OVP: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Film: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

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

Director: John Milius

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

1948 Oscar Viewing Project

I put this on Twitter, but one of my goals going forward is to have at least one Oscar Viewing Project ballot or one Oscar My Ballot each month until I have finished the project.  Because I just finished being on vacation (I was in Florida, having a blast in DisneyWorld), we're going to actually get a couple of these this month, both from 2024 in a few weeks AND from 1948 today.  Yes, I have officially seen all of the nominated films of 1948, and thus we are going to discuss the movies of this year.  We generally start with a look at the box office from a given year, but I will note that pre-1980 box office numbers are hard to find accurately, as it wasn't as consistently reported in trade papers before then.  Additionally, certain types of films (like, say, Disney films) tend to have been re-released in theaters more frequently than others (hence how movies that were considered flops initially like Bambi would eventually end up in the black).  That said, this is what Wikipedia has for the top domestic grossers of 1948, so we'll use it as a jumping off point (with a grain of salt):

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Paleface

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Easter Parade

6. The Three Musketeers

7. The Snake Pit

8. The Emperor Waltz

9. Homecoming

10. Sitting Pretty

As you'll see below, Oscar didn't start taking a really big detour from what was popular with audiences until the 1990's, as 9/10 of these movies are ones I not only saw, but would've seen in connection with the OVP, the sole exception being Homecoming with Lana Turner & Clark Gable (which I'll see for the My Ballot that year).  Other top grossers that year that sometimes are listed on the Top 10 include Sorry, Wrong Number with Barbara Stanwyck, Yellow Sky (which I have seen despite no nominations because I love westerns) with Gregory Peck, and A Date with Judy starring a young Elizabeth Taylor.  As you can see, Oscar wanted to embrace what was popular, particularly in a year of upheaval for Hollywood, as the theatrical monopolies had ended, and 1948 was a weak year at the box office.  With that context, I want you to go back to a different time, to a time of Truman defeating Dewey, of the creation of both Israel and the frisbee.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note from John: When I did this series during the time when I wrote individual articles, and had this blog be a daily part of my life, I made a point of highlighting each nominee in my many write-ups.  While I will be writing these every time I complete a year (like I said above, hopefully monthly going forward), I can't make that time commitment, either in terms of number of articles or in terms of giving each nominee their due with a mention, anymore.  I promise, though, that I have given each nominee their due under the confines of the specific category while making my rankings (and of course I've seen every single nominated picture discussed below), including giving higher rankings to movies I didn't like if the craft was better than ones I did like (Oscar should consider that).  Hopefully you enjoy the trimmed-down, but still devoted to the original concept version of the OVP we'll have going forward!

Picture

1. The Red Shoes

2. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

3. Hamlet

4. The Snake Pit

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: I actually did a podcast devoted to this specific topic (if you go to the Gilded Films podcast site, you can find both of their episodes on 1948, as I'm the guest on both of them) so feel free to listen if you want a voice reveal (and some great convo on this contest).  For me, it's not a difficult decision on the winner here.  The Red Shoes is just on another level.  There are really good movies here (honestly-there is no bad movie in this quintet, though I do frequently have to re-remind myself that I like Johnny Belinda as Oscar liked it way more than me), but the sheer modern scale of The Red Shoes here is unbeatable, besting worthy defenders like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Hamlet.

Director

1. John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

3. Anatole Litvak (The Snake Pit)

4. Jean Negulesco (Johnny Belinda)

5. Fred Zinnemann (The Search)

The Lowdown: With The Red Shoes out of the race, I've got a much closer contest, pitting John Huston & Laurence Olivier for the top spot against each other, much like in real life (weirdly, both were directing themselves, as both of their pictures in the collage are from them acting in their movies, though Olivier was the lead while Huston had a bit cameo).  I actually like Olivier's Hamlet more than most modern critics, as I think it's moody and just a little bit creepy (it's easy to see how the Coen Brothers were inspired by this when they did their telling of Macbeth), but Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of those movies it's impossible to deny Huston's impact, giving us a perfect decrescendo into hell with Humphrey Bogart.  Kudos also to Antaole Litvak who also had a lot of modern touches (rare for a social issues picture) in The Snake Pit.

Actor

1. Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

2. Montgomery Clift (The Search)

3. Clifton Webb (Sitting Pretty)

4. Lew Ayres (Johnny Belinda)

5. Dan Dailey (When My Baby Smiles at Me)

The Lowdown: Bogart's snub in 1948 was a big deal, some calling it the biggest of its kind since Bette Davis was looked over for Of Human Bondage in 1934.  It's insane, given how good he is (he'll be on my My Ballot for this year) that he was missed, but looking at just Oscar's choices, I'm going with the same selection as the Academy, giving Laurence Olivier (an actor I am very hit-or-miss with) a pretty easy victory.  Olivier might be too old for this part, but he leans in really well with the uncomfortable Oedipal overtones that Shakespeare provides his prince for his mother Gertrude, and while Clifton Webb is delicious & Monty Clift has a terrific star-is-born turn, this is a case of an actor's "time" also being for some of his best work.  I will also say that Dan Dailey getting Humphrey Bogart's nomination here is both perplexing (like...why?) and bordering on a war crime he's so bad.

