The Wizard of Oz (1939)

 

Like most people of my generation, I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz on television each year. It was an event that so many people shared on an annual basis, and even though we all had become so very familiar with the story, we would still talk about it the next day at school. Having so many opportunities to share a common experience made a sense of connectedness over the film that very few other movies have. Perhaps The Sound of Music with its annual Thanksgiving screenings now or The Ten Commandments at Easter could be similar, but nothing can approach the sheer numbers of people who have seen The Wizard of Oz thanks to its repeated showings on TV from 1956-1991. That’s longer than most television programs last.

The story is justifiably familiar. A young girl, Dorothy Gale (played by Judy Garland), falls and hits her head during a Kansas tornado (very accurately depicted) and awakens to find herself transported to Oz. How or why the tornado went from Kansas to Oz doesn’t matter, but the contrast could not be starker. Kansas is all sepia tones and dust and darkness. Oz and Munchkinland, by contrast, are so bright and vivid and beautiful. Dorothy spends much of the film trying to follow the Yellow Brick Road to ask the Wizard of Oz for help in returning to Kansas. Why she wants to return to such a drab place remains a mystery to me after all these years. Who wouldn’t want to stay in Oz with all of its excitement and vibrance and brilliance? Just based on the cinematography alone, I’d never want to go back to Kansas, and I’ve actually been to Kansas in real life and know that it’s much more colorful than the film depicts.

Along the way to meet the Wizard, Dorothy (accompanied by her adorable dog Toto) meets a series of strangers who wind up joining her on the journey. Each person (well, “person” might be a stretch) wants to ask for something different from the Wizard. Each of the three companions gets their own introduction and backstory: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. Heck, the lion even gets two songs! Each member of the cast was spectacular, and many of them had to perform two different roles, yet none of them were nominated for acting honors. In fact, other than Garland, none of them would ever be nominated by the Academy Awards for acting. Garland, who wasn’t even the first choice for the role of Dorothy, received a special “Juvenile Award” for The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms, the two films she completed in 1939, but I have always wondered how she might have done in the race for a competitive Oscar that year. It would have been tough to deny Vivien Leigh’s legendary performance as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

Garland’s co-stars were multitalented performers. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, as we learn later in the film, are manifestations of three farmhands from her home in Kansas. Ray Bolger plays Hunk and the Scarecrow, and his rendition of “If I Only Had a Brain” features some of the loosest, most acrobatic dancing in the film. Jack Haley (Sr., if I need to add that) is both Hickory and the Tin Man, a romantic trapped in a metallic body. The great Bert Lahr performs the roles of Zeke and the Cowardly Lion, and given how heavy that lion suit looks and how annoying that constantly moving tale must have been, he was astonishingly good at dancing and singing. It’s tough to imagine the movie being as successful as it is without these three.

Of course, those are not the only actors in the film to perform multiple roles. Frank Morgan seems to pop up everywhere you look. He’s Professor Marvel back in Kansas, he’s the Wizard (in disguise, hidden behind a curtain), and he’s a carriage driver and a doorman and… and… and…. It’s fun to watch the film to see just how often Morgan pops up. Margaret Hamilton makes the Wicked Witch of the Witch iconic, but her performance as Elmira Gulch back in the sepia world of Kansas is just as frightening. Almost every filmed version of a witch since 1939 has been measured against Hamilton’s performance and been found lacking. Her line reading of “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too” sends a shiver down the spines of viewers no matter how many times they’ve seen the film.

Speaking of being frightened, I was never really all that scared by the Wicked Witch or her flying monkeys, but a lot of other people were. Certainly, they are meant to be scary, and I can see why others felt that way, but what scared me more were sequences such as those grumpy trees that can talk and throw apples. They seemed much more likely to appear in the world I inhabited then, and I never quite recovered from those moments. The most emotionally frightening moment for me, however, was Dorothy seeing her Aunt Em in that crystal ball of the Wicked Witch’s and tearing up because she was afraid that she’d never see her aunt again.

