Back in 2011, I experimented with something that I like to call “Let’s second guess the Academy.” Basically, we take a look at past Oscar contestants and we ask ourselves if 1) the Academy made the right choice and 2) what else would we have nominated if we had all the power. It was always a lot of fun (and occasionally surprising) to see which films ended up getting the most love in hindsight.
So, I figured why not revive the tradition by considering the race for best picture of 2009. This was the first contest, since the 1943, to feature 10 nominees. At the time, most critics felt that the race was between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. Personally, as happy as I was to see a woman finally win best director, I thought The Hurt Locker was overrated and I hated Avatar. Which of the 10 nominated films would I have voted for? Well, as much as I loved both District 9 and A Serious Man, I would have voted for An Education. How about you?
Now, here comes the fun part. Let’s say that James Cameron never made Avatar. Let’s say that An Education never made it over from the UK. And maybe The Hurt Locker never got a distributor and just remained an independent film that occasionally popped up on the program at various film festivals. In other words, let’s say that none of the 10 best picture nominees for 2009 had been available to be nominated. Which ten films would have nominated in their place?
You can vote for up to 10 of the films listed below and yes, we do accept write-ins!
Personally, I voted for: Adventureland, The Girlfriend Experience, Moon, (500) Days of Summer, The Informant!, Bright Star, Where The Wild Things Are, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and Me And Orson Welles.
Last night, I had a little party. Me, my boyfriend, my sister, my best friend, and my 7,000 followers on twitter got together to watch the 85th Annual Academy Awards.
Why Were We Watching It?
If you love movies then the Oscars are like the Super Bowl. Seriously, how could I not watch it?
What Was It About?
It was about the best of times and the worst of times. It was about self-promotion, self-congratulation, and Michelle Obama. It was about whether or not Seth McFarlane would self-destruct. It was about rooting for the underdog and checking out who was wearing what. It was the Oscars and, for 210 minutes, the nation sat entranced.
What Worked?
Brave won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film! Seriously, that one award pretty much made the entire night for me. Actually, there were a lot of good winners last night: Ang Lee for Best Director, Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor, Paperman for Best Animated Short Film, and Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress. I was especially happy to see both Lawrence and Anne Hathaway win because, for whatever reason, these two actresses have recently had to deal with some of the most petty criticism that I’ve ever seen.
I also appreciated the fact that Quentin Tarantino, upon winning Best Original Screenplay, managed to spend his entire speech basically patting himself on the back while pretending to thank his cast. It may not be remembered as the most classy speech in the history of the Oscars but it definitely served to remind us of why we love Quentin.
As host, Seth McFarlane was such a mixed bag that I’ve included him under both things that worked and things that didn’t work. McFarlane started out surprisingly strong. Unlike a lot of female critics, I wasn’t offended by The Boob Song and I thought it was actually a pretty clever parody of McFarlane’s public image. (The joke was clearly meant to be on McFarlane and not the actresses mentioned in the song.) Unfortunately, as the show went on, McFarlane occasionally seemed to be determined to live up to that parody.
Oddly enough, I really enjoyed Lincoln when I saw it but yet I still found myself happy to see it lose in so many categories. I think it’s probably because Lincoln was so aggressively hyped and so many self-important Oscar pundits (like Sasha Stone) declared that Lincoln was the best film of the year before they had even seen it. It was hard not to resent the condescending tone that was taken by many of Lincoln‘s online supporters. Plus, it’s always fun to root for the underdog. It’s hard not to suspect that if Ben Affleck had actually been nominated for Best Director then Steven Spielberg and his film might have actually won big last night. But by snubbing Affleck, the Academy cast Steven Spielberg and Lincoln in the role of Goliath.
On one final petty note, I was happy to see Jennifer Lawrence win because I know her victory probably annoyed the editors of Awards Daily.
What Did Not Work?
I could have done without Michelle Obama showing up to present Best Picture. Yes, I know that Hollywood loves the Obamas but seriously, it felt rather Orwellian to have the First Lady suddenly pop up on TV and tell us why movies are so important. The fact that she appeared with a few random soldiers behind her just added to the creepy vibe.