Actress

1. Olivia de Havilland (The Snake Pit)

2. Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number)

3. Jane Wyman (Johnny Belinda)

4. Irene Dunne (I Remember Mama)

5. Ingrid Bergman (Joan of Arc)

The Lowdown: No one is as bad as Dan Dailey of the 20 nominations (an embarrassingly terrible performance), but Best Actress is not a great lineup compared to the guys despite having generally better actors.  Irene Dunne is playing I Remember Mama like she's channeling Loretta Young (not a compliment), and Ingrid Bergman once again proves that for one of the best actresses of her generation, Oscar nominated her for the wrong roles.  The win is between de Havilland, whose really raw performance adds to The Snake Pit's accuracy-to-life, and Barbara Stanwyck as a truly vicious femme fatale who totally nails the film's rough ending.  Stanwyck is the opposite of Bergman (she tended to get nominated for her best work, this being the least of her four nominated turns but still solid), but I'm going with de Havilland given she provides more accuracy.  Jane Wyman, the actual winner, uses physicality well in her role but doesn't add enough beyond being great casting given her giant saucer eyes are so crucial to filling in gaps in the underwritten plot.

Supporting Actor

1. Walter Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

2. Charles Bickford (Johnny Belinda)

3. Cecil Kellaway (The Luck of the Irish)

4. Jose Ferrer (Joan of Arc)

5. Oscar Homolka (I Remember Mama)

The Lowdown: Both of the supporting turns I'm going with the actual Oscar winner, and while I'm usually cognizant that I have a bias toward the actual victors (because, unlike the 2000's & 2010's, the winners here have been the "winners" my whole life), unlike Olivier (where Clift or Webb would make acceptable victors), the supporting winners are heads-and-shoulders above the rest (again, both will make my My Ballot list).  Huston's turn as a weathered gold miner is so calculating, and filled with such meaningful backstory in the way he portrays it, I wish that he'd worked with his son on ten more pictures.  The only thing that comes close to it is Charles Bickford's concerned father in Johnny Belinda, but even there it's not close to what Huston is bringing to a better movie.

Supporting Actress

1. Claire Trevor (Key Largo)

2. Agnes Moorehead (Johnny Belinda)

3. Barbara bel Geddes (I Remember Mama)

4. Ellen Corby (I Remember Mama)

5. Jean Simmons (Hamlet)

The Lowdown: Finishing out the acting races is Claire Trevor.  Trevor is one of those actresses who rarely played leading roles despite leading lady beauty, but she was also better suited for character work, as she understood the assignment in westerns & noir.  In Key Largo, she gets one really critical scene where she belts out a torch song to her own humiliation (it's a hard scene to watch, but it makes the movie), but she's good throughout.  No one else is in the same hemisphere as her.  Even second place Agnes Moorhead (not as good as Bickford, despite being a more reliable actor otherwise) is only in second because I didn't have anywhere else to turn and I like her as a rule.  This is all Trevor.

Motion Picture Story

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. The Search

5. Louisiana Story

The Lowdown: A quick reminder that Motion Picture Story is technically about the concept of the movie, which is a writing gift, but it's not (for example) about the specific dialogue in the picture.  This helps a movie like The Naked City, which is really better as an idea than a picture itself (though I liked it), but I have to dock points for something like Louisiana Story, whose almost documentary-like naturalism gets in the way of the actual tale it's attempting (or is it...this is a weird movie, speak up if you've seen it in the comments).  My top prize goes to The Red Shoes, which is really gifted in the way it uses its romances almost as a red herring, over Red River (which, conversely, uses its ambition as a red herring to cover some of its romances).

Screenplay

1. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

2. The Snake Pit

3. The Search

4. A Foreign Affair

5. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: 1948 is the most recent year where the Screenplay categories were not split out between adapted & original screenplay, and so we have four adapted films against the original The Search.  I actually wish I could give this to The Snake Pit, because it's the sort of picture that Oscar generally loves and I generally don't (social issue pictures are not my jam), but it's done so well I could actually find some common ground between us...but in this case both Oscar & I are siding with the work of John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of the truly great studio film screenplays of the era (no notes-even the Hays Code couldn't ruin this one).

Score

1. The Red Shoes

2. Hamlet

3. Johnny Belinda

4. The Snake Pit

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Movies are rarely gusty enough to do what The Red Shoes does with its score.  Look at a film like Tar, for example, which is about classical music and thus uses actual classical music throughout the picture to instruct that.  But The Red Shoes literally spends so much time talking about how it is written for a classic ballet, but instead of Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev, it's literally original music.  The chutzpah...and that they land it, making it sound like a genuine classic...it's impossible to deny, though the moodiness of Hamlet or the windswept grandeur of Johnny Belinda both would've made fine wins (this is the best of the many Johnny Belinda nominations, and the one that I'll come closest to duplicating with my My Ballot even though I won't actually).

Scoring

1. Easter Parade

2. Romance on the High Seas

3. The Pirate

4. The Emperor Waltz

5. When My Baby Smiles at Me

The Lowdown: Similar to Motion Picture Story, I'm not entirely sure how to grade this, and it's more difficult as we'll actually have this for the My Ballot for 1948 (we will not do the same for Motion Picture Story).  But I'm going to look at this as the best overall musical in terms of the way it's staged, sung, & conducted in the picture itself (with perhaps a bonus point or two for truly original song scores).  With that in mind, you can't really beat Easter Parade, with Judy & Fred sounding lovely, particularly with him taking on "Steppin' Out With My Baby" and our first real Ann Miller MGM musical.  Romance on the High Seas benefits from a young Doris Day, and The Pirate has a beautiful choreography from Gene Kelly, but neither are as good as what Easter Parade is achieving.

Original Song

1. "It's Magic" (Romance on the High Seas)

2. "Buttons and Bows" (The Paleface)

3. "The Woody Woodpecker Song" (Wet Blanket Policy)

4. "For Every Man There's a Woman" (Casbah)

5. "This Moment is Magic" (That Lady in Ermine)

The Lowdown: Yes, for those who grew up watching his cartoons, the title song from Woody Woodpecker performed by the Kay Kyser Orchestra, was Oscar-nominated (the only time in the history of the Best Original Song category where a short film was nominated).  But while it's a cute little ditty, I have to go with "It's Magic" as it does a really incredible job of establishing Doris Day as a star in the picture.  "Buttons and Bows" is also a standard, but it has less to do with the success of the film (and let's be honest, is more of a standard than a classic, if that makes sense).

