Backdraft (1991)

 

Backdraft is the story of two brothers in Chicago who go into the family business, firefighting. Kurt Russell plays the older brother, Stephen McCaffrey, who’s quite the impetuous hero at times. However, his recklessness has cost him his marriage to Rebecca De Mornay’s Helen and the respect and trust of his fellow firefighters. He’s also an alcoholic who’s living in his father’s old boat, now in dry dock. William Baldwin plays Brian, the younger brother who’s fresh from the fire academy and assigned to work in the same firehouse as his brother. Brian has had several unsuccessful careers, and Stephen doesn’t think his brother is ready to be a firefighter. Of course, given that when he was a boy, Brian witnessed his father die in a fire, you’d be right to question his abilities to be a firefighter. This certainly begs the question of whether or not you would become a firefighter if you had watched your firefighter father die in a fire, but the film doesn’t allow for such questions to be examined too deeply. Naturally, Stephen (who has acquired the nickname “Bull”) and Brian clash a lot, and sure enough, Brian leaves the firehouse to join arson investigator Donald Rimgale (Robert DeNiro). They have a series of mysterious deaths to figure out in terms of both method (how were they killed) and motive (why were they killed). You’d think that would be enough to fuel a plot, but Brian also wants to reconnect to an old flame of his, Jennifer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who’s an assistant to an alderman who wants to be mayor and may have a connection to the series of arson deaths. You’re supposed to accept that even though Stephen and Brian fight, they truly love each other even if you don’t get a lot of evidence to support that idea in the film itself. Russell is reliably good; he’s always been rather underrated as an actor, to be honest, if well-liked as a movie star. Baldwin isn’t much of an actor, to be fair, and his facial expressions seem rather limited. He often looks like he has smelled something unpleasant although he’s supposed to be amused or happy. (His character also has a rather expensive, stylish wardrobe, rather unexpected for someone who’s been unsuccessful at so many jobs.) The cast includes a lot of great character actors, such as Scott Glenn as “Axe,” a firefighter who worked alongside the boys’ father and now with them; Donald Sutherland as an arsonist up for parole who provides Baldwin’s Brian with some guidance on the arson cases; and Jason Gedrick as Tim, Brian’s fellow firefighter candidate who serves as a cliched sacrifice. This being a film directed by Ron Howard, Backdraft also has a brief appearance by his brother Clint Howard as a morgue attendant. Clint does sometimes get fun cameos like this one. This being a Ron Howard film, there’s also egregious use of several movie cliches: slow motion, manipulative music, and cutesy montages, for example, none of which truly furthers the narrative much. I mean, why do we have to watch firefighters trying to catch a bunch of loose chickens? Backdraft features some spectacular scenes of fires, and those sequences are the best aspect of the film overall. It also features some remarkable stunt work. Once the film has ended, it’s not the arsons or the other aspects of the plot that linger; it’s the visual effects. The film was nominated for Best Visual Effects and two other awards for its sound, but interestingly, it lost all three of them to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I wouldn’t disagree with the Academy voters on any of the three, frankly. 

