Success or Snub? Patton (43rd Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)
To see part 1, click here.
Let It Bleed (Full Album)~The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
After Patton came out on April 2nd, 1970, the film was instantly being talked about as the best movie of the year by numerous critics and cinephiles and George C. Scott’s performance in it was instantly being considered one of the best of all time by numerous critics and cinephiles. So much so that when it came time for the Academy Awards season, the film was nominated in just about every major category and expected to win most of them. Patton would close out the night with a lion’s share of 7 awards:
Scott, who was almost as much of a short-tempered savant as the real-life George Patton, had a famous axe to grind with the Oscars. A decade before this, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Bert Gordon in The Hustler (1961) which he ultimately lost to George Chakiris in West Side Story (1961). Whether or not he was snubbed is one of those things that’s certainly debatable, The Hustler and West Side Story are very different but both very great movies with Chakiris and Scott turning in great performances, but, regardless, he didn’t take the loss very well. After initially being upset, Scott was then upset by how upset he was and did what most actors should do and vowed to never again put so much stock into the Academy Awards.
Fast-forward to the 43rd Academy Awards where Scott was considered the frontrunner. Scott issued a statement that was more of an angry tirade that feels like it was written (and probably was written) during the height of an alcoholic bender. Scott called the Oscars a “meat parade,” stated that he didn’t think it was right for actors to decree how good they are by competing against each other and finally said that he would not accept the award if it was given to him. (His co-star, Karl Malden, said that he agreed with Scott but wishes that he was more tactful about it, in yet another case of these two actors reflecting their on-screen characters in Patton. You seriously can’t make this stuff up sometimes.)
Well, the Academy Awards decided to give the award to Scott anyway, who, true to his word, did not attend the ceremony and declined the award. The bitter irony is that this act ended up restoring the Academy Awards’ credibility after it had been in decline for the past couple of years. By giving the award to someone who did not want it because they truly believed that it was the best performance of the year, the Academy was (falsely) proving that it was a truly meritorious organization that only gives awards to the truly best movies of Hollywood. Well, I guess a broken clock is right twice a century because Hollywood still chose to revolve itself around this show and hasn’t showed any signs of stopping since.
Anyway, let’s get into the movies. Patton exists at a perfect nexus point between the different categories of the movies that were coming out of Hollywood at the time: it was about a true story, a war movie, a mainstream epic and a social commentary-heavy character study all rolled into one. So, with that in mind, let’s look at the big hitters of 1970 in each of those respective categories, starting with the true stories and, by those, I mean documentaries.
We’ve discussed previously how the Academy Awards have never allowed documentaries to be considered for Best Picture, Cinematography, Editing or basically any award except for the designated Academy Award for Best Documentary. Both back then and now, we do take the tack of understanding the discrepancy and seeing how maybe there is a difference between a fictional and non-fictional film though they should at least acknowledge this. Regardless, 3 very important films in the history of documentary filmmaking came out in 1970.
New Hollywood and the hippie generation flexed its muscles by giving the Academy Award for Best Documentary to Woodstock,
After Patton came out on April 2nd, 1970, the film was instantly being talked about as the best movie of the year by numerous critics and cinephiles and George C. Scott’s performance in it was instantly being considered one of the best of all time by numerous critics and cinephiles. So much so that when it came time for the Academy Awards season, the film was nominated in just about every major category and expected to win most of them. Patton would close out the night with a lion’s share of 7 awards:
- Best Sound
- Best Film Editing
- Best Art Direction
- Best Original Screenplay (named at the time the overly-verbose Monty Python-esque Best Story and Screenplay - Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced)
- Best Leading Actor for George C. Scott
- Best Director
- Best Picture
Scott, who was almost as much of a short-tempered savant as the real-life George Patton, had a famous axe to grind with the Oscars. A decade before this, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Bert Gordon in The Hustler (1961) which he ultimately lost to George Chakiris in West Side Story (1961). Whether or not he was snubbed is one of those things that’s certainly debatable, The Hustler and West Side Story are very different but both very great movies with Chakiris and Scott turning in great performances, but, regardless, he didn’t take the loss very well. After initially being upset, Scott was then upset by how upset he was and did what most actors should do and vowed to never again put so much stock into the Academy Awards.
Fast-forward to the 43rd Academy Awards where Scott was considered the frontrunner. Scott issued a statement that was more of an angry tirade that feels like it was written (and probably was written) during the height of an alcoholic bender. Scott called the Oscars a “meat parade,” stated that he didn’t think it was right for actors to decree how good they are by competing against each other and finally said that he would not accept the award if it was given to him. (His co-star, Karl Malden, said that he agreed with Scott but wishes that he was more tactful about it, in yet another case of these two actors reflecting their on-screen characters in Patton. You seriously can’t make this stuff up sometimes.)
Well, the Academy Awards decided to give the award to Scott anyway, who, true to his word, did not attend the ceremony and declined the award. The bitter irony is that this act ended up restoring the Academy Awards’ credibility after it had been in decline for the past couple of years. By giving the award to someone who did not want it because they truly believed that it was the best performance of the year, the Academy was (falsely) proving that it was a truly meritorious organization that only gives awards to the truly best movies of Hollywood. Well, I guess a broken clock is right twice a century because Hollywood still chose to revolve itself around this show and hasn’t showed any signs of stopping since.
Anyway, let’s get into the movies. Patton exists at a perfect nexus point between the different categories of the movies that were coming out of Hollywood at the time: it was about a true story, a war movie, a mainstream epic and a social commentary-heavy character study all rolled into one. So, with that in mind, let’s look at the big hitters of 1970 in each of those respective categories, starting with the true stories and, by those, I mean documentaries.
