What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1968

The Year: 1968
What the Nominees Were: Funny Girl; The Lion in Winter; Oliver!; Rachel, Rachel; Romeo and Juliet
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: 2001 and Planet of the Apes in America. Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses, Bergman’s Shame and Leone’s Once Upon A Time in the West overseas.

What Did Win: Oliver! (That’s their exclamation point, not mine)
How It’s Aged: Terribly. Oddly chipper given the downbeat subject matter, this is the movie people are referring to when they say they just don’t believe that people would break out into song in musicals.

What Should’ve Won: 2001: A Space Odyssey
How Hard Was the Decision: The Lion in Winter is great, but c’mon, everybody agrees that 2001 is one of the all-time great films, and it’s often cited as a baffling Oscar snub.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
Stars: Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood

The Story: At the dawn of Man, a monolith appears to some ape-men and suddenly they can make weapons from bones. In 1999, astronauts find another monolith buried on the moon. In 2001, they have followed a signal from that monolith to another orbiting Jupiter. After dealing with a pesky malfunctioning AI named HAL 9000, astronaut Dave Bowman has a freak-out at Jupiter.

Any Nominations or Wins: It won Best Special Visual Effects, but lost Director, Original Screenplay and Art Direction.
Why It Didn’t Win: Famously, at a Hollywood screening, Rock Hudson stood up halfway through and walked out, grumbling “What is this bullshit? Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?” Hollywood just wasn’t ready for this. It also doesn’t help that it didn’t make a lot of money at first (until stoners started coming back to watch it every day.)

Why It Should Have Won:

1. The term “art-movie” got tossed around a lot from the 60s to the 90s, but this is one of the only movies I’ve seen that genuinely feels like a piece of capital-“A”-Art. Maybe more art than movie, in fact. It’s long, it’s glacially slow, and it has very little dialogue (The first 25 and last 25 minutes have no words). You have to be willing to toss aside many of your expectations of what cinema is or should be and just let this movie overwhelm you with its enormity.
   
2. Andrew Sarris famously panned the movie and then was told to see it again stoned, which he did and issued a revised review saying it was great. I’ve never done drugs, so perhaps I’ve never fully appreciated this film, but the visuals alone are enough to make you feel like you’re tripping on something. The way-out final twenty minutes only makes any sense if you open your mind as far as it will go (zonked out or not) at which it becomes very beautiful and profound.
   
3. It cannot be overstated how shocking and monumental Douglas Trumbull’s astronaut special effects were in this movie. In our era of CGI, nothing impresses us anymore, but if you can get into a 1968 headspace, you will just keep saying, while your jaw is on the floor, how did they get that shot?? Everything just feels so real, which, given the subject matter, is extraordinary. This is outer space. We are living in the future.
   
4. In Dr. Strangelove, both America’s bomber plan and the Soviets’ doomsday weapon were designed to deploy even when nobody wanted them to, because the human element had been intentionally stripped out of the system. This movie takes the theme of dehumanization to the next level. The AI, which is touchy, sensitive, and ultimately homicidal, has the only real humanity in this movie. The astronaut that kills it is the real machine, not even reacting when HAL kills his co-pilot. When Kubrick looked at our space program, he wasn’t afraid of the aliens we might encounter, he was afraid of John Glenn’s terrifying lack of affect.
   
5. The sequel 2010, not made by Kubrick, is all about American-Soviet relationships, but of course there was no Soviet Union by 2010. This movie never mentions other countries so it’s aged better than that one, but the one thing that badly dates the movie is that women are strictly stewardesses. Even Planet of the Apes had a woman in the crew (who they kill off right away) Perhaps Kubrick didn’t want to imply that anything might have gotten better in his chilly vision of the future.

Ah, 1968: I grew up on Swanson and I can taste every one of these.

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1967

The Year: 1967
What the Nominees Were: Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Scorsese burst on the scene with his student film turned feature Who’s That Knocking at My Door? More great American films: The Dirty Dozen, Two for the Road, Cool Hand Luke and In Cold Blood. In Europe: Belle Du Jour, Weekend, and The Fireman’s Ball.

What Did Win: In the Heat of the Night
How It’s Aged: Beautifully. One of the greatest crime films of all time. Poitier burns up the screen, delivering the slap that shook the world. I love this film. But…

What Should’ve Won: The Graduate
How Hard Was the Decision: An almost impossible choice between In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke and Two for the Road, which are five of my favorite films. If any of those five had been released in 1965 or 1966 I would have given them those years.