The Wizard of Oz is filled with so many wonderful, joyous moments too. Billie Burke as Glinda with her high-pitched voice and that enormous pink gown and her wand and the bubble she travels in is just delightful. The costumes throughout the film are spectacular, especially the ones designed for the residents of Emerald City. Again, once you’ve seen what they were, why would you want to go back to overalls and gingham? Nevertheless, Dorothy is homesick and wants to return to Kansas, so Glinda gives her the ruby slippers and sets her off on the journey that takes up much of the film. I’ve seen one of the pairs of ruby slippers at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, and I couldn’t help but sigh at the memories associated with them. How important costuming can be to the success of a film!

The film won two Oscars, one for its musical score and one for the stunning “Over the Rainbow.” The winning song is performed by Dorothy while she’s still in Kansas at the beginning of the film, and it’s such a simple, beautiful series of dreamy images. It’s no wonder that Oz had to live up to a lot just on the basis of the song’s lyrics, and it’s such a great song that it’s no wonder that it has become as beloved as it has. If you consider the imagery in “Over the Rainbow,” you can appreciate the work of the production design team even more. The Yellow Brick Road is very bright, and Oz simply sparkles and shines. Even when you know that the backdrops in Oz are painted, you still appreciate the achievement.

Those of us who were regular viewers in the past have memorized the songs and learned so many of the lines from the film and analyzed what we saw on the screen. So beloved and influential is The Wizard of Oz that it was among the first twenty-five films selected for preservation by the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. What a rare and special honor that was, and, really, what a rare and special film this.

Oscar Wins: Best Song (“Over the Rainbow”) and Best Original Score

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Art Direction, and Best Special Effects

Elvis (2022)

 

Like so many of the movies directed by Baz Luhrmann, Elvis is a wild pastiche of moments that add up less to a fully coherent narrative than to an overwhelming emotional response. Sure, we do get many key moments in the life of the primary subject, Elvis Presley, but we also get a sense, a feeling if you will, of what it was like to be present during many of the events of his life that are depicted in the film. I wouldn’t turn to this film for a straightforward recounting of the events of Elvis’ life – although the film does touch upon some pretty significant moments of his life – but you can’t say that it’s not an exciting journey to take. It was one of the most thrilling movies to watch in 2022.

I’m going to address the least successful aspect of the film first, the portrayal of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ longtime manager, by Tom Hanks. Frankly, the film focuses too often on Parker instead of Elvis, and that’s to its detriment. Hanks is just not at his best in this performance, and the cartoonish accent doesn’t help. Most of the film is narrated by Parker through some sort of morphine-induced fever dream, so you might be willing to accept that some of the details might be fuzzy or less than historically accurate. However, having the man who is ostensibly blamed for getting Elvis hooked on drugs, ultimately leading to his death, seems like such an odd choice.

The film’s structure is mostly but not strictly chronological. We see how Elvis began touring as a young performer with Hank Snow, someone that anyone familiar with country music should know from “I’m Moving On.” As the show stops at various locations throughout the southern United States, you see Elvis’ billing keep getting higher and higher on the posters because he’s doing something that other white singers aren’t doing, playing what was then termed “black music” or “race music.” Of course, music is always more universal than it’s given credit for being, so when we see how Elvis as a young boy seems to have been struck (quite literally in this film) by the dual strains of blues in a juke joint he’s not supposed to be at and gospel music at a revival meeting, you sense how that blend of different styles will have an impact on his performances and why so many people responded to his music the ways that they did.

Austin Butler plays Elvis, and he doesn’t initially strike a viewer as really looking much like the King of Rock and Roll. However, when he shows up at a gig wearing a pink suit that makes him look quite beautiful, you see why the women in the audience respond in the, um, rather primal way that they do. The movie is really good at capturing the thrill of watching a live performance with the noise and the movement, and that is really one of the best aspects of the film overall. It’s tough to watch Butler sing “Baby, Let’s Play House” without feeling like you’re in the audience being overwhelmed by the shocking newness of Presley’s style.

