed to land a nod for Room with a View and become a noted supporting player in the Indiana Jones series as Marcus Brody.  Raiders was the only one of his BAFTA only films to make a major impression on the Academy, but the series never scored an Oscar nomination for acting despite a plethora of citations elsewhere, and one assumes that Harrison Ford or Sean Connery were more likely to score than Elliot if they did get a nomination.  His other work was very “British” (and not in a David Lean/James Ivory sort of way), so I don’t know that he would have gotten in for any of this latter two wins.  Trading Places did get an Oscar nomination (for score), but it’s not the sort of thing the Academy goes for, even in the 1980’s when it would have been a hit.

1. Dame Judi Dench

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 6 (Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, Iris, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 7 (Wetherby, A Room with a View, 84 Charing Cross Road, A Handful of Dust, The Shipping News, My Week with Marilyn, Skyfall)

Winner? 1 Oscar (Shakespeare in Love) and 5 BAFTAs for film (A Room with a View, A Handful of Dust, Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, Iris)

Closest She Got to Another: The Shipping News, maybe?

Each of these lists has been won by someone clearly at the top of the heap-someone who is either obviously beloved by the one awards body or shamefully snubbed by AMPAS (depending on how you want to look at it).  With seven additional nominations (and two wins for those performances), Dench is obviously that candidate, and I suspect we all knew she’d be at the pole position.

Dench’s career is bizarre of course because she became a major film star late, late in her career.  She’d had a long and distinguished couple of decades in theater and television before Mrs. Brown managed to pop her onto the international circuit (it’s worth mentioning she was a noted supporting player in Britain for film at this time).  Had she been DAME JUDI DENCH in the eyes of the world in 1986, A Room with a View surely would have gotten her her first Oscar nomination, but I think it’s safe to assume she came the closest during one of her peak fame years: either The Shipping News or Skyfall, with The Shipping News’s SAG nomination breaking the tie for me.  With Philomena coming out in a few weeks, she’s the only actor on this list who seems guaranteed to add to her numbers soon-will it be for BAFTA, Oscar, or both is the question?

Those are the top ten-what is the most surprising name on the list?  Who do you think came the closest overall to another nomination (I’m torn between Smith and MacLaine)?  Who deserved another nomination the most?  And what part should they have cast Shirley MacLaine in in A Room with a View, since clearly the top three found success with it?  Share in the comments!

Golden Globe Nominations ≠ Oscar Nominations, Part 2

Earlier this week, we took a look at the actors that the Golden Globes have nominated the most without ever receiving a subsequent Oscar nomination.  Today, however, we look at the actors that the Globes simply favored over the Oscars, but both have spread some love toward.  The weird thing about this list is that, in many cases, the Oscars have been fairly generous to the nominees: no one is a one-time Oscar nominee, and 80% of those included below have won an Academy Award.  Let's take a look:

I used the same weighting system as before (favoring leads in dramas, supporting roles, and comedies in that order), so there are a number of contenders, such as Cary Grant, Julie Andrews, Sally Field, and Walter Matthau who just miss the cut.  Also, for the sake of uniformity, I'm only including the below actors' film acting nominations, though I am aware at least two of them have received nominations in other categories at the Globes or the Oscars.

10. Al Pacino

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 8 (The Godfather, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, ...And Justice for All, Dick Tracy, Glengarry Glen Ross, Scent of a Woman)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 0
Nominated for Just Globes: 5 (Bobby Deerfield, Author! Author!, Scarface, Sea of Love, The Godfather Part III)
Winner?: 1 Oscar (Scent of a Woman) and 2 Globes (Serpico, Scent of a Woman)
Closest He Got to Another: The Godfather Part III

Like de Niro, Duvall, Hoffman, and Nicholson, Pacino enjoyed a "do-no-wrong" sort of joyride for a while with awards bodies, from roughly 1972-92 (he is, to date, the only one of those five to not have been nominated in the past twenty years).  One of Oscars favorites, it's hard to imagine him receiving many more nominations (eight puts him fifth amongst all male actors), though one has to wonder how close he must have been for The Godfather Part III.  The film received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and Pacino had to be close to taking out his longtime buddy Robert de Niro (who was probably just included over his costar Robin Williams) or Gerard Depardieu (who was likely close to cancelling himself out with the successful Green Card also in theaters that year).  One wonders if, in this alternate universe, pressure would have mounted to give Pacino one of the two Oscars that he was nominated for, and thus giving Denzel Washington his Malcolm X Oscar, which many feel he deserved.

