One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of those seminal films that helped launch careers and helped solidify Jack Nicholson as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. A year after starring in another seminal film in Chinatown, Nicholson was at his best yet again in Cuckoo’s Nest. He brought a bravado and panache to the role of McMurphy that no one else could have. He showed in Cuckoo’s Nest that he was indeed a unique talent that could carry a film almost single-handedly and make it great. I don’t mean to infer that Nicholson was the only thing that made Cuckoo’s Nest great, but I don’t think that it can be argued that it wouldn’t have been nearly as great a film without the performance that Nicholson gave.

McMurphy is one of those anti-heroes that we probably shouldn’t like because he’s a criminal trying to scam the system by pretending to be mentally ill so that he can serve his sentence in a psychiatric ward rather than a work camp. However, Nicholson’s portrayal of McMurphy as a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, and his desire to bring life to the other inmates make him a likable character. From a character development standpoint McMurphy goes through a great character arc. He experiences very little outer growth, but inside he becomes much more empathetic to those around him. Ironically it is that empathy that contributes to his tragic undoing. What McMurphy also does in this film is he affects the change of the supporting characters, whether it’s the Chief or Cheswick or Martini or the stuttering Billy Bibbitt. McMurphy helps all of them gain some measure of dignity, however small, that Nurse Ratched has always denied them.

As for the film itself, I think it’s fantastic however the second half of the film is stronger than the first half. It takes a while to get going, but once it does get going, it’s highly entertaining, tense in certain places and uplifting in others. I hadn’t seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest since I was a teenager, and back then I would have missed a lot of the subtleties that were going on. It seems to me that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is very much a character-driven film. There is a well-structured storyline and the plot is fairly simple. There aren’t a ton of subplots that you have to pay attention to like in The Godfather Part II or Chinatown, and there isn’t really a rising level of tension until we get to the climax of the film. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is all about McMurphy and his failed attempt at working the system, but his successful, albeit partly tragic, work in humanizing a group of men that had been dehumanized by the very system that was supposed to take care of them.’

That brings be to what really makes this film so powerful and that is its thematic component. Ultimately I think the film’s strength as a thematically powerful and deep film is what won it the Oscar. I’ll dive deeper in to that in a bit, but this is a film that requires thought. This is a film that you can’t just passively watch. Like so many other Best Picture winners before it, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a film that requires active participation on the part of the viewer. That’s not to say that the viewer becomes a part of the story, but you have to watch this film as though you were reading a book. You have to actively think about what’s going on, primarily because the storyline is so straight forward. You need to pay attention to how McMurphy is building up these guys’ confidence.

What’s great about it is that it starts out as a prank. At first, all he wants to do is make Nurse Ratched mad and maybe put her in her place a little bit. The way he does that is by sneaking himself and the guys out of the institution for a day of charter fishing. He does it by using Chief’s height to beat the orderlies in a game of pick-up basketball. Since he’s kind of a selfish guy at first, but as he’s trying to upset Nurse Ratched, he starts to gain affection and empathy for the other guys in the ward. It happens in a totally organic way, and you almost don’t even see it happening while the film is going on. You watch the film and wonder where the story is going, but the story is secondary in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There is just enough of a story to implement the character growth for McMurphy and the others, and that is what this story is really about.

Speaking of effective characters, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to Nurse Ratched, who might be one of the best villains/antagonists of all time. I’m actually not being hyperbolic in saying that, as AFI has named her the #5 villain of all time trailing only the Wicked Witch of the West, Darth Vader, Norman Bates, and Hannibal Lecter. That’s a pretty impressive list, and she deserves to be on it. She was played perfectly by Louise Fletcher, who would win the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her efforts. Fletcher played Nurse Ratched with a sinisterly subdued manner that at first belied just how wicked she really was. She never does anything overtly evil, but she has malice towards all. Nurse Ratched is the commander of the ward, and she does her best to dehumanize its tenants so that they will always be submissive to her. It has always worked until McMurphy arrives. What’s interesting is that there is a point in the film where she has the opportunity to send him back to the work farm, but instead wants him to stay at the institution. She wants to break McMurphy. She wants to show all of the inmates that she’s in command and what better way to do it than by breaking the one that would set them free of her. What’s great about the screenwriting in that scene is that she never comes out and says it. It’s all in the subtext of the dialogue as well as in Fletcher’s outstanding performance. That’s where you really see that subtleness in Fletcher’s acting. Nurse Ratched’s exterior is one of calm and kindness. However, on the inside she is sinister and devious and manipulative. It truly is an outstanding performance that has to be seen in order to be fully appreciated.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention again the amazing performance that Jack Nicholson gave as Randle Patrick McMurphy. This was one of Jack’s signature roles, along with Jake Gittes in Chinatown and Jack Torrance in The Shining. In fact Jack Nicholson dominated the 70’s to the point where you can just say “Jack” and everyone knows who you’re talking about. He would win the Oscar for the first time for his performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the film would help him become one of the all-time icons in the history of cinema. It almost seems as this was the role that Jack was born to play, and he played it with a style and panache that no one else could have delivered. As pointed out above, there are a lot of great things going on in this film, but it’s hard to imagine One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest winning Best Picture with anyone other than Jack Nicholson as its star.

I should get back to the thematic elements for just a moment. This is a film about “the system”. At this time in the mid 70’s, America was just getting out of Vietnam and the Watergate Scandal was coming to its depressing conclusion. The economy was recessing and we were also in an energy crisis. The systems of our society and our economy were breaking down all around us. It was a very tumultuous time that kind of gets overlooked since it was bookended by the counter culture revolution of the 60’s and the Reagan revolution of the 80’s. But in the 70’s there was a noticeable problem with our systems, with the way we were doing things. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shined a bright spotlight on that. Whether it was McMurphy trying to use loopholes in the system to make his time easier or whether it was Nurse Ratched showing that the systems that were set up to protect us were actually doing us more harm than good, this film exposed flaws in our society in a subtle and small way that made them palatable to the average film viewer. Those messages, though subtle, are what make this such a powerful film.

Did the Academy get it right?

Yes they did, but there was some stiff competition in 1975. Barry Lyndon, directed by Stanley Kubrick may be one of the most beautiful films ever shot. However the story is long and rambling. It’s a period piece and is the type of film that might have won had it come out in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, but was not the best film of 1975. I should also say that personally, Kubrick is my favorite director, but Barry Lyndon is my least favorite Kubrick film. Dog Day Afternoon was another film nominated for Best Picture in 1975 that might have won had it come out in a different year. It’s the film that showed that Al Pacino could be more than just Michael Corleone, and it is a dramatic, edge of your seat thrill ride, in which all of the characters are brought to the edge and cannot turn back. Perhaps the film with the most staying power that was nominated in 1975 was Jaws. Yes, Jaws was nominated for sheer entertainment value. Jaws really changed cinema in that it was an event movie and probably the very first summer blockbuster. It would end the year as the all-time box office leader and started the tradition of summer blockbusters that continues to this day. It also launched the career of director Steven Spielberg, who as we know would go on to be one of the most important filmmakers in the history of the medium. The final film nominated was Nashville, directed Robert Altman. What makes Nashville an important film is that it showed that musicals could be still viable, although they had to be rethought in order for that to happen. Nashville was an example of this type of rethought musical where concert music replaced characters breaking into song and dance. Nashville was the precursor to films like The Blues Brothers, Almost Famous and Chicago. Overall those were some very fine films nominated in 1975, and they all had attributes that made them worthy of being named Best Picture. However the right film won. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the total package of a well-crafted film with top shelf performances by the actors. It was ranked #20 on the original AFI list of the top 100 films of all time, and it was the Best Picture of 1975.