We meet lots of people who influence Elvis besides Col. Parker, but they go by so quickly that you sometimes are retrospectively remembering how important or significant they were to his career. Sam Phillips at Sun Records, for example, started Elvis’ recording career. Well, a secretary at Sun Records probably deserves a lot of the credit, but Sam ran the company. We watch Big Mama Thornton performing “Hound Dog,” a song that Elvis would later make into a huge hit. And there’s brief moments featuring B.B. King, Little Richard, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but don’t blink or go to the restroom or you’ll miss their time on screen.

Because Elvis broke so many racial barriers and sexual taboos, everyone, it seems, tried to control him and his behavior, usually to little effect. One of the more interesting moments in the film happens in Mississippi, Elvis’ home state (and mine), when Senator Eastland tries to get him arrested. Rather than take the safe path, Elvis chooses to perform “Trouble.” The film features some great closeups of Butler as Elvis during this sequence, writhing on stage and deservedly earning the praise for his performance. He certainly gets the gestures and movements right, and the press frenzy that surrounded Elvis gets highlighted effectively in this sequence too.

One of the hallmarks of a Luhrmann film is quick editing. It leads to a blend of reality and hyperreality. The montages that show us how he reacted to becoming famous feature the womanizing and the drugs that became the fodder for lots of gossip. The 1960s is really almost a blur of images: the various bad movies into which Parker pushed him, his marriage and its dissolution, the birth of his daughter Lisa Marie, so many things. And then the film slows down a bit to let us see behind the scenes a bit for the so-called “comeback special.” Was Elvis ever sexier than when he wore that black leather suit? The Colonel wants a family-friendly special with “Here Comes Santa Claus” as the climactic moment, but Elvis is too troubled by what’s going on the world to concentrate upon something so frivolous. This was the period when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Jr. were assassinated. The performance of “If I Can Dream” – with Butler’s note-perfect rendition of how Elvis did the number originally – is truly a highlight of the film.

By the time the film gets to the Las Vegas years and the record-breaking residency at the International Hotel, we’re back to spending too much time watching what’s going on with Col. Parker and his mounting gambling debts. The use of split screens and multiple images during the reimagining of “That’s All Right, Mama” is reminiscent of the concert films that Presley released at the time. We get the obligatory depiction of “Suspicion Minds” in the white jumpsuit and of Priscilla’s departure from the marriage, but the key result of this sequence is Elvis learning the truth about the colonel’s background and how much of his money Parker had taken from him over the years. Elvis dies about sixteen minutes before the end of the film, leaving us to listen to Hanks as Parker rather than allowing us to feel grief over the loss of one of the greatest entertainers of all time.

The film Elvis was certainly well liked by the voters of the Academy, who nominated it for eight awards. However, it now stands as one of the most-nominated films in history to receive not even one Oscar. When you consider the film editing and the cinematography and the makeup and hairstyling and the costumes – the costumes! – as well as the great portrayals of Elvis performing his songs throughout this career, you’re left with a remarkable achievement. The film might have been at least 30-40 minutes shorter with less attention on Col. Parker, and that could have made the achievement even greater.

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Austin Butler), Best Achievement in Hair and Makeup, Best Sound, Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Costume Design, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Production Design

Gladiator (2000)

 

Gladiator begins with an epic, brutal battle sequence that lasts about twelve minutes, and it’s a brilliant strategy to start with something so physical and action-packed. Director Ridley Scott has always been good at directing action movies, and while this might have easily been a throwback to those earlier, rather corny gladiator movies from the 1950s and 1960s, Scott’s film is filled with great sequences, many of them taking place in various arenas and featuring intense encounters between some of the biggest gladiators imaginable.

