Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, a nominee for Best Picture of 1967, must have seemed old-fashioned even when it was initially released. In the midst of the civil rights movements of the 1960s, it must have been rather quaint to watch a white, middle-aged (to be charitable), liberal couple come to terms with the fact that their daughter is going to marry a black man. This film is perhaps best known now as being the final collaboration between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, as well as being Tracy's last film before he died. Given those two factors, I can understand why the Academy chose to include this film among its top five choices for that pivotal year of 1967, but watching it nowadays, one is struck by how much it truly caters to the white audience.

Tracy and Hepburn play Matt and Christina Drayton, a successful couple living in San Francisco who have taught their daughter Joey/Joanna (Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's niece in real life) to treat everyone equally. And that's just what she does. During a vacation in Hawaii, she meets and falls in love with Dr. John Wade Prentice (Sidney Poitier), and they come to visit the Draytons to seek their blessing. Hepburn's Christina is on board almost immediately, of course, but Matt needs more time. Joey, however, gives him one day to make up his mind because Dr. Prentice is leaving for New York and then Switzerland for his work.

All of the action of the film takes place in just one day, and much of it occurs in the Drayton home. There is one scene where Matt and Christina go for ice cream just to get a break from thinking about Joey and her fiance. That sequence is designed to show just how out of touch Tracy's Matt is. He can't even remember which flavor of ice cream he likes. That he comes to enjoy the flavor he's brought is supposed to be a revelatory moment, I suppose, but you don't really need that heavy-handed of a metaphor to get the point.

Dr. Prentice's parents (played by Roy E. Glenn Sr. and the lovely Beah Richards) come up to San Francisco from Los Angeles once they hear of the engagement. Mr. Prentice and Matt have a serious talk about their objections to the marriage. Mrs. Prentice and Christina have a talk about their support for the marriage. Mr. Prentice talks with his son. John talks with Matt. This is a very chatty movie overall. Much of the talk is, of course, about what kinds of obstacles the couple will face after they are married. If their parents are any indication, they're in for a lot of contradictory reactions.

Of course, the big scene, the one everyone both in the movie and in the audience is waiting for, is the one in which Matt reveals how he feels about the engagement. I know that it is meant to be the key moment of the film, but having a older white man determine whether or not his daughter and her fiance should get married smacks of a continuation of the existing power structure. Yes, I know that's what the speech is all about, but really, it's still delivered by an old white man. The future bride and groom are supporting players here, as are all of the African Americans. Poitier, even though he's the co-star, defers to Tracy's Matt, and the Prentices are only on screen for a brief period of time. Ironically, the most vocal African American in the film is Tillie, the servant (!) played by the great Isabel Sanford, and she makes some of the most racist comments in the movie, even using the N-word to describe Poitier's accomplished doctor and repeatedly calling him "boy." How this film won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay--over Bonnie and Clyde, no less, and Two for the Road--remains a mystery to me.

By the way, if you ever question the depth of love the Academy had/has for Katharine Hepburn, just realize that she won Best Actress for this role, yet she has so very little to do in the movie except to listen. I suppose she gets to be teary-eyed at the end while Tracy, her long-time lover, delivers a speech about how happy they have been together, but she was up against such strong performances as Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. Hepburn would win again the next year for a far stronger performance in The Lion in Winter, but you have to be puzzled over how she was chosen from the roster for 1967.

Despite the pleasure of watching Tracy and Hepburn together for the final time, I can't really say that I enjoyed this movie. It takes far too patronizing an attitude toward the black characters, and they are all so willing to allow for the white man to have the final say. I know that the movie makes Poitier's doctor too good to be true so that the only questions will be what kind of life he will have with Joey or whether they have decided too quickly to be married. Yet even taking that step makes the filmmakers so overly cautious, unwilling or unable to allow the audience to think in a more complex way about race relations. Ultimately, I think this movie fails in its attempts to bridge whatever gaps between the races it was attempting to bridge, and I think it probably wasn't that successful even in 1967.

Elmer Gantry (1960)

I was fascinated and puzzled by Elmer Gantry, one of the nominees for Best Picture of 1960. It's the story of a down-on-his-luck traveling appliance salesman who becomes part of the rise of evangelism in the 1920s. What is intriguing to me about this movie is that I could never quite get a handle on how we are supposed to feel about the preachers and their followers. I know this movie is an adaptation of a Sinclair Lewis book, and I would expect his novel to be a rather scalding indictment of evangelism. However, given how mesmerizing the central character is and the intensity of his sermons, I'm not sure that the impact of the film is truly to make him into despicable person. Instead, he seems awfully charismatic, someone others would want to follow.

In the capable hands of Burt Lancaster, the title role of Elmer Gantry is a fascinating one. When we first meet him, he is telling off-color jokes to a group of salesmen in a bar on Christmas Eve. When two women from the Salvation Army try to take up a collection, Elmer starts preaching on their behalf, shaming his fellow salesman into making some significant contributions. Given the passion of his talk, you really expect that he believes what he says. However, he then spends the night with a woman he meets in the bar and skips out of the hotel before she awakens.

