Best Picture and Director 1975

[Heksagon]

I have fallen behind in the voting, so I'd better catch up a bit.

I agree that this is one of the strongest Best Picture line-ups. But even with several worthy films, this is another easy choice for me, as my votes go to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Concerning Barry Lyndon, O'Neal and Berenson are terrible actors, but in a strange way, I feel their acting nevertheless fits the film quite well. Filmmaking, after all, isn't about getting the best actors all the time, it is about the getting the right fit for each part. O'Neal's hapless performance conveys a surprisingly good impression of Lyndon as an awkward person who doesn't have full control of what is happening around him. Furthermore, it goes well with the film's overall style. With authentic costumes and sets, and minimalist lighting, Barry Lyndon aims to distance itself from the highly polished costume dramas that Hollywood usually makes, and bad acting somehow suits that style, a bit like some directors like to use amateur actors.

[Precious Doll]

And with this movie, I can come up with so many that just thrill me with so many complex feelings. . . Sueleen Gay's pathetic striptease. . .

Sadly, Gwen Welles, who played Sueleen Gay, died of cancer when she was just 42.

And speaking of Gwen Welles, Donna Deitch (Desert Hearts) made a sensational documentary on Gwen Welles battle with cancer in 1998 called Angel on My Shoulder. Unfortunately the film seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet. Well worth seeing if you ever come across it.

[Greg]

And with this movie, I can come up with so many that just thrill me with so many complex feelings. . . Sueleen Gay's pathetic striptease. . .

Sadly, Gwen Welles, who played Sueleen Gay, died of cancer when she was just 42.

[The Original BJ]

I think this is the greatest lineup in both Best Picture and Best Director in the history of the Academy Awards. What's most impressive is the range of films represented -- they all seem quite different in style/tone from one another, and yet they are all very representative of what was happening in mainstream cinema in the 1970s.

In a field this superb, it seems a fool's errand to call one of the nominees the "worst"...but, given that I think Amarcord should have been a Best Picture nominee and Steven Spielberg a Best Director nominee, I guess that leaves Dog Day Afternoon as my runt of the litter. I, too, like Sidney Lumet far more than Damien did, though I think he was too limited visually to be the great director a lot of those obituaries claimed him to be. (There's one shot in this film, in particular, that I find so bizarrely framed, it took me a moment to even figure out what the director was intending me to look at.) But Lumet often found himself with strong scripts, and this year (and next) those scripts were just about the perfect fit for his rough-and-ragged style, and he directed them both to the hilt, with exciting energy and a madcap black comic tone. The premise of Dog Day, on paper, sounds ridiculous, but thanks to Lumet, the screenplay, and completely game actors, the film feels like a fresh jolt and never a joke. Could you imagine a contemporary thriller with this concept -- a guy holds up a bank to pay for his male lover's sex change operation -- being sold to commercial moviegoers today? It's certainly unimaginable that the final product would turn out as gripping, piercing, and oddly poignant as Dog Day Afternoon is.

