Success or Snub? Midnight Cowboy (42nd Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

To see part 1, click here.


Once Upon a Time in the West Suite~Ennio Morricone - C'era Una Volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West)

        So Midnight Cowboy is indeed a great movie but the reason for its success and relevance can also be traced to a large degree of serendipity that there was no possible way for the filmmakers to plan. In 1969, the Gay Liberation/civil rights movement began when the Stonewall Riots occurred in New York City’s West Village. Also of note that year was Mart Crowley’s famous Off-Broadway play, The Boys in the Band (1968), which had been running for the past 2 years. We’ll go more into detail of this play when reviewing the film adaptation for the 1970 rundown but The Boys in the Band was the first mainstream work that analyzed gay culture and problems. Long-story short: 1969 was the year that homosexuals joined the various other civil rights movements in agitating for equal rights before both the law and culture.
        Midnight Cowboy is interesting in how it reflects this. As mentioned, it wasn’t strictly speaking a "gay movie" as the two leads’ relationship is never explicitly confirmed one way or the other but you could definitely interpret it as such if you so chose. Even without that, Midnight Cowboy is the first movie to show homosexual relations as Joe Buck does end up having sex with several men during the course of the film. Further, with the biggest cultural event of the year being the famous Woodstock concert which, along with the Manson murders, served as the climax of the hippie movement; Midnight Cowboy serves as a curious and interesting parallel to the hippie ideology. Or, to be more accurate, it’s refuting the idea of free love and wanting to have sex with everyone all of the time, making it an interesting and timely curio to the year of 1969.
        In light of the new ratings system courtesy of the MPAA, Midnight Cowboy was given an X rating (a rating that has since died out but would be the equivalent to an NC-17; one step above R, one step below XXX which was basically reserved for porn). Surprisingly, if you watch Midnight Cowboy, the sex scenes aren’t all that graphic; certainly not nearly enough to warrant going beyond an R. The producers claimed that they pushed for one to give the film more notoriety though the truth of the matter is that the MPAA actually originally gave it an R but upped it to X for “moral reasons.” In other words, because it was a gay film, the idea that 17-year-olds might be aware that some men might have sex with each other is apparently something that should never enter their minds, regardless of whether an adult is with them or not. This is going to be a running theme going forward as despite the downfall of the Hays Code, the MPAA that replaced it wouldn't be much better as they handed out ratings with very little rhyme or reason and usually chosen on which films they'd like to bury and screw over.
        One can easily see some of the up-and-comers in the Academy pushing for Midnight Cowboy as a gleeful rebellion against the man but, honestly, Midnight Cowboy is such an excellent film and was the third-highest-grossing movie of the year. So, yeah, this definitely made an impression and people were very aware that it was something to glom onto at the time. But let’s see what else came out that year and if they were also worth talking about, shall we?
        Considering how this was the last year of the 60s, let’s start by looking at some of the long-time genres that defined the decade. And, boy, were a few of them duds. On the musical side was Hello, Dolly!

        
        This was the fifth-highest-grossing movie of the year, nominated for 7 Academy Awards (almost all of them for the technicals but it was also (unjustifiably) given a Best Picture nod), directed by the great Gene Kelly and starring Barbra Streisand as a quick-witted matchmaker who manipulates everyone around her into relationships. This is also the epitome of a musical where it comes alive during the musical scenes but is annoying and full of insipid clichés during the talking scenes. I would actually recommend watching this and fast-forwarding through any scenes where they’re not singing; you’ll have a great time and save over an hour of your life.
        From the Walt Disney Company was The Love Bug.

       This was the second-highest grosser of the year, showing that audiences may have still wanted crowd-pleasers in tough times. The movie is about a down-on-his-luck mechanic (Dean Jones) who discovers that the car he’s working on is, in fact, alive and hijinx ensue from there. It’s not great but it is fun enough and David Tomlinson is a blast as the villain. For some reason, Herbie (the car) would become one of Disney’s recurring icons, having four sequels, a TV series and being that car you see at most of the Disney theme parks but not too many people actually know the name of off-hand.
        Another famous movie for kids was A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

        Based off of the classic comic strip named Peanuts (1950-2000) by Charles Schultz, Peanuts had slowly become one of America’s favorite icons, both from the comics and the multiple TV specials that were made during the 60s (particularly the 1965 Christmas special that is played so frequently during the holidays that any American who had a TV growing up could probably recite most of it from memory). A Boy Named Charlie Brown was the first feature-length story. The film was a colossal (and surprising) success, breaking Disney’s monopoly on animated films though it does run into the same problem as Disney’s movies around this time in that animation was now being treated as being exclusively for kids with the art form’s budget being sketchy and resigned to mediocrity. Though, at the very least, Peanuts is amusing in how it shows a more cynical side of childhood, with Charlie Brown (Peter Robbins) remaining one of the most beloved losers in the history of pop culture.
        Elvis Presley’s last movie that year came out with Change of Habit.

