Year in Review: 2009

To end this series, I decided to revisit 2009 – which I had already posted a top 10 list for back in January. Has it changed? Yes, because I decided to move a film that I was going to consider for 2010 back to 2009. It was nominated for the Foreign Language Film Oscar last year, and as such, is not eligible for anything else this year (due to restrictions, it wasn’t eligible for anything by Foreign last year). Other than that, this is the same list. But I felt the need to post it, if for no other reason than for completeness sake. Now that the series is done, I think I will continue to post a rethought list near the end of the following year – because sometimes once the dust as settled, you get a better chance to view the films.

10. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)
There isn't much left to do with the alien invasion genre - or at least I didn't think there was until I saw Neill Blomkamp's wholly original movie. The setting is South Africa, where an alien spaceship has broken down and its inhabitants have come down to earth. They are treated like crap, shoved into makeshift shanty towns, derided by everyone, who wants them gone. Sharlton Copley gives a wonderful performance as an unprepared government bureaucrat, who is charged with moving the aliens to an even worse place, and doesn't expect what he gets. The movie has a documentary feel in its opening scenes - brilliantly handled with special effects that fit in naturally with its surrondings. And the climax is one of the best action sequences in recent memory. District 9 is a science fiction film that has a larger outlook than most in the genre - and that adds weight to the proceedings. Yet, for me, this is first and foremost a film about Copley's character, and his tragic downfall. A brilliant debut film - I expect big things from Copley in the future.

9. Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
Lars von Trier is, by all accounts, an asshole in real life - which is why many actors refuse to work with him more than once. Yet, for all his experiments in style, all his preteniousness, he is still a vital, original filmmaker. Antichrist represents von Trier at his most far out. It is a film about a married couple - Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourgh, reeling after the death of their infant son (shot in stunning black and white for the opening scene, which is contrasted by the two of them fucking). He, a doctor, takes her to their cabin in the woods and tries to "cure" her of her depression - which doesn't go well. The film is a study in abject pain and cruelty - he is cruel to her mentally, and she in turn is cruel to him physically, leading to a confrontation. The film mixes genres - throwing in horror with psychological drama and others. The performances are brilliant - especially Charlotte Gainsbourgh who undeniably gives the bravest performance of the year, and also one of the best. You may end up hating Antichrist - but it is a film that demands to be seen.

8. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
The films of Wes Anderson have always had a slightly animated feel to them, so it was probably only a matter of time before he made an actual animated film. This allows Anderson to indulge himself in things like costume design and art direction like he never has before, and also gives him complete control over every aspect of the film. Yet, while to some this may be stifling, I think it actually freed Anderson up a little bit. His films before this hadn't hit the heights of Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, but with this film, he has made one of his absolute best. It doesn't matter that the film is animated - or about talking animals - this really isn't a family film (although I think kids will enjoy it, even if the wonderful animation isn't quite what the expect), but a film about a dysfunctional family. I have no idea what Anderson's father was really like, but his film fathers are usually distant and cruel - and Mr. Fox here is no exception. When Mrs. Fox berates him for what he has done, and claws at him, it is a painful scene full of honesty and heartbreak. Yes, it's animated, yet it is still a stunning portrait of family dysfunction by a director whose has made it his obsession.

7. Up (Pete Docter)
Pixar may just be the most consistent creative force in American movies right now. Even when they make a film not up to their standards - Cars, A Bug's Life - they are still quite good. And when they get everything right - like in Up - they make animated masterpieces. Up is a strange film about a sad old man, who lost his wife (in a heartbreaking, tear inducing introduction that recalls their life together) and now just wants to be left alone. But they want to take his house away from him - so he ties a bunch of balloons on to it and takes off - unwittingly taking a small child with him on his adventure. The film hits all the right notes, even though it changes tone quite frequently - it is potent study in loss and redemption, a hilarious comedy and a thrilling adventure and action film. While it may not be quite the film that Wall-E was in 2008 (or Toy Story 3 in 2010 for that matter) Up is still Pixar at its best.

6. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
Audiences do not want to see movies about the Iraq war. None of them have made all that much money, perhaps because America is still mired in the war there, and audiences crave escape. But they should - and I think have, at least on DVD - see The Hurt Locker, a film that drains the politics out of the film, and simply looks at one bomb squad going about their last month of duty before being sent home. They get a new leader in Jeremy Renner, who is an adrenline junkie - he loves the rush of defusing a bomb, and takes unncessary risks. The other two just want to get home. This is the best film of Kathryn Bigelow's career - that strangely for a female director has mainly focused on wounded masculinity. She is a great director, and the action and thriller sequences in the film are as good as any I have seen in war movie. But there is a deeper level here - and that is what makes The Hurt Locker the one film about the Iraq war that must be seen.

5. Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are was criticized by some for not being a kids movie, even though it is based on a beloved children's book and stars a bunch of large creatures. While its true that this film is likely too slow for children, I don't think that's a criticism of the film - which really is a movie about childhood, not a movie for children. The little boy at the center of this film is going through a hard time - his parents are divorced, his mother is dating again, he has no real friends, and his older sister won't hang out with him anymore. He runs off after an argument, and finds himself in a strange land populated by "wild things" - each one representing a different facet of his life and imagination. The movie takes place in the mind of a confused child - one that is fighting his feelings of abandonment and hurt, and his budding sexuality that he doesn't understand. The film is also, it must be said, very entertaining and tremendously directed by Spike Jonze - who I think has made the best film of his career here. This is a funny, sad great movie about what childhood is really like.

4. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
Michael Haneke never makes it easy for his audiences. In Funny Games, he literally punishes his audience with what he puts on the screen - in Cache in implicates his French audience in the guilt of his protaganist. In The White Ribbon, he has made a film about the birth of fascism, as seen in a small German town just before WWI. The adults in the town - who all indentified by their jobs - impose a strict, absolutist moral code on the children - and then are shocked when the children hold them to the same standards. Shot in brilliant, beautiful black and white, The White Ribbon is not as shocking violent as some of Haneke's films - and isn't quite as good as Cache - but it is still a masterpiece by one of the boldest filmmakers in the world today.

3. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet is a film about a teenage Muslim who goes to jail a naïve young man, and comes out a career criminal. When he arrives, he is a loner, an outsider who doesn’t fit in with any of the groups – not even the other Muslims, who beat him up for his shoes. He is embraced by the Corsicans, who operate like the Mafia, not because they like him – they don’t – but because they need him to murder someone that they cannot get close to. This murder, early in the film, sets the tone – it is brutal, bloody, violent and messy. It doesn’t come off like most movie murders, but has the messiness of real life violence. The young man sits back and observes what he sees around him – just like we sit back and observe him – until he is ready to make his move. Jacques Audiard has been an accomplished director for a while now, but in this movie he takes things to another level – his film is violent and sweeping, encompassing politics, identity issues alongside its prison movie structure – which is also different than most prison movies we see – no one here is looking for redemption. They are violent men. At the heart of the movie is a remarkable performance by Tahr Rahim, who subtlety transforms himself as the movie progresses – from that young man who shakes when he kills his first man, to the confident criminal who leaves the prison years later. In its own way, A Prophet is a rather profound tragedy – the story of a young man who has wasted his life, and has so much more of it to waste.

2. A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
The Coen Brothers are the best directing team in history - and among the most original filmmakers in the world right now. A Serious Man is one of their very best films - a strange, dark comedy about a Jewish phsyics professor in 1960s Minnesota who is being tested like no one since Job. His family life is falling apart, because his wife wants a divorce to marry his friend - who is one of those infuriatingly calm people who just wants to talk about his feelings. His professional life could also be in tatters, as his tenure is up for review. At each stage in the film, he is given one moral test after another, and struggles to come up with the right answers - going to see three rabbis who are, of course, no help at all. When he finally relents, finally gives in and makes a bad moral choice - it brings on the Apocalypse. A Serious Man is a brilliant, bold dark comedy from the Coen brothers - filmmakers who make whatever the hell they want to.

1. Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
Quentin Tarantino is like no other filmmaker in history. You can't really call his films original, as they are inspired by so much of cinema past, and yet he makes films like no one else would even dare. To me, Inglorious Basterds is his masterpiece - his most fully realized film, where his love of language and cinema are ingrained in the narrative like none of his other films. It opens with one of the best scenes ever put on film, as Jew hunting Nazi Christophe Waltz, questions a farmer he thinks is hiding Jews. The sequence is so brilliantly written, directed (with a great nod to Hitchcock) and performed by Waltz, that it is masterpiece in and of itself. The rest of the film - told in various chapters - are just as good though, as Tarantino weaves his complex, masterful alternate history and multiple storylines together until it all comes to a brilliant climax at, where else, a movie theater. To reference another Tarantino film, Inglorious Basterds is like a shot of adrenline - brilliant, bold, original and completely unique. Tarantino's best film, and one of the very best of the decade.

Just Missed The Top 10: Avatar (James Cameron), Bad Lieutentant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog), Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi), An Education (Lone Scherfig), 500 Days of Summer (Marc Webb), The Informant (Steven Soderbergh), In the Loop (Armando Ianucci), The Messenger (Oren Moverman), Passing Strange (Spike Lee), Police Adjective (Cristi Puiu), Public Enemies (Michael Mann), The Road (John Hillcoat), Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa), Up in the Air (Jason Reitman).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
I remember seeing The Hurt Locker at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival and thinking that it was a great film that would never get seen by anyone. After all, Iraq war films had all tanked at the box office - and this included films with big names, not one starring Jeremy Renner in the lead role. So it made me very happy in 2010 that the film got embraced by critics and awards groups - and although it remains the lowest grossing Best Picture winner ever, I have heard from more and more people who have seen and loved the film on DVD. It had pretty much the perfect campaign strategy by going all David vs. Goliath against Avatar, and the Academy made the right call by giving it to this film. True, I would have loved to see Tarantino or the Coens win the big prize this year, I won’t complain too much.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Jeff Bridges is one of the best actors of his generation, and with Crazy Heart he picked up his fifth Oscar nomination since 1971, and he had yet to win. His work in Crazy Heart is the reason to see the film. It is a fairly standard country music movie about a washed up, alcoholic singer who finds a second chance when he cleans up his act. The music, written by T. Bone Burnett is great, and he gets some good support from Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell, but Bridges really is the whole show here. He is great in a movie that is merely good. Out of the nominees, I would have given the Oscar to Jeremy Renner for his work in The Hurt Locker, and would have loved to have seen the ridiculously great Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant got a nomination, but how can you really complain about Bridges finally winning an Oscar?

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Sandra Bullock’s win for The Blind Side caught a lot of flak from many critics and film buffs for a number of reasons. First, Bullock has never really been known as a great actress - she has spent most of her career doing mediocre romantic comedies. And the film itself, although a HUGE hit (I mean really, how many straight dramas make $250 million? Answer - none). I myself thought the movie was pretty good for what it was - not great by any means, but okay and I don’t think Bullock deserved to win, or even be nominated, so I’m not going to defend it too much. But I will say that Bullock was miles better than fellow nominees Helen Mirren, who was WAY too far over the top in The Last Station, and she was at least as good as Meryl Streep’s wildly over praised performance in Julie and Julia. Yes, the youngsters Gaborey Sidibe and especially Carey Mulligan deserved to win - but considering the Academy completely ignored truly great work like Charlotte Gainsbourgh in Antichrist and Tilda Swinton in Julia, what did we really expect?

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Christophe Waltz, Inglorious Basterds
Christophe Waltz’s work in Inglorious Basterds is, in my opinion anyway, far and away the best performance of the year. Even if his performance was nothing more than the first scene in the movie - where he goes back and forth between French, German and English while questioning a man he thinks is hiding Jews in his house - he would have deserved this award. But the performance goes much further than that. Waltz is perhaps the vilest, most memorable movie Nazi in history. A masterful performance in a truly great movie. There was some other decent work this year - particularly Woody Harrelson in The Messenger - but Waltz was still the best by far.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, Precious
There are some performances that seemingly come out of nowhere. If you asked me at the beginning of 2009 if Mo’Nique would win an Oscar this year, I would have laughed. There is nothing in her background that would suggest that she was capable of delivering this type of performance. But as the title character's monstrous mother, Mo’Nique is truly amazing. I’m sure most people will remember her profanity spewing rants early in the film, but it really it her masterful final scene, where we start to understand what makes this woman tick, that earned her this award. Whether or not Mo’Nique turns this into a more sustained acting career remains to be seen - but no matter what, she earned this Oscar.

