1970: Patton.

Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. (George C. Scott) salutes the audience in the iconic opening scene.

Release Date: Feb. 5, 1970. Running Time: 172 minutes. Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, Edmund H. North. Based on the books: Patton, Ordeal and Triumph, by Ladislas Farago; and A Soldier's Story, by Omar N. Bradley. Producer: Frank McCarthy Director: Franklin J. Schaffner.


THE PLOT:

The disastrous Battle of Kasserine Pass leads to major American losses in northern Africa. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. (George C. Scott) is given command of the surviving II Corps, and he goes to work instilling a sense of discipline and pride in the men. He quickly clashes with the British forces over supplies, plans, and air cover, and he enters into a rivalry with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Michael Bates), the British hero Patton regards as a prima donna.

After the Allies achieve victory in Africa, Patton and Montgomery submit separate plans for an invasion of Sicily. To Patton's annoyance, Montgomery's cautious unified assault is favored over his own more aggressive approach. When Montgomery gets bogged down in the southeast, Patton makes a push to capture the key cities of Palermo and Messina... something that doesn't sit well with his second-in-command, Omar Bradley (Karl Malden), who views this as sacrificing lives for the sake of one man's glory.

The fall of Sicily makes Patton into a hero... but not for long. During the campaign, he slapped a soldier with combat fatigue and shouted that the man should be shot as a coward. The incident goes public, causing a loss of support. Patton is passed over for command of the invasion of Europe, with Bradley given that plum assignment. As he's relegated to staging a distraction, he is told to consider himself on probation.

After the landing at Normandy, he is given another chance. He's made commander of the Third Army, and he begins a rapid advance across France. He becomes frustrated when his desire to advance to Berlin is thwarted (for the second time) in favor of an ill-fated rival plan by Montgomery. But when the Germans launch their counteroffensive, the Battle of the Bulge, Patton's aggressiveness suddenly becomes the very thing the Allies need!

Patton finds success on the battlefield, but he sabotages himself in the press.

GEORGE C. SCOTT AS GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON:

"No (soldier) ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb (soldier) die for HIS country!"

42-year-old George C. Scott plays the 60-year-old general... and it works. It helps that Scott was one of those people who looked old when he was still fairly young. The only, very slight giveaway is the occasional shot in which lighting makes it obvious that his hair has been artificially whitened. These are relatively rare single shots, however; given how magnetic Scott's performance is, it's doubtful many viewers will notice.

Though it's evident that the filmmakers genuinely like their bellicose subject, they avoid making this a hagiography. Patton is presented sympathetically, and the movie clearly wants us to believe that he's in the right when he disagrees with official strategy - but the script and actor don't shy away from showing his vanity and ego. He loves being the center of attention. There's a moment when, while his army advances across France, the movie cuts to Omar Bradley approving a front-page article, proclaiming, "Give George a headline, and he's good for another thirty miles!"

George C. Scott is superb, delivering not a single false note. There is a potential danger in reducing Patton to an eternally shouty caricature. Scott makes sure to vary his deliveries, and the script makes sure to give him moments of quiet and contemplation. Patton is also played as part showman, and Scott keeps a twinkle in his eye as he barks orders, savoring that his men are never quite certain when he's serious and when he's acting. "It isn't important for them to know," he observes. "It's only important for me to know."

Scott became the first actor to refuse to accept his Oscar, condemning the entire concept of the Academy Awards as "degrading." I would argue for the Oscars' worth, not because Scott was wrong (he wasn't) and not because they always get it right (they often don't), but because the awards provide a glimpse at what is valued and even celebrated in a given year. Co-star Karl Malden expressed sympathy for Scott's reasons, but he felt that he could have been less blunt in his refusal - the two actors' statements making a perfect parallel to the roles they played in the movie.

Gen. Omar Bradley (Karl Malden) is appalled when Patton jeopardizes lives for the sake of ego.

KARL MALDEN AS GENERAL OMAR BRADLEY:

Malden's Bradley is this film's moral center (and it's probably no coincidence that the real Bradley consulted on the film). He recommends Patton for the North Africa posting, seeing him as well-suited to getting the demoralized troops back into fighting shape. He recognizes Patton's quirks and flaws, but he's still supportive of him... during the North Africa campaign.

This changes in the Sicily campaign, when Patton creatively interprets his orders - or just ignores them as "garbled" - in his rush to reach Messina ahead of Field Marshal Montgomery. Bradley doesn't directly clash with his superior, but he lets his disapproval show in his tone and in the look in his eyes. When he rebuffs Patton's offer to accompany him into Messina with a simple, "I'm not very good at that, George," his judgment is as fierce as it is quiet. When he later states that he would have relieved Patton had he been in charge in Sicily, we remember this moment and know that he means it.

That quality of quiet strength makes him a perfect foil to the bellicose title character. Bradley is low-key, plain and unshowy. Karl Malden's unassuming yet solid presence is both opposite and equal to George C. Scott's showy bravado, and I think Malden's performance is every bit as crucial to the movie's success as Scott's own.

Rommel (Karl Michael Vogler, center) is frustrated when his superiors
refuse to commit all forces to defending Normandy.

OTHER CHARACTERS:

Col. Charles Codman: Paul Stevens plays Patton's aide, who stays at his side even when the general tells him that he's "hitched (his) wagon to a falling star." Codman knows how to play to the general's ego. When he takes over as aide, Patton's ego has just been stung by learning that he did not actually face Rommel in North Africa. Codman smoothly points out that he defeated Rommel's plan, which is the same as defeating the man himself. He's unwaveringly loyal, but he isn't blind to the man's faults. There's a hint of weariness and frustration in his voice when he vainly attempts to remind him to mention the Russians in a speech, with Patton's failure to do so compounding his problems with his superiors..

