1972: The Year that Was Not Quite as Predictable as Most Seagal Movies but Should Have Been

The reason I say this is that one of the nominees this year won 8 Academy Awards, but it wasn't the winner! Kind of crazy. One wonders what the Academy was thinking, although I'm sure there were some behind-the-scenes political things going on too. I don't think they liked Coppola too much for various reasons, some of which I will describe later in this entry and some of which I will discuss in my 1970 entry. All of that aside, this was a rather interesting and varied year. There are some random choices and some obvious ones, and a 3+ hour Swedish movie that I was forced to watch on my computer because it's not available on DVD and my PS3 wouldn't play it. Not cool.

Starting things off right for this year is Cabaret. This film was the one that took home the 8 Academy Awards this year, including for director, but it didn't win Best Picture. So this is already kind of a strange year. The film is a musical...sort of. I mean, it's a musical in the sense that there's a lot of choreographed singing and dancing in it. But all of the singing and/or dancing takes place within a context that makes sense. To me, a movie can only be a real musical if the singing and dancing make no sense whatsoever within a real world context. That's what makes them awesome. Not to say that this movie isn't good, because it's fantastic. It is about an American woman in Germany just before Nazism really took hold. The titular cabaret is a place where you can go to escape the world outside and forget about the terrible things happening. This is perfect because all of Germany was pretty much sitting around whilst the Nazis took over. Or rather, they didn't take the movement as seriously as they should have. This also makes Liza Minnelli's character as the ignorant American truly brilliant. Because America dropped the ball on that one (if you can call "being isolationist to the point that millions of people die" dropping the ball). She just wants to enjoy her life one day at a time, with no thought toward the future. Her entire romance and everything that she sings can be seen as having double meaning, which has now forever changed the meaning of the song "Maybe this Time" for me. It was on the first Glee soundtrack, so I have thus listened to it an obscene amount of times. On one hand it could be seen as being about a fresh start with a new romance, but think about the lines "Everybody loves a winner, so nobody loved me...maybe this time I'll win" in the context of Germany when the Third Reich was coming into being. That's pretty eerie when you think about it that way. But my favorite scene in the film comes when a group of Nazi youth sing (quite beautifully, which makes it more creepy) "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." The kid is so bright-eyed and hopeful, thinking that he's fighting for a worthy cause. And tomorrow almost did belong to him, which boggles the mind to think about but it's true. Keeping all of this in mind, as a movie it doesn't always come through (when it's not focusing on the allegorical aspects of the plot it's a bit dull) and Liza Minnelli is only tolerable when A) singing or B) when you remember that she's supposed to be kind of irritating. Joel Grey is pretty great, and he won for Supporting Actor that year. But his whole role is singing on stage and he only does that for about 20 total minutes in the film. Comparing that to another Supporting Actor nominee in this same year who largely carries 2 hours and 55 minutes of movie and it's a bit absurd that Joel won...but no matter (that certain someone ended up doing okay for himself). This was easily the year's second best, and in most years it would be the best. I look forward to watching it again at some point to pick up on some more intricacies, and that's something I wouldn't say about most of the Oscar films I've viewed since I started.

A movie I fully intend to never watch again is Deliverance. I'm glad I saw it, because it's one of "those movies" that has fueled a good number of South Park and Simpsons jokes. But as it turns out, people really only reference the one scene so I have gained nothing comedically by viewing the entire picture. The famous "dueling banjos" scene is right at the beginning and it goes on for too long. That was the first sign that the movie wouldn't be too enjoyable. I'll try to just briefly touch on each of the things that bothered me, because there were a lot of them. First off, the film couldn't seem to decide whether the venturing men were competent or not. Burt Reynolds killed the rapist dude with an arrow from behind (appropriately, one of the few nice touches in the film) and fairly far away so he clearly knows what he's doing. But then they just bury the dude instead of attaching rocks to him and letting him sink into the river. I forgave this, until their friend died later in the movie and that's what they did with his body. So they were, in fact, aware of this method of body disposal. So...the rapist got a "proper burial" and their friend's body is lost in the bottom of the river for all time? That's not cool. The other major thing that bothered me is that I always figured it was about city boys trying to have an adventure in the wilderness and are then assaulted by "hill people." You know, inbred monsters like the ones in the X-Files episode that was pulled from syndication (my obscure references know no bounds). Well they might have been inbred, and they were definitely crazy, but they lived in a legit small town by the river and they happened to be in the woods "hunting" (not sure if that deserved air quotes or not). So they didn't have the interesting theme in the plot where the audience and the characters are reminded that nature is dangerous and that country club rich folks shouldn't screw around with it, no matter their skills with a bow. Instead they had a far less applicable "rich folks shouldn't underestimate nature at the same time that some crazy people from a nearby town happen to be in the same vicinity." So there you have it. I'm sure it made much more of an impact when it first came out, and I do respect the filmmakers for making what is essentially a horror film in a way that a horror film hadn't been done before. But I still dislike horror films and think they're stupid, even if they're pretending to be something else.

