Revisiting the Oscars: The Movie Podcast
Revisiting the Oscars: The Movie Podcast
Episode 40: 1971 - The French Connection
In our latest episode we're going back more than 50 years to 1971 where we'll be seeing Gene Hackman, a classic musical and another appearance from a podcast favourite...
On this episode we’ll be looking at a gritty New York crime saga that redefined the cop thriller in The French Connection, the sweeping yet tragic portrait of Russia’s doomed royal family in Nicholas and Alexandra, the timeless story of tradition and change in Fiddler on the Roof, a haunting exploration of lost innocence in The Last Picture Show, and Stanley Kubrick’s audacious, controversial vision of violence and control in A Clockwork Orange. Together, they capture a moment when Hollywood was pushing boundaries, questioning authority, and reshaping what a Best Picture nominee could be.
All this and our usual features, banter, trivia and insights!
Hit us up on our social media channels and let us know your thoughts on this episode!
1971 Best Picture Nominees
The Last Picture Show
Nicholas and Alexandra
Fiddler on the Roof
A Clockwork Orange
The French Connection
*This podcast will contain some spoilers for these movies although we do try our best to signpost them!
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SPEAKER_08:Hello and welcome to Revisiting the Oscars, the podcast all about film history, where we go back in time and review the Best Picture nominees of yesteryear. I'm joined, as always, by my two co-hosts, Bingham and Mason, alongside myself, Luke Watson. Folks, how are we doing today? It has been a while.
SPEAKER_07:It has been a while. It's actually been 45 minutes longer than it was 45 minutes ago when we started recording.
SPEAKER_08:Yes, technical problems on my end.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, well, you behind the magician's skirt and... It's clearly been too long since we've done this because none of us know how to
SPEAKER_08:do it. I'll be sending my new Bose headphones back. They were meant to be better.
SPEAKER_07:But other than that, I'm
SPEAKER_09:alright. Yeah, fine. Apart from the biblical pushing it down rain in the day. But yeah, can't eat more.
SPEAKER_08:I think we've had quite a good summer and then all of a sudden it is well and truly no longer summer. The last couple of weeks have been pretty miserable.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, I was laughing at some of the lads at the weekend because it's definitely had a bit of an autumnal feel but there's the people still clinging on to the summer I did see a guy with a wee pair of combat shorts and Havana flip flops I was like hey you're taking that a bit far pal it's about 13-14
SPEAKER_08:degrees You get these people in Scotland any time of year they could be sitting in the dead of winter when it's snowing cut about with a pair of shorts on but with like a big jacket and a hat and scarf and so
SPEAKER_07:on I think legs don't really get cold so I don't mind
SPEAKER_09:that ah fuck off I think that's like Ned Brownie points on it it's like I'm hard because I've got my legs out and it's fucking snowing
SPEAKER_08:Kenny's dad will sit in the house in shorts and then have the heating up full pelt I don't understand it it is one of those things I do not understand
SPEAKER_09:it costs a living man heating bills are through the roof all they care just to buy a pair of trousers exactly
SPEAKER_08:on this episode we're going back more than five 50 years ago to 1971 so quite a few films that we've got to talk about very very shortly but of course going back 50 years means that we are going to delve into what was happening then via the medium of Bingham's Blast from the Past
SPEAKER_11:Come closer
SPEAKER_08:Come
SPEAKER_11:closer It's
SPEAKER_09:been a few weeks since your last bath, but luckily Mother Nature doesn't judge. It's a spliff quietly burns out and you wash down a bottle of grog while you get another whisky sour. Woodstock is two years dead this year and your peace sign tattoo may as well wipe a tear. However, you are still here. All the damn kids want to do nowadays is eat McDonald's quarter pounders, drink Starbucks coffee and play arcade games. But you're still here, fighting for peace, fighting the cause, clinging to the age old soggy hippie dream. Why not give it one more whirl you think, one final hurrah as you jump on the bus. A quick tap on the driver's glass, a wink to a young filly and you stand in front of all the passengers and announce hippies will never die you mutter slow fuck it pop two tabs here we go everyone stares lots of sighs he's lost his mind says one kid a smile fills your face I'm about to die colours flash hours pass as you sit crumpled in your seat beads of sweat push down your forehead and the BBO reeks off you but nobody cares you've debated the week Vietnam war with a unicorn shouted at clouds out the window and barked like a dog at an old lady who by all accounts you're sure was extremely impressed by your impression of a poodle but then a jolt and a shaking feeling you must have crashed out again you feel the bus roll a stop the other seats are deserted as the driver shouts it's the end of the line pal you've been here all day just another day in the life of the free as you march up to the driver look him in the eye salute like a soldier and say to him never ever fear your old smelly hippie is still here.
SPEAKER_07:Love it. I loved it almost as much as I did about 20 minutes ago.
SPEAKER_09:I think that was a better version, do you not agree?
SPEAKER_07:I agree actually,
SPEAKER_09:yeah. Slight tweaks on the hoof. Yeah, the hippie movement was about done by then. There was still some clinging on. Indeed, there's still some clinging on today, isn't
SPEAKER_07:there?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, it's quite right. Most of the hippie movement was 60s mainly, was it
SPEAKER_09:not? Yeah, yeah, it was... Four years after the summer love, 1971. Yeah. I was going a bit off piste but it reminds me of the book by Ken Casey who wrote One for the Cuckoo's Nest where he rode around this fucking hippie bus called something like The Electric something a Kool-Aid or something and what he did in the 60s was absolutely wild so I'd recommend reading it but anyway we're a film podcast not a not a
SPEAKER_08:literature book it's got enough of a link I would say
SPEAKER_07:we're a culture podcast Hi
SPEAKER_08:Culture, it comes number one on the culture list on Apple Podcasts. Well, those of you who came to us for the first time may not know, but the title gives away that this is an Oscar podcast. So we're going to talk about the five Best Picture nominees in great detail. But we like to have a quick rundown of some of the other films that were out in the year that we're covering. So this being 1971, I'm just going to read out the 10 highest grossing films of the year. given we're going back to the very early 70s, I suspect there's at least three or four here that none of us have heard of. However, there are a couple beyond the Oscar-nominated ones that may warrant some comment. So, starting in 10th place, we have the interestingly titled Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song. Nine, The Last Picture Show. Eight, Carnal Knowledge.
SPEAKER_07:I think we need to, wait, wait, wait, we need to spend more time on number
SPEAKER_08:10. So, have you seen Sweet Mac's badass song before? I
SPEAKER_07:think you're saying it wrong. I think you've got to say it in jive. Okay, well, be my guest. I'm alright.