9. Gene Hackman

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 3 (The French Connection, Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 2 (Bonnie and Clyde, I Never Sang for My Father)
Nominated for Just Globes: 5 (The Conversation, The French Connection II, Under Fire, Twice in a Lifetime, The Royal Tenenbaums)
Winner?: 2 Oscars (The French Connection, Unforgiven) and 3 Globes (The French Connection, Unforgiven, The Royal Tenenbaums)
Closest He Got to Another: The Royal Tenenbaums or The Conversation (see below)

Hackman actually has a pretty solid track record outside of the Globes-two nominations without a Globe nomination for either is a pretty solid position to be in, especially considering they both came before his first Globe nod.  However, the Globes were particularly fond of him in the sixteen years between The French Connection and Mississippi Burning, giving him a nomination even for the "really?" sequel to The French Connection.  I'd say that The Conversation was the most likely nominee, possibly taking out Albert Finney, but with Hoffman's Lenny, Pacino's Godfather 2, and Nicholson's Chinatown, they may have had enough of the new generation and it might have been a longshot for Hackman to make it too.  The Royal Tenenbaums likely would have gotten him a nomination had they been a little clearer on his campaign-he won the Globe for lead but they campaigned him in supporting, a smart move, but the confusion probably cost him and benefited surprise nominee Ethan Hawke.

8. Goldie Hawn

Nominated for Globes and Oscars: 2 (Cactus Flower, Private Benjamin)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 0
Nominated for Just Globes: 6 (Butterflies are Free, Shampoo, The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, Foul Play, Best Friends, The Banger Sisters)
Winner?: 1 Oscar (Cactus Flower) and 1 Globe (Cactus Flower)
Closest She Got to Another: Shampoo or Butterflies are Free

Am I the only person who desperately misses Goldie Hawn?  I don't think it's fair that she retired on us so abruptly after 2002's The Banger Sisters and am always hoping someone finds a role suitable for her.  She might be the most surprising entry on this list-unlike Pacino and Hackman, she hasn't given so many critically-lauded performances to put her into a ubiquitous, "always-nominated" state.  Every single one of her "extra" nominations happened for comedies, which likely caused this big gap, though I suspect that she had a shot to take out Maggie Smith in Butterflies are Free (competing at the time with Carol Burnett for the fifth slot).  There's also a chance that she could have gotten in on the wild mess that was the 1975 Best Actress race, though Marilyn Hassett, Faye Dunaway, and Hawn's costar Julie Christie were all also trying to break into that wild category.  Considering her enormous influence on the Globes you would think she could get the DeMille at some point.

7. Nicole Kidman

Nominated for Globes and Oscars: 3 (Moulin Rouge!, The Hours, Rabbit Hole)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 0
Nominated for Just Globes: 6 (Billy Bathgate, To Die For, The Others, Cold Mountain, Birth, The Paperboy)
Winner? 1 Oscar (The Hours) and 3 Globes (To Die For, Moulin Rouge!, The Hours)
Closest She Got to Another: Cold Mountain or The Paperboy

With actresses that aren't named Meryl, Oscar frequently forgets that they exist once they've won their trophy.  Think of how many women have done interesting work that was looked over for years, perhaps forever, after they won their Oscars.  Kidman, at least up until Rabbit Hole (which, despite it being the best of the year, seems like a sort of fourth or fifth slot nomination rather than one the Academy actively pursued).  She was obviously in the running for Cold Mountain, though the 2003 Best Actress race is one that I think we all can agree was Oscar (thankfully) thinking outside of the box, so it's difficult to gage where the more standard nominations like Kidman would have fallen into place.  The Paperboy was definitely outside of the box, and Jacki Weaver clearly upset some frontrunner, though I partially think it was Maggie Smith for Best Exotic who was in sixth place rather than Kidman (who knows though-throw in Ann Dowd and those four women had to have been separated by single-digits).

