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2001 |
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Some Pictures Stan Thinks Wuz Robbed:
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 "Bonnie & Clyde" |
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 Orson Welles in 'Citizen Kane' |
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Stan speaks up for also-rans
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
I
AM invariably disappointed and often piqued by the Motion Picture
Academy awards. Not only have some of my favorite movies not
won an Oscar for best picture--such as "Citizen Kane"
(1941), "Twelve Angry Men" (1957), "Bonnie and
Clyde" (1967), Atlantic City" (1981) and "The
Shawshank Redemption" (1994)--but some of my favorites have
not even been nominated, namely: "Laura" (1944), "Kind
Hearts and Coronets" (1948), "The Third Man" (1949),
"Lonely Are the Brave" (1962), "Brassed Off,"
(1996) and my favorite all-time western, "The Gunfighter"
(1950).
Three of my unfavorite movies--"Unforgiven"
(1992), "Braveheart" (1995) and "The English Patient"
(1996)--actually won Oscars. Nor was I overcome with delight
by the awards to such inflated entities as "The Greatest
Show on Earth" (1952), "Ben Hur" (1959) "The
Last Emperor" (1987) and "Titanic" (1997).
This year is pretty much running true to form in setting me up
for a gnash-teeth evening while watching the Sunday night extravaganza.
I accept "Traffic" and "Chocolat" as worthy
nominees but I would quickly substitute "Billy Elliot,'
"You Can Count on Me' and "Finding Forester" for
"Gladiator," "Crouching Tiger, etc", and
"Erin Brockovich."
"Finding
Forester" got poor reviews. Critics dismissed it as overly
sentimental. What's wrong, say I, with sentimental?
The sentimental film, "Brassed Off," an English picture,
paticularly warmed my cockles. It is about a group of embattled
Yorkshire miners who play in the company brass band while fighting
off a threatened closing of the mine. The struggling miners perform
in rousing brass band contests, winding up with the championship
competition at the vaunted Prince Albert Hall in London.
I was stunned and delighted when the piece the band chooses to
play is the "William Tell Overture." This, of course,
is the music that was the theme song of "The Lone Ranger"
radio, television and movie shows with which I grew up. Most
American boys of my post-World War II generation and beyond loved
that overture, and I was amazed and gratified that it seemed
to have enough meaning in England so that the movie people chose
it for its musical finale.
Pete Postlethwaite, with a face that only a sister can love,
leads the band, struggling to keep it intact in the face of the
mine closure while fighting a debilitating illness. It is an
Oscar-worthy performance and the lovely Tara Fitzgerald, as the
love-interest new horn player, is all that the word "colleen"
conjures up.
The movie is set in Sheffield, the same working-class town that
was the background for "The Full Monty," which got
a lot of attention that year. I enjoyed "Monty," too,
certainly more than the lofty, convoluted "The English Patient,"
which won the Oscar for 1996. Maybe the "Brassed Off"
musicians would have made more of a stir if they had played in
the buff.
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I BELIEVE "The Gunfighter," an admirable psychological drama, was one of the first and the best of the westerns which debunked the western-gunfighter-as-hero syndrome. It shows Gregory Peck as Jimmy Ringo, the No. 1 gun in the west tired of fighting gun battles, weary of trying to head off young punks who want to achieve fame as the man who beat the great Ringo. Skippy Homeier is the cowardly "yoot" who shoots Ringo in the back and Millard Mitchell, one of the memorable character actors, plays Peck's old buddy who has gone straight as the town sheriff.
When Peck was making one of his public speaking appearances in New York, I told him I had seen "The Gunfighter" almost a dozen times and wondered if he could provide any background information about the movie. He nodded and speaking in that measured, slow pace of his, mentioned that shortly after he made it, he was sent another western script. He said the story about a lone gunman fighting the good fight seemed similar enough to "The Gunfighter" that he might be typed if he took the role. So he turned it down.
It was, he said, "High Noon."
Gary Cooper got the role and "High Noon" (1952) is one of the most acclaimed of all westerns. I'll still take "The Gunfighter."
The consolation for me about another personal favorite, "Harry and Tonto," was that it earned a best actor Oscar for the great Art Carney. He plays an old man who travels from New York to California with his cat, Tonto. It is a low-keyed story, rich in texture, warm, loving, funny and sad. Director Paul Mazursky and writer Josh Greenfield created a gem.
There is the image of the old radicals sitting on a bench on upper Broadway in New York bemoaning broken dreams, pining for the days when immigrants built the unions, joined the Socialist and Communist parties, supported FDR and the New Deal, and worked together with what character actor Herbert Berghof calls "the kepitalistic bastards" to defeat Hitler.
When Carney tells Berghof he is being evicted from his apartment, and he will get a lawyer to stop them, Berghof says, "You can't fight in the court. You got to go to the barricades, man the dynamite, blow up the cesspool (of the kepitalistic bastards)." I loved this.
When I covered spring training with the Yankees in the 1950s, I used to watch the Oscars at the Hotel Soreno in the retirement town of St. Petersburg, sitting in the television room with some of the gray-haired ladies who frequented the hotel. Once, Yankee pitcher Bob Turley, a respectful fellow, joined the crowd and interpolated comments of explanation lest the ladies didn't comprehend some of the references of the hosts. "What a nice young man," one of the ladies said.
I was in London covering Wimbledon in 1981 when I was introduced to a young woman who ran marathons. She mentioned that there was a good new movie about runners playing in the West End which she thought I would like. I went to see "the runners movie" and was knocked out it was so good. It was "Chariots of Fire" which would open in the United States later. It won the 1981 Oscar, of course.
I had no complaints with the Academy Award choice that year.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs.
You can contact Stan Isaacs with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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