Elmer has an odd series of what might be considered lucky incidents. He stumbles into a black church and joins the congregation in singing hymns. Lancaster sings every hymn in the movie with such gusto; he has a fine singing voice, strong and deep. After getting help from the minister of the black church, Elmer next stumbles upon a tent revival starring Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons). He's immediately intrigued by her and uses one of the singers in her band, Sister Rachel (played by the singer Patti Page), to get closer to Sister Sharon. Initially, Sister Sharon rejects him because she quickly sizes him up as a gambler, drinker, and womanizer--all true, by the way. However, Elmer is nothing if not persistent, and eventually, he worms his way into talking during one of Sister's meetings. After telling the crowd how the Lord helped him to sell toasters--remember that he's been pretty much broke throughout the early scenes of the movie--he's hired for the job on a more permanent basis.

It's not impossible to see that Sister Sharon is physically attracted to Elmer. He's unlike any of the men who surround her. They all tend to be conservative clergymen or the like, men who are timid and prefer to let Sister Sharon take charge of the meetings. That's why she's always tired, she says. However, once she gets to know Elmer, she says to him, "You're amusing, and you smell like a real man." Elmer is a man who seems to enjoy the physical aspects of life to their fullest. Despite warnings from her chief advisor, William L. Morgan (Dean Jagger), Sister Sharon becomes involved with Elmer.

There's a coterie of press people who follow the sister wherever she goes. One of those is newspaperman Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), who eventually digs up enough information about Sister Sharon and Elmer to print an expose about the evangelism movement. Elmer, for example, was expelled from a seminary when he was younger, and Sister Sharon has no credentials to be a preacher. Rather than be upset, Elmer suggests that they use the publicity to draw even bigger crowds. In fact, he befriends Lefferts, admitting that each of them uses the other to full advantage. Elmer even invites the press along as he goes around destroying liquor bottles and trashing houses of prostitution.

The biggest obstacle faced by Sister Sharon and Elmer arises when they reach the city of Zenith, which appears in several of Lewis' novels, by the way. It's there that Lulu Bains, a prostitute who knows Elmer from a few years back, gets involved. She's played by Shirley Jones, who had heretofore done more wholesome fare, such as musicals like Oklahoma and Carousel. This performance marked quite a turning point for Jones, and she was awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for it. Lulu, you see, still loves Elmer but tries to cash in on his notoriety by having some incriminating photos taken of the two of them. How Elmer manages to redeem his reputation is really quite interesting to watch during the final third of the film.

As I stated at the beginning, this movie leaves me with more questions than answers. I never can quite tell if Elmer converts or if he's still the con man at the end that he was at the beginning. There's such a fervor to Lancaster's speeches--and that hair doesn't hurt, either--that it's really tough to tell which side you should be on at movie's end. Lewis himself was harshly critical of religion, so I think the film version has taken more than a few liberties with the subject matter. Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to be more balanced; even the atheist newspaperman played by Kennedy is subjected to criticism for his beliefs. There's a lot of talk about the intersection of religion and money, and the film certainly shows many people who are skeptical of evangelism. To call Elmer Gantry an anti-Christian movie, however, would be too simplistic of an assessment.

One Night of Love (1934)

The chief reason to watch One Night of Love, nominated for Best Picture of 1934, is to see the performance of Grace Moore. Moore was a star with the Metropolitan Opera who made several films in the 1930s, none of which is particularly memorable today. In this film, Moore plays Mary Barrett, an aspiring singer, who at the beginning of the film is performing the title song as a part of a radio contest. Whoever wins the singing competition gets to study for two years with famed maestro Guilio Monteverdi (played by Tullio Carminati). Mary loses the competition but decides to take her savings and move to Italy to study and live anyway. She refuses to listen to the advice of her mother, played by an uncredited Jane Darwell: "But that place is full of Italians." I suppose they knew what that meant in 1934.

It isn't long, of course, before Mary has spend all of her money while waiting for her big break. She lives in Milan in a building that features performers of every type of musical instrument, and apparently, the only way she can quieten them down is to sing. Her roommate, a painter, has been trying to get her to take a job at the Cafe Roma, but Mary wants to hold out for the world of opera to discover her. Ironically, after she takes the job, which does involve her singing now and then (a rousing version of "Finiculi, Finicula"), she is discovered by Monteverdi himself, who is having lunch with his pianist. He has just dismissed his previous pupil (and lover), Lally (played by Mona Barrie), and he is now ready to take on another student. He promises to make Mary a star if she will only listen to his directions and vow never to fall in love with him. Given that she has a young man who's already in love with her, Bill Houston (Lyle Talbot), and given how much of a bore Monteverdi is, you'd think this would be easy for her.

As I was watching One Night of Love, I realized just how indebted American filmmakers were to the early Soviet directors. Where would the early sound movies be without a montage, like the one here meant to show the various locations throughout Europe where "La Barrett" performs on her way to becoming an opera superstar? Intercutting trains, crowds, fliers, and snippets of performances, the longest montage is quite a marvel, frankly. I know you're probably thinking that I must have been somewhat bored by the plot in order to pay attention to the editing, and you'd be right.

Frankly, you should know where all of this is headed anyway. It's all pretty standard stuff, really. Bill proposes to Mary, and Monteverdi makes his case for her love as well. Lally reappears just at the worst possible time, and there's a misunderstanding between Mary and Monteverdi about Lally. Since this is a movie about opera and performance, you also know that there will be questions along the way of whether or not Mary will be able to overcome her fears that she isn't good enough. I suppose much of this was not a cliche back in 1934, but it has all become cliched by now.

