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: 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.