Oscar history was made when The Godfather Part II became the first sequel to win Best Picture. Two years after The Godfather became one of the great films of American cinema its epic sequel solidified the gangster genre and continued the rise of acting superstars like Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, and Robert De Niro. In fact, De Niro would walk away with the statue for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of the up-and-coming Vito Corleone. It was also the parallel narratives of Vito’s rise and Michael’s peak that helped make The Godfather Part II one of cinema’s more unique film experiences.

Saying Michael’s peak is actually only half of his half of the story. One of the great cinematic and screenwriting components is to create conflict within your character by playing his internal need or want against his external need or want. What writer/director Francis Ford Coppola did with Michael in The Godfather Part II was he created a scenario where Michael was succeeding with his external campaigns while simultaneously losing control of his internal needs. Indeed, the driving theme of The Godfather series is taking care of your family and realizing that nothing is more important than that, and Michael fails miserably at that in The Godfather Part II. Vito himself states in the first movie, “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” I think that in The Godfather Part II Michael honestly thinks that he is taking care of his family, but he’s so focused on getting revenge on whomever tried to have him killed that he loses sight on what’s important and what his father really wanted for him. In that respect, he causes the very disintegration of his family even as he attains revenge on his enemies, including doing the unthinkable to his own brother. Where The Godfather is a drama with a somewhat ambiguous ending, The Godfather Part II is an unambiguous modern tragedy.

That’s where the parallel narratives come into focus for this film, and how important it is to the film’s success. As we watch the younger Vito succeed in painstakingly laying the foundation of his empire so that he can take care of his growing family, we watch as Michael loses his family while trying to maintain that empire and get revenge on his enemies. In the ultimate irony of the story, Vito successfully gets his revenge on Don Ciccio, the man who killed his father, mother and brother at the beginning of the film. He was patient. He waited for years. When the moment came, he took advantage, but he wasn’t obsessed by it. In fact, in what might be the ultimate plant and payoff in cinema history, most of the audience had probably forgotten all about Don Ciccio. The juxtaposition of those dual storylines helped make this such a great film.

One other thing that struck me this time as I watched The Godfather Part II is just how different a film it is from its predecessor. Thematically, many things are the same, but otherwise it’s a completely different film. A whole slew of different characters are introduced. The old days are referred to with much nostalgia throughout the film by several characters, but that only magnifies the differences in this film and this story. Mainly, the storyline of The Godfather Part II is much more intricate than the storyline from the first film. The Godfather has relatively straight forward Hero’s Journeys for both Michael and Vito, and the storyline, as great as it is, is straight forward and relatively simple as well. The storyline for The Godfather Part II is much more intricate and requires much more attention from the audience in order to be able to follow it fully. Indeed there are myriad subplots throughout the film. While Michael is determining whether or not Hyman Roth is responsible for the attack on his life, he’s also entering into a business venture with him in Cuba as the winds of revolution blow throughout the island. He also has to testify in front of the Senate where one of his old allies appears to be betraying him. Speaking of the Senate, the Corleone family now lives full time in Lake Tahoe, NV and Nevada Senator Pat Geary is trying to shake Michael down. And of course there are Michael’s difficulties with Fredo and Kay. What’s impressive about this is that quite often when there are so many subplots competing for our attention, the story can feel muddled and disorganized. Coppola was able to pace the story out in a way that kept everything clear. You had to pay attention, but as long as you did you would be able to follow each plot and storyline. It also helps that Coppola did a great job of paying off all of the subplots by bringing them all back into the main flow of the storyline. This is an intricately woven story with a complex and complicated plot that ends in a satisfying, albeit tragic, way.

What makes the ending even more tragic is the way the story of young Vito ends. The film starts with 9-year old Vito Andolini at the funeral of his father. His brother is also murdered, and then his mother is shot right in front of him. With the help of local villagers from the village of Corleone, Vito is put on a ship for America where the immigration officer changes his name to Vito Corleone, and he’s put into quarantine for small pox. Years later, he’s working for a grocer in the Little Italy section of New York City, and he comes across Don Fanucci who runs the neighborhood and forces residents and businesses to pay him to keep them secure. After meeting young Tessio and young Clemenza (Bruno Kirby), they start a small crime ring that Don Fanucci finds out about and demands that they pay him a cut or he’ll go to the police. Vito convinces Clemenza and Tessio that they don’t need to pay him and that if they trust him, he’ll make it worth their while. Vito then kills Don Fanucci and the neighborhood now belongs to him. He goes to his apartment where his wife sits on the steps with young Santino, Fredo and newborn Michael. Vito takes the baby and tells Michael that his father loves him very much. Vito opens an Olive Oil distribution company as a front and becomes the most powerful don in the city. After the birth of his four children, he takes his family to his birthplace in Sicily. That’s where he finds Don Ciccio and completes his revenge. As they leave the village on the train, Vito tells Michael, here just a boy, to wave goodbye.

This whole storyline is about the creation of something. It’s about the creation of Vito’s family and how, even though he’s built all of it through lawlessness, he’s at heart a good person who protects his family and also uses his strength to protect people that can’t protect themselves and have no recourse through the law. That’s the huge difference between Vito and Michael. We never doubt that Vito, despite his faults, is at his core a good person. Michael, on the other hand, has become sinister and vengeful, and is everything his father was not. This is punctuated by yet another shot of Kay having a door shut in her face as Michael refuses to let her see their children. Perhaps the most tragic shot in the film is the last shot where we see Michael sitting alone. His father was never alone, and yet Michael has no one. Vito was loved and respected by everyone that knew him and that love and respect bred loyalty that cannot be bought. Michael, on the other hand, has successfully driven away or killed everyone who was close to him. He has destroyed everything that his father built. What could be more tragic than that?

Even though they’re as different as they are, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are essentially companion pieces. Together, they form one overarching and complete story. The fact that they were released within two years of each other also helps with the continuity of the story. Sixteen years after the release of The Godfather Part II, Coppola would try to rekindle that magic again with The Godfather Part III with mixed results and to a mixed reception. It picks up the story some 20 years later as an aging Michael tries to once and for all bring the Corleone family out of the shadows and into legitimate business dealings. Various forces prevent that from happening and the story ends the only way it really can. Unfortunately Coppola wasn’t able to restore that magic and the third film in the series suffered from the confusing and muddled plot that he was able to avoid in the second instalment. The third film is very disconnected from the other two, and is not nearly on the same level in terms of storytelling or filmmaking. The fact that the second film is a continuation of the same story at essentially the point where the first one left off helps the continuity of the stories and each film feeds off of the greatness of the other. The third film was made in a completely different era and there is a lot of film history between the first and the third film. It was clearly an attempt to rekindle an old flame, but the magic was gone and the third film probably should never have even been made. That wasn’t enough to keep it from being nominated for Best Picture, but it was unable to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors, a fact that will be dug deeper into in about 4 months from now.

Did the Academy get it right?