The much hyped Bond tribute turned out to be a bit of a bust, didn’t it?
The audience, which never seemed to be that excited about the prospect of Seth McFarlane in the first place, seemed to turn more and more against him as the show progressed. As a result, once the Oscars hit the 120 minute mark, Seth started to come across as being a bit desperate to get a reaction — any reaction — from the audience.
Daniel Day-Lewis gave a good acceptance speech and all but surely I’m not the only viewer who was curious to hear what Joaquin Phoenix would have said if he had won.
In the end, the show just felt a little bit too bland for my tastes. Unlike last year, there was nothing truly unexpected. There were no hints of eccentricity. No one showed up wearing anything awful. Nobody made a fool of themselves while accepting their Oscar. In short, the show was just forgettable.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
When Jennifer Lawrence fell on the way to accept her award, that was definitely an “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment. Seriously, I loved her dress but, from the minute I saw it, I knew she was going to have a hard time getting up to the podium.
Lessons Learned
Award shows are a lot more fun when things go wrong.
I stayed up way too late last night but it was totally worth it because I was watching a film from 1966, The Oscar.
Among those of us who love bad and campy movies from the 50s and 60s, The Oscar is a legendary film. It has a reputation for being one of best so bad-its-good-films ever made. The Oscar is a film that I’ve read about in several books but, until last night, I had never gotten a chance to actually see it. When I saw that the film was going to be on last night, I said “Sleep be damned!” and I stayed up and watched. What other choice did I have?
The Oscar takes place in a world where women are “dames” and men are “fellas” and everyone acts as if they’re a character in a Rat Pack-themed fanfic. One look at Frankie Fane (played by Stephen Boyd) and you know he’s the type of guy who snaps his fingers when he walks and probably uses pig Latin when he flirts. He’s one cool cat and as the film begins, he’s been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
The film begins at the Oscars. Frankie sits out in the audience, surrounded by Hollywood royalty and nervously waiting for the envelope to be opened. The camera pans over to Frankie’s personal manager, Hymie Kelley. Hymie stares bitterly at his former friend and suddenly, we hear his thoughts and do they ever let us know what type of movie we’re about to see.
As Hymie himself puts it:
“You finally made it, Frankie! Oscar night! And here you sit, on top of a glass mountain called “success.” You’re one of the chosen five, and the whole town’s holding its breath to see who won it. It’s been quite a climb, hasn’t it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie, I do…”
Hymie, incidentally, is played by the singer Tony Bennett. This was Bennett’s first dramatic film role and it was also his last. Whatever talent or magnetism Bennett may have had as a singer, it didn’t translate into screen presence. Bennett goes through the entire film looking embarrassed but who can blame him when the script calls for him to constantly tell Frankie that, “You lie down with pigs, you stand up smelling like garbage…”
As we discover through the use of flashback, Frankie has had to lay down with a lot of pigs to get his chance at winning an Oscar. After starting out his career working at sleazy clubs, Frankie, Hymie, and Frankie’s stripper girlfriend (Jill St. John) find themselves in New York. Frankie dumps his girlfriend (unaware that she’s pregnant with his child) after he meets artist Elke Sommer at a “swinging party.”
“Are you a tourist or a native?” Frankie asks her.
“Take one from column A and one from column B. You get an egg roll either way,” Sommer replies.
No wonder Frankie tells her, “You make my head hurt with all that poetry.”
Eventually, Frankie is discovered by a talent agent who takes him to see studio mogul Joseph Cotten (who went from Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Third Man to this). Cotten is so impressed with Frankie that he says, “Once in a while, you bring me meat like this. It all has different names: prime rib of Gloria, shoulder cut of Johnny. MEAT!”
With the help of savvy talent agent Milton Berle, Frankie becomes a film star but he’s still a total heel who cheats on Sommer and takes advantage of Hymie’s loyalty. When Frankie gets nominated for an Oscar, he hires a sleazy private investigator (Ernest Borgnine, of course) to leak a story about Frankie’s criminal past. Frankie assumes that one of his fellow nominees will be blamed for the leak and that he’ll be able to ride a wave of sympathy to victory.
