Best Screenplay 1964

[Heksagon]

More like answered and asked. Oh well.

[Big Magilla]

I believe this is the only time that the nominees in Best Picture, Director and any Screenplay category have matched perfectly?

This was the sole time in Academy history that best picture/best director/best adapted screenplay consisted of the same five candidates.

Asked and answered.

[Heksagon]

Adapted category is an easy choice with Dr. Strangelove.

I believe this is the only time that the nominees in Best Picture, Director and any Screenplay category have matched perfectly?

[The Original BJ]

Obviously Contempt had zero chance of getting near the Adapted Screenplay list, but I would also throw that out as an exciting option -- some of the marital squabbles between Piccoli and Bardot are rather piercingly written.

We've covered all of these movies in the Picture/Director thread, but I'll do my due diligence and try to focus on them as screenwriting achievements here.

Zorba the Greek isn't nothing -- the story has some interesting elements, particularly in the subplots involving Kedrova and Papas, as has been previously cited. And though a little of Anthony Quinn in a role like this goes a long way, you can't deny that his character makes an impression, and offers compelling observation throughout. But I find the overall arc of the story -- stuffy Englishman travels to another country to have his life changed by an outrageous foreigner -- sort of mundane, and it definitely goes on a lot longer than necessary.

My Fair Lady is certainly one of the best written Golden Age musicals, probably unsurprisingly because it had pretty great source material as its basis. I tend to think the movie version is mounted pretty well -- it's not revolutionary, but it's far from the misfire of the Hello, Dolly! movie, and I have to give credit to those involved for preserving the wit and poignancy of the stage version in this transfer. But, as always, there's just not enough screenwriting in these Broadway adaptations for me to choose them.

I sat down to watch Becket in order to dutifully check off that Best Picture nomination, and was prepared for something along the lines of Anne of the Thousand Days or The Lion in Winter -- dull history. Instead, I was surprised to find a very involving narrative, plenty of witty dialogue, and most of all, two very well-realized central characters. This isn't to say I found the movie breathtaking in any way -- and, of course, it too is a filmed play, even though the central conflict is slightly reworked. But you can see why, if voters decided they weren't going to pick a musical here, this was the choice.

While watching Saving Mr. Banks back when it opened, my main thought was -- I wish this had been halfway has much fun as Mary Poppins. Somehow, I managed to get through my childhood without watching this movie, so I first saw it in college -- you know, when film school classes were regularly showing me movies like Contempt. I worried I'd be too cynical a moviegoer at that point to respond to it, but I found myself completely swept away. It's wonderfully imaginative, often very funny (the fact that Mary Poppins is actually pretty bitchy is probably the medicine that helps the sugar go down, if you will), and by its conclusion, quite touching. I think it rates higher as a screenplay than My Fair Lady -- certainly bringing together a series of vignettes from a collection of books wasn't an easy task -- though, of course, the writing isn't the central element to the movie's success either, given the songs, choreography, animation, and the splendid embodiment of the title character by Andrews.

But this is a no-contest vote for Dr. Strangelove, one of the funniest movies ever. I took a look at the script back when I was voting for the WGA's Funniest Screenplay list, and was reminded just how many laugh-out-loud funny lines the writers came up with -- I'll cite "I don't think it's fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up" and "I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops" as personal favorites. But what's perhaps even more impressive is the tone of the movie, the way the script so carefully rides the line between the outrageously silly and the realistically horrific, so that the audience is never sure whether to laugh or recoil (or both at the same time) at the events portrayed on screen. This is a very talky movie, and I don't mean that as a criticism -- it's hard to watch something this verbose, something where the language itself is so cleverly and cruelly crafted and think that it shouldn't be an obvious candidate for writing prizes. I like other movies on the ballot, but certainly as a screenplay, this one blows them away.

[Kellens101]

My votes would go to the wonderfully funny A Hard Day's Night and the timeless blackly comic satire of Dr. Strangelove, the best film of 1964 and an incredible landmark masterpiece that still holds up brilliantly today. My omissions would be Contempt(one of Godard's best and a beautiful film), Goldfinger(the best Bond film in my opinion and a wonderful script filled with iconic one liners, suspenseful set pieces and a tight well-crafted plot), The Best Man(a wonderful underrated political satire), Fail-Safe(an incredibly tense, haunting suspense thriller), The Night of the Iguana(a dark, sensual movie that is also quite underrated), Red Desert(one of Antonioni's best and a great examination of technology and the modern age), Seance on a Wet Afternoon(a chilling and haunting thriller), and The World of Henry Orient(a delightful and underrated film that is a great comedy, coming of age film and wonderful adventure). None of these were REALLY robbed, but I definitely would've liked them all on the ballot than Zorba the Greek, That Man in Rio and Father Goose.

