Success or Snub? A Man for All Seasons (39th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)
To see part 1, click here.
Batman Suite~Nelson Riddle - Batman: The Movie
The 39th Academy Awards ceremony is notable on a few accounts. The first two trivia facts are that this ceremony was actually in serious danger of being cancelled due to a strike by the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, which wasn’t (tragically) resolved until less than a half-hour before the show was scheduled to go on air. The level of stress in that control room must’ve been insane to have been a part of.
The other is that this was the first time that a Governor of California attended the ceremony though this record sounds less impressive when you remember that the recently-elected Governor of California was an actor who was part of the Academy and Hollywood establishment. There could be a case made that the political reason why A Man for All Seasons won the Academy Award for Best Picture was as an endorsement of Ronald Reagan’s law-and-order platform that he rode to Sacramento (and eventually the White House), and his ongoing battles with the student Berkeley protests, though the cynical truth is that A Man for All Seasons was probably the most impressive yet dryly safe film to Academy minds that year.
1966 was the worst year for movies since World War II ended and could be considered the absolute nadir of the late-stage Golden Age of Hollywood. Almost every major film that came out in America was intrinsically flawed in some manner and much of the banal awards season tended to reflect that. All 5 of the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Leading Actress were born outside of America (Elizabeth Taylor for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (see below), Anouk Aimée for A Man and A Woman (see below), Ida Kamińska for The Shop on Main Street, Lynn Redgrave for Georgy Girl and Vanessa Redgrave for Morgan! (the latter three movies are all boring Oscar bait and not worth discussing)) and at least 2 of the nominees for Best Leading Actor (Paul Scofield for A Man for All Seasons and Michael Caine in Alfie). More foreign movies were nominated than ever and just about all of the most interesting things being done were in films well outside the Hollywood establishment.
Things were so hilariously bad that the only American film that the (famously picky) Venice Film Festival accepted that year was the indie Roger Corman B-picture The Wild Angels
Things were so hilariously bad that the only American film that the (famously picky) Venice Film Festival accepted that year was the indie Roger Corman B-picture The Wild Angels
a counterculture movie about a motorcycle gang that, unlike Marlon Brando’s comically safe The Wild One (1953), actually depicts the real hellions that inhabit a motorcycle gang. You’re not invited to like or dislike these characters; instead it just depicts all the sorts of anti-authority attitude that bikers embrace that was being embraced by American youth.
The epics that Hollywood kept trying to cash in had pretty mixed-to-poor critical results this year even though they, of course, got numerous nominations at the Academy Awards. By far the worst was Hawaii,
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an insipid, long and insipidly long melodrama about Calvinist missionaries on the Hawaiian islands, dealing with Native Hawaiians who are so racially stereotyped that it would be offensive if the film was even remotely interesting enough to invite you to care about it. What the Hell the Academy was thinking when they agreed to accept this for nominations (granted, mostly for the technical ones but this movie’s visuals aren’t even all that grand) is beyond comprehension.
Also not good was The Bible: In The Beginning…
We mentioned this in the previous blog but to recap, it’s an episodic take on the Book of Genesis, kind of in the same spirit as How the West Was Won (1962), only much more boring and (strangely) soulless. It still bears repeating that this movie’s failure did more or less kill the Biblical movie craze forever. While it’s not the worst movie in the world, it’s not worth the 3-hour running time and somehow turns the birth of creation into a total snoozefest.
Somewhat better was The Sand Pebbles,
which takes a similar track to Hawaii with an American warship being stationed in colonial China. This was a passion project of Robert Wise who more or less agreed to direct The Sound of Music (1965) in exchange for the studio agreeing to fund The Sand Pebbles. While not a fantastic film, as some of the subplots go nowhere and the love interest is dull, it’s still pretty good with a very intense climax. I feel like if this came out 3 years beforehand, it would’ve made a bigger splash, but, alas, it would be confined to the dustbin of history.
Alright, so clearly the epics are out for movie of the year material. What about some of the artistic films coming from up-and-comers and the swingers? Were they finally tempered enough to take Hollywood by storm yet? Not quite. This was about the height of the artistic counterculture before they formally challenged Hollywood. This was the era of the avant-garde, the era of what is known auteur theory where every film made was the personal story of the one artist. This is the era of movies that wanted to put the onus on you to try to understand their vision instead of the other way around. This is the era of movies like Persona by Ingmar Bergman,
which has been called the Mt. Everest of film analysis as its story and shooting style eschews all sense yet captures so many different meanings, and Empire by Andy Warhol,
which is literally 8 straight hours of the Empire State Building being filmed.
Auteur theory is the belief that each work of art is the work of its sole artist and the best films are those that conform the best to the directors with the strongest vision. Auteur theory was the bread and butter that a lot of this time period as artists from the New Wave school wanted to be the ultimate auteurs (this is why they were such big fans of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and other directors who had stronger creative control from the old days). This idea is the nucleus that the counterculture was based around and coming back years later I will say that I find it to be a frightfully immature filmmaking theory.
While a movie is the director’s vision, films are the epitome of a collaborative medium: your greatest vision in the world won’t be worth a damn if you can’t get actors, cinematographers, editors, producers, grips and make-up to all contribute to the final product. It is interesting going back to movies of this time period since I grew up in a world where pop culture was largely dictated by the far more cynical Generation X and this pretentious, avant-garde filmmaker is one of the most often-mocked archetypes you would see in a lot of comedies.
These avant-garde movies are somewhat harder to criticize because they were experimenting with the film medium to see what worked and what didn’t and what their audiences would respond to. Going back to them is puzzling as you really have trouble believing people watched some of this stuff. And I don’t mean this as a turn of phrase. I’m genuinely struggling to understand the mindset of wanting to spend 8 hours of your day staring at an unchanging static shot of the Empire State Building and believing that the onus was on you to interpret why the filmmaker would want to do that. Did people really have nothing better to do with their time? (The answer being that when you’re watching a movie while tripping on acid, as most audiences of these films usually were, time means nothing at all baby.)
The Hollywood New Wave grew out of this understanding to streamline the process to make arguably the greatest movies ever made. We’ll get more into this next year when the New Wave unofficially began but 1966’s counterculture movies that managed to make it onto the Oscar stage did far less to impress. I usually try to contextualize these counterculture movies for their times but both of these movies I dislike so much, I’m willing to go against the grain and explain why they really had no business being “movie of the year,” no matter how revolutionary they were at the time.
A frontrunner at the Academy that year was Alfie
Auteur theory is the belief that each work of art is the work of its sole artist and the best films are those that conform the best to the directors with the strongest vision. Auteur theory was the bread and butter that a lot of this time period as artists from the New Wave school wanted to be the ultimate auteurs (this is why they were such big fans of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and other directors who had stronger creative control from the old days). This idea is the nucleus that the counterculture was based around and coming back years later I will say that I find it to be a frightfully immature filmmaking theory.
