The 1965 Hollmann Awards: The End

The exciting conclusion to my year of 1965...

You've seen Brock Peters square off against Oskar Werner for Best Supporting Actor...

Listened to music ranging from Cat Ballou to Morituri...

Actively rooted for The Flight of the Phoenix, maybe...

And now it comes down to this -- the awards for Best Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Picture of 1965 -- including my Top Ten!

All below the jump...

The 1965 Hollmann Awards: Supporting Actor and More!

After much delay, the RETRO HOLLMANN AWARDS OF 1965 finally continue! Today, we remember that Martin Balsam won Best Supporting Actor, Thunderball was honored for Visual Effects, Darling's costumes (for black-and-white) and screenplay were declared the Best, and Doctor Zhivago added costumes (for color) to its cache of trophies -- and we determine who should have won, and indeed, who should have even been nominated. Unlike that ceremony, we will not be dividing craft categories between B&W and color; we will, however, guarantee 100% honesty in  our assessments.

My personal ballots:

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

5. Brock Peters as Rodriguez
The Pawnbroker

Leaves an impression, not just because we rarely get to see Peters in villain mode -- but because he's so damn good at it. So commanding a presence, he cannot help but dominate every scene he's in, even if it's just his voice over the phone. You can hardly blame Steiger for breaking down into tears -- Rodriguez is a son of a bitch who feels more dangerous than he already is.

4. Rod Steiger as Mr. Joyboy
The Loved One

Who knew Steiger had this in him? Creepy, ridiculous, yet somehow...not unrealistic. Mincing about yet lip-smackingly obsessed with the film's heroine, Joyboy is a creepy mama's boy, a cross between Mr. Humphries from Are You Being Served? and Francis Dolarhyde from Red Dragon. It is perhaps the most dedicated performance I've seen from Steiger.

3. John Gielgud as Sir Francis Hensley
The Loved One

A brief turn, but this is where all the heart is. Gielgud, as a somewhat absent-minded thespian facing irrelevancy, is sharp in his comic timing -- and heartbreaking in his pathos. His once-over before leaving the studio for the last time is an emotional moment, and Gielgud does not overplay his hand. And besides, he sets the plot into motion.

2. Oskar Werner as Dr. Wilhelm Schumann

Ship of Fools

From my original post: "The film's beating heart, possessing all the complications and ambiguities that the rest of the ensemble is only able to convey on the surface. Apparently it's impossible for this man not to bring out the best in all his scene partners."

1. Alec Guinness as Yevgraf
Doctor Zhivago

Another understated performance, but perhaps because he narrates and bookends the film, Guinness is more dominantly felt. He's masterful in his detached delivery, betraying some emotion on a rare occasion, and genuinely surprised by his own sentimentality. This is the performance I walked away thinking about.

Costumes, Original Screenplay, and more after the jump....

The 1965 Hollmann Awards: Ensemble & Makeup

Over the next four days, I will share my own personal ballot for the films of 1965. Because honey, this is THE RETRO HOLLMANN AWARDS OF 1965!

In addition to the 65 films I previously listed, I watched Love Has Many Faces and The Cincinnati Kid -- I still missed out on The Hill and The Knack, but you know, c'est la vie.

We start our journey with two categories that did not exist for Oscar at the time; one of them still does not. And that one is...

BEST ENSEMBLE

5. Onibaba

A small but memorable cast of characters that you'd never want to be in the same room with -- a bunch of murderers and thieves.

4. The Flight of the Phoenix

An all-male ensemble -- and what an all-male ensemble! Even the characters killed off in the opening credits fit perfectly into this sweaty world director Robert Aldrich has established. Everyone feels essential -- even if Dan Duryea isn't given much to do, I'd still miss him.

3. The Loved One

Lynn Stalmaster
Perhaps an obvious choice for this category -- star cameos, character actors in the leads, an unusual leading lady, the immensity of Allyene Gibbons, and of course, a young Paul Williams playing even younger. All making for one surreal experience.

2. Ship of Fools

From the Spanish dance troupe to the Oscar-winning vets to the young newbies to the foreign stars, there's authenticity in every one. True, there are some performances I naturally gravitated towards, but it says something that no one truly outshined each other -- a very generous ensemble.