[ITALIANO]

Adapted is even too easy. Becket is a better-than-average movie-based-on-history - strong dialogue, two wonderful roles in which actors could, and did, shine, a certain emotional complexity - but it's still based on a play, and in this case a famous one, a sort-of classic by now. I know that there are additional scenes and a few narrative changes which make the material more "filmic" - but basically, it is still Jean Anouilh's Becket. So, clearly, it's Dr. Strangelove.

Original is much more interesting. I don't know how Father Goose won this one - or actually I do: it's the only "big" American movie in the race. It's never more than "nice". Never stupid either, of course, but American cinema has produced lots of better and better-written comedies. It had been a box-office hit though, and it's exactly the kind of movie that, had there been the ten-slots format back then, would have been nominated for Best Picture. I found That Man from Rio quite enjoyable actually when I saw it many years ago, and One Potato, Two Potato is dated because it refers to a dated issue, but it must have seemed quite courageous at the time, and its unhappy ending is effective even today (but then the characters have no subtext and I remenber an especially dreadful scene with the two lovers playing like children through the streets of the city at night). It's between A Hard Day's Night and The Organizer, and one should be grateful to the writers' branch of the Academy for selecting movies which would otherwise be forgotten (and to this board for often voting for them). Because while Hard Day's Night is an iconic movie in many ways, The Organizer is the better script, definitely, that rare movie where a strong political commitment still merges effectively with more human and emotional aspects. It wasn't a flop when it first came out in Italy - it just wasn't a giant box-office hit as other Mastroianni movies had been and would be. But time has made it a classic here - and a beloved one. It's just so... Italian in its approach to life and to historical events, intelligent but in a quet, unshowy way - no grand gestures, no cliches, no heroism. It has a genuine feeling for its characters, its place, its time. You start watching it and before you realize it, you are involved in the events it portrays - it's truly one of the best Italian screenplays ever, and it deserves to win here.

[Mister Tee]

This was the sole time in Academy history that best picture/best director/best adapted screenplay consisted of the same five candidates. Which makes adapted a shrug-worthy rehash of the best picture/director discussion, but makes original a whole new ball game.

To quickly go through adapted:

Lots of alternative options: Séance on A Wet Afternoon, Seven Days in May, King and Country, Diary of a Chambermaid. But the actual slate isn’t chopped liver, either.

You could argue that Alan Jay Lerner’s My Fair Lady screenplay nod gets past our usual “it’s just what was done on stage” objection because it was his own libretto he adapted – except for the awkward fact that a good portion (and most of the best) of the dialogue was Shaw’s to start with. Thanks to GBS, the film is one of the better-written of all film musicals. But it’s still a musical, and the adapted-from-an-adaptation aspect makes me give it a pass.

Zorba the Greek is OK, I guess. The whole magical-life-force character isn’t my favorite, and I’m not crazy about the trajectory of the story – the “well, my dream just collapsed, but I can dance, so it’s OK” ending leaves me quite unsatisfied. But many of the subplots – the Lila Kedrova/Irene Papas elements – work better, and it’s overall a decent effort.

I’m sorry for P.L. Travers’ unhappiness at seeing her creation sugared-up, but the Disney-fied Mary Poppins is a children’s classic and still holds up pretty well. There’s a lot of imagination, even wit, involved, and the writers had far more adaptation to do to get the film rolling than Lerner did with his. However…when one thinks of Mary Poppins, many elements – the animation, effects, songs –come to mind before dialogue, however respectable that dialogue might be. There are other, more writer-centric candidates available.

Becket is in the top tier of historical pieces (not a crowded field, that), and the two leading roles are very well written (in addition to being splendidly performed). The Thomas a Becket/Henry II conflict is one of history’s most compelling, and the film more or less does it justice. There are limitations, which prevent my voting for it, but those are mostly inherent in the genre.

It’s moot, anyway, since Dr. Strangelove is on the roster, and a script that close to perfect easily gets my vote. Andrew Sarris actually opined at the time that the script was so strong, Kubrick was getting more credit than he deserved as director; that anyone competent could have succeeded with it. That’s putting it too strongly, but the fact is this script is a gem: beautifully structured, drawn so taut it plays partly like a thriller even in the midst of hilarity. There’s one memorable character after another – General Ripper here, General Turgidson there, and of course Peter Sellers in triplicate. There are lines that have gone into the lexicon (“You can’t fight in here; this is the war room”; “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed”), and whole conversations that can make you laugh just to think of them (the president on the phone to the Russian premier; Ripper’s crazed rationale, and Mandrake’s glazed-eye reaction). This is the movie of the year, and the script is probably the number one factor in its success.