Year in Review: 1969

I’ll admit it – I ran out of time. When I started this series, I thought I’d be done by the end of the summer, which was perfect because from the Toronto Film Festival on, I pretty much spend my movie watching time catching up with as many films as I can from the current year. But it didn’t happen that way. This is perhaps the weakest list I have done, and that’s only because I didn’t have enough time to catch up with some of the movies I have missed from this year. Still, having said that, aside from number 10 – which is still a wonderful little movie – having to bump any of the top 9 out would have been hard – and I find it next to impossible to believe that anything could dethrone my number 1 film – which is one of my all time favorites.

10. Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen)
Take the Money and Run is the first real film directed by Woody Allen – after his strange redubbing work on What’s Up Tiger Lily? It is one of the films that Allen would later reference in Stardust Memories when he had people repeatedly come up to him and tell him that they liked his earlier, funnier films. Take the Money and Run is almost pure slapstick, with Allen great in the role of a bungling thief and his various escapades. The film is very early mockumentary, one of the first really, showing that Allen, even early in his career, was not adverse to taking chances. The film is hilarious pretty much from start to finish. No, I do not consider it to be one of Allen’s best films, but it’s a great comedy nonetheless.

9. Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper)
You could make the case that if you wanted to include just one movie that encapsulates the 1960s, that Easy Rider should be that movie. It has certainly aged quite a bit in the 40 years since it was released, yet if you watch it in the spirit in which it was intended, it is still quite effective. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda pretty much did this themselves - they wrote the screenplay together, Hopper directed and they play the two hippie bikers on their cross country journey trying to complete a drug deal. They get a nice assist from Jack Nicholson, in his first great performance, as a young lawyer who admires them and their dropping out. The film has a wonderful visual flair - perfectly suited for the material, especially in that extended graveyard sequence. The two may not quite seem like the innocent, martyred heroes they did in the 1960s (they are drug dealers after all), but the film is still an excellent example of its era.

8. The Damned (Luchino Visconti)
Luchino Visconti’s The Damned looks at Germany during the rise of the Nazis as a country already diseased – the Nazis just gave them excuse to come out of the closet as it were. It concentrates on a wealthy industrial family, whose patriarch openly detests the Nazis – although he is quickly killed and his son framed for the crime so that a distant relative – pro-Nazi – can come in and run the company the way he sees fit. Visconti’s films always had an undercurrent of homoeroticism, but here he lets it run wild – with its portrayal of the sexual deviant and child molester by Helmet Berger, and of course the infamous Night of the Long Knives sequence, with devolves into a homosexual orgy, and blood bath. Visconti, once he abandoned his neo-realist roots – was a fan of over the top movies like this one, and here he revels in decadence and moral decay. It may not be his best film, but it is one you are likely never to forget once you’ve seen it.

7. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Ronald Neame)
The British boarding school drama has been a staple of English cinema pretty much since its infancy – with lots of great examples from the earliest year’s right up to this year’s Never Let Me Go. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is one of the best, and one of the most original, of the group. Maggie Smith delivers an excellent performance – perhaps her best – in the title role as a woman who loves her “girls” and has already mapped out their futures for them before they even have a chance to decide for themselves. But not all of these girls are willing to go along with her plans – some of which involve one of the girls to become a lover of an older artist. Pamela Franklin gives a performance almost the equal of Smith’s as the most fiery and independent of the films, even though what she really longs for is for Miss Brodie to see her the way she sees another of her classmates. The ending packs an emotional wallop in this wonderful little film.

6. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Sydney Pollack)
I can’t think of another film quite like Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? It is a film set during the great depression, but it had resonance in the 1960s, and perhaps even more so today. The film is about a marathon dance competition that goes on for weeks on end, where the dancers have to keep dancing for 50 minutes every hour. The last couple standing will share $1,500. Gradually, we get to know the contestants – the miserable Jane Fonda, the sympathetic Michael Sarrazin, the upbeat Red Buttons, the diva Susannah York and the farmhand Bruce Dern among them. They are presided over by the excellent Gig Young, who acts as emcee, as mercilessly mocks the contestants, and holds up their weaknesses for ridicule. This is a fascinating film – sometimes funny, but ultimately quite tragic – especially at the end when the title snaps into focus.

5. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of the most entertaining Westerns you are probably ever going to see. The film coasts along on the charms of its stars – Paul Newman and Robert Redford, not the mention Katherine Ross. Butch is the leader of his ragtag group of outlaws that rob trains in the West, and Sundance is his right hand man – a kid yes, but quicker on the draw than anyone else. When Ross is introduced, as Sundance’s girlfriend, the movie really gets moving – as the three of them have such a natural chemistry together that is impossible not get swept along with them. The screenplay, by William Goldman, is witty and funny all the way through, and Newman and Redford make the most of their roles – from the moment up on that cliff when they have to jump, to the finale when they go out in a blaze of glory. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is not a deep film in any way – it’s pure cinematic pleasure, and on that level it is one of the best ever made.

4. Midnight Cowboy (John Scheslinger)
Midnight Cowboy was seen as quite daring back in 1969 - because of its sexual content it was rated X. Watching it today, it seems fairly tame - and the film has certainly dated a little bit. But the film is still a wonderful one, about the strange relationship in New York between two unlikely friends. Jon Voight plays the small town, Texas boy who comes to New York with the hope of becoming a gigolo. Dustin Hoffman is the inventively named Ratso Rizzo, the streetwise veteran, who takes Voight in. Together, they move through New York city, both full of false bravado and confidence, but really quite sad, lonely and pathetic. By the end of the movie, they realize all they have Is each other - and on that bus, heading for Florida and the hope of a better life, you can’t help but hope they’ll make it - the whole time knowing full well that they don’t have a chance.