Jaws was one of those films that really started getting me into movies as a kid. (Actually, Spielberg is responsible for a lot of those, probably a good reason why my generation of cineastes holds him in such high esteem.) I adored the thing as a young teenager, to the point where I devoured all the sequels, despite increasingly diminutive returns. I revisited Jaws in college and found even more to appreciate about it. It remained, as ever, a totally frightening experience, thrillingly orchestrated by Spielberg with so many famous touches (the delay of the reveal of the shark until that startling moment, the borrowed-from-Hitchcock zoom-in/track out, the hugely suspenseful two-note score). But I also noticed the movie's wicked sense of humor ("You're going to need a bigger boat" is exactly the laugh-that-we-may-not-scream line we need at that moment, and the scene where the guys show off their scars is pretty fun too). And, above all, it struck me that the movie, like The Birds, had a far stronger dramatic subtext than your average monster movie. Viewed post-9/11, it seemed one could almost interpret the narrative allegorically, as the story about a leader's approach to dealing with a type of terrorism threatening his community. This is not to say that I think the movie is the height of profundity, but I think these elements make it pretty special nonetheless.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest could be viewed as a fairly middle-of-the-road compromise choice, and given the other films on the ballot, anyone making that argument wouldn't be wrong. But I wouldn't want to overlook what DOES make the movie exciting either. I think the reason it became such an Academy bingo is that it wrapped its narrative in Milos Forman's restrained, classical style, but told a story that was, content-wise, completely anti-authoritarian. Forman is, for me, a big reason why the film doesn't seem dated today, as it maintains the novel's overthrow-the-man (or in this case, woman) spirit, yet never goes over the top in a way that some more aggressive films from this period did. The other big reason the film holds up is the pair of central performances. Nicholson is just phenomenal here, full of crazy energy but never playing McMurphy so broadly as to undercut one of the main ideas in the movie -- that McMurphy is just about the most sane character around. And Louise Fletcher, cold, steely-eyed, and always in control, provides the perfect, frightening foil for him. The movie is perhaps not as artful as the remaining three, and Forman is clearly an inferior director to that trio, but the film is not an objectionable winner by a long shot.

Amarcord is one of Federico Fellini's finest triumphs, a touching and funny film about memory, community, growing up, and time passing. It is a film in which one can just get lost -- almost like an Italian Winesburg, Ohio -- as we drift in and out of the lives of these townsfolk, through moments funny, shocking, and heartbreaking. It is, above all, a tremendous visual experience: images like the dandelion seeds floating by, the characters rushing out to watch the ocean liner pass, a bride's bouquet landing sadly on the ground, and, of course, the peacock spreading its feathers in the snow. Throughout the film, Fellini finds just the right mixture of reality and fantasy, of satire and honesty, of narrative and dream. I've voted for Fellini twice already as Best Director, and very easily could have picked him again, but the competition forces me to hold off, despite the fact that I think this is a truly wonderful movie.

Stanley Kubrick is another director I've chosen several times before, and Barry Lyndon is yet another quintessential masterpiece from the director. Visually, it's a total knockout, from the images lit by natural light, to the painting-inspired compositions. But I think the movie is far more than just a collection of pretty pictures. Its narrative -- about a casually immoral man who eventually gets his comeuppance in ironic ways -- is cold, cynical, and utterly fascinating. I know some don't particularly care for the use of narration in the film, but I think it's hugely effective -- almost like the unfeeling voice of God overseeing Barry Lyndon and his predestined fate. I definitely don't think Ryan O'Neal was any great actor (though I do think he's a lot of fun in Paper Moon), and he's bland in the title role here...but I think his passivity is used effectively enough by Kubrick to tell the story of a man who has life happen to him rather than a man who is a hero (or even an anti-hero). The below-the-line prizes the film reaped were hugely deserving, and Kubrick would be, yet again, a perfectly worthy Best Director choice for his typically exacting work.

But The Greatest Movie Ever is on the ballot, and I vote for it with tremendous enthusiasm in both Best Picture and Best Director. For better or for worse, I've often cast my votes in these polls for films that have the most moments I find memorable. And with this movie, I can come up with so many that just thrill me with so many complex feelings: the opening patriotic/arrogant "200 Years," the repeated Hal Phillip Walker campaign trucks blaring by, the traffic snarl, the soldier delivering flowers and watching over Barbara Jean in her hospital bed, Pearl's monologue about her love for the Kennedys, the Sunday church montage, Barbara Jean's onstage meltdown, Opal wandering around the schoolbuses, Kenny's phone call with his mom, Tom's "I'm Easy" and Linnea's reaction to it, and then their final tryst together, Sueleen Gay's pathetic striptease, and of course, the shocking finale, followed by Albuquerque's bittersweet rendition of "It Don't Worry Me" as the camera cranes up toward the sky. Nashville is Robert Altman's greatest triumph, and everything about the film is astounding, from the sheer number of narratives deftly juggled, to the glorious country songs, from the superlative ensemble of performers, to the exciting overlapping sound design that puts the viewer right in the middle of this bustling, lived-in city. It is, for me, a film that is both deeply patriotic about its belief in the American dream, as well as severely critical of the darker elements of society that continually threaten to overwhelm the promise of that dream. I think it is to the American cinema what I think The Great Gatsby is to the American novel, and Ragtime is to the American musical: the finest exploration of what it means to be an American in the art form's history. I believe it is the greatest miracle that the movies have ever produced, and I treasure it so very, very deeply.

