What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1980

The Year: 1980
What the Nominees Were: Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Elephant Man, Ordinary People, Raging Bull, Tess
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: John Sayles arrived on the scene with Return of the Secaucus Seven. Louis Malle’s Atlantic City was great. Sam Fuller finally made his autobiographical magnum opus The Big Red One. Stanley Kubrick delivered The Shining. And of course we had one of the all-time great sequels: The Empire Strikes Back

What Did Win: Ordinary People
How It’s Aged: It’s a beautiful, tender, heartbreaking movie about survivor’s guilt, suicidal ideation and therapy. But…

What Should’ve Won: The Shining
How Hard Was the Decision: This should have been an easy decision. This is one of those years where everybody knows what should have won: Raging Bull. So I just rewatched that movie …and I just don’t like it very much. It’s beautifully shot and De Niro certainly puts the work on screen, but the problem is that I don’t find Jake LaMotta to be a very compelling character. He keeps beating the crap out of his brother and wife not out of some great tragic flaw, but merely because he’s a dumb brute. He’s not a raging bull, because bulls have dignity. He’s a raging louse. So that left me with a very hard decision? Stick with Ordinary People? (I feel bad I haven’t upheld a decision in a while.) Go for The Big Red One? And what about Empire?? That’s certainly my favorite movie of the year, after all. But Empire is also a mess in some ways. I decided that the closest thing to a perfect movie was The Shining.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Kubrick and Diane Johnson
Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd

The Story: Frustrated novelist Jack Torrance takes a job as a winter caretaker of Colorado resort, along with his wife and psychic son. Ghosts (or is it all in his head?) torment him until he decides (like his predecessor) to chop up his family with an ax. Can they survive?

Any Nominations or Wins: None! But it did get Razzie nominations (an award for the worst films and performances of the year) for Duvall and Kubrick’s directing!
Why It Didn’t Win: So obviously, this was a movie that was pretty despised upon its original release, it’s only gradually that it’s come to be recognized as perhaps the greatest horror movie ever made. Nicholson and Kubrick were Academy darlings, but this movie inspired nothing but loathing from the Academy and general public at the time.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. I’ve skipped over some great horror movies, so why this one? Because it’s the scariest damn movie I’ve ever seen. It was the first movie I ever watched on laserdisc, at the home of a family friend, in a home theater system where I was sitting right next to the sub-woofer, which kept rattling my bones with the ominous Bela Bartok music on the soundtrack. By the time the movie ended, I was completely freaked out and frazzled, and had to rewatch Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to calm myself down. I’m still terrified of it to this day.  The twins!
   
2. Given the fact that I denied Oscars to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, you might think that I just don’t like anti-heroes, but I love them if they hit a certain sweet spot. Nicholson is absolutely captivating here as a weak man who gives in to his dark side with too little resistance. Unlike LaMotta, I find him utterly compelling.
3. But this is actually a fascinating movie, in that the role of hero is passed like a baton. First it’s Jack, as he makes a half-hearted attempt to better his life, then he gives up and it becomes Danny, investigating the secrets of the hotel, then he is traumatized, so then it’s Jack again, picking up the investigation, but he succumbs to the temptations of the ghosts, so then it’s Wendy who picks up the baton until she gets shut down, then it’s Scatman Crother’s character Halloran who comes to the rescue, but he gets killed, and finally it’s the no-longer-catatonic Danny who must step up and resolve the story once and for all. The movie gets extra points for making this bizarre structure work (and we don’t even notice how bizarre it is as we watch.)
   
4. I absolutely love the scene where Jack spills his drink on his shirt and goes to the bathroom to clean it off. An obsequious man in a tux is there to dab at the stain with a towel. Jack angrily grabs the towel to do it himself, saying “Mr. Grady, you were the caretaker here. You chopped [your family] up to bits, and then you blew your brains out.” Grady only smiles mildly and says, “I’m sorry to differ with you sir, but you are the caretaker, you’ve always been the caretaker. I should know sir, I’ve always been here.” Someone, after all, has to remove a lot of stains in this place. This is a classic example of a seemingly-innocuous exchange of an object that actually encapsulates the meaning of the scene. Jack thinks he’ll get a rise out of Grady by grabbing the towel away, but Grady only smiles: the towel has been passed on to his successor, in every sense. By grabbing it, Jack has admitted he will take up Grady’s (multiple) roles.
   