Director: Mike Nichols
Writers: Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, based on the novel by Charles Webb
Stars: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross

The Story: Aimless college graduate Benjamin Braddock falls into an affair with the older woman next door, then begins to date her daughter as well. Finally, he chooses the daughter, steals her away from her wedding to another man, and they ride the bus off into the sunset.

Any Nominations or Wins: Nichols won for Director, but the film lost everything else: Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography
Why It Didn’t Win: There’s an excellent book on what went down this year called “Pictures at a Revolution” by Mark Harris. Basically, old people wanted Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner or Dr. Dolittle, young people wanted The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde, and In the Heat of the Night was the neutral middle ground where the two sides could meet.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. I cannot recommend highly enough the Criterion Collection commentary track by Nichols and (of all people) Steven Soderbergh. They both keep pointing out how often Benjamin is shot through glass, plastic, water, or some combination of the three, driving home the theme of sensory deprivation. “Plastics” isn’t just a money-making recommendation, it’s everywhere. Nichols says “I believe in those schemes, but they’re best when nobody notices. You make yourself happy, and most people are just watching the story.”
   
2. This is the ultimate example of the key rule of casting: Cast them for how they feel, not how they would actually look. Benjamin is supposed to be the handsome track star the moms can’t keep their hands off of. It was an ideal part for Robert Redford, and Nichols was friends with Redford, having directed him on Broadway in “Barefoot in the Park”, so Nichols felt him out for the part, asking him, “Have you ever struck out with a girl?” Redford answered, “What do you mean?” So he didn’t get the part. Nichols says on the commentary that he said to himself, “I need a loser who was really more. I need someone who is the way we all felt starting in life, starting with women, who felt like behind a permanent eight-ball.” That was Hoffman and he’s brilliant in this miscast role (He was also 30!)
3. Nichols got his start in stand-up comedy with Elaine May (who would also go on to be a great film director), and he re-uses their bits here, such as when Ben goes in for a kiss with a smoking Mrs. Robinson, so she puts up with it but releases her smoke when he’s done. Nichols says of his time with May: “We weren’t making fun of people, we were making fun of ourselves, and people would say, ‘I know someone just like that,’ and we were saying ‘That’s me.’” A good attitude for any writer to take.
   
4. Nichols was listening to Simon and Garfunkel albums every morning to get himself in the right headspace to direct, before he finally said to himself “Schmuck, you’re listening to the score to your movie! How’d it take you so long?” Nobody ever scored a movie to pre-existing pop music before. It’s overdone today of course, but it’s electrifying here.
5. Famously, Nichols forgot to call cut during the final shot, and instead just dumbly kept the camera rolling as the elation gradually slipped off their faces, replaced by uncertainty. In reality it was just uncertainty about what Nichols wanted them to do. They weren’t acting at all, but of course, that’s often when the best acting occurs. (Soderbergh says, “If you don’t have this, the movie’s like a sham”)
   
6. Modern young audiences have more problems with the film than 1967 filmgoers did, because they can see that Ben is actually a pretty awful person. It’s one of the great mysteries in American History: How did the hippie generation end up giving Reagan a 49 state victory as soon as they were old enough to take the reins of power? You can see the seeds of it in this movie. Benjamin rebels against societal norms, and he’s certainly right to call out the moral hypocrisy of the ruling class, but he’s not actually a good person in any sense. And I think that’s part of the brilliance of the film. We are exhilarated by his rebellion (swinging a cross to batter his way out of a church) but the film also subtly indicts him, and all the “Me Generation” awfulness to come.
7. The movie is one of the three subjects in a wonderful Michael Arndt video on Insanely Great Endings. Arndt points out that it’s so brilliant to have Ben stop the wedding too late, instead of just in time, because it’s more rebellious this way. By all means go watch the video.

Ah, 1967: You have no choice, so choose to have no choice before we choose for you!

New episode of A Good Story Well Told about The Intern, featuring Peter C. Hayward!

Our Guilty Treasures season continues!  Master board game creator Peter C. Hayward joins us to sing the praises of the 2015 Nancy Meyers movie The Intern, but Jonathan and I have very different reactions. Who will join in the praise and who will say this movie just might be the death of America?

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1966

The Year: 1966
What the Nominees Were: Alfie; A Man for All Seasons; The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming; The Sand Pebbles; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: That covers America pretty well, but over in Europe there was Bergman’s Persona, Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

What Did Win: A Man for All Seasons
How It’s Aged: It’s good. Very stagebound, very talky, probably not a movie that would be rewatched very much today if it hadn’t won, but a worthwhile movie.