Sound

1. Moonrise

2. The Snake Pit

3. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: One of the big reasons that the Oscar Viewing Project will take me so long is that, just a few years earlier, the Sound categories were popping out a dozen or so nominees each year, and then by 1948 they randomly became only a three-wide affair.  The quality here is better, though, with only a trio of nominees, and gives us the single finest "hidden gem" nomination of this bunch: Moonrise.  Moonrise is a dynamite picture (if you've never seen it, please add it to your Letterboxd Watchlist as it's masterful), and it's also a cool nomination.  The film features one song moment (though it's not a musical one), that is executed perfectly, and it also works really well with the circus motif to create strong background noise to heighten tension.  Oscar gave the statue to the also solidly authentic work in The Snake Pit, but for me it's all about Moonrise.

Art Direction - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. Johnny Belinda

The Lowdown: For the record, we will not be separating between Black & White and Color for my My Ballot's (though we will have five nominees, so for this at least we'll have more than Oscar).  The win here is easy for me-Olivier's Hamlet is a really cool combination of stage play and realism (again, much like the Coen Brothers' lauded turn with Macbeth), and totally upstages anything that is done in Johnny Belinda.  Honestly, the real credit from staging in Johnny Belinda is believably making California look like Prince Edward Island (if there was an Oscar for location scouting...this is the one it should've won).

Art Direction - Color

1. The Red Shoes

2. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Both very worthy nominees (say what you will about the end product of Joan of Arc, it surely looks terrific), but much like Moira Shearer, I cannot deny The Red Shoes.  Even the title cards for the movie are crafted to match the set, as if they are somehow part of the movie itself, everything so careful, beautiful, and deliberate.

Cinematography - Black & White

1. A Foreign Affair

2. Johnny Belinda

3. The Naked City

4. Portrait of Jennie

5. I Remember Mama

The Lowdown: Back to the arbitrarily chosen nominee count, Oscar went with the naturalism of The Naked City, which is understandable.  Shot entirely on location in New York, the movie uses real life so well it's hard not to fall for the gimmick (this is one of the hardest My Ballot quintets I'll have ever had to assemble, for the record, as I don't know that any of these will end up on it, and normally the Top 3 would be gimme choices).  I'm instead going to pick the naturalism on display in A Foreign Affair to reward, where Marlene Dietrich is shot in actual war-torn Berlin as if she was back with von Sternberg (compliment).  At some point someone needs to explain to me how I Remember Mama got a nomination in this category when much better options existed (hell, if you just stick to movies Oscar was already watching, you have Moonrise or The Snake Pit right there!).

Cinematography - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Three Musketeers

3. Green Grass of Wyoming

4. The Loves of Carmen

The Lowdown: There's literally room for one more nomination, and in one of those situations where I have to assume there was a paperwork mistake (like Roddy McDowall accidentally going lead for Cleopatra), The Red Shoes was cut from this, which it definitely should've won.  With that out of the way, I have a moment to honor its competitor Joan of Arc, though honestly not by much-this is not just the best lineup of this list, it's also one of the best lineups I've seen Oscar assemble during the Classical Hollywood era...every single one of these I gave 4/5 stars in my personal rankings (which is hard to get as I grade on a curve).  Even The Loves of Carmen in last place has a wonderfully vibrant motif (and Rita Hayworth has rarely looked so lovely).

Costume - Black & White

1. Hamlet

2. B.F.'s Daughter

The Lowdown: Despite costumes being in movies since the dawn of time, it took until 1948 for the Academy to bother rewarding the men & women who made them (this is the first year of the category).  For Black & White, I will go with Hamlet, which gives us not just lovely frocks for Jean Simmons to prance about in, but we also get some attention-to-detail loveliness in the menswear (guys like wearing pretty things too).  BF's Daughter gets nominated almost entirely for a stunning white-and-gold dress that Barbara Stanwyck wears about halfway through (hopefully this link works, but you can see it here) which is breathtaking...but nothing else in the movie compares so it can't really be on the same level as Hamlet.

Costume - Color

1. Joan of Arc

2. The Emperor Waltz

The Lowdown: Similar to how we constantly talk about John Williams in Best Score and whether or not I'm giving him another Oscar (he was nominated so often), we'll be doing the same for Edith Head.  In our second profiled year of Head's 35 competitive nominations (we did 1957 here) Head won, but while I was intoxicated by Joan Fontaine's glorious green dress with matching hat in The Emperor Waltz, it was the only look that really stood out to me, and so I'm more inclined to the many armored outfits of Ingrid Bergman wore in Joan of Arc instead.

Film Editing

1. The Red Shoes

2. Red River

3. The Naked City

4. Johnny Belinda

5. Joan of Arc

The Lowdown: Fun fact-The Red Shoes will not be sweeping the My Ballot awards in the way you're thinking right now because, well, there are a lot of really good movies in 1948 that Oscar chose to ignore that I'll get into.  But I cannot deny with this specific lineup that the Powell & Pressburger film shouldn't take the cake.  The way that the ballets are structured and shot, jumping the line between reality and fiction, are made in the editors' room, even against solid naturalism in The Naked City and the gigantic cattle drives of Red River.

Special Effects

1. Portrait of Jennie

2. Deep Waters

The Lowdown: The early years of the special effects categories are odd because while effects have always been a part of the movies, that doesn't mean that they were as common as they are now (where even crowd work in a rom-com is likely done at a computer).  Portrait of Jennie takes out Deep Waters both because Deep Waters doesn't really have a lot of effects to champion (just a gigantic storm sequence late in the picture), and because of the way it uses the film's cinematography as a tool with the color lensing in the water effects at the end of the movie to give us an ethereal beauty.