5. Are any of the crazed conspiracy theories in the documentary feature Room 237 accurate? For instance, was Kubrick encoding evidence that he had faked the moon landings throughout the film? Surely not, but it can’t be denied that he was enjoying packing the movie with complicated imagery open to many interpretations. He famously drove the cast crazy with his bizarre perfectionism, but the result is a movie dense with many meanings.
6. One thing I’ve been trying to do with these posts is highlight the forgotten female creators who have been essential to making the male-led movies. In this case, it’s not often acknowledged that Kubrick co-wrote the movie with novelist Diane Johnson. Kubrick had a hard time deciding whether to adapt King’s novel or Johnson’s own horror novel “The Shadow Knows”, so he decided to split the difference and hire one to adapt the other. Johnson (who would later go on to write the novel “Le Divorce”, which was turned into a Merchant-Ivory film) brings a sensitive eye to how marriages turn sour.

Ah, 1980: When I read this ad in 1980 I wanted all of these

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1979

The Year: 1979

What the Nominees Were: All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Norma Rae 

Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Those are five great movies! This was one of the best years for American film. Amazingly, there were more great films, including Being There, The China Syndrome and, of course, Alien.

What Did Win: Kramer Vs. Kramer
How It’s Aged: It’s deeply moving, the all-time great movie about divorce, and the performances from Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep both richly deserved their Oscars. But…

What Should’ve Won: Breaking Away
How Hard Was the Decision: I truly love Kramer vs. Kramer, but it’s a very strong year.  I was going to give it to Apocalypse Now, which is an amazing film, but I was sort of dreading rewatching it, and so I eventually decided to go with my heart and award it to one of my all-time favorites instead.

Director: Peter Yates
Writer: Steve Tesich
Stars: Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley, Barbara Barrie, and Paul Dooley

The Story: After the quarries close, the sons of stonecutters have no idea what they’re going to do with their lives. Dave decides to be a star bicycle racer and imitates his Italian idols. Only when he meets them and finds out they are cheats does he admit his own problems, especially with his father. He eventually realizes that he should go to college.

Any Nominations or Wins: It won Original Screenplay. It lost Picture, Director, Supporting Actress for Barrie and Score.

Why It Didn’t Win: I can’t blame the Academy for giving it to Kramer vs. Kramer, which was more “of the moment,” addressing one of the most painful issues facing America at the time. Breaking Away, on the other hand, is more gentle and timeless, and giving it an Oscar (other than original screenplay) must have felt less urgent.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Yates didn’t make any other films this good, nor did Tesich, nor did Christopher, making this one of those great one-offs where the right elements all came together in some bizarre alchemical concoction that could never be repeated.
2. But Christopher has one of my favorite line readings. Dave’s father runs a used car lot and rips off the local college kids. Dave rejects his family and chooses to idolize Italian bike racers instead. His dad tries to break him of this mania and forces him to take a job on the lot. One day, some kids his dad ripped off try to return their car and Dave naively gives them their money back. His father tries to physically block them from pushing the dead car back onto the lot, almost killing himself with a heart attack. Dave runs off to join a race with his Italian idols, but they betray him too, cheating and running him off the road. Dave returns home tearfully to his dad and bitterly laments, “Everybody cheats. I just didn’t know.” He can no longer hide behind the imaginary heroism of the Italians, which means he must accept his father’s wickedness. It’s just about one of the most devastating moments in any movie I’ve seen.
   
3. The movie has an seemingly-cuttable silent scene that manages (as I’ve pointed out before) to be a perfect one-scene encapsulation of the plot and everything the movie has to say. Practicing his racing along the side of the highway, Dave ends up racing against a truck advertising Italian Vermouth, while an Italian opera plays on the soundtrack. The trucker ends up getting pulled over by a cop, so Dave wins, racing by a sign that says “Now entering Bloomington, Home of Indiana University.” Dave doesn’t realize that his Italian fantasy is harming others, and he doesn’t realize that he’s been heading towards his real goal this whole time: the university.
   
4. I’ve said before that in the best sports movies the hero either wins by losing (Rocky) or loses by winning (Downhill Racer). This movie is a great sports movie, but it’s an exception because the hero wins by winning, and that’s fine. Dave resolves all of his issues with his dad, his girlfriend, and his friends, and then begins the triumphant final bicycle race, which is a bit of an afterthought. The result is an exhilarating stand-up-and-cheer triumph, but it’s still packed with irony: Dave gets to defeat the university kids one last time, but only after admitting that he needs to join the enemy and enroll at the university himself.
5. Steve (ne Stoyan) Tesich was a Yugoslavian immigrant who came to Indiana University on a wrestling scholarship, where he decided to switch to screenwriting and wrote two unrelated scripts, one about a bike race and another about ex-stonecutters, but Yates had the great idea to combine them. Sometimes writers don’t know what they have until a clever director leads them there.
   

