Shaft (1971)

 

The opening sequence of Shaft clearly establishes Richard Roundtree as a star and his character John Shaft as the fascinating central focus of our attention. Clad in a brown leather trench coat and walking with a determined swagger, Roundtree’s Shaft emerges from the subway and walks through Times Square under movie marquees featuring films with white actors. Director Gordon Parks slyly inserts Shaft into movie history here by proclaiming in the opening sequence that, yes, this is a movie with a black lead character, and it’s going to be a different kind of film from those on the screens in New York City in the early 1970s. It certainly helps to have Isaac Hayes’s percolating “Theme from Shaft” to underscore Roundtree’s walk, a welcome musical and lyrical introduction to the film and the character. John Shaft is a private detective who’s hired by crime boss Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn, almost Shakespearean in his venality) to find his kidnapped daughter, this despite attempts by a couple of Bumpy’s men to kill Shaft earlier in the film. At Bumpy’s suggestion, Shaft unites with Ben Buford (Christopher St. John, father of actor Kristoff St. John, who was almost as stunningly good looking as his dad), a leader of a black “militant” group similar to the Black Panthers, to find Bumpy’s daughter. (Every group who wanted equal rights at the time was labeled “militant,” it seems.) It turns out that the Mafia have taken the girl, and according to Shaft’s friend in the NYPD, Lt. Vic Androzzi (Charles Cioffi), the tensions between the two criminal groups from opposite ends of the city are threatening to start a race war. The reasons behind this impending war are perhaps a bit murky, but it’s not those details that make this an exciting film. It’s the action, and Shaft has lots of gunfire and fighting and what must have been pretty violent stuff for the time period. The film also features some very interesting moments involving race relations, and many of them feature some sly humor. For example, when Lt. Androzzi holds up a black pen to Shaft’s face and says, “What is it with this black shit, huh? You ain’t so black,” Shaft holds up a white coffee mug to Androzzi and responds, “You ain’t so white either, baby.” The location shooting in New York lends the film a sense of authenticity, down to the unexpected real protest against the New York Times that Parks managed to capture for the opening sequence, and the numerous supporting characters, such as the many informants (like Antonio Fargas before Car Wash and the TV series Starsky & Hutch), keep the plot moving briskly. The few women in the movie are only incidental to the plot; they’re primarily there as objects for Shaft, who has sex with a couple of different women, never professing emotional attachments to any of them. Of course, James Bond was bedding multiple women in every 007 movie at the same time, but it must have been (and still must be) a surprise for some viewers to see a black male lead character engaging in the same behavior. Movies like Shaft don’t often get recognized for their award-worthy costume design, but even though it might not be a very practical outfit for taking down the Mafia, Shaft looks damn good in the black leather he wears for the latter part of the movie. The film is oddly progressive for when it was made. As an example, I would point out that when Shaft is looking for a couple of Mafiosos in a Greenwich Village bar, there’s a bit of witty interchange or banter between him and a gay bartender. I’d almost characterize it as playful, making this one of the few movies of its time that didn’t traffic in homophobic attitudes towards its gay characters. In a sly nod to other directors like Hitchcock who made brief appearances in their own films, Gordon Parks managed to cast himself in a cameo role as a landlord. It’s a fun moment in a film that holds up well overall despite some of the dated slang that the characters use at times. Shaft was so successful that it spawned two sequels, a sequel/reboot, and another sequel/reboot, all of them grounded in the original mythology of the 1971 film and all of them starring or featuring Roundtree. Oscar Trivia Note: Isaac Hayes was the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Original Song (for the theme song) and only the third African American to win an Oscar in any category (after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier).