[ksrymy]

04. F for Fake
05. Grey Gardens
06. Deep Red

I'm glad to see both amazing documentaries and classic giallo getting love here. Your lists are always the most interesting.

[Reza]

Voted for Cuckoo's Nest and Milos Forman.

My picks for 1975:

Best Picture
1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2. Amarcord
3. Jaws
4. Dog Day Afternoon
5. Nashville

The 6th Spot: Barry Lyndon

Best Director
1. Milos Forman, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2. Federico Fellini, Amarcord
3. Steven Spielberg, Jaws
4. Robert Altman, Nashville
5. Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon

The 6th Spot: Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon

[Big Magilla]

Two things.

As disappointing as I found the year overall, I will say that my top three, Nashville; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Dog Day Afternoon were/are superior to a lot of the product of the 70s. Nashville was my favorite film since Midnight Cowboy and remained so until L.A. Confidential cam along twenty-two years later.

I don't remember any of the sub-plots in Benchley's Jaws, just that the build-up to the shark attacks were much more frightening in the book than the film.

[Jim20]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for Best Picture, and Robert Altman for Directing.

[Mister Tee]

I remember sitting with a friend at the end of 1975 and his expressing something like Magilla has: that the year hadn’t yielded as many interesting films as the years prior. My response then (and I echo it now) was Tracy’s famous “Pat and Mike” remark: “Yeah: not much meat on her…but what’s there is choice”. True, there weren’t many back-up options available…but who needed them, with a field this glittering, and as representative of the era? I think this is one of the strongest best picture/director fields ever.

If I were forced to go hunting for substitutes, I’d probably first advocate for Woody Allen’s Love and Death – his best film to that point, but still just “funny”, so the Academy gave him no notice (that was of course soon to change drastically). I’ve always felt I OUGHT to love Shampoo more – by pedigree/subject matter, it seems right up my alley -- but I found it only a decent/middling achievement at the time. I did like (in a minor fashion) Lies My Father Told Me, a Jan Kadar film singled out by the writers. And I enjoyed The Man Who Would Be King, though not up to the enthusiasm level of latter-day revisionism.

Speaking of revisionism…I’ve often mentioned here how interesting it is for those of us who were around in real time to watch the upward rating of certain films from the era – Raging Bull and Apocalypse Now notable among them. Barry Lyndon is another in that group. The film always had a certain level of support – it finished second in the NY Critics’ voting that year – but a good portion of critical opinion was in line with Magilla’s “beautiful but dull”. Today it’s often placed much higher in Kubrick’s canon (as witnessed by the first place votes it’s received here). I always liked the film more than the most skeptical – I found its beauty tangible enough to transcend some of the dramatic shortcomings. But the weakness of the acting leads prevent me from seeing it as the masterpiece many now find. Still, for a film this strong to rank last for me among the six best picture/director candidates shows just how solid a group it was.

