Best Screenplay 1971

1927/28 through 1997

What were the best original and adapted screenplays of 1971?

The Hospital (Paddy Chayefsky)
0
No votes
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri and Ugo Pirro)
3
8%
Klute (Andy Lewis and Dave Lewis)
3
8%
Summer of '42 (Herman Raucher)
1
3%
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Penelope Gilliatt)
11
29%
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
5
13%
The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)
4
11%
The French Connection (Ernest Tidyman)
0
No votes
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio Bonicelli and Ugo Pirro)
3
8%
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich and Larry McMurtry)
8
21%
 
Total votes: 38

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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by danfrank »

Glad to see Vivian Pickles mentioned. She was delightfully eccentric and a scene stealer in both Sunday Bloody Sunday and Harold and Maude.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Big Magilla »

Vivian Pickles also had a major supporting role as Glenda Jackson's friend in Sunday Bloody Sunday and had a minor role in 1971's Nicholas and Alexandra as well.

She's still with us at 92 although her last credit was a 1999 episode of Midsomer Murders.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Greg »

Speaking of romances between different-aged characters, I want to echo the posts that Harold And Maude would have been a worthy Original Screenplay nominee.

Some of the best lines were given to Harold's mother. "Harold, that's your last date!" "Your girlfriend is a sunflower?" Incidentally, I just read that Vivian Pickles, who played the mother, also played Mary, Queen Of Scots in the BBC television miniseries Elizabeth R the same year. It has been quite awhile since I have seen both, but, from what I remember it is hard to believe both were played by the same actress. She must have been quite a versatile performer.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Reza »

Greg wrote: Thu Sep 14, 2023 3:46 pm I wonder if, considering the current mindset, Sunday Bloody Sunday was remade today, that the age difference between the two male characters would be a bigger issue than the bisexuality.
:lol:
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Greg »

I wonder if, considering the current mindset, Sunday Bloody Sunday was remade today, that the age difference between the two male characters would be a bigger issue than the bisexuality.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Reza »

What an eclectic list of nominees. All pretty much brilliant films.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Sabin »

I'm watching a fair amount of 1970s films. It's a crazy world we're living in right now and it seems appropriate. I just watched The Hospital last night and I know it's generally held in low esteem on this board... I kind of dug it but just wish a different sensibility was at the helm than whatever Arthur Hiller's is, someone with a sense of humor or a stronger governing intelligence to recognize which scenes deserve to be more taken seriously than others. I actually like it more as a structured work than as a dialogue piece. I wasn't there in 1971 but it seems like a pretty sly work to me. George C. Scott spends most of the film railing against the counterculturists, his disappointing children, and the Marxists at the gate but by the end of the film he's almost totally willing to exit society to run off to Mexico with a delusional murderer and his loony daughter. To be more specific, we're meant to find the offer of him leaving to actually help people free of the meddlesome system in Mexico enticing. He may not actually end up leaving but I think at heart there's a slight countercultural spirit in this film, about Marxists and the middle-class almost meeting in the middle. Unfortunately, Hiller isn't the guy for that and Chayefsky doesn't quite push it there enough in the end. With someone else at the helm, I think it could have been a lot better. As it is, I dug it enough, but I can clearly see that Paddy Chayfesky is the kind of God screenwriter who shouldn't operate as the feared, unquestioned almighty of the worlds he creates.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by The Original BJ »

The Original Screenplay race left a lot to be desired this year. I'm still missing some of the candidates others here speak highly of (Carnal Knowledge, Taking Off), but I could still come up with plenty of alternates that I think are way better written than most of the slate, including Harold and Maude, Claire's Knee, and Bananas.

Given the name attached, I was pretty surprised how much I disliked The Hospital. It's not as if there's zero display of craft here -- Paddy Chayefsky certainly knows his way around an impactful monologue -- but I found this a fairly ragged piece of work. George C. Scott is the ostensible center, but way too much screen time is taken up by random side characters, and as a result, I found it difficult to engage with such a narratively diluted story. And too many elements just didn't work for me, from the wan and needlessly convoluted mystery plot, to the obviousness of much of the satire. I think this is the worst Original Screenplay winner of the '70's.

