The 1969 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part Two

And the final day of 1969! I've given you the Top Ten, a full roster of nominees, and nine awards already. The final nine herein, beginning with....

Best Makeup and Hairstyling 

The Damned

Mauro Gavazzi, makeup artist

Luciano Vito, hair stylist

2. Black Lizard; 3. The Comic; 4. They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; 5. Once Upon a Time in the West 

The Damned takes its aristocrats from chic to ghoulish, all in the way they apply their makeup - and how much of it they're using. Martin's drag, Sophie's increasingly painted face, the blood (God the blood) - it's all perfect.

In second, Black Lizard gives you face. In third, The Comic's early cinema pancake and convincing old age. In fourth, the dried makeup and frazzled hair on tired, sticky faces in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. In fifth, the sweat and beards of Once Upon a Time in the West. 

The rest of the show, after the jump....

The 1969 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominees!

Finally - the nominees for the 1969 Retro Hollmann Awards!

Best Director

 
Robert Altman
That Cold Day in the Park


Costa-Gavras
Z


Sergio Leone
Once Upon a Time in the West


Paul Mazursky
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice


Luchino Visconti
The Damned

25 more films in 17 more categories, after the jump!

Day Six: Best Actress, 1969

Every single nominee here was a five-for-five transfer from the Golden Globes' Best Actress in a Drama category. That has only happened one other time, in 1995: Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking), Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas), Sharon Stone (Casino), Meryl Streep (The Bridges of Madison County) and Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility). Stone won the Globe, but Sarandon won the Oscar.

If one wants to stretch it a bit, one could also count 1962, in which the Academy's lineup of Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker), Bette Davis (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), Katharine Hepburn (Long Day's Journey Into Night), Geraldine Page (Sweet Bird of Youth) and Lee Remick (Days of Wine and Roses) were also all up for the Drama Actress Golden Globe...albeit within an expanded slate of ten nominees. Page won the Globe, Bancroft the Oscar.

And in 1969, Geneviève Bujold won the Globe...while Maggie Smith won the Oscar:

The nominees, after the jump....

Further Thoughts: 1969 in Review(s)

Further thoughts on some of the 1969 films discussed earlier this week.

Alice's Restaurant

dir: Arthur Penn

pr: Hillard Elkins / Joseph Manduke

scr: Venable Herndon and Arthur Penn, from the song by Arlo Guthrie

cin: Michael Nebbia

Overall an admirable, if cautious and somewhat skeptical, attempt to humanize and sympathize with a misunderstood movement, balancing clear-eyed observations about using "freedom" and "protest" to excuse shirking your own responsibilities with criticism of the establishment's adherence to form and appearance. If only Penn could consistently pay off on the characters he introduces, or handle the tonal whiplash between the comedy of the song and the drama of his and Herndon's additions. Guthrie proves a surprisingly compelling presence on screen.

Sex, class, change, and more, after the jump..

Day One: Original Song, 1969

So we begin our journey through the Oscar-nominated films of 1969.

It's not often that one of the biggest wins of the night goes to Best Original Song, but here we are. Like "Moon River" eight years earlier, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" was an immediate phenomenon, the #4 song of 1970, and apparently, an automatic addition to the American Songbook, with at least thirteen cover versions from all over the world released within a year of the initial B.J. Thomas recording. I even remember the first time I heard it: middle school, listening to South Florida's oldies radio, Majic 102.7, hosted by the Tall Italian himself, Tom Caminiti. You've heard it, your parents have heard it, everyone knows it. It helps that it came from the number one film of the year.

The rest of the field were all future standards. My sister used to play "Jean" on the piano; Lea Salonga performs "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" as part of a Legrand-Bergman medley in her recent concert album The Story of My Life: Live from Manila; "True Grit" was as tied to Glen Campbell's legacy as "Wichita Lineman". It's a lineup of genuine hits and legends - let's take a listen.