Field Marshal Montgomery: While the film acknowledges Montgomery's effectiveness in pushing the Germans back in North Africa, it does so only in words. What it shown is a smug man who plays politics, trying to steer the course of the war in a way that will build his own reputation. The irony that much of this describes Patton himself isn't lost on the title character, who acknowledges to Bradley: "I'm a prima donna, I admit it. What I can't stand about Monty is, he won't admit it!" I won't call the film's portrayal character assassination; the real-life Montgomery was hardly a well-liked figure even before he proposed making South African apartheid into a model for the entire continent. Still, there's no question that the movie plays up his arrogance while downplaying his military successes.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: He refuses to celebrate the victory against the Americans at Kasserene Pass. He recognizes that the Americans were poorly led and knows that this is a correctable weakness. He is quick to recognize Patton's skill, but he doesn't make the mistake of mythologizing the man. During the attack on Normandy, he urges all forces be brought to bear to repel the attack. His frustration is tangible when his superior refuses, insisting that the assault is a distraction, and that the real invasion will be led by Patton. Karl Michael Vogler does a splendid job of showing Rommel's intelligence and instincts, making the most of very limited screen time.

The opening scene makes an instant and indelible impression.

OPENING SEQUENCE - A MAN AND A FLAG:

"Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser."

The opening is striking. There is no studio logo, no lead-in. The screen simply fades in on a giant American flag. George C. Scott's Patton strides up onto the screen and delivers a sharp salute, quick cuts focusing on the salute and his eyes, on the Ivory-handled revolver, on his riding crop, on his medals.

For the next six minutes, Patton delivers a (PG-safe) profanity-laced speech to rouse the morale of the men, who are unseen. He extolls the virtue of winning and the shame of losing. He denounces the idea of individuality, then makes a gory call to not just defeat the enemy, but to "cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks!"

Scott is masterful, his Patton as colorful and witty as he is aggressive. At some points, he speaks in quieter tones, as if reflecting on his words while speaking them. Then his ramrod-straight posture somehow gets even straighter as he all but bellows the next line in his speech. We gain an impression of the general's combative nature and also of his showmanship... and, in Scott's hands, we also sense the intellect lurking underneath the pugnacity. 

It is six minutes with only one actor on screen, against that flag backdrop, talking (and sometimes shouting), and it is instantly and absolutely compelling. I'd label it as one of the great openings in film history.

Patton loses his temper at a shell-shocked soldier, a moment that will come back to haunt him.

OTHER MUSINGS:

"God help me, I do love it so."
-Patton reflects on war in the aftermath of a battle.

Patton is a strange sort of epic. It offers the large-scale battle scenes you expect from a big-studio war movie, but those scenes are not at the center of the story. The focus is much more on the mercurial, self-sabotaging title character. More time in spent with characters in rooms, talking and planning and arguing, than is spent in the midst of action.

The script earned Francis Ford Coppola his first Academy Award (alongside co-writer Edmund H. North), and I doubt it's a coincidence that he was able to direct The Godfather not long after. The story is carefully crafted. Most of what's portrayed is reasonably accurate by Hollywood standards, but incidents are selected and used to fashion a neat arc out of messy reality. There are quiet stretches, with the entire middle of the film moving away from the battlefield to focus on Patton's time in the wilderness, and yet the pace never flags. At nearly three hours, the film goes by remarkably quickly.

George C. Scott's performance and sheer screen presence anchors this, with Karl Malden is every bit his equal. Supporting performances are also strong, from Paul Stevens' loyal aide, who often seems more politically savvy than his superior, to Siegfried Rauch's Steiger, a German officer tasked with researching the general, who comes to identify with his subject.

Patton is well made, with several memorable visual moments, though I don't think it ever quite reaches the heights of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, another Oscar winning war biography centered around a brilliant but flawed central figure. There's a certain self-consciousness in some of the visuals, as if director Franklin J. Schaffner wants you to know which moments are the most "important" ones. It's not quite a problem with this film - few directors could compete with David Lean at his height - but it is something I noticed a few times while watching.

The movie gets a big lift from its music. Jerry Goldsmith's main theme is stirring and atmospheric. It doesn't simply play unaltered throughout the movie, with slight variations to match changes in mood and setting, while snatches of it also play within the general incidentals. No disrespect to Francis Lai's score for Love Story, and I suppose that film was such a huge hit that it needed to win something... but I find Patton's score to be richer, more memorable, and simply better.

The film offers several striking visuals, but some of them feel a bit self-conscious.

SEQUEL:

In 1986, CBS aired The Last Days of Patton, which saw George C. Scott returning to his most famous role. This telefilm, which aired in a 3-hour time slot (2.5 hours without commercials), covered the last part of Patton's life, from his short-lived governorship of Bavaria to his paralysis and eventual death after a car accident.

George C. Scott was much closer in age to the real Patton than he had been for the 1970 motion picture, and his performance is again excellent. The first part, which covers Patton's time in Bavaria, is interesting. The pace sags afterward, however, and the final hour becomes a slog.

Had this been limited to a 2-hour slot, with a tighter script, I think it would have been a fine companion piece to the movie. But I suspect Scott reprising Patton was too strong an incentive for the network to limit the ad space it could sell. The movie has merit, but there just isn't enough story to fill the time. I'd still label it worth watching for fans of the original film, particularly since it can regularly be found streaming free-with-ads on various services.

A defiant Patton is determined to secure victory.

OVERALL:

Patton is highly entertaining, and a sharp character study of a difficult and complex figure. Though entirely sympathetic to the title character, it doesn't skimp on portraying his many faults. This helps to bring Patton to life in a way that a hagiography wouldn't achieve.

Some of the visual moments feel oddly self-conscious to me, I think because they are directed with a precision that isn't necessarily present in other scenes. Still, it's well made and thoroughly engaging throughout, and it's bolstered by an outstanding central performance by George C. Scott.  At just shy of three hours, I can't think of a single second that left me even slightly restless - and the iconic opening is worth a point all on its own.


Rating: 8/10.

Best Picture - 1969: Midnight Cowboy
Best Picture - 1971: The French Connection (not yet reviewed)

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Midnight Cowboy, the MPAA, and the Brief Rise and Rapid Fall of the "X" Rating.