The film follows the story of the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius (played with more stoicism than probably necessary by Russell Crowe), who leads the Roman army to victory over the forces in Germania in the opening sequence. So beloved and revered and successful is Maximus that the Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris, who departs the move far too quickly), favors him over the presumptive heir to the throne, his son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix, channeling evil personified). Commodus is not a good person and not a promising leader, and Phoenix lets us see the jealousy and hatred that have rotted him to the core of his being.

Marcus Aurelius dislikes his son so much that he plans to make Rome into a republic again rather than have Commodus succeed him, and he wants Maximus to be the leader under the new republic. Do you even have to guess how Commodus responds to this? In short order, he kills his own father, has Maximus’ wife and son murdered, and tries to have Maximus himself killed. Commodus assumes the title of Caesar and gives the people what he thinks they want or need: a seemingly endless supply of distractions like gladiator battles and bread. It keeps them pacified, but he seems to think that it will make them love him. Why are there so many movies about men who turn into awful humans because they think they didn’t get the love they deserved from their fathers? It must be because there are too many men in real life who turned out that way.

After being captured by slave traders while trying to recover from his wounds, Crowe’s Maximus starts developing a real talent for killing others in the battle arenas as a gladiator, and the series of scenes featuring those battles are among the best in the film. They’re particularly well shot. He acquires the nickname of “the Spaniard,” for reasons that were never fully clear to me. However, he becomes quite proficient at using his anger and hatred and pain to kill gladiators who would be expected to overpower him. By the time he delivers the famous “Are you not entertained?” line in the film, we have to agree that, yes, we are being very entertained, especially if we like watching grown men beat each up and blood flowing all over the ground of the arena.

Just as an aside, the fight scenes are so spectacular that The Boyfriend kept saying to me while we were watching the film again in preparation for Gladiator II that these battles were the Romans’ form of entertainment since they didn’t have movies or television. He’s not wrong, and I guess it’s pretty clear to anyone who watches the film that these “entertainments” were clearly used as a means to keep the people in check while their government engages in horrible acts. Thankfully, no one does any such actions these days. Right? Right?

Maximus’ goal, of course, is to get his revenge against Commodus, not necessarily to be a free man again, so as he keeps learning new and bloodier ways to kill someone, we acknowledge that he’s really in training to kill Commodus. He even tells the emperor this to his face after Commodus meets him in the middle of a large arena and asks Maximus to remove his mask. This, naturally, does not sit well with Commodus, so he starts scheming to have the gladiator killed. One of the most astonishing sequences has Maximus facing off against a gigantic guy from Gaul while chained tigers try to attack them if they ventures too closely to the large, hungry beasts. I don’t know how historically accurate such an approach might be, but it certainly does keep your attention.

The role of Maximus is a physically demanding role, and Crowe seems fully committed to the hard work of being an efficient killing machine in the arena. By the time he faces Commodus in the ring face-to-face, he’s clearly destined to kill the emperor, but you know that someone like the emperor is never going to play fair. He hasn’t been fair at any point during the film, so why should he start now? The ending of the film is a bit too, um, comfortable for my tastes, but after seeing flashbacks of his wife and son throughout the film, it’s no surprise that Maximus would want to “reunite” with them. There is often some sort of spiritual dimension to Scott’s film, and sometimes it’s more plausible or acceptable than at other times.

