1966: The Year that Anne Boleyn Wasn't Hot Enough to Warrant All that Mess

People seem to be fascinated by every aspect of King Henry VIII's reign. The Academy is anyway. And I think the fundamental question that always comes up is this: was the real life Anne Boleyn hot enough to warrant all of that death and rebellion? If she looked like the girl from The Tudors, I would give it a mild shoulder/eyebrow lift. Meaning: "hell yes but don't make me say it." Since she probably wasn't, Henry was a tool. But we'll get to that later. Well, we really won't because she's in the movie for about a half a second. I'm going to talk about her anyway though because I may or may not be mild to moderately obsessed with her.

But we begin with Alfie. And I would put it in my ever popular and all-too-prevalent "meh" category. I like that it breaks the fourth wall a lot. I'm always intrigued and excited by fourth wall breakings. But it doesn't do it in a particularly clever way like when Boston Legal had: "Denny, I've hardly seen you at all this episode." Brilliant. It's more like he narrates the story in the conventional way but he often walks toward the camera and addresses it directly in order to do so. And I'm sure it was way more revolutionary back then. If it wasn't: don't tell me because it'll make it suck more. The movie itself is a standard "lovable rogue" type story except he's not that lovable. He's actually the embodiment of that douchebag who goes out with that girl you've been wooing for months by simply spouting his cockney British accent a bit. So, not quite that douchebag you're familiar with...but similar! He ends up losing in the end because he's too old for women to be interested in him. I thought that was a nice touch. And it was probably some sort of vindication for the writer's life so you've got to love that. But it's not that funny and not that serious. As my dad would say it's "modestly entertaining." It's a little too zeitgeist-y to be truly effective now. Because even though he treats women like crap, he's a downright gentleman as compared to a lot of guys in the media today. Just not as compared to me (I'm so much of a gentleman I might as well be gay, which is not the best subliminal message to send to women while trying to ask them out). It also dealt with abortion (gasp!) as a major plot point and even though that's still a big deal today, it's anything but "not spoken of." My main issue with it is that as a character he falls into the "past his prime" category. This can be true of womanizers, adventurers, comedians, whatever. Basically it means that the movie tells you he's something but never really shows it to you because he's past his prime already. That pregnancy scare should have come 40 minutes into the movie, after we've already been sufficiently introduced to Alfie as he was. Otherwise you just feel like you're watching the sub-par sequel to a movie that never existed. But it's fairly short and Michael Caine is always great to watch so it's still better than almost any comedy today. Which should tell you what I think of most comedies.

A far better, though still not great, comedy is The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming. First off, they get points for not putting an exclamation mark there even though I'm sure it was tempting. Secondly, this maybe would be the only time an exclamation mark would be permissible. Because it's a satire and because when the line is spoken in the movie it's done in an over-the-top Paul Revere reference-y way. But anyway, this is a farcical representation of Cold War America. It's about a Russian sub that accidentally surfaces near a small town in Massachusetts and the passengers' journey to get back to Mother Russia. I love those kinds of stories because they're not only funny they're also brave. To promote a film that casts the Russians in a positive, or at least sympathetic, light during a time when the Cold War was in full swing was not a small feat. Because of this, it is impossible for me to experience it the way it was meant to be experienced. I'd say that a modern day equivalent would be that a group of terrorists accidentally comes ashore in America and tries to get home but it's not the same thing at all. And not just because terrorists are militant against us by nature and Russian soldiers were simply our enemies for political reasons. It's actually because the idea of painting a sympathetic portrait of Russians during a time when Russia and the U.S. came very close to nuking each other has no modern day equivalent (luckily). Obviously we have our fair share of enemies today but we don't wake up every day wondering if they'll nuke us. Well, I don't anyway. Members of the Russian government even saw and liked this movie and some were moved to tears when the two sides work together near the end to save a little kid. That was a nice scene and the movie is fairly enjoyable but it's not super funny. Of course, I was unfairly and inevitably comparing it to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece with a similar story. But I'll talk more about that in...(checking Wikipedia) my 1964 post. Anyway, this film is enjoyable to be sure but since I was born just prior to the complete collapse of the Soviet Union it's tough for me to really watch it the way it's meant to be watched.

And maybe the same can be said for The Sand Pebbles. But I asked my dad and he said he never liked it either. It's about a U.S. gunboat in China and the racial strife that takes place therein. But it's racial strife with the Chinese. So...not to be insensitive to the people depicted in the pilot episode of Kung Fu or anything but it's tough to imagine anyone caring much when it came out. This was right in the middle of racial strife in America and the movie is basically saying, "hey if Steve McQueen can get along with Chinese people then maybe black people should be able to vote." Actually, many critics perceived the film as an anti-Vietnam piece before it was cool to be against Vietnam (in the movies anyway). But none of the people involved with the film felt that way. Except for the caterer, "Bring Our Po' Boys Home" of course. It's based on a book written by a dude who actually lived a similar experience in the 1920s. So...yeah...probably not about Vietnam then. Kind of like how V for Vendetta, the adaptation of the 1985 British graphic novel, isn't actually about post-9/11 America. Just a thought. Anyway, the word I'd use to describe this movie is: "anemic." How many war movies can you really make about how war is bad? "We should set aside our differences because we're not really so different from the people we're fighting" blah blah blah. At least the movie I was just talking about got creative. This one is too straightforward. Plus it's like 3 hours long and the only thing that happens in the first forty minutes is that a steam pipe in the ship breaks. Actually I should give some credit for that. Because any writer who can stretch "and then a steam pipe broke and somebody died fixing it" into about forty minutes has some serious skills and probably excelled in writing research papers. There's a fairly impressive sea battle at the end but most of it is one uninteresting scene after another. I don't define "character development" as "anything in a movie that wouldn't interest a 13-year-old boy." Interesting things should be conveyed. Let's hear some character history! Why is the one guy more militant than the other guy? What events in life led them to hold different viewpoints? In a 2 hour movie I wouldn't care. But come on, they had time. So it's a great cast and a great director (Robert Wise) but it's not particularly interesting. Probably only got nominated due to misunderstood anti-war intentions.