Bob Hope, representing Hollywood' s Old Guard
while hosting the 42nd Academy Awards.

"This will go down in history as the cinema season that proved that crime doesn’t pay, but there’s a fortune in adultery, incest and homosexuality."

This was one of several acid observations from comedian Bob Hope, who didn't even try to hide his dismay at changing standards when he hosted the 42nd Academy Awards on April 7, 1970. In a retrospective article, Variety's Bret Lang reflects on the divisions in that year's Oscar nominees. The two major contenders were Hello, Dolly, a musical extravaganza of the kind that had been very popular over the past decade, but whose popularity was starting to wane; and Midnight Cowboy, a grimy, street-level drama with homosexual overtones that had earned an "X" rating.

Midnight Cowboy's win was no upset. The movie had been all but universally praised by critics and had become one of 1969's biggest box office successes, while Hello, Dolly was largely greeted as "more of the same." It had also cost so much to make that, despite healthy ticket sales, it ended up losing money.

But it was notable that a movie carrying the "X" rating had been named as Best Picture of 1969. Times were changing, and many of the old Hollywood guard must have felt, as Bob Hope clearly did, that the film industry was moving in a direction they didn't particularly recognize and certainly didn't much like.

The Hays Code seal, certifying a motion picture's approval.

THE DEATH OF THE HAYS CODE:

"No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin."
-the first stated principle of the Motion Picture Production Code, better known as the Hays Code.

I've previously discussed the tendency of the American motion picture industry to avoid government regulation by policing itself. The Hays Code, introduced in 1930, applied a rigid set of rules that movies needed to follow in order to receive Hays certification. In the 1930s and '40s, Hays certification was largely a requirement for a US theatrical release. I've also discussed the Hollywood Blacklist, the industry's response to the Second Red Scare. Movie professionals who were blacklisted became unemployable (at least under their own names) for the bulk of the 1950s.

A constant throughout history is that social standards change. Neither the Hays Code nor the blacklist was particularly adaptable. It took little time for studios to start finding ways around the blacklist, and it was less than a decade after its implementation before major producers and directors began flat out defying it. The Hays Code at least could be amended, and it was on occasion. But the Code itself was specific in what it forbade and therefore rigid.

European-born directors such as Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger decided to just ignore that straitjacket, releasing movies with no Hays Certification. The lack of the Hays seal did nothing to harm their 1950s releases, which struck a chord with audiences and were highly successful. The Code lurched along until 1968 (and I'll admit to being surprised that it lasted that long), but it was neutered by the end of the 1950s.

With the Hays Code no longer effective, the industry was faced with a problem. Movies were becoming increasingly sexually frank, changing to address the tastes of much of the public. Without regulation, it would only be a matter of time before Hollywood drew the eye of the government. Some sort of replacement Code was needed.

A 1968 poster explains the new Movie Rating System.

THE MPAA RATING SYSTEM:

"Jack (Valenti, President of the MPAA) set up the system in a way that accounts for changing values... how to reflect standards rather than set them."
-former Classification and Ratings Administration Chair Joan Grave, quoted in the MPAA's publication, G is for Golden: The MPAA Film Ratings at 50.

By 1968, it was obvious that contemporary audiences wanted movies to be able to feature explicit content and to directly tackle mature themes. Jack Valenti, who had become president of the MPAA in 1966, recognized that the Hays Code had become a relic, but he also knew that something was needed to take its place, if only to keep at bay those "who saw adult-themed movies as a threat to America's moral fiber."

After some back and forth, Valenti and the MPAA eventually settled on replacing the increasingly irrelevant censorship code with an age classification system. There were four initial ratings: G, for general audiences; M, for mature audiences, with parental discretion advised; R, for restricted audiences, with children under age 16 not admitted without a parent or guardian; and X, with admittance strictly for people ages 17 and up.


THE RATINGS EVOLVE:

"The PG rating probably had too much latitude. The net it cast over content was wide enough to encompass a movie with a little bit of implied violence, like Walt Disney’s The Black Hole or Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Also, movies so corrosively upsetting in tone... such as The Mechanic, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Killer Elite, (and) The Legend of Hell House..."
-Roger Ebert, Some Material May Be Inappropriate.

The ratings evolved, a process that started almost immediately. In 1969, the M rating was changed to PG to better distinguish it from the harder R rating. This made sense. Think about it from the perspective of a parent in the late 1960s: if you're casually perusing film listings, would you know that the new "Mature" rating involved less objectionable content that the new "Restricted" rating?

The next change occurred because of a shift in perceptions of the "G" and "PG" ratings. G - "general audiences" - was initially a default rating for a movie with no objectionable content. It did not mean "kids movie," as can be seen from several decidedly adult-oriented titles from the 1960s and '70s, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, and Silent Running.

But the highest profile G-rated movies were released by Disney. A flood of Disney films, both cartoons and family-friendly live action fare, led to audiences gradually reinterpreting "G" as "children's movie." Since adults and older kids generally don't want to watch "children's movies," studios started actively inserting curse words to secure a "PG" instead. The result was that the "PG" rating became overly broad.

The MPAA addressed this by introducing "PG-13" in 1984. This created a middle ground for movies that were not explicit enough to warrant an "R," but that also were not suitable for younger viewers... which, yes, was what "PG" rating had been originally intended to be.

A final ratings swap occurred in 1990 - but before I get into that, I'm going to wind back to 1968 and the release, and commercial and awards success, of Midnight Cowboy.

Midnight Cowboy's X rating didn't stop it from becoming a hit.
But it was an exception to the rule.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY AND THE RISE AND FALL OF THE "X" RATING:

"When they first trademarked our ratings, they didn't trademark the 'X'... It was an adult rating, so anybody could indicate something was adult; they didn't need to trademark it. What happened is the sex industry took it over."
-Joan Graves, former Board Chair of the MPAA Ratings Board, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

I noted in my review that, even by the standards of the time, Midnight Cowboy's "X" rating seemed odd. It may deal frankly with sexual topics, but it's not even remotely explicit. Per Nancy Buirksi's documentary, Desperate Souls, Dark City, and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, the rating was actually requested by United Artists, out of fear that young people would imitate the homosexual behavior portrayed. Frankly, I think most young male viewers would have been more likely to mimic Ratso's limp and speech patterns than Joe Buck's unappealing movie theater escapades, but what do I know?

