My Favourite Best Picture Winners

Spoilers Below 

In my last post I wrote about 10 films which didn't get nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Now, I want to discuss my favourite winners in this category, ones where I think the Academy got it (pretty much) right. The Oscars are always a fascinating snapshot in time. They're reflective of what people liked in the moment more than what lasts. But these films certainly have. So, let's get on with the list.

Casablanca

The late Roger Ebert once wrote of Carol Reed's The Third Man, that more than any film he had seen it embodied the romance of going to the movies. I feel that way about Casablanca. From its witty and poignant script, to the intrigue, the romance and its heroic finale, Casablanca has everything. It's pretty much a perfect film, maybe the best film to come out of the golden age of Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, even if they had never starred in anything else significant, would still be immortalizes forever as Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund. Rick is the cynical cafe owner, Ilsa is the woman he loved and left him because she was secretly married to resistance leader Victor Lazlo, and whom walks back in to his life. Rick. who's in possession of stolen letters of transit, is the only one who can help Ilsa and Victor out of Casablanca. But will his torch for Ilsa stop him from doing so? Yes, we know he'll do the right thing but its how we get there that matters. 

Lawrence of Arabia

The king of al epic movies, only rivaled by The Lord of The Rings, if you count that as one movie. The reason I call Lawrence of Arabia such is it's a great character study as well as a technical marvel. You have movies like the Star Wars prequels which  are conceptually and technically impressive but character and story-wise needed some script refining. And then you have certain superhero films which have some great character stuff but are compromised by formula, weak spectacle and uninteresting direction- but with Lawrence of Arabia, neither the character work or the grand-scale filmmaking feel anything less than stellar.. Another thing thing that impresses about the film is how effectively it both romanticizes T.E Lawrence while also portraying him as a complex, sometimes terrifying figure whom the audience is free to interpret the character, the man, however they like. In the greatest screen debut in cinema history, Peter O'Toole is beautiful, almost feminine, giving a performance that combines grace and madness. This is a mythic and majestic film.

The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

The great epic of American cinema, and still the only time a film and its sequel have both won Best Picture. It's hard to imagine that feat ever being replicated. I guess it's cheating to list both Godfathers under one heading but they compliment each other so well and tell one sprawling story that it makes sense to list them side by side. Michael Corleone's (Al Pacino) transformation from war hero and the good son who didn't want to become part of the family business to ruthless mob boss who will murder his own brother for his act of betrayal is possibly cinema's greatest character arc. That Pacino didn't win for either is one of Oscar's greatest travesties. Michael's arc is complimented by Part II's showing of how his father Vito went from orphan in Sicily to Don in turn of the century New York. These flashback add to the sprawling nature of the narrative, with Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro both winning Oscars for their performance as the Don. 

Director Francis Ford Coppola and novelist Mario Puzo, working from Puzo's popular novel, took the gangster film and put it on a Shakespearean scale while creating a lived in world with authentic people. The films are operatic yet subtle and nuanced. They also transport us back in time to early 1900s New York, post war New York and late 1950s Havana, just before revolution. These are simply unrivaled feats of filmmaking from the Hollywood studio system.

The Silence of the Lambs

The last film to win the top five Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), and one that has only gotten better with age. While Anthony Hopkins is iconic as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, it's Jodie Foster as F.B.I trainee Clarice Sterling, on the trail of serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) who gives this film its grounding and heart.  The film's director, the late Jonathan Demme, was a master of the close-up, using them to show the perspective of characters looking at each other. The film blends the gothic and realistic in such a way that we accept them both as existing in the same world. And again, it's Foster who grounds the whole thing.