Moore, though, is an engaging actress, and it's worth watching the movie for her performance. She is so bright and cheery, especially when she sings. And she sings beautifully. She does numbers from La Traviata, Carmen, and Madame Butterfly, and even though I am not particularly a fan of opera music, I enjoyed the numbers. This is one of those movies that lets you see the numbers as they would have been performed in practice or on the stage itself rather than having people break into song in a way that is unrelated directly to the plot. There are several significant moments that take place on stage, and watching Moore perform these numbers gives you a real sense of why she was such a star of the Metropolitan Opera and why Hollywood wanted to make her into a movie star as well.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

There are essentially three parts to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of the nominees for Best Picture of 1969. The first part of the film follows the adventures of Butch and Sundance and the Hole in the Wall Gang in the U.S. West, particularly the rather haphazard ways in which they robbed banks and trains. The middle part of the film, a rather long sequence, follows Butch and Sundance as they try to escape a six-man posse that has been sent to kill them. The final portion deals with the adventures the two men have after they and Sundance's girlfriend flee to Bolivia. This is a rather unconventional Western--at times, it's really almost a comedy--and one of the early films of the so-called New Hollywood that would come to dominate in the 1970s. It's a real treat to watch, primarily because of its two main stars and their chemistry together.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford paired for the first time in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and they were so successful that the director of the film, George Roy Hill, joined them again in 1973 for The Sting, a movie I've already described as just about as perfect as a film could be. Their earlier collaboration comes pretty close to perfection, aided by the Oscar-winning screenplay by William Goldman. Goldman wrote some great interaction between the two men, and each is given ample opportunity to demonstrate his acting talent. What most people remember about this film, I would imagine, is the quick-witted banter between Newman's Butch and Redford's Sundance that Goldman created.

Butch is the talker, the idea man of the gang. He's the one who always comes up with the plans for which banks or trains to rob. It's a different member of the gang, though, who suggests robbing the Union Pacific train both coming and going. Harvey Logan (Ted Cassidy, who also played Bigfoot on episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man) thinks that the railroad company will load the train for the return trip, thinking the gang won't suspect money to be available both times. As is typical of their somewhat inept skills, the gang members (under Butch's direction) use enough dynamite to blow up the entire train, not just the safe, on the second journey, but before they can pick up all the cash, they are quickly attacked by a posse that jumps out of a small train that pulls up behind the one they've just robbed. It doesn't take long before Butch and Sundance realize that the posse is only looking for the two of them.

The middle portion of the film follows the two outlaws as the traverse the western frontier, tracked all the way by the six men. As Butch keeps asking, "Who are those guys?" It turns out the posse has been hired by the head of the railroad, who is understandably upset that his train keeps getting robbed and/or blown up. Butch and Sundance wind up on a cliff over a river and have to make a decision. In one of the more famous sequences of the movie, Sundance admits that he can't swim, to which Butch jokingly replies, "The fall'll probably kill you." They survive the jump, though, and make their way (with Etta Place, played by Katharine Ross, by their side) to Bolivia after a side journey to New York to enjoy a little big-city life.

In Bolivia, they try to rob banks, but their Spanish is too weak. They try to learn from Etta, but Butch, in particular, keeps messing up, even with notes. Eventually, though, they master the art of bank robbing in a foreign country and start to enjoy themselves. After Butch spots one of the members of the posse from the United States, though, he and Sundance attempt to go "straight" (no pun intended) and find legitimate jobs as payroll guards. It seems the payroll for the mining company where they are hired keeps getting stolen by thieves. Ironic, isn't it?

I won't make anything of the fact that this is a movie where the key relationship is between two adult men. One of them already has a steady relationship, Sundance's romance with Etta, but she is apparently just as willing to be Butch's lover. They have a long bike ride to the tune of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," and she wonders aloud what would have happened had she met Butch before she met Sundance. Butch only seems able to have fun with prostitutes, but when he is left alone while Sundance and Etta share a bed or a dance, you might reasonably wonder who it is that he wishes were free to be with him. All buddy movies have, it seems to me, an implicit sense of the homoerotic or, at the very least, the homosocial (to use Eve Sedgwick's term). I won't even mention the fact that they share one horse for a large portion of that middle trek to avoid the posse.

What's ultimately most intriguing about this movie is that we begin cheering two outlaws. Butch and Sundance are obviously not on the side of law and order; they are self-professed criminals. They talk about getting out of the business, but it's really too easy for them to succeed. Instead, we get a continuing series of ideas from Butch and then the actions by Sundance, particularly his prowess with a gun, to back up those ideas. Newman and Redford were not the first anti-heroes to become the focus of a movie, but this movie helped to cement that kind of character in the public consciousness forever. And having two stars with this much chemistry together was certainly one of the major starting points for the buddy pictures that were to follow for decades afterward.

I'd also like to address the moments in the film when the makers have chosen to use sepia tone rather than natural colors. The film is, of course, based upon actual people, but both Butch and Sundance have more legend than historical fact associated with their exploits. The sepia tone seems to indicate that sense of the past, the way that events were seen then, the way that our memories are often "colored" by time or forgetfulness. Those moments are perhaps the stories that have been passed down, such as the opening sequence where Sundance shoots the gun belt off another man without injuring him. And the final freeze-frame, also in sepia tone, is one of the more remarkable endings in film history. I'll leave it to you to determine what you think happens at the end; it's been the subject of debate since this film was released in 1969 (although why it's been debated is beyond me).

