Best Picture and Director 1977

[Sabin]

Thank you for the quick responses. I wonder if it's also a conflation of a low ebb in New Hollywood, the rising muck of New Blockbusters (y'know, the ones that weren't Star Wars and Close Encounters), and the feminist movement.

A few scattered thoughts on why this didn't work for me:

-One of the problems that I have with the film is that the film is largely divided into two parts. There's the promise of the new generation embodied by Browne and Baryshnikov and the regrets of the past embodied by Bancroft and MacLaine. So, much of the latter scenes especially with MacLaine are just the same register of complaint (until they fight) with one exception and it comes out of the blue. It's revealed late in the film that MacLaine might have had sex with Skerritt to prove that he wasn't gay, which he denies and then kisses her on the forehead, says he never would've made it as a star, and this was as wonderful a life as he could've asked for. I looked online and yes, apparently the Skerritt character was originally written as gay although it's not clear if he was originally written as closeted and hiding it from MacLaine or if MacLaine knew she was married to a closeted gay man. Laurent said that this was an important subplot that was cut. Uh, yeah. I think at its heart, The Turning Point feels like an intersection of sex and gender roles of its time that just so happens to occupy a ballet film. I think the presence of Skerritt's homosexuality isn't just essential for this to become clear, it makes the MacLaine character boring without it. Otherwise her character arc just becomes about appreciating the lovely life that she has.

-Staying in a similar vein, this feels very much like a depiction of the youngs as written by an old. There's only one moment where Leslie Browne feels of her time, when she tells her mother not to worry about her sexual encounter because she's on the pill just in case. I thought "Oh, that's right. She's a 70's girl." Except as played by Leslie Browne she doesn't feel like one and the moment rings hollow coming off of such a ludicrous sex scene featuring a young woman who clearly refuses to be naked on screen so she clutches her sheets more tightly against her breasts than I've ever seen on film. I don't want to be too hard on Leslie Browne. It's not her fault she was cast in this film, but it's such a pivotal role. She needs to feel like the promise of the future but also a young woman coming into her own and she captures none of that. So this other crucial intersection (about the promise of the next generation) feels totally hollow. Really, what was up with Best Supporting Actress 1977? Obviously, Vanessa Redgrave was never going to have any competition but... she could've had some?

-These are two big problems but I don't think they make it a bad film. It just doesn't create for the snapshot of an era that maybe they were going for. Which by the way, is something I would like. I guess I can see audiences going to see it and still liking it. It's a nice little coming of age/love story and two old veterans hashing it out. Their resolutions are clear. Don't love it but I guess I get it.

-This dialogue OTOH would be purple as title cards in a silent film. I don't recall The Way We Were full of such howlers. What happened?

-I guess I understand its eleven nominations. Browne seems for lack of competition. Baryshnikov certainly has an interesting presence in the film. Picture, Director, Actress x2, Original Screenplay all make sense, as do Cinematography, Production Design, and Sound; if they're not deserving they at least seem like the kinds of nominations a film like this can get. Then there's Best Film Editing which I see won the ACE. I was acutely aware of the editing in this film because it's both accomplished and a thankless task. The Turning Point feels like a center-less film. There's no real driving plot and it has to leap between three subplots. William Reynolds does as good a job as I can imagine... and yet it all feels so weightless. Maybe if I saw it on the big screen it would feel more immersive and dynamic but I felt like I was just skimming over the entire story. Anyway, eleven nominations for this film feels inflated. An interesting comparison might be the fourteen nominations for La La Land. Had Damien Chazelle's charming musical been released in a year with contenders with stronger down ballot coattails, I could see it not making double digits. It's noms for Actor, Film Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, and Sound Effects Editing felt soft. The same could be very much said for many of The Turning Point's nominations.

-I see that Herbert Ross' high water mark during the Oscar season was at the Golden Globes winning six awards for his two films, including both Best Picture awards. But I see that Shirley MacLaine wasn't nominated by this group for Best Actress-Drama. Instead they went with Kathleen Quinlan for I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Gena Rowlands for Opening Night. As has been listed here, there were several contenders for Best Actress in 1977 including Sophia Loren for A Special Day. Was MacLaine seen as a sure shot? Also, was Jane Fonda really seen as a stronger contender for Julia than Anne Bancroft for The Turning Point?

-Actually, Herbert Ross's high water mark might have been winning the LAFCA for Best Director. It's wild that the same group could have the good taste to honor Shelley Duvall for 3 Women and the milquetaste of Herbert Ross.

-I used to view 1977 as Annie Hall's triumph over Star Wars. Maybe I should start viewing it as an even bigger miracle: as Annie Hall's triumph over The Turning Point. There isn't a minute of this film that I would have preferred over Alvy musing as he waits in line to see it. But then, that's true of most films.