While a movie is the director’s vision, films are the epitome of a collaborative medium: your greatest vision in the world won’t be worth a damn if you can’t get actors, cinematographers, editors, producers, grips and make-up to all contribute to the final product. It is interesting going back to movies of this time period since I grew up in a world where pop culture was largely dictated by the far more cynical Generation X and this pretentious, avant-garde filmmaker is one of the most often-mocked archetypes you would see in a lot of comedies.
These avant-garde movies are somewhat harder to criticize because they were experimenting with the film medium to see what worked and what didn’t and what their audiences would respond to. Going back to them is puzzling as you really have trouble believing people watched some of this stuff. And I don’t mean this as a turn of phrase. I’m genuinely struggling to understand the mindset of wanting to spend 8 hours of your day staring at an unchanging static shot of the Empire State Building and believing that the onus was on you to interpret why the filmmaker would want to do that. Did people really have nothing better to do with their time? (The answer being that when you’re watching a movie while tripping on acid, as most audiences of these films usually were, time means nothing at all baby.)
The Hollywood New Wave grew out of this understanding to streamline the process to make arguably the greatest movies ever made. We’ll get more into this next year when the New Wave unofficially began but 1966’s counterculture movies that managed to make it onto the Oscar stage did far less to impress. I usually try to contextualize these counterculture movies for their times but both of these movies I dislike so much, I’m willing to go against the grain and explain why they really had no business being “movie of the year,” no matter how revolutionary they were at the time.
A frontrunner at the Academy that year was Alfie
the breakout role of Michael Caine who plays a young man named Alfie Elkins, narrating his life as a swinger in London, having sex with a different woman about every 20 minutes on average. This movie is actually quite influential as it’s the first film featuring a protagonist who endlessly monologues to the camera about his life and poor decision-making. While that’s a fun concept, the movie quickly wears out its welcome pretty early on and you spend most of the running time waiting for Alfie to learn his lesson. Aside from the rampaging sex drive and monologuing protagonist, there’s nothing in Alfie to distinguish it from the melodramas of yesteryear. Which wouldn’t be so bad if the movie wasn’t 2 damn hours long.
A little better was Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, both of which are fair awards for it).
A little better was Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, both of which are fair awards for it).
Blow-Up is a thriller about an antisocial photographer named Thomas (David Hemmings) who goes around town taking candid photographs of things he sees. After a very intentionally slow first act, he’s going through his camera reel and figures out that he actually accidentally photographed a murder as it was about to happen. The movie takes the formulaic plot of most thrillers at the time and focuses almost exclusively on the discovery of the crime. Most of the movie is very procedural-like as Thomas blows up, edits and retouches the photos to piece the entire crime together. It’s like a Hitchcock movie crossed with Rififi (1955) and it’s great to watch.
Where Blow-Up drops the ball is in the 11th hour with how the story resolves itself. I won’t give it away but it ends on a very deliberate anti-climax as the movie is trying to commentate on how indifferent we all are to each other. At the time, younger critics swooned because no thriller ended like this before. Going back to it years later, you realize there’s a very good reason why no thriller had probably ended like that before and it’s because ending on an anti-climax just feels cheap and like you wasted your time.
Well, those are the two biggest categories. What about the other pulpier genres of the time period? Was this the year that the spy genre could’ve made a claim for movie of the year status? Well, no, because James Bond took a break and instead we were subjected to the Bond cash-ins. Like every blockbusting genre in history, there was a glut of spy movie cash-ins in 1966 and 1967 which came out with such frequency that they quickly reached over-saturation level and killed the genre in such a way that Bond would be the only survivor (and even those movies didn’t start topping the box office again until the late 70s). The two (characters, three movies) most famous and highest-grossing Bond knock-offs were Our Man Flint
Where Blow-Up drops the ball is in the 11th hour with how the story resolves itself. I won’t give it away but it ends on a very deliberate anti-climax as the movie is trying to commentate on how indifferent we all are to each other. At the time, younger critics swooned because no thriller ended like this before. Going back to it years later, you realize there’s a very good reason why no thriller had probably ended like that before and it’s because ending on an anti-climax just feels cheap and like you wasted your time.
Well, those are the two biggest categories. What about the other pulpier genres of the time period? Was this the year that the spy genre could’ve made a claim for movie of the year status? Well, no, because James Bond took a break and instead we were subjected to the Bond cash-ins. Like every blockbusting genre in history, there was a glut of spy movie cash-ins in 1966 and 1967 which came out with such frequency that they quickly reached over-saturation level and killed the genre in such a way that Bond would be the only survivor (and even those movies didn’t start topping the box office again until the late 70s). The two (characters, three movies) most famous and highest-grossing Bond knock-offs were Our Man Flint
and the Matt Helm series which was started with the movies The Silencers
and Murderers’ Row.
Whereas the earlier Bond movies were action-adventures that had one foot still placed somewhat in reality, these movies were a lot sillier and more over-the-top, with the villains being downright ridiculous and the hero’s gadgets being a major focus. In this way, they actually act as a precursor to the sillier Bond films of the 70s and early 80s starring Sean Connery’s tongue-in-cheek successor, Roger Moore. The Flint and Helm movies obviously weren’t nominated for the Oscars and, honestly, even by dumb spy movie standards, they’re not great though comparing the two, I do find James Dean’s Matt Helm to be much more fun and likable than James Coburn’s Derek Flint.
(Probably more famous and notorious than Our Man Flint is its sequel, In Like Flint (1967) where Flint foils a conspiracy being enacted by feminist terrorist organization to overthrow the patriarchy and subject the world to a much more sinister matriarchy. One critic at the time noted that it was clearly written by a man going through a divorce and it remains a punchline for how ignorantly sexist spy movies in the 60s could be. Similarly, the most famous Matt Helm movie is the fourth and final one, The Wrecking Crew (1969), as it was the last film appearance of Sharon Tate before her murder by the Manson Family.)
American comedies at least (as opposed to the British comedies) had a relatively decent year in 1966, with three of them making splashes at the Oscars. The winner of the Oscar for Best Scoring of Music - Adaptation or Treatment was the Stephen Sondheim musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
(Probably more famous and notorious than Our Man Flint is its sequel, In Like Flint (1967) where Flint foils a conspiracy being enacted by feminist terrorist organization to overthrow the patriarchy and subject the world to a much more sinister matriarchy. One critic at the time noted that it was clearly written by a man going through a divorce and it remains a punchline for how ignorantly sexist spy movies in the 60s could be. Similarly, the most famous Matt Helm movie is the fourth and final one, The Wrecking Crew (1969), as it was the last film appearance of Sharon Tate before her murder by the Manson Family.)
American comedies at least (as opposed to the British comedies) had a relatively decent year in 1966, with three of them making splashes at the Oscars. The winner of the Oscar for Best Scoring of Music - Adaptation or Treatment was the Stephen Sondheim musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
and Walter Matthau won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Fortune Cookie.
