Tomorrow we close out the 1960 Oscars with Best Director, since this 1944/45/60 run began with the nominations for Alfred Hitchcock. That’s the marquee category this time around. Which means today, we get into the Big Prize. The nominees for Best Picture are:
The Alamo
The Apartment
Elmer Gantry
Sons and Lovers
The Sundowners
My rankings, from fifth to first:
5. The Sundowners
Fred Zinnemann, producer
first of two nominations; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Film From Any Source and Best British Film, National Board of Review's Top Ten Films of 1960
What they call an Australian Western, as it contains iconography similar to the American Western genre, only, you know…in Australia. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr lead a nomadic family of sheep drovers, their nickname (and title of the film) coming from their habit of moving until the sun goes down - and wherever they are, that's where they pitch their tent. Which suits the restless Mitchum fine, but Kerr and son Michael Anderson, Jr., want to lay down some roots - and it looks they do, a little bit at a time, in an Outback village populated by Peter Ustinov and Glynis Johns and Chips Rafferty...among others. There's a sheep-shearing contest, an epic brushfire, it even becomes a family-united-by-a-racehorse film for a little bit. Mitchum does a great accent. Maybe I was too tired watching it after work, but, despite being populated by people whose past work I've admired - both in front and behind the camera - and despite not being able to actually say what was wrong...I just couldn't get into it. Not the movie's fault, just where I landed with this one.
4. Sons and Lovers
Jerry Wald, producer
second and final nomination; National Board of Review's Best Film of 1960, NYFCC Awards winner for Best Film; Golden Globe nominee for Best Picture - Drama
One of those daring dramas about an artistic young man in a coal-mining town with an unhealthy attachment to his mother, who wants to go out on his own and really live - and in the meantime, he has affairs with a nice neighbor girl and a married older woman. Dean Stockwell is the lead, not the best accent, supposedly cast as a sop to the youth audience - but why not, he's terrific as a young man wrestling between the confidence his mother feeds and the self-doubt his father instills. It's a beautifully photographed work, too, filmed on location in the Midlands of England, where the original D.H. Lawrence novel takes place. A frank, mature film, filled with great performances and honest in its approach to an ensemble of people who are, to the say the least, complex. Wendy Hiller as the mother is outstanding!
3. The Alamo
John Wayne, producer
only nomination in this category; National Board of Review's Top Ten Films of 1960
An epic telling of the most famous battle of the Texas Revolution, wherein a who's who of American legends defended a San Antonio former mission - in disrepair even then - against the better-armed and more massive forces of General Santa Anna and the Mexican Army. If you're unfamiliar the history of the Alamo, it is important to know from the beginning that the Mexicans won; this story is about the spirited defense that held them at bay long enough for General Sam Houston to build an army that would ultimately - and off-screen, after the movie - defeat Santa Anna's forces. John Wayne's directorial debut is a big wet kiss to frontiersmen and American legends, wiping a tear at the sight of a bunch of functioning alcoholics who would rather brawl than shake hands (with the number of jokes about how drunk and/or hungover everyone seems to be, it's a wonder they put up any fight at all!). You hear some of that clunky dialogue, you experience the repetitive "conflict" between stubborn leaders having to collaborate, you watch movie stars give big speeches about what it means to be an American living in Freedom, and you have to admit, you must acknowledge, it is a generally corny, simplistic movie. There's too much Chill Wills and it wants you to applaud one character promising to free his devoted slave when the battle is over (we know how that goes) and its insistence on the beauty of this particularly American brand of masculinity feels a little overstated.
But how could one not like this movie? Whatever you think about John Wayne the person, John Wayne the actor is one of the most effortlessly magnetic screen presences - honestly, seeing him up against the sweat and clenched jaws of Richard Widmark (who I adore!) and Laurence Harvey (who's also here!) makes you realize just how skilled he is. I can't entirely fault the direction, either: everything looks great, when it's crackling, it works, it's just that Wayne is too consciously trying to capture a John Ford-ian spirit without being John Ford. But the scale of the battle scenes, the control over the vast cast of characters, the instincts to dial in more on these people than on the battle itself: all tells me that Wayne at least knows how to make an effective movie, and it's a shame he wasn't given another opportunity to officially do so (though I'm sure he was basically ghost co-director of most of his post-50s output). I thought I got to know Davy Crockett and Smitty and Bowie and Jethro and Graciela, and I was moved by the final sacrifices made by each in turn. So yes, it's my #3 because, while it's certainly flawed, I not only think of it fondly, I know I will watch it again.