Ah, 1979: The 80s were on their way…

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1978

The Year: 1978
What the Nominees Were: Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express, An Unmarried Woman
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: How did Days of Heaven not get a nomination?? Blue Collar would have been an interesting choice.

What Did Win: The Deer Hunter
How It’s Aged: The scenes in America are very well done, but the movie’s portrayal of the people of Vietnam is certainly problematic. A great cast, put to good use, but ultimately a bit of a tonal mish-mash. Not a movie I ever intend to rewatch. The thing this movie does the best, a certain lyrical quality, is done much better by…

What Should’ve Won: Days of Heaven 

How Hard Was the Decision: A fairly easy choice. Coming Home and An Unmarried Woman are both excellent films, but Days of Heaven is one of the all-time greats.

Director: Terrence Malick
Writer: Terrence Malick
Stars: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz

The Story: After accidentally killing his foreman in a fight at a steel plant, a young man named Bill goes on the run with his little sister Linda and a girlfriend named Abby, who he pretends is also his sister. Picking wheat on a Texas farm, a supposedly-dying farmer falls in love with Abby, so Bill encourages her to marry him and inherit the farm. Soon, a love triangle develops, that ends tragically for most people involved.

Any Nominations or Wins: It deservedly won for Néstor Almendros’s (and Haskell Wexler’s) Cinematography, but lost for Sound, Costume Design and Ennio Morricone’s haunting score.
Why It Didn’t Win: The movie was a box-office bomb, which didn’t help, but The Deer Hunter didn’t light the world on fire either. Ultimately, to fail to even give this a Picture nomination is a baffling choice.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. I first discovered this movie through the wonderful documentary Visions of Light, where they make a convincing case that it’s the best looking movie ever made. Almendros (and Wexler who took over after Almendros had to leave to shoot another movie) shot a lot of the movie at magic hour, just after the sun has gone down but before night has fallen (but Almendros would complain that it was actually “magic 15 minutes.”) On the Criterion commentary track, they talk about how only Malick understood what images you could capture with the film using no lights, more than Almendros, more than Wexler (who was convinced that many of the scenes he was shooting would end up blank) even more than the Kodak corporation, who made the film stock. The result is the lushest, most hypnotic movie ever made.
   
2. Over the course of the two-year editing process, Malick gradually decided to cut out most of the dialogue (we never know what the opening fight in the steel mill is about, for instance). At one point, Bill asks Abby, “Do you love him?” As a screenwriter, what’s the best response you can write to that? Well, you can write all day, but the best reply is nothing, which says it all, and that’s what’s left in the movie.
   
3. Malick found 15-year old Manz living nearly homeless in a laundromat with an abusive mom and quickly realized she was a brilliantly instinctive actress. Even better, they realized she was a writer. Gere says on the DVD: “she was such a, kind of a unique eccentric wild animal of a teenager that some extraordinary jewels came out of her.”
4. So instead of dialogue, they decided a year into the editing to add an improvised voiceover by Manz. (Malick knew he could make it work because he’d done something similar on his earlier film Badlands.) Sometimes they would watch a scene and have her sum it up in her inimitable way, or they would tell her the story of The Book of Revelation one night and have her try to remember it the next day, and sometimes she would just say bizarre non-sequiturs (“I been thinking what to do with my future. I could be a mud doctor, checking out the earth, underneath.”) They recorded her for 10 hours and then cut 15 minutes of it into the movie. It’s the best voiceover in the history of cinema, as far as I’m concerned.
   
5. Joining in the commentary is casting director Dianne Crittenden, who offers excellent insights. It would be fascinating to see the film with the original intended cast for the men, John Travolta and Tommy Lee Jones, before that casting fell through.
6. Some of the majestic shots were made using old-fashioned movie magic: In order to get a stunning shot of a swarm of locusts rising out of a wheat field, they had helicopter drop maple tree seeds and all of the actors acting in reverse, then ran the film backwards.
   

Ah, 1978: I’m not sure that’s going to be a long-lasting career…

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1977

The Year: 1977
What the Nominees Were: Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, Star Wars, The Turning Point
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: How on earth did Close Encounters of the Third Kind not get a nomination??