Gladiator features a strong supporting cast. I’ve already mentioned Harris, who has only a few moments on screen at the beginning. Djimon Hounsou plays a fellow gladiator, and the great Oliver Reed, in his final film role, plays Proximo, the “owner” and trainer of a band of gladiators. Derek Jacobi is Gracchus, a key member of the senate who faces reprisals from Commodus after the emperor learns that Gracchus and his own sister and others have been plotting against him – as you would if you were being ruled by a tyrant. The sister, Lucilla, is played by the talented Connie Nielsen. Her scenes with Crowe give more than a few hints that the two were former lovers, and they seem to have had a child together as well. How else can you have a sequel? The child in question is played by Spencer Treat Clark, whose face is very expressive.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the production design for the film. It’s very evocative of the era that it depicts, and the recreation of the Colosseum is spectacular. The locations of the emperor’s residence and of the senate meetings and even Gracchus’s house, which is seen only for a few seconds, get a great deal of attention. The production design was nominated for an Oscar, and the costume design deservedly won in its category. The various costumes demonstrate the kind of stratification of Roman society, and the smallest details on someone’s robes, for example, are visible and perfect. Scott’s films that cover historical periods are always very attuned to displaying what would have been common at the time. It’s just another element in a film that strives to be entertaining, and isn’t that what Maximus wanted for us, after all?

Oscar Wins: Best Picture, Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Sound, Best Costume Design, and Best Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Director (Ridley Scott), Best Supporting Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen/Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing

Sound of Metal (2020)

 

I don’t normally start a discussion of a film with an examination of the sound design, but Sound of Metal does such an amazing job that, even though it’s odd to point it out, you can’t really experience this film without acknowledging it. The central character learns that he’s suffering from severe hearing loss, and we as viewers and listeners get to experience what he’s going through. The film features subtitles throughout – although it does withhold telling us what’s going on at a couple of key moments – and the difficulties that we have in hearing replicates for us what Ruben (played with great physicality by Riz Ahmed) experiences. When he cannot hear anything but distorted voices, that’s what we hear. When the sounds for him almost disappear, they do the same for us. It’s a spectacular aspect of the film, and it truly helps to make the impact even greater for us as an audience.

We may not realize it when the film starts, but we’re already in Ruben’s auditory world. We see him on stage with his girlfriend. It’s a loud blast of music, which contrasts to the many moments of absolute silence we get later in the film. They’re a heavy metal act – or punk metal or something like that – and much of her singing is rather inaudible. We might think at first that it’s the quality of the singing or the music more generally, but we’re already getting a sense of how much difficulty Ruben is having. When he cannot hear at all on a subsequent night, he realizes (as do we) that he is suffering from hearing loss. A doctor’s appointment arranged by a pharmacist reveals that he only has 24-28 percent of his hearing capacity. The film really only takes about ten minutes or so at the beginning to convey how much Ruben’s life is going to change.

Ruben is also a former addict, and he wants a solution quickly so that he can resume his life on the road. He would need $40,000-$80,000 for cochlear implants, money that they don’t have as struggling musicians. Lou (Olivia Cooke) is worried about him, though, and they contact Ruben’s sponsor, who finds him a spot in a deaf community in a rural area. She has to leave him there because the community is only for those who are deaf or hard of hearing; those who are not hearing impaired would be a distraction, according to the rules of the community leader, Joe (played with great stoicism by Paul Raci). It’s tough for her to leave him, and it’s tough for him to let her go. Their separation is painful to watch.

Ruben doesn’t immediately fit in, of course, and we also get to be a part of feeling his alienation. The others in the community mostly use American Sign Language, but he doesn’t know how to sign yet. He senses they’re talking about him sometimes, but he cannot respond. Only those who can lipread can understand what he’s saying, and he feels rather isolated at first. However, Joe is committed to getting Ruben to become more integrated into the community. Ruben goes to classes for ASL with children and slowly begins to bond with them. He even brings in music and drumming to their classroom so that they can get a sense of what his life was like. The moments with the kids are really some of the more delightful ones in the film.

His comfort in the rural community – which is beautifully photographed, by the way – is short-lived, though. He becomes impatient when he sees online that Lou has gone to France to live with her father and is now singing a very different style of music. His career as a rock drummer might be coming to an end, and he wants to return to that life if he can. He sells almost everything he owns: the music equipment, their RV they used to tour, whatever he can. Of course, he also is impatient for the implants to work immediately after surgery, but what he hears first is really distorted and painful to listen to. He’s warned by the audiologist to give it time, but Ruben leaves almost immediately for France to meet with Lou. He seems to think that if they just get back to their music, he’ll regain some sense of what he considers “normalcy.” The film has repeatedly questioned what “normal” is, but Ruben isn’t quite to the point of accepting his new life as normal just yet.