To respond to Mister Tee's inquiry, I have to admit that years of coming-of-age stories have likely affected my take on Summer of '42, but I can't say I was all that impressed by it. It was a pleasant enough sit (and I actually found the condom purchasing scene quite funny), but I found it almost shockingly limited in point of view. Most stories about growing up focus on the young characters learning a lot of lessons about life, but Summer of '42 is virtually entirely about its protagonists' quest to get laid. For a story set during such a major global event as WWII, this seemed like a real wasted opportunity. And the ending isn't just completely unbelievable -- it seemed to think it was WAY more profound than it actually was. The main character's life was never the same again after that experience? Give me a break. As with A Little Romance, I have no idea why this should have been considered for major awards attention.

If the entirety of Klute had been on the level of the portions of the movie that might have been called "Bree," perhaps I might have considered it. Because those scenes -- like Fonda's first therapy session -- featured some really blistering monologues for the lead actress that made Bree Daniels one of the most fascinating female characters of the era. But what you might call the "Klute" portions -- the mystery plot -- were a lot more ho hum, even bordering on generic crime drama. The movie remains a notable film for the great performance it houses, but I don't consider it an A-grade piece of writing in its entirety.

The other two nominees are the only ones I'd really consider. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is a pretty complex piece of work, both in its structure (with flashbacks detailing the breakdown of the central relationship) and political ideas (I actually liked the way the film wasn't so laser-focused on its central murder plot, because the police department's handling of the revolutionaries was so nicely linked thematically to the film's concerns about the hero's power abuses). Beyond the movie's protagonist, it doesn't explore any of the other characters with much depth, but there are a lot of well-written monologues throughout, and the surrealist dual ending is a nifty finale, ambiguous but not vague. I certainly understand people voting for it.

But I'm going to join the super-majority and pick Sunday Bloody Sunday. It doesn't have a ton of plot, but the way its script burrows so deeply into the lives of its characters in such an emotionally resonant way makes it feel more overwhelming than its smallish size might seem to have allowed. It's full of trenchant dialogue, which its characters use to express their conflicting feelings over whether, in Jackson's words, "something is better than nothing," a dilemma I bet most adults have encountered at some point in their lives. And though I imagine the particulars of the central relationship -- a polyamorous affair with both heterosexual and homosexual sides -- were seen as hugely bold in 1971, it's not as if any of the movie comes off as quaint or dated today. Instead, it remains an incisive character study, and my favorite of the nominees in this category.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by The Original BJ »

The Adapted race is very strong this year -- I'm sure we could all come up with some substitutions (mine would be the great McCabe & Mrs. Miller), but I think every script here is an exciting effort, and fully representative of the best of filmmaking in the era.

I agree with most, though, that The French Connection isn't the script that should have been singled out for the win, mainly due to the kind of film it is -- it's hard for me to choose more action-driven fare in this category, because I tend to think of them more as directing/technical achievements than scripted ones. And French Connection's highlights (especially the subway chase, but also the earlier subway cat-and-mouse game, and the final stakeout) are certainly triumphs of this nature. Still, I wouldn't want to put down the script either, because it has a lot of assets too -- a very solid structure, a complex anti-hero at its center, and some sharp one-liners. When people praise the movie for being more than "just a thriller," I think it's the more intelligent quality of the writing people are noticing.

For so long, I'd heard of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis talked about as a Holocaust film that I was surprised when I got to it to find out just how little of it actually takes place in that environment. It's far closer in content to something like Cabaret, in the way it chronicles the specific romantic relationships of a group of people against the backdrop of the Nazis' rise to power. And I felt the film explored a lot of issues I hadn't seen on-screen before, from the way class privileges deluded the titular family into thinking the big walls of their estate would keep out the gathering storm, to the conflicts between members of different Jewish families with opposing ideas of how best to handle their increasingly horrific situation. It still isn't, for me, quite as much of a favorite as some other nominees on the ballot, but it's certainly one of the key films on this subject.