        In this one, a trio of nuns (Mary Tyler Moore, Barbara McNair and Jane Elliot) are sent as missionaries to assist a doctor (Elvis Presley) in a rough inner-city neighborhood. Sfter the riots and assassinations of 1968, Elvis wanted to break out of his focus-tested image and use his art in a more productive manner. To his credit, Change of Habit is a big and bold change from his normal schtick, not shying away from the grittiness of an inner-city ghetto (though Midnight Cowboy it most certainly is not) and being one of the first on-screen portrayals of a child suffering from severe autism. With that said, while the movie’s decent, its tonal whiplash from what should be grittier commentary with the Elvis brand is the big problem and Elvis is so wrong and miscast for this part. In terms of commentary, A for effort, D for actually being able to act.
        James Bond got a huge makeover in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

        This was the first, last and only movie of the franchise to star George Lazenby as 007, replacing Sean Connery. The film revolves around Bond pursuing his old nemesis, Blofeld (Telly Savalas, whose performance is so radically different from Donald Pleasance's that I honestly don’t know why they didn’t just have a new villain), while meeting the woman who could potentially be the one to get him to settle down and marry, Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg). Making the epitome of the swinging 60s sex icon decide to put aside his womanizing ways and get married was very controversial with audiences to say the least. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the most polarizing action movies ever, both back then and now, as fans and critics can’t seem to agree on whether it was one of the best Bond films, one of the worst or one of the middle-of-the-road ones. In case you’re wondering what I think, I’ll give you a big hint: I don’t think it’s one of the best and I don’t think it’s one of the middle-of-the-road ones either.
        This film is meant to be a direct sequel to You Only Live Twice (1967) which is the key flaw when it comes time to introduce a new Bond and radically re-alter his character. When Lazenby’s Bond has nostalgia and reminisces about his previous adventures, it just feels like a wall is being hit because this is visibly not the person that audiences had been on these adventures with. If they kept Connery for this film or had this be Lazenby’s 2nd or 3rd movie, his subplot about finding true love might’ve been less jarring. Even ignoring that, though, Lazenby was a terrible James Bond and is completely unbelievable as a gentleman or a thug. And while Diana Rigg was a great actress, I also don’t buy her as being the one who would convince James Bond to settle down. Even as a fun action movie, it fails to impress as the cinematography during the action scenes feels like it completely spazzes out and is trying too hard to be artistic, making them feel more weird than fun (though the ski chase is a highlight).
        A very bad snub occurred for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, L’Amour de la Vie - Arthur Rubinstein (Eng.: Arthur Rubinstein - The Love of Life).

        The film is a documentary about Polish-American pianist, Arthur Rubinstein. It’s fine. But the much better and more influential documentary that didn’t win was In the Year of the Pig.

        This was the first movie to be about the Vietnam War, pairing its grisly footage of Americans wading through the jungle with Vietnamese peasants being murdered. Interspersed is documentary footage of how the war began, how Lyndon Johnson and the United States Senate stretched the truth to escalate it and all the various abuses implemented by the Diem/Thieu regime. Not only was this the first movie to be about this Hellish conflict (and reminder that 1968/1969 was the height of the war and its controversy) but it's also surprisingly still very clinical to this day. If you want to watch a documentary about the Vietnam War in 2026, this is still an excellent documentary to use to learn about it.
        And, finally, there was the screwball comedy, Cactus Flower.

        This is a pretty generic screwball, revolving around a grumpy dentist (Walter Matthau) who gets into a love triangle with his long-suffering nurse (Ingrid Bergman) and his half-his-age girlfriend (Goldie Hawn). I normally would ignore a movie like this but, what do you know, Hawn ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, in a truly terrible choice. I mean, she’s fine, but the character isn’t that unique, not that difficult to play nor is it even that influential or iconic of a role. Supposedly, the reason for this choice is that Hawn was a big TV star on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (1968-1973), a very popular sketch comedy TV series at the time (they even got Richard Nixon to appear on it) and Cactus Flower was her jump into the pictures. The fact that she was able to match wits with Matthau and Bergman despite coming out of television impressed the Academy and they wanted to prove that they were hip and “with it.” So, in other words, the award was given to the actress, not the performance.
        Moving onto our bigger hitters, a much better and more culturally relevant comedy that came out that year and also received Academy nominations (though it didn’t win anything) was Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

        Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol Saunders (Natalie Wood) are a sophisticated couple who go to a hippie retreat that educates them about love and openness. They apparently take it a little too close to heart as they return home trying to find love with everyone and everything they meet, which just ends up weirding out everyone and everything they meet. Especially taken aback are their closest friends and fellow couple, Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice Henderson (Dyan Cannon), which is a shame because Bob and Carol seem keen on trying to get them to join in a foursome.
        Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice examines some of the similar themes of Midnight Cowboy but through a more fun, lighthearted lens. This movie is clearly satirizing the free love attitude of the hippie movement, showing how it just does not gel with the world around it. Yet, like all great satires, it doesn’t take an overt side to it; choosing to let you decide whether Bob and Carol are right and the world would be a better place with more love in it or if they’re idiots whose point-of-view is completely warped. The finale of the film elevates Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice from a fun comedy to a genuinely thought-provoking piece on what love is and what it should mean and how it can still be found in an increasingly commercialized world. This is one of the most excellent movies of the year and could have a case made for it being the most socially relevant film of 1969.
        Another movie that captured the times was They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

        They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a throwback to the Great Depression, though unlike other movies which like to stew in the nostalgia of a bygone era, this movie seems to be more interested in evoking the crushing classism of the time to draw parallels to the modern day. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? revolves around a group of individuals who compete in a last-person-standing dance marathon where everyone dances non-stop with limited breaks. One by one people drop out until eventually the winner will be awarded a cash prize of $1500. In case you’re wondering, yes, this was a real thing back in the day and the film uses it as a clever framing device to examine the oppression of the era and how the characters’ humanity is subsumed in chase of the almighty dollar and also entertainment for the audiences. Even before mass media and TV existed, Americans would be willing to do anything for fame and money.
        The study of suffering for entertainment was a common trope that would become more and more commonplace in the 70s, 80s and 90s though They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was one of the first. The look of the dance marathon has very soft yet earthy colors and feels generally sweet, which contrasts vividly with the visible exhaustion that all the actors evoke. As the game goes on and on, they only get more and more tired until they seem like they can’t barely stand anymore. Yet they’ll keep on dancing because not only is the money the only way they can make it ahead, for many of them it might be the only way they could even survive.
        This is a pioneer of what is known as the last man standing or tournament movie, wherein characters compete, knowing fully well that only one of them can possibly win (modern examples: The Hunger Games (2012), Circle (2015), The Long Walk (2025)). The acting is chillingly good across the board as our contestants slowly lose their plastic grins from the sheer exhaustion of the dance. While They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a great movie and thinkpiece, it is definitely on the inconsistent side and you will start feeling its length by the end of it. Critics at the time tended to agree although most still lauded it and it was nominated for numerous Academy Awards, with Gig Young winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as the sleazy emcee of the competition and deservedly so.
        Another anthem of the counterculture was Easy Rider.

        This one was on the independent side so we can understand (though not excuse) why the Academy ignored it. Easy Rider was very much a voice of a generation and auteur vehicle, directed by Dennis Hopper during the height of his cocaine years (which lasted from about 1936 to around 2010). Co-written with his best friend, Peter Fonda, Easy Rider is a quasi-autobiographical film about a pair of friends named Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Fonda) as they hop on a pair of motorcycles and travel across the United States, encountering all sorts of oddballs along the way.
        So while many other counterculture movies were made by professional directors who may have had ties to the arts scenes, Easy Rider was made by an actual hippie who had first-hand experience with a lot of these environments. The sheer amount of drug consumption on display in this movie is insane and there is a sense of both celebration and loss that seems to follow our heroes everywhere they go. Celebration at the joy of burning some rubber down the road, being born to be wild, but also feeling the sense of emptiness that no one in America knows how to achieve the hippie ethos.
        Easy Rider was a colossal blockbuster when it came out, being the 4th-highest grosser of the year and making over $20,000,000 at the box office (on a budget of around $400,000). Along with The Graduate (1967) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967) this was one of the biggest cementers of the New Hollywood crowd and convinced studios that the way forward was to basically let directors do whatever they want. In terms of watching the movie today, it is a fascinating time capsule to understand the psychology of young America at the time though, like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? it’s definitely on the inconsistent side and some scenes are better than others (with Jack Nicholson’s star-making performance being the highlight). Still great but not quite masterpiece status and not as focused as Midnight Cowboy though some would argue that that is the point.
        Another political movie that came out in 1969, though this one was more overtly so, was Medium Cool.

