Best Picture and Director 1972

[The Original BJ]

Thanks to the Criterion Collection, I've finally been able to view The Emigrants in its subtitled version, confirming my view that this Best Picture roster is one of the best in Academy history. While the film is not as bracing a work as The Godfather or Cabaret, it's a deeply moving story, filmed by Jan Troell with the sweep of an epic, but with an attention to human detail that makes it feel as specific a focus on this group of characters' journey as it is a universal account of the 19th century immigrant experience in America. It's also remarkably light on its feet -- for an over three hour film, and a fairly dour one at that, it rarely feels padded, and by the time it reached its conclusion, I was perfectly ready to pop in The New Land and experience the next chapter in this extended family's saga in America.

I finally cast my votes -- for The Godfather and Coppola.

[dbensics]

Alfred Hitchcock has been nominated five times for Best Director, and in four of those times (1944, 1945, 1954, 1960) he was up against Billy Wilder, losing to him twice.

There was a real possibility (though remote) that they could have gone head-to-head again in 1972.

The Globes nominated Hitchcock for Frenzy and Wilder for Avanti.

[Eric]

01. OffOn
02. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
03. Pink Flamingos
04. Cabaret
05. Winter Soldier
06. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
07. The Godfather
08. Heat
09. Images
10. Tales from the Crypt

[Mister Tee]

Except for the obligatory Irwin Allen disaster movie nominee (a slot later hilariously filled by The Swarm and When Time Ran Out), the other contenders for costume design were certainly defensible. But, yeah, you'd think a period piece so widely admired like Cabaret would have scored here.

Ir's emblematic of the unexpected difficulty The Godfather had in that Oscar year that, while it was robbed of nominations for cinematography and art direction (two categories it might have won), the one design area where it wasn't a clear choice came through.

As for the costume winner: Travels with My Aunt was a pretty mediocre movie, but the costumes were pretty swoon-worthy, so I approve of its victory.

[Big Magilla]

I think Cabaret is one of the best films nominated of the 70s.

There are some very strange snubs this year. Why was Cabaret not up for Costume Design? I understand why Gordon Willis and Nino Rota were not nominated but years later it's no less ridiculous.

Very good question. The German costume designer, Charlotte Fleming was nominated for a BAFTA, but nothing else.

[Sabin]

I think Cabaret is one of the best films nominated of the 70s.

There are some very strange snubs this year. Why was Cabaret not up for Costume Design? I understand why Gordon Willis and Nino Rota were not nominated but years later it's no less ridiculous.

[mlrg]

Interesting to see that the split here coincides with the Academy's split

[Uri]

And yet...when discussions come up about great movies of the 1970s...Cabaret doesn't seem to get mentioned very often. So many of what history has decreed to be the landmarks of this era are such male dominated movies, it's no wonder the Liza Minnelli musical has practically been demoted to something more niche-like. But that's unfortunate, because Cabaret is -- both stylistically and thematically, with its bleak yet energetic take on the rise of the Nazi party -- completely of a piece with the New Hollywood classics so typically celebrated by today's (mostly male) critics. I'd almost want to vote for the film just for this reason, because I think it's such a major achievement.

It has a lot to do, indeed, with gender based bias – the American new wave of the ’70 was all about distinctively heterosexual male p.o.v., and Cabaret had a gay man and a woman as protagonists – but it was also very much about redefining American iconography, and the setting of Cabaret was way too foreign to relate to this trend, so probably from that perspective it can be looked at as a marginalized piece, but I believe that elsewhere it’s still a very revered film.

[Precious Doll]

iTunes has both The Emigrants and The New Land for rent, and I rented the former in preparation for this poll, as I have never seen it. But I just noticed the audio for the film is in English, and I feel like that's not necessarily the best way to view a film like this, so I may have to hold off on this year until I can get my hands on a copy of it.

Interestingly, iTunes lists that the audio for its version of The New Land is in Swedish.