The Apartment

The optimistic cynic, Billy Wilder, along with his longtime collaborator, I.A.L Diamond, crafted a perfect screenplay for The Apartment, the story of C.C. "Bud" Baxter, an office worker who lends his apartment to his superiors for their extramarital affair. It's already a difficult situation for Bud, having to spend nights out in the cold, getting him sick. Things get more complicated when he discovers his boss Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) is having an affair with Elevator girl Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the object of Bud's affection. All of this could be contrived but Wilder and Diamond's script, along with Wilder's direction, create believable characters whose actions make sense, even in a scenario such as this. It's established that this whole apartment lending situation started out with just one guy wanting to use Bud's apartment and then escalated to many men at the office wanting to use the apartment, with Bud using it to his advantage, being granted perks by the higher-ups. Bud is selling his soul but Lemmon is such a likable and sympathetic everyman that we aren't immediately offput by his actions. Bud's not a bad guy and we can see how we could end up in a predicament like this. 

I always feel that Wilder's dramas were very funny and his comedies very dark. The Apartment walks the line between comedy and drama so expertly that that it feels unbalanced. And like many other Wilder films, it ends on the perfect note.

No Country For Old Men

I just re-watched this and man does it hold up. This is a fantastic movie that's only gotten better with age. It's one of the perfect matches of source material (Cormac McCarthy's novel) and filmmakers (the Coen brothers). From their first film, Blood Simple (1984), the Coens have played around with genre conventions, creating films that both belong in their respective genres but also exist somewhat outside them. There's an offbeat quality to their work, with No Country For Old Men being populated by familiar types who are also different from anyone else we've encountered before. Hit man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in an Oscar winning performance), with his weird haircut and pre-occupation with a coin toss- a flip of faith- is one of the most unusual villains in recent memory, genuinely terrifying whenever he shows up. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is the "good old boy" who's smarter than we may at first realize, a character who would be a supporting player, killed off pretty early in another film but takes center stage here. And then there's Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who we assume is maybe going to be killed when he catches up to Chigurh, but narrowly misses him. 

The movie sets us a up for a showdown between Moss (Josh Brolin), who has stolen 2 million from a drug deal gone bad, and  Chigurh but Moss is killed offscreen,  and the final scene is Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) talks to his wife about two dreams he had- "Then I woke up" is the final line, cutting to black. There's no satisfying resolution to anything. It's a bleak but it fits the noir style, where there are no heroes or heroic endings. The villain gets away and the survivor, Bell, retires because he doesn't know how to deal with the new kind of evil he's seeing in the world now, though ultimately this kind of evil, the evil Chigurh represents, has been forever, with Chigurh being a devil/grim reaper figure, haunting the whole film

Amadeus 

Maybe it's my own feeling of mediocrity that makes Amadeus the most relatable film to be, but I think it's also a brilliant idea to tell the story of a great artist through the perspective of the bitter rival who wasn't as great. Peter Shaffer's play was the basis for Milos Foreman's glorious film, one of the best of the 80s, a decade that's not one of my favourite, despite some great films. F. Murray Abraham, received a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the proud but jealous and old-fashioned Antonio Salieri, while Tom Hulce was nominated for his performance along Abraham for his mischievous performance as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart is childish but also serious when it comes to music. The fact that such an immature young man could be so talent enrages Salieri but he but he feels guilt for Mozart's death, believing he killed him.

On the Waterfront

If you were going to ask me what my favourite performance of all time is, I would say Marlon Brando's Oscar wining performance as Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. This is Brando at the peak of his physical beauty and acting abilities. While A Streetcar Named Desire established his image, and The Godfather his most iconic, On the Waterfront is his most sensitive and tender work, masculine but feminine. Movies are time capsules that can keep an actor forever young in their prime, and that's what this film is for me when it comes to Brando. 

Of course, the film's director, Elia Kazan, was the ultimate actors' director, his films being defined by a rawer, more naturalistic style of acting, and the film is full of other superb performances, including Eva Marie Saint (who won Best Supporting Actress), Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Rod Steiger When Kazan won an honorary Oscar in the late 90s (on of Oscar's most controversial moments), Martin Scorsese called Kazan a poetic realist, and you can see why just by looking at this film, which blends realism with stylish flourishes. 

