In the Heat of the Night (1967): Eitan’s Take

Released in the thick of the Summer of Love, Norman Jewison’s truly incendiary In the Heat of the Night is the first Best Picture winner we’ve seen that has felt really immediate, really visceral, and really contemporary. Its brilliant social critiques are obvious (or, at least they are now) and its central mystery is hardly worth blinking an eye at, but the atmosphere of the film — Poitier’s tough and intelligent performance, the classy jazz and blues score, and the crisp writing, to name just a few elements — is soulful, rich, and thrilling. Nowadays, a hack like Paul Haggis could probably take the same material and turn it into a hodgepodge of liberal guilt-inducing malaise, but it’s tough not to admire the risks this film took in 1967.

Of course, watching a slightly preachy detective film about a black man coming into a town of redneck racists and saving them from themselves (Blazing Saddles, anyone?) requires a bit of patience and some acquiescence to the shopworn cliches of both the film noir and the racial reconciliation drama. But as with so many great genre pics, it’s easy to forget about the hamminess of this approach when the performances and the dialogue are so unforgettable. Poitier’s performance is a brilliant melange of passionate anger, soul, grit, and jazzy coolness. Rod Steiger (pre-bald-creepiness) matches him note-for-note, imbuing what could have been a tacky caricature with just enough emotional depth and hurt to believe his willing partnership with a mostly despised black detective. We know that they’ll eventually solve the crime, and a film this complex cannot rest on a simple, “Law and Order”-style investigative framework. At the same time, it cannot be content with only busting taboos and failing to provide an exciting story. That it manages to do nearly all these things at once, while remaining edgy and thrilling, is a great testament to the artists behind it.

It would be easy to criticize this film for being a simplistic, easily-digestible apologia for middle-class, white liberals to stand up and pat themselves on the back for enjoying. If I was more cynical, I might very dismiss it as that myself. But within this film’s historical context — it was released at the dawn of New Hollywood, and is the subject, along with the four other Best Picture nominees that year, of the supposedly excellent “Pictures at a Revolution” — I refuse to write it off and ignore the new, edgy, ambitious cinematic aesthetic that it embodies. I certainly don’t enjoy or even admire it as much as my two favorite 1967 Best Picture nominees, The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde, but it was a worthy winner nonetheless. It’s too bad that 2004’s winner, Crash, took a similar set of narrative ideas and morphed it into an absurd after-school special.

8/10.

Marty (1955): Eitan’s Take

About the only thing I knew going in to Marty was that Herb Stempel famously lost to Charles Van Doren on 21 with a question about this utterly wonderful Best Picture winner. Every once in a while, it seems the Academy puts away all their love for big epics and dark mysteries and tales of desperation and woe and falls head over heels for a warm gem like Marty. (Recent nominees Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, and Juno definitely fall into the small-budget-big-heart category that this movie kicked off).

Ernest Borgnine is adorable as oafish Italian lump Marty, who feels pressure from his stereotypical mom and his weaselly friends to go out and score a “tomatah” at a dance hall or a dive bar on 72nd. But fate steps in and hands him a wonderful, if a little homely, woman named Clara who’s dumped by a jerk at the Starland Ballroom. A night of meet-cute ensues, and their relationship takes funny and charming turns at every chance encounter.

As a film, Marty is just like a warm patch of sunlight. For 90 minutes, we get to bask in the glow of a sweet underdog story, with moments of perfect nebbishy romance (Marty running through the streets, exhilarated, trying to find a taxi after he drops Clara off at her house, is one of the most romantic moments in any Best Picture winner, ever) and an undefeatable humanity shining through.

An 8, with a big smile on my face.

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947): Eitan’s Take

Looking back on the two decades of films we have watched so far, a clear trend is emerging. About half of them are about characters too laid back to get caught up in the affairs of the world — the empty souls in Grand Hotel, the lame assholes in Cavalcade, Gable’s smarmy and aimless huckster in It Happened One Night, the play-it-cool grandaddy in You Can’t Take it With You, the low-key priest in Going My Way, and the domesticated folks of Mrs. Miniver and Best Years. The other half, the more important half, are about frustratingly obsessed, nearly egomaniacal people, driven to madness and extreme behavior by the stirring of a strange part of their souls — Yancey in Cimarron, Christian and Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, Flo Ziegfeld, Emile Zola, Scarlett O’Hara, Laurence Olivier and the maid in Rebecca, Don Birman in The Lost Weekend, and now Phil Green in Elia Kazan’s simplistic but ultimately rewarding Gentleman’s Agreement. 1947 was the height of Jewish involvement in Hollywood, and it’s no surprise that they picked a scathing and insightful film about anti-Semitism for the big prize. If the film came out today, I have no doubt it would still win. The obsession of Phil Green, played marvelously and with real craftmanship by Gregory Peck (swoon), is in cracking the hidden code of anti-Semitism and driving it out by exposing it not as a bigotry founded on false premises, but as a bigotry perpetuated by false and hypocritical enablers.