6. Leonardo DiCaprio
Nominated for Globes and Oscars: 3 (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, The Departed)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 0
Nominated for Just Globes: 6 (Titanic, Catch Me If You Can, The Departed, Revolutionary Road, J. Edgar, Django Unchained)
Winner?: No Oscars, but he won the Globe for The Aviator
Closest He Got to Another: Django Unchained

Look at the spread of time that DiCaprio has wracked up nine nominations.  Over the course of fifteen years, he scored nine Globe nominations, and three led to Oscar.  That's a stunningly low conversion rate, particularly when you consider that he has never been nominated in a comedy.  Part of his problem is that the Oscars don't care for younger men-DiCaprio has not yet turned forty, whcih is when the Oscars really start paying attention for men, but some of these are just odd, particularly Django.  Considering that Waltz was a lead and Arkin was on autopilot (and Waltz, oddly enough, was not a sure thing at the Oscars), had DiCaprio been able to trounce him and get into the race, he likely would have won taking on four previous winners.  It seems deeply apparent that at some point DiCaprio is going to pull a Paul Newman and win the big trophy after his golden boy looks have faded, but clearly the Globes are going to rub their "we honored him first" at Oscar for the time being.


5. Johnny Depp
Nominated for Globes and Oscars: 3 (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Finding Neverland, Sweeney Todd)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 0
Nominated for Just Globes: 7 (Edward Scissorhands, Benny & Joon, Ed Wood, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Tourist, Alice in Wonderland)
Winner?  No Oscars, but one Globe for Sweeney Todd (though sadly he won during the Writer's Strike, so instead of Depp accepting we had to sit through Billy Bush prattling)
Closest He Got to Another: The Tourist...just kidding, probably Ed Wood (though admittedly none of these were super close)

Depp seems content to be without an Oscar indefinitely at this point, as his constant, garish cartoons that Tim Burton has dreamt up keep him from getting back to the comedic brilliance that he hit in Pirates.  It's worth noting that with the exception of Finding Neverland (which did gain him an Oscar nod), he's never been nominated in the drama category, which puts him in a situation where he's rarely going to be nominated for an Oscar based off of Globes love (the comedy category, especially for men, is usually a slate of broken dreams for those HFPA-nominees with Dolby-aspirations).  Of the ten on this list, he's the one I see moving up the most frequently in the future, as his star status is still huge, getting him Globe attention and the Globes, oftentimes a bit pressed for Comedy nominees, go with the big hits rather than the critical ones on a regular basis (can't you see him landing for the cringe-worthy Lone Ranger?).

4. Barbra Streisand
Nominated for Globes and Oscars: 2 (Funny Girl, The Way We Were)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 0
Nominated for Just Globes: 8 (Hello, Dolly!, The Owl and the Pussycat, Funny Lady, A Star is Born, Yentl, Nuts, The Mirror Has Two Faces)
Winner?: 1 Oscar (Funny Girl) and 2 Globes (Funny Girl, A Star is Born)
Closest She Got to Another: Babs usually gets closer behind the camera when she misses, but my best guess would be Yentl.

Yes, before anyone says anything I am aware that Streisand has been nominated for directing, producing, and song-writing in her long awards career with these two bodies, but this, as I mentioned above, is limited to acting nominations only.  Even then, Streisand, who is treasured by the Globes, comes ahead by eight.  She and Hawn are the only two people on this list to have only two acting nominations with the Oscars, and like Hawn, Streisand won these nominations predominantly for comedies or musicals.  Streisand has a long history with the Oscars, and has been fairly vocal about her inability to be nominated for directing for Yentl or The Prince of Tides, so it's actually quite overlooked how frequenty she's missed in the acting categories.  She was probably in sixth or seventh place for Yentl (but based on the strength of the eventual Oscar nominees, wasn't a major contender).  And of course, as she made a film in 1975 that was somewhat noteworthy, she was part of the conversation in that weirdest of Best Actress years, though probably not to the extent that Hawn was.

3. Meryl Streep
Nominated for Globes and Oscars:15 (The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Sophie's Choice, Silkwood, Out of Africa, A Cry in the Dark, Postcards from the Edge, The Bridges of Madison County, One True Thing, Music of the Heart, Adaptation, The Devil Wears Prada, Doubt, Julie and Julia, The Iron Lady)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 1 (Ironweed)
Nominated for Just Globes: 8 (She-Devil, Death Becomes Her, The River Wild, Marvin's Room, The Hours, The Manchurian Candidate, Mamma Mia!, It's Complicated, Hope Springs)
Winner?: 3 Oscars (Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice, The Iron Lady) and 7 Globes (Kramer vs. Kramer, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Sophie's Choice, Adaptation, The Devil Wears Prada, Julie and Julia, The Iron Lady)
Closest She Got to Another: Hmm...probably The River Wild or The Hours