Magilla, I’m close to stupefied you find Jaws the movie inferior to Jaws the novel. Widespread feeling at the time (with which I was in full agreement) was that, by jettisoning such trashy subplots as Hooper’s affair with Brody’s wife and the mayor’s Mafia ties, Spielberg had vastly improved the potboiler book and made it into a focused, rousing adventure. There were plenty of great moments prior to boarding Quint’s boat: the famous opening; the comical “guys with the side of beef” scene; Hooper’s sudden encounter with the underwater corpse. And once the film got on board, it was non-stop tension/excitement. That first glimpse of the shark – the “You’re going to need a bigger boat” moment – was the single scariest scene in any movie I’ve ever seen (I could literally feel my vocal chords collapse, and heard this shrill sound escaping my throat that I realized was an actual scream – something I’ve never before or since experienced in a theatre). Yes, it was obvious once the shark fully emerged from underwater that it was fake -- but that was so late in the film (while Quint was being devoured), and the audience was by then so worked up, that it didn’t matter. (I remember telling myself, Look, it’s a machine – yet it didn’t lessen my terror by one iota) I imagine many of you younger folk have only seen the film on television, which offers a more distant experience. Plus, you’ve no doubt seen lots of scarier films before or since. All I can tell you is, on a big screen in 1975, it was an incredibly terrifying experience (yet, at the same time, often quite funny, which made it a pleasure, not the agony that, for me, Alien was).

None of which is to say Jaws is in great movie/masterpiece territory. It’s just entertainment -- but, for me, entertainment of a pretty special kind. Its effect on subsequent Hollywood strategy/marketing (in combination with Star Wars two summers later) has of course been pernicious; grown-up movies literally find it tougher to be made because of what those two outsized blockbusters left in their wake. But this doesn’t diminish the immense enjoyment I took in Jaws. It doesn’t get my vote – the remaining movies were of a higher stature – but it retains my deep affection.

I was never anti-Sidney Lumet to Damien’s degree, but I never found him a particularly distinguished director -- and, the year prior, I thought his lack of style was a major drawback for Murder on the Orient Express. But in Dog Day Afternoon I thought he found his true voice for the first time. The story was off-beat, certainly for the time, and Lumet (along with screenwriter Pierson) struck just the right tone – finding the comedy in the bizarre turns of the narrative but never letting it descend to cheap laughs. And he got exceptional performances across the board, most notably from Chris Sarandon and Al Pacino, who was incredibly alive yet fully under control. (A balance he wouldn’t hold onto for long) There are years later in the decade where I could imagine Dog Day Afternoon being the going-away choice to sweep the major categories. This year, it only rates being one of the excellent also-rans.

My next two choices – worthy winners most years – are pretty even in my book. Amarcord, yes, was released in NY in October ’74, but it’s not like a wonderful film fades from memory all that fast. Fellini had been thought to be on the wane after a trifle like Roma, but Amarcord got some of the best reviews of his career – deservedly so. There are hilariously funny moments in the film (“I want a woman!”), beautiful images (the enormous ocean liner, and, my favorite, the peacock in the snow), and an overriding sweet/sad nostalgia for boyhood and a hometown. Fellini would be my second choice for best director this year for his beautifully orchestrated memory film.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a very different sort of film. Pretty much everyone I knew had read/adored the novel, but there was some worry the material would be a bit dated, so much a part of the early/mid 60s it seemed to be. Milos Forman – still mostly new to American cinema – turned out to be the perfect director to ameliorate that doubt. Where many versions of Cuckoo’s Nest – including the long-running stage production – played the “rage against the machine” broadly, Forman’s film put a bland face on the repression in the form of Louise Fletcher’s placid Nurse Ratched. The broad plot is still there (though Chief Bromden’s secret is kept longer than in other versions), but the material is played at a more delicate, less confrontational level, which made it feel more in tune with 1975 reality than it might otherwise have.

Of course, the other element, aside from Forman, that made the movie special was Jack Nicholson. Nicholson obviously didn’t match Kesey’s description of the red-headed giant McMurphy. In every other way, though, he was the perfect choice for the role …and he not only lived up to expectations, with such big, rousing scenes as the World Series re-enactment, he surpassed them by showing extraordinary subtlety in more intimate scenes (like his talks with the chief doctor). For me this is one of the two or three great performances of Nicholson’s career, and it helped make the film, if not the actual best movie of the year, a creditable choice for the Academy’s prize.

