American Graffiti (1973)

Watching American Graffiti, a nominee for Best Picture of 1973, is like catching up with an old friend. I've seen this film several times in my life, and getting to see it again is a chance to relive some very fond memories. I wasn't even born yet in 1962, the year in which the movie is set, but the story and the characters are really timeless. Almost everyone has had a night like the one this movie depicts, that night when all of the decisions you have make in life seem to coalesce.

The plot is pretty paper-thin, in many ways. Two recent high school graduates spend their last night in a small town before going off to college. Ron Howard and Richard Dreyfus play the leads, and the bulk of the movie is what happens on a "typical" night to them and their friends. They hang out at the local diner, and they cruise up and down the streets of the town. They meet new people and talk with old friends. Nothing more serious than that happens...well, except that both young men come to realize what they want out of life.

I've always empathized with Charles Martin Smith's Toad. Here's a guy who just can't seem to catch a break, yet he's always upbeat. He usually drives a scooter, but he gets to drive his friend's car for this one night and he makes the most of it, picking up a girl and buying liquor and making out at the lake and getting the car stolen--it's quite a full evening for him. In some ways, Toad is the archetypal "nerd" character that became such a staple of films in the following decades.

Then again, I also feel a kinship with Dreyfuss' Curt. He's the smart kid who's always second-guessing himself. He knows he's destined to go to college; he just has to convince himself of it first. And when an opportunity for love presents itself in the guise of a blonde in a white Thunderbird, he almost throws away his future for it. Perhaps that's why this film has such resonance (no, not blondes in T-birds); we all can see someone like ourselves in it.

Overall, this is a jewel. Not a bad performance or a wrong moment in it. And how can you resist that music? There's a reason why the 1950s made a comeback in the 1970s, and that reason is American Graffiti. I owned the soundtrack for many years on vinyl (yes, I am that old), and I wasn't the only one. Even those of us who didn't grow up during that decade can still feel a nostalgic twinge whenever "Rock Around the Clock" comes on the radio (which, granted, isn't that often unless you're listening to the oldies station anyway, but still...).

I feel intense sadness at the end of the movie when we're told what happened to the key characters later in life. It's almost a cliche in films now to end with this device, but American Graffiti uses it to great effect. Certainly, not all of their stories end unhappily. The opposite is true in several cases. But it's as if someone managed to find out what happened to all of your childhood friends; you can't help feeling a sense of nostalgia and regret. Perhaps that's another reason for why this movie retains its appeal after all these years.

The French Connection (1971)

The winner of the Oscar for Best Picture of 1971, The French Connection is a very taut, suspenseful movie. It fairly crackles with intensity. I found it to be one of the most compelling movies I'd ever seen. Everything about this movie is first-rate. I'm only sorry that I'd never managed to see it before now.

Two cops, played by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, sort of stumble upon a huge drug smuggling operation (with a connection to a French smuggler, as the title suggests), all due to their stake-out of a tiny candy store run by suspected drug dealers. The movie tracks the attempts by the cops to find how the drugs are coming into New York and who is responsible for the shipment. There's an amazing car chase sequence involving the elevated trains of the city (quite a spectacular series of images) and a "tailing" of a suspect that goes on for quite some time, building in intensity as the viewer wonders if the cops can keep up with the suspect. The film also features several "interrogation" sequences, including one in a bar populated by African Americans that results in Scheider's Buddy being beaten up. A lot of what happens is the result of the instincts that Hackman's cop has developed throughout many years in the city, and of course, those same instincts are repeatedly questioned by his superiors. He's been too much of a rebellious part of the force to be trusted fully.

Hackman is amazing, a tough guy cop with an aggression that you can see verging out of control almost all the time. Scheider has the quieter role, certainly, but he acts as fine counterpoint to Hackman's Popeye Doyle. Both men are unusual choices for lead roles--you'd think Hollywood would have kept them forever in supporting or character parts--but they truly shine here.

I won't talk about the final sequence, in case you haven't yet seen the movie. But it's a doozy. All of the movies about cops and dope smugglers and crime-ridden areas owe The French Connection an enormous debt. This is one of the best movies of the 1970s, an era that attempted to bring a sense of realism back to film.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

The Philadelphia Story was nominated for Best Picture of 1940. It's a witty movie with three great lead performances from Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Cary Grant (he's making a lot of appearances on this blog, isn't he?). Allegedly, it marked Hepburn's return to prominence as an actor after several years of being labeled "box office poison." She's very charming here, as are her two male co-stars.

