On an objective perspective, I won’t disagree about the merits of Ordinary People as a mainstream film, I like the dreary mood quite a lot with a couple of very moving performances by Sutherland and (surprise surprise) Hutton and let’s face it…it’s the only worthwhile Redford work behind the camera.
However, on a clear perspective, there were far better 1980 art-house films when compared to Ordinary People and not just American ones like Raging Bull.
Star Wars took a Kurosawa movie and made it worse
Annie Hall reinvented the romantic comedy
Annie Hall makes me cry from pure laughter and sheer beauty
Star Wars makes me laugh because of that incestual kiss
I’ve watched Annie Hall at least 7 times and it gets more and more beautiful
I’ve turned all of my friends into Kurosawa fan’s by showing them Hidden Fortress
Annie Hall is a film I will love until the day I day
Star Wars is good, but when face to face, in my mind, there is no comparison
DIMITRIS: no, Quiz Show was good too!!! ;-))
My point about Ordinary People is not that it’s a bad movie as such, but that it was undeserving, esp against Raging Bull.
Star Wars is a better film than Hidden Fortress — which was a weaker Kurosawa film in and of itself.
I am a huge Woody Allen fan, although for me Annie Hall was not his strongest work so I have few qualms saying that Star Wars would be the winner. Manhattan gave me the warm fuzzies that Jason Miller is talking about, Annie Hall just makes me happy. While Star Wars completely changed the way I – and many other people – think about sci fi films. So in terms of greater significance, this isn’t a hard choice.
Annie Hall deserved to win. I fought for Star Wars many years, but Annie Hall is the superior film.
Now, there ain’t no way in God’s green Hell that Kramer vs Kramer should have topped Apocalypse Now, no fucking way, but….
The the very next year the Academy spit in the faces of everyone by choosing Ordinary People over Raging Bull.
KvK and OP are fine films, but they ain’t AP and RB, it’s a travesty, it’s a sham, it’s a mockery.
Deer Hunter got 78, Chariots of Fire in 81 and Ghandi in 82
The Oscars get it wrong with comforting regularity:
Calvacade won over Trouble in Paradise
There were like a dozen films better than Gone With the Wind in ‘39
All the King’s Men beat White Heat in ’49
Gigi beat out both Touch of Evil AND Vertigo!
Oliver! won over 2001: A Space Odyssey
it’s a traveshamockery!
I have a list about this:
http://mubi.com/lists/1359
I think that Woody Allen doesn’t get the respect he deserves within the film community because of the relative weakness of his film catalog of the last 20 years. I can count on one hand his films since 1990 that I consider to be in the great-to-excellent category (Husbands & Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Sweet & Lowdown, Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona). The other 15 films in this span varied from average to downright poor, and I think that this paints a poor picture to the average film goer.
It’s hard to argue that he wasn’t one of the best filmmakers of the 1970’s and 1980’s, however. And Annie Hall was clearly a better film than Star Wars. In historical context, SW was much more of a phenomenan, and is arguably a more important film in the grand sheme of things. But don’t forget that, for better or worse, Annie Hall set the blueprint for the modern romantic comedy. Annie Hall is superior to Star Wars in the basic film categories: writing, acting and directing.
Annie Hall is one of the very few times the Academy got it right.
Re: Ordinary People, I agree that it is unfairly dismissed. I watched it again recently and it holds up beautifully. It is an extraordinary film filled with some of the most heart wrenching moments you will see captured on film. If it was a Swedish film directed by Bergman you all would think it was brilliant. Yes, Raging Bull was a technically great film, but sadly as much as I watch it I cannot see it as anything but that. Something nice about being moved by a film, and Ordinary People does that.
Annie Hall deserved it…then in order
Julia
Saturday Night Fever
The Late Show
House
The Obscure Object of Desire
A Special Day
3 Women
Soldier of Orange
The Twisted Detective
and then Star Wars.
I’m kidding of course…although I do think Annie Hall deserved to win…frankly, it’s one of the nitwit Academy’s really decent choices.
Saturday Night Fever was so much more deserving than Annie Hall. Far better than its reputation would have you believe.
Looking at these titles, I have to say 77 was a very good year.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Stalker. That was ’77, right? A masterpiece.
I love Woody Allen’s films, and he is a superior director to Lucas, but Star Wars defines the idea of imagination. Annie Hall is the same template as Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Cries and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Match Point, etc. – quality films about witty people in tangled romances. Star Wars takes the idea of space travel and elevates it to the level of opera. If you did not love that film as a child, then you had no childhood. You felt at every moment like you were part of a vast interstellar society that could be taken in any direction the auteur wished. Star Wars and Annie Hall are both classics, but Star Wars is the more cinematic of the two, and deserved the award.
Now, as to Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker vs. A Serious Man – where is Inglourious Basterds in this contest? All three of those ’09 nominees are superior to Hurt Locker in writing, acting, cinematography, direction and grandeur (well, maybe not cinematography for Serious Man, but you get my drift). 2009 was like 1998 – a superb year where the Academy chose the worst contender.
Just to toss it out there, The American deserved to be nominated this year over Black Swan. But really, after you realize how many classics from the Golden Era of International Cinema (1959-1977) were not nominated for Best Picture by a Hollywood establishment that wanted to keep their bloated careers going – Hiroshima mon amour, Winter Light, The Red Desert, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Le Samourai, House, El Topo, The Spirit of the Beehive, Amarcord, In the Realm of the Senses – you realize how irrelevant they are.
The trend of not nominating foreign films for the top prize continues today – Underground, Santa Sangre, Das Boot, Waltz with Bashir, Amelie, Persepolis. This may be the first year I don’t watch since childhood.
The Academy history is so full of snubs and moments of sheer unbelievability. But it is its nature.