3. If… (Lindsay Anderson)
I remarked that earlier that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is one of my favorite British Boarding school dramas – Lindsay Anderson’s If, which is a completely different film on every level, may just be my favorite. It stars Malcolm McDowell in his first screen role, gives an excellent performance as the films antihero – one of the few boys in his class who rebels against the norm at his school, which constantly gets him in trouble. McDowell, and his friends, are constantly beaten down by authority, until the almost surreal finale – in which they find a cache of automatic weapons, and decide to fight back. Anderson was always a daring, innovative filmmaker, and you can see that in the way he shoots this film – which is completely unexpected (although it was later revealed some of the stylistic innovations and transgressions had more to do with money than anything else, they work brilliantly in the movie). If is a strange film – a film very much of its time and place – and yet one that still resonates today, more than 40 years later.

2. Army of Shadows (Jean Pierre Melville)
It took nearly 40 years for Jean Pierre Melville’s masterpiece about the French resistance to get a North American release – but it was worth the wait and it truly is the master filmmakers greatest achievement. The film is a stark, honest and exciting view of the French resistance during WWII – somehow portraying the members as heroes, but not making their lives seem glamorous. The performances in the movie are excellent, especially considering how stoic the actors have to be – the standout being Simone Signoiret’s great work, which ends with a scene that is tragic, and perhaps a little pathetic. But the real star of the film is Melville and his direction, and he keeps his complex story moving along at a brisk pace, never letting up for more than two hours. Melville, the great filmmaker behind such films as Bob La Flambeur and Le Samorai, made his best film with this one.

1. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
The Wild Bunch may just be the greatest Western ever made - and it came at the perfect time. The classic Western can become stagnate and rather dull, and although Leone had tried something new with the spaghetti western, we needed a film like The Wild Bunch- which finalized de-romanticized the Western completely. This is not a film with good guys and bad guys - everyone is rotten to the core, and in that final gun battle - the greatest in screen history without a doubt - everyone is shot - women, children - it doesn’t matter. Bullets don’t discriminate. Sam Peckinpah is perhaps the best of all directors in dealing with violence, and here he makes his masterpiece. He is aided greatly by his cast of aging Hollywood stars - particularly William Holden as the leader of the Bunch, and Robert Ryan as a former member who realizes before the rest of them that their time has passed, and switches side - and because of it, at the end of the movie, he is all by himself - a man who has outlived his friends, and his time. This is an absolute masterpiece.

Notable Films Missed: Antonio Das Mortes (Glauber Rocha), The Color of Pomengranite (Sergei Parajanov), Days and Nights in the Forest (Sayajit Ray), Hello Dolly (Gene Kelly), The Milky Way (Luis Bunel), My Night at Mauds (Erich Rohmer), The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman), Satyricon (Federico Fellini), Tom Tom the Piper’s Son (Ken Jacobs), The Wild Child (Francois Truffaut), Z (Costa-Gravas).

Oscar Winner – Picture & Director: Midnight Cowboy (John Scheslinger)
What a daring choice this was in 1969. This was the first, and still only, film ever to be Rated X to win the Best Picture Oscar. Perhaps the previous year’s winner – the lumbering, dull giant that was Oliver – made the Academy realize how out of date they were, so this year to assert their relevancy, they picked a popular critics movie, but a new generation filmmaker starring two up and coming stars. Out of the nominees, it certainly was the best. I feel kind of sad that Midnight Cowboy has aged a bit – even in the decade it has been since I have first seen the film – because it was such a daring film in 1969 – and remains one of my favorite winners – even if it isn’t necessary one of the best.

Oscar Winner – Actor: John Wayne, True Grit
I have been known to insult True Grit, but the truth is, it is a pretty solid B Western. It is nothing all that special – and the little girl in it annoys me to no end – but what it does, it does fairly well. If John Wayne had not won an Oscar for the film, then it would be largely forgotten today. But Wayne did win. It is clear that it was a sympathy win – he had just been diagnosed with cancer, and the Academy had only nominated him once before, despite the fact that he was biggest star in Hollywood. Wayne deserved an Oscar – his performances in films like Red River, The Searchers and Rio Bravo can attest to that. True Grit is nowhere near a great movie, but it’s pretty decent. There is a great movie lurking in that source material though – so let’s hope the Coen’s pull it off in the remake later this year.

Oscar Winner – Actress: Maggie Smith, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Maggie Smith really is quite excellent in this film. She is prim and proper, the perfect school teacher for an all girls school, who is really quite a bit more warped then anyone suspects. She thinks she knows everything, maps out her girls futures for them, and then is somewhat shocked when they do not all want to follow her plan blindly. I have seen many British Boarding school movies, but The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie remains one of my favorites – and the principle reason for that is Smith’s excellent performance in the lead role.

Oscar Winner – Supporting Actor: Gig Young, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Gig Young is excellent as the evil emcee who delights in poking fun at all the contestants in his marathon dance competition. They are nothing to him, beneath his dignity, so he lets go a tirade of insults at them. He is dripping with evil, and yet this is not just an one dimensional performance. Young never lets his guard down, but he allows his character to show us more than perhaps he wants to. A great character actor, in one of his best performances.

Oscar Winner – Supporting Actress: Goldie Hawn, Cactus Flower
Cactus Flower was not an original movie even back in 1969. It was a warmed over story about a middle aged dentist (Walter Matthau) who tells his young hottie girlfriend (Goldie Hawn) that he’s married in the hopes of keeping their relationship casual. It doesn’t work, and he finds he needs to get a fake wife to get rid of Hawn – so he enlists the help of his nurse, Ingrid Bergman. It is a classic comedy of errors, and not one that is overly terrific – but it is made immensely enjoyable because of the three leads, all of whom are wonderful. Goldie Hawn is the classic supporting actress winner – young, hot, funny – and so she won an Oscar for her gloriously ditzy performance, while the other two, who are equally as good, didn’t even get nominated. Oh well. I can’t say this is one of the best Oscar wins in history, but Hawn is enjoyable in the film, so I won’t complain too much.