2. Elmer Gantry
Bernard Smith, producer
first of two nominations; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Film From Any Source, Golden Globe nominee for Best Picture- Drama, National Board of Review's Top Ten Films of 1960, NYFCC Awards runner-up for Best Film
Elmer Gantry is a traveling salesman who loves his drink, his women, and the sound of his own voice, and he stumbles upon the perfect venue for his vices when he takes a peek into the tent of touring revivalist minister Sister Sharon Falconer, eventually finagling his way into her good graces (and then some!) and becoming part of the show, thereby turning religion into the greatest sideshow attraction this side of the Atlantic! I first saw this movie in college, I think it was on TCM, and I immediately fell in love. So much so, in fact, that a week later I borrowed the book from the library, whereupon I discovered a lot more than the film offered: Sinclair Lewis's original novel is a satire of fundamentalist Christianity, from tent revivalists to occult Christians to Baptists to Methodists. My mother and I recently revealed that the line that sticks out the most to us comes from a passage wherein Gantry is speaking to a collection of other ministers, outlining his strategy to get people into his church and get them to tithe more and tell their friends to increase the followers and, basically, pitch church like it were a great new washing machine; one minister, the soft-spoken Andrew Pengilly, whose congregation has been dwindling because he's too sincere, speaks up: "Mr. Gantry, why don't you believe in God?" But I hadn't seen the film since that first time in 2009, despite owning it on DVD (I bought it when I first came to LA), and I was afraid that I could come away not as taken by it.
Relief! Elmer Gantry the film is just as effective now as it was then, and I get to admire it differently than I did before not only because I've now read the book, but because I've almost 20 years of growth (hopefully) as a human to reflect on its concerns regarding religion as entertainment and commerce. Richard Brooks won a deserved Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, plucking elements from throughout the novel while focusing the bulk of the film on a five-chapter episode with Sister Sharon Falconer. Lancaster is perfectly cast, Jean Simmons gives her greatest performance as Sister Sharon, Jones flexes her muscles, and Arthur Kennedy and Dean Jagger are both well-utilized as, respectively, an atheist reporter and a spiritually cowardly flunky. Its subject matter is timeless, moral charlatans are as reliable as death and taxes, but even this film's specific approach - the score, the cinematography, the dialogue - feels like it could be replicated beat for beat now and still feel like a fresh take. There's even some cleverness in its opening disclaimer reassuring audiences that this is no criticism of your faith, but of people who try to fool, you know, everyone else: it's like hearing Elmer Gantry before the movie even properly starts, reassuring and cajoling you into a narrative that is much angrier and thornier than that scrawl would suggest.
1. The Apartment
Billy Wilder, producer
only nomination int his category; BAFTA Award winner for Best Film From Any Source, Golden Globe winner for Best Picture - Comedy, NYFCC Awards winner for Best Film; National Board of Review's Top Ten Films of 1960
CC Baxter works at a Manhattan insurance firm, and he's been quietly climbing the corporate ladder - thanks mostly to his acquiescence in allowing his superiors to use his apartment for their extramarital trysts; unfortunately, the latest addition to that roster includes head of personnel Sheldrake, whose particular "cookie" is elevator operator Frank Kubelik, whom Baxter has a crush on. A romantic-comedy, a satire on modern workplace politics, a picture of America on the border of two decades. Took me long enough to see this, but last year I finally did, thanks to my friend's husband hosting movie nights. This was my second viewing, which confirmed that its reputation as one of the greatest films of all time, as decided by the most recent lists from Sight & Sound and the American Film Institute, was and is well deserved.
For yes, as you can see, I think this movie deserved its Best Picture win, at least out of the five nominated. The performances: perfect, every single one, with even the single-scene performers (like Hope Holiday) offering distinct portraits of sexual neuroses and New York cynicism. The sets: genuine, you can't believe they didn't just borrow a working insurance office or a Chinese restaurant or a local dive, that they're all just sets. The screenplay: funny in a way that people naturally can be, a situation that you can see happening anywhere and everywhere every day, even its worst characters are not wicked but disappointing. I marvel at its ability to take on office politics, agnostic ambitions, and women dehumanized into playthings, and still come away with a full heart, hope in people, warmth...without contradicting or sacrificing reality. And it's entertaining, an easy watch.
Tomorrow, the nominees for Best Director: Jack Cardiff (Sons and Lovers), Jules Dassin (Never on Sunday), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), Billy Wilder (The Apartment), and Fred Zinnemann (The Sundowners).
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