1972 Oscar Viewing Project

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The Big Knife (1955)

Film: The Big Knife (1955)

Stars: Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters, Everett Sloane

Director: Robert Aldrich

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Film noir in the mid-to-late 1950's, in my opinion, gets a bum rap.  Yes, at this point we are seeing less of the biggest names in show business doing the genre (not like in the 1940's when stars like Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, & Barbara Stanwyck were regularly appearing in the genre), but you still get really good movies like Odds Against Tomorrow, The Wrong Man, and perhaps the greatest film noir of them all (my opinion changes depending on the day on who deserves that title) Touch of Evil.  In 1955, Robert Aldrich, most well-known today as the guy who dealt with Bette Davis & Joan Crawford on the set of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (if you watched Feud's first season, he's played by Alfred Molina) made two of the most-revered film noirs of the era.  The first, Kiss Me Deadly, we profiled in a previous season (check out the review at the bottom of this page), but is a proper masterpiece (if you haven't seen it, you must, and also put down your damn phone during it as it's the kind of movie you need to immerse yourself into), but his second was far more infamous at the time it was made, and while it's not as good, that doesn't mean it's not a very strong follow-up picture from Aldrich.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place largely in one house (other than a cutaway to a party, I don't recall a scene that doesn't take place in the main character's home...which is how you can tell it was adapted from a play by Clifford Odets).  Charlie Castle (Palance) is a leading man living in a mansion, and is about to sign a contract with his studio to continue to make movies, even though he's not interested in such a contract because he keeps getting saddled with commercial garbage from the studio.  He's also worried about the impact it'll have on his marriage to wife Marion (Lupino), who is separated from him and seeing another man.  Things to come to a head when the studio chief Shriner Hoff (Steiger) basically blackmails Charlie into signing the deal, as he has knowledge of a vehicular homicide that Charlie caused that ultimately his friend Buddy went to jail for.  Charlie signs it, and in the wake sleeps with Buddy's wife (Hagen), but there's a problem-a woman was there the night Charlie had his hit-and-run, a struggling starlet named Dixie Evans (Winters), and she's threatening to go to a gossip columnist (clearly modeled after Hedda Hopper) to destroy Charlie's career.

The movie continues on, but we'll stop here for an intermission.  The Big Knife is one of several films that happened in the wake of the success of Sunset Boulevard that showed the uglier side of Hollywood.  We saw more of this with pictures like In a Lonely Place and The Bad and the Beautiful, but The Big Knife is one of the nastiest in this subgenre.  First off, it's at least somewhat based on a true story, and even more so off of a famous Hollywood legend.  In the early 1930's, John Huston was arrested (though ultimately absolved) of a hit-and-run involving a dancer who ran in front of his car.  Huston, unlike the character in the movie, was the actual person behind the wheel and unlike Charlie, wasn't drunk when it happened.  The legend involving Huston's accident is that he took the blame for Clark Gable, even in 1933 a major star for the studio and more valuable than Huston, and whose career couldn't handle the scandal (this is rebutted by pretty much everyone in retrospect as untrue as Gable was nowhere near the accident, but it's become enmeshed in both the Huston story and in the making of The Big Knife).

Then again, no one gets away scot-free here.  Rod Steiger is really good as Hoff, playing him as a malevolent monster, willing to destroy Charlie's life if it helps his bottom line.  It's also a clear homage to Harry Cohn, then the head of Columbia, who was furious when he saw the film.  In fact, despite a starry cast (Palance & Hagen had recently gotten Oscar nominations, Lupino & Steiger were still pretty big names) no studio would touch this film other than United Artists.  That was largely to do with the film's subject matter (tearing apart the star system), but also could've done with the film's bleak ending.  Winters' character dies (Winters, for the record, aces this part, which feels written for her as she gets to be drunk, lascivious, & downtrodden, which are all onscreen skills she perfected in the wake of A Place in the Sun), not from murder (as some expected), but getting hit by a bus.  Charlie, at that point, could find reprieve...but when his wife finds out about his affair with Jean Hagen's Connie, he can't take it.  He has no control in his life, and he kills himself offscreen.  