I’m actually going to go out on a limb and say that no, they did not. I realize that I just typed 1600 words espousing the virtues and greatness of the film and its themes and the depth of its characters. In almost any other year, The Godfather Part II would be a slam-dunk, no-brainer to win Best Picture. The epic size and scope of this film should be enough to stifle any questions about whether or not it deserved to be named as such. It was certainly better than Lenny, the erstwhile bio pic of comedian and satirist Lenny Bruce. For the second time in three years a terrific film by Bob Fosse would lose to a Godfather film. I liked Lenny, but didn’t love it, and certainly wouldn’t have voted for it for Best Picture. The Conversation, also directed by Coppola (more on that in a moment) was nominated, but wasn’t nearly as strong a picture as The Godfather Part II. In fact, I found The Conversation to be very slow and boring. I don’t mind if a film is slow, but there was very little about The Conversation that I found to be engaging. It had a cool twist at the end, but that wouldn’t have been enough for me to give it a vote for Best Picture. The Towering Inferno is a super-entertaining action film, but not really the type of film that one thinks about when voting for Best Picture. The film that I would have voted for would have been Chinatown, which I think is an absolute masterpiece. As great as The Godfather Part II is, and it is great, Chinatown does it one better. It’s complex story, but is way more compact and streamlined. It’s a smart story and has wonderful performances by Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It has moments of humor that give it balance that is missing in The Godfather Part II and it has a lot more personality. Deciding between these two films is like deciding between a Mercedes and a BMW. You can’t go wrong either way, but I prefer Chinatown and would have voted for that film in 1974.

There is one more thing I’d like to mention. A few months ago, I pondered whether any director had ever had a better year than Victor Fleming had in 1939 when he directed Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, both of which were nominated for Best Picture and have gone on to become pantheons of not only cinema, but also our popular culture. Francis Ford Coppola came close in 1974 with The Godfather Part II and The Conversation. While neither of those films has reached the cultural status of Fleming’s films (The Godfather Part II is close), it’s still a major and very impressive accomplishment to have two films nominated for Best Picture in the same year.

With one of the most recognizable scores in the history of American cinema, The Sting walked away with the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1973. It actually dominated Oscar night with a total of seven wins, including Best Director (George Roy Hill), Best Writing (David S. Ward) and Best Music (Marvin Hamlisch). After starring together four years earlier in the Oscar nominated Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert Redford and Paul Newman, two of the biggest stars of the era (and of all time), got together again, and again made cinema history.

This truly is a wonderful film, but even though it isn’t necessarily one of my favorites. In looking back and comparing it to the winners that preceded it, I’d say that for me The Sting rates somewhere maybe a little bit higher than the middle of the pack. I had seen it before, but not for many years, so I was essentially watching it as though it was the first time. This film has it all. It has first rate performances from Redford, Newman and Robert Shaw, as well as the supporting cast. It has a wonderful script, as evidenced by the Oscar that it won, and the script has terrific dialogue and a well-structured and complex storyline. George Roy Hill, who also directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, did a fine job of directing it and crafted a film that is visually stimulating and intellectually intriguing. This is a film that you have to pay attention to and follow carefully or you will get lost.

So why doesn’t The Sting rank higher for me? Why did it not affect me the way other Best Picture winners have, especially some of the films that I had not seen or had not seen for a long time affected me? I must say that I don’t know the answer. I like this movie. I liked it a lot, but I never was fully engaged with the characters on an emotional level. Like the outlaws in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Redford’s Johnny Hooker and Newman’s Henry Gondorff are con men who make their living outside the law. The fact that their target for a big score (Shaw’s Doyle Lonnegan) is a bigger crook than they are helps us to root for them, as Hooker wants revenge on Lonnegan for having his partner killed. Redford is one of the great actors of all time, and was nominated for Best Actor for The Sting, but I really think Newman stole the show every time he was in a scene. Newman’s Gondorff is a roguish devil who isn’t afraid to drink too much and isn’t afraid to crack wise, even to men like Lonnegan. Newman has some of the best lines in the picture and the scene where he plays poker with Lonnegan and out-cheats him is one of the best scenes in the film.

Newman and Redford rightly get a lot of credit for how well this film turned out and is remembered, but there was a lot more going on that made this film what it was, and a lot of that had to do with the expert direction of George Roy Hill. As mentioned above, this is a complex story. Movies about cons are always complex, as one of the components to a con movie is always staying one step ahead of the audience. As a director you have to take chances like hoping that the audience isn’t paying close enough attention to remember that the actor playing the phony FBI agent was the same guy at the very beginning of the film running the bookie operation. But then you have to hope that they are paying close enough attention to catch all of the nuances that fill in blanks that are easy to miss. A film like The Sting is all about the details. Just like the con is about the details, if the director misses a trick, then the whole thing will be a bust.

David S. Ward is also due a lot of credit for is Oscar-winning screenplay. Not only does he deliver snappy dialogue that fits the period, he also crafted the complexity of the story without making it so complicated that it would lose the audience. There is a pretty well-developed Hero’s Journey written in to the script, but that isn’t what the story relies on. Generally speaking, Hooker is the hero of the story. His Ordinary World is one of a small-time con artist who makes a big score when he and his partner Luther con money out of a runner for Lonnegan. It’s more money than they’re used to, and Lonnegan has Luther killed, and has his henchmen on the lookout for Hooker. Hooker’s Call to Adventure happens a little earlier when Luther, who also starts out the film as Hooker’s Mentor, tells him that he’s retiring and that if Hooker wants to get a real big score and hit the big time, then he should go meet Henry Gondorff, who has pulled off plenty of big scores. After Luther is killed, Hooker Crosses the First Threshold and enters the Special World by finding Gondorff and convincing him to help pull a big job on Lonnegan in order to get revenge for him having Luther killed. The Tests, Allies and Enemies portion of the script occurs when Lonnegan puts the team together for the con, all the while Hooker has to escape Lonnegan’s men and the crooked cop Snyder (Charles Durning) who believes Hooker owes him money. The Approach is the planning of the con and the Supreme Ordeal occurs on the train when Gondorff out cheats Lonnegan at the poker game. The Reward is Hooker gaining Lonnegan’s trust as they trick him into betting on horse races that aren’t really happening. The Road Back has Hooker seemingly arrested by the FBI and having to agree to turn Gondorff in at the end of the job. There is a literal Resurrection during the climax of the film where the con is pulled, but the FBI show up and it appears that Hooker has betrayed Gondorff, and Gondorff retaliates by shooting Hooker in the back. The FBI agent then shoots Gondorff. Not knowing what’s going on, Snyder rushes Lonnegan out of there, leaving his half a million dollars behind. Then Hooker and Gondorff get up, the bullets as fake as the FBI agents. The Return With the Elixir is the satisfaction of the con pulled off. Neither Hooker nor Gondorff even wants the money. Hooker, especially, is just happy that he got his revenge on Lonnegan.

The narrative of the Hero’s Journey is pretty straight forward and simple. The cleverness of the script comes out in not only the details of the story, but the twists that it takes along the way. You never quite know who you can really trust, and whom you cannot. There are plenty of surprises along the way and Ward wrote a wonderful script that Hill was able to craft into an equally wonderful film.