Oscar Nominations: Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Sound

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the third entry in the Indiana Jones series, and it manages to present a couple of interesting wrinkles in the ongoing saga. First, we get a far-too-short sequence starring River Phoenix as young Indy, and it provides us with explanations for why he hates snakes, why he wears a fedora and carries a whip, even how he got that scar on his chin. It’s only about twelve minutes, but it is a real adrenaline rush to start the film. I know there was television program in the early 1990s called The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles that attempted to capitalize on the fun of this opening sequence with Phoenix. Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful, but perhaps there is more of the tale of young Indy to be told. The other benefit of this entry into the Indiana Jones universe is the introduction of Sean Connery in the role of Professor Henry Jones, Indiana’s father. Harrison Ford, of course, is back as Indiana, and he and Connery are delightful in their characters’ father-son bickering. Connery doesn’t actually appear until about a third of the way through the plot, but when father and son are reunited, the movie ramps up the humor and action. The senior Jones was never particularly interested in his son’s activities while Indy was growing up, but now the younger Jones (who hates to be called “Junior”) has to rescue his father, who has disappeared in Venice, Italy, while looking for clues to the location of the Holy Grail. A rich American, Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), finances a trip to locate Jones Senior, but later we learn the real reason is his own desire to obtain the Holy Grail for himself (since the myth is that it can provide immortality). There’s lots of stuff here about the Crusades, but I don’t think an understanding of historical events is necessarily important, and you shouldn’t want a fiction film to learn a history lesson anyway. Much of the film is set in 1938 and there are Nazis everywhere—the film travels to Italy, Austria, Germany, even the Republic of Hatay—so you get a clear sense that Germany was already beginning to dominate many countries before World War II had started. As for clues to the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, there’s a broken stone table that’s missing significant information and Henry Jones’s diary (which he conveniently mailed to his son before being kidnapped) has a very cryptic map and some very elliptical instructions for how to find the Holy Grail. All of these items are just an excuse for a series of chases and shootouts and adventures across Europe and Asia. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade includes boat races, motorcycle escapes, a ride on a zeppelin, a biplane air battle, tanks, horses, some camels, and lots of broken stuff and quite a few fires. Alison Doody plays Dr. Elsa Schneider, who was assisting the elder Jones in his research in Venice and who has apparently bedded both father and son, something that the film really doesn’t comment upon very much, perhaps for good reason. Denholm Elliott plays Marcus Brody, a colleague who runs a museum and who seems too ill-suited for adventures like this. Sadly, John Rhys-Davies’s Sallah doesn’t get as much to do here as he had in Raiders of the Lost Ark. None of this really matters, though, because much of the film is devoted to the interplay of Ford and Connery as the two Dr. Joneses. Watching the two of them having so much fun as action movie stars is the greatest highlight of the film. 

Oscar Win: Best Sound Effects Editing

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Sound and Best Original Score

Death Becomes Her (1992)

 

Death Becomes Her is a wry commentary on aging in Hollywood, particularly as it pertains to women. Overall, the film seems pretty misogynistic to me since it suggests that women will go to any length, no matter how risky or dangerous, to remain attractive (while men are more reasonable or rational about the consequences of aging). That doesn’t mean that it didn’t deserve its Oscar win for Best Visual Effects. Aside from a few laughs, mostly at the expense of the two primary characters, it’s the visuals that stick with you after viewing the film. Goldie Hawn plays Helen Sharp, an aspiring writer whose fiancé gets stolen by her long-time rival, Madeline Ashton (played by Meryl Streep). Madeline, an egotistical actress (is there any other kind in the movies?), doesn’t really find Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis) attractive physically; she just knows that having a plastic surgeon like him will help her stay younger looking. Their marriage isn’t a happy one. After losing Ernest to Madeline, Helen gains a lot of weight and becomes very vengeful. Seven years later, when they arrive at a party celebrating Helen’s new book, Madeline and Ernest find her transformed into a beautiful, youthful woman, quite a difference from the somewhat dowdy woman she was in the past. Madeline, now desperate to look younger herself, goes to a strange mansion and obtains an expensive magical potion from a woman named Lisle (Isabella Rossellini) who claims to be 71 years old, but who appears to be in her late 20s or early 30s. Of course, Lisle doesn’t really share all of the relevant details until after Madeline has downed the potion; one of the side effects is that you become, in essence, a zombie once you die. You only get about ten years to look youthful before you’re expected to disappear from public view. Hawn’s Helen tries to steal Willis’s Ernest back from Madeline, but to be honest, I kept wondering why these women are interested in him. He’s not particularly attractive, but his talent for making corpses look alive must be sufficient. The real appeal of Death Becomes Her is the masterfully done special effects. The transformation of Madeline to a younger version of herself is shot in a mirror, and it’s amazing. However, when Madeline falls down a flight of stairs, her body gets twisted and she has to walk backwards because her head is now on backwards. During a fight, Madeline blasts a hole in Helen’s stomach. (That’s when we learn that she, too, has taken Lisle’s potion—if we hadn’t already figured it out, that is.) Seeing through Hawn’s stomach is revelatory; that effect alone must have taken some time to accomplish. The film also has a few funny moments at the expense of the stars. For example, Helen calls Madeline a “bad actress” at one point, a nod to Streep’s reputation even then for possessing a singular talent for acting. And Madeline warns Ernest about what happens to “soft, bald, overweight Republicans in prison,” so knowing that Willis, who was already balding at the time, is a Republican only makes the joke funnier. Of course, as I stated earlier, the film treats men and women quite differently in terms of aging. Women are more obsessed with youthfulness and more inclined to do whatever they can to look younger, but when Ernest is offered the same potion as the two women, he refuses because he doesn’t want to live forever even if it would mean that he looks young. I realize that this film has become a cult favorite since its release, and some of the performances veer quite readily into camp, but it’s tough to watch this movie and not sense that it treats its female characters very badly overall.

