What We Missed: 1972
Talking about movies that aren't The Godfather.
ICYMI: the four films nominated for Best Actor Oscars from 1972 were Sleuth (two nominations), The Godfather, The Ruling Class, and Sounder. The links provide the trivia write-ups on those films while this post discusses what else was happening in the movies that year.
1972 Best Picture winner: Well, 1972 was a tough year for anyone trying to win the top prize since critical and commercial darling The Godfather was there sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Sounder was one of the four also-rans, along with three other films we haven’t discussed:
Cabaret. Liza Minnelli played Sally Bowles, a singer in the German cabaret Kit Kat Club. It’s based on the 1939 novel “Goodbye to Berlin,” one of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories by way of the 1951 play “I Am a Camera.” It was directed by Bob Fosse and netted Joel Grey, who played the MC, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Deliverance, or “I know what you did last canoe trip.” It’s based on a novel by James Dickey, a U.S. Poet Laureate, and it famously features one of the canoe trip guys getting raped. You should also know the “Dueling Banjos” scene (SFW, despite the sentence that came before).
Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds on a not very good canoe trip. The Emigrants, about Swedish peasants emigrating to America. It starred Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow but wasn’t directed by Ingmar Bergman—gosh, not every Swedish movie was. We’ll see another Swedish film with Liv Ullmann up for Best Picture in next year’s Oscars, but don’t worry, that one will in fact be directed by Ingmar Bergman.
1972 highest grossing film: The Godfather. Number two was The Poseidon Adventure, a classic example of the 1970s disaster flicks produced by “Master of Disaster” Irwin Allen. Gene Hackman played a preacher who leads a who’s-who of half-washed actors (Ernest Borgnine! Shelley Winters! Red Buttons! The guy who played Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka!) to escape the sinking SS Poseidon.
The movie is a good time, although Gene Hackman kinda sucks. Here’s the heroic moment when he sacrifices himself to save the others—try not to laugh.
Best Actress Oscar race: Liza Minnelli took it home for her role as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Cicely Tyson (Sounder) and Liv Ullmann (The Emigrants) also received nominations. The other two nominees were:
Diana Ross, Lady Sings the Blues. It’s a by-the-numbers biopic about Billie Holiday, hitting every beat laid out in Patrick H. Willems’ biopic video. The best part of it is Billy Dee Williams doing his best “Omar Sharif in Funny Girl” impersonation, simply oozing charisma.
Also, here’s Diana Ross doing “Strange Fruit” in the film—pretty cool. Note that Andra Day was later also nominated for Best Actress for playing Billie Holiday in the film The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021), so I guess we’ll talk about that when we get there.
Maggie Smith, Travels with My Aunt. Based on a novel by Graham Greene and directed by George Cukor. Smith plays an older woman who goes on madcap adventures with her nephew. The Be Kind Rewind video on this Oscar race discusses how wildly miscast Dame Maggie was in this film.
Relitigating the Best Actor race: Brando, yep. We’ve previously discussed how George C. Scott declined his Oscar for Patton, but Brando did Scott one better. Not only did he not attend the ceremony, but he had a woman named Sacheen Littlefeather accept his Oscar. She gave a speech about the film industry’s mistreatment of Native Americans while the crowd lustily booed. It’s a remarkably brave speech. Nowadays people argue about whether Littlefeather was actually Native American, which I suppose is an easy way to sidestep having difficult conversations about history and representation.
Weirdly, the film with two nominations this year was Sleuth (Olivier and Caine) and not The Godfather (Pacino was snubbed). And pour one out for O’Toole, whose loss here was one of so, so many.
Quick Hits
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Luis Buñuel? More like Luis Bun-bad. We discussed his career in our post on Robinson Crusoe, but here’s what you need for this particular film: “six fancy people keep trying to have dinner with each other but it keeps not happening.” The lead is Fernando Rey, the drug smuggler from The French Connection, who plays a drug smuggler here as well.
Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson. We could talk about this film or I could just show you the meme.
Pink Flamingos: this is the first film in director John Waters’ “Trash Trilogy.” Divine, a drag performer, played a woman forced to fend off challengers to her title as “Filthiest Person Alive.” Having now seen the movie, it is somehow far weirder than that description makes it sound.
MOVIES I DEFINITELY MEANT TO WATCH BUT DIDN’T: Solaris from Andrei Tarkovsky; Aguirre, the Wrath of God from Werner Herzog. Sorry.
Quicker Hits: The Heartbreak Kid, where a guy on his honeymoon tries to score with Cybill Shepherd…The Getaway, with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw…Babs screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?…Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon…Hitchcock’s Frenzy…two more Woody Allen movies, we can’t avoid him forever…Ben, the rat sequel to rat movie Willard…blaxploitation flick Super Fly…Child’s Play, a Sidney Lumet picture that doesn’t involve a killer doll…The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds…Under Milk Wood and Man of La Mancha, both discussed here…musical 1776…Jack Nicholson bummer The King of Marvin Gardens…Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett in Pete ‘n’ Tillie…Butterflies Are Free with Goldie Hawn…Joe Kidd with Clint Eastwood.
Trivia Questions
The quiz below serves as a refresher for some of the material covered in the four posts on 1972 films. The answers can be found in the footnotes.
What playwright wrote “Sleuth”? He also wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock’s Frenzy (mentioned in the Quicker Hits section above) and the 1973 film The Wicker Man.1
Who directed the 1972 Sleuth adaptation? He won back-to-back Best Director Oscars for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950).2
What author is the creator of LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and his brother, “Lincoln Lawyer” Mickey Haller?3
What fictional detective appears in the mysteries “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and “The Purloined Letter”?4
What actor played consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather?5
What 1975 dystopian film featured James Caan as a superstar in the title sport?6
This woman was married to Henry II and mother to three kings of France: Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III.7
What family seized control of Milan in 1450? Two of their famous members are Francesco and his son Ludovico (“Il Moro,” the Moor).8
What poet wrote the “play for voices” “Under Milk Wood”?9
What musical includes the song “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)”?10
A “Jeopardy!” question: These two words follow “New” in the name of Oliver Cromwell's force that defeated the Royalists in the English Civil War.11
What title did Oliver Cromwell take after disbanding the Rump Parliament in 1653?12
What actress won one Emmy for TV movie “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (1974) and another for miniseries “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” (1994)?13
What author wrote the children’s books “Bridge to Terabithia,” “Jacob Have I Loved,” and “The Great Gilly Hopkins”?14
What young actress starred in both Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) and Bridge to Terabithia (2007)?15
In conclusion: Would I recommend any of the films from 1972? Yeah. I’d recommend The Godfather. Let’s see if we find something a little more interesting to say in 1973.
Anthony Shaffer.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Michael Connelly.
C. Auguste Dupin.
Robert Duvall. (We could’ve had ten of those “who played this character in The Godfather questions, you need to know the whole damn cast.)
Rollerball (1975).
Catherine de’ Medici.
The Sforzas.
Dylan Thomas.
“Man of La Mancha.”
Model Army.
Lord Protector.
Cicely Tyson.
Katherine Paterson.
AnnaSophia Robb.
Does being nominated for Best Supporting Actor count as being "snubbed"?