Technically this is a great film, but it just didn’t hit me emotionally. It’s ultimately a feel-good movie with a happy ending and no real tragedy. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, and you would expect that from a film like The Sting. It’s a romp, in the manner of its kin, like Ocean’s Eleven and any number of other con movies. It’s fun and it’s a bit of a ride in trying to figure out the con as it’s playing out in front of you. While there are moments of danger and suspense, The Sting doesn’t have the tone of a film that could have anything other than a feel-good kind of ending and that is somewhat rare for a Best Picture winner. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t feel like a Best Picture winner to me. Especially with many of the recent winners leading up to The Sting, many ended on pure down notes, or had ambiguous endings. Not since the days of the Musical winning almost every other year had we seen something like The Sting, which was a feel-good movie with a happy ending that won Best Picture.

Did the Academy get it right?

I’m inclined to say that they did. I like The Sting, but it’s not one of the stronger winners. However in looking at the competition that it was up against for 1973, The Sting was the most deserving. American Graffiti is a terrific film, and it launched the film careers of George Lucas, Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfus and Harrison Ford. Those men would go on to be some of the most important names in film over the next four decades, but American Graffiti itself wasn’t a better film than The Sting. Cries and Whispers was a Swedish that was a little too depressing for most voters. The Exorcist was an absolute phenomenon that completely changed the Horror genre. I was at a recent screening of it, and I must say that even though the horror doesn’t hold up, it’s still an amazing film with a dramatic and compelling story. It’s really more of a cop film than a horror film, and it deserved Academy recognition. I do not, however, think it deserved to be Best Picture, because while the story is compelling, it’s not nearly as well-crafted as the story in The Sting. A Touch of Class was a romantic comedy, and as we’ve seen before, romantic comedies rarely win the Oscar. So overall, based on the competition more than anything else, I believe The Sting was the correct winner for Best Picture of 1973.

Truly one of the great films of American cinema, The Godfather is ranked as the #2 film of all time on the AFI list of the 100 Greatest Films, trailing only Citizen Kane. The story of the making of this film is almost as dramatic and riveting as the film itself. Director Francis Ford Coppola was nearly fired from the film, and he claims that the fact that he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for Patton was the only thing that prevented him from getting fired. No one from the studio wanted to hire Marlon Brando, and there were many other issues with casting as well. Oh yeah, and there was also the little problem with the fact that many powerful people in the Mafia didn’t want the film to be made.

The fact that this film was made is a minor miracle in and of itself. The fact that it’s one of the greatest films of all time confirms that miracle, and is a testament to what can happen in Hollywood when just the right combination of talent comes together to create a magnificent work of art.

In thinking about this film, I had to wonder what your humble narrator could possibly say about The Godfather that hasn’t already been said or written by film scholars and historians with much more clout than I. I’ve seen The Godfather many times, but I tried watching it this weekend with a fresh perspective. I tried to follow the structure of the script and look at it from the perspective of a screenwriter. In doing this I was reminded of something that my first screenwriting instructor at USC told me a long time ago. He said that The Godfather is actually the only mainstream American film that has two heroes. One of them is Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and the other is his son Michael (Al Pacino). It was paying close attention to the structure of the screenplay that made me realize that this could actually be true.

The first 40 minutes of The Godfather is basically prologue. The film opens with the marriage of Connie Corleone (Talia Shire) to Carlo. The wedding sequence is followed by a sequence in which Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) goes to Hollywood in order to convince the studio head Jack Woltz to hire Vito’s godson Johnny Fontaine to be in his next picture, and culminates with the famous horse head scene, have little to do with the rest of the story. We do meet the undertaker, who will play a role later in the picture, but there are few story elements that take place in those first 40 minutes that have much to do with the rest of the film. Instead, those minutes are spent introducing us to all of the characters of this drama. We meet everyone in the Corleone family, as well as their henchmen Luca Brasi, Tessio and Clemenza. We get to see what kind of person Vito is, what kind of person Sonny (James Caan) is, and the dynamic of all of their relationships.

From the perspective of the Hero’s Journey, as laid out by Christopher Vogler in his book, The Writer’s Journey, these sequences set up the Ordinary World. We see that the Ordinary World for Vito is that he is the head of a powerful Mob family in New York. People come to him when they have no one else to turn to, and if you are his friend, or if you can pay him, he will get you what you want, whether it’s justice for your beaten daughter, or the lead role in the new Woltz Picture production. We also see that Michael’s Ordinary World is one of sideline spectator. He enters the wedding with his new girlfriend, Kay Adams (Diane Keaton), and we learn through the stories that he tells her that he knows what his father does and he knows what the family is about, but he does not partake in it. In fact, he’s a war hero, just home from World War II, and is in his dress uniform when we first meet him.

The story really gets going when Vito receives his Call to Adventure. Tom tells Vito that with Sollozzo, a young up-and-comer also known as The Turk wants the Don to invest in his narcotics trade. The Meeting With the Mentor also happens in this scene as Tom is the family lawyer and also now acts as the consigliere, and advises Vito that narcotics are the next big thing and if they don’t get involved the other families will and over time the Corleone family will lose power and political influence. The Refusal of the Call happens in the same scene when Vito tells Sollozzo that drugs are a dangerous business, and that he’ll likely lose his support in the police department and with the judges and politicians if he gets involved with it. However, Sonny seems to like the idea and Sollozzo notices. The Crossing of the First Threshold happens when Sollozzo’s men shoot Vito. Sollozzo himself takes part in the killing of Luca Brasi and he kidnaps Tom to tell him to have Sonny make the deal. It isn’t personal. It’s just business.

Meanwhile Michael finds out that his father has been shot. Remarkably, Vito wasn’t killed, so while visiting him in the hospital, Michael notices that none of the security is there, and a nurse tells him that the police sent them away. He makes a quick call to Sonny to let him know and then, with the help of the nurse, moves Vito to another room. He goes to the front of the hospital and stares down a couple of mobsters in their car before they hastily drive away. The police show up and when Michael asks Captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) how much The Turk is paying him, McCluskey punches him in the face, breaking his jaw.

Michael’s Call to Adventure follows. Sollozzo requests a meeting, and Michael, knowing that these men will not stop until they’ve killed Vito, volunteers to kill Sollozzo and McCluskey. Michael’s Call is initially refused by both Sonny and Tom, but Michael persuades both of them that he can do it, and he also has ideas on how to use the press to pin McCluskey as a corrupt cop in order to reduce the heat from the police. For the first time, we are seeing that Michael could lead the family.

Michael Crosses the First Threshold by killing Sollozzo and McCluskey and then going into hiding in Sicily. With that in mind, Michael’s transition is not only from the Ordinary World of mob “civilian” who takes no role in family business to the Special World of mob “leader” who is now as deeply involved as anyone in the family, but also a physical transition from the Ordinary World of New York City to the Special World of Sicily. There Michael goes right into the Tests, Allies and Enemies portion of his story. He has body guards that go everywhere with him, and he’s under the protection of a local Don Tomasino. He hasn’t been there long when he meets Apollonia, the daughter of a local tavern owner, and he asks the father permission to court and marry his daughter. Michael does court her, and eventually marries her as well.

Back in New York, Vito’s Tests, Allies and Enemies portion of the story is taking place while he recovers from his wound. Michael’s actions have started an all-out gang war and the casualties are mounting. Carlo is showing himself to be abusive of Connie, and Sonny tracks him down on the street and beats him with a garbage can, threatening to kill him if he ever touches his sister again. A short time later, Carlo beats Connie with a belt, and she calls Sonny on the phone. Enraged, Sonny gets in a car to drive there. He’s stopped at a toll booth and viciously gunned down by a half a dozen guys with machine guns. Don Vito’s Approach is when Tom tells him that Sonny has been killed, and Vito tells him that there will be no acts of vengeance and he calls a meeting with the heads of the five families so that the war can end now.