Yes, Virginia, there is someone who loves Meryl more than the Oscars, and it is the HFPA.  Streep, despite seventeen Oscar nominations, has managed to pull off another eight Globe nominations that Oscar didn't cite.  It's worth noting that Mamma Mia and It's Complicated couldn't land her Oscar nominations, as she was already nominated (the Oscars limit their actors to one performance per category, the Globes do not).  Meryl gets the occasional Globes-loving-celebrities sorts of nomination where it seems more about the person having a film out than about the performance (She-Devil, anyone?), but I can see a few films here where she was clearly making a play with Oscar.  The Manchurian Candidate I distinctly remember as part of the conversation, though people were divided on the remake.  The Hours she was obviously in sixth place, but that Best Actress race was impenetrable (it's hard to say who was in sixth place, as they were all so obviously going to be nominated).  I think, therefore, the closest she got was for her surprise nomination for The River Wild.  Meryl kind of came out of nowhere to get the nomination, and then once she became part of the conversation and I have a feeling she almost landed her nomination (in the same way that she got her fifth place nod for Music of the Heart over Reese Witherspoon and Sigourney Weaver).

2. Jack Lemmon
Nominated for Globes and Oscars: 7 (Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, Days of Wine and Roses, Save the Tiger, The China Syndrome, Tribute, Missing)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 1 (Mister Roberts)
Nominated for Just Globes: 9 (Under the Yum Yum Tree, Irma la Douce, The Great Race, The Odd Couple, The Out of Towners, Avanti!, The Front Page, That's Life!, Dad)
Winner?: 2 Oscars (Mister Roberts, Save the Tiger) and 3 Golden Globes (Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, Avanti!)
Closest He Got to Another: Dad?

Lemmon for years held the title of the most-nominated actor at the Globes (until Meryl took the title, like she is wont to do).  Though he is one of the rare comedic actors to make a significant impression on Oscar, there was still plenty of room for him to score at the Globes for his many comedies of the 1960's and 1970's.  Looking at the nine films that he didn't get nominated for, none really scream out as odd that the Oscars didn't nominate him-The Odd Couple is a classic, but one where he shared the lead and likely split the vote with his longtime costar Walter Matthau.  I don't know enough about the 1989 acting race to make a guess, but based off most years, a nomination for Best Actor in a Drama (the only time he missed with Oscar but got in at the Globes in that category) is usually a tip of someone making a play for the Oscar, though with Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson also Globe-nominated for memorable roles, I can't be sure (I'd love some thoughts in the comments for those who remember that year's Oscars).

1. Shirley MacLaine
Nominated for Globes and Oscars: 4 (Some Came Running, The Apartment, Irma la Douce, Terms of Endearment)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 1 (The Turning Point)
Nominated for Just Globes: 10 (Ask Any Girl, The Children's Hour, Gambit, Woman Times Seven, Sweet Charity, Being There, Madame Sousatzka, Postcards from the Edge, Used People, Guarding Tess, In Her Shoes)
Winner?: 1 Oscar (Terms of Endearment) and 4 Globes (The Apartment, Irma la Douce, Terms of Endearment, Madame Sousatzka)
Closest She Got to Another: Postcards from the Edge, Being There, Madame Sousatzka...let's discuss.

Shirley MacLaine is one of the best actors who doesn't instantly come up on lists of the greatest actors.  Sure, you get to her eventually (as do most life achievement awards bodies, the Kennedy Center Honors being the strange and remaining holdout), but she's not Streep, Nicholson, de Niro instant.  She also has a weird history with the Oscars.  Despite five nominations (solid) in four different decades (damn impressive), you could make a very legitimate argument that the number should be considerably higher.  How many actors, especially high-name actors, miss out on performances like Being There (getting bumped for Marsha Mason in a fairly one-note role?) or Postcards from the Edge (again, I liked Diane Ladd in Wild at Heart, but MacLaine is much more in their wheelhouse)?  And MacLaine is one of only six actors to have won the Drama lead Globe and then not get nominated for an Oscar (oddly enough, our leader in the other Globes countdown, Jim Carrey, is one of the remaining six).  Is it perhaps MacLaine's politics that turns off the Academy (the Globes seem to court controversy a bit more)?  Whatever the reason, it's a weird circumstance and one worthy of discussion  (especially since this is one of the only film nomination awards lists where someone beats Meryl)!  Theorize in the comments, and also on which of these actors perhaps got the closest to either going up (Globe snubs-we know they happen) or down (Oscar snubs-the weirdest of the Top 10 for me is Pacino in Godfather III, but I'd love your thoughts!)