The pacing of the film is rather interesting. Very intense moments are followed at times by very slow passages. We even see how Ruben’s reactions can mirror the film’s pacing or vice versa. He’s often very quiet or still, but then he will have an explosion of emotions. He holds in his feelings at times when you know he’s not as happy or accepting as he claims to be. It’s a thrilling performance in many ways, and you can sense how very committed Ahmed was to learning how to play the drums and how to use ASL to communicate. The film editing was honored with an Oscar, as was the sound design, so you do have a sense that the voters really appreciated what the filmmakers were doing.

Even when he’s in France, we get to experience what Ruben is hearing. The distortion returns at times, and he has to adjust the implants to accommodate the volume at other times. When Lou and her father duet in French at a party, we don’t get subtitles telling us what they’re singing. If you know French, it’s probably a charming song. However, Ruben apparently doesn’t understand French, so we aren’t allowed to experience a moment differently than he does if we also don’t understand French. It can be distancing or alienating at times, certainly, but once you’ve caught on as to what’s happening with the sound, you can’t really help but appreciate the commitment of the filmmakers to let us into the world of someone experiencing the loss of their sense of hearing.

Sound of Metal also teaches us a bit about the technology available to the deaf or hearing impaired. We witness the use of sign language and lipreading and speech-to-text programs, all of which help us to see what someone just learning how to live with hearing loss might experience. The deaf community of the film is a rather insular one, but the movie takes some time to introduce us to the controversy surrounding cochlear implants. Some fear there’s nothing to be fixed in someone who cannot hear, so they oppose the use of implants. That’s why Ruben has to leave after he gets them. He no longer fits into the community like he did before when he was learning to accept himself as someone without full hearing.

I’ve mentioned the cinematography already, but it’s exceptional and was overlooked by the Academy. The rural landscape would likely be what many would notice, but watch the camerawork as Ruben and Lou are traveling in the RV from gig to gig, or look at how beautiful Paris looks as he walks to her father’s place. The wind in the trees, the wheat moving gracefully, the kinds of moments that those of us with full hearing take for granted are presented here as the marvels that they are. You may be able to hear that wind blowing, but the subtitles on the screen remind you that not everyone experiences it the same way. Our immersion into Ruben’s experience is likely not to be replicated easily after the stellar achievements of this film.

Oscar Win: Best Sound and Best Achievement in Film Editing

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Riz Ahmed), Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Paul Raci), and Best Original Screenplay

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

 