The film is too simplistic in its expectation that Mr. Green would automatically become the victim of endless acts and implications of hatred toward Judaism just because he mentions it ever so slightly in front of questionable company, and as a Jew and a longtime scholar of anti-Semitism, I think that the film fails to earn a total suspension of disbelief on my part. For one thing, Green never even comes to terms with potential rationale for anti-Semitism — even though there really is none, and anti-Semitism is almost 100% irrational, he should have at least questioned this once in the film — he merely decries it as the hobby of publicly decent/privately despicable white Christians, too comfortable with their own sense of superiority. The film also never mentions the Holocaust, which is just ridiculous. 6 million Jews mass murdered in the name of anti-Semitism just five years earlier, and nary a peep from the lips of any one of the characters (especially the wacky Jewish scientist and Phil’s pragmatic Jewish friend David)? Please. Not to mention the fact that this film, which purports to be and often succeeds at being a beacon of hope for a renewal of freedom and equality in America, was directed by a thuggish scumbag who sold out his own friends and colleagues by offering up names by the dozens during Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch hunt. Kudos to him for crafting a smart and worthwhile script into a classy, humanistic, and insightful film about a religion he didn’t even belong to; shame on him for earning an Oscar for it and squandering its noble message for his own self-interest.

This worthwhile film, which mostly hits the mark, earns an 8/10

How Green Was My Valley (1941): Eitan’s Take

It’s a shame that John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley has come to be known as “the film that beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture” when it should have already rightfully earned its place among the most well-regarded films of all time. Kane is a distinctly American film, with the labored intellectualism of Orson Welles driving a plot about business, ego, and the “American Dream.” Meanwhile, How Green Was My Valley is a different kind of story, built upon foreign family ideals and the traditions of a far-off land few people seem to care about (Wales). However, I feel as though the values set forth in this wonderful — though utterly depressing — film are universal: family, faith, hard work, and preserving even the most painful memories of childhood as a way to stake out a vision for the future.

Although Kane was truly a masterpiece of cinematography, it’s unbelievable that few look to this film as a perfectly shot specimen of celluloid. Every frame could be a photo; the bleak Welsh coal-mining landscape is rendered beautifully in a gritty black and white, and the angelic face of Roddy McDowall is photographed in such a remarkable way that you feel his optimism break through the dark clouds of grief that permeate the rest of the movie. I’ve always been a big fan of the look and feel of Ford’s similarly depressing/uplifting The Grapes of Wrath (even though it doesn’t hold a candle to the book), and it’s clear that he knew he had hit the right note with that film one year prior and wanted to stay on a roll. My favorite John Ford movies are still Stagecoach and The Quiet Man, but this one is definitely up there — maybe even better than The Searchers if I’m even allowed to say that publicly.

I said last night that I was impressed with the unpreachy, totally creepy and awesome Rebecca and how its win broke the trend of “important message movies,” and How Green Was My Valley is definitely a sort of return to that mold. Nevertheless, I don’t fault it, and I definitely don’t fault it for beating out Kane. Orson Welles’ masterpiece seems to have won in the end, so I’ll tip my hat to Ford’s film and award it a solid 8/10.

Rebecca (1940): Eitan’s Take

I can’t tell you how completely pleased I am — if you could see the wide smirk across my face, you’d know — that Alfred Hitchcock’s utterly perverse, demented, and sickeningly awesome Rebecca won Best Picture. As impressed as I was by the sweep and perfectly executed drama of Gone With the Wind, it was a pretty obvious shoo-in for the award. Rebecca is the anti-GWTW, romantic in all the wrong ways, disquieting and raw, maddening, and suspenseful. It’s far from a perfect film, and at some points I was waiting for Hitchcock to go all-out-Hitchcock on the sordid plot, but I realize he was slightly limited by the source material. Du Maurier’s story is wonderful and chilling, and definitely worthy of his adaptation (as was her similarly creepy story “The Birds”), but I’ve always thought that Hitchcock did better with his own story ideas than with the ideas of others.

Either way, this movie confirms why Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most beloved directors of all time. In every scene, we feel his confident hand guide moment after moment of dread and queasiness. Every closeup of Laurence Olivier’s tortured face, every shot of clandestinely lesbian Mrs. Danvers sullenly insist on the world’s eternal love for the recently dead Rebecca, every moment we watch Joan Fontaine live a terrifying lie for her strange and wayward husband we are reminded of Hitchcock’s total mastery of the camera. He mixes in elements of voyeurism (the creepy old man by the docks), murder (Rebecca’s mysterious disappearance that goes unexplained until the very end), and the twists and turns we expect from him. While Rebecca doesn’t quite measure up to the director’s absolute masterpieces (Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Strangers on a Train), it shows the same penchant for smart, dark weirdness and the complete ugliness of humanity; after nearly a decade of middlebrow “important message films,” I’m utterly pleased that the Academy took such a left turn and picked something rather unconventional for their award. I have no doubt that this choice set the precedent for many other winners in the same demented vein: Midnight Cowboy, Silence of the Lambs, and American Beauty. I give it an 8/10.