What Should’ve Won: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

How Hard Was the Decision: Very hard. There was no overwhelmingly strong candidate this year. So, for the second time in one decade, I’m invoking the Parasite rule, and awarding it to a foreign film (albeit one set in America that starred American actors speaking English (then dubbed over in Italian, then dubbed back over in English!)) What makes this a cheat is that the movie was not released at all in America in 1966, so in my little pocket universe, I’m having it jump the pond earlier.

Director: Sergio Leone
Writers: Leone, Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, from a story by Leone and Vincenzoni
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef

The Story: In Civil War Texas, bounty hunter Blondie keeps turning in and then freeing criminal Tuco, but then, just after they’ve had a falling out, they find out about a shipment of gold and each ends up with half the information they need to find it. They reluctantly work together, but another bounty hunter, the evil Angel Eyes, is after the gold as well. All three end up in a squint-filled shoot-out in a graveyard at the end.

Any Nominations or Wins: Nothing! Not even score!
Why It Didn’t Win: Again, the movie wasn’t even released in America until it was more than a year old, so maybe it wasn’t even eligible anymore? Or maybe it was just that Italians weren’t trusted to do movies about the American west? The movie was dismissed as a “spaghetti western” at the time.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. I’ve said movies should have ironic titles, and this one certainly fits the bill. “The Good” (Eastwood as Blondie) is a terrible human being, and “The Bad” (Van Cleef as Angel Eyes) is honorable in his own twisted way. This movie is an attack on the self-satisfied morality of most American westerns, and thus an indictment of America itself. “You think you’re the good guys? We all know how good you really are.”
   
2. Rewatching Dr. Zhivago made me wish Lean had done our own Civil War next, because I feel like we still haven’t gotten the non-problematic Civil War epic America deserves, but this movie comes closest. Our characters are doing their best to ignore the war, but it keeps blowing up in their faces. A good movie about living under constant bombardment and just trying to mind your business, which is still the reality in some countries today.
   
3. Wallach and Eastwood are giving opposite performances, but they support each other beautifully. When Tuco has to make a tough decision, you can see a hundred emotions gallop across his face, whereas Eastwood just twitches an eyelid when he’s called upon to react to things. Which method is the greatest type of film acting? I’m happy to give them both trophies.
   
4. Tonino Delli Colli’s epic cinematography (using Spain to sub in for West Texas), with all its extreme close-ups, whip pans, and sudden zooms, created a whole new language for cinema, much imitated, but never matched.
5. The movie has so many funny moments! The funniest: Blondie and Tuco have stolen confederate uniforms off of dead men, then they see soldiers coming. Blue or grey? They see the soldiers are wearing grey, so they start shouting and waving and condemning Lincoln. Then the solders arrive and brush all the gray dust off their uniforms: They’re actually wearing blue. Cut to our “heroes” in chains.
   
6. I proposed to my wife while Ennio Morricone’s epic showdown music was playing, so I have a special affection for it, but surely we can agree that this is the greatest film score of all time? Just listening to the soundtrack album takes you on the full journey of the film. We’ve heard it so much now, it’s hard to remember how weird it is. Screaming is the lead instrument!

Ah, 1966: Now we know what that sound snippet at the beginning of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” was playing off of!

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1965

The Year: 1965
What the Nominees Were: Darling, Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools, The Sound of Music, A Thousand Clowns 

Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: In America, Arthur Penn delivered his first great film, Mickey One. Orson Welles had Chimes at Midnight and Robert Aldrich turned out The Flight of the Phoenix. Overseas there was Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits, Forman’s Loves of a Blonde and Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers.

What Did Win: The Sound of Music
How It’s Aged: It’s a great two hour movie that is unfortunately three hours long. Does every single song need a reprise? Andrews is great, but ultimately there are tone problems as well.

What Should’ve Won: Doctor Zhivago
How Hard Was the Decision: Almost impossible. This was simply a year with no slam-dunk options. Certainly, the greatest film of the year is The Battle of Algiers, but I just couldn’t come up with any scenario in which that film (stridently anti-western, made by a proud communist) could have won. That left a lot of weaker choices: Stick with Sound of Music? Give comedy a chance and go with the wonderful-but-stagebound A Thousand Clowns? Ultimately, I decided to rewatch Dr. Zhivago, and I loved it. It’s not as strong as Lawrence of Arabia (which was made by all the same people) but in a weak year, I decided it still deserved its own Oscar.