1. Young Cassidy

Miriam Brickman
Faces you recognize are suddenly unrecognizable -- but it's not makeup doing the trick, it's the pitch-perfect performances they're all giving! You really get the smell of the time and place, and oh, if only you could toast the way Rod Taylor toasts, or throw shade the way May Craig and May Cluskey throw it. Perfection, from the star to the extras.

Makeup after the jump....

Cinema '65: Best Picture of the Year

We're all here for Best Picture, right? Let's get on with it.

Darling

***

A very modern film, cheeky and bitchy, frank and real. Does it go on a little bit? Yes -- I think the holiday in Capri lasts a little longer than necessary, and while I like the ending, it feels, to me, like it kind of just stops. Maybe because narration is sprinkled throughout, until suddenly it isn't? It feels ungrateful to complain about it, though -- great performances, thrilling direction.

Doctor Zhivago

*****

People don't talk enough about what a gas this movie is! It's not that there are great bursts of humor, but there is some wit sprinkled, no matter how dark it gets. An engaging love story, a thrilling account of war and revolution, a perfect (and consistent) bookend. Everyone's at the top of their game, from the cast to the composer to the designers.

Ship of Fools

****

Critics of the time dismissed this as a Grand Hotel on a boat; I, personally, can't believe that's considered a dismissal. Every member of the large ensemble gets a moment to shine; never once in its two-and-a-half-hour running time does it get dull.

The Sound of Music

*****

Magical. Goosebumps at the first notes....tears at "Climb Ev'ry Mountain"...and everything in between, in between. It's a perfect movie that never over-sentimentalizes itself, remembering the realities of the world it inhabits and sticking them in when you least expect it. And it has one of the greatest performances in a movie-musical.

A Thousand Clowns

**

Though it tries to open itself up, it cannot escape its stage roots. That's not a problem in and of itself; the problem is that it's just not interesting. Despite a fine and convincing ensemble, it's a very written piece, with the sort of tiresome characters you would never even want to identify with. Director and ensemble make a valiant effort, but this is a dud.

----------------------------

The Academy voted for The Sound of Music....and damn it to hell, I vote for...

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

Because perfection is undeniable...though I confess there are two correct answers to this conundrum.

Over the next week, I'll reveal my personal picks for the year of 1965. Stay tuned....

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Cinema '65: The Model and La Condesa

A pretty groovy race, this, with reigning champion Julie Andrews facing off against new discovery Julie Christie -- plus Oscar winner Simone Signoret in a semi-supporting role, Cannes-honored Samantha Eggar, and newcomer Elizabeth Hartman!

Eighty percent of this lineup was up for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama, at the Golden Globes. Eggar won there, also; the only Drama nominee not to make it in here was Maggie Smith for Othello, though she wound up in Supporting, if you recall. I still think it's interesting that Christie's Globe nom was for Darling and not Doctor Zhivago. Oh, of course, Darling was her star-making role, but the Globes were quite big on Zhivago. It's worth noting, too, that the Globes have often given two slots to one actress, and she was honored for both performances by the National Board of Review.

Julie Andrews, of course, won the Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical -- a cakewalk, really, since the competition consisted of Barbara Harris fussing about in A Thousand Clowns, Natalie Wood almost-but-not-quite-convincingly playing a fifteen-year-old in Inside Daisy Clover, and Jane Fonda ably taking on the lead in Cat Ballou -- but let us recall, it's a pre-respectability Jane Fonda. Rita Tushingham was nominated for The Knack...and How to Get It, but I did not see it and so cannot comment.

Andrews, Tushingham, and Smith (nominated for Young Cassidy) lost to Christie when they went up against her for Best British Actress at the BAFTAs -- yes, it would another three years before the Brits allowed their countrymen to compete with foreigners in single categories. The Foreign Actress lineup was something else -- Fonda for Cat Ballou, Signoret for Ship of Fools, Lila Kedrova for Zorba the Greek (she won the Supporting Actress Oscar the previous year), and the winner (!)....Patricia Neal in In Harm's Way! A worthy honoree.

In the end, Christie proved unstoppable -- in addition to all her other plaudits, she went home with the Academy Award.

But did she deserve it? Let's talk about it:

Cinema '65: The Novelists and the Playwright

Shall I repeat yesterday's joke? Oh, why not!

Get your library card! It's Best Adapted Screenplay time after the jump!

Cinema '65: The Brother and the Revolutionary

Sometimes the nominees for Best Supporting Actor are honest to God character actors in supporting roles, instead of character actors in leading roles (J.K. Simmons in Whiplash), or A-Listers "slumming" it in character roles (Bradley Cooper in American Hustle). The year 1965 is almost there, but Oscar will be Oscar, and so...