Easily the best film in the year is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That question mark is part of the title and does not denote my disbelief over it being good. Because as it is the only film in the history of the Oscars to be nominated for every award it was eligible for (13 total) I figured it was pretty good. And since it only won 5 or 6 of them, not including Best Picture or Director, I knew it was even better. It was so sad to hear about Elizabeth Taylor the other day because this movie perfectly illustrates what she brought to the world. She put on like 30 pounds or something for the movie and she was still gorgeous and her acting rightfully earned her a 2nd Academy Award. Richard Burton is also excellent and so is Sandy Dennis who won Supporting Actress that year. George Segal is good too but I can never take him seriously and he's not quite up to the other 3 people anyway. But it's a small complaint. Black and white was a wise choice for the film because it accurately depicts the dark, militant, and very two-sided environment that their (Richard and Elizabeth's) marriage had become. The entire film encompasses an awkward dinner party they have with a younger couple and how they use that couple to feud with each other. It's basically 2+ hours of amazing dialogue and incredible acting. Normally, I'd need more to put in a bid for Best Picture. But I think the Director gave the film a really great atmosphere and the script was certainly strong enough that I wish it would have won. And everyone thought it would win (I suspect a Vatican pay-off) but it was snubbed. I will say that I read about an alternate plot twist near the end that would have made it better but I won't share the details because I care enough about the film to not spoil it for my 3 1/2 readers. Some of the exchanges within the film are so toxic that I cringed on my couch. It makes you never want to get married ever. Which I'll use as my new excuse for continual solitude. "Dating anyone Domenic?" "Nope, watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? recently." "Makes sense." I'll just have to rewatch it every few months or so to complete the illusion. The sad thing is, if this came out today it'd probably win but not deserve it as much. If that makes any sense. I guess it just goes to show that we can track the injustices back to at least 1966, and that's what the escapade is all about.

Continuing on that note, no one expected this year's winner to win: A Man for All Seasons. I have many qualms with this movie. That's not really true, I have many qualms with the story itself and a few qualms with the movie. I also have a retrospective qualm with it. Wow, this is going to be long. That's what she said. Okay, here we go. My retrospective qualm is that after having seen The Tudors, basically every Henry VIII story is ruined. Because that show fleshed out Henry's friendship with Sir Thomas More for a whole season. And then it took five episodes for all of the dominoes to fall into place and Thomas to get executed. And the King felt terrible about it! It was all so wonderfully complicated and tragic and real. Plus (wait for it) it had more than five seconds of Anne Boleyn and she was way hotter. My qualm with the movie is that you can do the story well in two hours...they just didn't. It basically starts at a point where everyone is already trying to get him to agree to the King's divorce. No setup whatsoever. So it's two hours of the same conversation over and over again. "Will you sign it?" "NO! Because what is to sign but to say? And what is to say but to say before God? And what is to say before God but to..." FOR 2 WHOLE HOURS. The same conversation. They should have set up the marriage. Set up his relationship with Anne. Set up the friendship with Thomas. Then the dominoes start to fall slowly over time and the last twenty minutes is Thomas making his moral stand after a movie's worth of deliberating. Instead of the same exhausting back and forth conversation over and over. Paul Scofield does a great job in it, don't get me wrong. And the five minutes of Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey is easily the best part of the film (probably because Welles himself directed it). And this brings us to my problem with the story on a whole: really Thomas More? Really? By the end of the movie his family has no food, no candles, nothing. Why? Because he refuses to sign something and making literally no impact on anything by not signing it. He doesn't come off as righteous, he comes off as smug and self-important. If it had been a twenty minute struggle then it would've been heroic possibly. But it's the whole freaking movie. And since in real life he was locked up for a year or something crazy, it was even more excruciating in real life for the same reason. He basically says, "I don't want God to be mad because I lied. I'm sure he won't be mad at all that I'm royally screwing my family." Stupid. SIDE NOTE: I might have mentioned this before but I find it entertaining that without the Church of England the United States probably wouldn't exist. And the Church of England wouldn't exist if a man with too much power didn't want to bang a hot teenager. That is delightfully messed up and funny. So there you go. It's a movie about a stubborn guy who gets more stubborn as he goes along and Anne Boleyn is in it so little that I completely missed when she was in it. IMDB told me it happened and I believe them. So it's a waste. Just Netflix The Tudors and you'll have a much more enjoyable time.

Well that's it for 1966, it was a pretty good year overall. Definitely one of the better decades so far, no doubt about that. I'm strongly considering rebooting my 2009 post since I didn't really give it a proper post and I'm OCD like that. So keep an eye out for that "Director's Cut." But aside from that the other next entry should be pretty interesting. Or at least I presume so since it involves hiking Russians, cruising Jews, and singing Nazis.