The story is that of  Malloy, who testifies against the mob boss (Cobb) who runs the docks. Malloy has to decide between loyalty to this father figure and doing the right thing, which could lead to redemption for Malloy after being involved in the murder of another dock worker.

Rebecca

Hitchcock's first film in America, and the only Hitchcock film to win Best Picture (Hitchcock's other 1940 film Foreign Correspondent was also nominated) and on Hitchcock attributed more to producer David. O Selznick than himself. However, the Hitchcock is not absent in this entertaining gothic melodrama, base Daphne Du Maurier's splendid novel (one of my favourites), about a  unnamed woman (Joan Fontaine) who marries a rich widower, Max de Winter (Laurence Oliver), who former wife's presence still haunts his home of Manderley. Fontaine and Oliver were both nominated for their performances (Fontaine would win the next year for another Hitchcock film, Suspicion, with Cary . Grant) and Judith Anderson is sublimely creepy as Manderley's housemaid Mrs. Danvers, who still adores Rebecca. I wrote more about the film here: Davies in the Dark: The Essential Films: "Rebecca" (1940) (thenoirzone.blogspot.com)  

So, what are your favourite Best Picture winners? Comment and let me know. 

"I Look Up, I Look Down- Hey it's Citizen Kane": What Vertigo's Place On Top of Sight & Sound's Top Ten Greatest Film Poll May Mean

Warning: Spoilers for Citizen Kane and Vertigo Ahead


So, Orson Welles' revolutionary classic Citizen Kane has been dethroned from the top spot of the British film magazine Sight & Sound's Top Ten Greatest Films Poll. It's seat has now been filled by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the film considered by many to be Hitchcock's masterpiece. And while Citizen Kane still holds the number 2 spot, it's quite a shakeup considering its held the number one position for fifty years.

The first Sight & Sound poll was conducted in 1952. The film that ranked number one on that first poll was Vittorio De Sica's Neorealist Bicycle Thieves. Citizen Kane, released in 1941, was no where to be found. On his commentary for the  DVD, film critic Roger Ebert mentions that the film, due to the controversy surrounding its similarities to the life of William Randolph Hurst, the newspaper baron, Hurst used his powerful influence in order to make theatres limit the number of showings for Citizen Kane, leading to poor box office. Ebert says it was only in the late fifties that many people were able to see the film. The lack of exposure for the film back in 1941 may have a role in keeping it out of the Sight & Sound Top Ten.

It was only ten years later, in 1962, when the film entered the top ten and claimed the number one spot, keeping that spot over the decades, as other films entered or fell out of the top ten. In 1952, Charlie Chaplin held the number 2 and 3 spots with City Lights and The Gold Rush, respectively. Sadly, from 1962 onwards Chaplin is completely absent from the top ten, with City Lights ranking 50th this year. For that devastatingly beautiful last scene, I feel it should be much higher. One film that has slowly crept up the list is Hitchcock's Vertigo. A film that, on its initial release, was met with poor box office and negative reviews, entered the top ten in 1982, tieing with Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura for the seventh spot. In 1992 it climbed to the number 4 spot and in 2002 it was number two right behind Citizen Kane.

Now Vertigo has claimed the number one spot, edging out Citizen Kane by 34 votes (Vertigo: 191, Citizen Kane: 157). The question remains: does it mean anything that Vertigo is now in the number one position? Many people will still feel Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made while others will still feel it's "overrated." Some have already argued that Vertigo isn't really Hitchcock's best film (for me, Rear Window is my favourite of his but I feel Vertigo is his greatest film). Ultimately, it comes down to the slow shift of perspective regarding Hitchcock's film. It look a little longer for it enter the top ten and even longer to reach the top spot. It didn't automatically claim the spot as Citizen Kane did. But over time, Vertigo is one of those films that keeps reminding viewers, new and old, how great and timeless it truly is. It's a film that captures the obsessive and twisted forms love can take-especially within the male psyche. It starts out as a mystery about a woman, Madeline (Kim Novak) who may be possessed and the former detective, Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), assigned to follow her-and becomes the story about a detective being haunted by her spirit, becoming possessed himself by the need to mold another woman, Judy (the same woman in fact), in to Madeline's image. It's essentially a character study that doesn't reveal itself as a character study until the third act.