        Medium Cool is a movie that satirizes the news industry and its culpability in the tragedies that befell America in 1968. Specifically, it revolves around a TV cameraman (John Cassellis) who reports on the famous Siege of Chicago (when protestors swarmed the city to protest the Democratic National Convention, Mayor Richard J. Daley gave the police orders to shoot to kill and the CPD broke out into a full-scale riot outside the DNC, attacking multiple innocent civilians caught in the crossfire) and his journeys through the Balkanized city. Medium Cool is notable for its cinéma vérité style, as the camera will cut to footage that the newsman is filming and will frequently intersplice it with real footage of the Siege of Chicago, giving the movie a documentary feel and blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction.
        The technical aspects are very impressive and really make you wonder how much was original versus how much they took from the actual event. While this is notable, Medium Cool is an interesting and good movie but not necessarily a great one. The style of it is more notable than the movie itself as the only real thing that makes the newsman a multi-dimensional character is the romance he strikes up, and it’s a very forced and tepid one. In addition, it hasn’t had much staying power through the years and I think that’s because it’s not very forgiving to the uninformed viewer. Which, granted, at the time, no one in America wouldn’t have had an opinion about this event but, 50 years on, if you only know the basics of this event in history, I don’t think you’d be able to follow Medium Cool.
        Unlike these other movies, Medium Cool seemed to be a bit more controversial. It was originally rated X by the MPAA which is bonkers as it’s far more tame than Midnight Cowboy. A year later it was re-rated as R and the director, Haskell Wexler, acknowledged that it was given an X for political reasons. I guess the Hollywood establishment saw something taking the nickel out of someone as powerful as Mayor Daley was far more inflammatory and wanted to bury it? The movie wasn’t nominated for any single Academy Award either (despite its groundbreaking style giving it cause for nominations for Best Cinematography or Best Editing at least) so that seems likely.
        But the question is why? Medium Cool is only a little bit more inflammatory than In the Year of the Pig, which was nominated for Best Documentary, even if it didn’t win. In addition, a rare foreign-language nominee for Best Picture was the even-more-left-wing Greek political thriller, Z.

        Z is a very complex movie to try to explain the plot and equally complicated to fully understand why it encapsulated so much of the spirit of 1969 but I’ll do my best. In the movie, a very popular government deputy (Yves Montand) in an unnamed country (though it’s obviously Greece) was murdered by members of the government’s right-wing military. The film leads us through their complex web of intrigue to cover up the murder and then leads us through the prosecution by a fair-minded, Inspector Javert-esque magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant) to uncover the conspiracy. The movie was based off of the murder of Greek left-wing icon, Grigoris Lambrakis, a populist politician who led a public movement against Greece’s government junta in the early 60s before being murdered by them.
        I am not even going to pretend to know enough about 20th century Greek history or the murder of Grigoris Lambrakis to speculate about how accurate or inaccurate this movie is but that’s not the point. The point of Z is to show an allegory of how right-wing governments around the world will prevent any true societal change, showing the rise of home-grown fascism in the West. The movie is also a pioneer in the political thriller genre. Before this, political thrillers were much more lighthearted or inspirational in the vein of a Capra film or Hitchcock. This is a very dense movie that gives you the full details of how bureaucracy works and doesn’t really stop or wait for you to catch up. It can be difficult to understand but that’s also where the intrigue of the movie comes from: it’s a smart movie made for smart people.
        With its dismal ending, clinical approach and important contribution to leftist cinema after the downfall of liberalism, Z was a surprise international hit when it came out and, for the first time ever, was a foreign-language film that was a serious contender at the Academy Awards. Not only did it win the Award for Best Foreign Language Film but it also won Best Editing and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. This is a huge deal and shows just how much New Hollywood was changing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Sadly, this isn’t a trend that would continue through the years but, hey, acknowledgment where it’s due.
        All 5 of these movies are great and perfectly capture the spirit of the times, with Z often regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made. Some could argue that it would have been more impressive had Z actually won the award, showing an international “we’re all in this together” attitude in the post-68 world. On their merits as movies alone, arguing whether Z is better than Midnight Cowboy is both debatable and an exercise in futility. Both movies are groundbreakers, pushed the medium forward and have similar themes, even if they explore them from opposite sides of the world.
        Normally, I like to conclude with what could arguably be called the greatest snub and/or competition. While latter-day cinephiles would probably argue Z as being the best movie of 1969, I think it’d be more productive and interesting to close off with another avenue. In this case, 1969 was a big year for Westerns. The most American of genres was due for a re-examination, both because of the cultural transformation of America in the late 60s but also because the groundbreaking The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) completely changed the rules of the genre. 1969 was the year that saw not one, not two, not three but five important and classic films in the Western genre (arguably six since Dennis Hopper considered Easy Rider a Western though that’s certainly debatable). And since Midnight Cowboy was basically taking a giant piss on the archetype by having a self-styled cowboy turned into a sex toy, it seems like only a fair comparison.
        First, and the quickest hitter, is Death of a Gunfighter.