And who are Frankie’s fellow nominees? We only learn the identity of three of them – Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton, and Burt Lancaster. We never find out what movie Sinatra was nominated for but we’re told that Burton was nominated for The Grapes of Winter (which, I’m going to assume, was a film version of a Shakespeare play about Tom Joad) while Lancaster was nominated for his amazing performance in The Spanish Armada. Doesn’t that sound like an amazing film?
Oh, how to describe the delirious experience of watching The Oscar? In many ways, it is a truly terrible movie but it’s fun in the way that only a “racy” film from the mid-60s can be. Nobody plays his or her role with anything resembling subtleness. Instead, everyone spends the entire film yelling, screaming, and gritting their teeth while flaring their nostrils. Everyone, that is, except for Tony Bennett who gives a performance that has a definite community theater feel to it. Even better is the dialogue. People in this film don’t just say their lines – they exclaim them. If you’ve ever wanted to spend two hours in a world where every sentence ends with an exclamation point, watch The Oscar.
For a film that was apparently meant to be something of a love letter to the Academy, The Oscar was only nominated for two Oscars. It received nominations for Best Art Design and Best Costume Design. While I had a hard time seeing what was so impressive about the film’s art design (in the world of The Oscar, Hollywood has a definite Ikea feel to it), the costumes were fairly impressive in a tacky, 1966 type of way.
Finally, I think it’s time that somebody remake The Oscar. David Fincher can direct it, Aaron Sorkin can write the script, Jessie Eisenberg can play Frankie Fane, and Justin Timberlake would make for an adorable Hymie Kelley. For the supporting roles, I think Billy Crystal would be a natural for Milton Berle’s role and perhaps Philip Baker Hall could step into the shoes of Joseph Cotten. Perhaps veteran film blogger and self-described very important person Sasha Stone could make her film debut in Ernest Borgnine’s role.
Today is the last day for the members of the Academy to vote for the 86th Annual Academy Awards. With that in mind, here are my predictions as to what’s going to win next Sunday. Please note: this is not necessarily who I think should win.
Best Picture — Argo
Best Director — Ang Lee for Life of Pi
Best Actor — Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
Best Actress — Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook
Best Supporting Actor — Alan Arkin in Argo
Best Supporting Actress — Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables
Best Adapted Screenplay — Argo
Best Original Screenplay — Amour
Best Foreign Language Film — Amour
Best Animated Feature — Frankenweenie
Best Documentary Feature — Searching For Sugar Man
Released in 1952 and directed by Vincente Minnelli, The Bad and the Beautiful is arguably one of the greatest films ever made. It’s certainly one of my favorite films.
Perhaps appropriately, The Bad and the Beautiful is a film about the movies.
Jonathan Shields (played in a truly amazing performance by Kirk Douglas) is a legendary film producer. He’s won Oscars, he’s got a reputation for being a genius, and, as the film begins, he is one of the most hated men in Hollywood. It’s been years since Shields made a succesful film but he thinks that he’s finally come up with a movie that can put him back on top. His assistant, Harry Pebbel (played with a weary dignity by Walter Pidgeon), invites Hollywood’s best director, actress, and screenwriter to a meeting and he proceeds to spend the rest of the film trying to convince them to help Jonathan make his comeback.
The only problem is that all three of them hate Jonathan Shields and have sworn that they’ll never work with him again. Through the use of flashbacks, we see how each of them first met Jonathan and how each eventually came to despise him.
Director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) first met Jonathan when Jonathan hired him to pretend to be a mourner at his father’s funeral. With Jonathan’s help, Fred moves up from directing B-movies to finally getting a chance to make his dream movie, an adaptation of a believably pretentious novel called The Far Off Mountain. With Jonathan’s help, Fred even gets womanizing film star Gaucho Ribera (a hilariously vain Gilbert Roland) to agree to star in Fred’s movie. Jonathan also introduces Fred to Georgia (Lana Turner), the alcoholic daughter of Jonathan’s mentor.