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We discussed in our previous blog that comedy as a genre was subjected to the same problems as the rest of mainstream Hollywood in that they were falsely associating length and scale with quality, especially in the wake of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). A lot of avant-garde artists were stuck asking questions about the human existence and, as a result, comedies remained the territory of mainstream theater directors, not more risque young folks. While neither of these films listed were pushing boundaries per se, they are actually both pretty funny and two of the best movies of 1966.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a parody of the Roman epics as a slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) manipulates a colorful cast of characters (one of whom is played by silent comedy legend Buster Keaton in his final film appearance) in an elaborate scam to earn his freedom. This movie, in my opinion, was a severe snub for Best Adapted Screenplay as the way that Pseudolus manipulates every character in the movie against each other with misunderstanding after misunderstanding makes for one of the quickest, wittiest comedies you’ll ever watch. It’s basically “Misunderstanding: The Movie” and it’s great at watching all of these oddball characters completely misinterpret each other.
The Fortune Cookie was Billy Wilder’s last big showing at the Oscars and it once again has the same meanness to it that gave his movies such a fun identity. The movie follows a CBS cameraman named Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) who gets tackled while filming an NFL game. While he recovers fine, his conniving lawyer and brother-in-law, Whiplash Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau), convinces him to fake an injury so they can sue. Hinkle has a pang of conscience about lying in this matter so Whiplash Willie performs a variety of emotional manipulation and gaslighting techniques to kowtow Hinkle. The dark humor is on-point and Matthau earned a well-deserved award for this character as he is an early forerunner of comedies where the humor comes from how utterly beyond redemption they are (Whiplash Willie would fit right at home as a member of the Gang in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005-present)).
As great as both of these movies are, the comedy that was nominated for Best Picture was the much weaker The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a parody of the Roman epics as a slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) manipulates a colorful cast of characters (one of whom is played by silent comedy legend Buster Keaton in his final film appearance) in an elaborate scam to earn his freedom. This movie, in my opinion, was a severe snub for Best Adapted Screenplay as the way that Pseudolus manipulates every character in the movie against each other with misunderstanding after misunderstanding makes for one of the quickest, wittiest comedies you’ll ever watch. It’s basically “Misunderstanding: The Movie” and it’s great at watching all of these oddball characters completely misinterpret each other.
The Fortune Cookie was Billy Wilder’s last big showing at the Oscars and it once again has the same meanness to it that gave his movies such a fun identity. The movie follows a CBS cameraman named Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) who gets tackled while filming an NFL game. While he recovers fine, his conniving lawyer and brother-in-law, Whiplash Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau), convinces him to fake an injury so they can sue. Hinkle has a pang of conscience about lying in this matter so Whiplash Willie performs a variety of emotional manipulation and gaslighting techniques to kowtow Hinkle. The dark humor is on-point and Matthau earned a well-deserved award for this character as he is an early forerunner of comedies where the humor comes from how utterly beyond redemption they are (Whiplash Willie would fit right at home as a member of the Gang in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005-present)).
As great as both of these movies are, the comedy that was nominated for Best Picture was the much weaker The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
This one is a more classic screwball as a band of Russian soldiers crash ashore on a small island community off the coast of Maine and infiltrate the town. The movie was boundary-pushing at the time as the Russians are portrayed in a sympathetic manner and the film is a commentary on Cold War hysteria as the town goes insane. While the politics are progressive and commendable, this is ultimately a very annoying film. All the humor just comes from the character screaming and freaking out for 2 hours straight.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Fortune Cookie are definitely better than The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and I honestly think some of the best-aged of this time period of comedies in a pre-Producers (1968) world. It’s sad that both remain pretty obscure compared to some other risque comedies of yore (have you even heard of them before) but, again, 1966 seemed to be the year with a low turnout of movies entering the pop cultural zeitgeist.
The genre that seemed to have the biggest breakthrough into mainstream pop culture knowledge this year were a trio of movies adapted from TV shows. We’ve discussed the first ever movie(s) based on a TV show previously but 1966 seems to be the year that had the biggest breakout with three box office successes based off of three of the most popular shows of the 1960s: Batman: The Movie (based off of the TV series of the same name (1966-1968)), The Man Called Flintstone (based off of The Flintstones (1960-1966)) and Munster, Go Home! (based off of The Munsters (1964-1966)).
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Fortune Cookie are definitely better than The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and I honestly think some of the best-aged of this time period of comedies in a pre-Producers (1968) world. It’s sad that both remain pretty obscure compared to some other risque comedies of yore (have you even heard of them before) but, again, 1966 seemed to be the year with a low turnout of movies entering the pop cultural zeitgeist.
The genre that seemed to have the biggest breakthrough into mainstream pop culture knowledge this year were a trio of movies adapted from TV shows. We’ve discussed the first ever movie(s) based on a TV show previously but 1966 seems to be the year that had the biggest breakout with three box office successes based off of three of the most popular shows of the 1960s: Batman: The Movie (based off of the TV series of the same name (1966-1968)), The Man Called Flintstone (based off of The Flintstones (1960-1966)) and Munster, Go Home! (based off of The Munsters (1964-1966)).
Taking them from worst to best, Munster, Go Home! is about the titular family of Universal horror monster knockoffs who go on vacation to England whilst their relatives at home scheme to steal their fortune. As television series became more and more part of the pop culture zeitgeist, movies based on TV shows would become far more commonplace. A rule of thumb, however, is that these films would usually up the budget and stakes of the story to treat fans of the series to something larger to warrant seeing a movie. (i.e. The Simpsons Movie (2007), based off of the iconic TV series (1989-present), features far better animation than its TV counterpart and the titular family foiling an evil government plan to quarantine and nuke their hometown.)
I bring this up because Munster, Go Home! clearly predates this trend as this just feels like a longer episode of the sitcom it’s based on. No grand scale, no great stakes, no major character developments; if you’re just a fan of The Munsters and thought that 30 minutes was too short, then this is the movie for you.
I bring this up because Munster, Go Home! clearly predates this trend as this just feels like a longer episode of the sitcom it’s based on. No grand scale, no great stakes, no major character developments; if you’re just a fan of The Munsters and thought that 30 minutes was too short, then this is the movie for you.
The Man Called Flintstone is a little better in this regard. The movie features the modern-day Stone Age family going on vacation while Fred Flintstone (voiced by Alan Reed, singing voice dubbed by Henry Corden) gets confused for a secret agent who looks just like him (voiced by Paul Frees). The movie is a clear parody/cash-in of the James Bond films and the animation is still TV quality but, for fans of the show, it does feel like a movie at least with a scale and a doomsday plot that the characters get mixed up in.