We’ve discussed previously how the Academy Awards have never allowed documentaries to be considered for Best Picture, Cinematography, Editing or basically any award except for the designated Academy Award for Best Documentary. Both back then and now, we do take the tack of understanding the discrepancy and seeing how maybe there is a difference between a fictional and non-fictional film though they should at least acknowledge this. Regardless, 3 very important films in the history of documentary filmmaking came out in 1970.
New Hollywood and the hippie generation flexed its muscles by giving the Academy Award for Best Documentary to Woodstock,
a 3-hour-long documentary that shows the famous concert for the millions who didn’t get to go. Woodstock is a celebration of the hippie movement, showing the little miniature society that sprung up around Woodstock, cross-cut with the actual bands and artists that played. Similar to the concert that it was based on, Woodstock is the climax of the 60s concert films, reflecting many of the cinéma vérité styles that had been ongoing for a while.
The other big documentary that year revolved around the other big social movement of the 60s, King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis.
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This documentary was instrumental in transforming the martyred Martin Luther King Jr. into an American folk hero, stringing together his televised speeches into one fluid narrative. While you might think that it was King's work that did that, actually, he wasn't as beloved toward the end of his life as you would think due to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s smear campaign on him. King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis used its documentary style to remind audiences of what the man fought for and, more importantly, how he did it.
Both films are definitely culturally important and could have made a claim for being the Best Documentary of the year so this debate would probably distill down to whether you think the triumph of the counterculture was more important or the civil rights movement was. You can clearly tell what the Academy thought but, regardless, Woodstock is a great documentary in its own right and is probably more technically competent and engaging throughout (though, in fairness, King: A Film Record… Montgomery to Memphis was trying to create a narrative using mostly 15-year-old archived footage).
The great documentary that came out that year wasn’t nominated, however, was Gimme Shelter.
Both films are definitely culturally important and could have made a claim for being the Best Documentary of the year so this debate would probably distill down to whether you think the triumph of the counterculture was more important or the civil rights movement was. You can clearly tell what the Academy thought but, regardless, Woodstock is a great documentary in its own right and is probably more technically competent and engaging throughout (though, in fairness, King: A Film Record… Montgomery to Memphis was trying to create a narrative using mostly 15-year-old archived footage).
The great documentary that came out that year wasn’t nominated, however, was Gimme Shelter.
If the Woodstock Music Festival was considered the triumph of the 60s counterculture, the 1969 Altamont Speedway Free Festival was basically the exact opposite and showed how free love and music can’t actually conquer hatred. For those who don’t know, this was a festival where the Rolling Stones headlined and hired the Hell’s Angels to work as security which ultimately culminated in the bikers attacking several patrons and murdering someone. The way the documentary organically steers us towards this is very electrifying and Gimme Shelter blends cinéma vérité style and documentary footage with a flowing narrative that feels very movie-like. When the tragedy hits, it hits as hard as if this was a fictional film, with the haunted looks on the Stones serving as a wake-up call for audiences.
In terms of experimenting with the art of documentary, I’d personally argue Gimme Shelter was the best of these three films and probably the most culturally important to understand the downfall of the hippie ethos. And this is also the exact reason why I think the Academy chose to ignore the film as they didn’t want to remind themselves, or their loyal followers, of this gear change.
Moving from the documentaries to the fictional epics that were still trying to rake in those old Hollywood dollars. First is Ryan’s Daughter.
In terms of experimenting with the art of documentary, I’d personally argue Gimme Shelter was the best of these three films and probably the most culturally important to understand the downfall of the hippie ethos. And this is also the exact reason why I think the Academy chose to ignore the film as they didn’t want to remind themselves, or their loyal followers, of this gear change.
Moving from the documentaries to the fictional epics that were still trying to rake in those old Hollywood dollars. First is Ryan’s Daughter.
This was another character study, courtesy of David Lean, the same man who made Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1966), this time set in revolutionary Ireland. And I struggle to think of a bigger gap in quality between a director’s two films than the colossal dropoff between Doctor Zhivago and Ryan’s Daughter. Ryan’s Daughter is ostensibly a love story about an Irish woman named Rosy (Sarah Miles) who cheats on her husband (Robert Mitchum) with a British soldier named Major Doryan (Christopher Jones) and how the townsfolk turn against Doryan and, by extension, Rosy, (rightfully) suspecting her of aiding the enemy.
Even if the movie wasn’t an unfathomably boring portrayal of small town life dragged over 3 hours (and it is), this is a movie that’s completely D.O.A. just by virtue of Lean, a British director who made very pensive takes on British heritage, showing his own prejudice in the making of this movie. The film is about an Irish woman who cheats on her husband with a Black and Tan during the Irish War for Independence and the local IRA are treated as the villains for harassing the Black and Tan. For those of you who don’t know Irish history, this is only a couple steps removed from if a German filmmaker made an epic romance about a Jewish woman who falls in love with a Wehrmacht soldier in 1930s Germany and treated the latter as the victim in this situation or if a white American did the same thing with a slave falling in love with her plantation owner (ahem). (Ryan's Daughter also came out during a Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland which would eventually devolve into the Troubles, which makes it even more insensitive.)
In case you’re wondering why I’m devoting word count to this movie, it’s because, you guessed it, it won Academy Awards. It won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography which, while it’s not bad (it’s David Lean for Christ’s sake), it’s not exactly mind-blowing the way Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago were. It also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for John Mills as Michael, the local “village idiot” (read: mentally handicapped man) who ends up being the only person in town who actually sides with Rosy. It’s an okay performance but it’s definitely not the best of the year and is a victory that boggles the mind, especially coming off of Karl Malden in Patton.
Ryan’s Daughter basically coasted to the Academy based on prior good will from David Lean and had no right being even considered for best anything of the year. But at least we can understand that legacy choice, which is more than can be said for another big movie that year that’s also very bad, Airport.