Jonathan eventually makes Georgia into a film star and Georgia falls in love with him. Of all the major actresses of the 1950s, Lana Turner seems to get the least amount of respect from film historians. She’s more remembered today as the epitome of glamour and scandal but, in The Bad and the Beautiful, Turner gives one of the best performances of her career. In her best scene, Georgia has a nervous breakdown while driving in the rain and, for those few minutes, you forget that you’re watching an iconic film star. Instead, you’re just amazed by the performance.
Finally, the screenwriter is James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), an intellectual novelist who is brought to Hollywood by Jonathan. While the reluctant Bartlow finds himself being seduced by J0nathan, his flighty wife (Gloria Grahame) is seduced by Gaucho.
The Bad and the Beautiful is perhaps one of the few perfect movies ever made, a film that qualifies as both art and entertainment. There are so many reasons why I love this film that its hard for me to describe them all. The film snob in me loves the fact that Minnelli directed The Bad and the Beautiful as if it were a classic black-and-white film noir. The entire film is lit and shot to emphasize shadows and moral ambiguity. As played by Kirk Douglas, Jonathan Shields is as seductive and dangerous a figure as Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. My inner film historian loves the fact that the film is full of barely disguised portraits of real life Hollywood figures like David O. Selznick, Val Lewton, Alfred Hitchcock, and Diane Barrymore. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, my girly girl side loves that this film is basically a big melodramatic soap opera. Lana Turner’s outfits are to die for and Jonathan Shields is the ultimate bad boy that we can’t help but love.
The Bad and the Beautiful received 6 Oscar nominations but it wasn’t nominated for best picture. (This snub is all the more surprising when you consider what the Academy did name as the best picture of 1952 — Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth.) Out of those six nominations, the Bad and the Beautiful won five Oscars. (Of all the film’s nominees, only Kirk Douglas failed to win.) As of this writing, The Bad and the Beautiful still holds the record for most Oscars won by a film that failed to be nominated for best picture.
Previously, I reviewed the 1935 Best Picture winner Mutiny on the Bounty, a film that still stands as one of the best adventure films ever made. However, this was not the only film made about the Bounty to be honored with several Oscar nominations. In 1962, another version of Mutiny on The Bounty was released and, like its predecessor, received a nomination for Best Picture of the year. However, while the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty remains one of the most entertaining films ever made, the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty is a mess.
As in the 1935 version of the story, we once again follow the HMS Bounty as it sails from England to Tahiti. Again, the ship’s captain is the tyrannical Capt. Bligh (Trevor Howard) and again, the eventual mutiny is led by Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando). While the 1935 version presented Christian as the unquestioned leader of the mutiny, this version features an indecisive Christian who is goaded into leading the mutiny by a seaman named John Mills (Richard Harris). Whereas the 1935 Fletcher Christian never regretted his decision, the 1962 version seems to regret the mutiny from the moment it occurs and literally spends the rest of the film trying to get the mutineers to agree to return to England with him.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two versions of Mutiny on the Bounty is that the 1935 version was a 2-hour film that felt shorter while the 1962 remake lasts 3 hours and 15 minutes (including intermission) and feels even longer. The 1962 version was made at a time when Hollywood was attempting to counteract the influences of European art films and American television by making films that were a thousand times bigger then they needed to be. Whereas the 1935 Mutiny on The Bounty was all about telling the story as efficiently as possible, the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty was about telling audiences, at every possible moment, that they couldn’t see anything like this on television or in some French art film. Audiences in 1962 may very well have been amazed by the endless shots of Tahitians dancing and the Bounty rocking on the ocean but, for modern audiences, the entire film just feels incredibly slow and padded.
Another major difference between the two versions of Mutiny on the Bounty is that Marlon Brando, to be charitable, was no Clark Gable. Much as Clark Gable could never have been a credible Stanley Kowalski or Vito Corleone, Brando could never have been a convincing Fletcher Christian. Whereas Gable played Christian as the epitome of masculinity, Brando’s internalized, method approach serves to turn the character into something of a wimp. It doesn’t help that Brando’s twangy attempt at an English accent sounds like every bad Monty Python impersonation that’s ever been heard in a college dorm room.
