What We Missed: 1965
Lara and the von Trapps.
ICYMI: the five films nominated for Best Actor Oscars from 1965 were The Pawnbroker, Cat Ballou, Ship of Fools, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and Othello. The links provide the trivia write-ups on those films while this post discusses what else was happening in the movies that year.
1965 Best Picture winner and highest grossing film: The Sound of Music. For 1964, we watched four movies and all four of them were nominated for Best Picture. This time, of the flicks we watched, only Ship of Fools received a Best Picture nod. That means we’ve got some ground to cover in this wrap-up post.
The Sound of Music starred Julie Andrews one year after Mary Poppins. In it, she played Maria, a free-spirited failed nun who becomes a magic nanny governess for the seven children of Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). Like Mary Poppins, Maria brings joy and music to the household she’s in charge of, but the film swaps out the setting of Edwardian England for Nazi-occupied Austria.
The film was based on a 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which was itself inspired by the real Maria’s memoir, “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.” It’s another musical where basically all of the songs are well-known:
“Maria,” where the nuns try to solve a problem like Maria. Some of the words they use to describe her: flibbertigibbet, will-o’-the-wisp, clown.
“My Favorite Things”: a Christmas classic that has nothing to do with Christmas.
“Do-Re-Mi,” an excellent solfège teaching tool.
“Edelweiss”: about the flower, but really about Nazi occupation.
Throw “I Have Confidence,” “So Long, Farewell,” “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” and the title song (the one about how “the hills are alive”) onto the “stuff you should know” pile as well.
1965 Best Picture nominee and 2nd-highest grossing film: Doctor Zhivago. An adaptation of the Boris Pasternak novel with director David Lean doing epic David Lean things. The film stars Omar Sharif as Yuri Zhivago, a doctor-slash-poet who lives through the Russian Revolution, and focuses on his forbidden and tragic affair with Macguffin Lara (Julie Christie).
Like Lean’s other epics, Doctor Zhivago had a stacked cast that included Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie’s daughter), Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, and Rod Steiger. The film’s score (done by Maurice Jarre, who also did Lawrence of Arabia) includes “Lara’s Theme,” which features the balalaika, a Russian stringed instrument.
The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago are both love stories set against backdrops of historical upheavals, but look at how their characters are shaped by that history. The von Trapps escape Austria and history while Lara and Yuri are powerless against that same tide. Which you prefer says more about you than about the movies.
For completeness, the other two Best Picture nominees were:
Darling. It was a big year for Julie Christie: she co-starred in the 2nd biggest film of 1965 (Doctor Zhivago) and won the Best Actress Oscar for Darling, about a character who rises through London’s high society.
A Thousand Clowns. Irresponsible comedy writer Murray Burns (Jason Robards) is living with his 12-year-old nephew. Drama ensues.
Best Actress Oscar race: Julie Christie won for Darling, beating out Julie Andrews (Sound of Music) and Simone Signoret (Ship of Fools). The other nominees:
Samantha Eggar, The Collector. Lepidopterist Freddie (Terence Stamp) gets a new hobby: kidnapping. He hopes “collecting” Eggar’s character will make her fall in love with him. It’s based on a John Fowles novel (though he’s probably better known for “The Magus” and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”) and was directed by William Wyler.
Elizabeth Hartman, A Patch of Blue. Gordon (Sidney Poitier) befriends Selina (Elizabeth Hartman), a blind, abused young woman who has been isolated by her racist mother (Shelley Winters).
Relitigating the Best Actor race: this section is here to right (really, really small) historical wrongs. Here, we’re taking Lee Marvin’s Oscar and giving it to Rod Steiger.
Quick Hits
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes. A comedy adventure film with an ensemble cast in the mold of (and with a name even longer than) It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Quicker hits: Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, which doubles as what I feel for Polanski himself…In Harm’s Way, with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas doing a watered-down version of From Here to Eternity…Russ Meyer’s B-movie cult films Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Mudhoney…What’s New Pussycat? WHOA-OH-WHOA…Godard’s Pierrot le Fou…an Orson Welles Shakespeare work, Chimes at Midnight, where he plays Falstaff…Steve McQueen in The Cincinnati Kid (it’s The Hustler, but for poker)…Charlton Heston as Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy…James Bond #4, Thunderball, and Dollars trilogy #2, For a Few Dollars More…The
LongestGreatest Story Ever Told.
Trivia Questions
The quiz below serves as a refresher for some of the material covered in the five posts on 1965 films. The answers can be found in the footnotes.
This director helmed the 1957 film 12 Angry Men.1
This “high priest of bebop” said “the piano ain’t got no wrong notes” and wrote the songs “‘Round Midnight” and “Straight No Chaser.”2
This Englishman coined the term “survival of the fittest” in his work “Principles of Biology.”3
This French director of And God Created Woman and The Game Is Over was Jane Fonda’s first husband.4
Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and the fictional Matt Dillon were all lawmen of this Kansas town known as the “wickedest town in the West.”5
Timothy Olyphant played this lawman on the HBO show “Deadwood.”6
This Pulitzer Prize winner authored “Ship of Fools.”7
Plato’s school was called the Academy; what was the name of Aristotle’s school?8
This “waltz king” composed “Tales from the Vienna Woods.”9
This spy created by John le Carré is the protagonist of his novel “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (1974).10
This film based on a le Carré novel stars Ralph Fiennes as a British diplomat in Kenya trying to solve the murder of his wife.11
This city on the Rhine served as the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990.12
This West German chancellor won a Nobel Prize for normalizing relations with Eastern Europe through the policy of “Ostpolitik.”13
Othello’s wife was Desdemona. What was Iago’s wife’s name?14
The first to play the role of Othello was this star actor of the King’s Men.15
On to 1966!
CORRECTIONS: Yogesh got us good this time. Apparently Lana Turner isn’t Kathleen Turner, Stubby Kaye isn’t Buddy Hackett, and Fred MacMurray still wasn’t in Sunset Boulevard.
Sidney Lumet.
Thelonious Monk.
Herbert Spencer.
Roger Vadim.
Dodge City.
Seth Bullock.
Katherine Anne Porter.
The Lyceum.
Johann Strauss II.
George Smiley.
The Constant Gardener (2005).
Bonn.
Willy Brandt.
Emilia.
Richard Burbage.