The Supreme Ordeal for Vito is the meeting, which is led by Don Barzini. . In return for a truce, Vito has to open up his judicial influence to the other families so that they can all get involved with the narcotics trade. Vito does demand that Michael be allowed to come back to America and in a show of strength he makes it clear that should any accident befall Michael, he’ll be sure to blame the people in this room and his vengeance then will be swift and terrible. He also makes peace with Don Tataglia, who he initially thought was responsible for Sonny’s death, but he’s now figured out that it was really Barzini all along.

Michael’s Approach follows when he finds out about Sonny’s death. Don Tomasino tells him that it’s no longer safe for him and he has to move. His Supreme Ordeal happens when he discovers that one of his bodyguards has betrayed him buy wiring his car, but he can’t stop Apollonia before she tries to start it and it explodes, killing her. Michael then goes home where his Reward is waiting for him in the person of Kay Adams. She hasn’t seen or heard anything from him in years and initially refuses to go with him, but he convinces her that he loves her and makes a promise to her that in five years the Corleone family will be completely legitimate.

Vito’s Reward is to have Michael start taking over the family business. He never actually wanted that for Michael, but it’s clear right away that he’s better at it than Sonny ever would have been, and his other son Fredo just isn’t strong or smart enough for the role. Vito’s Road Back is the scene in which he becomes and archetypal shape shifter by serving as Michael’s Mentor and warning him of a meeting he’ll be invited to by someone he trusts and at that meeting he’ll be assassinated. Vito’s Resurrection happens in this scene as well as he officially passes the torch to Michael. He confesses to Michael that he’s done what he can to take care of his family and he owes apologies for that to no one. He is a man who is at the end of his life and has made peace with himself. The Return With the Elixir for Vito is the scene where he spends his last moments alive playing with his grandson. For the first time in the film we see Vito truly and totally happy.

Michael’s Road Back is a literal one as well as a symbolic one. He is back in New York and he is back in the family. In fact, he is now in charge of the family business, and is going to take it places it’s never been. He sees Las Vegas as the future and is going to move the family there so that they can get into the casino business and become legitimate, as he promised Kay. The problem out there is that Moe Green refuses to sell his casino. This, and other things, leave Michael with business to settle first.

At Vito’s funeral, Tessio reveals himself to be the traitor by wanting to set up a meeting with Barzini. This leads to one of the most famous sequences in the history of cinema. Michael’s Resurrection is when he stands to be Godfather to Connie and Carlo’s new baby. As we see Michael proclaim his belief in God and as he renounces Satan and all his works, Michael’s men kill Barzini, Tataglia, and all of the heads of the other 5 families, along with Moe Green and everyone else who was standing in his way. After the baptism, he gets Carlo to admit that he worked with Barzini to get Sonny killed. In one last act of retribution, Michael assures Carlo he’s safe, and then has him brutally murdered.

The Return With the Elixir for Michael is the most powerful man in the Mafia. His business is settled, even as he lies to Kay when he tells her that he had nothing to do with Carlo’s death. In one of the most famous movie endings ever, we see the door close on her as Clemenza and others pay their respects to Michael.

There it is. Two Hero’s Journeys for two separate and equally important characters in the same film. That’s just one of the aspects of this film that make it so wonderful. In fact, Michael’s character arc in The Godfather is an amazing piece of work. Any aspiring screenwriter could learn a great deal about character development by watching how screenwriters Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo used the story to turn Michael from honest and empathetic war hero to a ruthless and sinister Mafia boss. For me, Michael’s character transformation is what makes this film and this story so compelling. That’s especially true when you juxtapose it with the opposite transition that Vito is experiencing, but in a more subtle way.

Combing all of those things with the amazing performances of all of the players as well as the subtly amazing and underrated cinematography, we have a film in The Godfather that is truly one for the ages.

Did the Academy get it right?

Yes they did. This is one of the biggest no-brainers in the history of the Academy. I haven’t actually seen The Emigrants or Sounder so I can’t speak about them. Cabaret is a wonderful film that made Liza Minnelli a star, and I recommend seeing it if you haven’t seen it before. It actually has a deep and dramatic story as the characters try and live a bohemian lifestyle in Berlin in the early days of the Nazis. Deliverance is also an iconic film that is much more than just the one scene that everyone remembers. But The Godfather is one of the greatest films of all time. It has a script that is not only an incredibly well structured story, but it also has some of the most iconic dialogue ever committed to the screen. The actors were all at the top of their games and Coppola was also at his best as a director. This is a film where everyone was in the zone, and it was one of the most deserving films to ever win Best Picture.

The French Connection is an anomaly to me. It’s an action film that was named Best Picture. It probably had the least amount of dialogue of any Best Picture winner to date (except of course for the silent Wings). It had a grittiness and edginess that had really only been seen to that point in Midnight Cowboy. The villain in The French Connection is in some ways more likable than the hero, and he certainly is more sympathetic. Putting all of that together adds up to a film that is as deep as any Best Picture winner and as intriguing.

Ranked #70 on the original AFI list of the top 100 films of all time, The French Connection clearly is one of the all-time greats, and there isn’t just one particular thing that you can point to with this film that makes it great. Sure, everyone has seen the iconic scene where a maniacal Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) speeds through the New York City streets in pursuit of the train carrying the man who just tried to kill him, but it is the totality of this film, with its intricate storyline, its deep and complex characters and gritty cinematography that creates in this film the whole package.

One thing that struck me about this film is the juxtaposition of the hero and the villain. It actually reminded me of Die Hard. I was discussing that film with a colleague recently and we were both in agreement that it’s one of the greatest action films of all time. There are a lot of reasons we felt that way, but one of the reasons was the depth of the characters. The hero, John McClain, is a New York City cop visiting Los Angeles. He’s the classic fish out of water, and he’s brutish, blunt and vulgar. He never misses an opportunity to stare at the pinup of a topless girl every time he passes by and shoots first and asks questions later. He is very much an anti-hero. Then in Hans Gruber, we have a sophisticated, articulate, witty, and educated man of taste and style. He aims high, plans to the last detail and has created comradery among his men. Although he is ruthless, he succumbs to the wishes of his hostages to make a pregnant woman comfortable and allow them basic needs like going to the restroom. I told my colleague that I don’t know if there’s a more likable villain in the history of mainstream cinema, and I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic in saying so.

That leads us to The French Connection and obvious influence for Die Hard. Popeye Doyle is not afraid to use questionable ethics when interrogating suspects. When we first meet him, he’s dressed as Santa Claus, and he and his partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) chase down a suspect. After a long pursuit on foot, the suspect pulls a knife and cuts Russo in the hand. The two cops proceed to kick the guy mercilessly while he’s down before dragging him to the station where they beat him up some more. He’s also a womanizer and is quite possibly a racist. Throughout the film, we see Popeye raid bars and neighborhood joints, mistreating the customers in order to gain information. He’s not above twisting and stretching the law in order to get the information that he needs. On the other hand, we have the antagonist of the story in Alain Charnier, a would-be drug smuggler dealing in heroin who is trying to corner the New York City market. We meet him at his well-to-do home in Marseilles, France presenting a gift to his wife and discussing the life of his daughter. He too is an articulate, sophisticated and witty man with expensive taste and refined etiquette. He is also clever, as he demonstrates when he outsmarts Popeye, who is trying to tail him, by tricking him into getting off the train and leaving him behind on the platform. He’s not nearly as likable as Hans Gruber, but he’s in no way unlikable.