Oscar Wins: Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score (for a Non-Musical), and Original Song ("Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head")

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, and Sound

Sounder (1972)

Sounder was nominated for Best Picture of 1972, the year of The Godfather, so it was always an unlikely candidate to win the top award. However, it was unlikely in another way as well. This is a film with a predominantly black cast that tells the story of family of sharecroppers in Louisiana during the Depression, hardly the subject matter for many movies during the early 1970s. Sounder came out during the burgeoning "blaxploitation" era when films about inner-city black life, not history lessons about the black experience in the Depression, were more popular. Sounder, however, is an exceptional movie worthy of the attention that it received and worthy of our continuing admiration today.

The plot is somewhat simple, as befits a movie based upon an award-winning children's book. Nathan Lee Morgan (Paul Winfield) and Rebecca Morgan (Cicely Tyson) have gotten into debt as sharecroppers, as many of the poor did who were forced into this kind of work. Nathan steals meat one night for his family, particularly his eldest child, David Lee (Kevin Hooks), and is jailed and then sent to a prison work camp. The family, however, cannot find out to which camp Nathan Lee has been sent until a white woman, Mrs. Boatwright (Carmen Mathews), intercedes on their behalf. David Lee walks many miles to visit his father in the camp, but he fails to find Nathan Lee once he gets there. Instead, he stumbles upon a school where the teacher and all of the pupils are black, quite a difference from the predominantly white school he is sometimes able to attend back home. It's a revelatory moment for David Lee, one that he is excited to share when he returns home.

I haven't yet mentioned the dog, but he's rather significant to the story. His name is Sounder, and he's shot while Nathan Lee is being taken into custody. Sounder disappears for a while, but he returns when he has started to heal. I don't want to make too much of the fact that Nathan Lee also has to leave for a while and returns to his family still wounded yet healing, but the film itself seems to make that parallel.

One of the most impressive aspects of this film is its cinematography. The images in Sounder are especially evocative of the era with the fields and houses and forests. It's beautifully shot, and while I know that infusing such a story as the oppression of an entire race of people with beautiful imagery could be construed the wrong way, I think part of the beauty of this film is in its attention to real detail as well. It doesn't attempt to make the grinding work of the sorghum mill, for example, any less sweat-inducing or labor-intensive than it really is. If you've ever been to Louisiana or other similar places in the South, you'll recognize just how accurate the film is in its depictions.

Everyone in the cast is fantastic. Winfield brings a touch of humor to his part, yet he also allows you to see just how close to being completely exhausted a man can become. Hooks was making his motion picture debut, and he's a revelation. He has an incredibly expressive face, and his eyes reveal the thoughts that his David Lee is unable at times to speak. Hooks has become more famous as a director and producer now, but he had a talent for acting. You might recognize James Best in the role of Sheriff Young; he's perhaps better known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard. Did he always get the call when they needed a redneck sheriff? He's good at the part, certainly, but I bet he wishes he had a career with more range to it.

I've saved the best for last, of course, and that's Cicely Tyson. What an amazing actress she is. I first saw her on television in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a movie I recently got to see again. She had already been acting almost a dozen years before she got the part in Sounder, and it made her a star. She's outstanding in the part. She has a quiet dignity going about her day-to-day errands here, and yet she allows you to see the pain she is feeling when the sheriff refuses her entrance (as a woman) to the men's jail to see her husband. It's a standout performance in a year that saw many strong women's roles. She lost to Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, but she's the equal (or the better) of any of the actresses nominated that year. Sounder is only one of the great performances she has given throughout her illustrious career, and I'm very grateful to have had a chance to watch it.

Watch on the Rhine (1943)

Watch on the Rhine, a Best Picture of 1943 nominee, is a World War II era movie that takes place almost entirely in the area surrounding Washington, D.C. However, it's not about government officials or military leaders trying to determine how best the United States should involve itself in the fight against Nazism and fascism. Instead, it's a film about one family's struggles to make what it considers to be the right choices.

Paul Lukas, who would win the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance here, plays Kurt Muller, a German refugee who is married to an American woman, Sara, played by Bette Davis. At the beginning of the film, they and their three children, two boys and a girl, cross the border from Mexico into the United States in order to escape to the home of Sarah's mother, Fanny Farrelly (the delightful Lucile Watson), the widow of a former Supreme Court Justice--it's a fact she keeps pointing out throughout the film; you can't accuse Fanny of subtlety. In addition to her son David, Fanny is also host to the Count and Countess de Brancovis (George Coulouris and Geraldine Fitzgerald), a Romanian couple. The Count, also known as Teck, has maintained ties with the German embassy; well, his ties include regular poker games and gossip with various hangers-on at the embassy.

Fanny, delighted to have all of the members of her family in the same house, tries to arrange for an engineering job for her son-in-law. Unfortunately, she soon learns that he hasn't really been working as an engineer for quite some time. He describes himself instead as being an "anti-fascist" whenever someone asks him. The Mullers left Germany in the 1930s and have been to most of the places in Europe where the Nazis and others have attempted to take control. Herr Muller tells how he saw men murdered in the streets of his hometown during a holiday festival, and that's what apparently determined the future direction of his life. Davis' Sara has been completely supportive of his choices, and the family has made many sacrifices over the years to support the father's efforts.