This is when maybe the most dastardly thing in the movie happens.  Ida Lupino wails in sorrow, and the camera zooms out, showing us first the apartment, and then the sides of a screen, implying (in a Twilight Zone-style twist) that we've been watching a fictional movie-within-a-movie.  The end credits roll before they do much with it, but it's a bitter note to end the picture on, with Aldrich/Odets commentating on us enjoying the sorrows of these beautiful people as entertainment in a meta way.  The film is sometimes a bit too heavy-handed, but the performances from Lupino, Steiger, & Winters are so strong (Palance is fine, but maybe a tad miscast...William Holden or Kirk Douglas would've been a better choice here since they were more convincing leading men) you won't care.  And of course, as is evidenced by this month, I love me a ruthless film noir, which this is.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Caught, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Side Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach, A Woman's Secret

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, Kansas City Confidential, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps, Whirlpool

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Film: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Stars: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, Richard Bright

Director: Robert Wise

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

While the French New Wave (as we learned a couple of days ago) was already starting to invest in film noir elements as Hollywood began to lose interest in the late 1950's, that didn't mean that Hollywood had stopped making noir entirely, though the tale-end of the film noir is generally considered to be 1960 (most films after that are "neo-noir" and I refer to them as such if you look at the list of past film noirs at the bottom of this page).  One of the last important film noirs came from United Artists, and was the first film noir from a major studio to star a Black actor, in this case the late Harry Belafonte.  1959 was still within the peak of Belafonte's entertainment career.  At 32, he had starred in major movies, including the box office smashes Carmen Jones and Island in the Sun, and was a popular recording artist, just a couple of years out from "Banana Boat (Day-O)," the biggest hit of his career.  Odds Against Tomorrow represented a different chapter in his career, though, and was an opportunity for him to be seen in a different way by audiences, a dramatic actor who didn't need a musical to make an impression.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a ticking clock story, as we countdown to a bank robbery being orchestrated by David Burke (Begley), a former police detective whose career is ruined when he refuses to provide evidence to state crime investigators.  He recruits a former con Earle Slater (Ryan) and a nightclub entertainer Johnny Ingram (Belafonte) to join him in the hit.  Neither man is excited about the prospect, as Ryan's Slater is an avowed racist who doesn't want to work with a Black man & Belafonte's Ingram is trying to do right by his wife & daughter, but Slater's pride (he's supported by his girlfriend Lorry, played by Winters) and Ingram's gambling debts mean they can't turn down the job.  The heist goes wrong, and Burke is killed holding the keys to the getaway car.  There's a chance for Ingram & Slater to escape, but instead they turn on each other, having a shootout that burns them both alive.  The film ends a bit cheekily, with the police officer not being able to tell who is who with their charred corpses (indicating that underneath, we're all the same).

The film is solid.  The cast is really good.  Winters is maybe the best part as the scorned girlfriend, who can't understand why her man won't love her even though she gives him everything (Robert Ryan is having an affair with their neighbor, played by Gloria Grahame, who is also good as a titillated, bored housewife), but everyone is solid in this movie.  Belafonte is sexy as hell in the lead role, and they even find an excuse to have him sing some of the jazz score, original work by John Lewis that would be a hit for the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The film doesn't always work, though.  The ending is perhaps a bit too cute (particularly the "can't tell them apart" scene), given that it implies pretty heavily both of these men have committed the same crimes, even though Slater's bigotry is far worse (it's 1959, I know, but I'm still going to say it hurts the story).  I also think that the way that they handle the personal lives of Ryan & Belafonte in particular could've been stronger. We needed more scenes late in the film with Winters & Grahame, as well as Kim Hamilton's Ruth (who plays Belafonte's love interest).  And we sure as hell needed to get more of Richard Bright's delicious Coco, who is so queer-coded that honestly I think he's just meant to be openly gay, a small-time hood who is horny-as-hell for Belafonte, and flirts openly with him.  While film noir will frequently hint at queer characters, this is the closest I've ever gotten to seeing an openly gay one in a Classical Hollywood noir, and man I wish he'd been in more scenes.