Batman: The Movie is by far the best of these films. In this movie, Batman (Adam West) and his sidekick Robin (Burt Ward), find out that all of their most sinister enemies; the Catwoman (Lee Meriwether), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith), the Joker (Cesar Romero) and the Riddler (Frank Gorshin); have joined forces in their quest for world domination. Just having all the best villains from the TV show together at once must’ve been a big treat for fans back in the day and the movie takes the already ridiculous set-ups of the TV series and ups their scale for a movie.
Contrary to popular belief, the 60s Batman TV series was a bit of a flash-in-the-pan pop culture-wise at the time. The show had a tried-and-true formula that perfected the idea of “if you’ve seen one episode, you’ve seen them all” which means audiences got pretty sick of it and started tuning out before the conclusion of its 120-episode run. The movie came out right before this audience backlash started happening and, by the end of the 60s, the show would be dead, buried and canceled. It has gotten a second wind, however, by Batman and movie fans alike as one of the best examples of 60s camp, as well as some pretty hilarious cognitive dissonance for fans of the character who are used to his darker interpretations in the 90s and 2000s. Even 50 years later, there are scenes from this film that are famous Internet memes which is pretty impressive staying power for a movie that is this old.
Batman: The Movie is basically like if the 60s vomited all over itself and it is a lot of fun as it knows what it is, how stupid it is and is just having a blast. It’s also probably the most famous film of 1966 that still lives on in pop culture so many years later which is both to the movie’s credit and also a commentary on how bad of a year for movies 1966 was. It’s probably not movie of the year though I do think that the tongue-in-cheek political satire was much smarter and funnier than The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
It’s also better than probably the two other most famous and iconic action movies of the year. There was Fantastic Voyage,
Contrary to popular belief, the 60s Batman TV series was a bit of a flash-in-the-pan pop culture-wise at the time. The show had a tried-and-true formula that perfected the idea of “if you’ve seen one episode, you’ve seen them all” which means audiences got pretty sick of it and started tuning out before the conclusion of its 120-episode run. The movie came out right before this audience backlash started happening and, by the end of the 60s, the show would be dead, buried and canceled. It has gotten a second wind, however, by Batman and movie fans alike as one of the best examples of 60s camp, as well as some pretty hilarious cognitive dissonance for fans of the character who are used to his darker interpretations in the 90s and 2000s. Even 50 years later, there are scenes from this film that are famous Internet memes which is pretty impressive staying power for a movie that is this old.
Batman: The Movie is basically like if the 60s vomited all over itself and it is a lot of fun as it knows what it is, how stupid it is and is just having a blast. It’s also probably the most famous film of 1966 that still lives on in pop culture so many years later which is both to the movie’s credit and also a commentary on how bad of a year for movies 1966 was. It’s probably not movie of the year though I do think that the tongue-in-cheek political satire was much smarter and funnier than The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
It’s also better than probably the two other most famous and iconic action movies of the year. There was Fantastic Voyage,
a sci-fi film where a team of scientists enter a submarine that can be shrunk down to microscopic size in order to enter a human body and repair brain damage. This is one of the most famous movie set-ups of all time and it’s hard to think of a TV sitcom that hasn’t spoofed this idea of going inside someone’s digestive tract. The effects are pretty good for their time too, earning the movie the Oscars for Best Special Effects and Best Art Direction in Color, though it also has some of the most downright atrocious acting you’ll ever see in your life. Like, seriously, hippies would be offended at it being called wooden.
And there was also One Million Years B.C.,
And there was also One Million Years B.C.,
which is the most famous caveman film as it details a caveman (John Richardson) who gets exiled from his tribe and must find his way back while encountering all sorts of prehistoric monsters (animated by famed artist Ray Harryhausen) along the way. None of the characters speak and the story is communicated entirely visually which is nice. While it’s a gimmick, it’s a good one and the film wasn’t nominated for any of the technical awards which is a shame as it’s still a pretty good-looking and enjoyable movie. That having been said, it does fall into some of the isms of the time period. Specifically, the love interest played by Raquel Welch who is dressed like a prehistoric Bond girl despite the fact that every other human in the movie looks as filthy as you would expect hunter-gatherer tribesmen to look.
That covers almost every major American film of note that year. Compared to most of these, it’s both easy to see why A Man for All Seasons won and also why the counterculture’s demands of a Hollywood New Wave to match what was going on in Europe would be answered the following year. That having been said, there was one movie from America that could match A Man for All Seasons and, in fact, I would argue is the better and more impactful movie. The biggest competition that year for Best Picture was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
That covers almost every major American film of note that year. Compared to most of these, it’s both easy to see why A Man for All Seasons won and also why the counterculture’s demands of a Hollywood New Wave to match what was going on in Europe would be answered the following year. That having been said, there was one movie from America that could match A Man for All Seasons and, in fact, I would argue is the better and more impactful movie. The biggest competition that year for Best Picture was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is probably the most disturbing movie that escapes the horror or thriller moniker. A middle-aged college professor named George (Richard Burton) and his wife, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), invite his much younger colleague Nick (George Segal) and his wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis), to join them for a midnight cup of tea before they turn in for the night. Nick and Honey very quickly come to regret their decision as they realize that George and Martha are a horrifically toxic couple and are ensnared into their abuse-filled verbal tirades towards each other.
The movie was clearly based on a play as it takes place almost exclusively in one location but they spice it up with a lot of uncomfortable close-ups so you can see every line of hatred etched on these two’s faces. The movie also broke ground with swearing. While they don’t drop the f-bomb or any racial slurs, there’s some frank references to abortion and some mild swearing (i.e. “Screw you!” “God dammit!”) The new President of the MPAA, Jack Valenti, tried at first to trim some of the film but found that the distributor had no interest and that profanity watchdogs (whose threatening to boycott and picket movies 30 years ago inspired the Hays Code) honestly didn’t mind it all that much.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was released largely unedited and with profanity intact, the only condition being that movie theaters had to promise not to let anyone under the age of 18 see it. So while Some Like It Hot (1959) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959) fractured the Hays Code and The Pawnbroker (1965) splintered what was left, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? destroyed it once and for all. Its breakthrough and box office success (being the third-highest-grossing movie of 1966) is what inspired the MPAA to ditch the Hays Code in favor of workshopping the modern-day rating system. This wouldn’t be instituted until November 1968, making July 1966-October 1968 a true Wild West time for movies in terms of censorship, or the lack thereof.
The movie was clearly based on a play as it takes place almost exclusively in one location but they spice it up with a lot of uncomfortable close-ups so you can see every line of hatred etched on these two’s faces. The movie also broke ground with swearing. While they don’t drop the f-bomb or any racial slurs, there’s some frank references to abortion and some mild swearing (i.e. “Screw you!” “God dammit!”) The new President of the MPAA, Jack Valenti, tried at first to trim some of the film but found that the distributor had no interest and that profanity watchdogs (whose threatening to boycott and picket movies 30 years ago inspired the Hays Code) honestly didn’t mind it all that much.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was released largely unedited and with profanity intact, the only condition being that movie theaters had to promise not to let anyone under the age of 18 see it. So while Some Like It Hot (1959) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959) fractured the Hays Code and The Pawnbroker (1965) splintered what was left, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? destroyed it once and for all. Its breakthrough and box office success (being the third-highest-grossing movie of 1966) is what inspired the MPAA to ditch the Hays Code in favor of workshopping the modern-day rating system. This wouldn’t be instituted until November 1968, making July 1966-October 1968 a true Wild West time for movies in terms of censorship, or the lack thereof.