The Count, after initially suspecting that Muller might have been an advance man for the Nazis, comes to realize that he is either the leader of an anti-Nazi underground group or one of its most active members. He discovers money and a gun among the contents of a locked briefcase in a drawer in the Mullers' room, and he confronts Kurt after Sara discovers that the lock has been broken. The showdown between Kurt and Teck is very tense, and it's probably what won Lukas the Oscar. Of course, he won over Humphrey Bogart's legendary performance as Rick in Casablanca, so I'm not sure Lukas truly deserved the honor that year.

What intrigues me most about this film is that it is set in April 1940, years before U.S. involvement in World War II. Fanny and her son David seem to be naive about world events, perhaps choosing only to pay attention to those changes in Europe that they seem to favor and ignoring any evidence that the fascists have infiltrated many countries. They do not, for example, realize how much of an opportunist the Count is until it is too late. Sara confronts her mother's lack of knowledge by saying, "The world has changed." It's a pretty stinging indictment, and I suspect it was meant as much for the United States people as it was for the older woman in the movie.

Lukas gets a couple of good moments, particularly when he explains to his children why he has taken some of the actions he has over the years, such as killing another man. Davis is very different here from those movies in which she was the star. She's top-billed here, but this is really more of a supporting role for her, but she handles the part admirably. Watson is a standout as Fanny, and she was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I also enjoyed the performances of the three children, but the one who stands out, of course, is Eric Roberts as Bodo. No, it's not that Eric Roberts. Just how old do you think he really is? This Eric Roberts gives a fine performance as the know-it-all youngest child, a boy who's read a great deal of philosophy and history and seems to know all of the answers.

Watch on the Rhine is based upon a Lillian Hellman play that appeared on Broadway a few months before the attacks on Pearl Harbor led to the formal involvement of the United States in World War II. Maybe Hellman was trying to warn Americans of what was ahead for them. Her long-time lover, Dashiell Hammett, adapted the play into the screen version, keeping intact most of the warnings voiced by Sara and Kurt Muller. It would have been a very timely choice for the Academy to nominate this film in 1943 and to give an acting award to Lukas, at least in part, as a gesture of support for all of the anti-Fascists in Europe at the time.

Picnic (1955)

The real star of Picnic, one of the nominees for Best Picture of 1955, is William Holden's chest. From its first appearance on screen, during the opening credit sequence when Holden's character bathes in a waterfall, his chest demands attention. Almost everyone in the movie seems fascinated by it, and to be fair, it is a handsome piece of work, nicely muscled but not overly so, a bit smoother than I prefer but still worthy of the looks that it receives. In scene after scene, director Joshua Logan keeps finding ways to get Holden out of his shirt, and by the end of Picnic, we're as familiar with this piece of his anatomy as we are any other part of the plot.

Holden plays Hal Carter, a drifter who comes to a small Kansas town looking for an old college buddy of his, Alan Benson (a very young Cliff Robertson). Out of cash but desperate to try to look like a success, Hal first approaches an older woman, Mrs. Potts (Verna Felton), who not only feeds him breakfast and allows him to clean himself up before doing some chores in repayment for her kindness, she also encourages him to work without his shirt on. As she puts it, "You're a man. What's the difference?" Of course, next door to Mrs. Potts is the home of Flo Owens (Betty Field), and it's a house filled with women. There's Flo and her two daughters, Millie and Madge, and Flo's boarder, Rosemary Sidney (Rosalind Russell), a self-professed "old maid schoolteacher." It's actually Rosemary who first comments on Holden's chest although what she says could be construed as negative if it weren't for the way she strains to get a good look at him. Neither she nor anyone else in town has to strain for too long, though.

In one of those "only in fiction" coincidences, Madge (Kim Novak) is also Alan's girlfriend, and it isn't long before Hal has reunited with his friend, gotten the promise of a job at the Benson family grain elevator company, and been invited to attend the Labor Day picnic with everyone else. He takes as his "date" the younger Owens daughter, Millie (Susan Strasberg), and everyone has a lot of fun participating in the activities of the town picnic. A montage of contests includes a variety of images meant to evoke the small town life of middle American during the 1950s. There's a pie eating contest, a talent competition, a three-legged race, even a girl-carrying contest, all staged to full sentimental effect here.

Despite his masculine charms--or perhaps because of him--Hal causes everyone to react to him. Part of this would, of course, be due to his being new in town. However, the amount of attention lavished on him is quite remarkable. Even Alan's father comments on how broad-shouldered Hal is; Mr. Benson was a fan of Hal's during his glory days as a college football player. And Hal himself takes almost every opportunity, it seems, to talk about how physically fit he is and how demanding physically his life has been. He even points out how Alan's borrowed jacket doesn't fit him right because he really needs all of his suits to be custom tailored in order to meet the demands of his body.

Given all of this, is it any wonder that Madge finds Hal attractive? She herself has been the focus of a great deal of attention due to her physical appearance as well. She's supposed to be the prettiest girl in town, a natural choice to be the Queen of Neewollah (that's Halloween spelled backwards), but she's starting to resent being known only for her beauty. She and her sister constantly fight because Madge is supposed to be the pretty one and Millie the smart one, each one resenting the confining nature of that overarching characterization. However, in a small town like the one portrayed here, those roles are assigned early in life and seemingly never vary.