Year in Review: 1971

1971 is one of my favorite movie years for many reasons – one is that any of the top 3 films could easily be the number one film of the year, it really is that close. But there is a lot of great work throughout this year.

10. The Hospital (Arthur Hiller)
The Hospital is a very strange film indeed. It starts out as a farce, with George C. Scott as the Chief of Staff of a hospital where his staff start dying because of the incompetence of the other staff, and the only person who seems to take their job seriously is the woman who has to collect all the insurance information from the patients. Scott hardly cares – he’s left his wife, hates his son, and is planning on committing suicide as soon as he sobers up enough to actually go through with it. The film starts out at such a madcap pace, you wonder how it can possibly sustain it – and of course it doesn’t. Halfway through the film Diana Rigg shows up – an eccentric younger woman who is there with her father, but she wants to check him out so they can return to the desert. The sequence that makes the film so good is the long, dark, lonely night the two of them spend together, telling each other their stories which contains some of Paddy Chayevsky’s best writing. Yes, the film is admittedly uneven, and the ending, although kind of inspired and unexpected, doesn’t quite work, but The Hospital is a daring little film and one of the more interesting ones of this year.

9. Little Murders (Alan Arkin)
Little Murders is a pretty much forgotten film – I would never have even heard of it if Roger Ebert had not featured it on his website as an “Overlooked DVD of the Week”. It is a sad, tragic, violent little film about people driven to insanity simply because they live in New York. Elliot Gould gives one of his best performances as a photographer who gets beat up a lot. He meets and marries Marcia Rodd, the woman who saves him from muggers, and is introduced to her eccentric family. The film is a satire, but a dark one – one that never really lets loose, but remains contained, trapping its characters, and by extension the audience, in its insular, violent little world. Eventually, the film will erupt into violence, but most of its movie is low key mayhem. The acting is inspired – not just by the leads but by the entire cast, including Donald Sutherland’s hilarious cameo as a new age preacher, and Arkin’s own cameo as a cop. Little Murders is a one of a kind film – entirely self contained, and sad, tragic and hilarious.

8. Dirty Harry (Don Siegal)
Dirty Harry was heavily criticized when it came out as being a fascist film. Led by Pauline Kael, many critics deplored what the film stood for – essentially that it is a film that glamorized a violent, perhaps even sociopathic cop, who tortures criminals to get a confession, all wrapped up in a thriller package to satisfy the public’s bloodlust. I’m not really going to argue against that (she did kind of have a point), but I will say that I love Dirty Harry just the same. It is one of Clint Eastwood’s most iconic roles – and set the standard for cop movies (and later TV shows, especially something like The Shield) for decades to come. The film reflects a certain attitude in America – that the Bill of Rights is used by the most sick, twisted individuals to get away with anything and people are tired of it. That’s why we admire Dirty Harry – even if he is a violent sociopath – because on a certain level we agree with him. This is intense, gritty filmmaking, exciting as a thriller, and thought provoking as a film about violence.

7. Klute (Alan J. Pakula)
Klute is a thriller, but what I admire about it isn’t so much of the thriller elements, but the performance and the character that Jane Fonda plays. In fact, I’m not sure I could outline the plot in any detail, but I will never forget her performance. It is tough, cynical, intelligent performance where Fonda plays Bree, a prostitute who is being targeted by some sort of madman. Donald Sutherland plays the cop who is trying to solve the case. Fonda’s Bree does not have a heart of gold, and she is not really portrayed as a victim either – she is, in fact, very proud of the work she does meeting the needs of her clients. The relationship between Fonda and Sutherland, who plays a square, suburban cop, out of his depth, and yet caring towards her, is what makes the film as good as it is. Sure, the thriller elements are there, but it is Sutherland, and especially Fonda that make Klute a classic.

6. Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols)
Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge is about two men who find that the real women in their lives cannot match the fantasy women who exist only in their heads. I think many men, and women for that matter, go through this early in their life – they have an idealized version of the opposite sex in their heads, and when the person that they’re with turns out to be, well human, they are disappointed. The tragedy of the movie is that unlike many people, the two men at the center of this movie never outgrow this. They continue trying to find the woman they have in their head. Jack Nicholson gives one of his great performances here as one of the men – the smoother of the two, who can talk women into anything. His scenes with Ann-Margaret, which at times verges on downright cruelty on his part, are the best in the film. He ends up impotent, trying in vein with a prostitute (Rita Moreno). Art Garfunkel is not quite up to his level – how could he be – but he is quite good as well, and a man who deludes himself well into middle age (when he starts dating a 17 year old, and says “in many ways, she’s older than me”, he’s not wrong, but that’s only because he still acts like a teenager). Candice Bergen gives the other fine performance in the film – of Garnfunkel’s first wife, who finally has enough of him. Carnal Knowledge is a painful film, but that pain comes from a place that is all too real.

5. The French Connection (William Friedkin)
Along with Dirty Harry, The French Connection really did set the modern standard for cop movies. Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) is a little like Dirty Harry – on that he is capable of great violence, becomes obsessed with his case, and is perhaps a little crazy himself. He is also what centers this movie – as he really is the only three dimensional character in it. It is a great performance by Hackman – gritty, realistic, intense, violent, a man of action who will do whatever it takes to win. The storyline about a drug dealer (Fernando Rey) is almost besides the point – what matters is the action, masterfully filmed by William Friedkin, including one of the best car chases of all time – and Hackman’s intensity in the lead role. To a certain extent, time has dulled some of the impact the film must have had at the time – after all, isn’t Andy Sipowitz from NYPD Blue at least a little like Doyle – but the film remains an exciting, tense action thriller with just a little bit more going on than we normally see.

4. Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs was incredibly controversial when it was released, and remains so today. It is, to me anyway, along with The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, one of the three movies that makes Peckinpah a master filmmaker dealing with violence. The film stars Dustin Hoffman as an American intellectual who moves with his new wife (Susan George) to her small, British hometown. They have a house out in the country, and Hoffman immediately runs afoul of the more rough men in town – including his wife’s ex-boyfriend. The most controversial scene in the film, is also one of the best – most complex. In it, George’s ex breaks into the house with the intention of raping her – she puts up resistance, but as the scene progresses, it really does seem like she’s enjoying it. It is mark of how great George’s performance is that she is able to convey such complex emotions during a rape sequence – which is the films hardest scene to watch, even harder than the orgy of blood that ends the film. I don’t necessarily agree with much of what the film is saying about violence, but the film works because it forces the audience to confront that violence head on – in a way to participate in the violence in a way that left me shaken and disturbed. Straw Dogs is certainly not an easy move to watch – but to me it is a vital, courageous and endlessly thought provoking one.

3. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is a violent masterpiece – a film that presents us with a teenager named Alex (Malcolm McDowell) who is pretty much pure evil and leaves us with no hope that he’ll ever get any better. When we first meet him, he is beating and raping his way through a futuristic London along with his droogs. But he’s soon captured and sent to prison – where he undergoes a new brainwashing technique meant to “cure” him. But he can’t really be cured and still be human – or as human as Alex is at any rate. This is exciting, visual, visceral filmmaking by Kubrick – one of his most daring accomplishments. In eliminating the original ending of the Anthony Burgress novel (much to the author’s dismay), Kubrick has ultimately made a bleak, perhaps even nihilistic film. While to some, that nihilism is deplorable, to me it fits the material. This is a masterpiece by one of the greatest filmmakers in history.

2. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show is a sad movie, about a small Texas town that is pretty much dead, and its inhabitants who will be if they do not get out. The adults in the movie all seem beaten down by life – the look back fondly at their previous lives (like in the unforgettable scene where Ben Johnson recalls how he was once in love), which was probably not that great, but sure beats the hell out of life now. But the film doesn’t much concentrate on the adults, but rather on the teenagers. Sam Bottoms and Jeff Bridges are both excellent as high school kids curious, and somewhat desperate, about sex. Bottoms fumbles his way into an affair with the football coach’s wife (Cloris Leachman), while Bridges struggles with the town beauty (Cybil Sheppard). All the characters in the film are sharply drawn – Bottoms as kid who wants more, but can’t get it, Bridges trying to live up to the pressure of his girlfriend, Sheppard, coldly using sex to get what she wants, Ellen Burstyn as her callous mother, hating life beside her TV zombielike husband, Leachman, who provides just a little warmth, Johnson as the last standard bearer left in town. The film is all about tone and mood – about a town that is dying right alongside its movie theater. It is a sad, tragic film, brilliantly filmed in black and white. It breaks your heart to watch it, and remains one of the most timeless films of the 1970s.

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is perhaps Robert Altman’s most influential and best film. It is about a gambler named McCabe (Warren Beatty) who rides into the small town of Presbyterian Church, wins some quick money and invests it in starting his own brothel. Then Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) arrives and quickly talks him into letting her be his partner – they will do better together than apart. And they do. Whatever happened to these characters in the years before they entered this town doesn’t matter – they are here now, and that’s all that does. McCabe is a dreamer who believes he “has poetry” in him, and Mrs. Miller is a strict business women – she charges even McCabe for her services. The town is a sad little place, where is constantly cold, the town remains half built, and once the sun goes down everyone huddles together into dark, little rooms drinking by lantern light. The film is a Western, but not a classically structure one – but one that is much sadder in its tone. The rules of the Western don’t apply in this film – Beatty hardly makes a Western hero, and Christie is hardly the hooker with a heart of gold. The ending of the film is inevitable – we know it before the characters do, but they suspect it as well. Life doesn’t end well in Presbyterian Church for men like McCabe. This truly is a masterpiece.

Just Missed The Top 10: Bananas (Woody Allen), The Garden of the Fitzi-Continis (Vittorio DeSica), MacBeth (Roman Polanski), Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood), Shaft (Gordon Parks), Sunday, Bloody, Sunday (John Scheslinger), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles), THX 1138 (George Lucas),Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart).

Notable Films Missed: The Ceremony (Nagisa Oshima), Claire's Knee (Erich Rohmer), Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti), The Devils (Ken Russell), Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison), Get Carter (Mike Hodges), Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo), Nicholas and Alexandra (Franklin Scaffner), La Région centrale (Michael Snow),Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman),Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg), W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: The French Connection (William Friedkin)
William Friedkin’s The French Connection is perhaps best remembered now for the car chase, and little else. Watching the film today, you could be forgiven for thinking it is very much like dozens if not hundreds of other cop movies and TV shows of the past four decades. Yet, without The French Connection, those other movies would be different. Everything about this movie remains a little tougher, a little rougher, and better than what has come in its wake – and Hackman’s performance elevates the entire film. It would not have been my choice, but it’s a fine one.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Gene Hackman, The French Connection
Gene Hackman was due an Oscar by 1971. He had already been nominated for two very different performances in Bonnie and Clyde and I Never Sang for My Father. The French Connection was yet another completely different performance – although it is one that is probably more associated with Hackman today than the others. He nails the tough cop, utterly obsessed with cracking the case and bringing the bad guys to justice. He does a remarkable job of keeping his character even in the midst of action sequences, and there are some excellent moments when he seems to have lost his mind (“Did you ever pick your toes in Poughkeepsie?”). This isn’t Hackman’s best performance, but it’s damn close.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Jane Fonda, Klute
Most movie hookers have a heart of gold – they really are nice girls just waiting for the right man to come along and save them from themselves. Jane Fonda’s Bree in Klute then breaks the mold – she doesn’t want or need anyone to save her. She is a hooker, and proud of what she does. She views it more as acting, and likes that she can be different things to different people. Fonda makes the movie work, even with its creaky thriller plot, because we cannot take our eyes off of her – and its not just because in 1971 she was at the height of her beauty. This is one of the best performances ever to win the Best Actress Oscar.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Ben Johnson, The Last Picture Show
Ben Johnson spent much of his career as stock player in John Ford Westerns, which pretty much made him the perfect actor to play Sam the Lion in Peter Bogdanovich’s sad masterpiece. He embodied the old Texas. He won his Oscar mainly, I think, for his long, sad monologue about lost love that he tells to the boys out by the reservoir. And it is a masterful performance. I have always been torn between who should have won – Johnson or his co-star Jeff Bridges who embodies the young stud just as perfectly, but I will not complain.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show
Like her co-star Johnson, Leachman won her Oscar pretty much for one scene, although her whole performance is wonderful. After her young lover, Sam Bottoms, comes back to her after his brief fling with Cybil Shepard, she flings a coffee pot across the room in a scene that is unforgettable – and she did it in one take, no rehearsals. Leachman is the kindest character, and she really does a great job with the role. Much like in Supporting Actor, I am torn between her, and the much harsher performance by the great Ellen Burstyn who cynically informs her daughter to sleep with Jeff Bridges so she will stop thinking sex is going to be so fantastic.