I always do a DDL Test with supporting actor nominees -- if Daniel Day-Lewis played it, would it still be supporting? In the case of Frank Finlay as Iago in Othello, I think not; otherwise, though, most definitely. And he'd probably win each time, too.

Everyone here was on their first nomination -- though at the time, Martin Balsam felt his nomination was also due to his being "snubbed" for Breakfast at Tiffany's. Maybe he was right -- certainly enough goodwill and excitement had built up around him, and he walked away with the Oscar.

He's better with a mustache, I think

As for the others -- Michael Dunn becomes the first Little Person (I believe) nominated for an Oscar, Ian Bannen's double duty in The Flight of the Phoenix and The Hill nets him a nod for the former, Tom Courtenay lands the first of two career nominations so far (perhaps 45 Years will change things?), and Frank Finlay is nominated, too.

After the jump.

Cinema '65: A Patch of Blue, A Scale of Grey

The War! It happened in black-and-white! At least, that's the way Oscar preferred looking at it, with three war films nominated in Cinematography; the other two contenders were a leading-up-to-the-War film and a social issues drama. Well, OK, I suppose they were both social issues dramas, but only one of them had Nazis.

So, what have we got? In Harm's Way, Otto Preminger's epic about Navy men and women in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. King Rat, Bryan Forbes' dark comedy about the hustle in a POW camp. Morituri, Bernhard Wicki's thriller about a saboteur aboard a German shipping boat. A Patch of Blue, Guy Green's blind girl-meets-black boy romance. Ship of Fools, Stanley Kramer's ensemble drama about humanity, baby, which went home with the Oscar.

What's happening here, Ernie?

But what do I make of all of it? Glad you asked.

Cinema '65: The Spy and the Gunslinger

A comic performance dominating the year? Strange but true: Lee Marvin's role as a drunken gunman and his evil nose-less brother in the western spoof Cat Ballou won Best Actor honors from the National Board of Review, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the Berlin Film Festival -- oh, and the Academy.

Humbled

It's a rare moment for an industry that famously undervalues comedy. Especially since most of the other nominees went unrecognized the rest of the year. Richard Burton -- nominated at the Oscars for Becket the year previous -- won Best British Actor at the BAFTAs...but for the next year, and winning for both The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Oskar Werner was nominated at the Golden Globes, but he was getting more attention for his supporting performance in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Rod Steiger, at least, was nominated for a Globe and won for the previous year's Berlin Film Festival -- his was the critical darling.

Then there was Laurence Olivier in blackface, which showed up nowhere else.

And what did I make of it all? After the jump, please.

Cinema '65: A POW Camp and a Suicide Hotline

The nominees for Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration (hyphen city over here) consist of a war film, a social drama, a Cold War thriller, a shipboard ensemble, and The Slender Thread.

In King Rat, a POW camp in Southeast Asia, more or less permitted to run itself with little interference from the Japanese camp commandants, becomes the setting for a dark comedy survival -- not just physical, but psychological. George Segal is the king of the title, a soldier who has never been more powerful and influential than he is as a hustler and black marketeer in the camp.

A Patch of Blue follows a blind white girl who lives with her perpetually drunk grandfather and abusive, shrill, racist mother. She escapes, when she can, to the park -- where she meets and falls for a black man, a writer, who treats her with kindness -- played by Sidney Poitier. It's the annual Film with a Social Conscience, but it's by no mean the only one -- look, too, to fellow nominee Ship of Fools, about passengers on a boat heading for Germany from Vera Cruz, which explores class, race, prejudice in general, Anti-Semitism in particular, sex...the whole human experience.

Poitier also stars in The Slender Thread, playing a student (!) working at a suicide prevention center in Seattle; Anne Bancroft plays a caller who has just taken an overdose of barbiturates. If memory serves, the film plays out in real time, and is quite thrilling to experience -- and it's always a pleasant surprise to see contemporary-set films nominated in craft categories. Apparently, it takes a Poitier to bring attention to such films.

Rounding out the list is The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, one of those sophisticated, slow, highly-watchable John le Carre Cold War thrillers in which spy Richard Burton goes over the Berlin Wall to...but no. Best to just watch the whole thing unfold yourself.

The nominees, after the jump....