Near the end of the Labor Day picnic, after Madge has indeed been crowned queen and while the band is playing the romantic "Moonglow," Hal and Madge dance together and realize their attraction for each other. By this time, Rosemary has been drinking a little too much, thanks to her long-time boyfriend Howard Bevans (Arthur O'Connell) and wants to see Hal's legs. I suppose she's grown tired of just looking at his chest. Unfortunately--well, perhaps not that unfortunately--she accidentally tears Hal's shirt (another article of clothing borrowed from Alan), exposing his chest yet again. Embarrassed, Rosemary leaves with Howard, leaving Madge and Hal to drive off together in a car borrowed from Alan's family.

I hope you've been keeping track of all of the things that Hal has taken from Alan because he's not quite done yet. You know, don't you, that Hal and Madge are meant to be together, right? He's the epitome of masculinity, and she's the very model of femininity. She even has a crown and a sash to prove it. I've never been quite clear on what William Inge, the playwright who created Picnic, is trying to say with this pairing. Is there some lesson here about the right people, i.e., the perfect physical specimens, needing to be united and needing to escape a town that would force them into unhappy marriages (Madge's impending betrothal to Alan) or unfulfilling jobs (Hal's prospective job at the grain elevators)? Neither seems to be happy with being known simply for their physical attractiveness, yet both are stuck with being thought of in only that one way. Regardless of what Inge might have intended, it's clear almost from the first time they meet that Hal and Madge will wind up together.

By the way, if I haven't yet convinced you of the lavish attention given to Holden's chest in this movie, let me point out that also there's a swimming sequence somewhat early in the film whose main goal seems to be the inclusion of a scene where Hal and Alan are standing side-by-side changing out of their swimsuits. If you're unable to tell the difference between Holden's more masculine, well-defined and tanned chest compared to Robertson's pale, underdeveloped chest, well, you'll probably wind up very happy in a small and small-minded town like the one this movie portrays.


I have seen Picnic performed as a stage play several times in my life. Each time I see it on the stage or in this movie version, I pay particular attention to one scene. After returning to the Owens family house, Rosemary and Howard have a discussion about their future. Rosemary, perhaps acknowledging for the first time that she is getting older, begs Howard to marry her. Perhaps seeing the young couple of Hal and Madge, she realizes that too much of her life has already passed her by and Howard represents her last chance at happiness. It's a heartbreaking scene, and it takes a skilled actress to pull it off properly. Russell, who had already been acting in movies for more than twenty years by the time of Picnic, is just astonishing here. She was shamefully overlooked when the nominees for Best Supporting Actress were chosen, but her co-star, O'Connell, did make the cut for Best Supporting Actor.

Neither Russell nor O'Connell were Method actors, and Holden was himself a much more naturalistic performer. However, Picnic boasts performances by two women who had devoted a great deal of time to learning Method acting. It's interesting to watch Novak, in particular, during her scenes with Holden. She seems so very distant emotionally from him, and it's somewhat jarring when they must share an emotional moment such as when he confesses his attraction for her. Strasberg, whose father Lee was the most renowned acting teacher favoring the Method, similarly stands out from the rest of the cast. She uses props like a cigarette or a copy of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe as a part of her performance, yet overall, it just doesn't ring as true to me as the performances by long-time pros like Russell, O'Connell, and Holden. Novak's performance style would work to her advantage much better in later films like Vertigo and Bell, Book, and Candle, but she and Strasberg can stand here as early examples of a style of acting that would come to predominate film in the next decade.

Alfie (1966)

The title character of Alfie, nominated for Best Picture of 1966, is a misogynistic, womanizing cad. That he's played with some degree of charm by Michael Caine is perhaps his only redeeming feature. Otherwise, I cannot imagine why anyone would make a film about such a reprehensible man and expect us to feel sympathetic towards him. Perhaps many people of the time were amazed at just how realistic Caine's portrayal of a chauvinist was, but watching his Alfie Elkins for almost two hours was quite depressing at times and anger-inducing at others.

The film begins with Alfie making out with a married woman, Siddie (Millicent Martin) in his car. She's on her way to the train to meet her husband, but she first has to have her regular rendezvous with Alfie. It's during this scene that perhaps the most tiresome aspect of the film comes into play: Caine's direct address to the audience. This might have been a novel idea for a movie in 1966, breaking the fourth wall and all that, but most of the time, Alfie just tries to rationalize his bad behavior to the viewers. For me, it's not a successful device. It seems as if he wants us to see what goes on in his mind when he mistreats these women, thinking that we might start to empathize with him, but it just makes me feel even more disgusted with his behavior that he thinks he is justified in his actions.

We quickly learn that Alfie already has a girl at home, Gilda (Julia Foster), who starts to realize that she might be pregnant. Alfie tells her that she needs to consider seriously the merits of having an abortion versus giving the baby up for adoption after it is born. He, naturally, wants her to have an abortion because he doesn't want to take on the responsibilities of fatherhood. However, for a brief moment, the amount of time it takes to play a montage of the boy (named Malcolm) playing with his father while growing up, we might feel that Alfie has a bit of a heart. Yet he never marries Gilda. In fact, he lets another man marry her. It's a particularly cruel series of events that he sets into motion with that conversation with Gilda.