OVP: The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Film: The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Stars: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, Marilyn Monroe

Director: John Huston

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Director, Supporting Actor-Sam Jaffe, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 are hitting the halfway point in our month-long celebration of film noir, so it makes sense that we finally enter the 1950's, and we're doing so with not just the most lauded of the films we'll profile (at least in terms of Oscar success), but also one that brought about a future global superstar.  Marilyn Monroe didn't star in a lot of film noir once she became a big name, but in the first few years of her career, she made four films in the genre: Don't Bother to Knock, Clash by Night, Niagara, and The Asphalt Jungle.  We are only going to do one of these films this month (we've still got a lot of ground to cover as we're ending in the 1970's), but I will confess that while I've seen 70+% of Monroe's films, I've never seen any of these movies, despite the fact that film noir is my favorite genre.  So let's check out The Asphalt Jungle.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Doc (Jaffe) a criminal genius who has just gotten out of prison, and is already hoping for his next big score.  He thinks he's found it when he chances upon a stash of jewelry worth half a million dollars.  However, Doc needs three men (a safecracker, a driver, & a "hooligan") to pull off the job, and that requires money, which he gets (supposedly) from Alonzo Emmerich (Calhern)...but Emmerich doesn't actually have the money.  He's broke, and is planning on stealing the jewelry for himself.  One of the three men that Doc hires is Dix Handley (Hayden), who is a bit of a renegade whose only truly redeeming quality is his ex Doll Conovan (Hagen), who loves him despite his faults.  As you might expect, things go awry with the jewelry heist, and one-by-one each of the men fall, leaving behind the women who love them.

One of those women is Monroe.  This was very early in her career (the same year she made her big splash in All About Eve in an equally small role), and here she's playing Calhern's girlfriend (he's married to another, older woman).  Monroe steals every scene she is in, though it's hard to tell how much of that is sheer screen persona and how much of it is performance.  This is, admittedly, always the problem with Monroe's movies-how can you tell the difference between the legend and the actress?

Taking the Monroe out of it, this is a fine movie, with strong performances all-around (Calhern, Jaffe, & Hagen are also great), but no one is hitting a home run.  Hagen & Jaffe, in particular, feel like they're one scene short of something truly incredible, and that's kind of the film's problem.  There's nothing wrong with it, but with the Hays Code keeping its neck on the inevitable ending (the audience is actively rooting for the bad guys, and wants at least one of them to get away with the heist), it kind of feels like a letdown when they all end up dead or in jail.  Needs more focus, but well-edited & it picks up in the back-half.

Previous Films in the Series: Murder My Sweet, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Daisy Kenyon, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Woman on the Beach, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat

Top 10 Films of 2020 (that aren't from 2020)

All right-we will be this week (likely on Tuesday if my plans are correct) unveiling my Top 10 of 2020.  However, in every year but this year especially, I see a lot of movies, and not just ones from the 2020 calendar.  In 2020 I saw 288 movies, some repeat viewings but many classics (or not so much) that I had never seen before, and I don't want to let something like chronology get in the way of celebrating great cinema.  As a result, I've included below my Top 10 films of 2020 that I saw for the first time (that didn't come out in 2020).  Enjoy (titles are listed alphabetically)!

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

dir. Otto Preminger

A complicated look at sexual assault (and a surprisingly modern take considering its Classical Hollywood roots), this is a 3-hour film that never feels long, and has amazing work from Jimmy Stewart & Lee Remick.

Cabin in the Sky (1943)

dir. Vincente Minnelli

Ethel Waters steals the show in Vincente Minnelli's first musical, a landmark musical featuring an all-Black cast, and a picture that proves that "happiness is just a thing called Joe."

Honeyland (2019)

dir. Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov

A hands-off documentary that is so rich you almost feel it's a narrative feature; it's a challenging look at poverty, loss, & our ill treatment of the planet.

if... (1968)

dir. Lindsay Anderson

Malcolm McDowell shows early shadows of Alex DeLarge in this boarding school drama, a movie that even 50 years later is shocking in its frankness about sex & violence.

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

dir. Max Ophuls

Impossibly romantic, Joan Fontaine & Louis Jourdan are iconic as two lovers who alternate between passion & indifference in this forgotten masterwork.

The Misfits (1961)

dir. John Huston

A more avant-garde western than you'd expect given the stars, The Misfits is a look at the faded west & its fight against modernity.  Career-best work from Marilyn Monroe & (dare I say it?) Clark Gable.

Paper Moon (1973)

dir. Peter Bogdonavich

A gemlike father-and-daughter buddy film (on screen & off), that gives both of the O'Neal's their best work.  Proof that A+ chemistry, writing, & cinematography can always sell a picture.

Paths of Glory (1957)

dir. Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick gives us one of the best "war is hell" examples brought to cinema, with a look at the cruel politics of battle (and the finest performance from Kirk Douglas I've ever seen).

The Red Shoes (1948)

dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

One of those films that is spoken about in near reverent tones by cinephiles, Powell & Pressburger's magnum opus lives up to the hype: a modern, gorgeous tale of tragedy.

The Wind (1928)

dir. Victor Sjostrom

One of the greatest silent films I've ever seen, Lillian Gish gives the performance of a lifetime as a woman driven near mad by the harsh winds of the prairie.