Going into the 39th Academy Awards, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? seemed to be the odds-on favorite as it was
nominated for every award it was eligible for and was the first movie
in history where everyone in the cast was nominated for an acting award.
(This sounds impressive until you remember that there are only 4
characters in the whole movie.) Elizabeth Taylor, the arguable Queen of
Hollywood at the time, aggressively pushed for it to win and refused to
court the press for almost a month in protest when Richard Burton lost
the Academy Award for Best Leading Actor to Paul Scofield.
Comparing the two movies back to back, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? definitely seems like the edgier and more boundary-pushing film than A Man for All Seasons. While A Man for All Seasons was about the triumph of the individual and a pensive take on the triumph of law in an increasingly lawless America, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about the death of hope in middle-age and the uglier side of the American mom and dad. George and Martha seem like they were a happy couple once upon a time in that picturesque 50s family you see in Norman Rockwell paintings but they’ve clearly been married for so long that they’ve grown to loathe each other. Pairing them with a much younger, newly-married couple who are looking forward to their life with each other is a very unsettling commentary on contemporary Americana. Elizabeth Taylor is especially excellent as Martha and, whatever her diva-esque courting of the press was like in real life, she deserves credit for being willing to ugly herself up this much for the role.
For the sheer feat of completely altering the ratings system alone, it’s easy to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a more revolutionary film than A Man for All Seasons and more deserving of the Oscar for Best Picture. I would normally start wrapping it up here but there are a few other films that I want to acknowledge that weren’t nominated for Best Picture that I think shows the real level of stodgy ignorance on display by this generation of the Academy, namely in foreign cinema and documentaries.
The winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary was The War Game.
Comparing the two movies back to back, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? definitely seems like the edgier and more boundary-pushing film than A Man for All Seasons. While A Man for All Seasons was about the triumph of the individual and a pensive take on the triumph of law in an increasingly lawless America, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about the death of hope in middle-age and the uglier side of the American mom and dad. George and Martha seem like they were a happy couple once upon a time in that picturesque 50s family you see in Norman Rockwell paintings but they’ve clearly been married for so long that they’ve grown to loathe each other. Pairing them with a much younger, newly-married couple who are looking forward to their life with each other is a very unsettling commentary on contemporary Americana. Elizabeth Taylor is especially excellent as Martha and, whatever her diva-esque courting of the press was like in real life, she deserves credit for being willing to ugly herself up this much for the role.
For the sheer feat of completely altering the ratings system alone, it’s easy to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a more revolutionary film than A Man for All Seasons and more deserving of the Oscar for Best Picture. I would normally start wrapping it up here but there are a few other films that I want to acknowledge that weren’t nominated for Best Picture that I think shows the real level of stodgy ignorance on display by this generation of the Academy, namely in foreign cinema and documentaries.
The winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary was The War Game.
The War Game was originally produced for television by BBC but the subject was considered so disturbing that the censors opted to remove it from broadcast and release it in theaters instead. The War Game is what you might call a pseudo-documentary or a hypothetical documentary where it doesn’t document something that actually happened. Instead it takes place in a world where England was subjected to an atomic bomb and the documentary crew shows what had transpired. It then features some very grim and uncomfortable re-enactments of the complete breakdown of a first-world society in the wake of a nuclear war.
The War Game is still pretty chilling to this day with its death toll and brutal suffering that is portrayed. One could make the argument that the filmmakers could have gotten the point across by making a real documentary about the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but, regardless, bringing it home to swinging London does show the real horror and waste of the atomic bombs. It’s a well-earned victory though the question is begged why wasn’t it nominated for Best Picture? Its impact on the anti-war movement of the 1960s was palpable and many critics and audiences at the time noted its truly haunting nature.
Maybe the fact that it was so short (only 47 minutes) and originally made to be for television made it easier for the Academy to dismiss off-hand as not worth analyzing for Best Picture? Fair enough but if that’s the case, then an even bigger snub was The Endless Summer.
The War Game is still pretty chilling to this day with its death toll and brutal suffering that is portrayed. One could make the argument that the filmmakers could have gotten the point across by making a real documentary about the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but, regardless, bringing it home to swinging London does show the real horror and waste of the atomic bombs. It’s a well-earned victory though the question is begged why wasn’t it nominated for Best Picture? Its impact on the anti-war movement of the 1960s was palpable and many critics and audiences at the time noted its truly haunting nature.
Maybe the fact that it was so short (only 47 minutes) and originally made to be for television made it easier for the Academy to dismiss off-hand as not worth analyzing for Best Picture? Fair enough but if that’s the case, then an even bigger snub was The Endless Summer.
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Often considered a landmark in independent cinema, documentary cinema and the 60s counterculture, The Endless Summer is the epitome of a DIY ethos, being made by a couple of guys sharing their love of their hobby with the world. The movie chronicles surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they spend a year traveling the world, chasing the summer season as they go between hemispheres, trying to discover the beach with the most perfect surf. This is a fun framing device that allows the movie to explore both beach culture in exotic locales and also act as a fun peek into the surfer culture of Southern California.
Documentaries in the 20s-40s were usually over-the-top borderline propaganda that posted exaggerated facts or bold-faced lies to excite the audience (especially during the war years). Starting around the turn of the decade, a lot of documentaries from the cinéma vérité style would be more truthful but still be somewhat stodgy. The Endless Summer was arguably the first “fun” documentary. It has a very laidback style and feels more like a travelogue as these two beach bums share their encounters with foreigners all across the world and introduce them to their sport that they love. As a result, The Endless Summer feels like the precursor to many documentaries you used to see on the Travel Channel and the like (back when it used to show actual traveling), allowing you to vicariously globetrot.
This is a case of experimental filmmaking that actually really works and breathes an entirely new dimension of life into the genre of the documentary. While I don’t know if I would necessarily call it avant-garde, it is interesting, original and broke new ground and you could tell it at the time. This should’ve been at least considered for Best Documentary but the Academy, once again, was only concerned with what they considered mainstream documentaries and had no interest in seeing the new stuff that was happening in the Californian counterculture.