[Big Magilla]

The Turning Point was a hot property. The script was originally sent to Grace Kelly who wanted to play the part that eventually went to Shirley MacLaine. Audrey Hepburn would have had the Anne Bancroft part, but Princess Grace's husband wouldn't allow it. Deborah Kerr and Joanne Woodward were also mentioned for the leads at one time. The IMDb. mentions Doris Day instead of Kerr, but I never heard that one.

Ballet lovers were enthralled by Baryshnikov and Browne, but it was the older women's story that sold it.

It was the middle-of-the-road Oscar choice for those who were not big Annie Hall or Star Wars fanatics. Director Herbert Ross, who married Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy Onassis' sister) after his wife died ten years later, also had The Goodbye Girl in the Oscar race. The screenplay was by Arthur Laurents (West Side Story, Gypsy, The Way We Were). It was a prestige woman's film of the kind they hadn't made in a while and would seldom, if ever, make again.

[danfrank]

A couple other factors:

Mikhail Baryshnikov was, at the time, the most famous dancer in the world. That he was masculine and sexually appealing added to why people wanted to see him on the big screen. Add that he was a classical dancer and the film was about high-brow ballet, and voila! You have a prestige film.

Reza makes a good point that women were re-emerging as film stars in that period and not just for their sex appeal. Films at that time were finally addressing real-life issues women faced, and The Turning Point’s central theme of choosing between career and family was a big one.

Of course it has not aged well as it is pretty sappy and melodramatic. Bancroft and MacLaine, though, still hold a lot of appeal.

[Reza]

The Turning Point is on HB-- er, Max so I figured what the hey, let's check it out.

How did this get 11 nominations? What zeitgeist did it hit? Was ballet terribly in fashion at the time? Was it a New York thing? I'm truly baffled. There's a curious lack of tension in the film that's frustrating. There's not enough drama to sustain the Bancroft/MacLaine reunion or the Browne/Baryshnikov relationship, or wit or charm to liven it up. I'm not sure this film benefits from splitting its focus between generations but I don’t know what else we would’ve seen if we didn’t. I felt like I only caught glimpses of what first grabbed Arthur Laurents' imagination. Or am I overthinking this film? Does it just aspirate to be an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser in a unique setting with some fantastic dancing.

I’d be very interested in understanding how this became a thing.

It became a thing because for a few years there had been a dearth of female centric films in Hollywood. Suddenly there were a slew of them in 1977. Jane Fonda (had 2), Marsha Mason (had 2), Diane Keaton (had 2), Vanessa Redgrave, Simone Signoret etc. The Turning Point was long gestating as a project for Audrey Hepburn (as the ageing ballerina) and Grace Kelly (as the housewife). When Kelly decided to pass Hepburn also withdrew. Both MacLaine and Bancroft - huge stars during the 1960s - were pretty much down and out so their teaming became a huge thing adding to the female centric saga which the press wrote about. I remember Time magazine did an article that year with Diane Keaton on the cover.

It was certainly old fashioned and the ballet scenes were rather unimaginatively shot which was surprising as Herbert Ross and his wife the ballerina Nora Kaye were involved with the film. Also adding to the drama was the no holds barred catfight on screen between the two leading ladies which probably set the tone for similar catfights later on the tv series Dynasty between Joan Collins and Linda Evans.

[Sabin]

The Turning Point is on HB-- er, Max so I figured what the hey, let's check it out.

How did this get 11 nominations? What zeitgeist did it hit? Was ballet terribly in fashion at the time? Was it a New York thing? I'm truly baffled. There's a curious lack of tension in the film that's frustrating. There's not enough drama to sustain the Bancroft/MacLaine reunion or the Browne/Baryshnikov relationship, or wit or charm to liven it up. I'm not sure this film benefits from splitting its focus between generations but I don’t know what else we would’ve seen if we didn’t. I felt like I only caught glimpses of what first grabbed Arthur Laurents' imagination. Or am I overthinking this film? Does it just aspirate to be an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser in a unique setting with some fantastic dancing.

I’d be very interested in understanding how this became a thing.

[FilmFan720]

The Turning Point has to be one of the worst films ever to score double-digit nominations. Nothing about the film is interesting, believable or entertaining, and the film just lays there like a dud. The Goodbye Girl is better only because it contains some of Neil Simon's better jokes, and because Richard Dreyfuss brings a lot of wonderful energy to the proceedings (Paul Benedict is also very funny here). It is a property, like La Cage two years later, much improved by its Broadway adaptation in the following decades.

Julia is certainly a very solid film, although I could also see it being overshadowed by a lot of more exciting work in the late 1970s. I don't love it as much as lots of other people seem to, but Fred Zinnemann was always one of the more solid "prestige" directors in Hollywood from the 1940s to the 1970s, and it was nice to see him have one last triumph. I won't consider voting for the film, but I'm glad to see it here.