SPEAKER_08:So, I did actually search this one because, yes, it certainly stands out. So, it's an American independent blaxploitation action thriller film, written, co-produced, scored, edited, directed by and starring Melvin Van Peebles, which is a very cool name. And it tells the picaresque story of a poor black man fleeing from the white police authorities. It says here that no studio would finance the film, so Van Peebles funded it himself, shot it independently over 19 days, performing all of his own stunts and appearing in several sex scenes, some reportedly unsimulated. So
SPEAKER_03:it's
SPEAKER_08:done quite well to be the 10th highest grossing film of the year. This sounds very much like a B-movie, but maybe it's worth checking out.
SPEAKER_07:People are saying that the overarching plot is about um like police brutality and white police you know, chasing after black people. Is
SPEAKER_08:that
SPEAKER_07:what you're saying?
SPEAKER_08:Yes.
SPEAKER_07:I mean, we haven't come on much in 50 years, as far as
SPEAKER_08:I say. This is true. It does sound like a, I guess, an interesting mix of genres. That was number 10. I think it got to 8 with Carnal Knowledge. Then we had A Clockwork Orange, 7. Dirty Harry, 6. Diamonds of Forever, 5. Summer of 42, 4. The French Connection, 3. Billy Jack, 2. And Fiddler on the Roof, 1. So I don't know about you folks, but the one that stands out for me there that was not nominated for Best Picture is Dirty Harry which is of course Clint Eastwood's first movie as the titular character who he went on to play in four other films. For me this is a classic and would have been a worthy nominee this year.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah I would have had it in there. Incidentally I mean I'll leave it to later on but I did pick out another Clint Eastwood reference in one of the films that we're about to cover.
SPEAKER_07:Oh interesting. I'll like I spotted that
SPEAKER_08:and then we've got a Bond film here in Diamonds Are Forever which is this the first Roger Moore one
SPEAKER_07:no Connery
SPEAKER_08:it's with Phil Connery Phil Connery I always get mixed up with the latter Connery ones and the early Roger
SPEAKER_07:Moore ones I'd say the best Bond song I'm going to say
SPEAKER_08:it is definitely up there yes disagree I've you've told me before Bingham your favourite is Madonna's one from Diana Lafayette okay
SPEAKER_09:Honestly, the Bond films, like, I like them, but they all kind of merge into one, and I doubt... Don't get me started on Die Another Day, the song, nor the fucking film. I
SPEAKER_08:mean that is probably the worst song and the worst film universally agreed Are we not giving Willy Wonka a wee mention? Oh yeah of course well there was other films released this year that weren't in the highest grossing films so Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Bedknobs and Broomsticks for example I'm guessing you prefer this to the Johnny Depp version the Tim Burton version
SPEAKER_09:Yeah we've referenced this several times on the pod that fucking recent version was an absolute disgrace Grace and the original Gene Wilder one is pretty well done actually for its time hark back to classic classic old style kids movies full of imagination taken from classic book and not that shit one that got was yeah I don't know stamped on the grave of the old version the Johnny Depp one
SPEAKER_07:I'm just having a look at what was nominated for best song this year because I thought you know imagination from Willy Wonka he's an absolute belter but the winner of best song this year was the theme from Shaft it's a good song to
SPEAKER_08:be fair it's a great song that Isaac Hayes yeah good old good old chef from South Park
SPEAKER_09:yeah I was going to say when he was doing non-South Park songs and before he covered the classic or not covered the classic sang the classic chocolate salty bowls
SPEAKER_08:oh yeah put them in your mouth and suck them yeah excellent we will now move on to our five best picture nominees this year so those films are going to be The Last Picture Show Nicholas and Alexandra Fiddler on the Roof A Clockwork Orange and The French Connection four of which were in the highest grossing films of the year as we always say when we cover an older year very different from what you tend to see in the highest grossing films these days where you're lucky to get one Oscar best picture nominee in there and usually it's a token However, we'll go into the five films that we're going to talk about today and we're starting off with The Last Picture Show.
SPEAKER_04:Her and her husband was young and miserable with one another like so many young married folks are. I thought they'd change with some age but it didn't turn out that way. Being married always so miserable? No, not really. About 80% of the time I guess. If she was here I'd probably be just as crazy now as I was then in about five minutes. minutes. Isn't that ridiculous? No, it ain't really. Because being crazy about a woman like her is always the right thing to do. Being a decrepit old bag of bones, that's what's ridiculous. Getting old.
SPEAKER_07:I love that he says that being married is only reasonable 80% of the time. Fair enough. Right, so, last picture show. So when I was selling this film to you at the end of the last podcast, I think I billed this as a coming-of-age drama about two teenagers who are chasing the same girl. And I said it sounded like all the 90s comedies that we grew up with. So when I said that, I was thinking of things like American Pie and Road Trip and Will Ferrell's kind of nonsense. But let me tell you now, this is not at all like that. While I was technically right in my summary, this for me was more of a bleak snapshot of a small town life where everyone is miserable. And even in moments of humanity, it's still stained by melancholy. But let me first explain the plot a little bit better. So the protagonist here is Sonny, who's played by Timothy Bottoms, who, you know, must confess I hadn't heard of before. Sonny lives in a tiny town in 1950s Texas, the kind where you literally see tumbleweed roll through and where the entire town is forked off one street. We meet Sonny at a crossroads, both literally and metaphorically. He's graduated high school, but not really with any prospects. Football and basketball teams he plays for keep losing. He's broken up with his girlfriend. The girl that he pines for is dating his best friend, Dwayne, who's played here by Jeff Bridges. Add to that the fact that his friends get banned from the local pool hall and the cinema, that's a title. With that closing down, it basically means there's nothing for a teenager to do this is what ultimately leads to sonny hocking up with ruth who's the older wife of his basketball coach and beginning an affair now for me as i've said the overall theme of this film is misery every character without exception is unhappy whether that's the pool hall owner who is nostalgic for a skinny dip he wants out with the local girl and who we heard there in the clip or if it's the diner owner who knows that she's going to be flipping burgers until the day she dies you've got jc who's played here by Sybil Shepherd, who's horny, but doesn't really know what to do with that. And you've got a mother who is played by Ellen Bernstein, who worries that her daughter is going to get stuck in the same rut that she's in. What cuts through in this, I think, is the sadness. My suspicion is that's why they chose to shoot this film in black and white. 1971, every film's in colour. The film in this podcast that we'll speak about is in colour. In this one, it isn't. I think that's because the lack of colour here is reflective of these people's lives. There is no colour for them. I appreciate it's a tough sell to say to people that this black and white film about misery and melancholy is worth a watch, but for me it really is. I think the performances here are exceptional. The clear standout for me is Cloris Leachman, who plays the aforementioned lonely housewife Ruth, as well as a couple of excellent monologues that she has about regret and sorrow. She also has what I'm going to say is possibly the saddest sex scene ever. You know, there are a few sad sex scenes in this. There's one in a motel, there's one on a pool table sounds like they might be a bit raunchy they are not but I feel like I'm damning this when what I'm I really enjoyed it I saw that they made a sequel about 15 years later with all the same cast coming back and apparently the sequel isn't bad so I might just give that a watch because the characters here and it is a character study the characters here really stayed with me so for me this is a bit of a hidden gem Bingham you like a film about miserable people so come on you must like this