Documentaries in the 20s-40s were usually over-the-top borderline propaganda that posted exaggerated facts or bold-faced lies to excite the audience (especially during the war years). Starting around the turn of the decade, a lot of documentaries from the cinéma vérité style would be more truthful but still be somewhat stodgy. The Endless Summer was arguably the first “fun” documentary. It has a very laidback style and feels more like a travelogue as these two beach bums share their encounters with foreigners all across the world and introduce them to their sport that they love. As a result, The Endless Summer feels like the precursor to many documentaries you used to see on the Travel Channel and the like (back when it used to show actual traveling), allowing you to vicariously globetrot.
This is a case of experimental filmmaking that actually really works and breathes an entirely new dimension of life into the genre of the documentary. While I don’t know if I would necessarily call it avant-garde, it is interesting, original and broke new ground and you could tell it at the time. This should’ve been at least considered for Best Documentary but the Academy, once again, was only concerned with what they considered mainstream documentaries and had no interest in seeing the new stuff that was happening in the Californian counterculture.
Foreign-language cinema also had a pretty good showing in 1966. So much so, that if there was a year that a non-English-speaking movie could’ve, and maybe should have, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, this was it. A rare frontrunner of the Academy Award for Best Director was a movie from France, Un Homme et un Femme (Eng.: A Man and a Woman).
This is another avant-garde film though it’s definitely much more watchable for the lay audience than some others. A Man and a Woman is a love story but the twist is that the love in question is a lot older. Specifically, it revolves around Jean-Louis (Jean-Lous Trintignant) and Anne (Anouk Aimée), both of whom are widowed single parents, who meet and navigate their attraction for each other. It’s very well done and mature but the movie garnered accolades for being the first movie to change the color from black-and-white to Technicolor to accentuate the mood. This was done 27 years beforehand in The Wizard of Oz (1939), making this another eyeroll-worthy record, but A Man and a Woman definitely has a lot more interesting styles with the change in moods.
Compared to A Man for All Seasons and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Man and a Woman is definitely the most hopeful and arguably the most safe in its subject matter though it also has the most fun in its shooting and editing style and arguably did the most to push the medium of filmmaking forward. The constant switching of colors is more impressive in this time period than when you see it in movies nowadays since you remember they would’ve had to have mixed and matched different film prints and solutions, making the switching seem very deliberate.
The real snubs, however, didn’t come from France but from Italy. Far more challenging movies to the establishment were La Battaglia di Algeri (Eng.: The Battle of Algiers) and Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (Eng.: The Gospel According to St. Matthew).
Compared to A Man for All Seasons and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Man and a Woman is definitely the most hopeful and arguably the most safe in its subject matter though it also has the most fun in its shooting and editing style and arguably did the most to push the medium of filmmaking forward. The constant switching of colors is more impressive in this time period than when you see it in movies nowadays since you remember they would’ve had to have mixed and matched different film prints and solutions, making the switching seem very deliberate.
The real snubs, however, didn’t come from France but from Italy. Far more challenging movies to the establishment were La Battaglia di Algeri (Eng.: The Battle of Algiers) and Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (Eng.: The Gospel According to St. Matthew).
The Battle of Algiers is a movie nominally about the French-and-Algerian War. Adventure and war movies about European colonialism have been a thing ever since cinema was invented, often showing the battles of European soldiers doing battle with evil terrorists. The Battle of Algiers was the first movie, however, to ask a simple question: what if the white people aren't the good guys? True to the adage of one man’s terrorist being another man’s freedom fighter, The Battle of Algiers is a film showing the plight and rebellion of the Algerian locals as they do battle with the brutal and harassing French troops.
This is far more important than it may sound as the idea of a G7 country not being intrinsically good and the heroes of the movie not being white were huge deals. The film feels like a spiritual successor to Roberto Rossellini’s Neorealist films of the 40s such as Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisan (1946) with its showing of the grimness of urban warfare and innocent bystanders getting murdered. What’s great too is that the film doesn’t whitewash the Algerian guerillas who are our protagonists. They are responsible for innocent deaths but the movie does show what’s driving them to these extremes: they feel like they’ve run out of options because their rights have been denied from them.
The Battle of Algiers is often considered a milestone in leftist cinema: during the protests of the 60s and 70s, there’s records of both protestors and the military watching The Battle of Algiers as a training manual on how to conduct urban warfare. The film obviously ruffled some feathers in France where it was actually completely banned. Americans, on the other hand, liked it a lot, seeing parallels between the Algerian War and the War in Vietnam. In fact, it seemed like it was more popular in America than in France which is an interesting turn of phrase considering that’s the country that started the whole filmmaking movement that inspired movies like this one.
This is far more important than it may sound as the idea of a G7 country not being intrinsically good and the heroes of the movie not being white were huge deals. The film feels like a spiritual successor to Roberto Rossellini’s Neorealist films of the 40s such as Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisan (1946) with its showing of the grimness of urban warfare and innocent bystanders getting murdered. What’s great too is that the film doesn’t whitewash the Algerian guerillas who are our protagonists. They are responsible for innocent deaths but the movie does show what’s driving them to these extremes: they feel like they’ve run out of options because their rights have been denied from them.
The Battle of Algiers is often considered a milestone in leftist cinema: during the protests of the 60s and 70s, there’s records of both protestors and the military watching The Battle of Algiers as a training manual on how to conduct urban warfare. The film obviously ruffled some feathers in France where it was actually completely banned. Americans, on the other hand, liked it a lot, seeing parallels between the Algerian War and the War in Vietnam. In fact, it seemed like it was more popular in America than in France which is an interesting turn of phrase considering that’s the country that started the whole filmmaking movement that inspired movies like this one.
Compared to Hollywood’s Biblical epics, The Gospel According to St. Matthew is a more indie, cheap, neorealist take on the story of Jesus of Nazareth (Enrique Izaroqui, dubbed by Enrico Maria Salerno). In fact, comparing this movie to The Bible: In the Beginning… (and the previous year’s The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) which was also about Jesus’ life) is one of the best examples of how the Hollywood epics were completely thrashed by foreign cinema that year. While The Bible: In the Beginning… did gross more due to it having deeper pockets for marketing, The Gospel According to St. Matthew easily made a higher net and most audiences and Christians who saw both almost universally agreed that The Gospel According to St. Matthew was a better and more electrifying movie. It has had tremendous staying power throughout the years and, in 2015, the Vatican’s official newspaper officially decreed this to be the greatest movie based on the life of its Messiah.
The director of the film, Pier Paolo Pasolini, adapts the gospel almost word-for-word and portrays the setting as very mundane-looking. Remember that Jesus was a Jewish carpenter in ancient Jerusalem who served fishermen and other poor folks. So there’s no grand spectacles, no divine choirs with angelic lights, no lectures about faith. It’s very straightforward and just set in the windswept desert with most characters dressed in rags. What’s even more striking than the dismal setting is just how regal and strict Izaroqui’s portrayal of Jesus is. Many other movies about Christ make Him seem so awe-inspiring that it becomes a tad ridiculous. Here, He seems like a proud parent who wants what’s best for you and is disappointed when you don’t follow the rules. He actually comes off as pretty mean until you remember that, yes, this is how He was written in the Bible. After all, He was called the King of Kings for a reason and what does a King do if not expect his rules to be followed?