And like Citizen Kane, it never truly resolves itself. It allows the audience to interpret what they've seen and draw their own conclusions regarding the title characters. Can the loss of his sleigh Rosebud truly define Citizen Kane's titular character, Charles Foster Kane's (Welles) life? Or is it impossible, as the reporter Mr. Thompson says, to define an entire man's life by just one word? In Vertigo, what happens to Scottie after the death of Judy? Is he able to finally move on or will he plunge even deeper in to his obsessive abyss? Both films show men brought down by ambition and obsession. Citizen Kane is about a man who had everything in his life but love. Vertigo is about a man who can only love a woman if she fits the image of his obsession- and the woman who will change herself in order for him to love her.

But, back to the question at hand. What does it mean for Vertigo to be in the number one position. Well, as I said, the perspective regarding the film has changed and evolved slower than Citizen Kane and this year more people felt it was the greatest film ever made. Some have argued that Kim Novak's comment about feeling "raped" when this year's Best Picture winner, The Artist, used Bernard Herrmann's score, brought the film back to some people's minds, which may have led to some viewing it again. While that may sound humorous, it's not too big of a stretch that this comment made people revisit the film.

After 50 years, some voters may have felt it was time for a new film to take the number one spot. Some of these voters may have been new, some may have just come around to Vertigo after years of ranking it lower on their ballots or not ranking it at all. Now that Vertigo has placed number one, the best possible outcome is for more people to discover the film as well as other Hitchcock's films. Whether Vertigo is the greatest film of all time, I feel it's definitely one of the greatest films in cinema history.

Now, what of the rest of the list? What's fascinating, and maybe a little bit disappointing, is that the youngest film in the top ten is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968. So, the most recent film in the top ten came out over forty years ago. Contrast this with the first Sound & Sight Poll in 1952 where Bicycle Thieves, released only four years prior in 1948, topped the list. City Lights (1931, #2) was only 21 years old and The Gold Rush (1925, #3), only 28 years old when they ranked high on the list.

Now, there was "slightly" less film history in 1952 and more room for twenty year old films to appear on the list-but even when you look at the 1962 list, Citizen Kane was only 21 years old when it first claimed the top spot and was still only 31 years old in 1972. L'avventura was only 2 years old when it appeared on the 1962 list. Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 was only 9 years old when it appeared on the 1972 list. Now, in 2012, there are no films from the last five, ten, twenty or even thirty years in the top ten. No Pulp Fiction or Schindler's List. No There Will Be Blood or Fargo. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, which appeared together on the  2002 list, have now fallen out of the top ten. This may be due to the rule change that wouln't allow them to be counted as one film.. A Martin Scorsese film has also never appeared in the top ten. Taxi Driver is ranked 31 this year, tieing with The Godfather Part II. Raging Bull, and Goodfellas are not ranked within the top 50.

For reference, this is the top ten for 2012:

1. Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
2. Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
3. Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
4. The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
5. Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
7. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
8. Man With a Movie Camera (1928, Dziga Vertov)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
10. 8/12 (1963, Federico Fellini,)

Now, I've seen eight of the 10 films listed (I still haven't seen Sunrise or Man With a Movie Camera) and while it's a more than respectable list, it does feel a little boxed in. While the voters didn't sit down and decide not to have any post sixties films in the top ten, it's unfortunate that many of the great films from the 70s, 80s, 90s and the last decade are only represented outside of the top ten.

Now, Casablanca is my favourite film and it's not ranked at all. While I understand it's not as revolutionary as Citizen Kane or as psychologically probing or disturbing as Vertigo, its characters are as memorable and enjoyable as the ones in the aforementioned films, and while its filmed in a very classical Hollywood style, its images, the closeups of Bogie and Bergman, among others, really resonate. While I'm not a voter I've decided to throw out a top ten made up of personal favourites and films I just feel are great.