SPEAKER_09:yeah I did actually quite like this I actually was like thinking about it afterwards looking at my notes and I realised I came away thinking it was good and then when I was reading what I'd written and I was having a think about it I actually think it made me even more positive about it I agree with various points that you said I think there's a really the other bit I draw out is there was quite a realistic feeling to the film it felt really earthy I felt like I could be watching real people trying to squeeze out an existence in that like humdrum town and I think I just say I love a bleak edge so there's absolute spades of it here I do think that the direction was really skillful as well as the acting performances that you picked out I think I love a director that kind of takes a risk and Bogdanovich throws caution to the wind to you you mentioned that you hadn't heard of one of the you hadn't come across one of the actors or actresses I can't remember which one you referenced but you know that's because the cast basically come prized only one big star which was Ben Johnson and Sybil Shefford was basically you know completely unknown at the time and you know was trusted to carry such an important part of the film you know I also loved the five minute monologue that we heard from Sam the Lion a super centre piece that kind of drives the narrative of the film or rounds up the narrative of the film in sort of quick five minutes interestingly he got a well deserved supporting actor win which is the second shortest of all time well the shortest supporting actor win right enough but second shortest Oscar win of all time only beaten by Beatrice Strait in the network which we watched in one of the earlier episodes I'm quite interested in what you said about the black and white thing that's quite an interesting take on it I can have just maybe seen it as being slightly more straightforward than that it was just to convey the 1950s setting a little bit better it made you focused on the characters emotion and acting rather than harking back to any colourful costumes or cars but you know I'll tip my hat to this sort of the reasoning you gave because that just sort of builds it into a bit more of an interesting directorial choice just before I pass through you I did have one criticism that is probably more down to my preference and that this type of film I think is you know very well regarded particularly by American audiences they have a bit of a fucking weird nostalgia for the 50s and those kind of Dust Bowl type towns you know the type towns where retarded kids are forced to shag prosies and relationships older women are considered normal oh and getting a swatch of a fanny on a diving board is also fine whereas for a European or UK audience I struggle to have that same connection partly through age rest through place of birth so perhaps meant it was a good film for me not like into the upper echelons but can't take away the fact it was made in 71. Before
SPEAKER_08:giving my views on this, you mentioned Timothy Bottoms Mason, I don't know if you had a look at what his career's been like recently but he is the absolute spitting image of George W. Bush the American president so he's basically played George Bush in loads of TV movies and stuff and even played him in a short lived TV sitcom called That's My Bush which was created and written by the two creators of South Park and they imagined or reimagined the Bush administration as a family sitcom which is very weird if you ever got some time to watch six episodes of a sitcom that doesn't really work with the Bush administration but there you go
SPEAKER_07:and a good link to this because you do say a bit of Bush in this film
SPEAKER_08:yes you do you do indeed I didn't like this film as much as you two did and I don't really disagree with a lot of what you're saying I wonder if I went into this with I guess like false expectations I had heard about this film for a while but never seen it I suppose I maybe was expecting something a bit more like American Graffiti that's kind of like a nostalgic look back at the 50s but as you say it's definitely a way more depressing and sad film than what I was expecting it to be so I don't know if that did cloud my judgement but I didn't connect with it as much as I kind of wanted to I can see what it's trying to do it's trying to be this quite elegiac look at a dying town and lost youth and I can see how it's kind of hitting some of those beats and why people did get a lot of that out of it but for me I didn't really engage with the characters and I thought it was a bit more interesting on paper than it perhaps was on practice maybe. So yeah, I felt a bit odd coming away from it because I did expect to like it more than I did and I wasn't really taken by it. I think you'll maybe like this quote by Roger Ebert which I think probably gets at what people that liked it did like about it. He said the film's above all an evocation of mood, a town with no reason to exist and people with no reason to live there. The only hope is in transgression which is quite a good summation but sometimes you read stuff about a film and then it makes it sound better than what you actually enjoyed it and that is the last picture show for me
SPEAKER_07:Interesting I thought you liked it
SPEAKER_09:Yeah quite a split in the camp which is unusual I do my Clint Eastwood reference was from this film, about 10 years to be fair but I did clock the poster outside the little cinema and the film which had a poster of the sands of Iwo Jima poster which gave me a heart back to that Clint Eastwood film about the Battle of Iwo Jima that we watched in one of the earlier episodes so yeah, there's your 10 years link
SPEAKER_08:So this had 8 Oscar nominations for Best Picture Best Director, Jeff Bridges and Ben Johnson for Best Supporting Actor and Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman for Best Supporting Actress, Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman winning the Oscars, the two Oscars that this did win and it was also nominated for best adapted screenplay and best cinematography so clearly a well liked film and I remember it being discussed a bit more recently because I think the director Peter Bogdanovich died maybe a couple of years or so ago and this was quite well regarded as his finest film Cool, okay so next we are going to a completely different time period but also in the past Nicholas and Alexandra
SPEAKER_01:Thank God you're here. Prepare an order. Your Majesty, I'm afraid it's too late. The Dumas has appointed a provisional government. And all your ministers have been arrested.
SPEAKER_05:Order your troops to march
SPEAKER_01:on... At this moment, Your Majesty, if my troops knew the Tsar was here, there's every chance they would turn on you. Whole garrisons are going over. Sire, the Dumar also insists on your abdication.