Director: David Lean
Writer: Robert Bolt
Stars: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Rod Steiger, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine Chaplin

The Story: Unlike Sound of Music, this movie has tons of plot justifying its (even longer) epic length, so I can only briefly sum it up here. Doctor and part-time poet Yuri Zhivago marries his childhood sweetheart but falls in love with a nurse named Lara on the German front in WWI. As with any great European epic novel, he is separated and reunited with both women many times over the course of several wars, but dies alone.

Any Nominations or Wins: It lost Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Courtenay, Editing and Sound. It won Adapted Screenplay, Color Art Direction, Color Cinematography, Color Costume Design, and Score. Christie did win Best Actress, but for a different movie entirely, John Schlesinger’s Darling (which is also excellent).
Why It Didn’t Win: It was clearly hard for the Academy to decide between this and Sound of Music. Both were big hits and widely acclaimed. But ultimately Sound edged this movie out at both the box office and the Oscars. Ultimately, feel-good usually wins over feel-bad.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. When I was 15 in 1990, I vowed to watch all the great movies. And so I did …in extremely low-quality VHS resolution. And the widescreen movies were all “pan-n-scan” (reformatted for square TVs, only showing half the original image.) That barely counts as having watched the movies at all. And even if I had seen ideal versions of these movies, it’s now been 35 years, and my memory is not good. The result is that I now realize that I can no longer claim to have seen many of the great movies. In some ways, this is wonderful: So many masterpieces are now waiting to be rediscovered. So I’ve been gradually rewatching them, and many have been spectacular. Especially the widescreen movies, which I can only now begin to appreciate, finally seeing the whole image. Like Lawrence, this movie would be a masterpiece for Freddie Young’s cinematography alone, and I’m so glad I finally get to see it all. (Lean originally wanted a new cinematographer, none other than future director Nicolas Roeg, but they couldn’t get along, so he returned to Young again.)
   
2. Omar Sharif blew everybody away as a fierce Arab chieftain in Lawrence. Could he do the same as a sensitive Russian poet/doctor three years later? Lean placed enormous faith in him to handle this very different role (an Egyptian as a Russian?) but Sharif rises to the challenge. Ali and Zhivago have very little in common…except smoldering stares of love (cast at very different objects of affection!)
   
3. Of course, the biggest difference between this and Lean’s two previous movies, Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence is the presence of… (can it be?) women! They do exist! You might think that Lean would not be able to get the hang of this new gender right away, but both Chaplin and Christie give wonderful performances as very rich characters. They’re both great at looking secretly wounded, though the man they both love is trying his best not to hurt anyone.
   
4. Directors teach you their vocabulary, and then they can play with that. In Lawrence, we don’t see the hero’s dead body at the beginning, just his dangling goggles that have been thrown into a tree. Likewise, where we’re with Lara’s husband Antipov at the front, he seemingly gets blown up and then we cut to his glasses in the snow. Longtime Lean fans know that means he’s dead, right? Ah, but then, an hour of screentime later, he shockingly shows up alive. Lean seemingly repeats an old trick, but this time he does it to mislead us.
   
5. We know how things turned out, but the trick with any historical epic is to recreate moments in which the possibly of revolution seemed absurd, which are so deliciously ironic. The most painful statement in the movie happens early on when one character reassures another “People will be different after the revolution.” Unfortunately that turns out to be true, in all the worst ways.  After revolution will follow Civil War, and that will harden all hearts.  
6. The best scene in the movie is one in which soldiers marching to the front in WWI encounter soldiers who are deserting. Before long, anarchy has been unleashed, and the first group joins the second, leaving just Yuri and Lara to struggle on. Lean is the only director who is at his best when he has a hundred actors in a scene.
   
7. He’s also once again great with trains, of course. This time he doesn’t get to blow one up, but the passengers still don’t get a pleasant journey.

Ah, 1965: Cars (like movies) just had to get smaller, because they couldn’t get any bigger.

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1964

The Year: 1964
What the Nominees Were: Becket, Dr. Strangelove, Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, Zorba the Greek
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Billy Wilder had his final great film, Kiss Me, Stupid. Mary Poppins was Disney’s greatest live action film. Seven Days in May and Fail Safe were great political thrillers (though not as satirical as our winner.) And I’ll acknowledge independent film for the first time with Michael Roemer’s great Nothing But a Man. Overseas, there was the UK’s A Hard Day’s Night, Italy’s Red Desert, and Japan’s Woman in the Dunes.