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

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

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

Winchester 73 (1950)

Film: Winchester 73 (1950)

Stars: James Stewart, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Rock Hudson

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Frequently with legendary actors, we don't think of their careers as having lulls, but with Jimmy Stewart, this was the case by 1950.  Though he starred in what would ultimately be the role he was best-remembered for in 1946 (George Bailey in the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life), the film had a mixed result at the box office and actually was considered a flop when it first ran.  The next few years brought about movies that are considered to be classics today (specifically Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and the film noir classic Call Northside 777), but it was clear a new generation of actors was replacing Stewart, who had not really had a hit film that had captured the public imagination since before the war.  That changed in 1950, though, when Stewart's career opened a new door.  Stewart made what would end up being his first of eight films with Anthony Mann, which would largely be critical & commercial successes throughout the 1950's, and would reimagine the war hero and Frank Capra's everyman type as a classic cowboy, giving him a spot as one of the most important western stars of Hollywood's Golden Age. The film that started this collaboration was Winchester 73.

(Spoilers Ahead) Winchester 73 is one of many, many big screen takes on the famed Dodge City myth, and starts with Lin McAdam (Stewart) and Dutch Henry Brown (McNally) in a shooting contest to win a famed Winchester 73, the best gun in the west.  Lin wins, but is stood up by Dutch in his apartment and has the Winchester 73 stolen from him.  Thus ensues a chase, which involves both men meeting up with a variety of figures, including a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold named Lola (Winters), Waco Johnnie (Duryea), a wild-eyed bandit who kills Lola's boyfriend to be with her, and a group of Native Americans led by Rock Hudson of all people as Young Bull (a case of redface that I didn't know happened until I saw his name buried in the opening credits, one of Hudson's very early films before his eventual breakout in 1954's Magnificent Obsession).  As the film goes, we realize that Lin & Dutch are brothers, and Lin is still angry about Dutch murdering their father years earlier after their dad refused to provide cover for Dutch after a bank robbery.  The film ends with Lin killing Dutch with the titular gun, their feud now ended.

I really liked Winchester 73, I'm going to be honest, and two films into Stewart's partnership with Mann (I watched this month's out of order) I'm thrilled by the movies that they made together.  This film doesn't quite hit the mark of an all-time western classic (the stakes are there, but it doesn't have the harrowing nature that something like Shane or The Searchers would bring to their final showdowns), but it's close.  There's something so magnetic about Stewart in this role.  He's not a natural cowboy.  The "awe shucks" charm that he brought to something like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington isn't absent here, but it adds a mystery to him.  He's kind, but capable of great violence.  Stewart plays with this well, making his Lin a man of honor, but a man who is foremost set on his mission.  It's a great juxtaposition, and likely why the public was drawn to him; he struck a different, more intelligent chord than other western figures like John Wayne & Gary Cooper in the same era.

The rest of the film works really well too.  Sadly we are deprived of a song (side note for those who are not well-versed on westerns of this era-they almost always had a great ballad associated with them sung by someone like Tex Ritter or Frankie Laine), but the cinematography from William Daniels (who won an Oscar for The Naked City) is splendid, crystal clear & deliciously shot in medium close-up.  There's a moment about halfway the movie where Jimmy Stewart sees a just-waking up Shelley Winters, her cleavage as low as you could get it in 1950, and you see the lust before he remembers he's a man of honor all in one take-it's a great moment, and indicative of the kind of knowingness that Mann & Daniels would frequently bring to their work.  Duryea, whom I'm fast-realizing might be the best character actor of the Classical Hollywood era who never got an Oscar nomination, is marvelous as a late addition to the movie as Waco Johnnie, totally unnecessary to the plot, but he plays his villain as lusty & has better chemistry with Winters (who is good but, again, unnecessary, which she complained about when reflected on this movie and said (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much) "all these men were more interested in that gun than a beautiful blonde like me!") than Stewart or any of the other actors.  All-in-all, well worth your time if your first reaction to me saying "Jimmy Stewart" for a theme of westerns was one of surprise.