Midnight Cowboy was far from the only well-received film to initially be released with an "X." Stanley Kubrick's 1971 release, A Clockwork Orange, is probably the most famous example. Director Lindsay Anderson released If... with an "X" in 1968, the year before Midnight Cowboy. Other titles include Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, director Ralph Bakshi's take on artist Robert Crumb's Fritz the Cat, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, and John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Even early on, though, the "X" rating posed a problem for studios. Midnight Cowboy was a hit; but the flat restriction against underage viewers being admitted, even with their parents, automatically meant less revenue for most titles. It should be noted that If..., Midnight Cowboy, and A Clockwork Orange were all re-released with an R rating. Of the three, Midnight Cowboy was the only one that was re-rated without editing.

As Joan Graves observed in the quote above, however, the real death blow for the "X" came from pornographic films. Whether, as Graves indicates, out of a feeling that there was simply no need or (as I suspect) out of a sense of prudishness, the MPAA chose not to trademark the adults only rating. As those few high-profile X-rated movies resulted in a higher profile, pornographic movies began to advertise their fare as "X"... then as "XX"... and finally as "XXX."

This led movie theaters to increasingly refuse to even carry X-rated content, and more and more newspapers refused to advertise X-rated motion pictures. Studios had already been hesitant to accept an "X," in most cases preferring to edit their titles to receive a more audience-friendly rating. Now that hesitance became flat refusal. The handful of legitimate X-rated titles that trickled out in the late 1970s and the 1980s are, to a one, low-budget independent releases and/or foreign films, rather than anything produced by a major studio.

Author Henry Miller (Fred Ward) has an affair with aspiring writer Anaïs Nin (Maria
de Medeiros) in Henry & June, the first motion picture to be rated NC-17.

THE "NC-17" RATING:

"Mad slasher films like the Friday The 13th series routinely get an R rating from the MPAA and play at millions of teenagers... but let an artistic film come along that really sincerely considers the subject, and it’s banished by the MPAA... This must be the only civilized country on Earth that doesn't believe that there is such a thing as an adults only movie."
-Roger Ebert, in a 1990 episode of Siskel & Ebert, expresses frustration while championing Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert discussed (and argued) over movies for more than two decades across multiple movie review shows. They started with PBS's Opening Soon at a Theater Near You, which was later re-titled Sneak Previews. The breakout success of Sneak Previews led them to bigger paychecks and a bigger audience with At the Movies before they finally signed with Disney for the final version of their show, Siskel & Ebert & the Movies. Though many argue about the duo's legacy, they enjoyed a large audience and a surprising amount of influence - and to their credit, they frequently used that influence to champion foreign films and independent cinema.

In April 1990, the two reviewed Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, a movie that Greenaway released unrated rather than agree to make edits to avoid an "X." In that same episode, they laid into the contemporary state of the MPAA ratings.

I'm sure that it's total coincidence that the MPAA introduced "NC-17" in September of that year, less than six months after that episode aired.

The first motion picture to earn the new NC-17 rating was Henry & June, co-writer/director Philip Kaufman's drama about the relationship among author Henry Miller, his wife June, and budding writer Anaïs Nin (whose memoir was the basis for the film). I have to admit to finding it a bit... well, dull. Kaufman's earlier The Unbearabe Lightness of Being was a better movie on every level, and it was also a lot sexier. Still, Henry & June was both a "real" movie and a serious one (too serious by half); and while its box office performance was unspectacular, it likely made more money because of the controversy created by its rating.

In the years that followed, major studios avoided releasing NC-17 movies the exact way they used to avoid releasing X-rated ones. As a result, most titles were - again - either foreign films or indie fare. Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas made one big attempt to pull the rating into the mainstream. They had the clout, building on the success of their hit erotic thriller, Basic Instinct, and their project drew a great deal of press.

I remember, in the weeks leading up to the release of 1995's Showgirls, reading articles that breathlessly wondered if this would be the new Midnight Cowboy, legitimizing the adults only rating. Unfortunately, the resulting film did the opposite. Showgirls turned out to be a hackneyed exploitation film, good for some unintentional (?) comedy and not much else. Its failure doomed most movies with that rating to obscurity. Every so often, an independent picture gets released as "NC-17" - but the major studios have steered well clear. The letters may be different, but the overall situation is exactly the same.

Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls was meant to bring "NC-17" into the mainstream.
It ended up doing the opposite.

CONCLUSION:

Midnight Cowboy's Best Picture win seemed to herald a rising legitimacy for serious movies aimed strictly at adult audiences. This seemed to be borne out by several releases, from Linday Anderson's If... to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. But it ended up being a mirage, with even those titles resubmitted or, more often, re-edited in order to gain wider distribution.

The ratings system itself was a success for Jack Valenti's MPAA, enduring for more than two decades longer than the Hays Code it replaced. The ratings don't directly impose direct content restrictions, allowing studios and filmmakers to meet the tastes of contemporary audiences without direct defiance of the board. Also, as a classification system, ratings have been better able to adapt to shifting standards.

That is a simplification. The 1972 New York Times article, Putting the Hex on "R" and "X," observed that, even at that early stage, the ratings allowed the MPAA board to be censors in all but name. The threat of a rating that would greatly limit revenue resulted in the MPAA directing changes to many movies, something that still happens to this day (these days, often to keep movies from even being released with an "R").

Still, the success of the ratings compared to the failure of the Hays Code points to the importance in any system of having the ability to encompass and adapt to changes in times, tastes, and values.


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1969: Midnight Cowboy.

"I'm walkin' here!" Rico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) and Joe Buck (Jon Voight).