Even if the movie wasn’t an unfathomably boring portrayal of small town life dragged over 3 hours (and it is), this is a movie that’s completely D.O.A. just by virtue of Lean, a British director who made very pensive takes on British heritage, showing his own prejudice in the making of this movie. The film is about an Irish woman who cheats on her husband with a Black and Tan during the Irish War for Independence and the local IRA are treated as the villains for harassing the Black and Tan. For those of you who don’t know Irish history, this is only a couple steps removed from if a German filmmaker made an epic romance about a Jewish woman who falls in love with a Wehrmacht soldier in 1930s Germany and treated the latter as the victim in this situation or if a white American did the same thing with a slave falling in love with her plantation owner (ahem). (Ryan's Daughter also came out during a Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland which would eventually devolve into the Troubles, which makes it even more insensitive.)
In case you’re wondering why I’m devoting word count to this movie, it’s because, you guessed it, it won Academy Awards. It won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography which, while it’s not bad (it’s David Lean for Christ’s sake), it’s not exactly mind-blowing the way Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago were. It also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for John Mills as Michael, the local “village idiot” (read: mentally handicapped man) who ends up being the only person in town who actually sides with Rosy. It’s an okay performance but it’s definitely not the best of the year and is a victory that boggles the mind, especially coming off of Karl Malden in Patton.
Ryan’s Daughter basically coasted to the Academy based on prior good will from David Lean and had no right being even considered for best anything of the year. But at least we can understand that legacy choice, which is more than can be said for another big movie that year that’s also very bad, Airport.
Just because the 1970s is often considered the greatest decade for filmmaking, that doesn’t mean that bad movies making ridiculous amounts of money didn’t come out. Case in point: the disaster genre. Airport pioneered the disaster movie genre, which would be the next iteration of Hollywood’s Grand Hotel (1932) films for the 70s. These films had a checklist that you could easily identify after seeing only one or two of them: a glut of celebrities all gather in one single location where a disaster is about to take place and they all play off of each other. In this movie’s case, it’s about a plane trying to land during a blizzard while there’s also a suicide bomber (Van Heflin) on board threatening to blow it to Kingdom Come.
The disaster genre would go on to be a ludicrous moneymaker for the rest of the 70s and the movie critics that joined the New Hollywood movement seemed to enjoy analyzing them more than actually watching, trying to study why mainstream audiences were so obsessed with disasters and doom. Maybe they watched them since they felt that the American dream was spiraling out of their control and watching people manage them made them feel like the world could make sense again?
Airport feels like a movie from a completely different time as, watching it, you’d swear it came out in the late 50s or early 60s. Even by the standards of pulp entertainment, it’s not very good as the acting is terrible and the story is a big ball of corn. Yet it was a frontrunner at the Academy Awards, being nominated for a whopping ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It also earned Helen Hayes the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as a(n unfunny) piece of comic relief as a stowaway. We tend to take the tact in this series of criticizing the Academy for not acknowledging more fun movies so often so this may sound hypocritical but I do think that there is a clear quality gap between the Sean Connery Bond movies versus Airport and some of the late 60s musicals that show that there is a right way and a wrong way to make a fun movie that isn’t trying to say anything important. This film’s success with the Academy had to have been some holdovers from Old Hollywood falling in love with it because this feels so removed from where cinema was going at the time and is almost as bad as Dr. Dolittle (1967).
Moving onto some of the more New Wave character studies that came out that year and, many of them were excellent. We’ll try to quick-hit some of these as much as possible since, honestly, I could gush and analyze many of these films if I let myself. First, it’d probably be best to tick off two of the other nominees for Best Picture.
The highest-grossing movie of the year was Love Story.
The disaster genre would go on to be a ludicrous moneymaker for the rest of the 70s and the movie critics that joined the New Hollywood movement seemed to enjoy analyzing them more than actually watching, trying to study why mainstream audiences were so obsessed with disasters and doom. Maybe they watched them since they felt that the American dream was spiraling out of their control and watching people manage them made them feel like the world could make sense again?
Airport feels like a movie from a completely different time as, watching it, you’d swear it came out in the late 50s or early 60s. Even by the standards of pulp entertainment, it’s not very good as the acting is terrible and the story is a big ball of corn. Yet it was a frontrunner at the Academy Awards, being nominated for a whopping ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It also earned Helen Hayes the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as a(n unfunny) piece of comic relief as a stowaway. We tend to take the tact in this series of criticizing the Academy for not acknowledging more fun movies so often so this may sound hypocritical but I do think that there is a clear quality gap between the Sean Connery Bond movies versus Airport and some of the late 60s musicals that show that there is a right way and a wrong way to make a fun movie that isn’t trying to say anything important. This film’s success with the Academy had to have been some holdovers from Old Hollywood falling in love with it because this feels so removed from where cinema was going at the time and is almost as bad as Dr. Dolittle (1967).
Moving onto some of the more New Wave character studies that came out that year and, many of them were excellent. We’ll try to quick-hit some of these as much as possible since, honestly, I could gush and analyze many of these films if I let myself. First, it’d probably be best to tick off two of the other nominees for Best Picture.
The highest-grossing movie of the year was Love Story.
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Often considered one of cinema’s greatest romances, Love Story revolves around a couple who meet at Harvard, the upper-class Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) and the working-class Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw), and their relationship together. Love Story plays as a contemporary reimagining of many of the classic romance movies from the 30s and 40s, clearly taking the most influence from Camille (1936). This gave the movie a familiar yet fresh feel to it, taking the most classic movie clichés and updating it to modern-day youth. This led to audiences falling in love with it and it became the highest-grossing movie of the year it came out, giving audiences something to cheer for in a time when much of the rest of cinema was becoming pretty cynical and nihilistic.