The Conformist is a film which deserved a lot more Oscar attention than it got -- I can't believe the cinematographers didn't go for it -- but it's great it did get this one citation. To the argument that the film is not as much a writing triumph, I guess I'll say that it's true the film's visual look, and particularly the mood Bertolucci evokes through the chilliness of the images, is one of the film's great virtues. But there's more than enough here for me to celebrate the screenplay as well, especially given the audacious structure that makes the flashbacks feel like memories from which Trintignant can never escape. And I find the dialogue rich in ideas as well, particularly the way in which it explores the psychology that leads to its hero's devotion to the status quo, and by extension of backdrop, how that complicity doomed an entire continent.

But my votes come down to the remaining two movies, my two favorites of the year, and as in Picture & Director, I'd be happy to vote "Tie" as my choice. A Clockwork Orange is a dazzling experience, one that creates a fully imaginative dystopian world, fills it with horrific incidents, and yet somehow still manages to possess a great amount of wit to it (the ace up the sleeve of this film's script). It's true that the film has a nihilistic streak, but none of this is to simply miserable ends -- there's a fascinating thematic exploration of the way in which the attempt to police unsavory images from reaching the populace actually leads to increased sex and violence, and I think the movie's richness of ideas makes its disturbing scenes far more palatable. But, when it comes to casting my vote this year, I'm going to acknowledge that the film is perhaps a greater visual triumph than a verbal one, and seeing as I've already granted Kubrick Best Director this year...

...I'm going to go with Bogdanovich (and McMurtry) for Best Adapted Screenplay, because I think The Last Picture Show is an even more nuanced piece of writing. I can recall so many wonderful exchanges of language in this script -- Ben Johnson's monologue at the fishing hole, Ellen Burstyn and Timothy Bottoms in the convertible, pretty much every encounter between Bottoms and Cloris Leachman at her house -- all full of insightful and painfully heartbreaking dialogue. The film is an emotional powerhouse, in the way it creates a town full of characters who feel realistic to the bone, and follows the hopes of the teenagers and regrets of the adults as they fumble their way through the cultural changes leading to the death of their town. It's a beautifully honest portrait of individual lives, and a more panoramic view of America in a specific time and place. Neither Bogdanovich nor McMurtry, for all of their gifts as director and novelist respectively, have that many great screenwriting credits, but this was the clear peak in that department for both, and the work deserves acknowledgment as one of the great scripts of the decade.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by ITALIANO »

Before someone says it - yes, I have voted for TWO Italian movies. Partly because they deserve to win, partly because... well, why not? It may seem strange in this context of mostly American movies, but in the larger context of the 70s, Italy used to produce almost as many movies per year as the US - and many of these movies were very, very good (many were also very bad, of course). It was the last, glorious period of the Cinema Italiano - from the 80s, things would start getting different.
Investigation on a Citizen Above Suspicion is a brilliant, brilliant movie. a meditation on how those belonging to certain "powers" (the police, in this case) can commit any kind of crime without fear of being punished - even when clues prove their absolute responsability, even (and this is where the movie becomes deliberately paradoxical) when they intentionally leave those clues. I know, it sounds like the plot of the Kurt Russell vehicle Unlawful Entry, but really, you should watch this movie (and even too obviously most here haven't seen it) and see how bizarre, almost "kaflaesque" it is. It's not like Sunday Bloody Sunday isn't well-written, of course - except that John Schlesinger always said that it wasn't actually written, in its final form at least, by Penelope Gilliatt (who, perhaps not surprisingly, never saw her name on another movie). As for Oscar-winner The Hospital, it's probably not a stupid movie, and you can see that it has something to say (too much to say actually) on what its writer perceived as "bad" in contemporary society. But this writer is the talented but VERY self-important Paddy Chayefsky, which means that the movie (while always kind-of interesting) becomes soon preachy, obvious. And, of course, the device of letting the viewer know about a leading character's past by having him spelling it out in a very explicit monologue to a psychitrist is just too easy.