        This is significant for being the first movie ever directed by Allen/Alan Smithee (the spelling changes from movie to movie). Alan Smithee is a pseudonym that a director uses when they think that the movie they made was taken away from them and they file a motion with the Director’s Guild of America to have their name taken off of it and replaced with Alan Smithee. This is a moniker that was popular in the 80s and 90s though it fell out of use once it became well-known to the general public that Smithee was not a real person, thereby defeating the entire purpose of it.
        Since the name is usually used for when a director feels that he’s been screwed over by producers, it should be no surprise that the majority of films officially directed by Alan Smithee are notoriously pretty awful (e.g. Appointment with Fear (1985), Catchfire (1990), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)). Death of a Gunfighter is actually the rare exception to this rule, as it’s a pretty good and dark Western about a beloved sheriff being forced out of his job for political reasons. It’s also the most obscure of these Westerns, only being known for the aforementioned trivia fact, but it’s worth a watch.
        (In case you’re wondering why the film was filed to be directed by Alan Smithee; the original director, Robert Totten, was unceremoniously fired partway through production and the film was finished by Don Siegel. Siegel felt that it wasn’t in good sport to have his name on the project since most of the development was done by Totten. Totten, however, didn’t want his name on it since he felt that the film was no longer his. In a surprising and rare piece of sportsmanship in Hollywood, both agreed to have their names stricken from Death of a Gunfighter.)
        More famous was the American release of Sergio Leone’s follow-up to the Dollars trilogy, C’era Una Volta il West (Eng.: Once Upon a Time in the West).

        Similar to the Dollars trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West deconstructs and rejects most clichés of the genre, experimenting with close-ups, epic music and sleazier and meaner characters. Yet, despite the title, the Dollars trilogy’s plots seemed more like Western fairy tales while Once Upon a Time in the West has a bit more of a classic story from the genre, with Leone viewing several older Westerns and combining their plots (specifically referencing The Iron Horse (1924), High Noon (1952) and The Searchers (1956) as his chief influences). The movie is about a widow, Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), who has inherited a large piece of land from his deceased husband (Frank Wolff) and starts getting harassed by a railroad tycoon (Gabriele Ferzetti) into giving up the land. Like most Westerns, things quickly escalate and Jill is defended from the tycoon’s thugs by a pair of mysterious gunslingers (Charles Bronson and Jason Robards).
        All of the stylized coolness that made the Dollars trilogy is right back here. The paired leitmotifs, the beautiful cinematography, the memorable characters, the way that Leone experiments with pacing in a way that completely enthralls you. The opening of the movie is literally 10 minutes of three guys just killing time while waiting for a train to pull into a depot and it’s so engaging to watch despite nothing happening. There’s so many questions asked here: who are they? What are they waiting for? What will happen when it finally comes?
        The story is well-paced, the set pieces are memorable, and while Charles Bronson isn’t as charismatic as Clint Eastwood, he’s still a likable protagonist. More fascinating is Henry Fonda going against-type by playing the main villain, Frank. Fonda had a long and storied history of playing heroic characters who usually had to confront some darkness in the world around them. Making him play such a wicked character is a nice turn of face. Seeing an actor play against type is one of those things that you see so rarely because so few can pull it off but, when it works, it’s simply delightful.
        Once Upon a Time in the West is another of the great Western epics and, despite making a ton of money and often being regarded alongside The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as one of the greatest Westerns of all time, was completely ignored by the Academy Awards due to their sneering xenophobia towards spaghetti Westerns. In fact, Leone ranks up there as one of the greatest filmmakers to never win an Academy Award. The fact that not one of his movies were ever even nominated for Best Cinematography is one of the long-time shames of the institution.
        If Once Upon a Time in the West was indicative of the new Western, the archetypical Western star also gave one of his most iconic performances in True Grit.