Critics at the time seemed pretty split on whether Love Story was actually a great love story or overly sentimental schmaltz, with some thinking that the deconstruction of the genre was more predictable than interesting. In addition, the film still gets criticized for the ending (where Jenny remains drop-dead gorgeous despite being in a position where she most certainly should not be) and its iconic line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” (which is one of the most awful pieces of romantic advice to ever come out of movies).
Personally, I don’t think these ruin Love Story and it’s still a great movie for two major reasons. First is the chemistry between the two leads feels very real and genuine. Second is the social commentary. Barrett is the WASP scion of a very rich family and there’s a great conflict between his rebelling against his parents and refusing their handouts to start his life while also feeling unable to provide for the woman he wants to marry because of the poor economy for college graduates in the 70s. Combining this classic Hollywood story with a grittier splash of the real world enhances the tragedy to create something truly special and makes you want to see the two get happily ever after so much more. Couple it with the depressing yet iconic theme song (which won the movie the Oscar for Best Score) and it allows the film’s emotions to overcome some of its logical holes and combine romance with realism.
This trend of rich scions rejecting their rich family for the authenticity of blue-collar life only to end up sorely disappointed seemed to be a popular motif that year, as evidenced by the fourth nominee for Best Picture, Five Easy Pieces.
Critics at the time seemed pretty split on whether Love Story was actually a great love story or overly sentimental schmaltz, with some thinking that the deconstruction of the genre was more predictable than interesting. In addition, the film still gets criticized for the ending (where Jenny remains drop-dead gorgeous despite being in a position where she most certainly should not be) and its iconic line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” (which is one of the most awful pieces of romantic advice to ever come out of movies).
Personally, I don’t think these ruin Love Story and it’s still a great movie for two major reasons. First is the chemistry between the two leads feels very real and genuine. Second is the social commentary. Barrett is the WASP scion of a very rich family and there’s a great conflict between his rebelling against his parents and refusing their handouts to start his life while also feeling unable to provide for the woman he wants to marry because of the poor economy for college graduates in the 70s. Combining this classic Hollywood story with a grittier splash of the real world enhances the tragedy to create something truly special and makes you want to see the two get happily ever after so much more. Couple it with the depressing yet iconic theme song (which won the movie the Oscar for Best Score) and it allows the film’s emotions to overcome some of its logical holes and combine romance with realism.
This trend of rich scions rejecting their rich family for the authenticity of blue-collar life only to end up sorely disappointed seemed to be a popular motif that year, as evidenced by the fourth nominee for Best Picture, Five Easy Pieces.
The movie that made Jack Nicholson a star (after his breakout role as an electrifying bit part in Easy Rider (1969)), Five Easy Pieces is a character study of Bobby Dupea (Nicholson), a grumpy and cynical oil worker in Texas who moonlights as a piano prodigy. His life consists largely of the drudgery of working in the oil fields while hanging out with his uncouth and abusive girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black). When he gets a message that his father (Ralph Waite) is dying, he decides to visit his family in Washington (state, not D.C.), reluctantly bringing Rayette along for the ride, leaving him caught in the middle of this classist and cultural clash.
Unlike Love Story, there isn’t as much of a throughline to the story of Five Easy Pieces as it exists more predominately as a character study of Bobby Dupea and how he keeps lashing out because he is unable to make nice with either of these two worlds that he inhabits. How he wants to go his own way but also feels unable to fulfill the expectations for the women in his life. Both for the life he left behind but also with his new life as a blue-collar schmuck for Rayette. Nicholson is on fire in this movie with his very distinct cadence giving Bobby a burning resentment that is both funny yet off-putting.
Love Story and Five Easy Pieces are considered classics of the New Hollywood movement and received some well-deserved acknowledgment from the Academy, even if they were both blown out by Patton (Patton, in fact, was the only movie that year to win more than one Academy Award.) But, yet, there were still movies that received little to no acknowledgment at all. Snubbed classics include:
These are all great films and worth watching but are they as good as Patton? Maybe but Patton is definitely more epic and offered a pensive take on American heroism during a war that was only spiraling further and further out of control. It’s very hard to compare a movie about homosexual relations set entirely in one location against a one-man war that spans the length of Europe. So maybe it would be best to compare Patton against some of the war movies? There were quite a few that came out in 1970, all of them in the New Hollywood mode and they were all saying interesting things about America and its relationship with war. So let’s run down another list, shall we?
Considering how World War II was America’s most celebrated war, filmgoers might have thought it was about time to question some aspects of it. Well, they got that in the form of Tora! Tora! Tora!
Unlike Love Story, there isn’t as much of a throughline to the story of Five Easy Pieces as it exists more predominately as a character study of Bobby Dupea and how he keeps lashing out because he is unable to make nice with either of these two worlds that he inhabits. How he wants to go his own way but also feels unable to fulfill the expectations for the women in his life. Both for the life he left behind but also with his new life as a blue-collar schmuck for Rayette. Nicholson is on fire in this movie with his very distinct cadence giving Bobby a burning resentment that is both funny yet off-putting.