Myra Breckinridge (1970)

Film: Myra Breckinridge (1970)

Stars: Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, John Huston, Mae West, Farrah Fawcett, John Carradine

Director: Michael Sarne

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 Raquel Welch-click here to learn more about Ms. Welch (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I'm going to be honest here, it feels kind of mean to put this movie next in our month devoted to Raquel Welch.  We aren't going to be jumping super far after 100 Rifles here for Welch chronologically, and I'll be real that based on the cast list & the genre, I assumed that I'd have liked 100 Rifles more than I did, so we're going to have our third 1-star movie in a row for the actress today.  But it would be irresponsible to talk about Raquel Welch's career and not bring up the nadir of her stardom: Myra Breckinridge.  We'll get into this below, but initially one would've thought that Welch was making a good decision here.  The original novel (by Gore Vidal) on which this story is based was a big deal.  It was certainly controversial (many called it pornographic), but it was celebrated by some (Harold Bloom included the novel in The Western Canon), and for an actress like Welch, who was trying to be taken seriously by her peers, investing in a movie that might do that made sense.  Instead, it nearly wrecked her career (and in some ways caused irreparable damage), and pretty much every person involved with the movie has since opined it was an unmitigated disaster, destroying the lives of several involved & generally being considered one of the worst movies ever made.

(Spoilers Ahead) All right, this is a very strange movie, and one that is not sensitive to today's views on transgender issues, so I'm going to be matter-of-fact in describing the plot as accurately as they did at the time.  We open with Myron Breckinridge (Reed), undergoing an experimental surgery at the hand of a surgeon (Carradine, in a cameo).  He is then transformed into a beautiful woman, Myra (Welch) who goes to see Myron's Uncle Buck (Huston) under the guise that Myra is Myron's widow, rather than telling the truth.  Myra is entitled to a portion of Buck's school, and when Buck refuses to give over the school, Myra insists on teaching at the school while Buck comes up with the money.  While there, she meets two "all-American specimens," masculine, handsome Rusty (Herren) and feminine, blonde Mary Ann (Fawcett).  In her quest to "destroy the last vestigial traces of traditional manhood," (that's a direct quote from the movie) Myra sets out to seduce both of them, first Rusty (which she does by raping Rusty with a strap-on dildo), and then after Rusty breaks up with Mary Ann, she starts sleeping with the blonde.  Eventually Uncle Buck concludes Myra isn't who she says she is with him trying to get her to admit she's a con artist, and then she exposes herself (and her apparently still-present testicles) to Uncle Buck, showing that she is Myron.  After this, we see that Myron has just been dreaming all of this-the people were figments of his imagination (Mary Ann was his nurse, and on a nightstand seen by the audience but not Myron as the film concludes, is a picture of a magazine featuring a headline & cover story about "Raquel Welch").

That's the plot in essence, though there are other aspects to the film worth mentioning (specifically that Reed's Myron continues to appear to Myra, frequently lusting after both Mary Ann & especially Rusty from afar, as a figment-of-her-imagination, and a strange subplot involving Mae West's Letitia van Allen as a casting couch-agent who at one point beds an extremely young, pre-mustache Tom Selleck).  But this is enough for you to understand we're in uncharted territory plot-wise, right?  A few years after the fall of the studio system, Frank Capra has officially left the building.

Myra Breckinridge could have been a cult classic.  It has those trappings, just a few years away from the quintessential (and not entirely dissimilarly-themed) Rocky Horror Picture Show.  But Myra is terrible, and not even some of its campier elements can save it.  Myra as played by Welch is a cartoon, a cruel, vicious cartoon, insensitive, degrading, & violent.  She's a weird juxtaposition of celebrating Old Hollywood (in many ways mirroring film critic Red Reed himself in that regard) and wanting to totally defy gender norms.  Her sexuality at the end feels a bit confusing (it feels like her lust after Mary Ann is more real than her lust after Rusty, even though Myron generally feels like he's a gay man in our meetings with him in apparition).  And putting Myra aside, the movie is littered with terrible performances (including from actors like Huston, who are brilliant in other movies), and a plot that vacillates between dumb comedy & abject horror.  Particularly in its strange treatment of the character of Rusty (who is literally raped for laughs at one point in the film), it's just mind-bogglingly awful.

And that was the public reaction.  Myra Breckinridge was an abject disaster for all involved.  Mae West (who came out of a 27-year film retirement to do this movie) & Raquel Welch feuded repeatedly on the set, and the whole film went over budget quickly.  As word spread of what the movie was about (and that it was going to get an X-Rating, one of only two such films to be released by Fox with such a distinction), the use of old footage of movies in the picture was removed due to lawsuits from the original stars; Loretta Young & Shirley Temple (then a UN Ambassador, so even the White House go involved on her behalf) both successfully sued to have footage of themselves removed from the film (though other footage of Temple was still used during the opening of the film).  And the end product was savaged by critics, was a flop at the box office, and since then West, Vidal, Welch, & Fawcett have all publicly disavowed the film.  Sarne never directed another major studio film again, and eventually had to find work as a waiter at a pizzeria to make ends meet.

This also caused big issues with Welch's career.  Welch thought when she was signing up for this film she was taking her career in a different direction, a more serious one like we saw with Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge last month.  Instead, she became something of a joke, and never really got to do a film that was considered "important" in the 1970's.  Next week we're going to take a look at arguably the closest that Welch ever came to actual critical credibility, but it's worth remembering that unlike several of the women we profiled this year, Welch never actually was considered a serious actress (even in hindsight), and a lot of that damage lies squarely at the feet of Myra Breckinridge.