S.O.B. (1981)

Film: S.O.B. (1981)

Stars: Julie Andrews, William Holden, Richard Mulligan, Robert Preston, Robert Webber, Robert Vaughn, Larry Hagman, Marisa Berenson, Stuart Margolin, Loretta Swit, Shelley Winters, Robert Loggia

Director: Blake Edwards

Oscar History: The film has a weird awards history, getting nominated for a WGA Award, a National Society of Film Critics prize for Preston, and a Globe for Best Picture, but also being cited for a Razzie for  

Worst Director & Screenplay.  Oscar didn't want to get its hands on such a polarizing picture & skipped it all-together.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

Last week we took a look at what would become a major cinematic renaissance moment for Julie Andrews, teaming up with her husband Blake Edwards for the smash-hit 10.  This would become a recurring theme for Andrews for the next several years, regularly leading Edwards films.  We've talked about a few of these on the blog (or some I've seen & not discussed...I watched movies before I started writing this blog, I have to admit).  The best and most successful of these films was Victor/Victoria, where Andrews plays a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.  The film was a critical & commercial smash, and won Andrews her third (and to date, final) Oscar nomination.  But as we only watch film I'd never seen before, we're going to talk a different film from this era, the movie that tried the hardest to crack the veneer of Andrews' squeaky clean image: S.O.B.

(Spoilers Ahead) S.O.B. is a pretty cruel sendup of the Hollywood machine.  We have Felix Farmer (Mulligan), who has produced what is sure to be a major flop called Night Winds after an unparalleled string of successes, many alongside his wife Sally Miles (Andrews), an, Oscar-winning angelic figure for the movies who is in the middle of trying to leave him, as Felix has gone mad while producing the movie. The first third of the film Felix tries to commit suicide, frequently to comic effect (at one point he falls on Loretta Swit's brassy gossip columnist & puts her in a full-body cast for the remainder of the picture), until it occurs to him-if they recut Night Winds, they can make it pornographic and play off of the public's titillation if Sally goes topless.  After Felix buys back the film from the studio, Sally has no choice and does, indeed, go topless.  Afterward, though, the studio realizes that this gimmick might work & go behind Felix's back to get the movie back, driving him mad, and leads him to standing up the studio with a toy gun...after which, in a shock, he is killed by real bullets from the police.  Felix is therefore dead, but the movie thanks to all of the publicity becomes a huge hit, with Sally winning another Oscar for the film.

The movie is vicious in the way it skewers Hollywood, oftentimes watching people stripped of their humanity as they try to find some way to scrounge a buck on a picture.  No one, not even Andrews' Sally, is a saint in the movie, though she does come the closest of the bunch.  The film is very funny, filled with black humor, and Preston & Winters provide the best comic relief of the bunch (both are terrific as soulless figures that know their way around the edges of Tinseltown).  Andrews in the center is hardly at her best, even if she's clearly playing a fictionalized version of herself (she's called "Peter Pan" quite often, perhaps to make it seem like she might be Mary Martin or Cathy Rigby, but, come on...she's Mary Poppins), but she's good.  The movie is good.  It's not great (it's meandering & a bit too long at parts), but it's not Razzie-worthy in any respect.

Andrews would continue to make movies and is still quite active today, nearly 60 years after she became America's Sweetheart.  A botched vocal surgery would rob her of her brilliant voice, but an appearance as Queen Clarisse in 2001's The Princess Diaries revived interest in the actress, and since then she's been playing some version of the Julie Andrews persona in everything from Shrek to Despicable Me to Bridgerton for a new generation.  She, like many of the women we've profiled in recent months, was able to escape Hitchcock's shadow & is hardly considered part of his legacy by modern audiences.  That will not be true on Monday, when we start our penultimate star of the year, a woman who would be defined by Hitchcock...but a star who would have more to say about Hitchcock's modern legacy than any of his leading women.

OVP: Executive Suite (1954)

Film: Executive Suite (1954)
Stars: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Douglas, Shelley Winters, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, Nina Foch
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Nina Foch, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

There is no genre harder to gage in how it will age than straight-dramas.  For any classic film fan, there's really few joys greater than investigating a classic movie for the first time, but I have to say that dramas always have their own risks.  Westerns, whether comedy or drama, you know what you're getting into; same with action-adventures, love stories, horrors, noir, but straight dramas run multiple different pitfalls.  The issues that are being discussed (because almost every drama has an issue at its core) may no longer be applicable, or applicable in the same way.  What might have seemed important at the time could, in fact, be unimportant now, and societal norms may shift to make the film much more dated than you'd hope.  As a result, I headed into Executive Suite (as part of Operation Clean My DVR), not knowing what I was in store for, and actually ended up pleasantly surprised.  The film, with an inexplicably gigantic cast of stars, works despite on-paper seeming like something that might not.