Love Story and Five Easy Pieces are considered classics of the New Hollywood movement and received some well-deserved acknowledgment from the Academy, even if they were both blown out by Patton (Patton, in fact, was the only movie that year to win more than one Academy Award.) But, yet, there were still movies that received little to no acknowledgment at all. Snubbed classics include:
- Joe,
which is a very morally complex movie despite its monosyllabic title. It revolves around an upper-crust business executive named Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick) who seeks to rescue his daughter (Susan Sarandon) from her life as a drug addict. In his quest, he enlists the help of a racist barfly named Joe (Peter Boyle) and the two slowly become friends over their violent fantasies and hatred of the counterculture. Joe is a disturbing and timely satire of the so-called (white) silent majority to put Nixon into power; Bill and Joe come from utterly different walks of life and yet bond over their shared mission and hatred for hippies, liberals, minorities and drug users. Peter Boyle, an actor long since remembered for his work in sitcoms, does a phenomenal dramatic job at making Joe into a truly vile human being and was a snub for one of the acting Oscars. - Diary of a Mad Housewife,
an excellent portrayal of second-wave feminism with its portrayal of a marriage on the rocks as Tina Balser (Carrie Snodgress), is a housewife who attends to the whims and wishes of her whiny, pathetic, abusive and socially stunted husband, Jonathan (Richard Benjamin). This movie is genuinely excellent in its portrayal of the trap that many women fall into of wanting to be good wives only to find a husband who does not return the favor. To the Academy’s credit, Snodgress was nominated for Best Actress though she lost to Glenda Jackson for Women in Love
which is a good, not great, movie with a fun set-up of women looking for love in spite of their boring marriages. I would definitely argue that Snodgress was a snubbed pick here as so much of her frustration with her husband is communicated through her actions and delivery which makes her explosion near the end of the movie feel so rewarding. Similarly, Richard Benjamin was snubbed as well. Abusive spouses in movies is something that Diary of a Mad Housewife didn’t invent but I have never seen this character done this well before or since. You’ll be impressed by just how much you utterly loathe this character by the end of the movie and Benjamin’s commitment to making him so hateful is commendable. - The Landlord,
the directorial debut of Hal Ashby, the man who edited In the Heat of the Night (1967), and if you thought that In the Heat of the Night was challenging in terms of race relations in the late 60s, then wait until you see The Landlord. The movie revolves around Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges), a wealthy socialite who falls out with his family and decides to buy an inner-city tenement in Park Slope. The rest of the movie then revolves around his relationship with the tenants with a genuinely thoughtful and challenging dynamic of race relations (it probably goes without saying that Elgar is white and all of his tenants are not). Once again, this movie avoids many clichés as you think that Elgar and his tenants will open up but the film is instead very pessimistic and also realistic about race relations circa 1970. The Landlord would go on to be a relative failure and seems to be one of the more forgotten films of the New Hollywood movement, which is a damn shame as it’s a very good and challenging movie. - The Boys in the Band,
which is a major milestone, if not the biggest milestone, in the history of gay representation in movies. Based off of an Off-Broadway play that blew up the previous year, The Boys in the Band revolves around a gay man named Michael (Kenneth Nelson) who invites his friends (all of whom are also gay) over to his apartment for a birthday party. Simultaneously to this, he is also visited by his homophobic former roommate (Peter White) who’s unaware of Michael’s sexuality and, as you can imagine, he doesn’t get along with most everyone else at the party. The Boys in the Band was the first play and movie in a mainstream work to really analyze gay culture at the time, with the characters speaking in gay slang, having “gay accents” and ultimately starting to talk about the self-loathing they have because of their status in a society that has rejected them.
These are all great films and worth watching but are they as good as Patton? Maybe but Patton is definitely more epic and offered a pensive take on American heroism during a war that was only spiraling further and further out of control. It’s very hard to compare a movie about homosexual relations set entirely in one location against a one-man war that spans the length of Europe. So maybe it would be best to compare Patton against some of the war movies? There were quite a few that came out in 1970, all of them in the New Hollywood mode and they were all saying interesting things about America and its relationship with war. So let’s run down another list, shall we?
Considering how World War II was America’s most celebrated war, filmgoers might have thought it was about time to question some aspects of it. Well, they got that in the form of Tora! Tora! Tora!
The United States Navy once did a study in the 90s that determined that most Americans’ knowledge of the Attack on Pearl Harbor came from this movie which, considering how the modern-day alternative would be Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (2001), this isn’t a bad thing. Tora! Tora! Tora! is similar to Airport in that it revolves around a variety of different characters in Pearl Harbor building up to the day of the attack, specifically showing how much of the bloodshed can be laid at the feet of the bureaucracy that failed to stop the Japanese in time.
Speaking of which, the movie is also notable in that it was an American and Japanese co-production and half of the movie revolves around the Japanese Empire who carry out the attack. While they’re not portrayed sympathetically, they’re not portrayed horribly or, more importantly, racistly either. The culture and characters are treated with dignity and respect and acted in a believable manner. No dehumanizing caricatures, no white actors in yellowface, no Engrish. This movie is a major step forward in that regard.
Unfortunately, it’s also a major step backward in battle filmmaking. Considering how long Tora! Tora! Tora! is, the actual Attack on Pearl Harbor is incredibly underwhelming to watch after all of the build-up. And before you think that I’m trying to grade what is clearly a quiet drama as an action movie, it’s not that it’s not exciting; it’s just paced very slowly and clumsily shot. If the thesis of the film is meant to shine a new light on this tragedy, the tragic elements are severely lacking and does make the movie feel like it lacks the gut punch it truly needed.
Also somewhat mixed in its outcome was Catch-22,
Speaking of which, the movie is also notable in that it was an American and Japanese co-production and half of the movie revolves around the Japanese Empire who carry out the attack. While they’re not portrayed sympathetically, they’re not portrayed horribly or, more importantly, racistly either. The culture and characters are treated with dignity and respect and acted in a believable manner. No dehumanizing caricatures, no white actors in yellowface, no Engrish. This movie is a major step forward in that regard.
Unfortunately, it’s also a major step backward in battle filmmaking. Considering how long Tora! Tora! Tora! is, the actual Attack on Pearl Harbor is incredibly underwhelming to watch after all of the build-up. And before you think that I’m trying to grade what is clearly a quiet drama as an action movie, it’s not that it’s not exciting; it’s just paced very slowly and clumsily shot. If the thesis of the film is meant to shine a new light on this tragedy, the tragic elements are severely lacking and does make the movie feel like it lacks the gut punch it truly needed.