What Did Win: My Fair Lady
How It’s Aged: It’s bloated, artificial, and terribly miscast. Julie Andrews had triumphed in the role of Eliza Dolittle onstage, but Jack Warner insisted on a film star and put Audrey Hepburn in the role. Hepburn was a great actress and she did have some range, but a crude cockney just wasn’t in her wheelhouse. (Andrews got her revenge by making her movie debut in Mary Poppins instead and then beating out Hepburn for the Oscar.)

What Should’ve Won: Dr. Strangelove
How Hard Was the Decision: Easy, especially when I saw that this movie was nominated, which surprised me. The Academy almost noticed the obvious: that this was the best movie of 1964.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter Bryant, based on the (serious) novel “Red Alert” by Bryant (aka Peter George)
Stars: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens

The Story: Mad general Jack D. Ripper orders America’s bombers to nuke Russia, so Americans and the Russian ambassador gather in the War Room to try to figure out what to do about it.

Any Nominations or Wins: It was nominated for Picture, Director, Actor and Adapted Screenplay, but lost all four.
Why It Didn’t Win: Everyone had to admit that this was a great movie, but there were plenty of critics who were disturbed by it, such as Bosley Crowther at the New York Times who said, “I am troubled by the feeling, which runs all through the film, of discredit and even contempt for our whole military establishment.” Such voices couldn’t deny the movie a nomination but could deny it the win.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Peter Sellars plays three roles here (he was supposed to play four, but injured himself and couldn’t play the bomber pilot.) Interestingly, two of those roles (Officer Mandrake and President Muffley) are straight men, letting their scene partners carry the comedy (always an equally great acting challenge). Sellars originally played the president more broadly but Kubrick decided on set that, “We’re on the wrong track. Merkin Muffley should be the one serious man. Like Adlai Stevenson if he’d won.” It’s only when Sellars plays the title character that he really lets his freak flag fly.
   
2. Sydney Lumet’s Fail Safe, a deadly serious take on a very similar story, released a few month’s later, is also great and the two films make an excellent pairing. As film critic Alexander Walker says in the Criterion documentary: “If a man learns the news that nuclear annihilation is nigh when he’s in his office, the result is a documentary. When he’s in his living room, it’s a social drama. When he’s in the bathroom, it’s a comedy.” This is a rare chance to see two very different, both excellent, takes on the same story.
3. From the opening shots of one plane thrusting into another to refuel it, sex pervades the film. It doesn’t take Freud to figure out that obsession with manhood was one factor in the missile race, but it took Kubrick to finally call it out (like the girl calling out “The emperor has no clothes!”)
   
4. Fears about flouridation are back in the news, as is nuclear détente, for all the wrong reasons. Watching the current (terrifying) absurdity, one can’t help but figure that this version, not Fail Safe, is the more accurate predictor of what it’s really like in the corridors of power. (Ronald Reagan, who often confused movies for reality, got to the White House and immediately asked if he could see the War Room, only to be embarrassedly told there wasn’t one.)
   
5. Like Airplane and Blazing Saddles, almost every line of this screenplay is legendary. “Gentlemen, you can’t fight here, this is the War Room!” “You’ll have to answer to the Coca-Cola company,” “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.” The movie is as consistently funny as the trailers are for most comedies.
6. As Mandrake is attempting to call the president with the recall code, the movie slows to an absurd crawl (trying to get the change to make the call at a payphone), but then after Colonel Bat Guano gets a face full of Coke, the screenplay suddenly jumps way ahead, picking up after most of the planes have been recalled. It’s brisk when it needs to be.
7. Like General Turgidson, we can’t help but root for the men in the bomber to complete their mission, though we know what they don’t: that they’ll destroy the world by doing so. This is why Francois Truffaut said it’s impossible to make an anti-war movie: Because when you’re embedded with the troops, you inevitably end up cheering them on.
   
   
   

Ah, 1964: 

New episode of A Good Story Well Told about Ace in the Hole, featuring Keir Graff!

It’s a special crossover episode with the The Filmographers Podcast! They’ve been spending their second season looking at the films of Billy Wilder, so we invited Keir Graff on to discuss Wilder’s most underrated film, Ace in the Hole! Can he convince us that it’s great? (Spoiler Alert: Easily)

 

What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1963

The Year: 1963
What the Nominees Were: America, America; Cleopatra; How The West Was Won; Lillies of the Field; Tom Jones 

Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: America produced Charade, Shock Corridor and The Great Escape. Overseas there was Kurosawa’s High and Low, Godard’s experiment in color Contempt and Fellini’s greatest film 8 ½.