Oscar Win: Best Visual Effects

Pepe (1960)

 

Pepe takes almost three hours to tell a somewhat simple story. Pepe (played by the great Cantinflas) is a ranch hand in Mexico whose prized horse is a beautiful white stallion named Don Juan. Everyone wants to purchase Don Juan, but Pepe tricks everyone into backing out of buying him except for Hollywood director Ted Holt (Dan Dailey), who plans to make money off the horse to fund his comeback picture. Pepe, following the advice of Greer Garson, tracks Holt down and looks after Don Juan in Holt’s crumbling Beverly Hills mansion. He also meets and starts to fall in love with Shirley Jones’s Suzie Murphy, whose parents were never appreciated by the movie business despite their years of hard work. She acts as if she hates Hollywood, but of course, she really wants to be a star herself. Pepe convinces her and Holt that she could be a star in a very foggy dream sequence performed to “Faraway Part of Town” by Judy Garland, one of the few stars who doesn’t make a cameo appearance in the film. In truth, one of the most interesting aspects of Pepe (perhaps the only interesting one, to be honest) is the seemingly endless series of cameos by famous performers: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charles Coburn, Jay North (who played Dennis the Menace on TV), Hedda Hopper, etc. Some stars get a bit more than just a line or two. Bing Crosby autographs Pepe’s tortilla and sings a little of “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way).” Jack Lemmon shows up in his drag costume from Some Like It Hot a year after the earlier movie was released. Maurice Chevalier gets a full production number with both Cantinflas and Dailey. Kim Novak even helps him to pick out an engagement ring. A sequence set at the Sands Hotel, where Pepe wins enough through gambling to get financing for Holt’s film, allows us to see most of the members of the Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Even Jimmy Durante shows up in the Las Vegas portion of the film. There’s also a bizarre sequence involving Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, who were married at the time, thinking that Pepe is a Mexican movie official. That scene does allow Cantinflas to demonstrate his talent for physical comedy, though, as he drunkenly dances first with Leigh and then with Curtis and even with Dailey. Edward G. Robinson is often listed as making a cameo appearance, but even though he’s playing himself, his part is integral to the plot. Cantinflas is a very charming screen presence, and it’s a shame that this film was his American follow-up to Around the World in 80 Days. He had such talent—a bullfight sequence at the start of the film shows just how impressive he can be—but Hollywood didn’t really seem to know what to do with him. For example, Pepe traffics in stereotypes that should have been cringe-inducing even in 1960. When Pepe first shows up at a Hollywood movie studio to see Holt, he’s mistaken for a shoe repairman and then for a parking attendant. He’s also prone to misunderstanding some idioms in English, and some of his explanations, such as how he considers Don Juan his “son,” confuse lots of other characters. Then there’s his penchant for rubbing a bull’s ear on himself for good luck, an odd take on the lucky rabbit’s foot, I suppose. His character is meant to be the innocent in a corrupt world, so it’s not surprising that he doesn’t always understand what’s happening. He wants to believe that everyone is good and that you have to protect the ones that you love. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking cannot last even in a Hollywood movie, especially one where the lovely young white woman should end up with the delightful Mexican man (but doesn’t). Aside from such racist depictions, one of the other weaknesses of the film is how long and strange some of the musical numbers are. Before she starts work on Holt’s movie, Jones’s Suzie works as a waitress and dancer in what can only be described as a beatnik café. Bobby Darin shows up to sing “That’s How It Went, All Right” while Jones and a couple of male dancers perform something akin to what the lyrics say. It seems to go on forever. Likewise, Jones does a huge production number of the title song that involves what seems like hundreds of extras dancing through the streets of a Mexican town. Cantinflas and Debbie Reynolds emerge from a wine bottle to perform a strange dance to “Tequila” as tiny versions of themselves atop Holt’s desk. None of these numbers really advance the plot, but they certainly lengthen the movie unnecessarily. Pepe received no Academy Awards despite tying with The Alamo and Sons and Lovers as the second most nominated film of 1960. Interestingly, some of the performers making cameos were having success in other 1960 films: Greer Garson in Sunrise at Campobello, Janet Leigh in Psycho, Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry. All of them were Oscar nominated, and Jones won an Academy Award for a much better performance than the one she gives here.

Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Color Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song (“Faraway Part of Town”), Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Best Sound

Come to the Stable (1949)

 

The plot of Come to the Stable is certainly meant as a testament to the power of faith to make things happen. Throughout the film, what seems impossible or unlikely tends to occur, sometimes far too easily, thanks to the beliefs of the central characters, two nuns (played by Oscar nominees Loretta Young and Celeste Holm) who have come to America from France after the end of World War II with the goal of opening a children’s hospital. They wind up in a small New England town called Bethlehem; the state isn’t specified, but it has to be within driving distance of New York City (more on that later). Sister Margaret (Young) and Sister Scholastica (Holm) locate Miss Amelia Potts (Elsa Lanchester, also Oscar nominated) because they have received a postcard with an image of one of her religious paintings on it, which they take as a sign that they should seek her out in the United States. Miss Potts gets easily flustered and can’t quite say “no” when the nuns ask to stay with her. The nuns visit the bishop of a neighboring town, who initially balks at their assertion that all they need is “land and money,” but he allows them one month and provides them with a small amount of money to work on their project. A lot of people impose rather arbitrary deadlines on the two women, but they always (or almost always) seem to make it in time. They choose a hill near Miss Potts’ home as their ideal location, but it’s held by a bookie named Luigi Rossi. However, much like everyone else in the film, even New York City criminals cannot resist helping Sisters Margaret and Scholastica in their quest. Then they put a down payment on an option for a former witch hazel bottling factory even though the “for sale” sign is only just going up. After the arrival of eleven other nuns and a priest from their Mother Church in France, they begin making money by selling stuff that they make, such as lace and pottery and cheese. Really, they seem to keep on succeeding almost by accident; they just keep maintaining their faith that they can establish a hospital. It’s difficult to know if they’re just incredibly naïve or amazingly skillful although, as I’ve already stated, I’m certain that the film is trying to make a point about how a strong sense of faith can make anything happen. One of the obstacles that the nuns face is the composer Bob Mason (the always reliable Hugh Marlowe); he lives next to the hill where they want to locate the hospital, but he wants to have a quiet residence in which to compose. Mason writes a song entitled “Through a Long and Sleepless Night” that is performed twice during the film, and while it may be odd to include a secular song in such an overtly religious film, it becomes relevant to the plot later in the film. Of course, it’s also odd that Marlowe appears nude at one point (you can only see his bare chest) in a film so concerned with religious matters. To be fair, Come to the Stable is much more light-hearted overall than I’ve probably made it sound. It does have quite a few moments of levity, such as when eleven French nuns and a priest emerge from one taxicab or when people keep giving the Sisters Margaret and Scholastica money thinking that will make them go away. The most fun, though, is watching Loretta Young drive Mason’s jeep with such reckless abandon. I wouldn’t want to be a passenger in the jeep with her, but her driving skill is hilarious. One of the cleverest performances in the film is by Dooley Wilson of Casablanca fame, who has the thankless and stereotypical role of playing Mason’s servant Anthony. However, Wilson manages to emit such charm as the servant who knows more than the man for whom he works, and he shows quite a strong sense of support for the nuns and their goal. He finds them fascinating, and the audience can’t help but find him fascinating too. The Academy certainly liked Come to the Stable in 1949 as the film tied with All the King’s Men for the second most Oscar nominations that year. However, it received no Oscars despite those numerous nominations.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Loretta Young), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Celeste Holm and Elsa Lanchester), Best Motion Picture Story, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Original Song (“Through a Long and Sleepless Night”)