What I'd really love to do is segue that into something snarky to say about The Emigrants. Unfortunately, it's not available here in the states as it is a Swedish movie that is actually called Utvandrarna. I found a version of it on the internet but the subtitles are 5 minutes and 40 seconds behind. That'd be pretty bad for a movie that was 2 hours long, but especially bad for one that's 3 hours and 10 minutes. And so I'm going to break my own rule and publish this blog entry anyway, having not seen it. My search online will continue, and if need be I will make my own subtitles, petition TCM to show it, or wait for the highly unlikely DVD release. I will find a way to view this movie. And then I will ret-con myself (look it up) to make it look like it was written here the whole time.

Luckily, I am fully able to rip on Sounder. You have to love when the sub-par nominees are still in print. I'm not trying to sound insensitive or anything, but I'm pretty sure this movie was only nominated because it's a positive family picture that stars African-Americans in positive roles that aren't quite as stereotypical as the crows in Dumbo. I realize how big that was back then, and the Academy certainly hasn't changed its stripes with regards to nominating socially conscious films. But whereas you can look at Million Dollar Baby and say "this was especially relevant because of the Terri Schiavo case," you can also say "this is an extraordinary movie." But this movie is pretty much just a schmaltzy family story, and not even a very good one. It's one of those "movies for kids" that is actually too boring for children and probably too traumatizing. The dog gets shot! This is pretty much Old Yeller with black people. Although I guess that's a positive step forward. Because as Dr. King said, "I have a dream that little white boys and little black boys will be in therapy together after being equally traumatized in their youth." Aside from the social aspect, I'm not a fan of melodramas and I'm also not a fan of banjo music. And the whole score is pretty much banjo music. That brings 1972's total banjo movies to 2 (and possibly 3, never know what Utvandrarna might hold). That is 2 too many. The film stock evokes a 50s feeling, which is odd since it takes place during the depression. Although perhaps it evokes the types of movies made about the depression in the fifties (like the aforementioned depressing kids movie for white people). I probably mentioned this before, but I don't like when something is a carbon copy of something else with one thing changed just to be more relevant. And I know this is based on a book and everything, but it feels tailor-made to make a statement. That's not how you make a statement. The XXX movie franchise (with Vin Diesel, not with "actors" such as Trixie Carlisle and Mugsy Cypress, although the acting abilities are similar) was tailor-made to be an American take on James Bond. It failed miserably. The Bourne movie franchise set out to be good movies, and ended up becoming the American equivalent of James Bond. Although only in some ways, since 22 movies is more impressive than 3. So there's my incredibly cynical take on the film. I would have liked it more if A) the titular dog was in it more and B) if the characters weren't still mostly stereotypical and not interesting.

Plus, no film can measure up when nominated alongside this year's winner: The Godfather. Although its legacy is not as strong as I hoped. Coppola didn't win for director (a crime) and as I alluded to before, Pacino didn't win for Supporting Actor. Many would say that it's not really a stretch for Pacino to be playing an angry Italian guy. This is true. But he doesn't play an angry Italian guy. He plays an alienated son who loves his father, and slowly becomes an evil man for all the right reasons. The subtlety of his performance is the key. All of his emotions are boiling beneath the surface. So even if the delivery of his lines don't reflect his transformation throughout the movie, you can see it on his face. And it's not until his brief explosion toward his wife Kay near the end of the film that you realize how far he has come. Luckily, Brando was rewarded with a Best Actor win for his outstanding and unforgettable performance as Don Vito Corleone. Here again is a subdued performance. He could have gone completely over the top with it, but a man as powerful as the Don doesn't need to get angry to have his ruthlessness shine through. That way, when it does shine through you know exactly what kind of dangerous man you're dealing with. I could go on about those two, and about the whole movie at length, but I'll instead touch on some side facts that I find interesting. For one thing, I think Hollywood didn't like Coppola too much and this movie almost didn't come together. Coppola was almost fired, until he won for Best Screenplay in 1970. The music in the film almost wasn't included, until he forced the producers to listen to Nino Rota's immortal music and they realized that the movie couldn't work without it. Everything about the film shouldn't have come together but miraculously did. The only other stories I've heard like that with regards to film are the stories of how Lord of the Rings came together. Whenever a film survives through the troubles that these films survived, you know that the passion of the filmmakers is strong. And it shows. Coppola's magnum opus is masterfully paced, beautifully filmed, superbly acted, and directed in a way that would change movies forever. Spielberg left his first screening of the film somewhat depressed because he said that he knew he could never make a better film than that and his career hadn't even started yet. I've been sitting here for 15 minutes trying to think of which scene I'd like to highlight, but I can't. There's too much to pick from. And everyone needs to view it for themselves anyway, it's one of my personal favorites and from a purely stylistic and "scholarly" point of view it is quite possibly the greatest film ever made. That is one of the few things that many critics agree on, even including myself and my sworn enemy the Academy.

So this blog entry is just like filmdom in general in that it had, "The Godfather...and everything else." At least there was one other great movie this year. And even if it didn't comparatively deserve the 8 Oscars it won, it was certainly a great movie. This year is also the most frustrating because I'll have to go to a lot of trouble to truly finish it. With my luck the escapade won't end where it began in 1927, as I intended, but instead back here in 1972 when I finally track down a copy of what is probably 3 hours of my life I'll want back anyway. Next year probably won't be that dramatic. But it will include ultraviolent Beethoven lovers, snarky lovers of fiddle music, and a whole royal family of Tchaikovsky-philes.