I had more doubts in Adapted. Three of the nominees are great movies, with great screenplays. One is a very affecting movie, though probably a bit dated today. And one, the winner, is efficiently written but I guess the worst of the five. It's difficult to pick one from a trio composed of A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show and The Conformist. And I must admit that if I have chosen The Conformist, it's also because I know the original material it's based on, and I can truly appreciate Bertolucci's work on it. Moravia's novel is one of his most ambitious - a study of Fascism (ANY fascism, but especially the Italian version of it) as "banally evil" - before Hannah Arendt wrote HER book about it. It's a great novel, but also one which is mostly set inside its leading character's complex mind and soul. And this is always difficult to be made into a movie. Bertolucci succeeded in writing a VERY filmic movie, full of impressive, almost iconic scenes, yet preserving the novel's disturbing psychological background. If it's not a masterpiece, it comes close to being one.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Mister Tee »

There must have been some real hate for Carnal Knowledge in the Academy. The movie had been highly critically praised AND a major box office hit; for everyone, even the writers, to pass on it (the writers picking some fairly lame stuff in its place) required serious animus. I remember a Chicago film writer (not Siskel or Ebert) saying one voter had told him the suggestion of oral sex in the final scene was enough to turn many voters off. Whatever it was, it cost Jules Feiffer a nomination I thought a gimme.

Also deserving spots were Bananas (Woody during the long-ago time when it seemed the Oscars would never nominate him), Taking Off, and Claire’s Knee (Rohmer apparently seen as rating one-lifetime-nomination-only).

I’m rather startled to see the number of votes for Klute. I’ve always seen the movie as an engrossing character study (offering Jane Fonda full rein to give the performance of her career) trapped inside a truly mundane mystery. I watched it again sometime in the past year and saw no reason to alter my opinion. Would some of its champions like to speak up and tell us why it got their support?

I’m disappointed no one’s commented on Summer of ’42 – not, god knows, because I’d expect anyone to vote for it, but because I haven’t seen or heard anything about the film in a very long time, and I’m pretty sure it’s never been discussed here, so I’m curious about reaction. The movie was a major sleeper hit – opening somewhat quietly in Spring, but really exploding when it hit the neighborhoods in mid-summer. I thought it was a mostly likable, funny nostalgia piece, though some of it may seem less fresh now (after a gazillion teens-buying-condoms scenes, I doubt Hermie’s foray into the drugstore holds up, but it was new screen material at the time, and audiences ate it up). Even back then, though, I thought the ending was pure screenwriter’s wet dream; I groaned throughout the entire wish-fulfilling bedroom sequence. I still found the film a pleasant enough thing overall, but I couldn’t take it remotely seriously.

I don’t know if Chayefsky’s winning moment for The Hospital is available on YouTube, but if it is, you should check it out for the bizarre presentation by Tennessee Williams (as I recall, he kept saying he didn’t need his glasses, when in fact he could barely read the teleprompter). One wished he was misreading when he called out Chayeksky’s name for this bleat of “You kids get off my lawn” reactionarism. I suppose the script isn’t all bad – it has its comic moments, and probably paved the way for the full leap to better satire in Network. Unfortunately, though, Arthur Hiller directed it in such numbing fashion that the 19-year-old me was screaming for him to pick up the pace, and he made the script seemed far worse than it was.

I’d been expecting more of a straight-line crime procedural from Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, so I was a bit knocked off balance by its satirical approach. (I only later got to The Tenth Victim, which would have prepared me better.) It’s been some time since I saw it – not 40 years, but a solid 20 – so maybe I should look at it again. My recollection is, the movie’s witty, but not so witty as to rate my vote here.

Anyway, Sunday Bloody Sunday is a marvel, and my clear choice: a rather perfect piece of writing that’s closer to New Yorker-level quality fiction than the general run of screenplays. Upfront, the premise (bisexual man in affairs with both a man and woman) seemed to promise titillation, but the film instead delivered a moving slice of life with real insight into just how little people are willing to settle for in life. Both the Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson characters are intelligent, accomplished adults, yet they accept Murray Head’s “half a loaf” offer, not seeming capable of demanding more from life (though Jackson finally makes some move near the end). There are wonderful chunks of dialogue among the various characters (I especially love Jackson’s scene with Peggy Ashcroft), and, above all, a sense of actual life being observed. An easy pick.