You Can’t Take it With You (1938): Eitan’s Take

You gotta hand it to a film that ends with a rousing hoedown of “Polly Wolly Doodle” on two harmonicas and a xylophone… no one does it quite like Capra. The great sentimentalist director was known for his iconic scenes of suburban whimsy — the title of his late movie “Pocketful of Miracles” pretty much sums up his approach to filmmaking — and “You Can’t Take it With You” is no different. However, I was surprised and pleased by the subtlety of these scenes. I still knew exactly what they were, and I could still sense the hand of Capra moving these scenes along (such as when reliably aw-shucks Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur learn how to dance the Big Apple and when old Grandpa Vanderhof’s countless friends unite in a courtroom near the end of the film to pay a $100 fine he receives for the illegal manufacturing of fireworks), but they were strangely charming and uplifting, rather than being cloying and pseudo-religious. Regardless, people who hate Capra will still hate this film, but I think it has some unique elements that relieve it from possibly pandering and being obnoxiously over the top.

Lionel Barrymore was one of the best parts of Grand Hotel, and he is absolutely wonderful here as Vanderhof, the patriarch of a predictably wacky family, populated by goofy black maids, Russian wrestlers/ballet teachers, typesetters for the coming Communist revolution, and a frustratingly bland younger daughter. Seriously, how in the world did mopey, boring Alice Sycamore end up in such a nutty family? Regardless, Barrymore’s performance is one of the most captivating I have ever seen in a Capra film, and every scene he is in is truly joyous. When he tells the stuffy, fat, Baldwin-esque Anthony P. Kirby that no one can “take it with him,” I felt in awe of both the important lesson at hand (see, there’s Capra, yanking at my heartstrings again) and the naturalistic eloquence with which Barrymore delivered the line.

Magic, whimsy, and solid screenwriting aside, I’m actually quite surprised that this movie won Best Picture. It doesn’t appear that 1938 was a particularly strong year for movies — it was definitely the calm before the storm of 1939, still considered the greatest year in cinema history — but You Can’t Take it With You doesn’t seem to fit the arc of winners so far. It isn’t epic, important, beautifully shot, or all that consequential in the scheme of things. It’s just a character-driven story, well acted, nicely developed and modestly fleshed out from a nice little stage play (which we did at my school in 9th grade, when I was really into technical theater) with a neat little “everyone learned their lesson” ending. As movies go, it’s watchable, charming, and fun. As Best Picture winners go, it’s not exactly a natural part of the club. 8/10.

Cimarron (1931): Eitan’s Take

“That’s the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands a time…” – The Stranger, The Big Lebowski

After falling asleep during the first attempt to watch Cimarron, I was incredibly surprised to watch the whole film and discover a truly beautiful, epic tale of American ego, discovery, fortitude, and development. Starting with a quest into the empty dustpan of Oklahoma, this absolutely great movie delves into the lives of two pioneers — one restless and the other reluctant — who settle in Osage, Oklahoma just as it is beginning to boom into a real town. Without any of the goofy “ain’t Oklahoma great” theatrics of, well, you know the musical, Cimarron shows how rough it really was to be a part of the fledgling society. Rampant racism, cold-hearted bandits, failed businesses, greedy politicians and sycophants, harlotry, an unjust social system… the list goes on and on. The inner bravado of protagonist Yancey Cravat — a newspaper editor, marshall, attorney, and all around town badass — acts as the motor for the story, which lacks the epic vistas of later John Ford westerns, but more than makes up for it with its epic sweep across forty years.

I was truly surprised at how affecting the movie was. It had the beautiful pacing of more modern epic historical dramas; over the span of just two hours, we watch Yancey and his wife transform from rascally adventurers to souls crushed by the wheels of time. Years pass by in instants, but the audience is given clues to understand what exactly those years had in store for these people. It is also one of the best depictions of the transformation from Westward Ho! ambition in the late 1800s to the mechanized ennui of the early 1900s. It’s amazing what our country left behind when we annexed the whole west and decided that pioneers — once the go-get-em soul of our young country — were obsolete old fools, deserving to die in a ditch in an oil field.

Overall, very impressive acting by the leads, especially in the courtroom scene and the church inauguration scene. It’s amazing how many messages about American identity and ambition they were able to cram into just two hours. I started out as a skeptic, but now I know why this won Best Picture; many, many historical/western films like it have won the award since, but this appears to be the first of its class. I give it an 8.