Some not-in-English films seem only to be available in dubbed versions -- I finally watched Das Boot that way, after much searching for a subtitled version. But I can tell you The Emigrants certainly played the US with subtitles in its 1972/73 run, so it might be worth hunting a little further.

Mister Tee watching Das Boot with subtitles is a different experience altogether. Have seen the dubbed version too.

I'm glad to hear that Reza. I have only ever seen the truncated dubbed version released in cinemas in 1982 and was unimpressed. I admit that films set in submarines are my least favorite genre, but there have been some goodies (Crimson Tides, Hunt for the Red October come to mind).

I bought a Blu Ray of the full German version some time ago and haven't had a chance to watch it. I really should make an effort before we get to the 1982 voting because they way things stand now I won't be voting for anyone nominated that year for director and the director's cut of Das Boat may convenience me to vote for Wolfgang.

[Precious Doll]

I saw The Emigrants over 20 years ago on TV in a dubbed version. Both it and The New Land (it's sequel which I have never seen) seem to have become virtually impossible to see since then. They have been long rumoured to be coming some time in the future in fully restored versions by Criterion. Hope it turns out to be true.

I do have a copy of The Emigrants (DVD rip) in case you are interested

Thanks for the offer mlrg, but I'll wait for a Criterion release. It would be nice to seen them together fully restored.

[The Original BJ]

As I said, I have never seen The Emigrants, so I can't actually vote this year in either category. But I'll offer up some thoughts on the other films.

If The Emigrants is indeed as good as its reputation suggests, then this would have to qualify as one of the strongest Best Picture lineups ever. Not every movie is necessarily an all-time great, but they all seem fully qualified as Best Picture candidates in a way that many clear stinker nominees in other years are obviously not.

Of the also-rans, I'm quite fond of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and its consistently imaginative director. I'd also advocate for Frenzy, the last great triumph for Hitchcock. (Tokyo Story, of course, is a masterpiece, but I noted it under the '53 thread -- it just seems unfair to cite it in practically a different era of filmmaking.)

This was actually the rare year where the Best Director lineup was actually weaker than the Best Picture field. I knew very little about Sleuth when I watched the film, but I figured out the Big Twist almost as soon as that narrative element was introduced. So in that regard, I didn't find even the story's most notable element to be particularly inventive. Which isn't to just dismiss the movie -- the power play between Caine and Olivier is entertaining enough to watch, and the old-fashioned mystery milieu has its charm. But it's certainly not anything major in the writing department, and even less so under directing. Joseph L. Mankiewicz had his notable films, but he never was so imaginative visually that you'd consider him the prime choice to open up a very stagebound piece like this.

Sounder is a rather lovely movie, with a moving storyline and very fine performances by Winfield and Tyson. Its charms are mostly quiet ones, but I found them very welcome, in context of some of the bloated epics often nominated for Best Picture, but also compared to some of the bolder, more quintessentially '70's movies. It's true that the film wasn't tremendously groundbreaking, (though it's not like mainstream films about black families were EVERYWHERE either), but sometimes something old-fashioned can still be very affecting, and I find the movie to be very worthy.

At its heart, Deliverance is kind of pulpy, but it's so magnificently mounted that the horrors it displays feel far less like lurid attempts to shock and a lot more like great tragedy. It's one of the best examples of the one-bad-thing-leads-to-another narrative, and by the end of the story, the audience is just exhausted by how brutally our heroes' trip has spiraled into nightmare. John Boorman's contribution here is masterful, as so many elements of the story must work together to create the film's haunting sense of mood, from the tense edits (deservedly nominated) to the startling cinematography (outrageously omitted!) I don't rate it as highly as the remaining two films, but it certainly merited its place in the conversation.