Also somewhat mixed in its outcome was Catch-22,
a satirical war comedy that was based off of a very famous novel of the same name that came out in 1961. The novel is famous for its stream-of-consciousness and manic narration that’s difficult to follow. In other words, this is a very, very difficult novel to adapt and the movie unfortunately fails to do so. Catch-22 is a satire of the carelessness of bureaucracy as Captain Yossarian (Alan Arkin) constantly butts heads with his commanding officers who don’t care whether he or his compatriots live or die, illustrating the confrontation between patriotism and self-preservation. While the satire is amusing, the movie never really feels like it develops beyond this pitch and starts feeling like it's spinning its wheels very quickly. It literally feels like nothing happens until the last 5 minutes at which point the movie is over. Still, it bears noting as being part of this trend of undermining the heroism of the American military’s bureaucracy, finally giving a proper jugular punch that was neutered in From Here to Eternity (1953) so many years ago.
An equally deconstructive, and much better, comedic film was Little Big Man.
An equally deconstructive, and much better, comedic film was Little Big Man.
The movie revolves around a white American named Jack Crabb a.k.a. Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman) who was raised among Native Americans and, as an adult, finds himself caught between these two worlds during the Indian Wars of the 1870s. This movie was very revolutionary at the time for being one of the first movies to offer a portrayal of the Wild West where the Natives were shown as victims of America’s frontier spirit. For most of the first half of the 20th Century, America’s settling of the west, especially in Western films and TV shows, had portrayed the Natives as being evil boogeymen who must be conquered so our heroes can spread civilization. Native Americans’ status as villains was never questioned and while there were occasional movies that were more fair to them, such as Broken Arrow (1950) and arguably The Searchers (1956) (though that’s more notable for making its protagonist grey than for humanizing Native Americans), the American settlers were never shown as bad guys.
This is not the case here. The main villain of Little Big Man is General George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan), a historical figure who became an American folk hero after he and his men were massacred by Cheyenne and Sioux tribesmen at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Ever since then, Custer had been martyred in the American consciousness (see the Errol Flynn picture They Died With Their Boots On (1941) as an example from the Golden Age of Hollywood) but Little Big Man was the first movie to challenge this assumption and offer a portrayal much closer to how he was. The real life General Custer had a full-on genocidal hatred for Native Americans and his downfall occurred because he was an overconfident idiot who thought that Native Americans were so uneducated that they would flee in terror from him despite outnumbering him by 10-to-1. Considering how this movie came out as America was approaching the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn (and 3 years before the Wounded Knee protests), it was a timely satire.
The dynamic between Custer and our hero is great and the reason to watch Little Big Man. Little Big Man is also one of the first “who’s the savage?” movies; a subgenre of films where a character enters a war between sides and finds out that the more “savage” of the two groups is actually the nicer and more pure-hearted group (e.g. Dances with Wolves (1990), Pocahontas (1995), Princess Mononoke (1997), The Last Samurai (2003), by the time Avatar (2009) came out this would be so clichéd it had become a punchline). Yet even being very familiar with this trope, Little Big Man comes off as fresh so many years later since it plays more like a silly comedy with its screw-up of a main character that slowly steers you to its dark ending. Though the tradeoff is that, while this was a step forward for positive Native American portrayals, the Native Americans in the movie still come off a bit stereotyped and silly compared to today.
A brother-and-sister film to Little Big Man, in the sense that both movies deconstruct and challenge the classic mythology of cowboys and Indians on the frontier, was Soldier Blue.
This is not the case here. The main villain of Little Big Man is General George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan), a historical figure who became an American folk hero after he and his men were massacred by Cheyenne and Sioux tribesmen at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Ever since then, Custer had been martyred in the American consciousness (see the Errol Flynn picture They Died With Their Boots On (1941) as an example from the Golden Age of Hollywood) but Little Big Man was the first movie to challenge this assumption and offer a portrayal much closer to how he was. The real life General Custer had a full-on genocidal hatred for Native Americans and his downfall occurred because he was an overconfident idiot who thought that Native Americans were so uneducated that they would flee in terror from him despite outnumbering him by 10-to-1. Considering how this movie came out as America was approaching the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn (and 3 years before the Wounded Knee protests), it was a timely satire.
The dynamic between Custer and our hero is great and the reason to watch Little Big Man. Little Big Man is also one of the first “who’s the savage?” movies; a subgenre of films where a character enters a war between sides and finds out that the more “savage” of the two groups is actually the nicer and more pure-hearted group (e.g. Dances with Wolves (1990), Pocahontas (1995), Princess Mononoke (1997), The Last Samurai (2003), by the time Avatar (2009) came out this would be so clichéd it had become a punchline). Yet even being very familiar with this trope, Little Big Man comes off as fresh so many years later since it plays more like a silly comedy with its screw-up of a main character that slowly steers you to its dark ending. Though the tradeoff is that, while this was a step forward for positive Native American portrayals, the Native Americans in the movie still come off a bit stereotyped and silly compared to today.
A brother-and-sister film to Little Big Man, in the sense that both movies deconstruct and challenge the classic mythology of cowboys and Indians on the frontier, was Soldier Blue.
Unlike Little Big Man's Battle of Little Bighorn, which is one of the famous episodes of the American West, Soldier Blue builds up to a much more obscure event in American history, the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. Here, the movie is set in Colorado Territory as a group of settlers are ambushed and killed by the Cheyenne. The only survivors are the scrappy Private Gant (Peter Strauss) and the erudite and socially conscious Cresta Lee (Candice Bergen) who join forces to try to survive the wilderness and try to make their way back to civilization whilst denying their feelings for each other.