        This is a bit more of a traditional Western as a young girl named Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) watches her father (John Pickard) get murdered and sees the killer (Jeff Corey) flee into Indian Territory. Desperate for vengeance, she enlists the aid of Deputy Marshal Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) and Ranger La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) to track him down and bring him to justice. A pretty typical Western plot though the fun and uniqueness of it is that young Mattie Ross insists on accompanying the two men despite them shooting the idea down countless times, even after she follows them on horseback into the wilderness.
        It’s a good movie with some pretty likable characters, solid pacing and gorgeous vistas. John Wayne would win the Academy Award for Best Leading Actor for his performance as Rooster Cogburn (over Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy) as his performance was lauded for being against his normal type. This is one of those things that’s technically true in that Cogburn does have a bit more depth to him than most of Wayne’s normal roles though he’s still the same hyper-machismo and superhumanly competent dick that he plays in all of his movies. Giving the Oscar to him for this role would’ve been like if the Academy had given Arnold Schwarzenegger an Oscar for his role in Total Recall (1990). Sure, it’s the best interpretation of his stock character but it’s still his same stock character; Wayne doesn’t come close to disappearing into the character in the same way that Voight or Hoffman did. Also, if he was nominated for playing “against type,” then where was Henry Fonda’s nomination for Once Upon a Time in the West?
        In my (admittedly millennial) opinion, the real draw of the movie is Kim Darby as Mattie Ross, doing a surprisingly great job at holding her own as an actress opposite several veteran actors, including genuinely excellent actor Robert Duvall as the villain. I have heard some fans of the Duke (as Wayne was sometimes referred) consider her annoying but that’s also the appeal of her. Ross is that right blend of being just annoying enough to seem in-character yet her grit always shines through. It’s a very impressive performance for a child actress and one that could’ve actually warranted a nod, especially over Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower.
        Compared to the rest of these Westerns, True Grit is the most traditional Western with the least amount of themes. As far as traditional Westerns go, though, it is a very good one with beautiful cinematography, a likable protagonist and a fun stand-off situation in the back half of the picture.
        One Western that was actually a groundbreaker was from another perennial Western figure, Sam Peckinpah, with The Wild Bunch.

        The movie refers to the titular Wild Bunch, a gang led by Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his right-hand man, Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), who, after a robbery gone awry, flee to Mexico whilst a posse pursues them. While down in Mexico, the Wild Bunch end up finding even more trouble as they run afoul of the local military thugs and find that trying to keep their heads down ends up being more trouble than it’s worth. The film offers a pensive take on the violence of the West though the appeal of watching it is how many moving parts there are in the picture (the film is essentially a three-way standoff between the Wild Bunch versus the posse pursuing them versus the Mexican army and it’s fun watching these sides play against each other).
        The Wild Bunch was Peckinpah’s allegory on the Vietnam War as the film runs through a lot of classic tropes that would’ve been familiar to audiences of the Western but there is much more of a sense of pointlessness to it. The film opens with the Wild Bunch successfully carrying out a robbery only to lose a member and find out that the prize they were pursuing ends up being worthless. Similarly, instead of them looking for lost gold or trying to save a town, they end up running arms for a local gang. Not once do they do anything even remotely heroic and the film ends in a complete and total bloodbath.
        This last point was the thing that The Wild Bunch was most famous for at the time, as, along with Bonnie and Clyde, this was one of the most violent movies ever made at the time. Going back to it today, it seems pretty silly that it raised eyebrows as none of the deaths are especially gory and characters who get shot still splay out in the over-the-top way characters in classic movies do. But the sheer volume and indifference to the carnage is what alarmed people at the time. The bodycount in this movie approaches pretty close to the triple-digit marker and the film even received an X rating at first before the studio petitioned for an R.
        And our final Western with a similar set-up, and the highest-grossing movie of the year, was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

       Similar to The Wild Bunch, this movie follows Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and his best friend/second-in-command, the Sundance Kid (Robet Redford), as they frequently rob railroads before ultimately going on the lam from a mysterious posse of lawmen. But while The Wild Bunch has some musings on the death of the West and how these middle-aged men are confronting a lifetime of robbery, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid seems to use the West as an avenue of examining the generational gap that was omnipresent in a lot of youth pictures such as Bonnie and Clyde and Cool Hand Luke (1967).
        Despite the fact that their profession of choice revolves around stealing money and killing people, Butch and Sundance have good hearts deep down. Or, at the very least, they want to. Their goals in life consist of hanging out with their girlfriend (singular, they seem to share a girl without letting each other know), enjoying nights out on the town and even when they go robbing, they treat it like it’s one big party to laugh at. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid come off as a more light-hearted Bonnie and Clyde and the film does reflect the misery of the times while still having a somewhat sunny outlook. This dichotomy makes the movie fascinating to study as you root for Cassidy and Sundance due to just how likable they are even though all they do is steal money and rob people. There’s this sort of feeling of the death of the West and the death of youth and how this lifestyle can’t last forever. While The Wild Bunch examines this more in the tone of how real outlaws behave with violent results for all, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid seems to reflect more of the end of the good times and the attempt to recapture them.
        Even ignoring those themes, though, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is just straight-up fun with some of the best setpieces and one of the most unique tones in the genre outside of Leone. The climactic gunbattle that closes out the movie is one of the best in movie history, the big chase about halfway through is a great sequence of minimalist filmmaking and there’s one of cinema’s great romantic moments when Butch takes Etta (Katharine Ross) on a bike ride to the tune of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” This song is so great that a lot of people don’t realize that it was written for this movie but, once you learn that, it’s impossible to not think of the film while listening to it. Plus, Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s chemistry with each other is amazing and their relationship seems to transcend normal bromanticism until they seem like an old married couple at times.
        I think this cognitive dissonance is partially why Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had more mixed reviews at the time though, nowadays, it has long since become a classic. It was also one of the big frontrunners at the Academy Awards, being nominated for seven awards and winning four (Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Song for “Raindrops Keeping Falling On My Head”) so it clearly had some legs.
        All of these seem deserved and, honestly, many of the movies that won the Academy Awards do seem like good, or at the very least, understandable choices. Granted, Goldie Hawn’s victory was dumb and Wayne’s is debatable but at the very least all of the great movies were nominated for something notable (sans Once Upon a Time in the West). So were there any real snubs this year?
        Well, I can think of a big one that was ignored and definitely shouldn’t have been: The Learning Tree.

