What Should Have Won, Part IV: The 1960s

I have put off talking about the 1960s in my appraisal of the Academy Award-winning films of the past, mainly for one reason: I can’t stand the films of the 1960s. While the decade was good for many things, American cinema during those years had a sort of elephantiasis about it – with the world changing so rapidly during those tumultuous years, the Academy just couldn’t keep up with the times. Maybe that’s why clunky musicals won Best Picture four out of the 10 years of the decade (more winners for musicals than in any other decade). Nevertheless, there were some bright spots in these years, as I will try to demonstrate:

Let’s keep our rules in mind. My choice has to have been nominated for at least one Oscar in at least one category. It does not have to have been nominated for Best Picture. Any category will do.

1960

What film won Best Picture: The Apartment
What film should have won: The Apartment

This is the only year in the decade where the Academy got it right. Some people might claim that Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was the film of the year (and they’d have a point), but I have to give the nod to Billy Wilder’s damn-near perfect romantic comedy. And correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the last film in black and white to win Best Picture?

1961

What film won Best Picture: West Side Story
What film should have won: Splendor in the Grass

I know a lot of people love West Side Story, and while it’s a great show I’ve always felt that the movie left a lot to be desired. The clunky literalism of shooting it on the streets of New York with a group of actors who are way too old to be playing teenagers (and a leading lady who can’t sing) strikes me as being fundamentally wrongheaded. In fact, I've thought for a long time that the show is ripe for a remake -- with real Hispanics as the Sharks and shot in a stylistic way that resembled The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. For 1961 I would have given the Oscar to another Natalie Wood film from the same year – Elia Kazan’s great film Splendor in the Grass, from a script by William Inge. The fact that you’ve never heard of it doesn’t make it any less great, and it might be Natalie Wood’s best performance.

1962

What film won Best Picture: Lawrence of Arabia
What film should have won: Long Day’s Journey into Night/The Manchurian Candidate

I know I’m in a distinct minority here, but I can’t stand Lawrence of Arabia. Can't stand it. In fact, the last time it was revived theatrically, at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York, I walked out on it. Instead of David Lean’s bloated desert epic, I would call it a tie between two very different films: Sidney Lumet’s pitch-perfect adaptation of O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night (with a masterful ensemble performance by a superb cast), and John Frankenheimer’s suspense classic The Manchurian Candidate.

1963

What film won Best Picture: Tom Jones
What film should have won: America, America

Tom Jones just doesn’t age well. I saw it recently on DVD and I started cringing from the minute they opened with a mock silent film. The helicopter shots didn’t help matters. My choice for this year would have been Elia Kazan’s last great film (and one of his least known), his paean to his adopted country, America, America. The minute it comes out on DVD you have to find a way to see it. It’s one of the most powerful films he ever made, and it was clearly a labor of love.

1964

What film won Best Picture: My Fair Lady
What film should have won: Dr. Strangelove

It would be interesting to see what My Fair Lady would have been like if Jack Warner had relented and given his original choice for director, Vincente Minnelli, a cut of the profits and let him direct the film. It made have ended up a great film musical instead of the stagebound bore it became under the usually capable hands of George Cukor. Instead, I would go with a certified masterpiece, one of the few from this decade: Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

1965

What film won Best Picture: The Sound of Music
What film should have won: A Thousand Clowns

The Sound of Music was the film that finally supplanted Gone With The Wind as the biggest box office success of all time, but I’ve never been able to warm to it: I have no idea why. Granted, 1965 wasn’t the greatest of movie years, and had I been an Academy voter at the time I might have wished that, like the Pulitzers do sometimes with their Drama award, they had declined to name a winner that year, but I find A Thousand Clowns (with a great performance by Jason Robards and an adorable one from the luminous Barbara Harris) to be the only film made that year that I would most want to return to -- or that I have any desire to return to, for that matter. You couldn't make me watch The Sound of Music again with a gun at my head.

1966

What film won Best Picture: A Man for All Seasons
What film should have won: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Spare me from Important Pictures About Great Men (who are almost always white and who invariably speak with plummy British accents). I saw this film on a re-release in the 70s (on a double bill with Chaplin’s City Lights, if you can believe it), and was not amused. I’d give the Oscar to Mike Nichols for this scathing adaptation of Edward Albee’s play about marital hell, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with amazing performances from Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (who should have gotten an Oscar for his performance).

1967

What film won Best Picture: In the Heat of the Night
What film should have won: The Graduate

It could have been worse, I suppose: they could have given the Oscar to Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? But I would give it to Mike Nichols for the second year in a row for his masterpiece (and one of the few truly great films to come out of the 60s) The Graduate. And who cares if Dustin Hoffman is miscast? This is one of the very few studio films of the 60s that still holds up for me.

1968

What film won Best Picture: Oliver!
What film should have won: The Producers/Rosemary’s Baby

Another bloated musical wins the Oscar. Well, I would go the other way, and call it a tie between Mel Brooks’ The Producers and Roman Polanski’s suspense film based on Ira Levin’s novel, Rosemary’s Baby. Who wouldn’t rather see Zero Mostel screaming “Double! Double!” or Mia Farrow looking horrified at what’s been done to her child over Mark Lester croaking out “Where is love?” I mean really…

1969

What film won Best Picture: Midnight Cowboy
What film should have won: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

As the 60s were ending, the Academy started to get adventurous. They gave their last award for the 60s to John Schlesinger’s film about dreams and sleaze in Times Square, Midnight Cowboy. You’d think I’d agree, right? Well, you’d be wrong. I would have gone with George Roy Hill’s revisionist Western (from a script by William Goldman), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The film that teamed Paul Newman and Robert Redford for the first of only two screen appearances together.

That’s all for the 60s. I’ll try to get to the 70s (one of the great decades for American cinema) fairly soon.

Tom Moran