Release Date: May 25, 1969. Running Time: 113 minutes. Screenplay: Waldo Salt. Based on the novel by: James Leo Herlihy. Producer: Jerome Hellman. Director: John Schlesinger.


THE PLOT:

Texas dishwasher Joe Buck (Jon Voight) has a plan. He's going to move to New York City and enjoy an easy life as a hustler. "There's a lot of rich women there begging for it, paying for it too!" So he quits his job, throws on an exaggerated cowboy getup, and hops on a bus to chase his dream.

He encounters just one small problem: Reality.

Once in New York, this would-be hustler finds himself out-hustled by everyone he meets. The couple of clients he manages to get don't pay, and his remaining money ends up being claimed by Rico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a small time con artist who plays the hapless Texan like a fiddle.

Joe eventually finds Ratso again - but by then, the money is gone. A mixture of guilt and loneliness prompts Ratso to offer him a place to stay, and the two become unlikely friends. Ratso tries to act as "management" to Joe - but it quickly becomes clear that neither man is a good fit for this life, leaving the two grappling against poverty and increasing desperation.

Joe's delusions of being a hustler keep running into the brick wall of reality.

JON VOIGHT AS JOE BUCK:

For all his talk of being a hustler, Joe has one big problem: He's a basically decent person. Once he's confronted by crocodile tears from a bored housewife (Sylvia Miles) or the begging of a pathetic college boy (Bob Balaban), he just can't make himself enforce payment for his services. Later, when he and Ratso are freezing through the cold New York winter, he berates the con man for stealing a coat.

This was the role that made Jon Voight's career. He's present in almost every scene, and all but one scene is shown from Joe's viewpoint. Voight is excellent, balancing just enough of a confident strut in his early scenes to make it believable that he would think his plan might be successful, while also maintaining a basic vulnerability and even innocence in the hellscape that is this movie's New York City.

Ratso, at his father's graveside.

DUSTIN HOFFMAN AS RICO "RATSO" RIZZO:

Dustin Hoffman is superb in one of his most famous roles. His entry into the film, at just shy of the half hour mark, injects energy and humor at the exact point that the film's initial momentum is lagging. Hoffman was always a gifted comedic presence, and he uses that strength to good advantage. Ratso talks fast, with practically every word seeming like a salesman's patter.

When he's showing off to Joe in the lead-up to conning him, he nearly gets hit by a cab, prompting the iconic "I'm walking here!" scene. His anger flares hot, but he lets it go immediately as he observes that something like that is actually a good way to get insurance money. This gets a call back later, when he takes Joe up to his apartment inside a condemned building. He tells Joe to be careful not to slip and hurt himself, because there'd be no insurance money in that.

The humor helps to make him stand out and encourages the audience to latch onto him, but Ratso is more of a tragic figure than a comic one. Hoffman's face is rarely still, but his eyes are sad and soulful. Ratso's goal is to move to Miami, where he thinks he'll have an easy life - a parallel with Joe, who expected an easy life in New York. As with Joe, there's a sneaking suspicion that if he made the move, he'd just continue living the same existence, albeit in a warmer climate that would likely be better for his (unnamed, but evident) tuberculosis.

Joe finally makes a connection with Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro).

OTHER CHARACTERS:

Cass: Sylvia Miles makes a big impression as Joe's first New York "client," a well-off Manhattan woman who lives in a penthouse - in short, definitely someone who can afford his services. Once the deed is done, she feigns indignance when he asks for money, breaking down into extremely fake tears until he pays her to assuage his own guilt. The interaction sets the tone for his entire New York adventure, making it clear right away that he's not a hustler, but a mark.

Shirley: Joe's only "success", Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro), is the opposite of Cass. She's appealing and pleasant, and she doesn't hesitate to pay. Even when Joe fails to perform, she doesn't get upset. She does needle him with a few teasing implications about his sexuality, which prompts him into proving her wrong - exactly as designed. She ends the encounter by lining up another client for him, making her - not Ratso - into his only effective manager.

Others: Outside of Joe and Ratso, almost all characters appear briefly. Most manage to make decent impressions, however. A very young Bob Balaban is suitably pathetic as a college boy who enlists Joe's services but lies about having money, then whimpers until Joe lets him go. Barnard Hughes is an out of town businessman who wants to pay Joe for sex, but who is too ashamed of his own impulses. Jennifer Salt (daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt) is a young woman from Joe's past, seen in flashbacks, whose refrain that Joe's "the only one" gets a chilling payoff in the final flashback. None of these actors and characters appear for more than a few minutes, but each contributes to the bleak mosaic of people trying and failing to break through their own isolation.

Joe and Ratso forge an unlikely friendship.

THOUGHTS:

Midnight Cowboy is the only "X" Rated movie to have ever won the Best Picture Oscar. I'll go into more detail about that in a supplemental post. Suffice it to say that, even by 1969 standards, it was a dubious rating. Despite its premise, this movie is no more than moderate in its sexual content and is fairly mild in terms of explicitness, and it's unsurprising that the rating was changed to an "R" when it was reissued in 1971.

This is a well-made movie, one that makes outstanding use of locations. The real New York settings showcase city's beauty when Joe first arrives, only to gradually shift to emphasizing coldness, isolation, and decay. Acting is excellent across the board. Other than Joe and Ratso, no one gets more than a couple of scenes, but every character makes a distinct impression.

Still, for me, it's very much of a movie of two halves. Joe is on his own for most of the first half, and he's a lot less engaging without Ratso acting as a foil. The structure also gets a bit repetitive: Joe makes a potential connection, in each case hoping to get ahead, only to end up worse off than before. This happens three times (two clients, with Ratso in between); and while I don't think there's anything here you could cut, I still have to admit to finding it wearying.

The second half shifts focus to the friendship between Joe and Ratso. The movie was starting to lose me, but that shift in focus quickly reeled me back in. Dustin Hoffman is particularly good at mixing in just enough humor to make you want to watch without undercutting the emotion. When he first offers Joe a place to stay, Joe is understandably wary. I love the way Hoffman snaps, "I'm inviting you!" The con artist's seemingly authentic indignance is amusing, but there's also a perfectly judged trace of desperation in it.