Beat the Devil (1953)

Film: Beat the Devil (1953)
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre
Director: John Huston
Oscar History: No nominations
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 Gina Lollobrigida-click here to learn more about Ms. Lollobrigida (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


We are not, sadly, going to start where I wanted to start with Gina Lollbrigida's career.  One of the heartbreaking things for classic film fans in the age of streaming is that with the focus on the new, and with the same streaming platform randomly trading back-and-forth something like Back to the Future II or Cliffhanger, we end up in a situation where certain movies are never brought forward for streaming, and are almost impossible to find on home video.  Thus is the case for Lollobrigida's first breakthrough role, Bread, Love and Dreams, which despite starring two major Italian actors (Lollobrigida and Vittorio de Sica), winning the Silver Bear at Berlin, and being an Oscar nominee (Best Motion Picture Story), is next-to-impossible to find even an affordable copy.  Hopefully someday Criterion takes pity on us here, but until then, we're going to start with Lollobrigida's first major English-language film, Beat the Devil.


(Spoilers Ahead) Beat the Devil sounds in many ways like the sort of standard-fare we'd expect uniting Humphrey Bogart with John Huston.   Bogie plays Billy Dannreuther, a broke (but formerly rich) American who is working with a group of criminals, led by Paterson (Morley), who are trying to buy up uranium-rich land in North Africa for cheap, scoring an easy buck.  Paterson has had a man who was suspected of going after the same property killed, and Billy and his wife Maria (Lollobrigida) are trying to keep their heads down.  Suddenly a British couple make their acquaintance: Harry (Edward Underdown) and his wife Gwendolen (Jones).  The two accidentally set off the alarms of Paterson when Gwendolen, who is soon madly in love with Billy and starts having an affair with him, brags about her husband but is overheard by Paterson's accomplice Julius (Lorre), who assumes that Gwendolen's lies are true.  They set off on a boat together, where "destiny lends a hand" allowing Harry, of all people, to purchase the land that Gwendolen lied about him buying (almost completely by accident), her running back to him, Billy & Maria getting nothing, and Paterson & his cronies ending up in jail.

This sounds like boilerplate film noir, but it doesn't play that way in the movie.  For starters, you might not know this if this is the first time you've seen a movie like this (you should watch The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre before tackling Beat the Devil), is that it's funny, and not because it's so-bad-it's-hilarious-it's meant to be funny.  Beat the Devil was not a hit at the time, but has developed a cult following in the years since primarily because it's one of the first straight-up camp spoofs, not in the way Abbott & Costello would do with the Universal monsters, but instead in a subtler way.  The villains are played as buffoons, and frequently you'll have what in a noir would be an obvious twist (a guy like Harry never lives through a traditional noir), go the complete opposite direction.  The best example of this is toward the end, when it looks like Paterson is about to get away with a lenient cop, and then Gwendolen shouts out the entire criminal plot, accusing Paterson of murder, and she isn't put in danger nor does the cop doubt her.  The penultimate scene has virtually no climax-just what would likely have happened in real life, rather than the expected chase or bullet Bogie will have to take for the female lead to protect her.

Lollobrigida supposedly hated making this movie, complaining that Bogart & Huston made fun of her.  Indeed, the production of this film is kind of legend (one of several "Bogie & Huston want a vacation" sort of films they made together, and one where Truman Capote was writing the script as they went along), so it's fare to assume that this was rough on Lollobrigida, acting in a language that wasn't her primary for the first time.  It shows in the script, too-Lollobrigida is fine, but ancillary, and isn't asked to do more than look beautiful.  It's actually Jennifer Jones (who I'm not really a fan of), who gets the best part in the whole movie, totally selling the blonde, air-headed beauty & underlining the camp of the film better than any other actor.

The Misfits (1961)

Film: The Misfits (1961)
Stars: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach
Director: John Huston
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 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 Marilyn Monroe-click here to learn more about Ms. Monroe (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Few films have productions as steeped in lore as The Misfits.  If you study film history at all, The Misfits shows up in a lot of texts about this era.  It was, as we'll discuss below, the final film of two Hollywood legends.  It also had pretty much everyone on the set at each other's throats, from Clark Gable & John Huston quarreling throughout the shoot (weirdly in the first & only film that they ever made together) to Marilyn Monroe & screenwriter Arthur Miller's marriage falling apart on the set of the movie they were making together to of course the continued "slow suicide" of Montgomery Clift after his car accident.  Pretty much everyone on the set suffered from some form of alcohol abuse, and production delays abounded.  But what of the film itself?  I have weirdly, despite having read about this movie for most of my life (and having written in college a 120-page paper about American cinema in the 1960's), never actually gotten around to seeing it, and if I was going to do a month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, there was no way I wasn't going to plug this gap in my film-watching.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Misfits is a little hard to explain in a conventional way, but let's give it a shot.  The picture starts with Roslyn (Monroe) getting a divorce in Reno from her husband for emotional neglect (her husband is played by Oscar nominee Kevin McCarthy in a truly 1-minute cameo, if not less).  She is staying with a local landlord named Isabelle (Ritter), and being as she's played by Marilyn Monroe, Roslyn quickly gets attention from the men of the town, including two cowboys: Gay (Gable), a rough-and-tumble guy and his driver best friend Guido (Wallach).  Roslyn & Gay move in together in Guido's house, even though it's not entirely clear that they are romantically linked (it's treated in many ways throughout the movie not as a love story, but more as a father getting a chance to raise the surrogate daughter that he gave up for his cowboy ways), though Guido clearly lusts after Roslyn.  At a rodeo, they meet Perce (Clift), a dumb rider who nearly kills himself and decides to join up with Roslyn, Gay, and Guido as they wrangle mustangs in the desert.  Slowly, Roslyn understands the cruelty of these men's lives as she sees them basically track and nearly murder a bunch of wild mustangs.  She calls them out on it, and in the dark with Perce she frees them, angering Gay.  Guido, still obsessed with her, tries to make a move but she says he's heartless, and it turns out she's right-he encourages Gay to leave her, but instead, after an extended shoot where he tries to tame a stallion, he lets them loose, driving off into the sunset with Roslyn, their future uncertain but knowing they love each other.