Similar to The Battle of Algiers, The Gospel According to St. Matthew gained some press in leftist circles that was becoming more and more overlaid with the counterculture that watched movies like this. Christian conservatives attacked the film for equating piety with Marxism, as one of the key scenes is when Jesus attacks the moneylenders in the temple (which, do remember, is in the Bible). The common counterargument to this critique is that many of the most militant Christians deliberately miss the point of Christ’s teachings though I think this is a case where audiences were more projecting their opinions (left-wing or right) of the director onto the movie he made instead of the movie itself.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an openly and proudly gay atheist Marxist, which is a pretty impressive trifecta. In the early 60s, Pope St. John XXIII set up an interfaith outreach to peoples of other faiths to make art for the Church. Pasolini accepted this program and, while leafing through the Bible at a pit stop, decided to ask for permission and funding to adapt the Gospel of Matthew (calling John too mystical, Mark too vulgar and Luke too sentimental). Considering how this man was, again, a gay atheist Marxist which means his very existence probably pissed off half the Christians he met in life (he would end up being tragically murdered for his politics during the Years of Lead (Italy’s equivalent to America’s Long, Hot Summers or the Troubles in the UK and Ireland)), it’s impressive how reverentially the film treats its subject. I recommend reading some of Pasolini’s commentary of the film, because it’s very intelligent and shows an interesting worldview of a man who doesn’t necessarily believe in this religion but still chooses to treat it in a respectful manner. So, no, I don’t think this man was warping Jesus to fit his own politics; I think he genuinely was fascinated by a subject that he didn’t believe in and wanted to treat it as an artistic challenge.
Having this movie be more well-regarded and literally funded by God’s Voice on Earth must’ve been a particular spit in the eye to the Hollywood establishment. I would say that the Academy might’ve deliberately snubbed it because of bruised egos but, I don’t think that’s it. The way the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film works is that each country submits what they think the one single best movie from their country is and submit that to the Academy and Italy’s slot was already occupied by The Battle of Algiers. You could maybe argue the Vatican might’ve been able to submit since it is its own separate country but this is getting into semantics. There is no reason why multiple films from one country can’t be nominated for Best Foreign Film other than pointless legalese. For being an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, they sure do seem to take a lot of excuses to not watch a lot of motion pictures.
Getting to the success or snub question, this is kind of a hard one to grade as you can tell that I’m not a big fan of the 60s avant-garde but the decisions on display still shows the willful ignorance and conservatism of the Hollywood establishment. As much as I do mock some of the narcissism of the youth in the 60s and how teen and young adult movies had the cliché of feeling that adults don’t listen to them, this was a valid complaint during the Johnson years as many young adults and counterculture types were being drafted to go off to die to prop up a Southeast Asian dictator.
Bringing it back to movies, reading biographies and histories of this era, there seems like an almost willful ignorance amongst the Hollywood establishment to ignore the new blood. There was famously a party that took place as the house of Henry Fonda where he hosted members of the old crew while his children, Peter and Jane, brought along their youngsters and the two sides almost immediately self-segregated.
With this in mind, this Academy Award ceremony seems almost like a desperate hang-on to project their pop cultural power over the up-and-coming artist generation but there was practically nothing good in Hollywood so they chose the safest and best option they could. While A Man for All Seasons is a good movie and a good parable, there’s not really anything being pushed and the movie is, quite frankly, boring a lot of the time. At the other end of the spectrum, a Hollywood Queen like Elizabeth Taylor deliberately put her backing into something far more creative, unique and boundary-pushing with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Remember that Elizabeth Taylor was a big deal in Hollywood at this time. She was literally the type of person who could get an Academy Award for Best Actress because she was sick and the members of the Academy gave her an award as a get-well card (see 33rd Academy Awards, 1960 review). Why wouldn’t her passion project be good enough for the big award, especially one with such a strong critical reception and box office receipt and even winning several Academy Awards in other categories? While A Man for All Seasons has an argument at being historically relevant when it came out, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was equally relevant, just in a more dismal manner. Was A Man for All Seasons elevated for political reasons to endorse a law-and-order platform? That’s a possibility but I think a better answer has less to do with American politics and more to do with Academy members being so offended by the subject matter and mean language that they chose to go with a safer option.
This kind of safeness permeates a lot of choices. Why not nominate more foreign films for Best Picture? Why push The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and Alfie for Best Picture when The Fortune Cookie takes a bigger risk by portraying a more hilariously selfish scenario? Why not nominate The Endless Summer for Best Documentary when it’s clear that it did some new things for the art of documentary-making? And if they’re not going to choose an American movie, why choose the slow British one when Italy made two great movies that challenged the audience more?
I want to re-emphasize that A Man for All Seasons is a good movie and worth watching if it interests you. But let’s just take the timeliness out and acknowledge that these other films are also timely. Then the question becomes if a movie is the best movie of the year based on how much it pushes forward in the filmmaking medium. In that regard, A Man for All Seasons is competent but nothing groundbreaking or new. Who’s Afraid of Virignia Woolf? (as well as The Battle of Algiers, The War Game and The Gospel According to St. Matthew) has a darker and more experimental shooting style that seems like something out of John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1959), a better story, more interesting pacing and more taboo subject matter. Throw that all together, yeah, this is clearly not the correct choice for Best Picture of the year, even accounting for taste.
Calling A Man for All Seasons the best movie of 1966 was a…
SNUB!
The director of the film, Pier Paolo Pasolini, adapts the gospel almost word-for-word and portrays the setting as very mundane-looking. Remember that Jesus was a Jewish carpenter in ancient Jerusalem who served fishermen and other poor folks. So there’s no grand spectacles, no divine choirs with angelic lights, no lectures about faith. It’s very straightforward and just set in the windswept desert with most characters dressed in rags. What’s even more striking than the dismal setting is just how regal and strict Izaroqui’s portrayal of Jesus is. Many other movies about Christ make Him seem so awe-inspiring that it becomes a tad ridiculous. Here, He seems like a proud parent who wants what’s best for you and is disappointed when you don’t follow the rules. He actually comes off as pretty mean until you remember that, yes, this is how He was written in the Bible. After all, He was called the King of Kings for a reason and what does a King do if not expect his rules to be followed?