SPEAKER_08:So, Nicholas and Alexandra. This is Franklin J. Schaffner's 1971 historical epic, and we've actually met this director before on the podcast, way back in our very first episode when we covered Patton, which won Best Picture in 1970, the year before this. He's also the man behind Planet of the Apes, so no stranger to big, ambitious films. Now, as that clip suggests there, this film tells the story of the final Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, covering his reign from 1904 right through to the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1918. In a way, this could work quite nicely as a companion piece to Warren Beatty's Reds, which gave us a revolutionary side of the story, or even to The Last Emperor, another portrait of the final ruler of a dynastic monarchy, in that case China. Both films that we have covered on the podcast before. But in this case, it's all about the doomed Romanovs, Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, and the Russian civilization as it was pre-1918. Now this film does try to take on a lot. It wants us to see what Nicholas and Alexandra, his wife, are like as characters. It wants to cover the early formation of the revolution, the influence of Rasputin and any of those elements could have been their own film. As we mentioned, Reds was its own film about the revolution. And the first half in particular juggles everything and you do feel the weight of it. It's not really my style to quote The Guardian but I did like Alex von Tunzelmann's summation from 2013 which says that Nicholas and Alexandra boast terrific performances and gorgeous production design but it's bloated and unwieldy there is more history here than the filmmakers know what to do with and to be honest that's probably a good view of where I come down on it liked elements of it but overall it's bitten off far more than the filmmakers are able to chew that said there are some really good elements about it namely some of the performances you get an early appear from Brian Cox one of his earliest roles you've got Tom Baker as Rasputin who steals every scene he's in quite an easy character to steal the scene in you will see and then you get the final 30 minutes where I do think the film does have some really really strong stuff I think once the Romanovs are toppled the story starts to narrow in and suddenly it all clicks and you get this inevitable march to death we know how history ends but they don't and that knowledge makes it all the more powerful despite what he had done as a leader and how they had been in the past on a human level I did find myself feeling bad for them regardless of everything that had led to this point and for me that's a testament to the filmmaking. There's something to be said about film or TV series that uses inevitability of knowing something's going to happen to kind of draw out things more powerfully. Countless examples of that I guess in things like Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Moments in Sopranos, Breaking Bad or even Titanic for example. So I found the ending 30 minutes or so really really really strong leaving us with the end of the Romanovs in bleak blunt fashion but overall the film is three hours plus it's definitely covering far too much and overall I thought this was probably better than I was maybe expecting watching a three hour long Russian epic period drama but a bit flawed all the same Mason what did you think of this?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah I think there's a good film hidden in the three and a bit hours here I don't know if that's because it is a really interesting period of history that means that I'm more likely to engage with it and you know it's not the only film that we're going to talk about on this podcast that involves Russia during that period so it's clearly something that filmmakers are drawn to I think secondly the fact it's got such a big cast of like classic English thesps and everyone really is like throwing their full acting chops at this I did have a look when I was doing a bit of research into it and when I say that this has got a big cast, do you know how many people in this film have got their own Wikipedia page? Let me tell you, it's 44 people in this film have got their own Wikipedia page. It sounds like a Wes Anderson film. Yeah. Well, I thought I'd compare it with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is like a Tarantino film with a load of like minuscule cameos in it. That's got 38 cast members with their own Wikipedia page. Again, 44. And this is from like the 70s. So anyway, that I think shows I think, as you've mentioned from The Guide and The Guardian, it is a bit of a bloated film, and you're right, that it doesn't really know a way to focus in on. However, it does have a good couple of things going for it. Firstly, like you said, Brian Cox playing Trotsky, I mean, who doesn't like that? It was never a role built for one person. I'm sure if he could have picked anyone to play, he would have picked Trotsky, so fair enough. Then ultimately, it does finish with the proletariat winning out over the bourgeoisie, which I am on board with. So, for me it wins points for its ambition for its cast and performances but I think it loses points for its scale and the pacing which for me is too slow so I'm coming down in the middle
SPEAKER_09:Bingham I wrote down one of my notes which didn't take pretty many despite sitting watching this on a training journey for a day of work meetings there and back because it's that fucking long it took me two training journeys I wrote, Alexei, Alexei, mustn't run, mustn't play, mustn't jump, mustn't climb, must be careful all the time. Oh, what was that pish all about? What did that kid have it like? Haemoglobia or something?
SPEAKER_07:I've never heard of it. Is there a response? I could not spell it. But you said you felt smarter at the end, not
SPEAKER_09:the kid. Absolutely no chance. And he was a really shit kid actor when he was like classic. I'm a kid, don't know how to act, but I'm probably there through pure nepotism. but as I meant anyway I don't really have anything to add I agree with absolutely everything yous have said it was just far too bloated bit off more than it could chew but on balance it was beautifully shot and wasn't as bad as some of the other period dramas that we'd watched and I mean that in the nicest sense like I think there was some elements to it which probably the historical element actually which kind of did keep my interest a bit more than what I've been liking some of those like I don't know Merchant and Ivory numbers that we've covered over the journey I did write something about Rasputin you've already covered him but I would say if they ever made this film or remade this film brought it up to speed and god forbid they do because we'll be bored for three hours again no fielding is an absolute shoo-in to reincarnate his character from the IT crowd as Rasputin it would work perfectly don't think you'll ever get that chance so sorry no you're stuck with Bakelore
SPEAKER_08:maybe if Armando Unici does a death of Stalin type version of this type you
SPEAKER_09:need yeah so
SPEAKER_08:yeah yeah a brief sojourn into diseases because you mentioned about the haemophilia so there is an interesting bit of trivia well it's not really trivia more of a bit of insight so it's an inherited genetic disorder that impairs the body's ability to make blood clots so for folks that have it if they get bruised easily or bleed they can like a minor like injury can then turn into something serious and it's been very common particularly in the 1800s within the royal families of Europe because they were all kind of like marrying off children to each other exactly so it's spread around quite a lot from there so there you go
SPEAKER_09:Christ revolutions in the past would have been more successful if some kind of just pushed some people then just give them a right good shove
SPEAKER_08:if only that's all that it took didn't need much more than that just shove someone off off a small wall so this had six nominations at the Oscars this year Best Picture Best Actress for Janet Sussman who played Alexandra Best Cinematography Best Art Direction Best Costume Design and Best Original Score and probably no surprise period dramas love these awards it won for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design so two prizes out of the six nominations Next up, then, we are going to our third film, and we're staying in Russia, as Mason mentioned, and we have the musical Fiddler on the Roof.
SPEAKER_10:If I were a rich man, yabba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dum All day long, I'd biddy-biddy-bum If I were a wealthy man, I wouldn't have to work hard Yabba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dibba-dum Lord who made the lion and the lamb You decreed I should be what I am Would it spoil some vast eternal plan If I were a wealthy man?