Rosemary’s Baby tells what could have been a very heartwarming story of a young couple (played by Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) who move into an old New York apartment building with lots of history and some very gregarious neighbors. Of course, what the two new tenants don’t realize yet – and what we as viewers quickly start to suspect – is that these neighbors are quite strange. A couple of them, the Castavets (played to perfection by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), are really quite nosy and pushy. Gordon’s Minnie, in particular, likes to insinuate herself into Rosemary’s everyday life as much as possible, and Cassavetes’ Guy Woodhouse actually befriends Blackmer’s Roman Castavet almost immediately. I suppose if you rent an apartment that is now available because the previous tenant died (thankfully, not in the apartment, which is quickly established to the relief of the Woodhouses) and you also know that a young dancer who lived in the building fell to her death – unless, perhaps, it wasn’t a fall – then you might find comfort knowing that some older, seemingly kind people are looking out for you. Oh, if only it were that simple. What’s really going on starts to become clear when Farrow’s Rosemary has either a dream or a vision (or is it neither one?) of being raped by a demon while others watch. When she becomes pregnant, everyone starts making a fuss over her and tries to get her to drink some strange smoothies and go to a particular doctor and… it just never seems to end. Minnie shows up almost every day to check on Rosemary, who starts to look especially sick. No one, including her neighbor-endorsed doctor, wants her to worry, but Rosemary starts to think something might be wrong with the baby. Farrow’s thinness and famous (or infamous, as the case may be) short hairdo help to convey the potential illness perfectly. This may be the only film that includes a testimonial for the work of Vidal Sassoon. She gets little support in her concerns from her husband, who seems especially distant after she reveals she’s pregnant, and it’s only in the company of her friends from outside the building that she seems to get any sympathy. I suppose, though, that when you confess that you think you might have been impregnated after some sort of bizarre ritual performed by a coven of Satan-worshipping witches, your friends need to comfort you. Yes, that’s right. The building is filled with witches, and they’ve chosen Rosemary to carry the devil’s child so that they will then have someone evil to take over and cleanse the world. Well, “cleanse” might be the wrong word for what they have in mind, but you get the picture. We have several occasions when we have to wonder if Rosemary might be delusional or if she is right about the witches. When she notices that Roman has pierced ears – which is supposed to be a sign of a male witch, I guess – it only takes a book from a former landlord to convince her. I suppose it’s a good thing she didn’t go to a dockyard or the Village; all those pierced ears would have really freaked her out. Rosemary’s Baby is considered a horror classic, and it certainly builds in suspense as we learn more and more about the neighbors and their plans. I’m not sure I fully appreciate the enigmatic ending, though, since it’s unclear exactly what Rosemary might do with respect to her devil baby, but such endings were becoming more common at the time. The film raises some interesting questions about the bodily autonomy of women, and Rosemary is almost treated as little more than an incubator by so many people in the building. It also forces us to consider what we know about others in our lives and what kind of influence they might be having over us. Some aspects of the film are, naturally, dated, and we certainly have seen far more horrifying tales on the screen, but Rosemary’s Baby serves as quite a strong origin point for what many modern films do with female characters, in particular. I’m certain that’s not really a good thing, but I suppose you can never imagine just where or how a film’s impact might spread.

Oscar Win: Best Supporting Actress (Ruth Gordon)

Other Oscar Nomination: Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium

Napoleon and Samantha (1972)

 

Napoleon and Samantha is a children’s movie released by the Walt Disney company, but it has one of the weirdest plots imaginable for a film aimed at children. Johnny Whitaker plays Napoleon, who’s living in the woods with his grandfather (Will Geer, right about the same time he started playing the grandfather on The Waltons). They run across a circus clown one night who has a lion with bad teeth who only drinks milk. The clown, who’s been looking for a way to retire, unloads the lion on the youngster and his grandpa, who decide to keep it in their chicken coop. Apparently, the chickens are safe since the lion can’t eat meat. When Grandpa dies, Napoleon has to hire an out-of-work grad student named Danny (played by Michael Douglas, of all people) to help bury the old man. Napoleon lies to Danny about an uncle who’s going to come take care of him because he doesn’t want to get caught living alone and face being sent to an orphanage. Danny, who herds sheep when he’s not in grad school because that’s something that lots of people do while studying for an advanced degree, lives in isolated cabin (is there any other kind?) several mountains away. You know where this is headed, right? Napoleon decides to take his lion across miles of wilderness so that he can live with Danny—without having asked Danny if he could move in with a large feline. Jodie Foster plays Napoleon’s good friend Samantha, who naturally wants to make the journey with him despite his objections that there won’t be enough food for them both. They face some danger along the way, some of it nature itself such as a stream they have to cross or cliffs that one of them almost falls off. They also face natural predators like the cougar that tries to eat Samantha’s pet chicken that she’s brought along because… you can’t leave a chicken along with your guardian if you just received it as a gift the day before? Said guardian, Gertrude, is played by Ellen Corby, who played the grandmother on The Waltons, but she and Geer are never in a scene together, robbing us of a big-screen pairing to rival the small-screen one. There’s also a bear attack, but the lion always seems to scare off whatever comes near, which is surprising considering that it only seems to want to lie down all the time and rest. Surely, this is one of the most lethargic lions ever filmed. When they finally arrive at Danny’s cabin, he rightfully suggests that someone tell the people in town where they are, so he leaves the kids with this guy who just recently showed up out of nowhere, Mark, who’s wearing the trademark serial killer glasses that all filmmakers use for shorthand. Danny goes back to town, promptly gets arrested for child abduction, sees a Wanted poster with Mark’s face on it, and escapes on a motorcycle that leads to a remarkable chase up mountain roads that seem to have an awful lot of construction going on for such a small town. It’s a Disney film, so you know there’s going to be a happy ending after all, and there’s little suspense that things will turn out otherwise. Whitaker and Foster were both very good child actors, and Foster has had a long and distinguished career. This was her first major film role, and you can see why she kept getting hired for movies. There’s a natural charm and looseness to her performance. Whitaker would continue to make movies and TV shows, but I still know him best from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. Hey, people have different career paths; some win two Oscars and others act next to someone in a costume that resembles a pile of leaves. Napoleon and Samantha also features lovely outdoor cinematography, which is not surprising when you consider that the producer was the great Winston Hibler, who was responsible for so many of the great Disney documentaries about the wilderness.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Dramatic Score