Similar to The Battle of Algiers, The Gospel According to St. Matthew gained some press in leftist circles that was becoming more and more overlaid with the counterculture that watched movies like this. Christian conservatives attacked the film for equating piety with Marxism, as one of the key scenes is when Jesus attacks the moneylenders in the temple (which, do remember, is in the Bible). The common counterargument to this critique is that many of the most militant Christians deliberately miss the point of Christ’s teachings though I think this is a case where audiences were more projecting their opinions (left-wing or right) of the director onto the movie he made instead of the movie itself.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an openly and proudly gay atheist Marxist, which is a pretty impressive trifecta. In the early 60s, Pope St. John XXIII set up an interfaith outreach to peoples of other faiths to make art for the Church. Pasolini accepted this program and, while leafing through the Bible at a pit stop, decided to ask for permission and funding to adapt the Gospel of Matthew (calling John too mystical, Mark too vulgar and Luke too sentimental). Considering how this man was, again, a gay atheist Marxist which means his very existence probably pissed off half the Christians he met in life (he would end up being tragically murdered for his politics during the Years of Lead (Italy’s equivalent to America’s Long, Hot Summers or the Troubles in the UK and Ireland)), it’s impressive how reverentially the film treats its subject. I recommend reading some of Pasolini’s commentary of the film, because it’s very intelligent and shows an interesting worldview of a man who doesn’t necessarily believe in this religion but still chooses to treat it in a respectful manner. So, no, I don’t think this man was warping Jesus to fit his own politics; I think he genuinely was fascinated by a subject that he didn’t believe in and wanted to treat it as an artistic challenge.
Having this movie be more well-regarded and literally funded by God’s Voice on Earth must’ve been a particular spit in the eye to the Hollywood establishment. I would say that the Academy might’ve deliberately snubbed it because of bruised egos but, I don’t think that’s it. The way the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film works is that each country submits what they think the one single best movie from their country is and submit that to the Academy and Italy’s slot was already occupied by The Battle of Algiers. You could maybe argue the Vatican might’ve been able to submit since it is its own separate country but this is getting into semantics. There is no reason why multiple films from one country can’t be nominated for Best Foreign Film other than pointless legalese. For being an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, they sure do seem to take a lot of excuses to not watch a lot of motion pictures.
Getting to the success or snub question, this is kind of a hard one to grade as you can tell that I’m not a big fan of the 60s avant-garde but the decisions on display still shows the willful ignorance and conservatism of the Hollywood establishment. As much as I do mock some of the narcissism of the youth in the 60s and how teen and young adult movies had the cliché of feeling that adults don’t listen to them, this was a valid complaint during the Johnson years as many young adults and counterculture types were being drafted to go off to die to prop up a Southeast Asian dictator.
Bringing it back to movies, reading biographies and histories of this era, there seems like an almost willful ignorance amongst the Hollywood establishment to ignore the new blood. There was famously a party that took place as the house of Henry Fonda where he hosted members of the old crew while his children, Peter and Jane, brought along their youngsters and the two sides almost immediately self-segregated.
With this in mind, this Academy Award ceremony seems almost like a desperate hang-on to project their pop cultural power over the up-and-coming artist generation but there was practically nothing good in Hollywood so they chose the safest and best option they could. While A Man for All Seasons is a good movie and a good parable, there’s not really anything being pushed and the movie is, quite frankly, boring a lot of the time. At the other end of the spectrum, a Hollywood Queen like Elizabeth Taylor deliberately put her backing into something far more creative, unique and boundary-pushing with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Remember that Elizabeth Taylor was a big deal in Hollywood at this time. She was literally the type of person who could get an Academy Award for Best Actress because she was sick and the members of the Academy gave her an award as a get-well card (see 33rd Academy Awards, 1960 review). Why wouldn’t her passion project be good enough for the big award, especially one with such a strong critical reception and box office receipt and even winning several Academy Awards in other categories? While A Man for All Seasons has an argument at being historically relevant when it came out, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was equally relevant, just in a more dismal manner. Was A Man for All Seasons elevated for political reasons to endorse a law-and-order platform? That’s a possibility but I think a better answer has less to do with American politics and more to do with Academy members being so offended by the subject matter and mean language that they chose to go with a safer option.
This kind of safeness permeates a lot of choices. Why not nominate more foreign films for Best Picture? Why push The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and Alfie for Best Picture when The Fortune Cookie takes a bigger risk by portraying a more hilariously selfish scenario? Why not nominate The Endless Summer for Best Documentary when it’s clear that it did some new things for the art of documentary-making? And if they’re not going to choose an American movie, why choose the slow British one when Italy made two great movies that challenged the audience more?
I want to re-emphasize that A Man for All Seasons is a good movie and worth watching if it interests you. But let’s just take the timeliness out and acknowledge that these other films are also timely. Then the question becomes if a movie is the best movie of the year based on how much it pushes forward in the filmmaking medium. In that regard, A Man for All Seasons is competent but nothing groundbreaking or new. Who’s Afraid of Virignia Woolf? (as well as The Battle of Algiers, The War Game and The Gospel According to St. Matthew) has a darker and more experimental shooting style that seems like something out of John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1959), a better story, more interesting pacing and more taboo subject matter. Throw that all together, yeah, this is clearly not the correct choice for Best Picture of the year, even accounting for taste.
Calling A Man for All Seasons the best movie of 1966 was a…
SNUB!
Personal Favorite Movies of 1966:
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (dir. Richard Lester)
- Batman: The Movie (dir. Leslie H. Martinson)
- Dracula: Prince of Darkness (dir. Terence Fisher)
- Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Mathew) (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini)
- One Million Years B.C. (dir. Don Chaffey)
- The Endless Summer (dir. Bruce Brown)
- The Fortune Cookie (dir. Billy Wilder)
- The Sand Pebbles (dir. Robert Wise)
- The War Game (dir. Peter Watkins)
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (dir. Mike Nichols)
Favorite Heroes:
- Alfie Elkins (Michael Caine) (Alfie)
- Batman/Bruce Wayne and Robin/Dick Grayson (Adam West and Burt Ward) (Batman: The Movie)
- Captain Jameson (Larry Gates) (The Sand Pebbles)
- Giulietta Boldrini (Alba Cancellieri as a child, Giulietta Masina as an adult) (Giulietta degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits))
- Jesus Christ (Enrique Izaroqui, dubbed by Enrico Maria Salerno) (Il Vangelo Second Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew)
- Machinist's Mate Holman (Steve McQueen) (The Sand Pebbles)
- Mike Hynson and Robert August (The Endless Summer)
- Nick (George Segal) (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
- Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum)
- Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) (A Man for All Seasons)
Favorite Villains:
- Blues (Peter Fonda) (The Wild Angels)
- Captain Miles Gloriosus (Leon Greene) (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum)
- Cromwell (Leo McKern) (A Man for All Seasons)
- George (Richard Burton) (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
- Giorgio Beldrini (Mario Pisu) (Giulietta degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits))
- Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) (Blow-Up)
- Julian Wall (Karl Malden) (Murderers' Row)
- Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe Mathieu (Jean Martin) (La Battaglia d' Algeri (The Battle of Algiers))
- The Catwoman, the Joker, the Penguin and the Riddler (Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith and Frank Gorshin) (Batman: The Movie)
- Whiplash Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau) (The Fortune Cookie)
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