Victoria & Abdul (2017)

 

The makers of Victoria & Abdul claim that it is “mostly” based on real events. I don’t think you should rely on non-documentary films for history lessons, but even if the details aren’t particularly accurate historically, the plot is still interesting and the locations are spectacular. A young prison clerk in India gets chosen to travel to England to present a mohur, a gold coin, to Queen Victoria, the Empress of India who has never actually visited the country that England rules. He’s chosen because he picked out some carpets that she particularly admired. Well, and he’s tall. That seems to be an important factor even though the other Indian chosen to go to with him is rather short by comparison. Even though he is told not to make eye contact with the Queen, their eyes do meet, and he gets asked to be her personal servant. The reason seems to be a simple one; she thinks he’s “terribly handsome.” The actor who plays Abdul, Ali Fazal, is indeed handsome and certainly deserves the looks that he receives from her (and some other women as well). The film never quite addresses the question directly of whether or not Victoria (Judi Dench) was in love with Abdul or perhaps “smitten,” but given how long it had been since the death of her beloved husband, Prince Albert, being attracted to someone as lovely and generous and even enthusiastic as Abdul makes perfect sense to me. Plus, he seems to be the only one who still thinks of her as his ruler. The rest tend to take her for granted. When she names him her Munshi (teacher) and she starts learning Urdu and the Quran, her circle of advisors begins plotting how to get rid of him. Dench has, of course, played Queen Victoria before, having earned her first Oscar nomination in the role for 1997’s Mrs. Brown. Victoria & Abdul even makes a veiled reference to Mr. Brown, a Scottish servant she had a relationship with, a friendship that was ruined by gossip. Abdul is a Muslim Indian, and no one in the queen’s household supports their friendship or relationship. Neither does the Prime Minister (Michael Gambon), particularly given the tensions being raised by the Indian resistance to British rule. The worst behavior, of course, is from her eldest son, Bertie, the Prince of Wales (Eddie Izzard). He threatens to have her declared insane so that he can assume the throne before her death. Dench is in good form here, and her Victoria certainly knows how to put an end to that attempt. She is, as she puts it, “anything but insane.” The relationship between the queen and her Munshi naturally has some misunderstandings at times, and she’s rather surprised to learn that he has a wife, for instance. The plot might not break any new ground in terms of its depiction of the racist British attitude towards its colonies, but it’s refreshing to have Dench’s Victoria and Fazal’s Abdul demonstrate how friendship can potentially cross some pretty powerful racial and age and class barriers. Sure, it’s simplistic, but a simple sense of hope can provide us with some comfort at times.

Oscar Nominations: Best Achievement in Costume Design and Best Achievement in Makeup & Hairstyling

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

 