What Did Win: Tom Jones
How It’s Aged: It’s a fun movie. Lawrence of Arabia’s editing had hints of the New Wave, but this movie embraced it fully: Suddenly we have jump cuts, metanarratives, and a general air of sexual frankness that the Academy hadn’t recognized before. But, as with any daring movie, it quickly dated, becoming a time capsule of a particular moment where the rules were slipping but not let loose.

What Should’ve Won: High and Low
How Hard Was the Decision: Very hard. My favorite American film of the year is definitely The Great Escape, but it’s a little too lightweight to win, and I didn’t want to do two epics-with-not-a-woman-in-sight in a row. So I decided I had to invoke, for the first time, “The Parasite Rule” (which states that a foreign film of particular greatness can sometimes, when all the stars align, win Best Picture). Even then, I had to choose between this and 8 ½, but High and Low has always been my favorite of the two, and it seemed appropriate for our first foreign film to be an adaptation of an American novel.

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Writers: Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, Eijirô Hisaita, and Kurosawa, based on the novel “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain.
Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyôko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi, Isao Kimura, Kenjiro Ishiyama

The Story: A Tokyo shoe company executive, in the middle of a takeover deal, gets a phone call that his son has been kidnapped—then his son walks into the room. It turns out that the kidnappers have accidentally grabbed his chauffeur’s son instead, but they insist that the executive pay up anyway. After the fateful decision is made, the movie becomes a gritty thriller as the police swing into action to do their part. 

Any Nominations or Wins: The Golden Globes nominated it for Foreign Film but the Academy didn’t recognize it at all. 

Why It Didn’t Win: Given the make-up of the Academy at this time, it’s pretty ludicrous for me to imagine this movie could have been the first to pull a Parasite, but we can certainly say that the Academy should have recognized its greatness, and in a year with no strong American contenders, I’ve decided to pull that trigger for the first time.

Why It’s Great:

1. This is one of the most conceptually audacious movies ever made: it is all about dualities of high and low in every possible way: rich vs. poor, a mansion on a hill vs. a slum in a pit, high-quality shoes vs. low-cost knock-offs, high-minded moral decisions vs. lowly police work. Kurosawa’s brilliant idea was to mirror these dualities by splitting his movie, right down the center, into two different styles: the first half (the moral conundrum) is very “high-art”: all on a tripod, very still, much like the classical Japanese cinema that Kurosawa had always resisted. Then, once the decision is made, we are abruptly slammed down into the chaotic “low-art” of Kurosawa at his gritty best.
2. Only in the justly-famous final scene do the two worlds finally come together, as the high-minded businessman and the lowly criminal finally come face to face, but each can only see the other as a reflection of himself. Money may have changed hands, but the line between high and low (or Heaven and Hell, as the title could also be translated) can never truly be crossed.
3. I was such a fan of this movie that I tried to track down the source material, an American pulp novel called “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain, one of his “87th Precinct” police procedurals. It was long out of print and I couldn’t find it, but I did find other “87th” novels and started reading those. They quickly became great favorites of mine, so I’m eternally grateful. When I finally did land a copy of “King’s Ransom” years later, I was surprised to see that the first half was more loyally adapted than the second half. I shouldn’t have been surprised: moral conundrums are more universal than the particulars of police work.
4. Moral dilemmas that revolve around money are very compelling in real life, but it’s almost impossible to portray them onscreen. We all have a vague sense that it would be a bummer to lose a lot of money, but if you’re going to show someone agonizing over giving up their fortune for a human life, the audience is going to be disgusted—unless you create a very specific, very compelling need for that money on that day. First Kurosawa gets us to strongly root for Mifune to use his money for a one-time-only opportunity to pull off a daring takeover of his shoe company, saving it from greedy opportunists who want to drive it into the ground, then he gets hit with the dilemma. Amazingly, we agonize along with him.
5. This movie is much better than Spike Lee’s recent remake titled Highest 2 Lowest.  For one thing, the millionaire in Kurosawa’s version really does get financially ruined, whereas in the remake he was just temporarily inconvenienced.  Real consequences are always better.  

Ah, 1963: An actual ad in “Sports Illustrated” that feels like a fake ad in “Mad Magazine.” Hey kids, like this profile of Joe Namath? Just wait until you meet Che Guevara!