What Did Win: Annie Hall
How It’s Aged: Look, what can I say here? It’s undeniable that Annie Hall is absolutely brilliant. Very funny (I quote it frequently), beautifully shot, and one of the best actress showcases of all time. But…

What Should’ve Won: Star Wars
How Hard Was the Decision: Choosing between Annie Hall and Star Wars is very hard, but choosing between the filmmakers is easy, so I’ll give it to Lucas. You might think that, after I passed over Jaws and Rocky, I just don’t think the Oscar should go to popular movies, but in this case the most popular choice was also the best. (I did consider Close Encounters, but c’mon, Star Wars is literally the most rewatchable movie of all time.)

Director: George Lucas
Writer: George Lucas
Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness

The Story: Luke Skywalker, a farmer on a distant planet, comes into possession of two droids with plans to blow up a planet-destroying weapon called the Death Star. Luke joins forces with a mystic hermit, a rogue pilot and a spunky princess to save the day.

Any Nominations or Wins: It lost Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Guinness, and Original Screenplay, but it won just about all the technical awards: Art Direction, Costume Design, Editing, Score, Sound, Visual Effects and a special Scientific and Engineering Award.
Why It Didn’t Win: To this day, there are many who look down on the artistic merits of this movie, and they were legion in 1977. It was a box office phenomenon, but it just didn’t feel like an award-winner. Remember that even 2001 wasn’t nominated, because science fiction (or, in this case, science fantasy) wasn’t remotely considered to be a respectable genre.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. It’s almost impossible to grasp how good John Barry’s production design is. Why is this movie so cool and timeless, while Zardoz and Logan’s Run are so lame and dated? There’s just one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that shows us what could have been. Originally, Luke’s vehicle was just a normal car with decals on the hood, before they all decided they could do better. But the original car shows up in this one shot. Look at this car. This is what this movie could have been, if Lucas and Barry hadn’t been so visionary.
   
2. I have no patience for those who carp about the quality of the movie’s dialogue. In retrospect, Harrison Ford’s infamous on-set complaint (“George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can’t say it”) probably refers not to overly simplistic lines, as is generally implied when that quote is cited, but to all of the bizarre unexplained specifics that the actors were expected to casually sell to the audience (“Nerf-herder!”). Those specifics are the heart of great dialogue!
3. Probably the most brilliant moment in this movie is the opening title card. Let’s go back in time and change just one thing. What if, instead of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” the opening crawl had started with the line: “It is the year 25,172!” Even if the rest of movie had stayed the same, I doubt it would have been as big of a success. That opening line is brilliant. It de-fangs the audience. It says, “Hold on there, buddy, this may look like science-fiction, with space ships and lasers and robots, but it’s not. It’s a fairy tale. So don’t expect a lot of time-travel paradoxes or super-computers. Instead, you should expect princesses and swords and magical mentors.” Lucas was managing our expectations. He was establishing a certain tone, before we in the audience could start making false genre assumptions that would have just left us frustrated.
   
4. If you want to hear more about this movie, go back and listen to all 48 episodes of “The Secrets of Story Podcast”, because James Kennedy and I ended up mentioning the movie in almost every episode, as an example of good writing. James’s theory of “The Holy Moment” (where he talks about how many movies end with a “let go and let God” sequence) owes a lot to this movie, and there are many episodes where we talk about how many movies have a “Snake in the Basement”, which this movie may be the ultimate example of.
   
5. Infamously, this movie has never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray, meaning that you have to go to Bit Torrent to watch it, which is (kind of) illegal, but there are no other options. If you decide to sail the pirate seas, you might as well go all the way and also download the documentary “Star Wars Begins” while you’re there, which is the best place to see all of the fascinating deleted scenes. As is so often the case, the scenes were deleted with good reason, but they also include much crucial information (such as why Luke wants to join the air force of an empire he hates).
   
6. As with 12 Angry Men, this movie is another great example of how heroes, no matter how morally pure they are, get what they want through tricks and traps. Luke uses a lot of indirect and manipulative dialogue, in an admirably crafty way. We think of Han as the slick one, but he’s actually transparent and plainspoken, while Luke is far more wily, and more likely to wrap Han around his finger. This culminates in the finale, when Luke finally convinces Han to totally betray his own self-interest by hitting him below the belt one last time: “Well, take care of yourself, Han... guess that's what you’re best at, isn’t it?” Han just can’t stay away after that. Obi Wan isn’t the only one who knows how to play mind tricks!
   