(Spoilers Ahead) Executive Suite uses the ticking clock aspect of storytelling well-while the film isn't quite in real time, it's only the course of about a 24-hour period, where an unseen man, a wealthy and controlling titan of industry, has died, leaving a gaping hole over who will be his successor at a successful furniture manufacturing company.  In the 24-hour period, we see multiple different men jostling with each other and other members of the board trying to figure out who will end up being the CEO, though the chief protagonists in that regard are Don (Holden), the young upstart with a lot of big ideals for the company, and Shaw (March), a practical man who lives mostly by the adoration of the shareholders.

I'll give you one guess over who wins (let's not forget this was made in 1954), but the film actually rises above its predictable nature in that regard.  We're well aware that Holden is the one in command here, and will eventually become the successor, but the film is still pretty riveting nonetheless.  It helps that Robert Wise hired a slate full of movie stars to fill up his picture; it was reported years later that they made this film, similar to the Grand Hotel-style all-star casts of the early 1930's, to compete with television, and while not all of the acting is on the same level, everyone is very watchable and knows how to command a scene when they're expected to do so.  I particularly liked Shelley Winters as a secretary having an affair with her boss, and Fredric March is commendable at making his mustache-twisting villain into a real human being (March is such a fine actor-the fact that he largely made pictures like these without any sort of genre hooks is the only explanation why he isn't still just as famous with casual moviegoers).  Nina Foch won the film's sole acting citation, and she's good, but it's the sort of good you only notice when someone else points it out to you-her character is mysterious, and rises above what could have been completely stock work (think of that scene where she's opposite of March and telling him off as carefully as she can, knowing he's likely to be her next boss), but I'll admit that I wouldn't have paid her much heed had I not been looking for the OVP.

The film's other three nominations are about on the same page-they're all good, though one wonders if they were listed simply because the movie is actually quite good and these were easy categories.  Art Direction is solid-I loved the C-Suite hallway stairs (it's such a nice, elegant touch, the sort that would happen dozens of stories above the earth), though the rest of the film (especially the homes and the other offices), don't have this level of inventive detail.  The costumes are all very appropriately tailored to this level of importance (one wonders if the Mad Men costume designers looked at a film like this for inspiration), and again there's the great touch of Nina Foch's pencil necklace, but overall I was less impressed with other parts, such as the men's suits which felt completely interchangeable.  And finally, the cinematography has a gimmick (never properly seeing the face of the dead CEO, and a first-person camera early on in the picture), which was catnip at the time to that particular AMPAS branch, but again (aside from those great C-Suite hallway shots), there's not a lot to recommend this nomination.

Stil, even if it didn't quite deserve all of its Oscar accolades, I can't help but be fascinated by this movie.  It's wildly watchable, particularly Winters and March, and the sort of film that's less about the acting or visual elements and more about the sum of its parts.  Think of something like Argo where nothing specifically is singled out as "the best" but it's damn fine entertainment.  At least those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Have any of you seen Executive Suite, and if so, what are your thoughts?  If not, share some favorite straight dramas that have stood the test of time in the comments!

OVP: The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Film: The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Stars: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowell, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson, Arthur O'Connell, Leslie Nielsen
Director: Irwin Allen and Ronald Neame
Oscar History: A stunning 8 nominations and 2 wins, one of them a special award for Visual Effects (Best Supporting Actress-Shelley Winters, Best Original Song-"The Morning After"*, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score-John Williams, Best Sound, Best Costume, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and a special Oscar for Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I have to admit, right off the bat, that I was skeptical going into this movie.  If you search back far enough in this blog, you'll find that I loathe the movie Airport, and that has thus far been my only major disaster film of the 1970's, though the OVP offers up a bevy of additional disaster films that I will be partaking in.  Aside from Maureen Stapleton's underrated performance, there was little to lend Airport to me as a viewer, and while I enjoy a blockbuster as much as the next person, and I love a star-filled cast more than the next person, I was not particularly pleased when The Poseidon Adventure popped out of my Netflix sleeve.