This depth of character between the protagonist and the antagonist is brilliant storytelling. Even though Popeye should be unlikable on the surface, we root for him because at his core he’s a good person. He’s charming and roguish and is ultimately someone for whom the ends justify the means, and to a degree, he’s someone to whom we can relate precisely because he’s imperfect, just like all of us. Charnier, on the other hand, should be likable on the surface, but he is also aloof and a criminal. He is not the type of person with whom most of us could relate. Ultimately it’s a good buy/bad guy issue, and even though the depth of the characters creates imperfections in both of them, it’s never confusing or unclear who the bad guy is and likewise who the good guy is.

Another thing that occurred to me while watching The French Connection is the role of New York City in the film. Like Midnight Cowboy two years earlier, and other Best Picture winners to come through the seventies and other films throughout the seventies and eighties, New York City was actually like a character in this film. New York City had a personality in this film, and it was not a pleasant one. New York City in the 1970’s was a unique place. It was the type of place that was instantly recognizable and those qualities gave the city just as much personality as any of the actual characters in the film, and that personality is one that is tough, uninviting and grim.

Director William Friedkin went to great lengths to show New York as a gray, gritty and dirty place. There’s trash littering the streets in almost every exterior shot, and the interiors are dull and drab places. Friedkin’s New York is a dirty place where dirty people do dirty things. Only when we see Charnier having lunch with his associate Nicoli in the fine dining restaurant do we see anything positive about New York, and even those shots are juxtaposed with Popeye across the street eating cold pizza and drinking cold coffee and shivering in the cold air as he stakes them out. Another thing that’s interesting is the grayness of New York. The scenes in Marseilles are shot with vibrant colors, as are the couple of scenes that were shot in Washington, D.C. The scenes in New York generally lack color. In fact, this is basically a black and white movie when we’re in New York.

I should also mention the script. As I mentioned earlier, this might be the lightest amount of dialogue in any Best Picture winner since Wings, and that film was silent. There is an economy of dialogue in this script that any aspiring screenwriter, or professional screenwriter for that matter, could learn from. We are shown almost everything that we need to know and dialogue is used primarily to fill in the blanks. No one says anything that is unnecessary in this film. Even the throw away lines that seem like sophomoric banter are important to show the personalities of the people involved and the characters that they’re portraying. The French Connection is also short compared to recent Best Picture winners, coming in at a brisk 104 minutes. It’s a streamlined and entertaining film that doesn’t waste time with any monologues, and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman resisted the urge to show how smart he was by gratuitously adding unnecessarily cumbersome dialogue. Like the version of the city of New York The French Connection shows, this film is a no nonsense, no frills, and straight to the point story that will leave you behind if you can’t keep up.

I had seen this film before, but not for a long time, and watching it this weekend was a lot like watching it for the first time. Especially since this time I was paying closer attention to a lot of the nuance and a lot of the details sprinkled throughout the film. I had forgotten that it’s basically and action film, not unlike a lot of the great action films that would come later in the decade and throughout the 80’s. In fact, films like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon or even Beverly Hills Cop probably wouldn’t have existed without The French Connection. It clearly influenced, if not started, a genre that would blockbusters over the ensuing four decades. That in and of itself, makes it one of the great and most important films of at least the second half of the 20^th Century.

Did the Academy get it right?

Even with all that said my personal opinion is that no they did not. Fiddler on the Roof and The Last Picture Show are films that are remembered as classics. In fact, the latter was ranked #95 on the 10-year anniversary list of AFI’s top 100 films of all time. As great as those films are, I wouldn’t have voted for either of them for Best Picture. I’ve never seen Nicholas and Alexandra so I can’t speak to that film. No. Had I had a vote in 1971, I would have voted for A Clockwork Orange, which is one of my top 2 favorite films of all time (Casablanca is the other one.) To me, A Clockwork Orange is as close to a perfect film as has ever been made. Just like in The French Connection, we have a story with an anti-hero who on the surface should be as unlikable as any hero in the history of cinema, but we root for because of his charm, wit and the fact that he becomes the victim in the third act. Also, the screenplay that Stanley Kubrick wrote is as structurally sound as any screenplay that I’ve read or scene on film. It’s actually told in four acts rather than three, and each act takes the story in a new direction. Many people find the content of A Clockwork Orange to be too violent or disturbing. Yes, the content is violent, but not gratuitously so. The violence in A Clockwork Orange serves an integral purpose to the story as well as to the overall message of the film. I’m also not alone with this opinion, as A Clockwork Orange was ranked higher on the AFI list than was The French Connection (46-70). However, I do not think that The French Connection winning Best Picture was an egregious error in the same way as How Green Was My Valley beating Citizen Kane or Going My Way beating Double Indemnity. I actually don’t have a problem with The French Connection winning, as it was a well-crafted story with well shot action sequences, deep characters and a complex story. It was a deserving winner, but just not my first choice for 1971.

Patton is as remarkable a film as was Patton the man. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I had never seen it before, however it was always on my list of films to see. I had just never gotten around to it. I’m certainly glad that this project compelled me to watch it, because I was sucked in as soon as it started and I was 100% engaged until the final shot. This was a terrific film from many perspectives, as it was a compelling character piece, as well as an action/war film with a dramatic story of a man overcoming his shortcomings to become one of the greatest generals of the Second World War. Screenwriters Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund North, along with director Franklin J. Schaffner expertly wove together a story about a man who was filled with contradictions. They developed a story about a strong man who had pronounced weaknesses that heavily contributed to his inability to achieve the greatness to which he thought he was destined.

George S. Patton was a hard man and a hard man to figure out. The film depicts him as a masterful tactician as well as a supreme motivator who suffers cowards and fools with equal distain. In fact, it is his treatment of a man he perceives to be a coward that prevents him from being named Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. The film makers did a very smart thing in setting up that pivotal moment. Not long after we first meet Patton (George C. Scott), he has just assumed command of a tank division in Tunisia at the behest of General Omar Bradley (Karl Malden). The division was just badly beaten by Rommel’s Africa Corps, and the men are undisciplined and badly trained. Patton sets out to fix that and implements a series of codes of conduct for everything from requiring the men to wear their helmets at all times to determining when they can and cannot eat. The men hate the discipline, but are transformed into a fighting unit that will ultimately kick Rommel out of North Africa. One other thing Patton does is something that might come across as unnecessarily cruel at first. He goes to the hospital and commands the doctor to remove the men who are suffering from self-inflicted wounds to another part of the hospital and away from the men who he feels were legitimately wounded. He won’t have cowards sharing space with honorable fighting men.

One of the first things he tells them is, “I don’t want to get any messages that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding on to anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we’re gonna go through him like crap through a goose!” He also tells Bradley, “They’ll lose their fear of the Germans. I only hope to God they never lose their fear of me.” Through this dialogue we learn right away what kind of a man that Patton is. Even if you know nothing of United States history, you’ll know by now that Patton is no-nonsense and supremely confident in his abilities. Even Rommel points this out after first hearing about Patton when he says, “I will attack and annihilate him… Before he does the same to me.”