The scenes I most connect with are consistently those featuring both characters. Ratso breaks into a shoeshine box to clean up Joe's boots for the next potential client, chattering about his father, who shined shoes for a living and died from health issues from the fumes. Before he even finishes speaking about how he will never follow in his father's footsteps, a policeman sits down beside Joe, waiting for his turn. Then more policemen sit, and Ratso's face falls.

There's a lovely nonverbal bit, in which the two dance to an orange juice jingle from Joe's radio to keep warm - a moment that bridges the grim and the humorous until the sequence delivers its bleak punchline. Another moment, the only scene from Ratso's persepective instead of Joe's has the con man watching as Joe goes into a women's hotel to drum up business. Ratso begins fantasizing about Florida - a fantasy that turns as Joe's lack of subtlety results in failure.

I won't spoil the ending, though it's not hard to see coming. I will say that I find the entire last ten minutes to be outstanding. Joe Buck has a realization that the audience made by the twenty minute mark; Ratso sort-of achieves his own dream, and their respective final lines are perfectly chosen.

Oh, and Harry Nilsson's rendition of Fred Neil's Everybody's Talkin' is splendid, a good song on its own that also matches and reflects the movie to which it's attached.

Joe is appalled as New Yorkers calmly walk past a dead body on the sidewalk.

OVERALL:

I'm torn on assigning a rating for Midnight Cowboy. Though performances, direction, and script are all high quality, I had difficulty connecting with it during its first half. I mostly love the second half, however, with the friendship/ersatz-family relationship between Joe and Ratso lending warmth and humor that offsets the bleakness.

This "tale of two halves" leaves me wavering between a "7" and an "8." In the end, I'm going with the higher score, because I think the strength of the ending outweighs my issues with the first half.


Rating: 8/10.

Related Post: Midnight Cowboy, the MPAA, and the Brief Rise and Rapid Fall of the "X" Rating.

Best Picture - 1968: Oliver
Best Picture - 1970: Patton

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Singing Through a Time of Change: The Musical, the Best Picture Oscar, and the 1960s.

The Sound of Music: The biggest of five musicals that won Best Picture between 1958 and 1968.

From 1958 to 1968, five musicals won the Academy Award for Best Picture: Gigi, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Oliver! This ended up being the last big surge in popularity for the genre, however. By the end of the 1960s, musicals - alongside other previously popular films such as westerns and Biblical epics - were flagging in popularity. But why were musicals so honored during their final decade as a major movie genre?

As I've noted in my reviews, and despite me thoroughly enjoying a few of them, the musical really isn't my genre. Still, when just shy of half of Best Picture winners during a (roughly) decade long period belong to one specific type of movie, and when that type of movie then almost immediately falls out of favor thereafter, I think it bears at least a passing examination.


ESCAPISM IN A TIME OF CHANGE:

"It’s refreshing and not too complicated. A love story, with children and music. That word ‘joyous’ has an awful lot to do with it."
-Julie Andrews on the success of The Sound of Music. 

Musicals had been a popular genre since the introduction of talkies. The first synced dialogue in a full feature film came in The Jazz Singer, which was a musical. Even so, from 1927 - 1957, the only musicals to win Best Picture were The Broadway Melody, The Great Ziegfeld, and An American in Paris. This wasn't because of any lack of quality musicals. Examples of musicals that, in my opinion, were better than any of the ones that actually won the Oscar during this period included: the 1937 and 1954 versions of A Star Is Born, The Wizard of Oz, Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones, and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain. None of these won the award. Despite now being regarded as one of the greats in the genre, Singin' in the Rain wasn't even nominated!

So why, starting in 1958, did musicals suddenly start routinely winning the big award? I think one reason is that it was a turbulent era. Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 launched in October 1957, prompting enormous anxiety in the West and effectively kicking off the Space Race. The Civil Rights movement grew, with increasingly large-scale demonstrations against segregation and violent incidents that included the bombing of the 15th Street Baptist Church in 1963 and the Freedom Summer murders of 1964. Political assassinations occurred throughout the 1960s, including the murders of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. US involvement in Vietnam expanded, culminating in the unrest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Entertainment provides a refuge from reality, and musicals are a largely escapist genre. Four of the five Best Picture winning musicals were period pieces, far removed from the chaos of moviegoers' contemporary world. Only West Side Story, with its conflict between Irish/Polish and Puerto Rican street gangs, was set in the present or dealt directly with current issues. The other four titles were more geared toward simple entertainment. Even The Sound of Music is mostly quite light until the shift in tone in the final Act.

It was a period that drove people to seek escape... and it helped that these were well made movies that found great popular success, making it that much easier for the Academy to bestow those honors.

Rita Moreno in West Side Story - the only one of the
winning musicals dealing directly with contemporary issues.

A REALIGNMENT OF VIEWER TASTES:

"I could feel musicals were dying, because there wasn't a renewal of stories and styles and they kept repeating the same plot."
-Leslie Caron, quoted in Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s.

The success of musicals in the early/mid 1960s seemed to promise a long life for the genre. Instead, it was a last gasp, a big final production number before the genre danced mostly off the stage. By the end of the 1960s, and despite the popularity of 1968's Oliver!, the musical was in sharp decline.

There are several reasons for this. The success of musicals - particularly The Sound of Music - led to the market becoming saturated. The back half of the decade saw more and more musicals being greenlit in an attempt to replicate that windfall. But The Sound of Music is an extremely well-made film with an excellent script and strong performances. Productions such as Hello Dolly!, Star!, and Paint Your Wagon (I'm actually rather fond of that last... but I'd love to know who thought a musical starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood was a good idea!?!) lacked the qualities needed to connect with either critics or audiences. And because it was an expensive genre, when these movies failed, it cost studios dearly.

Even beyond the issues of oversaturation and declining quality, I think there was a realignment in viewer tastes. Three classic genres had been cinematic mainstays for most of the life of the motion picture industry: the Biblical epic, the musical, and the western. All three genres seemed to be flourishing at the start of the 1960s. In a time of change, though, these films started to look not just old-fashioned but downright creaky. By 1970, all three were on the wane.