The 2017 version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has the same basic plot as the more famous and more fully animated 1991 version. It also contains many of the same songs as the earlier film version, just performed by different singers. This version still contains a lot of animation—the CGI version of the Beast, for example—so calling it a live-action film is a bit of a misnomer. However, unlike Disney’s unneeded attempt at remaking The Lion King, the newer version of Beauty and the Beast provides a different experience by having actual humans in several roles. In particular, Emma Watson’s performance as Belle, the “beauty” of the title, allows for a greater range of facial expressions than the animated version. (Is it just me or does she look momentarily disappointed when the Beast transforms back into a prince?) The plot, as I mentioned, is relatively familiar. An enchantress puts a spell on the prince (played by Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey fame) and the other inhabitants of the castle, and unless he finds true love, the spell will become permanent. A beautiful magic rose (also CGI) loses a petal from time to time, and when the last petal falls, the changes cannot be reversed. Belle’s father mistakenly winds up in the castle and is imprisoned, and she offers to take his place in order to protect her aging dad (Kevin Kline, not given a lot to do, actually, although we do get more backstory about what happened to his wife, Belle’s mother, in Paris). Based just on the names I’ve already mentioned, you can tell that Disney certainly spared no expense in assembling an all-star cast and a very multicultural cast for this version. Emma Thompson takes on the role of Mrs. Potts, the housekeeper who has become a teapot. Ewan McGregor plays Lumiere, the candelabra antagonist to Ian McKellan’s Cogsworth, the head of the staff who is now a clock. The great Audra McDonald plays a wardrobe but used to be the opera singer Madame de Garderobe, and Stanley Tucci plays her husband, a composer named Maestro Cadenza who becomes a harpsichord after the transformation. Seeing the animated versions of such famous performers is a treat, and they seem to be enjoying taking on these roles. A couple of changes to the original plot did stand out to me. For one, LeFou (an enthusiastic Josh Gad, less antic and yet more spirited than usual) seems to know just how bad a person Gaston is and even tries to get his friend to tone down some of the words of his characteristics. LeFou is much cleverer in this version, to be honest, and it’s Gad’s performance that really makes it work better. We also get a bit more information about what the prince was like before the transformation into the Beast, and it wasn’t good, certainly, but what really matters to the film’s narrative is the slowly developing relationship between him and Belle. Well, that and the increasing jealousy that Gaston (Luke Evans, ratcheting up the narcissism of the character to delightfully remarkable heights) feels about not getting Belle to agree to marry him. Every remake of a famous and beloved film is going to be subject to criticism, and one of the stupid criticisms of this remake was the inclusion of a so-called gay subplot. It’s really not more than a couple of seconds at two points in the movie. When the villagers attack the castle in an attempt to kill the Beast, the wardrobe swathes three men in dresses to scare them away. However, one of them actually seems to enjoy being in a dress; at least, the look on his face would suggest so. Later in the film, during the obligatory musical number signaling a happy ending, LeFou dances with another man for a brief time after they change partners. I doubt that the younger viewers of the film would even notice such moments, which seem more like substandard pandering to the large and faithful gay audience for Disney films. You need a few changes to make a remake worth doing, and if that means trying to have a wider audience feel included, so be it. The most challenging issue for the remake, though, had to be how to depict the dress. You know which dress I mean, the one Belle wears when it has become clear that she truly loves the Beast. The animated version is a stunner, and to put your fears to rest, it’s quite beautiful in this version as well. Overall, the 2017 reimagining of Beauty and Beast is like slightly altering a beloved family recipe. It’s comfort food with just enough changes to be distinct and up to date.

Oscar Nominations: Best Achievement in Costume Design and Best Achievement in Production Design

True Grit (1969)

 

The 1969 version of True Grit is beautifully shot. It features some lovely location shooting in Colorado and California (standing in for Arkansas and Oklahoma), and the cinematography should have received some recognition from the Academy Awards. Instead, it’s primarily known for the Oscar-winning performance of John Wayne as Marshall Rooster Cogburn, who is hired by teenager Mattie Ross to locate the hired hand who shot and killed her father. Ross (played by Kim Darby with great precision of language and body movement) wants to join Cogburn as he looks for Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), and like she does with everyone, she wears the marshal down until he relents. Cogburn has a reputation for being good at his job but not especially concerned with what others think of him or with following the strictures of the law. They are joined by a man named “La Boeuf,” a Texas Ranger who wants to bring Chaney to justice for killing a state senator in Texas. He’s played by Glen Campbell, who also sings the Oscar-nominated title song over the film’s opening credits. Campbell and Darby are both fine actors, but the showy part is certainly Wayne’s, and except for the moments when Darby’s Mattie Ross is brokering a deal with someone, True Grit is really a showcase for Wayne’s performance. He can be gruff and short, touching at times, and quite funny when he plays drunk. It’s a performance unlike most of the roles he played in his very long career, and the award was an acknowledgement not only of this particular role but for his entire body of work and what it represented. In addition to Darby and Campbell, True Grit features some supporting performances by some famous actors. Robert Duvall plays Ned Pepper, the outlaw Rooster has been tracking for a long time and with whom Chaney has joined. Duvall was already making a name for himself in roles like this, starting with his portrayal of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Dennis Hopper plays another of Ned’s associates, marking quite a contrast from his other famous movie from 1969, Easy Rider. Strother Martin also has a fun couple of scenes as a horse trader who winds up on the losing side of a bargain with Mattie. True Grit is a classic Western in many ways, featuring lots of action, but it has more than its fair share of dialogue during the times that Rooster, Mattie, and La Boeuf are riding horses on their way to find Ned or stopping to rest for the night. Much of the script follows the outlines of the Charles Portis novel upon which it is based, and a 1975 sequel (simply titled Rooster Cogburn and costarring Wayne and Katharine Hepburn) and a 2010 remake featuring Jeff Bridges as Marshall Cogburn don’t quite compare to the original film’s beauty.