Oscar Win: Best Original Song (“Theme from ‘Shaft’”)

Other Oscar Nomination: Best Original Dramatic Score

The Omen (1976)

 

The Omen is quite a trippy horror movie about a little boy who is apparently the spawn of the devil. Gregory Peck plays Robert Thorn, an American diplomat who is stationed in Rome with his pregnant wife Katherine (Lee Remick). She gives birth to a boy, but the child dies. A devious hospital chaplain offers Robert another child who was born at the same time but whose mother died in childbirth—or so he says. Robert agrees to the exchange without getting any documentation, proving that you should always, always get the receipts, and he never tells his wife about the swap. As the child grows up, weird stuff starts happening. The child, who is named Damien, doesn’t really talk a lot during the film, but there’s a lot of strange action surrounding him. His young nanny hangs herself in front of all the guests at Damien’s fifth birthday party in some sort of weird tribute/sacrifice. A weirdly intimidating Rottweiler shows up, as does Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw), a wild-eyed new nanny who is fiercely protective of this odd little boy (played by Harvey Stephens). Baboons attack the car when he and his mother go to a wildlife park, and Damien goes crazy when they try to take him to a church. The strangeness just never seems to end. Remick’s Kathy starts to think she’s going crazy, and both she and Robert dismiss all of the signs they keep getting that something is definitely… off… about their kid, much to the frustration of the audience who has seen too many strange things happen to avoid reaching a conclusion about Damien long before the movie confirms it. Robert, in particular, even keeps ignoring the warnings from a priest, Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), but after the priest dies mysteriously, Robert joins a photographer/journalist (the great David Warner) in tracking down clues about Damien’s origins. What they find is certainly unexpected, one of the best shocks that I’ve seen in a horror movie. All of this is, of course, allegedly based upon what the Bible predicts about the Antichrist. I can’t personally vouch for the accuracy of how the scripture is used throughout the movie, but I suspect its mostly hokum twisted for the sake of the plot. Thankfully, Peck has the necessary gravitas to make much of this crazy stuff seem plausible. Remick, always such a luminous and intriguing presence in whatever role she plays, is quite effective in the smaller part of the long-suffering wife; her exit from the film’s narrative is a sad, sad moment indeed. Much as I hate to perpetuate what might have led to his failure to have a longer Hollywood career, Stevens is just creepy, which I guess is a some sort of plus for a movie about the Antichrist.

Oscar Win: Best Original Score

Other Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Ave Satani”)

What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)

 

What’s the Matter with Helen? is an interesting mix of psychological horror film and suspense drama and movie musical. It has two great stars, Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters, playing the mothers of two young men who have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a young woman in Iowa. The mothers decide to move to Los Angeles and change their names. Well, to be fair, Reynolds’ Adelle Bruckner, the pushier one, decides that they should move to Los Angeles and open a dance studio to get away from all the depressing murder trial aftermath and press attention. Winters’ Helen Hill just wants to follow Adelle wherever she goes; she’s a bit adrift mentally and rather clingy. Besides, they’re being threatened by phone calls in Iowa, so they think that changing their names and leaving their home will somehow prevent them from being harassed any longer. When they arrive in Hollywood, Adelle (now Stuart) tries to make herself over in the guise of a Hollywood star, but Helen (now Martin) doesn’t watch movies and has little interest in anything other than feeding her pet rabbits, playing the piano for Adelle’s dance lessons, and listening to an evangelist on the radio each night. She’s suspicious of every man who comes to the studio/home that she and Adelle share, and she frequently has flashbacks or visions that make her very anxious. It’s a wonder than anyone wants her to be around the young children in the dance studio, but she plays the piano and helps with the costumes, so she’s allowed to stick around. All the little girls at the studio want to be Shirley Temple, of course, but what little girl in the 1930s didn’t dream of being Shirley Temple? Their mothers are portrayed as typical stage mothers, demanding that their daughter get more time and attention. One of the little girls, who does happen to be rather talented and can actually do a pretty good job of mimicking Temple, has a very rich, handsome father played by Dennis Weaver. Weaver’s Lincoln Palmer is quite charming and suave (and just a touch suspicious), and seeing him on screen made me nostalgic for the days of McCloud on the NBC Mystery Movie. The great Agnes Moorehead appears briefly onscreen as Sister Alma, a radio evangelist who is quite clearly modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson. Most of her performance, though, is accomplished by having her voice on the radio that Helen listens to so intently. As the film progresses, Helen’s mental state deteriorates further, and when a strange man comes into their house uninvited and calls her by her actual name of Helen Hill, she descends into a murderous state of mind from which she seemingly cannot escape. The film’s macabre ending, which the movie’s poster weirdly gives away, certainly sticks with you as the credits begin to roll. Reynolds has claimed that this is one of her favorite roles, and she’s excellent because it calls for the use of both her dramatic talents and her dancing and singing abilities. Winters is less successful as Helen, but then again, she had almost become something of a parody of herself by this point, giving rather mannered and over-the-top performances that seemed to call attention to her scenery-chewing tics. What’s the Matter with Helen? was nominated for just one Oscar, Best Costume Design, but the overall production design is quite outstanding. It certainly conjures up images of 1930s Hollywood, even somewhat self-consciously copying the kinds of sets that movies from that era would have had. I doubt that Academy voters saw this film, and if they did, they likely didn’t give Reynolds much serious attention as a contender for Best Actress in a Leading Role, but that sadly seemed to be the case for her throughout her marvelous career: lots of great performances, only one nomination (for The Unsinkable Molly Brown).