The Biblical epic all but died on the bigscreen, with most productions moving to television. Westerns and musicals hobbled through for a while, in large part by shifting to try to reflect the new age. Much has been written about the "anti-westerns" of the late 1960s and 1970s, and that same time period saw what I would dub the "anti-musical." Bob Fosse's Cabaret and All That Jazz were more cynical than classic musicals, with production numbers that embraced the darkness rather than providing relief from it. Even then, such films were not always successful. Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, for example, was a well-made, well-acted movie... that failed spectacularly both with contemporary critics and audiences.

There would continue to be scattered hits. 1978's Grease was a traditional musical that tapped into nostalgia for a bygone age, leaning into the same corniness that audiences had begun rejecting a decade prior. But I doubt Grease would have struck a chord had there been ten similar films that same year. And just as Dances with Wolves did not lead to a new western boom, neither Les Miserables nor La La Land led to a big-scale revival of the musical. And Cats - from the same director as Les Miserables - proved a stark reminder that when such films flop, they tend to flop hard.

Gigi's very story - a lighthearted romance between an adult man and a teen girl -
proves that viewer sensibilities can and do change.

POST-SCRIPT:

"Movies can be seen as a mirror for society."
-Godwin Francis, Medium

I think the musical "boom" for Best Picture Winners in the late 1950s and '60s was, in its way, a reflection of that time, or at least a reaction to it. In an age of massive social change, viewers and Academy voters alike took refuge in the comfort of a familiar genre. It didn't hurt that the quality was often high: The Sound of Music absolutely deserved its Oscar, and I wouldn't particularly argue with the awards for West Side Story or My Fair Lady (I would argue against those for Gigi and Oliver).

But the same social changes that made musicals an attractive escape during the first half of the decade made the same films seem like artifacts of a bygone age by the decade's end. Just as I don't think it's a coincidence that this time of change was one that resulted in so many wins for an inherently escapist genre, I also don't think it's a coincidence that the musical went out of style at roughly the same time that the western and the Biblical epic did.

The cultural shift resulted in audiences also shifting, turning away from previously unassailable genres. The next decade's major titles - and major awards - would be dominated by very different fare...


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1968: Oliver!

Workhouse orphan Oliver Twist (Mark Lester) does the unimaginable: He asks for more gruel.

Release Date: Sept. 26, 1968. Running Time: 153 minutes. Screenplay: Vernon Harris. Based on the 1960 musical by: Lionel Bart, based on the novel, Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. Producer: John Woolf. Director: Carol Reed.


THE PLOT:

Oliver Twist (Mark Lester) is a young orphan living in a 19th century workhouse. While working for an undertaker (Leonard Rossiter), he manages to escape. He makes his way to London, hoping to make his fortune. There, he meets "The Artful Dodger" (Jack Wild), a skilled pickpocket his own age who takes him to his benefactor, the wily old Fagin (Ron Moody). Fagin heads a gang of young pickpockets, working in tandem with the brutish Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed).

While out with Oliver, Dodger attempts to pick the pocket of Mr. Brownlow (Jospeh O'Conor), a respectable gentleman. Dodger's attempt goes awry, and Oliver ends up taking the blame. A witness steps forward to clear him, and Brownlow takes him in out of a sense of guilt. But Fagin and Sikes worry that he might yet talk and expose their operation. Sikes becomes fixated on the possibility and becomes determined to bring Oliver back to a life of petty criminal activity - or, failing that, to silence the boy permanently!

Criminals Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) and Fagin (Ron Moody) worry that Oliver knows too much.

CHARACTERS:

Oliver Twist: He shows flashes of personality in the first half hour. He plays along with undertaker Sowerberry's plan to drum up business by using him as a mourner for children's funerals. Later, when the despicable Noah Claypole (Kenneth Cranham) insults his mother, he erupts and attacks the man. Alas, these two moments and his actual escape are about it for him doing anything. As soon as he reaches London, his story becomes a series of events that happen to him. This combines with an unremarkable child performance by Mark Lester to make Oliver himself into the weakest single part of the movie, Oliver!

Fagin: Ron Moody recreates his acclaimed stage performance as Fagin, and he is almost certainly the best thing in the film. He's been significantly toned down from the novel. Dickens's Fagin was unquestionably a villain, a deliberate catalyst for violence even though he didn't directly commit it; Oliver!'s Fagin is a largely harmless rogue. He's appalled by Bill Sikes's brutality, and "No violence, Bill!" practically becomes a catchphrase. As Sikes becomes more threatening, Fagin considers reforming and living an honest life - though it doesn't take long for him to talk himself out of it, in one of the movie's more entertaining musical numbers.

Bill Sikes: With Fagin made harmless and another villainous character removed entirely, all the malice falls to Bill Sikes. This actually works, thanks in no small part to the glowering presence of Oliver Reed. His Sikes is what you'd get if malice was somehow cast into human form. He doesn't so much fall back on intimidation tactics as lean into them as a default. He clearly frightens Fagin and the children, and he keeps his lover, Nancy, doing his bidding with threats of violence. From threats, it's a very short escalation to actual violence, with the end of the movie seeing him literally fleeing from a torch carrying mob that seems more appropriate for him than it ever did for Dr. Frankenstein's unfortunate monster.

Nancy: Shani Wallis's Nancy is the light to Sikes's darkness. She's absolutely in love with him and repeatedly makes clear that she won't betray him. She has no illusions about what kind of man he is, though. She accepts his threats and abuse when they're directed at her. But when Sikes turns on Oliver, she's less willing to go along. She argues against taking the boy away from his comfortable new life with Brownlow, and as Sikes's ill-will toward him grows, she does the unthinkable and acts against him.

