Best Writing (Original) – 1969

Official Nominations: Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. The Damned. Easy Rider. The Wild Bunch.

William Goldman’s screenplay for BCATSD picked up the official win this year, and it’s difficult to argue against the win. The easy dialogue couple with the charm of the actors ensures that the film is quotable and doesn’t feel dated. BACATAA has a name too long to type repeatedly, but Mazursky peppers his frank script with a lot of modern humour which was a revelation for audiences at the time. Even more shocking, for the handful who saw it, was The Damned with its explicit sex and discussions on power, corruption, and politics. Easy Rider too was a revelation, with Fonda, Hopper, and Southern’s script striking a chord with America’s youth like no movie before or since with much of the dialogue being ad-libbed on the spot.

My Winner: Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

My Nominations: Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Easy Rider. The Italian Job. Medium Cool. Take The Money And Run. The Wild Bunch.

I add a few notable films to my list – The Italian Job is of course extremely quotable, Medium Cool is a timely piece and relevant today as the quest for morality and integrity within journalism rages on. Take The Money And Run is one of Woody Allen’s earliest hits, more manic than what he would later produce.

My Winner: The Italian Job

Let us know in the comments which film of 1969 do you think has the Best Original Screenplay.

Best Music (Scoring) – 1969

Official Nominations: Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Anne of The Thousand Days. The Reivers. The Secret of Santa Vittoria. The Wild Bunch. Hello Dolly. Goodbye Mr Chips. Paint Your Wagon. They Shoot Horses Don’t They. Sweet Charity.

More craziness this year as the Scoring category was divided into – Best Original Score (Not A Musical) and Best Original Or Adaptation Score (Including Musical). I’ve bunched them all together though, both in the Official List and in my own. Lets get the two Official Winners out of the way first. BCATSK by one Burt Bacharach is of course most famous for it’s central song, but the rest of the soundtrack has a fun and light folk and jazz vibe, unusual for what would be classed as a Western – it is in stark contrast to Morricone’s stuff for example. There’s a winsome, nostalgic, bittersweet, and playful tone throughout. I’m not convinced Hello Dolly should be on here given that the soundtrack is simply a list of songs from the movie – it’s whether you consider a movie soundtrack to be purely or mostly instrumental, or whether is matters or not. Regardless, the music and songs don’t do anything for me, aside from some amusing lyrics and the vocal and comic talent involved it’s just not very good.

Georges Delarue presents a regal soundtrack for Anne Of The Thousand Days, crafting a very good period sound with subtle contemporary flavour – moving and grand. John Williams was already an established Conductor by the time of The Reivers, but not yet considered in the same league as his contemporaries – this nomination and score went a long way to changing that – a rich and epic score peppered with the lighter melodic moments which would be one of his most enduring trademarks. Ernest Gold’s score for The Secret Of Santa Vittoria is another strong one, with authentic European charm, but it maybe gets lost in the mix with all of the other big hitters this year.

The Wild Bunch I’ve always found to have a strange soundtrack for a Western. Jerry Fielding’s score shares more with a drama or 80s adventure movie than with what you would expect from a Western – perhaps it is this which again adds to the feeling that the movie was closing the book on the genre. Speaking of unusual ideas for a Western, Paint Your Wagon sees Clint, Marvin, and co singing unnecessarily. The music by Lernre, Loewe, and Previn is okay, at least one of the songs is good, but it’s all terribly old fashioned and far too happy and cheesy for its own good.

Goodbye, Mr Chips has a score by John Williams again, and songs by Leslie Bricusse – not my thing as the songs are so plain, while Sweet Charity has work from Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields – better songs then, but the score is still nothing out of the ordinary – massive jazz thumps and sways, but again not my thing. Finally, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They has strange incidental music punctuated by show tunes or earlier times – the nice score coming from Johnny Green.

My Winner: The Reivers

My Nominations: The Reivers. The Secret Of Santa Vittoria. Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Easy Rider

If those other soundtracks are getting official nominations, then there’s no way Easy Rider is missing out. The same goes for The Italian Job. Quincy Jones somehow steps in to a uniquely English film to give some Motown class to the camp proceedings, while Easy Rider speaks for itself. As that soundtrack is entirely songs though, I can’t in good conscience give it the win in this category.

My Winner: The Italian Job

Let us know in the comments who your pick for the Best Score of 1969 is – and stay tuned throughout February as I unleash a tonne of music posts that have been sitting in my drafts for months!

Best Foreign Film – 1969

Official Nominations: Z. Adalen 31. The Battle Of Neretva. The Brothers Karamazov. My Night At Maud’s.

Another interesting selection, with one clear winner from my perspective. Bo Widerberg’s Adalen 31 is a retelling of true events in Sweden when five small town workers were killed during a protest. It’s exactly the sort of film The Academy loves but they tend to focus too on whatever the issue is with too heavy a hand; fortunately this is watchable and remains prescient. The Battle Of Neretva is an impressive and entertaining war film which is memorable for starring a number of familiar faces (Orson Welles, Yul Brynner), The Brothers Karamazov is yet another version of the book, while My Night At Maud’s feels very much like a play, minimalist and only concerned with dialogue and discussion – interesting, but it doesn’t stand a chance alongside Z.

My Winner: Z

My Nominations: Z. Burn! The Damned. Eros + Massacre. Fellini Satyricon. The Italian Job.

Costa-Gavras’s Z is the only copy and paste this time around, joining a host of controversial and entertaining entries. The Damned still has the power to unnerve and worry the viewer now, while The Italian Job is more fun than most comedies today. Burn! is essentially a forgotten movie, odd given that it features Brando as a man trying to serve Britain’s colonial ends by exploiting a slave uprising – it’s weird, but good. Over to Japan then for the beautiful and sometimes surreal loose biopic of Sakae Osugi, an anarchist during the later 19th and early 20th century. Yoshishige Yoshida’s film deserves to put him alongside more known directors like Kurosawa and Oshima, but it is one which has never found an audience in the West. Finally Fellini Satyricon would see the director get nominated at the following year’s Academy Awards, a bizarre and dazzling work.

My Winner: The Italian Job

Let us know in the comments which Foreign Film of 1969 gets your vote!