Band of Outsiders is about the strongest alternative I can conjure under original – though god knows if it was eligible that year, and, in any case, nothing Godardian was ever going to get past Academy security in that era.

To understand That Man from Rio’s spot here you have to grasp just how thoroughly the James Bond films (and books) had captured America. With even President Kennedy a fan, Bond became a major phenomenon, and spy films of all sorts were suddenly the rage. Many of the quickly-churned out efforts, on the premise that the Bond films’ humorous undertones were their main selling point, went for a vaguely spoofy style; such efforts began to flood the market. (When Le Carre’s Spy Who Came in from the Cold turned up in 1964, it was specifically hailed by critics for being the first in a while to treat espionage seriously) That Man from Rio fit snugly into this group of spy-spoofs, and for some reason the critics went for it in a big way. It baffles me why. I didn’t find it terribly clever; in fact, I thought it seemed pretty lame. Possibly the presence of critical fave Belmondo – or the subtitles -- caused them to overrate it? In any case, it’s not getting my support.

Peter Stone’s Oscar acceptance speech for Father Goose was “Thanks to Cary Grant, who keeps winning these things for other people”. It had actually only been once previous that a Grant-elevated script won the category (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer), but a great many films featuring him got script-nominated – some (Notorious, North by Northwest) well deserving, others (Operation Petticoat, That Touch of Mink) carried solely by his charm. Father Goose lies somewhere in-between. It turned out to be Grant’s next-to-last film (studios were still happy to cast his 60 year old self opposite much younger women, but he found it ridiculous and retired), and it’s far from his best…but it wasn’t the worst screenplay winner ever (nor even the worst that decade). I’m not voting for it, but I’m not hostile.

One Potato Two Potato is a sort of movie I feel I saw a lot of in my youth: centered on a hot-button social issue, shot in black and white, taking a starkly bleak tone. You can argue the subject matter of such films merited a bleak approach, but I remember early 60s dramas like this as relentlessly downbeat -- lacking the slightest touch of humor for relief, heading inexorably toward grim conclusion. One Potato Two Potato is perfectly fine by the standards of the era, but, for me, it was the fact that the dramas of the subsequent decade were more leavened with humor that made me like them far more. I can’t say I miss that old bleak style even a little.

A Hard Day’s Night is a real cultural touchstone for me, another on which I’m anxious to hear views from those not around at the time. I saw the movie on Labor Day of 1964 – dragged along by a friend, Marc Prinz, one of the few guys I knew who swooned for The Beatles from the first (the girls had flipped in unison, which made a lot of the rest of us suspicious). As everyone knows, the group was a worldwide cultural phenomenon by early 1964, but they were not yet taken seriously in grown-up world; rock and roll was still, to the mainstream, a kids’ thing, and many critics – and, I must admit, I -- went into A Hard Day’s Night expecting a B-movie along the lines of Don’t Knock the Rock. What we all found instead was a witty, zippy, blissfully irreverent comedy, with as great a soundtracks as has ever been recorded. Reviews were uniformly enthusiastic, and, pretty much from that moment on, the Beatles were broadly beloved. (You could say this was pure luck on their part: that it was Richard Lester and Alun Owen responsible for the film’s wit and spark. But anyone who’s seen the film appreciates how much Lennon’s impish charm and Ringo’s hangdog lovability add to the proceedings.) I watched the film again sometime last year, and enjoyed it just as fully as I had 50 years earlier – if anything, it might have been enhanced, as it now also seems like a perfect time capsule of the madness that was Beatlemania. Voting for this script is a perfectly defensible move.

I might never have heard of The Organizer without this nomination; it was not, to me, an especially famous film. Oscar completeness drove me to watch it, a decade or so back when I found it in my video store -- and was I glad it did! I think the film is excellent – easily the best film about the labor movement I’ve seen. It burrows back into history – when union organizing was in its infancy, viewed as disreputable by polite society; when even potential beneficiaries of the movement were openly skeptical if not hostile. The film is clearly on labor’s side, but it doesn’t sentimentalize its proles: there are lazy/selfish people in the ranks. The film is fully clear-eyed about the limitations of human beings…yet, everyone is seen as deserving decent treatment regardless. This is easily the most fully humane film in the category, so, despite my long-time affection for A Hard Day’s Night, I have to throw my support behind it.