1. Casablanca (1943, Michael Curtiz)
2. Rear Window (1954, Hitchcock)
3. The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)
4. 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)
5. Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Dreyer)
7. Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
8. Taxi Driver (1976, Scorsese)
9. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
10. Psycho (1960, Hitchcock)

And look, I only have one film from the seventies. Aren't I hypocritical. Pot, Kettle.There's also so many I left out! Singin' in the Rain!, GFII!, Goodfellas! Damn you lists! Anyway, those are some of my thoughts regarding the new Sight & Sound Poll. Whatever meaning lists like S&S have, if they make you want to revisit films you haven't seen for a while or discover one you've never seen, well, I think that's a pretty good thing.

P.S: Here's a piece I wrote on Vertigo's influence on Scorsese's Shutter Island and Christoper Nolan's Inception: http://thenoirzone.blogspot.ca/2012/05/hitch-marty-and-chris-vertigo-and-its.html


     

Top 11 Films For Valentine's Day

This is a little late but here's my movie playlist for Valentine's Day:

1. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1943)
The Rest (Alphabetically)
2. An Affair to Remember ( Leo McCarey, 1957)
3.The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
4. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
5. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006)
6. City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
7. Make Way For Tomorrow ( Leo McCarey, 1937)
8. Romeo + Juliet ( Baz Luhrmann, 1996)
9. Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2002 & 2004)
10. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
11. WALL-E (Andrew Stanton)

Desert Island DVDs

Recently critc Matt Zoller Seitz asked fellow critics to pick the ten films they'd want to take with them if they were stuck on a desert island. The rules were to pick ten films, one season of television and one short. I posted mine on Jim Emerson's blog, Scanners. I want to post it here as well just for fun.

Films (In no particular order, except for number one)

1. Casablanca- When asked what my favourite film is I pick this one. Roger Ebert said of Carol Reed's The Third Man that it captures the romance of going to the movies for him. I feel that way about this film. Romantic, funny, heroic and ultimately a little tragic, Casablanca has never failed to entertain or move me.

2. Casino Royale (2006)- My favourite Bond film. It may not be a perfect movie but in it's own way it's a perfect Bond film in that it combines fantastical action sequences with a grounded humanity, never escalating in to camp. The romance between Bond and Vesper Lynd is heartbreaking and establishes why Bond is such an emotionally cold bastard sometimes.

3. The Haunting (1963)- A really fun and spooky haunted house film. The fact that you never see a ghost makes it all the more terrifying and surprisingly satisfying.

4. The Apartment (1960)- Billy Wilder's romantic comedy blends humour and tenderness with cynicism and interesting social commentary very well. I think I like this more than Wilder's film before this, Some Like It Hot.

5. Out of the Past- It really encapsulates the film noir genre/style. While romance may not be what one automatically thinks of when they think "film noir" but the doomed romances at the heart of this film are integral to the psychology of the film noir anti-hero.

6. Shutter Island- This may sound blasphemous but this may be my favourite Scorsese film.

7. Hamlet (1996)- I'd need my Shakespeare fix and Kenneth Branagh's epic is my favourite Shakespearean adaptation on film.

8. Rear Window- Hitchcock is my favourite director and it's insanely difficult to pick only one. I think I would go with this one.  It takes something which sounds uncinematic and makes it in to pure cinema.       

9.  The Godfather- Mafia life played at almost Shakespearean heights.

10. The Pink Panther Strikes Back- My favourite of the series

Television: Season Five of The Simpsons
Short: Someone on Emerson's blog picked Geri's Game, which played before Pixar's A Bug's Life. It's the short where the old man plays chess with himself. I think I'd have to pick this one as well.

This is a fun but very difficult game. There are so many more more films I could have swapped with the ones on this list. It would take me too long to list all of them. I encourage everyone to try this exercise. It gives you a sense of the films you really can't live without...and you realize there's a lot!