Oscar Nomination: Best Costume Design

Black Narcissus (1947)

 

How to describe Black Narcissus to a contemporary audience? The plot involves a group of nuns who trek to a remote former palace in the Himalayan Mountains to start a school for girls and a hospital to treat the indigenous population. However, they encounter harsh winds and frequent misunderstandings with the people they claim to want to help. And something else happens… Each of the nuns starts to become, well, disturbed or distracted. The Sister Superior, Sister Clodagh (the great Deborah Kerr), starts experiencing flashbacks to her life before she joined the order, a time she was in love with a young man she hoped to marry – memories she has not recalled in many years. Sister Philippa (Dame Flora Robson, subtle and effective) keeps getting distracted from her duties of planting vegetables and stares off into the distance, eventually planting lots of beautiful flowers instead of the vegetables necessary for food. Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron, giving a performance that is so gloriously unhinged it’s impossible to ignore), who was ill before the sisters made the journey up the mountain, decides to renounce her vows. And on and on and on… Is it the wind that causes these feelings? Is it the pure air they are now breathing? Is it the history of the place, its rather carnal past as a location where a former king kept his women? Is it David Farrar’s hunky Mr. Dean? The film features a lot of sexual tension between Mr. Dean and the Sister Superior, and Sister Ruth fantasizes that she and Mr. Dean will be together once she’s left the order of nuns. Is there a possible love triangle there, or is it the frenzied mind of an unwell person? The film doesn’t really answer most of the questions that it raises. Should someone succumb to what they’re feeling, no matter how disturbing it might be, or should they just ignore their feelings? Can someone ignore those kinds of feelings? While you’re contemplating the underlying eroticism of the movie, you also can’t help but pay attention to the cinematography of Black Narcissus. It’s pretty spectacular even by today’s standards. You’ll see high-angle shots, canted angles, a range of dominant colors in different scenes, and some of the most astounding matte paintings integrated into the story. Considering that the film was shot inside the famed Pinewood Studios in England – yes, almost all indoors – the filmmakers were certainly able to create the feel of the outdoors through, for example, those matte paintings. They certainly wouldn’t have risked an actress being so close to a cliff; the insurance company would have vetoed that, certainly. I mean, it seems like a pretty bad place to put a bell anyway. I also kept noticing – how could you not notice – how Farrar, the male lead, is photographed. A lot of his body is exposed throughout the movie; he’s shirtless or has his chest exposed throughout the movie. And has any man ever worn shorter shorts on film? (I will refrain from mentioning the awful hat that he wears.) He’s clearly a distraction for Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth and perhaps even for us as audience members. As beautiful and intriguing as the film is, it’s also very problematic in its depictions of the indigenous and native people. Some of them are meant to be comic relief, such as May Hallat’s Angu Aya, or even Eddie Whaley Jr. as the young translator Joseph Anthony, who knows way more than he ever tells. The nuns, especially Kerr’s Sister Clodagh, are often confused by the behaviors of the indigenous people, and it leads to some very ridiculous behavior. For example, trying to get rid of a holy man revered by many people is a really, really bad idea. Sister Clodagh also gets to represent that British colonial gaze when, for instance, she (and the camera and we viewers) looks at – leers at? – Kanchi (played by British actress Jean Simmons, horribly miscast here) and makes some pretty offensive assumptions about her. Indian-born actor Sabu, playing the so-called Young Colonel, gets the most well-rounded role for a native actor, and he is the only person playing an indigenous person in an important role who isn’t a British actor in yellowface. Black Narcissus was released just months before India declared its independence from Great Britain in 1947. Perhaps the film can be read as a commentary on how the British were truly never able to comprehend why they didn’t belong in India and had to retreat quietly but with unresolved confusion.