SPEAKER_07:So, Fiddler on the Roof. Not the story of Jimmy Savile in his attic, but actually a... A 55-year-old musical that I'm going to say is actually quite timely for us to be discussing in 2025 for a couple of reasons, which I'll come on to. But I will jump straight into the plot summary, because I do want to spend a bit of time on this film. So we find ourselves in a small village in Ukraine in... 1905, which obviously at the time is part of the Russian Empire. There we meet Tevye, is that how you say his name? Tevye? Who is a farmer and head of a family of five daughters. But as they're poor, they can't afford a dowry to marry the kids off. We then see that three of the daughters have reached adulthood and they long to be married off. So when the local matchmaker finds that the wealthy widow Butcher is keen to marry Tevye's eldest daughter, Seitzel, it seems that their prayers have been answered. However, she wishes is to marry a child of sweetheart, to which Tevye reluctantly agrees. This kicks off a chain whereby other two adult daughters also wish to choose their own husbands and marry for love. Now, I'm going to say, this, to be fair, does sound like your standard musical. However, there is a much more serious subplot, which is that a pogrom is happening, and the Russians wish to expel the Jewish community from their village, with them ultimately forced into refugee status and scattered across the globe. Now, I appreciate that musicals will often have light and shade in them, but this one for me, and yeah, perhaps coloured by the current events, does cast a bit of a dark shadow. For one, the songs that define this as a musical are not very memorable. In fact, I'm going to say you've probably heard the only one you know in that clip. And let me tell you now, that's from the first 20 minutes of a three-hour film. So if you think it's going to be the centrepiece, be using it early. The others songs I'm going to say are middling at best. I did enjoy Tradition, which opens the film, and I also quite liked the more melancholic Sunrise Sunset, which features in the wedding scene in the middle of the film, but the rest of the songs, there wasn't much in there for me. It's rare that I'll watch a musical and think that I'd rather this was just a plain drama, but this one does book that trend for me. Performance-wise, this film hangs on the performance of Chaim Topal, who plays the lead, as we heard in the clip. He is the backbone of it. He's in most of the scenes, and I'm going to say he is brilliant in this. Whether or not that's him addressing the audience, which he does quite often, questioning his decisions, or whether he's questioning his faith even, or when he's chastising his daughters, he's really powerful in this. It doesn't surprise me that I found out later that he did continue to play this role on stage until as recently as 2009, which surprised me. However, I mentioned at the start that this is a prescient time to watch this film. Firstly, you know, this musical is still a big success. In fact, it was just on at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh only last week. Philly on the Roof won Best Musical at the Olivier Awards this year. It's still, you know, putting bums on seats. Although that's not really what I was getting at. The final scenes in this film show the entire village being rounded up and forced to leave their homeland. They're given mere days to pack up everything they own and leave, never to return. And it's hard, I think, to watch this and not draw parallels with what's happening in Gaza. Interesting of course with the tables turned from a Jewish perspective and of course it shouldn't be dismissed that this film is set in Ukraine with the Russians forcing them out again that's still happening 50 years down the line or 100 years down the line should I say versus when it was when it's set so look I did write down some silly things that I spotted watching this and I might come back to them depending on what you two say but I think ultimately what stayed with me from this is not the songs or the dance sequences or the wedding subplots what stayed with me were those final scenes of the village becoming refugees so a musical in name but and interested in what I thought. Watson, any thoughts?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, so I like this a lot more than I thought. Again, this is another film that's three hours long set in late 1800s Russia or something like that. And as you say, the songs, other than If I Were a Rich Man, which has stuck in my head quite a lot, it's quite a catchy wee number. There's not loads of songs in there that really stand out. Most of the top or classic musicals that you hear of even if you're not a big musical fan you could probably like name two or three songs I think the reason that this one seems to have endured is probably I think it's maybe less so about the politics but more about how it captures kind of like themes of family change and survival which are resonant I guess across the globe and not just for the Jewish diaspora. The film I enjoyed it quite a lot and I didn't think it felt like three years long despite being that long and I think largely that's down to how how Chaim Topol plays the character of Tevye. He's in pretty much every scene and he's very watchable and very compelling in the leading role. It's interesting that he's played it on stage up until 2009, which is not long before he passed away, which has obviously an incredible longevity and connection with the character. I think there's a couple of bits where it really does draw its power. I think a lot of the movie is just following day-to-day life in a farming village where it's quite poor, people struggle for survival, it's the whole nature of the tradition versus modernity etc which you kind of hear in the fiddler on the roof metaphor I guess but I think it's when it does like penetrate that with moments of danger or power that just show you the precariousness of life for in this case the Jewish community living in Eastern Europe at the time so think about the scene at the wedding where it's interrupted by the Russian authorities and then the conversation that Tevye has with the constable who in some senses would be seen as a sympathetic character to the local villagers but at the same time is still towing an authoritarian line from the Russian leadership at the time so I think those bits lends its power and then obviously has quite a resonant final scene where they are essentially left homeless and stateless and I guess that's the bit where you can kind of see the resonance and how things have maybe changed across the world in the 100, 150 years or so since but as a film I did enjoy this quite a lot and took quite a lot out of it Bingham what are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_09:Shite I hate that What? I've got a confession right You know, I'd obviously knew there was a title of the film, Fiddler on the Roof. I'd never watched it because it was a musical, it was three hours long. I genuinely thought it was an Irish film. So I was envisaging a wee Irish guy doing like a jig on a roof, like the Riverdance or something. And then when I switched it on, I was like, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_07:I mean, Fiddler on the Roof is in the first scene. They don't miss a bit. Literally, they're right there. I
SPEAKER_09:know. I couldn't believe it. I actually had quite similar... points on the music particularly as you Mason like I actually thought it started quite strong like that tradition tune I quite like that actually bit of a toe tapper even for a music critic like me and then of course the rich man tune also you know a bit of a wee bell area tune but after that really there was nothing to pick out and I felt quite a lot of the pacing was a bit off you know you've got a bit of a problem with a musical if you don't like the music but it's so you've got a very big problem especially if it takes three hours to get through it the other thing that I really didn't like is I couldn't decide where the protagonist I almost felt like you were made to sympathise with him because he you know is clearly struggling to maintain his fundamental beliefs with his daughters who want to embrace I don't know more modern modern life and move away from tradition but I just found him a bit of an annoying prick and it had that trope where you know he's speaking to the camera like he's directly speaking to God and you know like the kind of thing that people do on stage in theatre it's just like I've slipped down that so I just maybe that's like a moral struggle that I've already got a preconception around types of Jewish traditions where there's a lot of monogamy that I'm glad society has chipped away over time yet I felt like I was meant to feel sympathy for this guy who literally was willing to lose one of his daughters over the fact to his upholding tradition. Yeah, not for me. So yeah, she's shy and would have been better if it had actually been Michael Flatley doing a little jig on a roof to a guy playing the fiddle.
SPEAKER_08:So this is not going to join your limited list of musicals that you like?
SPEAKER_09:Most definitely not.
SPEAKER_08:It had eight nominations of which it won three. So Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Chime to Paul, Best Supporting Actor for for Leonard Frey best cinematography best art direction best scoring there was two scoring categories then for adaptation and original song score and best sound the ones that won were best sound best art direction and best scoring adaptation and original song score and that best scoring winner was a man at the time who was little known with his first Oscar victory in Mr John Williams now won five and been nominated for many others can you for E.T. Jurassic Park Jurassic
SPEAKER_07:Park
SPEAKER_08:Jurassic Park
SPEAKER_07:Oh, was he on this list?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah. I
SPEAKER_07:think all the things he's done. I know Star Wars, but did he win for Star Wars?