But there was another film that year that just outclassed everything else…in fact, for me, everything else that decade.

I probably sound like I’ve lost my equilibrium when I speak of this era, referencing one film after another as great or perfect. It’s possible my enthusiasm comes from my age and life status at the time – early 20s, newly educated in the nuances of dramatic/cinematic arts, hungrily seeking out new forms. But I have to believe at least part comes from the extraordinary level of creative work then being done by mainstream filmmakers -- directors given the chance to break through genres and work in fresh styles. This period unhappily didn’t last – by and large, it was over by 1977 or ’78 -- but it produced a great number of films still revered today. And, if I had to pick one film that epitomized everything that was great about the 70s, it’d be Altman’s Nashville. It was a visionary epic – one only he could have made -- that effortlessly intertwined multiple story-lines, building to a shattering climax. The film also managed to both reflect what Vietnam and Watergate had done to America, and also somehow look ahead to what was to follow – the Hal Philip Walker campaign surely foretold Ross Perot, and “the everybody can be a star” ambience anticipated the age of American Idol. Even the film’s final shocking act – unthinkable at the time – was prescient, given what later happened to John Lennon, or Selena.

When a film both breaks the narrative bonds of its era and manages to capture the pulse of both the present and future, I’d say it qualifies as a masterpiece. Even among the many strong movies on this 1975 list, Nashville easily stands out as my choice for both film and director.

[mlrg]

For me it’s one of the most difficult years to vote.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is amongst my top5 of all time. But on that list, Barry Lyndon takes the Nr. 1, so I voted for Lyndon and Kubrick.

[Sabin]

I have never seen Barry Lyndon. And I've yet to see Amarcord. I'm kind of waiting for them to screen on the big screen...for fifteen years...

...[scoot!]...backs away from the table...

[Eric]

I don't subscribe to the idea that 1975 was a dead zone in the middle of a bunch of other, far more bountiful years. But even if I did, this year brings the all-time "Sophie's Choice" of Oscar history, for me. There aren't many years where my #1 movie was also in the running for the Oscar, much less my #1 and #2. (Though, admittedly, three of next year's nominees figure into the bottom half of my top 10.)

01. Barry Lyndon
02. Nashville
03. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
04. F for Fake
05. Grey Gardens
06. Deep Red
07. Thundercrack!
08. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
09. Fox and His Friends
10. Love Letter to Edie

[Big Magilla]

I don't have a lot to say about 1975. The five films nominated for Best Picture were not only the best films of the year, they were the only likely nominees in an otherwise disappointing year.

I had read Peter Benchley's best-selling Jaws shortly before the film came out and found the film lacking dramatically until the last section with the film's three stars on the boat. Benchley's novel had more character development ,particularly with the early victims. The film was more concerned with the big moments despite a mechanical shark that didn't work for much of the filming and looked so phony it would have been laughable if it weren't for John Williams' dum-de-dum-dum score. While there had been successful summer films before, this was the first summer blockbuster which as we all know changed the way films are marketed. I find it more important historically than for what Spielberg actually got there up on the screen.

Kubrick's film of Thackeray's Barry Lyndon is visually sumptuous, but dramatically tedious. Casting Ryan O'Neal and Marisa Berenson in the leads doesn't help.

Sidney Lumet's only in New York Dog Day Afternoon is expertly crafted and performed.

Milos Forman's film of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is likewise expertly acted not just by Nicholson and Fletcher, but by the entire cast.

Altman's Nashville, however, for me was the film of the year -musically, dramatically and acting-wise.

Fellini's Amarcord which earned the writer/director the tenth and eleventh of his twelve Oscar nominations was an enchanting film, but in my min it was part of 1974, not 1975.

Of the also-rans, I would cite only Hal Ashby's Shampoo and Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor as really good Hollywood produced movies and Francois Truffaut's The Story of Adele H. and Vittorio De Sica's A Brief Vacation as the year's best newly released foreign films.