Sound of Music over Zhivago? WTH??? My Fair Lady over Strangelove? Going My Way over Double Indemnity? How Green Was My Valley over both Kane and Maltese Falcon?
The 70’s were more painful than other decades:
Godfather II should have never beaten Chinatown.
Cuckoo’s Nest is not better than Barry Lyndon, Jaws, or Dog Day Afternoon.
Rocky is not better than Network, All The President’s Men, or Taxi Driver.
While Annie Hall is brilliantly conceived and written, Star Wars is so further reaching in every aspect. One is a great film from 1977 and the other is one for all time.
re: Spencer
Never mind Zhivago…The Sound of Music over DARLING, THE COLLECTOR, WOMAN IN THE DUNES, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD!?!?!?
VERY difficult choice between Godfather II & Chinatown, but I think Godfather II over Chinatown is not nearly as egregious as Rocky over NETWOR, ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN, TAXI DRIVER, SEVEN BEAUTIES, FACE TO FACE, THE FRONT, 1900.
I think Cuckoo’s Nest is surely just as good as Dog Day Afternoon & Barry Lyndon and better than JAWS…and I LOVE JAWS!
Zhivago’s acclaim is baffling. It’s just as mild and “cozy” as Sound of Music.I never understood all the fuss about Zhivago, read the book instead and it’s not even a great book on top of that!
It’s Zhivagooey
If we’re talking ‘65, Welles’ Chimes at Midnight and Kurosawa’s Red Beard should not be overlooked.
If we’re talking ‘75, that’s the year of Robert Altman’s masterpiece, Nashville.
(incidently, I agree with Dim about Zhivago.)
When I was in high school, I rented both ORDINARY PEOPLE and RAGING BULL from the library. One moved me to tears and the other bored me to tears….respectively. While I 100% agree I need to re-watch RAGING BULL as an adult, but you know what they say about first impressions. My biggest complaint when it comes to Academy snbs, I think the one that will always take the cake is FORREST GUMP winning over SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, hands down! :)
Star Wars is a great movie as a kid, but i’m not a kid anymore. It’s decent escapist fare now at the age of 32 but that’s about it.
Agree with Dim about Zhivago
I’m in the Doctor Zhivago love group, so much so that I can hardly be objective about it. Call it a guilty pleasure, if you will, but the key word there is pleasure … if only to be able to look at Julie Christie at her most radiant.
As for Rocky ’s win, see my comment at the top of this page.
if only to be able to look at Julie Christie at her most radiant.
One of Julie Christie’s most uninspiring performances and I love Julie. Radiant or not, she was soulless.
I’m confused how anyone could conceive that Episode 4 is a better film, and I’ve loved Star Wars since I was a child but seriously? Take off your nostalgia goggles and realize that for ONCE the academy’s view was actually right. Atrocities they committed like placing Titanic over L.A. Confidential or Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction are far more painful. Most of the other posts I saw already mentioned other ones on my mind, like Kane, etc.
Star Wars is barely even a good example of real science fiction (it’s more of a space opera). Delightful film, but Annie Hall is on a completely different level. One of the wittier scripts of all time. Easily.
The fact that Star Wars is more a Western, in form, than a science-fiction does not detract from its greatness, but adds to it.
Star Wars has better music. And is thus better.
It’s hard to compare the two, they’re so different. Plus, I think the Academy goes for big production, big splash kinds of films, not the type of stuff Woody Allen does. I was a kid when I first saw Star Wars and absolutely loved it. I still think it has its own kinds of magic, but of course I’ve seen it so many times now. Although a good film, and I saw it again recently, I can’t imagine Annie Hall winning against Star Wars at the Oscars, not in the ‘70s, and not now, because we’re talking about The Academy here. That’s practically speaking.
My own opinion is that they are so different that I couldn’t really compare them. Really films should be compared in their own kinds of categories, to be fair. Star Wars — sci-fi, Annie Hall — romantic comedy. Nothing whatsoever to do with one another, and both well done for their kind.
Is this really still going on?
It’s kind of easy once you think of it in other terms. I love Star Wars and I love Annie Hall but:
Cinema: Stars Wars = Books: King Solomon’s Mines
Cinema: Annie Hall = Books: Candide
Easy choice: Candide
(and I love both books, mind you)
christopher sepesy
@ BRAD S.
This is what I wrote two years ago when the same subject came up in this thread, http://mubi.com/topics/1532 :
“Since I am on record several times on this site giving a lot of testimony to my love for Raging Bull and the films of 1980, I feel I am justified in saying this:
Stop dissing Ordinary People.
I understand that it is not Raging Bull — I’ve understood that for 29 years — but that doesn’t mean it is not an exceptional, fully realized and beautifully told film in its own right. One of the great ironic injustices is that those films had to be in competition. Any other year and Ordinary People would probably make a lot of peoples’ “tops” lists. It nevertheless does make mine, with Raging Bulll.
And now that I’ve kindly-yet-firmly reprimanded poor Jacy …
I feel the same about Rocky. I remember people standing on the backs of their seats and cheering that movie in 1976. I’ve not seen that happen before or since. I agree it’s easy to sit back now and say, “What could they have been thinking?!? Why didn’t they vote for Taxi Driver or Network or Bound for Glory or All the President’s Men???” But if you were there, as I was and several other posters on this board were, it’s very easy to remember how it happened.
As I just wrote earlier, unless you’re winning one and it catapults your career, Oscars mean absolutely nothing except maybe to be seen as bookmarks on the culture that was fostering them at the time."
I could also make the argument about Art Carney, Joe Pesci, Million Dollar Baby, etc.
Not Crash, tho …
Always remember, Oscars mean very-little-to-nothing unless they’re helping your own career.
@GARRETT
I just gave a lot of love to Annie Hall, and will always continue to do so.