SPEAKER_08:He did win for Star Wars,
SPEAKER_07:yeah. Oh, look at that. That's
SPEAKER_08:not bad. Four out of five guesses. This was his first win, though, way back in 1971. Still going relatively strong, you would say. Excellent. So that was Fiddler on the Roof. So we have two films to go then and no less controversial now because we are going to cover A Clockwork Orange.
SPEAKER_05:There was me That is Alex, and my three Droogs. That is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. And we sat in the Corova Milk Bar, trying to make up our razzoodogs what to do with the evening. The Korova Milk Bar sold Milk Plus. Milk Plus Velocette, or Synthamesque, or Drencrum, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
SPEAKER_09:Here we are, Clockwork Orange. What would I say about it? Stanley Kubrick's heartwarming adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel. I mean, it is a cheery little tale of teenage mischief, ultra-violence and the whimsical joys of Beethoven. But I guess who hasn't longed for a night out with a lad's dress to the nines and bowler hats and cod pieces? What I was expecting with your fashion sense
SPEAKER_08:that... You might walk up to the next line... the problem is I couldn't wear that amount of white I
SPEAKER_09:spill food on myself all the time not eggs and jokes yeah on the lads night out they engage in a bit of harmless fun like assault, theft and the occasional government mandated psychological torture I was going to explain the script to this but I just thought I'd keep it a bit high level on the assumption that a lot of people listening to this will I guess we'll have watched it the other things I was going to mention was you know you arrive at Alex the narrator who in a sarcastic way is perhaps a misunderstood youth who suddenly wants to enjoy the finer things in life like milk laced with narcotics yes please classical music and beating people senseless for no reason I do joke I also joke when I could describe this as a coming of age film if your idea of maturity involves brainwashing and sociopathy but don't worry it's Stanley Kubrick isn't it so it's all very meaningful so you're allowed to feel clever stroking your chin and arguing with fellow film students whilst watching people getting their cunt kicked in I mean look it's a part social satire part psychological horror part fuck knows what and I think the fundamental question it exposes whether you can condition someone evil to be good and then even more still should you actually do that in any case you know clearly from the subject matter it is one of the most controversial films of all time I was actually quite interested to read it wasn't actually banned in the UK but was withdrawn by Kubrick due to copycat crimes which were linked to the film he also got quite a lot of threats to his family so it wasn't re-released to like pretty much just before the millennium but was it all worth it right so I watched this back when I was a teenager I think and despite the fact that yeah I was still quite keen for the subversive back then I've always struggled with it I struggled with it on my first watch and I've definitely watched it since then and then obviously watched it ahead of this and I struggled just with the like coldness of the film it's one of those things that's like a spectacle there to be questioned and pondered rather than like emotionally invested into therefore perhaps there's an immense immediately lean into like my favourite types of films and one of the reasons for that is that there is a deliberate choice by Kubrick not to have any there should be a big lack of character development so Alex who by the way is like superbly played by Malcolm McDowell in the book you know Alex kind of grows up and begins to question his own violence there is also a different ending in the book which is deliberately excluded here or ignored and I kind of struggle because his evil in this film is never really explored it's just a given so by the time we reach the second kind of part of the film where it's clear that it's not going to be explored and instead we just focus on this like government power struggle my interest always has started to wane and it waned again on rewatch here on the other hand you know clearly the real strength of this is the direction yeah the film does look in an odd sense beautiful and there's some really clever direction around making it feel so uncomfortable it uses loads of awkward camera angles there's a lot of diversity in the shots the set design is immaculate there's just loads of random shit to look at frankly but I don't know I'd struggle with it again I think it's a difficult film to what would I say I think it's a difficult film to love I can understand this is going to sound really critical like first year film students wanking off silly to it but to your kind of average film watcher like me I just a bit like a bit boring am I being harsh Mason?
SPEAKER_07:No I'm going to go straight in here and I'm going to come back he's already been mentioned once on this podcast come back to Roger Ebert's opinion on this film which was that this is a right-wing fantasy masquerading as an Orwellian warning. And it all comes as no surprise that I would agree with him. I think this film manages to both be both silly and pretentious at the same time. I think it's up its own arse, despite maintaining its misogyny throughout. I mean, you've got two women raped on camera, not even off camera, in the first 15 minutes. And I appreciate that is part of the plot, but I think it's done gratuitously. It's an example to me of style of a substance. You've got an annoying protagonist who's played as some sort of anti-hero, despite not at all being likeable. If you want an anti-hero, then we're going to come to one in the next film. That's how it should be done. The only people in this film that I felt some sort of connection with were Alex's poor parents, who... I even was connecting with the guard in the prison, who is clearly... I don't know if he's played for laughs, or if he's meant to be some sort of authoritarian... authoritarian figure who the audience is meant to dislike, but I was thinking, fair play, let's just do Andrew's job. Well, it's spoiling the reign for me. And the only bit of joy that I got from this was, and we can play the theme if you like, when a certain character turned up towards the end. Do you know what theme I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_04:Here we go.
UNKNOWN:...
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, making his, like, I think his second appearance in an Oscar-nominated film, Fred Elliot pops up.
SPEAKER_09:I totally missed that.