Artful Dodger: I already noted how bland I find Mark Lester in the title role. That stands out all the more by comparison with Jack Wild's Dodger. Despite being even younger than Lester, Wild gives a fine child performance. His Dodger is quick-witted and silver-tongued as he talks Oliver into following him back to Fagin's hideout. When Oliver becomes the target of pursuit, Dodger tries to misdirect the police, steering them away from the boy. He's often paired with Fagin, memorably at the end of the film, and there's a sense that Dodger is probably very much like Fagin was himself as a boy... which has a sobering effect on the comedy, as Dodger is probably headed toward much the same life as his mentor.

Oliver meets the Artful Dodger (Jack Wild). One of these
child performances is significantly better than the other.

A GAPING HOLE WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER SHOULD BE:

This was my first time watching Oliver!, and I doubt it's a movie I'll revisit. I enjoyed it well enough, and I'll heap plenty of praise on aspects of it below. But I had one big problem, and that was with Oliver himself.

As I indicated in the "Characters" section, Oliver only actually does anything in the first half hour. His escape from Sowberry and the workhouse is his high point as a character. After that, he becomes ridiculously passive. Dodger takes him to Fagin. Dodger steals the wallet that he is blamed for. Mr. Brownlow takes him in to show him a better life. Fagin and Sikes plot to take him back. Nancy tries to rescue him. Oliver barely even reacts to most of this, to the point where it wouldn't make much difference if he was replaced with a sack of potatoes that was passed from one character to the next.

In fairness, Oliver was also quite passive in Charles Dickens' source novel, Oliver Twist. But the musical takes an existing problem and makes it worse. By eliminating some supporting characters who were directly linked to Oliver, and by toning down Fagin's villainy so that he no longer poses a direct threat, the title character is left with no meaningful interaction with anyone. This reduces him to a plot device, which greatly limits my engagement.

Musical number, Consider Yourself, turns into a tour of working-class London.

CHARISMATIC PERFORMANCES AND A FANTASTIC PRODUCTION:

Despite the weakness of Oliver himself, I mostly enjoyed the movie thanks to its many other merits. Ron Moody's charismatically sleazy Fagin just about fills the gaping hole where a main character should be. The movie sparks to life every time he takes centerstage - and in the middle of the film, that happens a lot, almost always with entertaining results. Too bad, then, that he mostly recedes to the background for the final Act, with Sikes and Nancy taking most of the focus as the tone turns darker.

The production itself is fantastic. Director Carol Reed spent weeks on the big production numbers, and the effort pays off. Consider Yourself, when Oliver meets Dodger, is a musical tour of working-class London. Dodger escorts him to Fagin's hideout through merchants, newspaper sellers, and various others. Each person they pass joins the song, with the performance growing to encompass the entire street.

Its mirror image comes after the Intermission, as Oliver looks out onto the upper-class street of Brownlow's estate to see a flower girl, a strawberry vendor, and milk maids selling their wares to the rich. Again, the number, Who Will Buy?, grows to fill the area, one which belongs to a completely different world than Fagin - and yet is also uncomfortably close geographically, as shown at the end by the camera closing on Bill Sikes, watching for his prey.

The script moves some of the stage version's songs around to good effect. In the stage musical, the boisterous Oom-Pah-Pah is Nancy's first song, introducing the tavern where she plies her trade. The film changes her introductory song to It's a Fine Life, which puts more focus on her character and her acceptance of a less-than-ideal existence. Oom-Pah-Pah is moved to her final song, with her deliberately rousing the people in the tavern to create a distraction for Oliver's escape. This adds a level of tension, folding the song into a part of the story.

Still, it's hard to fully get past the best moments being ones in which Oliver himself is on the periphery. The film dies whenever the focus returns to him. Little wonder, then, that the further along the story goes, the less the title character seems to be at the center of the action.

Sikes threatens Nancy (Shani Wallis).

REMAKES AND RETELLINGS:

As with almost any Dickens story, there are many film and television versions of Oliver Twist. The earliest is dated 1909, and variations of the story continue to be presented regularly. Some of the more notable adaptations include:

Oliver Twist (1922). Director Frank Lloyd, who would later helm Mutiny on the Bounty, directs this silent version starring Jackie Coogan as Oliver and Lon Chaney as Fagin. I haven't seen it, but contemporary reception was almost universally positive, with Chaney's caricatured Fagin influencing most later portrayals. Like too many silent films, it was lost for decades, until a print was found in 1973.

Oliver Twist (1948). Probably the most well-known non-musical version of Dickens' novel, this generally faithful adaptation was directed by David Lean. Alec Guinness's Fagin stirred controversy for playing up Jewish stereotypes, but his performance also was an obvious influence on Ron Moody's characterization (though Moody and director Carol Reed de-emphasized the stereotypical elements). As with most of Lean's works, the film is generally well regarded today.

Oliver & Company (1988). The Disney version makes Oliver a kitten who joins a pack of dogs to survive on the streets of 1980s New York. Dom DeLuise's Fagin is even less villainous than the 1968 movie's, with him coming across as well-meaning and likable. It performed well at the box office, and in retrospect its success was a sign that Disney's animation division was about to turn things around after lackluster output over the previous decade.

Oliver arrives in London.

OVERALL:

Oliver! is a fine production boasting strong performances by Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, and Shani Wallis. It also has an excellent child performance in Jack Wild's Artful Dodger, who makes a fun double act with Moody's Fagin.

Unfortunately, Oliver himself is a bland, personality-free void, and I found my interest waning any time he took center stage. The movie itself doesn't seem interested in him as a character, taking any excuse to focus on Fagin or Sikes or Nancy, to the point that the title character barely even speaks across the second half of the movie! In the end, I can't escape the sense that this movie has a big hole where its young hero should be.

I still liked it more than not - but I can't rate it as one of the better Best Picture winners. Given that The Lion in Winter and 2001: A Space Odyssey were released the same year, I think the Academy got this one wrong.


Rating: 6/10.

Related Post: Singing Through a Time of Change - The Musical, The Best Picture Oscar, and the 1960s.

Best Picture - 1967: In the Heat of the Night
Best Picture - 1969: Midnight Cowboy

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