Oscar Wins: Best Color Cinematography and Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration

Rashomon (1951; 1952)

Rashomon is a film that features black-and-white cinematography, just eight actors, and only three settings for the entire narrative, yet it still manages to captivate viewers and make then reconsider their notions of what a film can achieve with such simple materials. At the film’s start, a woodcutter and a priest are sitting out a rainstorm in the crumbling ruins of the Rashomon Gate when a commoner seeks shelter with them. The woodcutter and priest are still puzzling over the conflicting testimony that they’ve just seen involving the death of a samurai and the rape of his wife. The commoner, sensing that the rain might last a while, is intrigued enough to ask what happened. What follows is a bewildering, entrancing series of four different versions of the same event told from multiple perspectives: the woodcutter’s version, that of a bandit who captures the couple and rapes the wife, the wife herself, and, most astonishing, the dead samurai, who testifies through a medium. We see just how altered the same story can be through different sets of eyes, and we are left at the end of the film with no clear sense of what “really” happened. I don’t think we’re meant to know anyway. Instead, we’re supposed to start questioning the integrity of any story that we hear or see, even this film itself. When the woodcutter has to admit later that he has lied in his testimony, we are dumbfounded to discover that even the person telling us the story of what he has seen and said might be lying. The optimistic ending perhaps is necessary for us to retain some faith in our fellow human beings, but it doesn’t automatically satisfy a viewer who has begun questioning the very role of narrative itself. The breakout star of Rashomon was Toshiro Mifune as the bandit Tajormaru; he’s wild, almost deranged, in his behavior, and you sometimes wonder if he thinks he’s in a different movie from the rest of the cast. The real star for me, though, is Machiko Kyo, the actress who plays the woman who is raped by the bandit. She gets the most wide-ranging series of characterizations because each witness tailors the story to suit their individual needs, and she is depicted in wildly different ways by the men who tell her story. Her own version of events is quite the tour-de-force performance itself. Rashomon was the first major Japanese film to garner international attention, and even though more than seven decades have passed since its initial release, it still has the power to startle us and make us wonder how people can have “seen” such wildly different events. That’s what a true cinematic masterpiece can do – even after all these years. The woodcutter’s refrain of “I just don’t understand” lingers with us long after the film itself has ended. A note about foreign films and their years of eligibility: Rashomon was first released in Japan in 1950, but it didn’t make it to the United States until December 1951. That, however, didn’t mean it was eligible for anything other than a special honor, which it won, for foreign language film. It was still in release in 1952 and received Oscar attention the next year for its set decoration. You’ll see throughout Academy Award history this particular oddity. A film will be nominated for or even win the Foreign Language Film Oscar and then be nominated for other awards the following year. Such are the vagaries of the Academy Awards.

Oscar Win (1951): Honorary Award for being the “most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.”

Other Oscar Nomination (1952): Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration

Hallelujah (1929-30)

 

Hallelujah is tough to watch with a modern sensibility because it does occasionally traffic in some pretty offensive stereotypes of African Americans. Historically, it is significant as the first all-black, all-sound musical film, released early in the sound era, and it was named in 2008 to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” I’m sure its defenders (if there are any?) would claim that it depicts the standard representations of African Americans of the time, but given what we know of the racist tendencies of the entertainment industry, that doesn’t make it easier to view. You cannot just dismiss what was offensive even at the time of its creation; the film even features a character named Mammy, and that term certainly had pejorative implications even in 1929. The plot concerns Zeke, a poor cotton farmer who gambles away the money that his family has earned on their yearly crop. He’s fallen under the influence of a “loose woman” named Chick who is working with her boyfriend, a hustler called Hot Shot. After they cheat Zeke out of his money, he tries to get it back and one of his brothers is accidentally killed in the fight. Zeke becomes a preacher, renames himself Zekiel, and tries to convert Chick to Christianity. The sequence where Zeke baptizes multiple people, including Chick, is really quite beautifully shot. However, he really cannot resist Chick and she cannot resist her former lover. Soon after he leaves his religion to be with her, she renews her relationship with Hot Shot. As Zeke, actor Daniel L. Haynes exhibits a fine baritone voice. The real star of the movie, though, is Nina Mae McKinney as Chick. She is a supremely talented actress, a great singer, and a fantastic dancer. It’s a shame that she didn’t have a bigger, more successful career. Much of the acting is somewhat amateurish, but the dialogue doesn’t really help the actors. What does impress a viewer is the integration of music into the film’s narrative. Hallelujah features lots of singing and music, much of it diegetic. The music is an interesting mix of religious and secular music, and it certainly contributes to the overall impact of the film. Here’s an interesting bit of awards trivia: the film’s director, King Vidor, was one of two directors being nominated for the second time in Academy Award history; the other was eventual winner Lewis Milestone (for All Quiet on the Western Front), who had won for his direction of the comedy film Two Arabian Knights in the Oscars’ first year.

