The 1968 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part One

Let the 1968 Retro Hollmann Awards begin! For more context, check out the nominations from last week, as well as my Top Ten.

Best Ensemble

 Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell

2. The Birthday Party; 3. Night of the Living Dead; 4. The Odd Couple; 5. The Young Girls of Rochefort

A woman with a reputation to protect, a daughter on the verge of a life-changing decision, three possible fathers, their wives, a housekeeper, and a vintner who's loved the first woman all along. Plus a countess who doesn't have to say a word to convey haughty disapproval - we stan! Every cast member is zeroed in on Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell's zany, good-hearted delights.

In second, a different kind of madness effects the cast of The Birthday Party. In third, survivors who hate living and dying together in Night of the Living Dead. In fourth, The Odd Couple and their poker buddies and coo-coo neighbors. In fifth, the sunny, beautiful singer-dancers of The Young Girls of Rochefort.

More after the jump - with each category presented in the exact order as they were at the 41st Academy Awards.

Day Nine: Best Picture, 1968

If 1967 was the dawn of New Hollywood, 1968 was a return to values. Yes, the modern is being acknowledged, but wrapped within a more familiar package. The studio musical? We've got two. Historical fiction? We've got two of those, as well. Prestige theatre adaptation? A full four! Rachel, Rachel stands out the most for its frank talk about sex and repression, but Peyton Place was a full 11 years ago - and familiar face Paul Newman was the creative force behind it. So while movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Battle of Algiers, Rosemary's Baby and others are certainly acknowledged, the Academy at large was embracing the familiar.

Which is not to see these movies are bad or boring - they aren't! They're a solid lineup! But they are also clearly the last gasp of the old guard.

The nominees are....

Day Eight: Best Adapted Screenplay, 1968

In 1968, if you wanted an Oscar, best win a Tony first. Of the five Best Picture nominees, four of them were based on stage plays: Funny Girl (eight Tony nominations including Best Actress in a Musical, Barbra Streisand), The Lion in Winter (Tony Award Winner for Best Actress in a Play, Rosemary Harris), Oliver! (three Tony wins including Best Original Score) and Romeo and Juliet (classic!). Funny Girl and Romeo and Juliet did not repeat the trick for the Best Adapted Screenplay category, leaving the field clear for another Broadway smash: The Odd Couple.

Neil Simon's most famous work was a hit on the Great White Way just four years previously, winning Tonys for Best Author of a Play (back when production was designated separately from playwright), Best Actor in a Play (Walter Matthau), Best Direction of a Play (Mike Nichols) and Best Scenic Design. Funnily enough, the only category it lost was Best Play, which went to The Subject Was Roses, another '68 Oscar contender. A number of Tony-nominated shows from that year would go on to get the Hollywood treatment: Best Musical winner Fiddler on the Roof, Best Actress in a Play nominee The Owl and the Pussycat (the aforementioned Barbra replaced Diana Sands for the film), Best Featured Actor in a Musical winner Oh! What a Lovely War, (with various performers taking on Victor Spinetti's roles), and Luv, which shared Best Director and Best Scenic Design wins with The Odd Couple, as both were Mike Nichols/Oliver Smith collaborations.

Obvious, then, that the eventual winner of the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay would be a playwright recreating his Broadway success...and yet, funnily enough, he wasn't even nominated at the original Tony ceremony! Let's discuss....

Day Six: Best Supporting Actor, 1968

A rarity: not only were the supporting actor nominees of 1968 all first-timers - they were never nominated again! Sure, Gene Wilder would return as a co-writer on Young Frankenstein for Best Adapted Screenplay, but this is the only time he was recognized for his thesping, and no one else would return to this stage. Not Jack Albertson, though he found more solid fame (and three Emmys!) for Chico and the Man, and joined Wilder in the realm of cinematic immortality with Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Not Seymour Cassel, though he kept a solid career and would have buzz again for In the Soup and Rushmore. Not Daniel Massey, the Golden Globe winner - though I suppose the nomination is the reward for British character actors. And not Jack Wild, who found greater fame on the small screen in H.R. Pufnstuf...and tragedy through his long battle with alcoholism. No, these men and boy did not return for more accolades, for more praise. And indeed, only two of them received real competitive nominations throughout the season.