Whereas Little Big Man was a smart-aleck comedy set in the Wild West, Soldier Blue plays more like a classic romantic drama with its two diametrically opposed leads who slowly fall in love after going through a series of misadventures. The two actors have chemistry and the sex jokes are a bit more lewd and bawdy than romances of yore but what made Soldier Blue both excellent and revolutionary is the ending. After spending most of the movie escaping from Cheyenne and making their way back to civilization, Gant and Lee arrive at a military camp just as the army’s about to raid a Cheyenne village. And this climactic sequence is straight-up horrific, blending the drama of a Western with the gore of an exploitation film to show the true horrors of what a military massacre is like. It’s a masterclass of playing with the audience's expectations as we spend most of the movie thinking the Cheyenne as the bad guys only to have our expectations checked when they’re brutally massacred.
This isn’t just a back-then praise; the climax of Soldier Blue is still genuinely sickening to watch even today and doesn’t pull any punches. The movie gained major credit for pushing the envelope in acknowledging America’s poor treatment of Natives though it received a bit more criticism than Little Big Man in that the film is meant to be an allegory of Vietnam (specifically the My Lai Massacre) and, as a result, the movies definitely has a few anachronisms in terms of its portrayal. Still, a very excellent movie that was snubbed by the Academy, likely because it was so shocking that members confused their own discomfort for thinking it was a bad movie instead of acknowledging that this discomfort means that the movie is doing its job.
The most famous of these counterculture war movies, though, would’ve had to have been M*A*S*H.
Whereas Little Big Man was a smart-aleck comedy set in the Wild West, Soldier Blue plays more like a classic romantic drama with its two diametrically opposed leads who slowly fall in love after going through a series of misadventures. The two actors have chemistry and the sex jokes are a bit more lewd and bawdy than romances of yore but what made Soldier Blue both excellent and revolutionary is the ending. After spending most of the movie escaping from Cheyenne and making their way back to civilization, Gant and Lee arrive at a military camp just as the army’s about to raid a Cheyenne village. And this climactic sequence is straight-up horrific, blending the drama of a Western with the gore of an exploitation film to show the true horrors of what a military massacre is like. It’s a masterclass of playing with the audience's expectations as we spend most of the movie thinking the Cheyenne as the bad guys only to have our expectations checked when they’re brutally massacred.
This isn’t just a back-then praise; the climax of Soldier Blue is still genuinely sickening to watch even today and doesn’t pull any punches. The movie gained major credit for pushing the envelope in acknowledging America’s poor treatment of Natives though it received a bit more criticism than Little Big Man in that the film is meant to be an allegory of Vietnam (specifically the My Lai Massacre) and, as a result, the movies definitely has a few anachronisms in terms of its portrayal. Still, a very excellent movie that was snubbed by the Academy, likely because it was so shocking that members confused their own discomfort for thinking it was a bad movie instead of acknowledging that this discomfort means that the movie is doing its job.
The most famous of these counterculture war movies, though, would’ve had to have been M*A*S*H.
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M*A*S*H, like many successful comedies of its era, was such a big hit that it ended up getting a TV show (1972-1983) spun off from it. Said TV show is often regarded as one of the greatest TV shows ever made and was so beloved that a lot of people actually don’t even know that it was a movie first. M*A*S*H is set during the Korean War as it revolves around a pair of army doctors, Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Captain Trapper John McIntire (Elliott Gould), who get into all sorts of hijinx screwing around on base and messing with their conservative commanding officers. While Hawkeye and Trapper John are portrayed as generally competent doctors, the movie has a very anti-authority feel to it, giving the message that they should be able to act however they like as long as they do their jobs. (The TV show, by contrast, was occasionally more dramatic and early seasons took careful steps to ensure that it wasn’t overtly protesting the still-ongoing Vietnam War. As a result, the director of the film, Robert Altman, hated the show, saying that it missed the entire point of his movie.)
M*A*S*H is another pioneer of a movie subgenre, though this one is a bit more ahead of its time. The humor in M*A*S*H is very risque and revolves around Hawkeye, Trapper John and their comrades-in-arms doing everything they can to humiliate, browbeat and ruin the lives of their snooty superior officers. The superior officers who act just as warped and tongue-in-cheek, meanwhile, are rewarded for not taking life too seriously. The humor is downright filthy, just about any woman who gets in their way is systematically harassed and most of the humor is an all-out assault on American Puritan values. In other words, M*A*S*H is the earliest example of comedies that would be very popular in the 80s, alternatively called naughty comedies or slobs vs snobs movies (e.g. Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Porky’s (1981) etc.), a full 7 years before this trend took off with Animal House (1978).
M*A*S*H is a very, very funny movie though I think it has been forgotten and remains relatively obscure for two reasons: one, the aforementioned TV show which eclipsed it but it’s also a very laidback and episodic movie which can leave it feeling longer than its 2 hours (which is already pretty long for a comedy). Most who do see it, and saw it at the time, do tend to love it though.
M*A*S*H was the final nominee for Best Picture and, as you can see, the big question of the year was a re-examination of America’s fixation with its love of its military and war heroes. By 1970, while the draft had ended, it was clear that the War in Vietnam was still going to be a Hellish quagmire. Its unpopularity only increased when the My Lai Massacre was revealed to the American public, forcing Americans to come to grips with the fact that they’re not always the good guys.