Meanwhile, Alfie continues to have encounters with a series of women: the manager of a dry cleaner (although he calls her a "manageress"), a chiropodist, a bodybuilder's girlfriend, or "any bird that came my way by chance." Notice the derogatory language that he uses to refer to women. One of them is a hitchhiker, Annie (Jane Asher), that he "steals" from a truck driver in an encounter in a coffee shop. It's as if he wants to see just how much he can get away with. Alfie is particularly cruel to Annie, who just seems to want to keep things nice for the man she thinks she loves. He finally drives her away with his persistent verbal abuse.

During the middle of the film, Alfie suffers a health scare when two spots are found on his lungs by an x-ray, and he spends about six months at a sanitarium in the country. While he is recuperating, he has a fling with one of the nurses, and then after he recovers and comes back to visit his old roommate, he takes up with his roommate's wife, Lily (Vivien Merchant), and even gets her pregnant. He won't even pay, at least initially, for the abortionist who comes to his place to perform the procedure. I will give credit to Caine, though, for the look on his face when he sees the fetus after the abortion. He does appear to be thoroughly shocked at the consequences of his actions, and he seems to be headed toward becoming a better man as a result.

After he sees his son Malcolm at a christening for Gilda's new baby and how happy the family seems to be, he decides that he needs to settle down with just one woman and try to forge a true relationship. Unfortunately, the woman he wants to have as his mate is Ruby, played by Shelley Winters, and she has already moved on to a much younger man by the time Alfie comes to his senses. The movie ends with Alfie encountering Siddie, the married woman with whom he was having an affair at the film's beginning. They talk about meeting again, and even though she repeatedly says, "maybe," it's clear the two of them will likely take up where they left off. The ending is too parallel to the beginning of the film to suggest otherwise. Even the same dog--perhaps a metaphorical representation of Alfie himself?--appears in both the opening and closing sequences. It's a depressing frame device; at least, it left me feeling depressed for someone like Siddie.

By the way, in case you think I'm overstating the misogyny of the main character, consider this: when addressing the audience, Alfie never says "she" or "her." He always uses "it" to refer to any of the women with whom he has slept. How much more dehumanizing could this character be? He uses the pronoun for objects rather than the ones for women, yet we are supposed to be somehow sympathetic towards him. I would attempt to psychoanalyze a womanizer who tries to bed almost every woman he encounters but seems to hate all women, but I don't know if the film's makers have tried to give us a sense of the origins of the title character's attitudes towards women.

In case you're wondering, I've not seen the remake from a couple of years ago with Jude Law in the title role. After watching the original Alfie, I don't think I'd be interested in seeing another version. I doubt men like Alfie have gotten any better in the forty years since Michael Caine first played the part. While I can admire the talents of a performer like Caine, I can't really say that I like the role he portrays here or the movie that surrounds his character.

As an aside, I'll admit to being shocked to hear Cher singing the title song. That song has become so associated in my mind with Dionne Warwick that it caught me off guard to discover that she wasn't the original singer.

Oscar Nominations: Picture, Actor (Caine), Supporting Actress (Merchant), Adapted Screenplay, and Song ("Alfie")

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

The first half of Anchors Aweigh, a nominee for Best Picture of 1945, is one of those Hollywood films that lends itself very easily to a Queer Studies interpretation. Two sailors from the U.S.S. Knoxville get a four-day leave in Hollywood after receiving medals for their bravery. One of the sailors, a naive young man from New York City named Clarence Doolittle (Frank Sinatra), begins to follow the more experienced Joe Brady (Gene Kelly), hoping to pick up some pointers on how to pick up girls. What follows is a series of misadventures seemingly designed to keep the men together and away from any women.

Joe, for example, plans to meet up with a girl he knows in Los Angeles, the exotically named Lola. Unfortunately, the closest he ever gets to her is the telephone he uses to call her to beg her to let him show up at her home later than expected. By the way, it's always Clarence who keeps Joe from meeting up with Lola. He continually asks for Joe's help, and Kelly's sailor does his best at one point to act like a woman so that Clarence can practice his technique for meeting someone and introducing himself. He even tells Sinatra's Clarence to try to pick him up. A passerby "catches" them in the act, and the men quickly resume more stereotypically masculine behavior, but the film has already set up their relationship as paramount in importance. He then agrees to let Clarence watch him on a date with Lola so that Clarence can become a "wolf" like he is.

Of course, Lola is a difficult woman to please just over the telephone. She tends to reject Joe's offers of affection, thus giving Clarence and Joe more time to be together with each other. Interesting, during one of the phone calls to Lola, while Joe is trying his best to make romantic overtures, Clarence (who is sitting behind Joe) puts his head on Joe's shoulder. In fact, he does so a couple of times, as if Joe were wooing him instead of Lola. He seems to swoon at the romantic words Joe is speaking. Watch the look on his face and see if you don't agree with me.