        The Learning Tree is a coming-of-age film about two young black kids, Newt Winger (Kyle Johnson) and Marcus Savage (Alex Clarke), growing up in rural Kansas. Specifically, it’s a character study about the two boys and analyzes their separate upbringings that make them who they are: Newt is a good kid who stays on the straight-and-narrow while Marcus is a bad kid who descends into juvenile delinquency. This is admittedly a bit of a reductive way to describe this film but I think it’s important in pitching it that way as that is how most of America would tend to see these two kids and The Learning Tree’s intent is to challenge and analyze that assumption.
        The Learning Tree is nowhere near the first movie to analyze racism but it was the first to analyze racism as it exists in the Western United States as most movies up to this point focused on tensions in the South. In the Southern United States, segregation and racism was de jure (by law) while in the North and West, segregation and racism was (usually) de facto and cultural. In other words, the Civil Rights Movement did hit a wall at the end of the 60s when Martin Luther King and co. tried to start integrating the North and found it much more difficult as there weren’t any specific laws on the books saying that certain people can’t buy property in certain areas and the people already living there had to stay and integrate their neighborhoods. Instead, it was mostly just people refusing to sell property to others who didn’t look like them, which is much harder to legislate out of existence and had a severe backlash as they felt it wasn’t right for the government to tell them who they can and can’t do business with.
      The Learning Tree provides an example of a town of this sort which leads to a more complex and interesting study of how racism exists in America. The town isn’t fully segregated in the sense that Newt and co. are allowed to be around the white people. They’re allowed to walk on the same streets, partake in the same businesses and generally behave as members of society. And not even all of the white characters in the movie look down at the kids. Some of them have empathy for what they’re going through and want to make sure that they grow up right. But the problem is not all of them do; some of them are racist and the ones who aren’t don’t want to rock the boat too much by calling them out on it because it’s apparently their “right” to behave that way.
        There’s an excellent scene early in the film that shows this dynamic. Newt mouths off to his teacher (Peggy Rea) when he gets a bad grade, being so disrespectful that she marches him to the principal’s (Kevin Hagen) office. During the following conversation, Newt correctly deduces that the teacher grades the black students harsher than the white ones. The principal asks her to leave the office and gives Newt some encouragement, tells him to keep studying but also tells him to give his teacher the respect she deserves as his teacher. In a racially-blind world, this would be a good lesson of imbuing students with some respect for authority. But the world isn’t racially blind. And while the principal clearly means well and gives Newt some important life lessons, he still lets that same terrible teacher keep her job.
        This is a much more quietly chilling and realistic depiction of racism as it existed (and, in some areas, still exists) in much of the United States outside of the Deep South and it makes the character study of the two children very fascinating. Ultimately, Newt is able to grow up and prosper while Marcus’ story has a collision course with tragedy. While part of the reason is that Marcus clearly comes out of a broken home and Newt has healthy parental figures, you also know that if Marcus was white in this town, that broken home wouldn’t ruin him quite as much. There’s a fascinating debate here about nature vs nurture, how it takes a village to raise a child and how much can good authority figures save one kid and the bad ones ruin another.
        The movie isn’t a lecture either as it still portrays the idyllism of childhood. The actors playing Newt and Marcus are very excellent and the movie is a great coming-of-age tale of mixing the darkness of childhood with the unfairness of life, especially as an African-American. The movie honestly reminds me of a racially-swapped version of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962): you see the childhood logic, the fear of bad adults and how these lessons leave their mark on the kids. Yet for some reason, the film didn’t seem to catch on as much as To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a modest hit when it came out and was one of the first 25 movies to be admitted to the Library of Congress for being historically significant but yet when talking about some of the great works analyzing American racism, this doesn’t get brought up as often as To Kill a Mockingbird, Roots (1977) or Do the Right Thing (1989).
        It also bears mentioning at this point that The Learning Tree was the very first film to be released by a major American studio that was directed by a black man. Gordon Parks based this movie partially on his own life growing up in Kansas, which would explain a lot on why this movie cuts to the bone so well. Parks’ filmmaking style is very clinical and just shows the action as it is with very little close-ups, non-diegetic music or any stylizing. For a first-time director, it’s very well done and everyone hits their mark perfectly. Yet, it was completely ignored by the Academy, despite its social relevance especially since, again, it was the first movie about racism actually made by an African-American. It’s definitely worthy of at least being nominated in the top 5 films of the year (or top 10 if they went back to that number for their awards) as well as Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay and Best Leading Actor for Kyle Johnson’s excellent work as Newt. So why was it ignored?
        As mentioned previously, over the course of 1969, Academy President Gregory Peck started inviting more members of the New Hollywood crowd while urging older members to retire. Not all of them did, though, and much of the Academy Awards for the next few years could be seen as inter-generational battles of Old Hollywood vs New with the New usually winning out maybe 60-70% of the time. This is why the frontrunners at the Academy Awards this year were True Grit and Hello Dolly! being pitted against They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Midnight Cowboy with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid appealing to both. Gordon Parks and The Learning Tree didn’t really fall into the favor of either group.
        Despite what the 60s countercultural types would like to think about themselves, there was a difference between the civil rights movement and the hippie/artist movements, even if there was some crossover although moreso with the former going into the latter than the other way around. New Hollywood and the New Academy would still be pretty insensitive/racist going forward, and we will analyze more cases as they come up though, as a clue, notice how most Academy Award frontrunners regarding race from 1970-2015(ish) usually revolve around white protagonists. In this particular case, I think most of the counterculture types were so damn excited to be making decisions in the Academy that they pushed forward everyone they knew in the scene (i.e. Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) while either being unaware of or just straight-up ignoring The Learning Tree. But if that’s the case, then why did they give Z a few nominations as well? That wasn’t even from this country.
        But I digress, The Learning Tree was snubbed but let’s get back to the heart of the matter: was Midnight Cowboy the best movie of 1969? This is another choice where it’s hard to say one way or the other because of the definition of the word “best” being subjective, especially when pitted against such excellent, equally revolutionary films. But it definitely is one of the best and encapsulated the miasma of 1969’s America, symbolizing the death of the generation’s hope and love against the rotting of America’s most beloved metropolis. It’s dark, it experimented with new techniques, it’s memorable, it’s quotable, it’s stood up to the test of time, it has two fresh actors at the top of their A-game, it’s an excellent picture and you’d have to look pretty far and wide to find someone consider this a bad choice.
        Calling Midnight Cowboy the best movie of 1969 was a…