SPEAKER_07:When he goes, when he returns to the house that he's already committed the crime that he ultimately gets done for, when he returns at the end when he's bedraggled and the guy realises who he is and calls his pal, it's bloody Fred Elliot! Once again doing his posh accent and not doing his I said he doesn't do that bit he's doing so that did put me up a little bit when he turns up but yeah I was I was underwhelmed
SPEAKER_08:just to say by the way we have seen Fred Elliot before in an Oscar nominated film we will see him again
SPEAKER_07:will
SPEAKER_08:we? we will see him again I won't say the song but
SPEAKER_07:he is prolific
SPEAKER_08:Fred Elliot has probably been in more best picture Oscar nominated films than some serious actors oh so good old Fred good on Fred good for him I I disagree with you entirely Mason and partially with you Bingham I think this film is excellent this is I think the third time I've seen it so like again same as you Bingham I saw it way back when I was maybe like a teenager or early 20s or whatever and I went to see it at the cinema maybe 10 years ago when it was out and then obviously just watched it the other night again for this I agree it's a hard film to love I wouldn't say that I love it as a film there's a lot of like shocking scenes in it I mean you've got a point Mason the rape scenes are horrific do we need two of them? I think you kind of get the point with the first one but it does kind of build up a picture of how evil Alex is so that when you do get to the second part of the film when he's in the prison and undergoing the treatment or the Ludovico technique that it does create a difficult feeling for you because you're being asked to then sympathise with this person who's clearly been horrific and I think that the themes it explores around free will societal control, can you engineer morality are well drawn out in it and I actually think like we've seen a couple of Kubrick films before I think Barry Lyndon being one of the ones most recently and I do find a lot of his films are quite difficult to fully engage with he is quite a cold and clinical filmmaker obviously very very very talented from a directing perspective and there's a lot of that comes across here I think that works for A Clockwork Orange in a way that it doesn't work for say Barry Lyndon there's just a lot of interesting stuff happening here I think beyond the themes of the plot Malcolm McDowell's great performance you've got that really like incredible score from Walter now Wendy Carlos that's like creepy and hypnotic almost like juxtaposed with what's happening on the screen obviously Beethoven mixed in singing in the rain sorry Mason that they've used that in that way in your head someone getting kicked in the head and then the weird language that's came from Anthony Burgess's book where they're speaking this oddly warped version of English with just made up words out of it then. Baby Shakespeare yeah that's probably a good description for it I just think there's a film that's really interesting with a lot going on I can see why folk would find it pretentious and why not everybody would like it but I think it's a film that's bubbling with ideas I can't think of many things since then that are diving into such dark topics with such poise as this does and that's probably a large reason why it still has quite a powerful legacy to day and obviously at the time I mean if we're reflecting back clearly the impact it had at the time both managing to get a Best Picture Oscar nomination and get banned has clearly pushed the buttons in what I would say the right way for the most part
SPEAKER_09:Yeah there was one other thing I think I forgot to mention earlier but when I was watching some of these I was trying to sort of think you kind of have to watch I'm trying to watch these films not through the eyes of today but watch it through the eyes of yesteryear because you know of course now we see a lot of violence in films so whilst these scenes are still shocking by today's standards but they probably don't have the same gut punch that they would have had back in the 70s so whether that's limited some of the impact for me I don't know but even still I'm
SPEAKER_07:surprised this wasn't just because it is quite it is shocking and you know has been banned those kind of films don't tend to
SPEAKER_08:I think they were maybe having a a bit of a, I say a moment, but there's obviously a bit of a change if you look at the films that were nominated through the 60s. There's a lot of classic musicals, you've got Sound of Music, Dr Zhivago, war films, etc. As you get towards the end of the 60s and then into the early 70s, you had Midnight Cowboy won, it's got gay prostitution scenes in it, you had Bonnie and Clyde nominated. So I wonder if it was maybe a bit of, you kind of see it now with the Oscars trying to, I suppose, nominate more popular films, trying to make sure that there's like one film that's done really well at the box office getting nominated I almost feel like maybe that what was going on back at turn of the decade where it's maybe like trying to be a bit edgier I guess that would be my feeling yeah it's definitely out there I guess in terms of well you look at the other films nominated this year it's a bit different cool so this one did not win any Oscars but had four nominations so the four nominations were for Best Picture Kubrick for Best Director Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film What was the weight of the car
SPEAKER_06:when you got it Irv?
SPEAKER_00:£4795 Sure That's what it was, 4,795 pounds when it came into the shop.
SPEAKER_06:On his manual, it says 4,675. That's 120 pounds overweight. And when it was booked into Marseille, it was 4,795. That's still 120 pounds overweight. Jimmy's got to be right.
SPEAKER_00:Listen, I ripped everything out of there except the rocker panels. Come on, Herb. What the hell is that?
SPEAKER_08:So I think this is the film that is the reason why we picked this year because Gene Hackman obviously passed away earlier this year fairly tragically albeit at a fair age and because we've covered a couple of his films so far this is the movie that really burst him onto the scene as a big name Hollywood actor with an Oscar winning performance as Popeye Doyle in William Friedkin's The French Connection so this is a gritty crime thriller that I would say even watching it today still feels quite intense and dangerous more than 50 years later at its core it follows two cops in New York Popeye Doyle as I mentioned played by Gene Hackman and his partner Buddy Russo who's played by Roy Scheider as they try to connect a heroin smuggling ring back to France where they believe the drugs are coming from it's actually inspired by real people and real events and I think that probably gives it an edge of authenticity it's not just a cops and robbers movie this there's a lot more to it, a lot more about paranoia and obsession and there's a lot around how the characters interact with each other that isn't familiar of a police procedural that you maybe have seen before. There's a few things I'd say that I would say elevate this movie above its contemporaries of the era. Firstly, William Friedkin's filmmaking. He's chosen to shoot this almost like a documentary. There's quite a few sequences where he's following chases on foot. We've obviously got the car chase which we'll come to in a second. It uses a lot of natural lighting. It's not much studio sets it's all kind of shot out and out and about in New York City and that gives this feeling that the camera doesn't know what's coming next or do we know that as the audience he took inspiration from a political thriller called Z by a director called Costa Gavras which was nominated a couple of years earlier and the reason he said that he did that is that he felt that that had a raw almost new real quality and that was what he wanted to give in terms of the look and feel for the French connection and I think it does work in that sense mentioned the famous car chase you've probably seen it before it's been attempted to be replicated numerous times before but nowhere near as good on many occasions it's just about a six minute long sequence of Popeye like stealing a car driving through New York traffic under an elevated train there's great sound design camera angles it's chaotic as hell and then it ends in quite an exciting moment and then you can juxtapose that with another great scene in the movie which is the subway stalking sequence which is almost like the opposite slow methodical tense I would say both scenes show Friedkin's mastery of pacing, he knows when to crank up the adrenaline and when to let tension simmer and I think this film is full of moments that ape both of those elements As good as the filmmaking is, none of this lands without Hackman's performance he wasn't even the first choice for the role, I think before this he'd been in a small part in Bonnie and Clyde, a couple of other films but nothing major, he doesn't look like a film star, he's already balding at what must be like 30s at this stage, he looks a lot older. He wanted to cast someone like Paul Newman, Jackie Gleeson, there was other actors that he looked on, but ultimately for various reasons it landed in Hackman and he is a force of nature in the role. His character can be kind of brash, racist, downright unpleasant and obsessive, but he makes him riveting to watch. I think he does a good job of channeling that same kind of obsession that you'd see him explore in the conversation two or three years later, but obviously that's a lot more of a simmering intensity or paranoia, whereas this He's got one focus in mind, which is catching a criminal that always seems to be one or two steps ahead of him. I think this is a super film. I would say it's interesting. It's a film that is very much off its time. You can place this film in the 70s, not just because of the setting, but also because of the language used, the way the characters behave. It's very macho, hard-edged. There's not very many female characters, if any, to be honest. These days, this film gets made in an entirely different way. But I think that's part of the charm of it. It's almost like a haulback to... messy, uncomfortable, riveting American thrillers of yesteryear and that's why it stands the test of time. Hackman, Friedman and the filmmaking approach and I think this is a very, very strong film and a strong winner. Bingham, what are your thoughts on The French