The Misfits is a strange film.  Honestly-I didn't really know what to expect considering its place in film lore and its position in the early 1960's, when even westerns that would be conventional like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance would challenge some of the assumptions we have about heroes and villains.  It's more avant-garde than you'd think.  While yes, at its center this is the story of one man (Gable) struggling with modernity, aided in that struggle by a beautiful woman (Monroe)-basically the plot of most westerns-we also realize that it's Monroe's Roslyn who was right the whole time, not just about him needing to give up this life, but that perhaps this life wasn't necessary to begin with.  The film is brutally violent in scenes (the mustang wrangling is disturbing, particularly since with John Huston in the director's chair, there's no assurance those horses weren't injured at some point), and sex permeates the movie.  Aside from a scene where Monroe is topless (you see her from the back), you have Eli Wallach's Guido lusting after Monroe in a way that I don't remember seeing in a movie like this, at least not very often.  It feels carnal, and is a big payoff for the later scene where Monroe tells him off.

Because honestly-this movie is fantastic.  You can quibble over whether certain sequences go too long, or whether it's too much mood, but I loved it.  The script is tight-Miller was writing it as he went along, but it doesn't show as his vision comes together in the end.  The direction is glorious-Huston enjoys the action sequences the most (and they're thrilling if also gut-wrenching), and the score is divine.  Best of all is the acting.  Wallach, as I mentioned, is out-of-this-world good; if this movie hadn't been considered a disappointment at the box office, it's easy to see him getting an Oscar nomination.  Ritter is great as ever; there's this weird, odd scene in the center of the movie where she opines about the husband who left her for her best friend, and everyone is confused about why she's happy to see them, but it works.  Ritter's face & gestures indicate an understanding of love, even love that's lost or mistreated, that I found so moving.  And then there's Clift, who finds an authenticity in his rodeo clown that feels genuine.  Clift occasionally feels like he's about to forget his lines (and indeed, that might have been the case-if I had to pick a weakest link in the cast, he'd be it though he's still solid), but at least he picked a character where that is convincing.

Gable & Monroe are sensational in the leads.  Even with the box office disappointment, I'm kind of stunned Gable didn't get a posthumous Oscar nomination for this-it might be the best performance he's ever given (give or take Rhett Butler), and I like Gable in a lot of movies.  As he's worn down, you find a man who has long since lost his youth & his reason for even existing, but he keeps on living, and has to find a way to acknowledge that he's still living.  It's so profound, and while Gable is an A+ movie star at his best, I didn't really know he was this good of an actor.  The same has to be said for Monroe.  This could be another dumb blonde where men do crazy things to sleep with her, but it's not.  She finds something there in this lost soul, a woman who has something to say but doesn't understand how to get it out.  Monroe, deeply introverted in real life, rarely played such characters onscreen (there are actually very few introverts in Classical Hollywood cinema), but here it suits her grandly. This is possibly Monroe's best performance too (give or take Sugar Kane), and it's a bummer she didn't think so (Monroe disliked the movie & her work in it).

The film, as I mentioned above, was the end of the road for two Hollywood legends.  Gable died 12 days after shooting of a heart attack.  He wasn't that old all-things-considered (the film would be released on his 60th birthday, a few months after shooting), but you can tell that decades of smoking & drinking had worn down the matinee idol.  Monroe, 24 years his junior, also would never complete another film.  Though she had started shooting the (yet-another-troubled-shoot) film Something's Got to Give, Monroe died before it was completed, of a drug overdose, a potentially intentional one.  We've discussed the many conspiracies surrounding Monroe's death before (click the link if Hollywood true crime is your jam), but in the light of just watching The Misfits, it feels especially tragic, and adds a sense of anguish to the final scenes of Gable & Monroe driving off into the sunset that John Huston never could have intended.  Here we have two of the true legends of cinema, uniting for the only time, in some of their best ever work, and soon to die tragically young.

That ends our month devoted to Marilyn Monroe, the quintessential sex symbol in a year-long series devoted to cinematic sex symbols.  As we'll see in July, though, we aren't entirely abandoning Marilyn-her legacy will be felt next month, both in terms of heightened, sexualized glamour...and unfortunately, even more tragedy.

Oscar's 15 Biggest Snubs

We're in the heat of Oscar season, and as someone who has been writing about the Oscars for seven years straight on this blog, I have written a lot of things about the Academy Awards.  I don't have access to insider information about the Oscars (even in an era of everything being on social media almost instantly, there's still something to be said for interviewing theoretical nominees or attending press events), so it's occasionally a slight challenge to come up with unique things to say about the Oscars, especially since we spend so much time in the past here and have done so many trivia articles through the years (plug time: if you're newer to this blog, peruse the tags on the side, especially "Lists" and "Official OVP Ballot" if you want to look at hundreds of different dissections of past Oscar races).

So color me surprised when I realized I've never done a list of the biggest Oscar snubs of all-time.  It's hard to corner down the biggest snubs ever in Oscars history, so we're going to focus today on the acting races, and a Top 15 list of performances.  This is obviously subjective, but below are the 15 best performances ever that I think most definitely should have been nominated for the Oscar, and in most cases, should've won the statue.