When the sailors find lodgings for the night, in free beds reserved for servicemen, Joe brags about the women he and Clarence have met. He can't have the other sailors and soldiers realizing that he has spent the entire night with Clarence and has yet to meet up with Lola. These lies about their conquests suggest a form of "homosexual panic" on Joe's part. Clarence seems willing to admit that they haven't had any dates, but Joe bullies his way through the lies he tells. That the two men follow up the story with a dance together probably does little to convince a viewer of their heterosexuality. The next scene even has Sinatra's Clarence watching Kelly's Joe sleeping (wearing only his white t-shirt and boxer shorts, by the way), and when Joe realizes that he has overslept (because Clarence didn't wake him in time), he tries to attack Clarence. Once again, the more naive sailor has prevented the wiser man from completing a rendezvous with a woman, leaving Joe free to spend the day with Clarence again.

Thanks to a little boy who's running away from home to join the Navy (Dean Stockwell playing Donald Martin), Joe and Clarence meet Aunt Susie/Susan Abbott (Kathryn Grayson), a movie extra with aspirations to become a musical star, perhaps under the guidance of bandleader Jose Iturbi, who plays himself in the film. After initially rejecting Susan as not being right for Clarence, Joe cooks up a plan to introduce Susan to Iturbi, whom he and Clarence met on their ship during a medal ceremony. Grayson was a talented singer, no doubt, but her quasi-operatic style--most notably on the song "Jealousy," sung in a Mexican restaurant--is not a particular favorite of mine.

Iturbi shows up quite a lot in the film. The opening sequence has him leading the Navy Band in the title song. Under his direction, the band forms an anchor and even the word "Navy" on the aircraft carrier where the beginning of the film takes place. He also gets a full performance in the middle of the movie as he records a number for a film on which he is working. Here, however, he plays the piano rather than conducts. He also gets a piano number during a morning rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl--which still looks very much the same--with about a dozen young pianists. It must have been quite a challenge for the filmmakers to come up with new ways to insert Iturbi into a movie like Anchors Aweigh, so you have to give them points for ingenuity. Instead of what could have been merely a cameo, he becomes an integral part of the plot.

Kelly and Sinatra also get to sing and dance. No sense making a movie with one of the world's best dancers and one of the world's best singers without letting them use their talents. I've always liked Kelly's singing voice, and he gets a couple of good numbers here, most notably "We Hate to Leave" (a duet with Sinatra, one of several, actually). Sinatra gets his own numbers to shine, "I Fall in Love Too Easily" and "The Charms of You." Obviously, MGM was attempting to capitalize on Sinatra's success as a vocalist; he's even top-billed above Grayson and Kelly. It's during one of these numbers, also sung in the Mexican restaurant, that he meets a waitress who's also from Brooklyn, played by Pamela Britton. He begins to fall in love with the waitress instead of Susan because he feels so comfortable with her, having come from the same background. Meanwhile, Kelly has been trying to help Clarence and Susan become a couple, but he's fallen under her charms and now wants her for himself. Odd how Clarence really doesn't have all that much in common with Susan despite all of the efforts his pal Joe has made on his behalf.

Unsurprisingly, the "right" people get together at movie's end. It is an MGM musical, after all. Clarence and the waitress become a couple, as do Susan and Joe. Interestingly, though, each man is very reluctant to tell the other about his changed desires. It's almost as if they are ashamed to admit that they have found someone else to love rather than just stay together themselves. Yes, I know that's not what MGM had in mind at all, but the looks they give each other at the end of the film, just after kissing their respective girls, suggest that they still maintain quite an interest in each other's reactions. Despite the attempt at a happy heterosexual ending, the homoerotic possibility remains.

By the way, I don't believe there is such a thing as "overanalyzing." Even Grayson's Susan says to Joe, "You're always with him [Clarence] or talking about him. Why, Joe?" I'm just not sure she really wants the answer to that question, does she?

Overall, Anchors Aweigh still works on one level as a typical musical comedy from the studio system of this time period. Sinatra gets to use his fabled voice to full advantage, and he even manages to survive that dance with Kelly. Kelly gets to dance a few numbers on his own, including a remarkably athletic Spanish/Mexican-influenced number where Grayson is primarily obliged to watch him and wear the largest white lace mantilla that MGM could find in the wardrobe department. Kelly is, as usual, the primary focus whenever a dance number is needed. He did like to wear very snug clothing to show off his physique, didn't he? I suppose that just helps you to see the moves more clearly.

This movie is also another example of just much rapport Kelly had with child actors. He's a natural with Stockwell here, and in the scene where he shows up at Donald's school and tells how he got his medals--it involves him convincing Jerry the Mouse (yes, of Tom and Jerry fame) that he can sing and dance--the kids make for a rapt audience. Near the end of the film, Kelly dances with a young girl on Olivera Street, and they make for a charming couple. He would later use this same skill with kids to great effect in An American in Paris where "I Got Rhythm" becomes a group performance.

I should point out that Anchors Aweigh pays a lot of tribute to the Mexican heritage of Los Angeles. Several scenes take place in Olivera Street, and the Mexican restaurant where Susan is an occasional performer becomes an important part of the plot itself. And Kelly's big number with Grayson as his observer occurs on a movie set made to look like a Mexican villa. I must admit that it was a nice surprise to see how thoroughly MGM managed to incorporate the historical roots of Los Angeles into the film.

Oscar Win: Musical Score

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Actor (Kelly), Cinematography (Color), and Original Song ("I Fall in Love Too Easily")