SPEAKER_09:Connection? Yeah, I absolutely agree. It goes back to my point I made a minute ago. This was a groundbreaking film at the time and again you want to try and apply or watch it through the eyes of yesteryear rather than the eyes of today because You know, a dark, grimy crime thriller, you know, isn't a new thing, but the way it was, that raw, gritty feeling, the unpolished feel and setting was fairly new or, as I said, groundbreaking in 71. I loved that camera work that you referenced and just the way that they filmed it. It's just a really good directional choice and adds to that, the seediness and scumminess of the big city setting. It actually also reminded me of a film which must have been from a similar time Mean Streets which is like a gangster thing but has a really similar kind of raw feeling to it that was just starting to come through at that time there's obviously the car chase which you referenced you know that's one of the most famous parts of the film and again is a really good example of that sort of semi-guerrilla way of filming I think there's a lot of stuff that's been said about the car chase I'm sure there's Wee Pinocchio knows has grown on quite a few people who are telling the stories including the director because I think him and Hackman had both referenced each other telling little porky pies about it they said that they filmed this amongst other people driving and the other people driving weren't actors which is a half truth in that some of the shots that you see are actually real people just going about their day but of course the actual shot is the actual main bit where you see the storyline being prevailed is of course actors driving to be fair though the crash wasn't actually in the script so there you go the anti-hero stuff I really loved and that is made so good just purely through Hackman's performance yeah old style detective who absolutely loves the chase and would walk on glass to get his guy I did have one problem with it and that is I think the ending is a bit so the whole ending sequence I think is weak even though it's based on a true story like I mean come on guys like a roadblock to then have like a massive a massive chase there's definitely better police tactics than that but the very final scene which we've not put spoiler but maybe again maybe I'm looking at that through the eyes of today and that that kind of trope's been kind of done albeit in a similar way just I feel a weak ending with the gunshot and yeah it didn't really land as strongly as what it could have but yeah I'm probably nitpicking because otherwise I think it's you know clearly an excellent film Mason
SPEAKER_07:yeah Full House for me I think this is a great film I'm going to go straight to what you said about the ending because I thought the ending was bold in that you've spent the whole film building up to that sequence and you know We've established that Doyle is, albeit short-tempered, but he is the anti-hero here. And ultimately, at the end, he kills one of his colleagues. He kills a good guy and the body gets away. Not many films, I think, would take that decision. I would say I'd rather it did stop with the gunshot because the gunshot is ambiguous. But then he chooses to have an epilogue where it tells you what happened next to the characters. So you know that that gunshot isn't is that what you want to think is was that Doyle being shot at or was that Doyle shooting the guy but then the epilogue tells you oh Doyle got transferred out of the department and the baddie ended up back in France or whatever so I thought I'd rather that wasn't in there but I did think the ending was other than up until that bit was great and then if we go back to the start of the film I did like that it doesn't spoon feed the plot to you I didn't think it was clear in the first act exactly what the storyline was you do have to spend a bit of time working out what's happening particularly the sequences that cut between New York and Marseille it's hard to establish what the link is between the two especially because this might be just because it was shot 55 years ago but some of the dialogue is quite muted quite mumbly so you really have to pay attention to what's going on and I do like films like that where it challenges the audience I think that's why Christopher Nolan's films are so successful nowadays because it asks the audience to pay attention and audiences like been treated like that. Yes, it's got excellent chase sequences that have become the go-to as to how you would film a chase sequence and, you know, I can see why both tend to sound exciting. I thought it was excellent and a worthy winner.
SPEAKER_08:This had five wins out of eight nominations. It's definitely the most successful film of the evening. The eight nominations were for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Gene Hackman, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing. That is the five won. Roy Scheider also had a Best Supporting Actor nomination. It had a Best Cinematography and Best Sound Mixing nomination but didn't win those ones. The French Connection very well regarded still to this day. Certainly regarded as one of Gene Hackman's classic films. So that brings us to the end of the five movies on this episode. So folks, what would you have had as your winner? Let's go Bingham first. French Connection by a fair distance for me. I will join you with the French Connection because I wonder if Mason might be the one that could go differently. Mason, are you making it three out of three or are you going to go different?
SPEAKER_07:No, I think there's a couple of strong ones here, a couple of not so strong ones, but the standout is the French Connection. So yeah, it's a hat trick.
SPEAKER_08:A hat trick. A rare occasion where we all think that the Oscars voters of the time got it right. So that takes us to the end of off this part of the episode all that's left to do is where are we going next Bingham? Oh yeah
SPEAKER_09:so I referenced the millennium earlier so I thought we'd fast forward to the year 2000 so what films do we have so we've got Traffic which is Steven Soderbergh's crime drama ensemble cast and it's pulling the drug trade from different perspectives I've got another one by Steven Soderbergh Erin Brockovich which takes on the true story of the aforementioned mentioned earlier and helped the continued climb of Julia Roberts career. Going a bit off piste with the next one we've got Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon which I was interested to read as the first foreign film to take the US box office by storm by grossing over 100ml so we'll see what we think of that. There's also Chocolate or Chocola a romcom which I'll leave my synopsis to purely the description on the film poster for this one which it says sinfully delicious so yeah and of course gladiator which was one of the several films in my old history teachers catalogue mrs jackson oh mrs jackson i can't remember oh no that's a song isn't it mrs jackson i can't remember did you make a daughter cry yeah you know that was alongside our other favourites braveheart and escape from salby morse Obviously
SPEAKER_08:a good teacher to have.
SPEAKER_09:If you want accuracy. Yeah, exactly, I know. She did have a six pack in her back, but she had a very strange body structure. But anyway, side point.
SPEAKER_08:this must have been one of the only times that someone had two films nominated for Best Picture Steven Soderbergh I don't think even because I know that Spielberg had Schindler's List and Jurassic Park in the same year but Jurassic Park wasn't nominated so it can't have happened many times but yeah intrigued to watch these ones
SPEAKER_07:I can't believe we've not done Gladiator yet so yeah that's a strong year just from the sound of it
SPEAKER_08:excellent well look forward to getting into that then thank you thank you both for your time this evening and listeners hope you enjoy this episode it has been a while but hopefully we have made up for it with a good episode today and you hopefully enjoyed the films watching along we will finish the episode there thanks to my two co-hosts Bingham and Mason and we will speak to you all soon cheers bye
SPEAKER_02:music
SPEAKER_08:music
SPEAKER_02:music If they follow you.