It's a love story. Hepburn's Tracy Lord is about to be married when her ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) shows up with a tabloid reporter, Macauley Connor (Stewart). Tracy soon realizes that she is in love, to varying degrees, of course, with three men. The film charts the dilemma she faces and the method she uses to make her choice. There's a lot of smart verbal sparring here, and even members of the excellent supporting cast (my favorite being Ruth Hussey as the photographer Liz Imbrie) have a chance to get a good zinger in every now and then.

I wish I could say that I loved this film. It's always listed as one of the best romantic comedies ever made, and it's on many people's lists of favorite films of all time. I do like it, certainly. It has a sharp script and strong acting. It just seems a bit cold or distant to me. Perhaps it's because it deals with such old-money types (although I've certainly enjoyed other movies about the idle rich). Or maybe it's because the chemistry seems "off" a bit between Hepburn and her co-stars, despite their considerable acting talents. I don't know. Everyone seems so smart and clever in this movie, and yet it all seems so artificial in some way. I realize this assessment will likely mean that I'm forced to watch Dances with Wolves until I change my mind, and perhaps subsequent viewings of The Philadelphia Story will cure me instead, but at this point, this isn't one of the best films that I've managed to see since starting this project.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

The other Christmas movie to be nominated for Best Picture of 1947, Miracle on 34th Street is rightly a classic. It takes a rather odd premise--the court must decided if an old fellow who claims to be Santa Claus is truly who he says he is--and makes it work despite some incredible leaps of faith demanded from the viewer. I watched it again this year after many years of avoiding it ("who needs to see that again?"), and I was charmed all over again by how it restores your faith in your fellow human beings.

Edmund Gwenn is delightful as the would-be Santa Claus. He certainly makes you want to believe again in your childhood fantasy that a man in red from the North Pole will bring you lots of presents and make sure that you get what you ask for, too. John Payne does a nice turn as the lawyer who agrees to defend Kris Kringle, and Maureen O'Hara is great, as always, as the no-nonsense business executive who doesn't want her daughter to believe in fairy tales like those about Santa. Of course, watching Natalie Wood give one of the best performances by a child ever in the movies is a highlight. She's remarkable in her ability to convey how her emotions change throughout the story. She and O'Hara have a conversation late in the movie about the need to believe in Santa Claus, and it's one of the most touching mother-daughter moments I've ever witnessed.

In years past, I always kind of looked at this movie as a two-hour-long commercial for Macy's department stores. While the store certainly plays a central role in the film (much to their delight, I'm sure), it didn't seem quite as overwhelming this year as it had in the past. That might have a lot to do with the fact that all of the competitors mentioned in the film are no more, and only Macy's remains standing. It is fun to watch how the annual Thanksgiving Day parade looked back in the 1940s, quite different from the elaborate spectacle staged for television today.

Just as an aside, don't watch the remake from 1994. Richard Attenborough is a pale substitute for Gwenn as Kris Kringle. Attenborough is actually much better as the "entrepreneur" in the Jurassic Park movies. And Mara Wilson is no Natalie Wood either. She's charming in her own way, but Wood was already so talented as such a young age. Fox Movie Channel alternates screenings of these two versions on Christmas Eve, but hold out for the original. It's worth the wait.

Quiz Show (1994)

Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford, was nominated for Best Picture of 1994. It tells the story of the scandals involving the quiz show 21 in the 1950s. Allegations of answers being provided to certain contestants in order to improve the show's ratings led to significant changes in the television industry at the time (and greater regulation of it by the federal government). The story is a fascinating inquiry into our nation's obsession with wealth and celebrity, as well as our long-term privileging of whiteness and Christianity. The movie raises a lot of questions that, hopefully, members of the audience discuss after watching it. I remember after seeing it the first time back in 1994 having quite a few debates with friends over which characters had done the right things.

This is another film with almost everyone in Hollywood making an appearance. Rob Morrow, who had been starring on Northern Exposure on television at the time, plays the "lead" role of the attorney investigating the quiz shows on behalf of a Congressional committee; he's probably the weakest part of the film, given that he is expected to speak with a Boston accent and his success with it is spotty at best. Ralph Fiennes plays the young, dashing contestant who comes from a famous literary family. As soon as he appears in the offices of the quiz show, the producers make him a star, and you can see just how tempted he becomes by fame, how enraptured he is by the attention that he (and not his famous father or famous uncle) is finally receiving.

John Turturro is fascinating as a less than likable hero; he's the one whose loss sets into motion the events that lead to the show's downfall. And the fact of his character's Jewishness is raised as a/the potential reason for his being "replaced" by the WASPish Fiennes. Paul Scofield plays Fiennes' father with tremendous gravity and class. He's incredible to watch; you have a sense of a lifetime of acting at work whenever he's on the screen. There's also Hank Azaria and David Paymer as less-than-scrupulous television executives, and Christopher McDonald is hilarious as Jack Barry, the host of the show always worrying about the way that he looks. If you watch carefully, you'll see cameo appearances by a very young Callista Flockhart and a brief appearance by Ethan Hawke, as well as Ileana Douglas as a guest at a book party and Barry Levinson doing an interesting take on Today Show host Dave Garroway (with that stupid chimp they had on the show at the time).