[Big Magilla]

Original

The winner, Father Goose, is a film I never understood the popularity of. It's pretty much a by-the-numbers lost at sea comedy best remembered as the only film in which Cary Grant played a slob. If they needed to nominate a comedy, my pick would be Dear Heart, but better still, they should have gone foreign and nominated Pontecorvo's Kapo (a previous Best Foreign Film submission from Italy) or Bergman's The Silence.

One Potato, Two Potato was sold as a film about "one of the hotter topics of our time" - interracial romance, but as usual, the British got there first and did it better with Flame in the Streets, three years earlier, two in the U.S. Still, it was a decent nomination.

A Hard Day's Night was a witty, incisive comedy that is best remembered for its sweet portrayal of The Beatles and Richard Lester's energetic direction more than its screenplay. A good nomination, but not the year's best screenplay.

That Man From Rio is a very funny caper film, then considered a spoof of the James Bond films, but not more readily compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Again, a good nomination, but not the year's best.

The Organizer is a film I should have seen fifty-one years ago, but I don't recall it as being heavily promoted. It opened in New York at the Coronet on May 6th, was given a favorable review by Bosley Crowther on May 7th but there were no ads for the film on either Wednesday May 6th, Thursday May 7th or Friday May 8th despite ads for just about everything else playing in Manhattan including a revival of the 1944 Beatrice Lillie comedy, On Approval. I was evidently not the only one who didn't go see it.

It wasn't a hit in Italy either where Monicelli's comedies always were. A pity because this is a really compelling film about a real turn-of-the-century strike in Turin by textile workers seeking to have their hours shortened from 14 to 13. It's very much in the style of a John Ford film with elements of The Grapes of Wrath, The Last Hurrah and of course, How Green Was My Valley which it most closely resembles right down to its heartbreaking conclusion.

The Organizer is my easy pick.

All of the 1964 Original Screenplay nominees are readily available on commercial DVD in the U.S. except One Potato Two Potato which is difficult to find.

Adapted

This is one of those years in which I actually agreed with all five Best Picture nominees as well as the winner. For screenplay, however...

I'd like to know exactly what it was Alan Jay Lerner had to do to "adapt" the book of his My Fair Lady for the screen. Not much, I would think.

Mary Poppins has Julie Andrews and a terrific Sherman Brothers score, but the screenplay, though charming, is mostly filler between the songs.

I would have preferred to see Seven Days in May and The Night of the Iguana take those slots.

Dr. Strangelove is masterful and the probable winner here, but I prefer the literacy of Zorba the Greek and Becket with Oscar winner Becket getting my vote in a toss-up.

[ITALIANO]

That's absolutely correct, but sometimes there's a gray area. For example, Sartre wrote "Typhus" which became "The Proud and the Beautiful" in 1944 between "No Exit" (published in 1944) and "The Age of Reason" (published in 1945). For some reason it wasn't published so the story could be submitted for Best Motion Picture Story on a technicality even though Sartre did not write it with a movie in mind. One wonders what Sartre thought of the nomination if he was even aware of it as he famously refused the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".

I didn't know it, and it's actually quite interesting. I'm sure that the same thing happened other times - though with less celebrated writers. After all, it's not always easy to determine how and in which form a story first originated in a writer's mind. Anyway, Sartre's nomination is one of the most bizarre ever. I guess he must have known of it, though he certainly didn't care. At least, he was in acceptable company - Dalton Trumbo and Cesare Zavattini, while no future Nobel Prize winners, were solid intellectuals.

[The Original BJ]

What's interesting about the Proud and the Beautiful/Sartre example, though, is that it's actually not that different from gray area situations we experience today.

For instance, Jonathan Nolan received an Original Screenplay nomination for Memento for literally the same set of circumstances -- he wrote a short story which wasn't published before the film it inspired, with a screenplay by someone else, was released.

So I guess I don't view the Original Story category as being so divorced from the movies themselves as you do, at least based on my understanding of it.

[Big Magilla]

Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story and give it its own thread either when we finish the screenplay voting or on alternate weeks as we go along on the screenplays since Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story is not a screenplay category award even if it is a writing category award. As I said earlier I'm not even sure we should be voting in this category based on the films themselves but go back to the original stories, some of which have been published, some of which have not. In some instances during the three writing category era (1940-1957) films could be nominated for both Original Story and Screenplay. The word "adapted" didn't come into the picture until 1957, the last year of the three category concept. Prior to 1940 there were awards for Original Story and Screenplay. Original screenplays, though eligible for Screenplay, were usually, if not always, left in the dust, with adaptations hogging the category.