The context in which Cabaret is discussed as a great movie is interesting, and fairly telling, I think. When discussions come up about great movie musicals, it's often near (or even at) the top of the list. And deservedly so -- it's hard for me to come up with another Broadway-to-film adaptation where I think the screen version is without question superior to the stage production. For starters, the new songs put most numbers written for movie musicals to shame. And I find the new storyline adapted for the movie to be significantly more affecting than the older lovers romance from the play, to say nothing of the fact that it made the film feel more like its own entity than the musical just plopped on screen. In Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey, the film has two sterling musical performers -- believe it or not, actually a benefit for this genre -- who have never topped their iconic roles here. And above all, it has Bob Fosse, who took his own revolutionary style of dance and visualized it in such a way that it made even some of the more graceful movie musicals up to that point feel utterly stagebound.

And yet...when discussions come up about great movies of the 1970s...Cabaret doesn't seem to get mentioned very often. So many of what history has decreed to be the landmarks of this era are such male dominated movies, it's no wonder the Liza Minnelli musical has practically been demoted to something more niche-like. But that's unfortunate, because Cabaret is -- both stylistically and thematically, with its bleak yet energetic take on the rise of the Nazi party -- completely of a piece with the New Hollywood classics so typically celebrated by today's (mostly male) critics. I'd almost want to vote for the film just for this reason, because I think it's such a major achievement.

But...I still prefer The Godfather, which I find to be an even richer effort, a powerful American epic that has justifiably been remembered as an all-time classic. It's full of a tremendous number of now-iconic moments: the opening "I believe in America" speech, Connie's wedding, the horse head, Sonny at the toll both, the entire Italy flashback but especially the explosion, the gun-in-the-restaurant-bathroom murder, Vito's death, the intercut between the baptism and the deaths of the heads of the Five Families, Michael closing the door in Kay's face, and so on. I don't think that the movie reinvented the wheel -- narratively and stylistically it's a more traditional affair -- but Francis Ford Coppola finds such rich detail in this story, propels it forward in such engrossing ways, and elevates a dime-store novel to about as close as the American cinema ever got to Shakespearean tragedy, I'm nonetheless in awe of the way all of his various pieces fit to form such a brilliantly constructed whole. Add to that the amazing cast, the splendid score, the gorgeous images (the cinematography branch really just blew it this year, didn't they?) and you have one of the crowning jewels of the decade in cinema.

Pending The Emigrants, my votes would go to The Godfather and Coppola. But to be fair, I'll hold off on voting until I see Jan Troell's film, especially after a healthy number of votes here have gone its way.

[Big Magilla]

Tokyo Story wasn’t even on the radar, to my memory; it’s obviously a great film, but the years-later release is problematic (as it is for Limelight, for me).

It wasn't on my radar either until Limelight appeared among the nominees., but it was a high profile release at the time. The N.Y. Times even included it among its top ten films of the year.

[ksrymy]

Picture
1) Cabaret
2) Sleuth
3) The Godfather
4) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
5) The Ruling Class

Director
1) Bob Fosse - Cabaret
2) Joseph L. Mankiewicz - Sleuth
3) Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather
4) Jan Troell - The Emigrants
5) Luis Buñuel - The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

[Big Magilla]

The VHS and laser disc versions, which were released by Warner Bros. contain the theatrically released subtitled version. Amazon oddly has a download of The New Land available, but not The Emigrants. The dubbed download might be what IMDb. describes thusly:

The USA television version, retitled "The Emigrant Saga", consists of this film plus its sequel, The New Land, joined and re-edited together in chronological order and dubbed in English.

[Reza]

iTunes has both The Emigrants and The New Land for rent, and I rented the former in preparation for this poll, as I have never seen it. But I just noticed the audio for the film is in English, and I feel like that's not necessarily the best way to view a film like this, so I may have to hold off on this year until I can get my hands on a copy of it.

Interestingly, iTunes lists that the audio for its version of The New Land is in Swedish.

Some not-in-English films seem only to be available in dubbed versions -- I finally watched Das Boot that way, after much searching for a subtitled version. But I can tell you The Emigrants certainly played the US with subtitles in its 1972/73 run, so it might be worth hunting a little further.

Mister Tee watching Das Boot with subtitles is a different experience altogether. Have seen the dubbed version too.