That scene is an important one that is paid off later when Patton’s forces invade Sicily. Patton is in a race with the English General Montgomery to see who will be the first to get to the city of Messina and take credit for its liberation. Patton disobeys orders and pushes through Palermo on his way to Messina, causing heavy casualties for his own troops. While inspecting the wounded, Patton comes across a soldier who has lost his nerve. Patton accosts and slaps the man in front of several doctors, nurses and other patients. His behavior is lambasted in the press and causes Patton to be reprimanded and forced by Eisenhower to apologize publicly in front of his soldiers.

This represents the low point for him, but then an interesting thing happens. The soldiers, who had previously hated Patton’s hard core style now had a respect for him that has turned into a genuine affection. He said early on in the film that he didn’t want his men to love him. He just wanted them to fight for him. It turned out that in the end he got both.

For me, that is what made Patton such a great and compelling film. It’s a study of Patton the character. Through exposition, we learn about him through what the Germans have learned. Over the course of the film, they get to know him so well that they feel like they can predict his movements. Through their actions and dialogue, we get exposition about Patton’s character traits. Eventually the German high command fears Patton like they fear no other Allied general. The problem for Patton is that even the Allied command doesn’t know what to do with him. We get the sense that they’d love to fire him, but he keeps winning battles all over Europe. This complex character is a complete enigma to not only his enemies, but to his allies as well.

Looking at Patton from the point of view of the Hero’s Journey, the character of Patton fits a variety of archetypes. He’s more Hero than Anti-Hero, but he’s also a shapeshifter and a trickster. As a shapeshifter, he’s an historian and he, himself, believes that he’s been reincarnated. As he walks over a battlefield that was the site of a battle between the Romans and the Carthanians, he believes he was there for that battle. As the Germans point out when they’re discussing his personality for the first time, “He’s a romantic who reads the bible daily and swears like a stableboy.” We then see Patton as a trickster when he first lures Rommel into battle. He gets word that the Germans are planning an attack, and he sets up a trap for them. Using netting to hide his tanks, Patton unleashes a hell-like fury on the German tanks as they approach, catching them completely by surprise. Using this trick, he shows himself to be the master tactician, and it’s the first step in driving Rommel from Africa.

I would say that if you are an aspiring screenwriter, this is a film you should know. Coppola and North won the Oscar for their work on the screenplay, and it is a screenplay that is worth reading. Study this screenplay to see how Coppola and North developed Patton’s character. Study the depth they gave him. Yes, Patton was a real man, and they only needed to use his real-life characteristics to develop his character, but they still had to do it in a way that was dramatic and cinematic. Sometimes when you’re writing based on a real character, giving them realistic depth that is also cinematic and dramatic can be more difficult than creating a character from scratch. In this film, they did it seamlessly.

I cannot do this film adequate justice by writing about it here. This is a film that needs to be seen in order to be truly appreciated. It’s long, coming in at just under three hours, but it is such an engaging film that you don’t feel like you’ve been watching it for that long. Trust me. There have been plenty of films that I’ve been watching during this project that were three hours, and I felt every minute. Patton is not like that. It’s a wholly entertaining film that does offer something for everyone.

In fact, the DVD that I watched had a short interview with Coppola before the film started, and he mentioned that he strived to make this a film that would appeal to people no matter their political persuasion. It showed aspects of Patton that liberal viewers would appreciate, as well as showing aspects of Patton that conservative viewers would appreciate. He managed to do this, in my opinion, without alienating either political philosophy. Films like that are few and far between, and the fact that this film came out while the mood in the country had turned very much against the war that was going on in Vietnam, is another remarkable aspect of it. True, World War II has always been looked at as a “good” war or a “necessary” war. But the United States public was in an anti-war mood in 1970, and it’s remarkable to me that a movie that glorified war in any way would be so recognized by the Academy or the public in general. I guess it just shows that sometimes a great film is just a great film and can transcend political realities.

This is especially interesting when you consider that the previous year’s winner was Midnight Cowboy. That film embodied the 1960’s. You look at it, and you see a film that is obviously of its time. That isn’t the case with Patton. If you knew nothing of film making techniques, or the actors involved, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to guess when Patton came out. It has a timeless feel to it that is just as relevant now as it was in 1970. It could have just as easily been released in 1960 or in 1950 or in 1980. That timeless quality helps speak to the greatness of this film.

Did the Academy get it right?

You’ve probably guessed by now that I think that they did. All in all, Patton won seven Oscars. Along with Best Writing and Best Picture, it also won for Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Film Editing and Best Actor. However, George C. Scott famously refused to accept the award, stating that he never felt that he was in any kind of competition with other actors. The film’s producer, Frank McCarthy accepted the award on Scott’s behalf and per Scott’s request, the statue was returned to the Academy the following day. That’s not to say that there wasn’t stiff competition for Best Picture, because there was. Airport, Five Easy Pieces, Love Story, and M*A*S*H are all regarded as classics on one level or another, and any one of them could have legitimately taken home the statue. Although, I’ve never considered Airport to be particularly Oscar-worthy, but if nothing else, it helped spawn the Airplane! films. What I find particularly interesting is the juxtaposition between Patton and M*A*S*H. Even though M*A*S*H takes place during the Korean War, it is a clear anti-war parable for Vietnam. Looking at the mood of the country as well as the attitude of the times, it feels like M*A*S*H should have been the winner. In a vacuum, Patton is clearly the better film, but we should all know by now that the best film doesn’t always win Best Picture. Certainly M*A*S*H could have won, and it would have been understandable had that been the case. Thankfully, however, the award went home with Patton, and that was definitely the right call for 1970.

In my humble opinion, Midnight Cowboy is a good film, though not a great one. It has superb acting from both Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, but the storyline isn’t terribly strong, and the premise is fairly ridiculous, although that is admittedly looking at it through a modern perspective. Personally I feel what resonates with this film and why it won Best Picture, and why it’s considered a classic is that it is very strong thematically. The year was 1969 and America was in a state of upheaval between the Vietnam War, recent assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr, as well as the social and racial strife that were rampant throughout the country. This is a film about transition, and Joe Buck (Voight) is the personification of that transition that the United States of America was also going through.

Midnight Cowboy is about Joe Buck, a simple man from a small town in Texas who wants to leave behind his life as a dish washer and live the American Dream by moving to New York and becoming a hustler. He’s a good looking guy, and confident that the women of New York will be lining up for his services since he’s more of a man than any of those New York sissies. However, it’s harder going than he thought it would be when he gets there, and he as the misfortune to meet Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman), a con artist who tells him that he can find some management for him for a small price. Rizzo takes Joe to a man who wants to help him, but not in the way that Joe expects. This man doesn’t want to introduce Joe to women that will pay for sex. Quite the contrary, he wants to introduce Joe to God. Not wanting any of that, Joe bolts from the apartment and tries to find Ratso to get his money back and maybe get a little something else for his trouble.

Needing money, Joe considers applying for a dishwasher job at a coffee shop, but finds better money in prostitution, but with male clients rather than female clients. He finally happens upon Ratso again, and Ratso agrees to help him find some real management. From there, these two odd balls strike up an unlikely alliance as they try to hustle their way through life. Some hustles work out better than others, but for the most part, hustling turns out to be a losing proposition for Joe. He has some unresolved issues from his past relating to the deaths of his parents and perhaps some sexual abuse from his grandmother. We learn this through quick flashbacks throughout the film, and they show Joe is a man who is trying to repress some inner demons.