Star Wars is an interesting conundrum, and like some of the other members of the board from my 1980s/1990s generation, I have a really hard time being objective about it. Like I said this week in our Top 10 post on CinemaSight, Star Wars was such an important part of my childhood, and opened my doors to so much, that a nostalgic side in me is still enraptured by it every time I see it. I also still think it is the best film in the series, and it should most certainly be here from a historical stance. I won't vote for it, but I also wouldn't begrudge its consideration either.

Part of me really wants to vote for Steven Spielberg here, for what still may be his best film and certainly his most personal film. I came to Close Encounters much later than Star Wars (I think it was college when I finally saw it), and I was blown away by its maturity, its personality but also its youthful optimism. This seems the most Spielberg we've ever seen on film, a great technician with a child's sense of wonder. Spielberg gets career-best work from a lot of actors, both experienced and not, but it is the way he takes the film effortlessly from horror to personal comedy and its epic conclusion that merits him an award.

In the end, though, like most everyone else, I had to go with Woody Allen and Annie Hall. Woody Allen has gone a lot deeper sense then, and he has made more complete narratives and grander observations, but Annie Hall may still be his greatest achievement. The scope of this film is so large, encompasses so much, and contains so many memorable moments, that I can't help but be in awe everytime I encounter it. None of his films have taken so many risks (including the animated sequence, the subtitles, but also the diversion to Los Angeles and a final montage that should by all common sense be trite and annoying) and not failed in any of them. It is a monumental American film, in some ways as influential on cinema in the next 40 years as Star Wars was (at least to a different set of filmmakers) and an easy choice here.

[Eric]

I'll probably end up throwing Spielberg best director four times (and would be surprised if many of you don't match or exceed that tally). As magnificent as Annie Hall is and revere it's triumph here and IRL, this is going to be one of the votes I throw to Spielberg. Having never been an especially big fan of Jaws, Close Encounters feels to me like his first fully realized effort.

As for the year on the whole, I'd rank it alongside almost any other from the decade. Now you wanna talk about '78? That's a different story entirely.

01. A Grin Without a Cat
02. 3 Women
03. Suspiria
04. Valse Triste
05. Desperate Living
06. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
07. Killer of Sheep
08. Annie Hall
09. Eraserhead
10. The Last House on Dead End Street

[Reza]

Noted. It just really, really, really seems like a soap opera.

Of course it is. It is. It is.

[Sabin]

Biggest blowout since Dr. Strangelove. I really wasn't anticipating zero votes cast for Star Wars and Mr. Lucas. Nice.

[Big Magilla]

I think we beat this one to death. I'm probably not going to wait a full week before tackling 1978 which should generate a little more diversity of opinion than this one.

[The Original BJ]

Not a lot of options this year. I'd definitely bump up Close Encounters to the main race, and would advocate for 3 Women/Altman, even though I agree the latter takes a dip in the last act.

The Herbert Ross movies are definitely the worst of the lot, and I think The Turning Point is the worst of all. Mister Tee is totally right -- the film is full of ludicrously on-the-nose dialogue. My personal favorite occurs during a scene where Bancroft and MacLaine are having a drink at a bar, and Shirley says something like "I'm going to ask you something I've been wanting to ask you for years, but never have." Watching this scene, I thought...seriously? There was NO more graceful way to write this beat without explaining such thuddingly obvious subtext? And the whole movie is full of scenes like that, full of dreadful writing from scene to scene (and it's not like the soap-y plotline was any great shakes either). The dancing is definitely good, but as drama this is a slog -- Herbert Ross's direction is just blander than bland, and he seems to think he's helming something really profound to boot.

The Goodbye Girl is better, simply because Neil Simon's ability to construct a joke at least makes it less of a snooze. But it isn't very much fun either. The set-up is the usual Simon same-old-same-old (The Odd Couple...but with a man and a woman!), Marsha Mason couldn't make a less appealing love interest, and that precocious child is beyond irritating. Dreyfuss was superior to those two, but was still saddled with eye-rolling moments ("A-buff-o!") that sent the story completely out of reality and deep into the phoniness of Neil Simon-land. The similarly themed Barefoot in the Park may have been a trifle, but it wasn't nearly this obnoxious.

I agree with Mister Tee's general take on Julia. The first chunk of the film is handsomely mounted, and features good actors just about everywhere (hi Meryl!). But the plot was a little bit loose, as if the filmmakers couldn't quite decide on what the story needed to be. But once Hellman's mission takes center stage, the film becomes pretty gripping stuff, while also maintaining a very strong emotional core (which reaches its climax in that sensationally acted restaurant scene between Fonda and Redgrave). Fred Zinneman, on the whole, wasn't a terribly exciting director, and Julia feels more like a throwback than something quintessentially '70s. But it's tastefully done and rather intelligent -- two hallmarks of Zinneman's successes -- and it was definitely one of the better films of this year.