The 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty was a notoriously troubled production. Marlon Brando was reportedly bored with the role of Fletcher Christian (which might explain why he gave such an eccentric performance) and he reportedly used his star status to demand and make constant changes in the script. The film’s original director, Carol Reed, reportedly quit over frustration with Brando and was replaced by Lewis Milestone. Milestone, a veteran director who had started his career during the silent era, proved just as ineffectual when it came to controlling Brando. By the end of the film, Richard Harris was literally refusing to film any scenes opposite Brando. The end result was that the film went wildly over schedule and over budget.
Despite being reviled by even contemporary critics, Mutiny on the Bounty received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The nomination was a triumph for the studio system as MGM reportedly directed all of its employees to vote for the film. That may have been enough to win Mutiny a nomination for best picture but the actual Oscar went to Lawrence of Arabia.
It’s been a strange Oscar season and it could get even stranger. Several critics and industry insiders are speculating that, on February 24th, Argo might win the Oscar for best picture without winning in any other category. As strange as that may sound, Argo would not be alone in achieving this distinction. In the past, 3 films have won best picture without winning anything else.
Mutiny on the Bounty, the best picture of 1935, is one of those films.
Based (rather loosely, according to many historians) on a true story, Mutiny on the Bounty tells the story of one of the most controversial events in maritime history. The HMS Bounty leaves England in 1787 on a two-year voyage to Tahiti. The Bounty is manned by a disgruntled crew (many of whom have been forced into Naval service) and is captained by a tyrant named William Bligh (Charles Laughton). Bligh has little use for the majority of his crew and thinks nothing of having a man whipped until he is dead for even the pettiest of infractions.
Blight’s lieutenant is Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable), a compassionate man who disapproves of Bligh’s methods. As the voyage continues, Christian grows more and more vocal with his disgust towards Bligh. When the ship finally reaches Tahiti, Christian falls in love with a local Tahitian girl and defies Bligh’s direct orders so that he can spend time with her.
It’s only after the ship leaves Tahiti and Bligh’s tyranny leads to the death of an alcoholic crew member that Christian finally leads the mutiny of the film’s title. The rest of the film is divided between Bligh’s surprisingly heroic efforts to survive after being set adrift in a lifeboat and Christian’s attempts to avoid being captured by British authorities. Caught up in the middle of all of this is Christian’s friend (and audience surrogate), Roger Byam (Franchot Tone).
Mutiny on the Bounty was one of the biggest box office hits of 1935 and it received 8 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and a record-setting 3 nods for Best Actor with Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone all receiving nominations. However, out of those 8 nominations, Mutiny only won the award for Best Picture while John Ford’s The Informer took home the Oscars for Best Director and Actor. Mutiny on the Bounty was the third (and, as of this writing, the last) best picture winner to fail to win any other categories.
For a film that lost dramatically more awards than it won, Mutiny on the Bounty still holds up pretty well. Director Frank Lloyd keeps the film moving at a quick pace and perfectly captures not only the misery of the Bounty but the joyful paradise of Tahiti as well. Lloyd is at his best during the short sequence of scenes that depict Bligh’s efforts to reach safety after being forced off of the Bounty. During this sequence, the audience is forced to reconsider both Captain Bligh and everything that we’ve seen before. It introduces an intriguing hint of ambiguity that is not often associated with films released in either the 1930s or today.
Of the three nominated actors, Clark Gable and Charles Laughton both give performances that remain impressive today. In the role of Fletcher Christian, Gable is the literal personification of masculinity and virility. Meanwhile, in the role of Bligh, Laughton is hardly subtle but he is perfectly cast. If Gable’s performance is epitomized by his charming smile than Laughton’s is epitomized by his constant glower. Wisely, neither the film nor Laughton ever make Bligh out to be an incompetent captain. As is shown after the mutiny, the film’s Bligh truly is as capable a navigator and leader as everyone initially believes him to be. Unlike many cinematic tyrants, Blight’s tyranny is not the result of insecurity. Instead, Bligh is simply a tyrant because he can be. Laughton and Gable are both so charismatic and memorable that Franchot Tone suffers by comparison. However, even Tone’s bland performance works to the film’s advantage. By being so normal and boring, Roger Byam is established as truly being the sensible middle between Gable’s revolutionary and Laughton’s tyrant.