There's much to recommend about this movie. It's one of those films about "important" issues, but it does manage to make the story interesting to anyone, even those who have never heard of the quiz show scandal. You get to feel the torment that these people feel as they struggle to decide their courses of action, and you get a sense of frustration with the dishonesty that seems to characterize so many people portrayed in this film. When a Southern Congressman at one of the hearings asks why Fiennes' character should be praised for finally telling the truth (albeit in a very eloquent way), the applause that rings through the chamber is both shocking and honest. What Redford's film manages to accomplish is a clear dissection into one incident that has numerous consequences, and that's quite a feat. We still are too willing to accept television that is packed for us in the guise of "reality," and what Quiz Show manages to do is make us think, at least for a moment, about the honesty, the integrity of that approach and our own culpability in it.

The Good Earth (1937)

Nominated for Best Picture of 1937, The Good Earth is the story of a family of Chinese peasants and their struggles to survive and even flourish. It's based upon the prize-winning novel by Pearl S. Buck, and it tells a story of perseverance and hard work. This family faces drought, hunger, long migrations, political revolutions, a series of tests of their endurance. It's a relatively quiet film overall, a study in patience, with just two exceptions of note: a plague of locusts and a night of rioting during one of the revolutions in China.

The sequence involving the plague of locusts is pretty spectacular. The amount of effort it must have taken in 1937 is staggering to imagine. And the dozens of actors necessary to make the battle against these insects convincing? Well, these are the days long before CGI took care of crowds. The same holds true for the scenes of the revolution. Watching Luise Rainer being trampled as she tries to get her share of the treasures in the home of the wealthy landowners (a home where she once was a slave) is cringe-inducing in its suspense. Those are actual people tearing the structure down around her.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the most controversial aspect of this movie: its casting. The lead roles are played by European actors. Paul Muni, an Austrian, plays Wang Lung, the peasant farmer who learns to love the woman he has been arranged to marry (although with one significant misstep along the way, a woman named Lotus). Rainer, who was born in Germany, plays O-Lan, the servant girl who leaves the big house for a harsh life as the wife of a poor farmer. Only their sons are played by Asian actors, the best of them being Keye Luke as the older boy. He's very good; it's a shame that there was really no place in the industry at the time for him to achieve a career as a leading man. Understandably, Hollywood in those days didn't turn over leading parts to non-white actors, and while Muni and Rainer are both good, they are never truly convincing as Chinese peasants.

This was the last film that the "boy wonder" of MGM, Irving Thalberg, worked on. There's a tribute to him at the beginning of the film, and it's fitting that a big budget literary adaptation should be his final contribution to the industry.

The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

The first sequel to be nominated for Best Picture, The Bells of St. Mary's was released in 1945, just one year after Bing Crosby originated the role of Father O'Malley in Going My Way (the winner for Best Picture that year). I haven't yet watched Going My Way, but The Bells of St. Mary's doesn't seem to add up to a cohesive film to me. It's mostly just a series of sometimes unrelated, sometimes interrelated incidents that occur over the course of a year. It's a fun movie in many ways, but it's a rather inconsequential film to have been nominated for Best Picture during the last year of World War II.

As the film opens, Crosby's priest has just been transferred to St. Mary's, a parochial school that has been deteriorating rapidly. The school is in very bad shape, particularly the classrooms, and the Catholic Church has been considering closing the school and selling the property. Almost immediately upon his arrival, Father O'Malley clashes with the head of the school, Sister Mary Benedict, played by Ingrid Bergman, who wants to maintain order and discipline. He is a pretty lax disciplinarian, while she and the other nuns are more traditional (i.e., strict). But don't watch this film expecting to learn about any serious rifts within the Catholic Church over differing approaches to education. Their "fights" are all rather harmless in nature; nothing too serious is going to be debated or resolved here. For example, Father O'Malley is so filled with excitement at his new job that he lets the children have the first day off. Sister Benedict wonders what will happen to the children since their parents are at work. That's pretty much the depth of conflict for most of the film.