Oscar Win: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Wayne)

Other Nomination: Best Original Song (“True Grit”)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

 

I can’t quite decide if Chitty Chitty Bang Bang truly qualifies as camp or if it’s just bad. It is most certainly bad, though. Allegedly, this is a musical aimed at children, yet I can’t imagine a child being entertained by the almost 2.5-hour running time with all of the confusing characters and plot lines. And much of the music, including the dreadful title song that was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar, is already quite bad without adding the choreography of several production numbers to the mix. Even the names of most characters are silly. The title car, whose name derives from the noise its engine makes, won Grand Prix races for three years in a row before exploding in its final race. The two Potts children convince their poor unsuccessful eccentric inventor father, Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke), to buy the car and fix it up. It becomes quite an amazing vehicle, capable of converting into a sort of pontoon boat and into a flying machine. Given that the father is prone to devices that look positively Rube Goldbergian in nature (his complex machine for cooking eggs and sausages, for example), it’s kind of amazing that it can even run, much less float or fly. The carelessness of the children, Jemima and Jeremy, brings the daughter of the local candy-maker (played by the lovely Sally Ann Howe) into their father’s life; she almost hits them with her car and then takes them home to chastise their father for his poor parenting. Her name, Truly Scrumptious, is a nod to the ridiculous names of female characters preferred by the author of the book on which this film was based, Ian Fleming, perhaps better known for the series of James Bond novels. When Caractacus, Truly, and the two children enjoy a picnic on the beach, the father spins a bizarre tale about Baron Bomburst of Vulgaria and his desire to steal Chitty. The Baron kidnaps Grandpa Potts by mistake, hauling him off inside a “shed” that really looks more like an outhouse. When Caractacus and the rest chase the Baron’s zeppelin back to Vulgaria, they discover that there are no children there because the Baron’s wife hates them and has gotten them declared illegal. The Baron even employs a Child Catcher, portrayed by talented ballet dancer Robert Helpmann, and his role is the stuff of nightmares. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is all rather supremely silly, to be honest, and the music doesn’t help much. If you want to see how truly awful a production number can be, how one number can truly drag a movie to a halt, watch the big scene for the song “Toot Sweet,” a song about a new kind of candy. Thankfully, a large number of dogs interrupt the performance at the candy factory, just not quickly enough. The worst song, though, may be “Chu-Chi Face,” which primarily serves as a way to learn how much the Baron (Gert Frobe, better known as Bond villain Goldfinger) hates his wife (Anna Quayle, who comes closest to giving a truly campy performance, and the film is all the better for that). And I’ll need quite some time to forget the singing of Heather Ripley (Jemima) and Adrian Hall (Jeremy) about how, well, truly scrumptious Truly truly is. That song, in particular, is cringe-inducing, and young children tend to be poor singers anyway. To be fair, the movie does have a couple of good numbers. “Me Ol’ Bamboo” is a fun number that showcases Van Dyke’s dancing, but it’s really just a plot device that isn’t all that necessary and mostly just adds to the film’s length. And the staging of “Doll on a Music Box,” which manages to highlight Howe’s lovely voice and her ability to perform some elaborate choreography, works well until Van Dyke shows up to start singing another version of “Truly Scrumptious.” Oddly, Van Dyke doesn’t perform with an English accent, which is very puzzling given that almost everyone else in the cast is British, including Benny Hill as a toymaker in Vulgaria. And poor Howe’s character of Truly suffers the indignity of driving her car into a duck pond three times during the course of the movie, a sure sign that the filmmakers have exercised very little creativity. The insertion of an intermission only serves to make us endure more time waiting for this nonsense to end. I’ll resist the temptation to use a word that rhymes with Chitty to describe this film, but it certainly fits.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”)