The 1968 Retro Hollmann Awards, Part Two

Here it is, the concluding chapter of the 1968 Retro Hollmann Awards - and therefore, the conclusion of my look at 1968. Make sure you catch up with Part One of the awards, as well as the full list of nominations and the Top Ten. Onward...

Best Score

1. War and Peace
Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov

2. The Young Girls of Rochefort

Michel Legrand

3. Romeo and Juliet

Nino Rota

4. Rosemary's Baby

Christopher Komeda

5. Yellow Submarine

George Martin

The remaining awards - writing, directing, lead acting, Best Picture - and Original Song! - after the jump.

The 1968 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominees

You've seen the top ten (I hope - if you haven't, why not?). Now, the nominees for the 1968 Retro Hollmann Awards!

The nominees are....

Best Costume Design

   

 

Barbarella
Jacques Fonteray / Paco Rabanne

The Fixer
Dorothy Jeakins

Oliver!
Phyllis Dalton

War and Peace
Vladimir Burmeister / Nadezhda Buzina / Mikhail Chikovani / V. Vavra

The Young Girls of Rochefort
Marie-Claude Fouquet / Jacqueline Moreau

The remaining after the jump...

Top Ten of 1968

Here 'tis - my Top Ten Films of 1968! Honorable Mentions: The Boston Strangler, Bullitt, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, The Detective, The Fixer, Funny Girl, Hell in the Pacific and Hour of the Wolf.

The Battle of Algiers
dir: Gillo Pontecorvo
pr: Antonio Musu / Yacef Saadi
scr: Franco Solinas, story by Franco Solina and Gillo Pontecorvo
cin: Marcello Gatti

Much like my first viewings of Z (can't wait to revisit that next month) and 1987: When the Day Comes (my pick for 2017's Best Picture), The Battle of Algiers electrified me with its sweeping ensemble, tense action sequences, and the cat-and-mouse game played between the urban guerrilla forces and the forces of the occupying government. No one gets off scot-free: revolution is a messy, bloody business, with innocents slaughtered on all sides. And yet! This is decidely not a both sides appeasement - the condemnation of the occupying forces whose presence necessitates deadly action by people who want to be free is clear as crystal.

The remaining nine, after the jump...

Day Ten: Best Actress, 1968

Before the Moonlight / La La Land Best Picture fiasco, it was the most iconic moment in Academy Awards history. There are people who know the entire presentation by heart. It's largely regarded by Oscar Queens as Ingrid Bergman's greatest performance. See for yourselves:

So many things are happening in this story. First is Katharine Hepburn's unexpected win - having just won the previous year for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, she became that rarity: the consecutive champion (fitting, too, that the first actor to pull it off was none other than Spencer Tracy). Second is Barbra Streisand's somewhat unexpected win - I say "somewhat" because post hoc, people have accepted that her win happened because of Babs' early admission into the Academy allowed her to vote for herself, therefore leading to a tie; the implication being that it would have been Hepburn's had Streisand not been voting, ignoring the fact that consecutive wins are, as I said, rare, and Streisand was dominating the circuit all year.

Third: the total dismissal, historically, of the three other performances nominated this year, including Patricia Neal's return to film after her strokes and Joanne Woodward's reminding everyone that, yeah, she's got it. Let's give everyone their due, shall we?

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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