Imagine my surprise, then, that I was absolutely riveted throughout the film .  The film opens with a stock cast of characters, and for all intents and purposes, they really could just be Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Gene Hackman, etc., for it's nearly impossible to remember any actors' name, outside of Shelley Winters' Mrs. Rosen (more on that below).  But this works in blockbusters-you need charisma to sell a large-scale action adventure (casting directors who keep hiring Victoria's Secret models and Shia LaBeouf, take note), and you don't get more charismatic than this cast.  Yes, it would be nice to see an acting roster that includes five Oscar winners do a little more heavy-lifting, but everyone needs a relaxing day in the water and a giant paycheck to go with it.

(SPOILER ALERT THROUGHOUT) The capsizing of the ship is almost certainly the best sequence in the movie, and is actually a nail-biter.  This is the 70's, and so you know you're going to be losing some big name actors right away as opposed to saving them to the bitter end (hardly knew you, Leslie Nielsen and Arthur O'Connell!), so there's genuine suspense to see if everyone's going to make it.  The hanging from the ceiling, and the film's continuing body count, make the film a bit darker than it would be today, and it's unnerving to know this is likely how things would play out-most people waiting for help, most people not making it out alive-it is a capsized ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic we're talking about here.

One by one, the characters all start to perish, and we get to see some truly spellbinding stunts, with all of the actors roaming through crevices and tunnels around the ship.  Not to harp on modern cinema too much, but the reality is that we know when it's really just an actor or stunt double in front of a green-screen these days.  I know it isn't as cost effective, but occasionally it'd be nice to see special effects the Irwin Allen way-with giant sets, shooting fire and water, and genuine claustrophobia on-screen.  Today, we'd likely be taken out of the ship on a regular basis to see the rescue mission.  By keeping us trapped in the ship the entire film, instead of pulling us out, we get the same sort of desperate relief when the cast sees light pouring out of the ship for the first time.

There's a lot of Oscar nominations to discuss here, so I'll say first that the editing, score, and art direction are all top notch, but in the cases of the Editing and Art Direction (as well as almost every other category), they're competing against The Godfather and Cabaret, so it's tough to see it having a shot at my vote.  Ditto the Costumes and Cinematography, which are just fine, but nothing to write home about, and the Sound is loud, but doesn't strike a strong balance with the surroundings often enough, relying too heavily on the iconic score (written by my favorite John Williams, and probably the best shot it has at an Oscar win from my ballot, since Nino Rota's score is ineligible, though if I'm being honest, I probably prefer John Addison's work in Sleuth).  And though it wasn't a competitive category at the time, it's hard to see any film beating it for Visual Effects.

But you want to hear about the two highest profile of the nominations of the film, Best Original Song, it's only competitive win, and Shelley Winters final Oscar nomination in the category that adored her, Best Supporting Actress.  Maureen McGovern's lilting ballad certainly works in the film, though it's odd that after being performed by Carol Lynley, it isn't really referred back to throughout the score.  While most people of my generation are probably best familiar with the song from South Park, it works in the context of the film, and in a very weak year (in which I haven't seen a single one of the other nominees, but judging on reputation it's going to be an unfortunate weekend), it's got a head start as the "right" choice.

Shelley Winters is, I will say, the best of the cast.  Borgnine and Hackman, while both strong leading men, seem to have too much ego with not enough backstory to show why, and Red Buttons seems wildly out-of-place and way too old to be dating Carol Lynley.  I would have liked to have seen Roddy McDowell more, but mostly because I find McDowell wildly underused as an actor and I revel every time I see his handsome face.  Winters alternates from some lovely work-a very realistic, if overbearing, scene in the dining car highlights that sort of abrasive sweetness that is Winters' wheelhouse (see also A Place in the Sun), but she also flails badly when she decides that she needs to start ACTING, particularly when she has resigned herself to death 2-3 times in the movie.  This is oddly my first Best Supporting Actress performance of 1972, so we shall see where this takes us, but I've got to admit that I like Susan Tyrell's and Eileen Heckart's odds a bit more after seeing this movie.

What about you?  Do you have a favorite 1970's disaster film (after this I can't wait to investigate The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, and The Swarm!)?  Who was best in show?  How many of The Poseidon Adventure's nominations should have resulted in wins?  And was Shelley Winters robbed by Eileen Heckart in her quest for a third Oscar?