Ratso, on the other hand, is a man with no scruples, few morals, and little sense of the real world. He becomes a mentor, of sorts, to Joe and helps him navigate the streets of New York City (“I’m walkin’ here!”), and he helps Joe finally start to break seriously into the sex business. The main problem with Ratso is his health. He’s in very poor health, as a matter of fact, and refers to himself as a cripple. But underneath his poor health and his loose morals is a heart of gold and a vulnerable and scared man who is facing his mortality with varying degrees of success depending on the day. Bu helping Joe, Ratso is ultimately able to redeem himself and reach his own goal in a very bittersweet way.

From a storytelling and filmmaking perspective the strongest aspects of this film reside in the characters and their growth and development. Joe goes from being a naïve, small-town hick to a mature care-giver who realizes that life is different from what he set out to discover. He realizes that a simple life isn’t necessarily a bad life, and at the end of the picture he tells Ratso that he’s going to get a real job and try and start a family. The old Joe has died and a new Joe has been resurrected as an adult and someone who understands that life isn’t just a big party.

Ratso, on the other hand, seems to have more of a tragic ending to his story, but there is a silver lining. Throughout the film, he keeps making references to Florida, and how he’s going to make enough money to move down there. His health will improve and he’ll live the food life. It becomes readily apparent to Joe that Ratso is never going to make it to Florida. This comes at a very important point of the story at the end of Act II. Joe has finally made money as a hustler. He met a girl at a party that he and Ratso went to, and she actually paid him to have sex with her. And what’s more, she’s calling her friends to recommend that they hire him as well. After struggling the entire film to reach this point, Joe has hit the jackpot. But then he gets back to the condemned building that he and Ratso are living in, and Ratso can’t even walk. He’s coughing terribly and has a fever. Joe takes the money that he made the previous night and uses it to buy two bus passes to Miami. As soon as they cross the Florida line, Joe buys them new clothes, and they discard the color-less rags that they’d been wearing in New York for brightly colored tropical outfits. Joe nurtures Ratso as well as he can until they finally get to the outskirts of Miami, and that’s (WARNING! SPOILER ALERT!) wear Ratso dies, his illness finally overcoming him. One of the things that makes hits ending so effective, and helps make this a very good film, is that it isn’t everything that it appears to be on the surface. Yes, Ratso is dead, and it’s a sad moment, but he made it to Florida. That’s something that never would have happened without the help of Joe. He also has a new appearance, with his old ratty clothes gone, and he died with some amount of dignity that he never would have had if he had died in the rat hole in which he was living in New York.

Just like these two characters are not what they appear to be on the surface, what appears to be a sad ending actually comes off as quite uplifting upon reflection. And it’s true that these characters are not what they appear to be on the surface. On the surface, they’re each saddled with long lists of character flaws, and yet they’re likable characters. The reason for that is that they each have depth. If you’re an aspiring screenwriter and you want to learn how to make a reprobate of a character appealing to an audience, you should screen Midnight Cowboy. Screenwriter Waldo Salt, who incidentally won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for his work on Midnight Cowboy and director John Schlesinger, who also took home the Best Director statue for this film, created characters with depth. It sounds like an easy thing to do, but they had a huge challenge for themselves in having to convince the audience to go along on a two-hour ride with these people who for all intents and purposes are not likable people. We have one guy who wants to be a male prostitute and thinks that he’ll have no problem because he assumes that all of the men in New York are “fruity”, and we have another guy who would con his own mother out of her last pair of shoes if he thought he could get 50 cents for them. These guys are low lifes.

So why do we care about them? Because Joe Buck could charm a dictator. Joe Buck can relate to people and he is as charming as they come. With his folksy Texas accent, his cowboy hat and his simple way of looking at life, Joe is the kind of guy that you would want to have a beer with, flaws and all. They had a totally different issue with Ratso, but they were no less effective in making us care about him because ultimately, he had a good heart and was a good cook. For whatever reason, he sees Joe as a guy who he can help and who can help him. He’s never had love in his life, and though (we think) the love between Joe and Ratso is platonic, it’s love all the same and it brings out the best in Ratso, even though that’s a very low bar. However in that way, as we see palm trees in the reflection of his window, Ratso also gains his redemption.

There is one point that I would like to make about this film that I think is overlooked. The Art Direction of Midnight Cowboy is great. When Joe is in Texas, everything has a yellow hue. When he’s in New York, everything is gray, and it’s practically a black and white movie from that point on until they get to Florida. The scenes in Florida are alive with color. The gray misery of New York is replaced with the endless possibilities of an endless color palette. That’s film language-101 right there, as those choices did just as much as anything that was in the script to help tell the story and set the various moods of the film.

I mentioned earlier that this is a film about transition. Everyone knows that the late 1960’s were a tumultuous time in America. The years between 1967 and 1974 really did mark a loss of innocence for this country. We can argue whether or not that innocence ever really existed in the first place, but attitudes were changing, and artists’ expressions of those attitudes were changing as well. Filmmaking was changing, as the old studio system was out and a freer, more equitable system had taken its place. A new group of filmmakers were making their respective marks with films that were more experimental. The films now had more signature styles that allowed some of them to be considered as auteurs. A new rating system had been implemented as well, and directors like Schlesinger and Stanley Kubrick were taking advantage of the new freedom to take the content of film to places never dreamed of by filmmakers of the previous generation. Midnight Cowboy actually was rated X upon its initial release. It’s the only X-rated movie to ever win Best Picture, although the rating has since been changed to R. Likewise, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange would be released two years later with an X-rating and would be nominated for Best Picture. It also has since been re-rated with an R.

One other aspect to this more auteur-like filmmaking was that linear storytelling wasn’t as much of a concern. Indeed, the story line of Midnight Cowboy to my way of thinking is pretty weak. There are too many times where Joe just happens upon someone that he’s looking for or something that he needs. I know it was 1969, but it was still New York City. You’re not going to just bump into someone there, especially if you have no idea where to look. The story also has some sloppy moments where the party scene where Joe meets Shirley. It’s a Warhol-esque party, and the whole scene is rather self-indulgent. It’s a good scene for the most part, but it goes on too long, and we start to lose interest. The main reason to watch Midnight Cowboy is for the excellent character work and the layered thematic elements that make you really think about what was going on in America at that time.

Did the Academy get it right?

I am inclined to say no. Hello Dolly is a musical and it might have won had it come out three or four years earlier. I have not seen Anne of a Thousand Faces or Z, so I cannot speak to them. The film that would have had my vote in 1969 would have been Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Paul Newman and Robert Redford were at their respective peaks in this film, and it is by any measure a classic. Ranked #50 on the AFI list of the top 100 movies of all time (Midnight Cowboy is not on the list), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is an action film with a great story and two great actors at the top of their craft. Alas, it was a Western, and Westerns only get slightly more love than courtroom dramas with the Academy. With that said, however, I don’t find it an atrocity that Midnight Cowboy won. In fact, from a contemporary standpoint, it makes a lot of sense that it did. Unlike any of the other films nominated in 1969, Midnight Cowboy spoke to what people were feeling at that time. Even though very few people could empathize with these characters, they could relate to the transitions they were going through because that was what was happening to the country. If they weren’t living it in their own lives, they were seeing it all around them. For that reason, while I wouldn’t have voted for it, I can understand why Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture of 1969.