Oscar Nomination: Best Director (King Vidor)

Inherit the Wind (1960)

 

Inherit the Wind fictionalizes the famed “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925, but it manages to follow some of the broader outlines of what actually happened. A schoolteacher, played by Dick York (before he became the first Darren on Bewitched), plays the Scopes figure, Bertram Cates, who dares to broach the subject of Darwin’s theory of evolution to his students and is subsequently arrested. Instead of famed attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, the movie features Spencer Tracy’s Henry Drummond and Fredric March’s Matthew Harrison Brady. Providing some acidic cynicism is Gene Kelly as E.K. Hornbeck, standing in here for noted journalist H.L. Mencken. The film is adapted from the 1955 play of the same name, and both the playwrights and screenwriters have done really very little to disguise the connections between the fictional and historical counterparts. The trial is even referred to as the “Hillsboro Monkey Trial.” An interesting addition to the historical account is the romance between Cates and a fellow schoolteacher, Rachel Brown (a solid Donna Anderson), the daughter of the town’s preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Brown (Claude Akins, surprising in his fire-and-brimstone glory). Most of the more interesting events in the film take place in a very hot courtroom; that setting doesn’t help the movie escape its stage-bound origins. Tracy’s Drummond and March’s Brady fight each other and try to outshine each other in the courtroom. March has the flashier role, and Brady has the full support of almost everyone in the small town of Hillsboro. They even give him a huge parade and rally when he arrives in town. However, not everyone, it turns out, is against Cates, and some of them even realize how much of an embarrassment to the town this trial and all its publicity truly is. March can, by turns, be bullying, aggressive, and boastful in the courtroom; Brady is always performing for the crowd, it seems. March is too prone to mannerisms and tics that can be distracting, especially the way he moves his mouth at times, and his character emerges as a tragic, almost pathetic figure by the film’s end. By comparison, Tracy’s performance is much more low key. He’s in his funny, sarcastic mode here, and he finds humor even when he’s frustrated because it’s clear he’s going to be on the losing side from the beginning of the trial. The two lawyers have been friends for a long time and have faced each other in court many times, apparently, but their relationship has changed over time as each has taken a different path in life. Caught in the middle is Brady’s wife Sarah, nicely played by Florence Eldridge, March’s real-life spouse. Eldridge’s Sarah gets one good scene defending her husband and his life and work, and many other supporting cast members have opportunities to shine, including Harry Morgan as the judge and Kelly playing very much against type. The film doesn’t really care much for York’s defendant, honestly, and by the time Drummond calls Brady to the stand to testify as an expert witness on the Bible and its teachings, you know this is not really an examination of the impact of evolution. To be fair, Inherit the Wind is not truly meant as a history lesson even though too many people tend to take such movies as being completely factual. This film version is a fictional account, after all, and it isn’t even really about the supposed conflict between the theory of evolution and Christian belief systems or perhaps between education and faith on a much broader scale. Instead, it seems to warn against narrow-mindedness and the persecution of those who hold different ideas. It’s a pretty stern, clear warning about the dangers of fanaticism and groupthink. (The town is, for the most part, a Greek chorus of ignorance.) Sadly, we seem to be as much in need of this lesson today as they were when the play was written in the 1950s or when the film was released in the 1960s.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Spencer Tracy), Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, and Best Film Editing