Jules Feiffer was passed over twice that year, in my reckoning: he could also have got a nod in adapted for the funny/horrifying Little Murders. And Straw Dogs, though it’s clearly not script-centered, would also have merited consideration.

That The French Connection won the adapted category tells you just how closely best picture and best screenplay were intertwined in the era. Not to say the film had a sub-par script – Popeye was a well-wrought character, there was some scrappy dialogue, and nice observation throughout. But the film’s triumph was largely Friedkin’s (and his editor’s), for the film’s exhilarating kinetic energy; in script terms, it runs well back in the pack for me.

I hear all the enthusiasm here for The Conformist, and I don’t disagree that the film is an invigorating, sumptuous screen experience. But for me its strength is largely the director’s work – in fact, I’d say Bertolucci’s overwhelmingly sensuous style makes rather more of the script than was there on paper. The baseline story is actually fairly thin: even four decades ago, “man becomes fascist to keep his sexual leanings suppressed” was pretty routine (and certainly not profound). The thriller aspect of the plot plays well enough, but, again, it’s not revelatory. When I watched the film a second time, just a few years back, what impressed me were exactly the things I’d recalled from 1971: the images – whether the POV of the rustling leaves, or the erotically charged dance hall sequence. I’m not questioning The Conformist as an important film; I am saying that, for me, it’s not a great screenplay.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was a return to form for deSica after some lackluster years, and the last truly great triumph of his career. The film is a Holocaust movie, but not a simple one -- its subject, an upper class Jewish family in Italy so accustomed to privilege that they seem to feel it will exempt them from the horrors of Nazism, goes far deeper than most films in the genre. In the end, of course, it DOES become a Holocaust movie – watching the family being taken away to the camps moves us in a familiar way – but there’s lots more inventive stuff along the way.

A Clockwork Orange is an exciting piece of filmmaking that absolutely wowed me in 1971. The look, the language, the boldness of the material all gripped my college student psyche. A more recent look didn’t exactly change that view, but it did make me see more the point of view of those (led by Pauline Kael,, but including other top critics) who saw it as clinically cold and without much human sympathy. It’s still one of the most exciting works to emerge in 1971, and I gave it my directing trophy. But I no longer consider it the best film of the year, nor the best adapted screenplay.

Conversely, as I noted in earlier threads, I wasn’t wowed by The Last Picture Show when I saw it in 1971, but it was extraneous circumstance that probably prevented me from fully responding. I’ve seen it several more times over the years, including just a month or so back, and I’m now fully on board with it as a near-perfect American film and, certainly, one of the great adaptations of the era. Bogdanovich and McMurtry cast a sympathetic but clear-eyed look at the hypocrisies of a small Texas town -- handling a multitude of story lines (many with complex back-stories), managing to keep them all in balance, and offering over a dozen rich, full-bodied characters. At the same time, they offer a panoramic view of a society in flux – rural areas being dragged into the 20th century, for good or ill. There doesn’t seem to be a wasted moment in the film, and the dialogue throughout is memorable while also feeling true to its locale. I don’t know what else one could ask for in a screenplay, and I’m happy to be able to cast a vote its way.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Reza »

ksrymy wrote:How anyone could pick anything over "The Conformist" is lost on me. Possibly the most masterful political movie I've seen.
Very easily, it seems :)
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Reza »

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Last edited by Reza on Fri Jun 05, 2015 9:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by Reza »

Kellens101 wrote:I have not seen The Devils due to my age, so I wouldn't know if that was a major omission or not, but I'll probably watch it some day.
Dude you are hilarious. You seem to have seen every possible film out there and your "young" age hasn't stopped you. If you look hard enough surely you can watch this film too. Better still why not dispense with the "age" charade. It's getting extremely boring now :)
Last edited by Reza on Fri Jun 05, 2015 9:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1971

Post by ksrymy »

How anyone could pick anything over "The Conformist" is lost on me. Possibly the most masterful political movie I've seen.
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