Year in Review: 1949

1949 is a ridiculously good year for movies. One of the reasons why I waited until near the end to do this year is because I am constantly changing my mind about what order films 2 through 8 should be in. But the best of the year is clearly the best – one of the best films ever made.

10. The Small Back Room (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger may just be the best filmmaking team in history, and from one film to the next, you are never sure of what they are going to do. How did they follow up the massive success of the colorful, ballet epic The Red Shoes? By making this small, black and white film about a British scientist during WWII, who is frustrated by his superiors, and has become an alcoholic to dull the pain in his artificial foot. I admired the scenes featuring David Farrer as the scientist early in the film, and although I didn’t find the films climax – where he has to defuse a bomb – as interesting, it has to be noted that it is made with breathtaking skill by the filmmakers. The Small Back Room may not be Powell and Pressburger’s greatest achievement – but it is an excellent film nonetheless.

9. Late Spring (Yashijiro Ozu)
Yashijiro Ozu’s films all have a similar story about the tension between the generations, and how the most important things are what is not said, not what is said. Late Spring is one of his best films – and one of his best known. It tells the story of Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the only daughter of a widowed professor (Chishu Ryu). They live happily together, with Noriko taking care of her father. But she is of marrying age, and her Aunt convinces her father it is time for her to get married. Even though both she and her father are happy with the current arrangement, they go along with the Aunt’s plans – which ends up with both of them married to people they don’t love and miserable. All of this could be avoided if they simply told each other the truth – and that is the one thing they just cannot do. Late Spring is a sad, almost tragic, movie and one of Ozu’s greatest achievements.

8. House of Strangers (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
King Lear as a film noir. Edward G. Robinson gives one of his best performances as an Italian American banker, who is also involved with many criminal activities. Three of his four sons hate their father – and refuse to help when he is arrested and may end up in jail. The fourth son, a lawyer, agrees to help – and ends up going to jail for his trouble. The film is a complex look at this family in crisis – with Robinson towering over all of them in a magnificent performance. I have often felt that Mankiewicz is a director who is comfortable with complex screenplays – but that he is not the most innovative visual filmmaker. But here, he has crafted perhaps his best looking film – dark and mysterious, with great art direction and cinematography. A wonderful noir, from a filmmaker you wouldn’t expect capable of pulling it off.

7. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford)
The second, and far and away the best, of John Ford’s Calvary Trilogy, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is one of the most breathtaking color Westerns ever made. John Wayne is excellent as an aging officer of a remote outpost, who is approaching retirement and is given two final jobs – to deliver the wife and daughter of his commanding officer to an Eastbound stagecoach, and to quell the Indian uprising on a reservation not far away – and avoid another bloody Indian war like the one that has just killed General Custer. He fails at both, and retires, but cannot leave until he puts things right. Wayne is the center of the movie – giving one of his most subtle performances as a man who cannot let go. He is surrounded by Ford’s stock company including Ben Johnson, Victor McLagen. Harry Carey Jr., John Agar and Joanne Dru, and they are all fine. But it is Wayne who stands above them all. The cinematography is brilliant, and Ford shows once again why he is the best director to ever make a Western.

6. The Heiress (William Wyler)
William Wyler’s The Heiress takes Henry James’ Washington Square, and makes it into a terrific movie about lust, love, jealously and revenge – and gives Olivia De Havilland perhaps the best role of her career. She stars as a rather plain (yeah right, but it works here) woman who is still single – and getting old. Her father (Ralph Richardson) is cruel in the way he observes her and talks about her – both behind her back and sometimes straight to her face. But he has a lot of money, and she is his only child – meaning one day she’ll be rich. And that’s when Montgomery Clift enters the picture. He comes from a good family, but is completely broke. They two fall in love – but Richardson wants the relationship to end, and says he’ll cut her out of the will if she doesn’t give him up. The Heiress features great work by De Havilland, who is utterly heartbreaking in the film’s final scenes, Richardson who is cold and cruel, and Clift who it takes quite some time to get a read on. The films last scene is brilliant, but everything up until then works as well. A great film by Wyler.

5. All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen)
Robert Rossen’s All the King’s Men represents one of the only times I can think of when a Pulitizer Prize winning novel was brought to screen, and the result was a great movie in its own right. Robert Warren Penn’s novel was a thinly veiled story based on the life of Governor Huey Long, here embodied by Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, as a largely than life “man of the people”. His goals are enviable, but the means in which he goes about achieving them are deplorable. Crawford, in undoubtedly his best screen role, nails the contradictions in the character, making his hateful and yet somewhat sympathetic. Mercedes McCambridge is also excellent as his mistress. The film is one of the seminal films on American politics ever made – in all its nasty, dirty glory.

4. Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa)
An early Kurosawa masterpiece. This film is about a young cop (Toshiro Mifune) who is shamed when his gun is pick pocketed from him on the bus. He tries in vain to find the gun, but when it is used in a murder, things become more heated. He is taken under the wing of an older cop (Takashi Shimura). The film functions not just as a police movie, but also as social commentary – it’s style owes something to the neorealists as well, and the characterizations, especially by Mifune, is much better, more complex than in most thrillers. Stray Dog represented a huge leap forward in Kurosawa’s career – it is infinitely better structured, better written and more complex than Drunken Angel, the film he made in the year prior to this one. It shows, as much as Rashomon a year later, that Kurosawa was coming of age – and finding his true voice as a filmmaker.