7. And finally, as I was writing this piece, the real hero of this movie, editor Marcia Lucas, died. Everybody hated the rough cut of the movie and she moved heaven and Earth to make it come to life, rewriting the movie on the fly. Lucas would not be the only director who relied heavily on the efforts of his first wife and, once they divorced, never matched the work he did with her.

Ah, 1977: This is what fashion looked like at the time, which makes it all the more amazing how timeless the movie looks.

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1976

The Year: 1976
What the Nominees Were: All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Network, Rocky, Taxi Driver
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Those are five pretty great movies. They also could have considered Arthur Penn’s oddball western The Missouri Breaks and Paul Mazursky’s autobiographical masterpiece Next Stop, Greenwich Village.

What Did Win: Rocky
How It’s Aged: It’s a wonderful movie.  Much darker and more authentic than you probably remember.  Ignore the avalanche of sequels and appreciate the original. But...

What Should’ve Won: Network
How Hard Was the Decision: Really hard choice between Rocky, All the President’s Men, Network and Taxi Driver. Rocky is great and a deserving winner, but Network is even better. (The number one reason I was inclined not to choose Network is a behind the scenes story. As Wikipedia sums it up: “Lumet wanted to cast Vanessa Redgrave in the film, but Chayefsky did not want her. Lumet argued that he thought she was the greatest English-speaking actress in the world, while Chayefsky, a proud Jew and supporter of Israel, objected on the basis of her support of the PLO. Lumet, also a Jew, said ‘Paddy, that's blacklisting!,’ to which Chayefsky replied, ‘Not when a Jew does it to a Gentile.’” Yet another way that this movie predicts the events of 2026. Ultimately, the quality of the movie caused me to hold my nose and ignore this problematic backstory.)

 
Director: Sidney Lumet again
Writer: Paddy Chayefsky
Stars: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall and Ned Beatty

The Story: Nightly News anchor Howard Beale begins to have mental breakdowns night after night. His best friend and boss, Max Shumacher, wants to take him off air, but Max’s boss and mistress, Diane Christensen, keeps him on and promotes him as “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.” Ratings peak when Beale insists that everyone go to their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Beale eventually steps on the wrong toes when he tries to stop a deal between the network and some Saudis, but the conglomerate boss manages to get him back in line. As ratings plummet, Diane realizes she must do something drastic.

Any Nominations or Wins: Finch posthumously won Best Actor, beating out Holden who was nominated in the same category. It also won Actress, Supporting Actress for Straight, and Original Screenplay. It lost Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Beatty, Cinematography and Editing.
Why It Didn’t Win: The Academy clearly loved it, giving it three acting Oscars, but Rocky marked a return to feel-good filmmaking and this very sour lemonball was looking out-of-style in comparison.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. This is, I would say, the sharpest satire ever made, and the movie that most accurately predicted the future, right up to the events of 2026 as I write this book. There have been no shortage of Howard Beales that have risen and fallen in the intervening time, most notably Glenn Beck, who had a very similar trajectory. It’s really shocking the degree to which the America of the Sesquicentennial resembles the America of the Bicentennial, with multiple presidential assassination attempts in rapid succession, a middle-eastern stranglehold on the world’s oil supply, and, of course, a late night populist (on the left this time) getting fired because of a corporate takeover that needs approval from the FCC. Chayefsky wasn’t just predicting the next 50 years, he was specifically predicting a year exactly fifty years away. It’s gobsmacking to watch this today.
   
2. Of course, one thing this movie failed to predict about the future is that the quality of fictional TV programming would generally go up and it would no longer be seen as the cesspool it seemed to be in 1976. (Max says, “You’re television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy, all of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.”) TV has had a few peaks and troughs since then, but it’s generally regarded as a higher quality medium than movies now, maybe because TV has gotten better or because Hollywood has undeniably gotten worse.
3. Lumet told Dunaway that he would edit out any attempts on her part to make her character sympathetic or present her with any vulnerability, but he failed to do so, because, though she is undeniably evil, her performance has a tenderness and rawness to it just under the surface. Some part of her wants Max to save her from herself. Of course, the main reason we accept her is not because she’s redeemed in any way, but because she’s really good at her job, and we can never help but admire that.
   