In this regard, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Little Big Man, Soldier Blue and M*A*S*H are all very timely films that are still excellent. And while they’re great, I will agree that Patton could have the case for being the best movie of the bunch. These four tend to wear their messages a bit more on their sleeve while I think Patton asks much more of the audience and challenges their values. Sure, George Patton is barbaric and loves war but he also knows how to get the job done. Vietnam isn’t justified but was World War II justified? If so, how important is winning versus saving lives? If someone is better at it than anyone else, then should we let them do it or keep them on a tighter leash? These aren’t easy questions to answer but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be asked.
In addition, Patton has a much better sense of pacing, moving at a good clip and being entertaining throughout. Just about every other war movie listed here does have some problems with pacing and you notice the length at times (which is weird since Patton is longer than all of them). A lot of that is also partially because of George C. Scott who, once again, delivers one of the greatest performances in cinematic history.
Comparing Patton to the other New Hollywood movies such as Love Story, Joe and Diary of a Mad Housewife is another exercise in futility though it does bear mentioning that Patton was probably the most likely of these films to go awry, given the size and scope of the picture. Ergo, the fact that it ended up being so good is even impressive. So, all of that combined, if you had to definitively say that one movie was the greatest movie of 1970, then Patton is a very worthy honoree.
Calling Patton the greatest movie of 1970 was a…
SUCCESS!
M*A*S*H is another pioneer of a movie subgenre, though this one is a bit more ahead of its time. The humor in M*A*S*H is very risque and revolves around Hawkeye, Trapper John and their comrades-in-arms doing everything they can to humiliate, browbeat and ruin the lives of their snooty superior officers. The superior officers who act just as warped and tongue-in-cheek, meanwhile, are rewarded for not taking life too seriously. The humor is downright filthy, just about any woman who gets in their way is systematically harassed and most of the humor is an all-out assault on American Puritan values. In other words, M*A*S*H is the earliest example of comedies that would be very popular in the 80s, alternatively called naughty comedies or slobs vs snobs movies (e.g. Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Porky’s (1981) etc.), a full 7 years before this trend took off with Animal House (1978).
M*A*S*H is a very, very funny movie though I think it has been forgotten and remains relatively obscure for two reasons: one, the aforementioned TV show which eclipsed it but it’s also a very laidback and episodic movie which can leave it feeling longer than its 2 hours (which is already pretty long for a comedy). Most who do see it, and saw it at the time, do tend to love it though.
M*A*S*H was the final nominee for Best Picture and, as you can see, the big question of the year was a re-examination of America’s fixation with its love of its military and war heroes. By 1970, while the draft had ended, it was clear that the War in Vietnam was still going to be a Hellish quagmire. Its unpopularity only increased when the My Lai Massacre was revealed to the American public, forcing Americans to come to grips with the fact that they’re not always the good guys.
In this regard, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Little Big Man, Soldier Blue and M*A*S*H are all very timely films that are still excellent. And while they’re great, I will agree that Patton could have the case for being the best movie of the bunch. These four tend to wear their messages a bit more on their sleeve while I think Patton asks much more of the audience and challenges their values. Sure, George Patton is barbaric and loves war but he also knows how to get the job done. Vietnam isn’t justified but was World War II justified? If so, how important is winning versus saving lives? If someone is better at it than anyone else, then should we let them do it or keep them on a tighter leash? These aren’t easy questions to answer but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be asked.
In addition, Patton has a much better sense of pacing, moving at a good clip and being entertaining throughout. Just about every other war movie listed here does have some problems with pacing and you notice the length at times (which is weird since Patton is longer than all of them). A lot of that is also partially because of George C. Scott who, once again, delivers one of the greatest performances in cinematic history.
Comparing Patton to the other New Hollywood movies such as Love Story, Joe and Diary of a Mad Housewife is another exercise in futility though it does bear mentioning that Patton was probably the most likely of these films to go awry, given the size and scope of the picture. Ergo, the fact that it ended up being so good is even impressive. So, all of that combined, if you had to definitively say that one movie was the greatest movie of 1970, then Patton is a very worthy honoree.
Calling Patton the greatest movie of 1970 was a…
SUCCESS!
Personal Favorite Movies of 1970:
- Diary of a Mad Housewife (dir. Frank Perry)
- Gimme Shelter (dir. Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin)
- Indagine un su Cittadino al di Sopra di Ogni Sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) (dir. Elio Petri)
- Joe (dir. John G. Avildsen)
- Little Big Man (dir. Arthur Penn)
- Love Story (dir. Arthur Hiller)
- M*A*S*H (dir. Robert Altman)
- Patton (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner)
- Soldier Blue (dir. Ralph Nelson)
- The Landlord (dir. Hal Ashby)
- The Twelve Chairs (dir. Mel Brooks)
Favorite Heroes:
- Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) (M*A*S*H)
- Captain Trapper John McIntire (Elliott Gould) (M*A*S*H)
- Cresta Lee (Candice Bergen) (Soldier Blue)
- Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) (The Landlord)
- General George S. Patton (George C. Scott) (Patton)
- Jack Crabb/Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman) (Little Big Man)
- Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal) (Love Story)
- Tina Balser (Carrie Snodgress) (Diary of a Mad Housewife)
- Reverend-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis)
- Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) (The Twelve Chairs)
Favorite Villains:
- Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick) (Joe)
- Colonel Chuck Cathcart (Martin Balsam) (Catch-22)
- Colonel Iverson (John Anderson) (Soldier Blue)
- General George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan) (Little Big Man)
- Gérard (François Lafarge) (Au Hasard Balthazar (Balthazar))
- Il Dottore (Gian Maria Volonté) (Indagine un su Cittadino al di Sopra di Ogno Sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion))
- Joe Curran (Peter Boyle) (Joe)
- Jonathan Balser (Richard Benjamin) (Diary of a Mad Housewife)
- Major Margaret Houlihan and Major Frank Burns (Sally Kellerman and Robert Duvall) (M*A*S*H)
- The Hell's Angels (Gimme Shelter)
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