It's surprising that, for someone raised on Spielberg (including a lot of the historical films), I didn't end up seeing Close Encounters until college. So I don't have the youthful nostalgia for it that I feel toward most of the director's other hits from this era. But I still think it's a very strong movie, and one that crystallized a lot of what we think of as classic Spielbergian elements -- a suburban milieu, the arrival of fantastical beings, wondrous visuals, superbly structured chase sequences, and an instantly iconic John Williams score. I'd have to imagine that, if Jaws signaled the genuine breakthrough of a hot new talent, Close Encounters confirmed that he was no one-trick pony. (And maybe 1941 soon proved he wasn't infallible.) He doesn't get my vote this time -- like others, I have plans to vote for him down the line -- but, as usual, he's a very deserving nominee.

At this point, it's pretty difficult to separate Star Wars: The Movie from Star Wars: The Worldwide Religion, so inundated has the movie culture been with sequels, prequels, merchandise, theme park attractions, tv shows, and on and on. But, in an attempt to solely analyze the film that began the phenomenon, I'll say that it was one of the films that really ignited my cinephilia. I fell in love with Star Wars as a kid, owned the trilogy box set (the first VHS tapes I ever possessed), saw the special editions in the theater, etc. I sat down to revisit the movie in college, to form an adult opinion of it, and I decided that I come down somewhere in the middle of two highly opinionated camps. I definitely didn't side with what you might call the serious cineaste view, that Star Wars is basically vapid dreck, mainly because I still found the movie to be pretty darn fun. I think George Lucas creates a wondrous world, full of enjoyable characters, and sets them on a mythic narrative that really just zips along, thanks to the energy of Marcia Lucas's cuts and John Williams's thrilling score. Despite the countless imitators over the years (sometimes with the Star Wars name attached) I think there's something magical about this first effort -- Lucas may borrow from the past, but he took old-fashioned elements and created his own singular cinematic universe that essentially amounted to lightning in a bottle.

That said, I don't side with the populist take on the movie -- that it's an all-time great FILM -- either. The movie is very entertaining, but it's certainly not deep, or very insightful about anything relating to the real world, and I feel that those who rank this in the top echelon of film history's canon are just looking for different things than I am in their movies. I like Star Wars a lot more than Mister Tee, but he's right that it's not a movie my adult self could be incredibly emotionally attached to, and I don't quite understand how so many friends of mine could feel so strongly as to worship at its altar.

Annie Hall, though, is a movie I do cherish. I think it's incredibly funny, with smart and cynical dialogue that that's intuitive about cultural stereotypes ("Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here."), relationships ("Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week." / "Constantly, I'd say three times a week"), art ("They're always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler), and so many other areas of life. Aside from an absolutely glittering screenplay, Woody Allen the director incorporates consistently surprising visual elements that make the film soar as a piece of inventive cinema beyond even just the originality of the structure. And the central romance between Allen (working within his usual persona but still hugely appealing in his sweet-and-sour way) and Keaton (who has still never been more delightful) is heartfelt, hilarious, and hugely relatable in its honesty. Annie Hall is both an exceedingly intelligent and insightful piece of filmmaking as well as a blissfully entertaining comedy (how rare that combination is, especially today). Annie Hall for Best Picture and Woody Allen for Best Director, all the way.

[Sabin]

Noted. It just really, really, really seems like a soap opera.

[Big Magilla]

I just watched the trailer for The Turning Point, and my God it looks like a bumpy ride.

It is NOT Citizen Kane or a Bergman film but nevertheless it is quite fun when focusing on the two lead actresses. Of course one has to be into such films in order to get any pleasure out of it. Watch it, if only to see why it got 11 nods. After all I'm sure you must get to see other rubbish from time to time as we all do.

Tom Skerritt, Martha Scott, Alexandra Danilova and James Mitchell were pretty good, too.

[Reza]

Voted for Annie Hall & Woody Allen.

My picks for 1977:

Best Picture
1. Providence
2. Annie Hall
3. That Obscure Object of Desire
4. Julia
5. Star Wars

The 6th Spot: The Goodbye Girl

Best Director
1. Alain Resnais, Providence
2. Woody Allen, Annie Hall
3. Luis Bunuel, That Obscure Object of Desire
4. Fred Zinnemann, Julia
5. George Lucas, Star Wars

The 6th Spot: Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind

[Reza]

I just watched the trailer for The Turning Point, and my God it looks like a bumpy ride.

It is NOT Citizen Kane or a Bergman film but nevertheless it is quite fun when focusing on the two lead actresses. Of course one has to be into such films in order to get any pleasure out of it. Watch it, if only to see why it got 11 nods. After all I'm sure you must get to see other rubbish from time to time as we all do.