3. White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
James Cagney may have not liked being typecast as a gangster – but he played them better than just about any other actor in history. His work here as Cody Jarrett, ruthless criminal leader, is among the best performances of his career – and that the genre ever had. He is a gangster with a serious Mom complex – feeling that only his mother (Margaret Wycherly) truly understands him. Their scenes together are perhaps the best in the movie – and certainly have a creepy, sexual undertone to them. The film is interesting stylistically – it functions as a throwback to the gangster films of the 1930s, contains semi-documentary elements popular at the time, has elements of film noir (the femme fatale played by Virginia Mayo, the dark cinematography, the psyche of the killer) and was a forerunner to the heist films of the 1950s. How director Raoul Walsh was able to cram all of that in, and still make a wonderfully entertaining film, with one of the most memorable closing scenes of all time, is quite simply remarkable.

2. Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis)
Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy is a film noir just oozing sexuality. Apparently Lewis told star John Dall that “your cock has never been this hard” and female star Peggy Cummins “you’re a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don’t let him have it too soon”. And I can’t think of a better way to describe their performances. Gun Crazy is undeniably an influential film – they are certainly echoes of Bonnie and Clyde in the film, and not just because this is a “lovers on the run” film, but also because of the link that the film draws between sex and violence. Dall is a man obsessed with guns – even turned on by them – and meets his match in Cummins, a sharpshooter. Soon they are in love, or perhaps just lust, and are running from the cops. The film isn’t as explicit as it Lewis would have liked it to be – but there is no mistaking the sexuality on display in every scene in this film.

1. The Third Man (Carol Reed)
The Third Man is a pretty much perfect film. The film plunges us into postwar Vienna, a city destroyed and divided up among the victors. Into this murk comes Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) who has come because his friend Henry Lime has invited him. But when he gets there, he finds Lime is dead. He is informed that Lime was a criminal, an evil man, and he should leave. But he won’t – he wants to get to the bottom of this, and turns to Lime’s girl (Ailda Valli) for answers. The film is Reed’s greatest directorial achievement – he gives the film a skewed look, hardly ever shooting the action head on, but rather from strange angles. He concentrates on the faces of the actors – the innocent, naïve Cotton contrasted with the wizened, corrupt faces of almost everyone else. We all know that Lime is really alive – and when he finally enters, and we discover its Orson Welles, it is perhaps the most famous entrance in cinema history. Welles turns Lime into one of the great villains of all time, which is hard to do with such limited screen time. He gives a famous speech – one apparently he wrote – about the cuckoo clock, which is unforgettable. The chase scene, threw the sewers of Vienna, is one of the most famous ever shot – and for good reason. And the final scene in devastating. All of this is set to the wonderful zither score by Anton Karas. The Third Man is a perfect film in every respect.

Just Missed The Top 10: Adam’s Rib (George Cukor), A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), The Setup (Robert Wise), Thieves Highway (Jules Dassin).

Notable Films Missed: Battleground (William Wellman), Les Enfants Terribles (Jean Pierre Melville), The Fountainhead (King Vidor), Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer), On the Town (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen), Orpheus (Jean Cocteau), The Reckless Moment (Max Ophuls), Samson and Deliah (Cecil B. DeMille), Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini), 12 O’clock High (Henry King).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: All the King’s Men
The Academy Awards have always been political – but for some reason, they have often shied away from movies that directly address politics – this is actually the only best picture winner in history about American politics. It is a big, sprawling movie, based on an even bigger novel, that the filmmakers wisely thinned out to bring to the big screen. It is a nasty little movie, but also an extraordinarily entertaining one. It may not be the best winner in history, but it’s damn good.

Oscar Winner – Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives
Joseph L. Mankiewicz is one of only two directors ever to win back to back Oscars – starting with this film, and continuing the following year for All About Eve. Eve is a masterpiece, pure and simple, but A Letter to Three Wives is merely a very good one. It is an interesting film where an identical letter arrives at the homes of three women, supposedly from their friend, who tells them that she is running away with one of their husbands – and then flashing back to show us how they all got there. It is a fine film, with good performances and an interesting structure – but to me, it is hardly worthy of a directing Oscar.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Broderick Crawford, All the King’s Men
Broderick Crawford’s great, larger than life performance is everything that you could want it to be – and the exact opposite of the poor performance Sean Penn delivered in the ill advised remake more than 50 years later. He really does tower over the other characters in the movie, and you cannot help but be won over by him to at least a certain extent – he does not make Stark into a one dimensional villain, but something much more complex and even sympathetic. It is a great performance, by an actor who rarely got to grab the lead role like this.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress
Since they were never going to consider someone as sexually provocative as Cummins for this award, De Havilland’s win for The Heiress is well deserved. She is in practically every scene in the film, and carries it off effortlessly. It is heartbreaking to watch her put up with the abuse of her father, and then when she smiles in Clift’s presence it lifts you up – before finally, she has a cruel streak of her own in the film’s final scene. This movie asks a lot of De Havilland, who delivers this complex performance pretty much perfectly.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Dean Jagger, 12 O’clock High
Time for another embarrassing confession – I have never seen 12 O’clock High, despite my love for Gregory Peck. It is said to be an excellent movie WWII fighter pilots, and Jagger acts as our entrance into the world. I have always meant to see the film, yet somehow never have. Regardless, we all know Orson Welles should have won for The Third Man, but since it wasn’t even eligible until 1950, I guess we can’t fault them on that one (at least not this year, since they didn’t even nominate him the year after).

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Mercedes McCambridge, All the King’s Men
Mercedes McCambridge got her start in radio, and did many excellent vocal performances over the years – undoubtedly most memorably as the demonic voice of little Regan in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. But she was also an excellent actress, and here in her breakthrough role, she does a marvelous job at playing Willie Stark’s sympathetic mistress. She knows who he is, and goes along for the ride anyway. Even though she died years ago, I am still hoping to see one final great performance from her – if they ever do get together and finish editing Orson Welles’ unreleased The Other Side of the Wind.