A couple of notes before you dive in.  First, you'll notice I don't repeat any movies, and that's on purpose.  A few of these films didn't get any Oscar love in any category, and so it'd be easy to put the entire ensemble on this list, but that'd be boring (I tried, and failed, to not duplicate actors as one person gave two performances I refused to ignore).  So Kim Novak or Charles Bronson, I see you and I'm sorry-know you'll also be nominated when the time comes.  Second, there are more men than women on this list, but that has less to do with qualitative dissections of film, and more to do with me agreeing more often with the Oscars on female performances than male.  And lastly, these are old movies.  While I could just as easily have come up with a list of 15 performances from the past decade Oscar should have noticed (and might well do that if I do any "Best of Decade" lists next year), only a couple of films on this list I think have had enough time to breathe for me to realize that they're "indisputable snubs."  With that said, dive in and fight me in the comments!

15. Andy Griffith (A Face in the Crowd)

A harrowing look at a man the world wants to just be simple, but instead is a malevolent, cruel creation, only someone who could portray "sweet as pie" like Andy Griffith could shock us all as Lonesome Rhodes (the obvious correlations to Trump 50 years before he'd become president are indisputable & petrifying).

14. Rita Hayworth (The Lady from Shanghai)

I wrote once that Rita Hayworth is the greatest actor of all-time to never be nominated for an Oscar, so you knew she'd show up here.  Her Rosalie is an enigma, the kind of woman that drives men mad...and while they're entranced she gets exactly what she wants.

13. Michael Stuhlbarg (Call Me by Your Name)

Yes, he should have gotten in for the speech alone.  But the speech wouldn't work without his subtle groundwork beforehand, watching his son endure love-and-loss in the same summer.  Stuhlbarg has been a reliable character actor for a decade now, but has never been so tender as CMBYN.

12. Orson Welles (The Third Man)

Harry Lime is everything we came to expect from Orson Welles.  Possibly the greatest actor of his generation (give or take Brando & Ingrid Bergman), Welles brings a devilish charm to Harry in The Third Man, almost making you forget that he's been gone for half of the picture, and once you realize what he's been up to, you understand why "devilish" is the right term for Welles' work.

11. Cary Grant (The Philadelphia Story)

Jimmy Stewart is a fine actor and lovely in The Philadelphia Story.  He's also giving the third best performance in the movie.  The best work in the film wasn't even nominated, with Cary Grant giving the finest acting of his long career, playing the most "Cary Grant" role ever, and defining the suave, delicious persona that would keep him a star for decades.

10. Marcello Mastroianni (8 1/2)

When I sit down with cinephiles, few directors inspire more argument than Fellini.  Hell, put me in front of a mirror and bring up Fellini, and I'll argue with myself.  But I will stand no assertion that 8 1/2 isn't perfect, and no performance in his filmography is as effective as Mastroianni's, breathing life into his wandering director.

9. Jeanne Moreau (Jules and Jim)

The two title characters can easily be pushed aside, because for anyone who has seen this movie, there is only Catherine.  A picture of romance, drama, comedy, and at parts even horror, Jeanne Moreau became one of the indisputable faces of the French New Wave with this gorgeous, chaotic free spirit.

8. Anthony Perkins (Psycho)

Perkins work in Psycho so often features on these kinds of lists, it borders on cliche.  But how do you deny such a fully-realized creation, a monster whose evil is easy to identify, but impossible to forgive?  Every detail in his performance comes to light with clarity upon repeat viewings, but you are still shocked by Norman's plans thanks to his handsome uneasiness.

7. John Wayne (The Searchers)

Anyone who says John Wayne can't act needs to watch The Searchers.  John Ford's magnum opus also puts the Duke in his most challenging and effective role, Ethan Edwards.  Wayne finds the heart in a cruel, inhuman (but all-too-real) man, wandering through the desert until he no longer understands what he's looking for...perhaps his own soul?

6. Katharine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby)

Kate Hepburn was hardly at a loss for Oscar nominations-she was cited 12 times, and won 4.  That said, it still feels weird that the best thing Hepburn ever did in her career, her kooky Susan in Bringing Up Baby, somehow didn't get her nominated.  In the same year as her classic Holiday, was the Academy just not ready to admit they had a crush on the actress yet?

5. James Stewart (Vertigo)

If Cary Grant's going to take Best Actor in 1940, one could make a sincere argument that Jimmy Stewart should have won later for his Scotty Ferguson.  Vertigo was a financial disappointment, which is still no excuse for skipping the best work of this actor's career, as a man driven insane by lust, then heartbreak, and then just madness.

4. Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life)

Terrence Malick is always the star in a Terrence Malick picture-that's what the world-famous actors who sign up for his films are aware of when they take the job.  That said, Brad Pitt still manages to give one of the best auteur vessel performances I've ever seen as Mr. O'Brien, a man who would haunt his son's adulthood for decades in ways he couldn't understand.

3. Orson Welles (Touch of Evil)

Giving Stewart a run for his money is the other grand teton of 1958's Best Actor category, Orson Welles (I swear that's not a fat joke).  By this time Hollywood had no use for the former Boy Wonder, but that didn't stop him from making a movie like Touch of Evil, essentially the Unforgiven of film noir-his racist, corrupt detective pulled the mask off of what was lurking behind the Golden Age's treatment of the genre.

2. Henry Fonda (Once Upon a Time in the West)

Imagine casting Henry Fonda as a villain.  Nwo imagine him as a vicious man in black, with those piercing blue eyes staring down on a horrified Claudia Cardinale, and a ticking clock western where it's so well-structured you genuinely don't know who is getting out alive.  In a career where Oscar rarely called, this is Fonda's best work and more than earned him a trophy.

1. John Huston (Chinatown)

Huston's performance in Chinatown may be the best Supporting Actor performance, period.  His Noah Cross is a villain for the ages, able to conceal under his peculiar vocal cadence unmitigated evil, and justification for that evil as the movie unfolds.  Look at him, his head always turning, even as the credits role-Huston dazzles in Chinatown as if acting was what he was born for.