Mutiny on the Bounty remains an exciting adventure film and it certainly holds up better than some of the other films that were named best picture during the Academy’s early years. If Argo only wins one Academy Award next Sunday, it’ll be in good company.
One reason that I love February is because it’s during this month that TCM broadcasts 31 Days of Oscar. Over the course of this month, TCM is devoting itself to showing Oscar-nominated films. While this means that they are showing a lot of my favorite films, it also means that they’re showing some obscure films that I might otherwise never have had a chance to see.
Disraeli is one of those previously obscure films. Released in 1929, Disraeli was an early sound film that starred a distinguished stage actor named George Arliss. Recreating a role that he had previously played on stage and in a silent film, Arliss was the first British actor to ever win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Disraeli itself picked up a nomination for best picture but lost to All Quiet On The Western Front.
Disraeli tells the story of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (played, in a likable if overly theatrical performance, by Arliss). Disraeli was the first (and, to date, only) person of Jewish descent to serve as prime minister. A favorite of Queen Victoria, Disraeli held the office of prime minister several times during the late 19th century and remains one of the most influential leaders in British history.
Reflecting the fact that it was initially made at a time when its title character was still a well-known historical figure, Disraeli spends next to no time explaining how Benjamin Disraeli reached the office of prime minister or why he believed the things that he believed. Indeed, the film tells us remarkably little about just what exactly Disraeli, as leader, did believe in. Instead, it takes for granted that the audience will know who Benjamin Disraeli was and why he was important. The film, focuses on one aspect of Disraeli’s career — his efforts to purchase the Suez Canal and allow Victoria to add “Empress of India” to her list of titles. Along the way, he finds the time to encourage a tepid romance between his aide (Anthony Bushnell) and the young Lady Clarissa (played by Joan Bennett, who — nearly 50 years later — would play the sinister Madam Blanc in Dario Argento”s Suspiria). While this approach may have worked for audiences in 1929, modern viewers will probably wonder just what exactly everyone’s going on about.
If you didn’t know that Disraeli was based on a stage play, you would be able to guess it from watching the movie. It’s not just that this is an extremely talky film. It’s also a very stagey film, a reminder that the initial introduction of sound resulted in American cinema taking a step back artistically. Whereas silent films were free to experiment both visually and narratively, a film like Disraeli had to be shot in order to accommodate the limitations of the early sound era. As a result, the camera rarely moves and scenes are made up of static shots of groups of people standing close together and delivering lengthy passages of exposition. While this may not have been an issue for audiences who were still amazed by the very existence of talking pictures, modern audiences will probably find the film to be pretty dull.
Disraeli is a difficult film to recommend for a modern audience but it is interesting to watch from a historical point of view. As I watched Disraeli, I was reminded of a current Oscar contender. Much like Lincoln, Disraeli attempts to humanize a famous politician and is structured around the lead performance of an acclaimed British thespian. Much like Disraeli, Lincoln is a fictionalized account of how a powerful and controversial leader manipulated a reluctant government into making history. That Lincoln deals with the struggle to end American slavery while Disraeli celebrates British imperialism says a lot about the difference between 1929 and 2013.
It’s February and we all know what that means! It’s Oscar month! TCM is doing its 31 Days of Oscar and self-important film bloggers across the world are devoting themselves to reviewing the Oscar-winning films of the past. That includes me because, as our longtime readers know, I love the Oscars and nobody is more self-important than me!
This month, I’m going to be devoting myself to reviewing films that were nominated for an Oscar. Some of them won, some of them lost but all of them will forever be known as an Oscar nominee. I am going to start things off by reviewing the 1968 tear-jerker Charly.