SUCCESS!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1969:

• Anne of the Thousand Days (dir. Charles Jarrott)
• Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (dir. Paul Mazursky)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (dir. George Roy Hill)
• C'era Una Volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West) (dir. Sergio Leone)
• Death of a Gunfighter (dir. Allen Smithee (Robert Totten and Don Siegel))
• Easy Rider (dir. Dennis Hopper)
• Medium Cool (dir. Haskell Wexler)
• Midnight Cowboy (dir. John Schlesinger)
• The Learning Tree (dir. Gordon Parks) 
• The Wrecking Crew (dir. Phil Karlson)
• True Grit (dir. Henry Hathaway) 

Favorite Heroes:

• Anne Boleyn (Geneviéve Bujold) (Anne of the Thousand Days)
• Bob and Carol Saunders (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice)
• Charlie Brown (Peter Robbins) (A Boy Named Charlie Brown)
• Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) (The Wild Bunch)
• Freya Carlson (Sharon Tate) (The Wrecking Crew)
• Marshal Frank Patch (Richard Widmark) (Death of a Gunfighter)
• Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) (True Grit)
• Newt Winger (Kyle Johnson) (The Learning Tree)
• The Examining Magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant) (Z)
• The Man with the Harmonica (Charles Bronson) (C'era Una Volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West)) 

Favorite Villains:

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
• Frank (Henry Fonda) (C'era Una Volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West)) 
• Generalissimo Mapache (Emilio Fernández) (The Wild Bunch)
• Ivan Stanek (Morgan Woodward) (Death of a Gunfighter) 
• Joe Lefors and Lord Baltimore (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) 
• Peter Thorndyke (David Tomlinson) (The Love Bug) 
• Pike Bishop and Dutch Engstrom (William Holden and Ernest Borgnine) (The Wild Bunch)
• Rocky Gravo (Gig Young) (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?) 
• Rowntree (Robert Swann) (If....) 
• Sheriff Kirky (Dana Elcar) (The Learning Tree)