4. When Beale first announces that he’s going to commit suicide nobody in the booth hears him because they’re chatting amongst themselves. Chayefsky, in his research found that the people who worked in TV never watched it themselves, because they thought they were too good for their product.
5. This is one of Aaron Sorkin’s favorite scripts and predicts his body of work, for good or ill. This isn’t realistic dialogue. People generally speak in speeches here, which are quite high-toned. Diane brags that Howard will be “a strip Savonarola,” which I had to look up. Somehow it works wonderfully. As with Sorkin, we wish people could actually speak this way. (And since Chayefsky is a more incisive observer than Sorkin, it’s even more so.)
6. Straight won her Oscar for a five minute, two second performance as Max’s scorned wife, and Beatty deserved one as well for his six-minute performance as the Corporation boss who brings Howard to heel. (“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!”) Chayefsky knew how to sketch great characters quickly. 
   

Ah, 1976: I used one of these to write, of my brother, “STEVEN IS A COCKROACH” and attached it to a bookshelf, where it sat for 30 years.

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1975

The Year: 1975
What the Nominees Were: Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: In America there was Smile and Three Days of the Condor. Overseas there was Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

What Did Win: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
How It’s Aged: Not great. I bet you don’t remember what Nicholson’s character was in prison for. Hint: it’s a crime we take a lot more seriously today. I rewatched this, and it’s very well made, but, for multiple reasons, the hero is not one we can root for in this day and age.

What Should’ve Won: Dog Day Afternoon
How Hard Was the Decision: There were a lot of great movies released in 1975, but ultimately this came down to a very hard choice between Jaws and Dog Day Afternoon. Both are all-time greats, and they’re so different that it’s hard to compare them. They both have a lot of punch to them, but, ultimately, this one punches harder.

Director: Sidney Lumet
Writers: Screenplay by Frank Pierson, story by Thomas Moore, based on the magazine article “The Boys in the Bank” by P. F. Kluge and Moore
Stars: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning and Chris Sarandon

The Story: Local losers Sonny and Sal try to rob a bank but when the cops show up it turns into a 12 hour hostage negotiation. Sonny asks to talk to both of his wives, a cis woman and a trans woman, then arranges a jet to Algeria, but before they make it on board the FBI intervenes and resolves the situation.

Any Nominations or Wins: It won Original Screenplay (despite being adapted?) but lost Picture, Director, Actor for Pacino, Supporting Actor for Sarandon, and Editing.
Why It Didn’t Win: Clearly Cuckoo’s Nest was a juggernaut, becoming one of only three movies in Oscar history to win all five top awards. How did it steamroll this superior film? Surely the LGBT element came into play here.

 
Why It Should Have Won:

1. A trans character and her husband? In 1975? Surely that must be dreadful, right? Nope. Today of course, we would hope the character would be played by a trans woman rather than a cis man, but it can’t be denied that Sarandon is incredible in the role, and Pacino is even better as her unapologetic husband. Their long phone conversation is heartbreaking and profoundly human. The film’s final line is an onscreen title: “Leon Shermer is now a woman and living in New York City.” Not “is living as a woman,” just “is now a woman.” This movie knew in 1975 that trans women are women. That’s pretty remarkable.
   
2. This is neither our first nor our last Lumet film. American filmmaking had changed greatly since his debut 12 Angry Men in 1956 and he had changed with it, making a film that could not be more gritty, funky and electrically edited. The brilliant opening montage of life in the streets of New York pulses with so much life that we’re onboard for the movie to take us anywhere.
   
3. Look, I love films about geniuses doing bank robberies (think Inside Man) but that’s not reality. In reality, robbing a bank is a really dumb thing to do, which is precisely what terrifies the cops. Geniuses can be reasoned with, and their actions aren’t actually that unpredictable, but morons like these guys who are dumb enough to burn the register, sending out literal smoke signals? They might do anything. This is a true story, and the thing that makes it so thrilling is that nobody could have made something this crazy up.
4. Cazale only made five films: The Godfather, The Conversation, Godfather II, this, and The Deer Hunter. All five were nominated for Best Picture and three won. This is considered to be the best batting average in film history. He was never nominated himself, but he should have been for this, his meatiest role, as the dim-witted partner who wants to avoid extradition by fleeing to Wyoming.
   
5. Lumet built a bank branch with moveable walls for ease of shooting, but he built it on a real NYC block, which crucially allowed them to move seamlessly from interior to exterior. The movie would have been terrible if the bank scenes were shot on a Hollywood soundstage. He then surrounded the bank with some extras, but also just whoever showed up to hoot and jeer, which was better than anything they could have paid for. The seething crowd becomes its own character.
   

Ah, 1975: Fascinating