Daniel Massey is the only Golden Globe nominee for Best Supporting Actor to make it to the Oscars. Hugh Griffith was twice-nominated by the HFPA for his cameos in The Fixer (above, left) and Oliver! (above, right) - and I really do mean cameos; one scene per performance, though his Oliver! one is genuinely deserving of the nod. Also among the Globe honorees: Beau Bridges as a young hippie who wants to keep his wealthy family's maid at any cost in For Love of Ivy (terrific), Ossie Davis as an escaped house slave sold to a trapper in the Western comedy The Scalphunters (going by runtime and arc, he's THE LEAD, but whatever), and Martin Sheen as the son in The Subject Was Roses (also category fraud; like Ordinary People, the entire family unit works as a triptych lead).

Faces' Seymour Cassel won the National Film Critics Society award for Best Supporting Actor, beating out two other very arthouse NSFC-type titles: Dirk Bogarde as a sympathetic lawyer in The Fixer and Sydney Tafler as a Jewish gangster in The Birthday Party. Bogarde is aces in his film - hell, he's aces in all his films. Tafler's pretty good, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Patrick Magee.

That's who didn't make it. Here are the one-and-dones that did. After the jump.

The Past, This Week

This week, the Oscars of 1968 continue with the nominees for Best Supporting Actor, Best Score (Not of a Musical), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, and finally - Best Actress! The movies we'll be talking about are:

 

  

 

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Day Four: Best Actor, 1968

Do y'all know the podcast This Had Oscar Buzz, in which Joe Reid and Chris Feil "perform the autopsy" on films that "at one time or another had lofty Academy Awards aspirations, but for one reason or another, it all went wrong?" In a recent episode, Reid pointed out that they mainly cover films from the late-90s and beyond, as that period - coinciding with the domination of Miramax - is where Oscar Buzz and the Awards Season as we know it really came into its own. True! But I could not help thinking of the failed 1968 Oscar prospects of Petulia and The Boston Strangler. Neither landed a single nomination; both were early favorites for Best Actor.

Petulia's George C. Scott (as a divorcing doctor entangled with an unhappy socialite) was critically praised, even a runner-up for Best Actor honors from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. But The Boston Strangler's Tony Curtis (as the real-life serial killer who terrorized the Massachusetts capital in the early 60s) is a prime example of what Reid and Feil have in mind: in John Gregory Dunne's 20th Century Fox exposé The Studio, the Oscar campaign is discussed even during pre-production; Ebert 's uneasy review still calls Curtis's performance his best in a decade; LA Times columnist Joyce Haber predicted a nomination (according to Mason Wiley and Damien Bona's Inside Oscar); and he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama.

Oscar watchers were stunned, then, that it all came to naught, with room instead being made for NYFCC Award winner Alan Arkin, Golden Globe winners Ron Moody and Peter O'Toole, National Board of Review winner Cliff Robertson and...Alan Bates for The Fixer? Have any of you even heard of The Fixer? I hadn't before I started this project, and I have to say...well, you'll see what I have to say. After the jump.

Day Three: Song and Musical Score, 1968

Usually, I like to group the Score categories together - Musical/Adapted/Song Score with Original/Comedy or Dramatic Score - since, you know, they're sister categories. For 1968, I decided to do things a little differently and pair Musical Score with Original Song, mainly because it's only natural for there to be overlap (and there is!); even better, it saves me room on the tags.

Some great music...and some dull music! All after the jump.

Day One: Best Director, 1968

How does one judge Best Director separately from Best Picture? It's a question many awards watchers, obsessive and amateur alike, ask annually; it's especially relevant in a lineup like this one, where who wasn't nominated was just as much a talking point as who was.

I'm talking about Paul Newman, making his directorial debut with the Best Picture nominee Rachel, Rachel. Newman was up for the Directors Guild Award and won both the Golden Globe and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director. His absence was the shocker of nomination morning. Wife Joanne Woodward, herself a nominee in Best Actress for the same film, threatened to boycott the ceremony, but the good sport Newman convinced her otherwise.

Who did get in? Find out after the jump.

The Year is 1968

Tomorrow begins our journey through the cinema of 1968. In his book Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris describes 1967 as the great turning point of cinema, when New Hollywood began to definitively shove Old Hollywood for power in the arts. You still see it in 1968, with Golden Age director William Wyler's swan song Funny Girl nominated in the same ceremony as one of the ultimate acid trip movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This week, we'll look at six categories - Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Song, Best Musical Score, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Then, over the weekend, I'll have more in-depth looks at many of these nominees. They are:

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Here It Comes!

Get ready for back-to-back flashbacks on this here blog!

In July: the films of 1968. Two weeks of Oscar nominees, a week of other movies I watched, and then the grand finale - Top Ten, Nominees, two days of Hollmann Awards. Featuring Best Picture nominees:

And in August: the films of 1969! In the same format! Featuring Best Picture nominees:

 

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