I can see your point Big Magilla - though I am quite sure that the Original Stories which they considered weren't materal previously published - for example in form of a short story in a magazine (actually the few times this turned out to be the case, the nominee was disqualified). They were referring to the original concept of a movie, which in some cases later could have also been published, but had to start as a story specifically written for a movie. So even back then, it wasn't as if one could easily find and read those stories - they werent books one could buy. I'd say that we should vote in those categories with the other Writing awards - just at a slower pace...

That's absolutely correct, but sometimes there's a gray area. For example, Sartre wrote "Typhus" which became "The Proud and the Beautiful" in 1944 between "No Exit" (published in 1944) and "The Age of Reason" (published in 1945). For some reason it wasn't published so the story could be submitted for Best Motion Picture Story on a technicality even though Sartre did not write it with a movie in mind. One wonders what Sartre thought of the nomination if he was even aware of it as he famously refused the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".

[ITALIANO]

The Brave One was shown on TCM last February. I DVR-ed it, and actually started to watch it just a few weeks ago, but found it too cloying to get very far. I'll force myself through before we get to its year.

Since Italiano raised the issue, I'll say something I was planning to say soon: It's been difficult enough to keep this one-a-week schedule with ten films to talk about (including many films rarely discussed around here); when the number gets bumped to 15 from 1956 on down, it'll become impossible. Can we at that point stagger the threads -- perhaps make it every ten days, rather than seven?

We could, but it might make even more sense to strip out Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story and give it its own thread either when we finish the screenplay voting or on alternate weeks as we go along on the screenplays since Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story is not a screenplay category award even if it is a writing category award. As I said earlier I'm not even sure we should be voting in this category based on the films themselves but go back to the original stories, some of which have been published, some of which have not. In some instances during the three writing category era (1940-1957) films could be nominated for both Original Story and Screenplay. The word "adapted" didn't come into the picture until 1957, the last year of the three category concept. Prior to 1940 there were awards for Original Story and Screenplay. Original screenplays, though eligible for Screenplay, were usually, if not always, left in the dust, with adaptations hogging the category.

I can see your point Big Magilla - though I am quite sure that the Original Stories which they considered weren't materal previously published - for example in form of a short story in a magazine (actually the few times this turned out to be the case, the nominee was disqualified). They were referring to the original concept of a movie, which in some cases later could have also been published, but had to start as a story specifically written for a movie. So even back then, it wasn't as if one could easily find and read those stories - they werent books one could buy. I'd say that we should vote in those categories with the other Writing awards - just at a slower pace...

[Big Magilla]

We could, but it might make even more sense to strip out Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story and give it its own thread either when we finish the screenplay voting or on alternate weeks as we go along on the screenplays since Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story is not a screenplay category award even if it is a writing category award. As I said earlier I'm not even sure we should be voting in this category based on the films themselves but go back to the original stories, some of which have been published, some of which have not.

Does this mean that William Shakespeare was eligible for a Motion Picture Story nomination in 1948 for Hamlet?

No, Hamlet was a play, not a "story".

[Greg]

We could, but it might make even more sense to strip out Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story and give it its own thread either when we finish the screenplay voting or on alternate weeks as we go along on the screenplays since Original Story AKA Motion Picture Story is not a screenplay category award even if it is a writing category award. As I said earlier I'm not even sure we should be voting in this category based on the films themselves but go back to the original stories, some of which have been published, some of which have not.

Does this mean that William Shakespeare was eligible for a Motion Picture Story nomination in 1948 for Hamlet?

[mlrg]

Like Mister Tee, not all of us are able to afford a large DVD collection.

I'm an Oscar completist and for quite sometime I was able to go through almost all acting and best picture nominees since mid 60's. Time constraints have kept me from moving back to other years.

Nevertheless, even if I don't have the time to watch all of them I never stoped trying to own all nominated pictures from best picture and acting categories since the beggining of the academy awards. Of the 1220 movies that fit this criteria I know have on my 2 tb hard disk 1046 of them (the ones missing are basically all from 1932 to 1938 as I haven't started my search yet for these ones)

There are some (restricted but free access) websites on the internet where you cand find some of the most obscure nominated films.

Hopefully one day I will have the time to be able to watch all of them.