Beetlejuice (1988)

 

If you’ve not seen the original Beetlejuice in a while – and I hadn’t seen it in decades until it was time to refresh my memory for the release of the sequel – you might have forgotten that Michael Keaton’s title character actually isn’t as much of a focus as you might think. A lot of the first half of the movie really involves the somewhat mundane lives of Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) Maitland, a yuppie couple who are restoring a lovely but old-fashioned house in Connecticut until they die in an automobile accident and find themselves stuck in a sort of afterlife limbo. The Deetz family moves into the house, and Delia (the great Catherine O’Hara) decides to make it into the most postmodern nightmare of a house you could imagine. With the help of her clearly gay-coded “designer” Otho (Glenn Shadix, oozing with that bitchy gay demeanor for much of the film), she offends the aesthetic tastes of even the dead couple, who decide they need to find a way to rid their home of the Deetzes. They have just one issue: proto-goth child Lydia (Winona Ryder), who has the ability to see the couple even though they’re dead. Keaton takes over the plot about halfway through the film after his Betegeuse is hired (well, sorta?) by the couple to drive away the Deetz family. He’s a sort of “bio-exorcist,” someone who allegedly can frighten people in the real world away from a place like the Maitlands’ house, but really, he’s just a scam artist who wants to marry Lydia so that he will have the power to wreak havoc in the real world. Keaton brings such a crazy, insane, manic energy to the proceedings, a sharp contrast to the slower paced first half, that it’s probably good that we remember his character as having a bigger role than it actually does. He really does bring a level of spectacle that had been missing earlier in the movie. The film won an Academy Award for its makeup, and Keaton’s title character has to be a major part of that win. The edges of his face are masterfully done. However, it wasn’t nominated for its production design even though that too is spectacular. The house becomes such a focal point, which is appropriate since it’s the epicenter of so much of the film’s action, and the twists and turns in the bureaucratic halls of the afterlife are mesmerizing in their detail. The legendary Sylvia Sidney shines in a tiny part as the couple’s world-weary or afterworld-weary caseworker; that husky voice of hers is on full display in this film. Who knew the afterlife was so much like an overburdened social services administration? The original film is funnier than I initially remembered, and the running gag over trying to say (or not to say, as the case may be) the offensive demon’s name plays for solid laughs throughout the story. And any movie that puts the music of the great Harry Belafonte to this much effective use has to be applauded. You may never listen to “Day-O” or “Jump in the Line (Shake Senora)” the same again, and that’s a good thing.

Oscar Win: Best Makeup