Well, that's not completely accurate. The primary dramatic tension revolves around whether or not the adjacent building being constructed by Henry Travers' millionaire businessman, Horace P. Bogardus, will be donated to the school, something Sister Benedict and the other nuns have been praying for. There are several scenes sprinkled throughout the film where Father O'Malley and Sister Benedict separately bring up the subject of the building to Bogardus. He wants to buy St. Mary's in order to tear it down and build a parking lot. He also has, perhaps unsurprisingly, a series of health problems brought about by the stress of dealing with architects and contractors and workers. You know that in a film like this he's going to relent and give his building to the nuns. However, so much of the film is devoted to other stories that even this plotline seems no more important or significant than the rest.

For me, the most entertaining scenes involve Sister Benedict teaching a young boy how to defend himself. Father O'Malley has broken up a fight between two boys, Eddie and Tommy. The priest seems especially proud of how good a fighter Tommy is, but the nun fears that praising the boys for fighting might influence them to continue with this inappropriate behavior. After she correctly guesses that O'Malley is trying to suggest that women like herself wouldn't understand--it's the old fear of the female influence turning boys into sissies that movies of this era were obsessed with--she buys a book on boxing at a sporting goods story (cute scene, by the way) and begins tutoring Eddie every day in her office. The kid even knocks her out during one of their practices. When he inevitably bests Tommy in a schoolyard fight, Sister Benedict glows with pride.

The most intriguing sequence in the film is also the most enigmatic. A young girl named Patsy (well, Patricia) Gallagher is enrolled at St. Mary's by her mother (played by Martha Sleeper). The mother had married a musician, and you know how unreliable those types can be. Just watch Crosby's face when the mother explains about the itinerant life of a musician; it's a clever inside joke. Anyway, the father abandoned his wife for a job in Cincinnati, not knowing she was pregnant with Patsy (played very well by Joan Carroll), and so the mother had to "do things" to support her child. We are never told what those "things" are in the movie. We only know that Mrs. Gallagher thinks Patsy would be better off if she weren't around her mother. The priest takes a personal interest in seeing Patsy succeed, sometimes to the frustration of her teacher, Sister Benedict, but you know that both of them have the girl's interests at heart. The father eventually returns, thanks to the intervention of Father O'Malley, but it's a difficult, awkward transition for the Gallaghers to feel like a true family.

There's also an interesting series of scenes involving Sister Benedict's health. She has, it turns out, tuberculosis in its early stages. What I found odd is that the doctor tells Father O'Malley but not Sister Benedict about this diagnosis. He also conspires with the priest to have the nun sent away to some place with a more arid climate so that she can regain her health. The doctor doesn't want her to know about the serious nature of her health problems, and he wants her to be secreted off to Arizona or somewhere without letting her even know why? To me, it seems almost like malpractice not to share this information with the patient. It also smacks of misogyny to think that a man can handle the news of an illness like this, but not a woman--even if it's her own health that is at risk. That's still shocking to me.

You might also have a moment of surprise when the students in the school recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The phrase "one nation under God" doesn't appear in this pledge. That's because those words were added in the 1950s during the era when the government was trying to find Communists in every arena of American life. The added words became a sort of loyalty oath, if you will. Since this film was completed in 1945, today's audiences will quickly notice that absence when the pledge begins. Just don't get riled up about some leftist Hollywood plot; know your history first.

Lest you think it's all serious subject matter, the movie also has a couple of charming moments. One of the most delightful is the play put on by the first graders. It's a retelling of the birth of Jesus, and it's a riot. Those kids seem to have a rather vague sense of what happens in the Biblical story, but they don't let such pesky issues as accuracy interfere with their play. A close second would be the early scenes where a kitten stumbles into Father O'Malley's hat while he's trying to deliver a serious speech to the nuns in his new parish. The nuns, though, can't pay attention to him and start to giggle and laugh. Even he has to acknowledge the humor of the situation when he learns the cause of their outburst.

I know what you're still thinking: Bing Crosby as a priest and Ingrid Bergman as a nun? Indeed. Bergman has the most glowing make-up of any nun I've ever seen, and Crosby's Father O'Malley behaves in decidedly un-priestlike fashion. Crosby wasn't really an actor, as this film clearly shows. He was just a guy who could sing well (he gets several opportunities here to demonstrate his crooning ability) and who could act very naturally on camera. He acquits himself nicely. Bergman, however, was one of the best actors of her era. She does get to show that she too can play a comic part--and she is funny--but this is a far cry from her work in Casablanca or Anastasia. Neither of these performers seems to have been challenged by the material. In fact, the entire movie feels as if it were rushed into production to capitalize on the success of the earlier film. Regardless, it's relatively harmless entertainment, nothing that couldn't be seen by audience members of any age.

Oscar Win: Sound Recording

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Actor (Crosby), Actress (Bergman), Film Editing, Dramatic or Comedy Score, and Original Song ("Aren't You Glad You're You")