Charly opens with Charlie Gordon (Cliff Robertson) playing in a playground with a bunch of children. Though Charlie appears to be middle-aged, it quickly becomes apparent that, in many ways, he’s still a child himself. Charlie is mentally handicapped, an introverted man who works at a bakery where he’s frequently ridiculed and taken advantage of by his co-workers.
Charlie lives an isolated existence but he’s determined to better himself. As the film begins, he’s been attending night school for two years and he had been taught to read and write by a sympathetic teacher named Alice (Claire Bloom). One night, Alice takes Charlie to the Nemur-Straus Clinic, a research lab run by the cold Dr. Nemur (Leon Janney) and the much more compassionate Dr. Straus (Lilia Skala). Nemur and Straus think that they’ve discovered a surgical procedure that can increase human intelligence. Though both doctors are initially reluctant, Alice convinces them to use Charlie as a test subject.
The surgery is a success and Charlie suddenly finds himself intelligent. For the first time, he can understand a world that had previously only been a mystery to him. Charlie finds himself falling in love with Alice but he also has to deal with the possibility that his newfound intelligence might only be temporary. Even as the new Charlie starts to enjoy his life, he’s aware of the ghost of the old Charlie waiting behind every corner.
I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about Charly as a film. On the one hand, it’s a generally well-acted film and it doesn’t shy away from considering the conflict between science and nature. On the other hand, Ralph Nelson directs the film in such a glib and showy manner that Charly often feels like a rather shallow exploration of some very deep issues. As such, you’re often left feeling as if both the film and the title character deserve better than what Nelson gives them.
The 60s were transitional decade for cinema in general. While European filmmakers were proving that a movie could be a work of art, American directors found themselves struggling to keep up. Far too often, this led to American directors copying the techniques of their European counterparts without necessarily understanding what made those techniques were so important in the first place. Whereas directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Federico Fellini used showy cinematic techniques to comment on the act of watching the movie itself, many of the older American directors used those same techniques simply because they felt they had no other choice. One of my favorite games, when watching a mainstream American film from the late 60s, is to spot the random psychedelic moment that, as out-of-place or unnecessary as it may feel, was obviously put into the film “for the kids.”
Charly is full of such moments and very few of them add anything to the film. Ralph Nelson, a veteran of television who was previously nominated for an Oscar for directing the extremely straight forward Lilies of the Field, comes up with several self-conscious moments that seem to be there “for the kids” but which don’t necessarily move the story forward. The film is full of random slow motion, still shots, and split screens and, unfortunately, they serve to distract from a very simple and very effective story.
The film’s saving grace, however, comes in the form of Cliff Robertson. If you had asked me, before I saw Charly, just who exactly Cliff Robertson was, I would have told you that he played Uncle Ben in the first Spider-Man films and Hugh Hefner in a disturbing film called Star 80. However, after seeing Charly, Cliff Robertson will always be the tragic Charlie Gordon to me.
The genius of Robertson’s performance is that he not only captures Charlie’s sweet nature and desire to better himself but he captures Charlie’s anger as well. As Charlie becomes more intelligent, he also becomes more aware of just how poorly the world has treated him up until that point. When he can suddenly spell his own name and articulate his own feelings, it’s not just an individual triumph but a triumph for everyone who has ever been told that they can’t do something or that they should just be happy with whatever they’ve been given in life. Robertson makes Charlie Gordon into a very real and very sympathetic character and, as a result, you care about whether the result of the surgery are permanent or only temporary. Robertson’s performance is so strong and honest that it transcends the showiness of Nelson’s direction. Charly works because Cliff Robertson gives the film a heart.
Given the power of his performance, it’s not surprising to discover that Charly, as both a film and a role, was very important to Cliff Robertson. It was so important to him that he bought the rights to the film’s source material (the novel Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes) because he wanted to make sure that Charlie Gordon would never be played by anyone but him. For both his performance and his determination to get the film made, Cliff Robertson won the Academy Award for Best Actor of 1968.
Charly may not be a perfect film but I’m not ashamed to say that I cried at the end of it. Cliff Robertson’s heart-felt performance as Charlie Gordon transcends whatever other flaws the film may have. If you haven’t seen Charly, you really should.
