The Nighthawk Awards: 1968

42 years after Metropolis and true greatness finally returns to Science-Fiction.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 10 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The Lion in Winter
3. The Producers
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
5. Rosemary’s Baby
6. Belle de Jour
7. The Battle of Algiers
8. Closely Watched Trains
9. The Two of Us
10. War and Peace

Analysis:  The adjustment into Oscar-eligibility years hurts several films: Belle de Jour and Battle of Algiers would be Best Picture nominees in their original years and War and Peace would be the #5 film if not for the five films in front of it from other years.  But what we have is a fantastic Top 5 and Top 10.  The #2 through #5 all earn the same rating and Belle is only point below (Belle ties several other films for the third best #6 film to date).  War and Peace is a ***.5 film, but a top-level ***.5 film.
This is also a rare group for its genre variety; there is the first Sci-Fi film to win, the first to even earn a Top 10 finish since 1956 and the first time that a Top 10 has featured a Sci-Fi, a Western and a Horror film.

• Best Director

1. Stanley Kubrick  (2001: A Space Odyssey)  *
2. Sergio Leone  (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
3. Roman Polanski  (Rosemary’s Baby)
4. Luis Buñuel  (Belle de Jour)
5. Anthony Harvey  (The Lion in Winter)  **
6. Gillo Pontecorvo  (The Battle of Algiers)
7. Sergei Bondarchuk  (War and Peace)
8. Kaneto Shindo  (Kuroneko)
9. Ingmar Bergman  (Hour of the Wolf)
10. Luis Buñuel  (The Exterminating Angel)

Analysis:  Anthony Harvey, who really wasn’t a very good director aside from this one film, receives his only nomination.  Buñuel finally receives his first nomination.  Leone receives his first of consecutive nominations.  Polanski receives his third nomination (in just six years).  Kubrick earns his fifth nomination and second win; this moves him to 315 points and a four-way tie for 8th place.
This is the best top 5 in this category in six years.
This year is the closest race of all-time for Consensus.  Four directors actually tie for the raw total (Carol Reed, Anthony Harvey, Paul Newman, Franco Zeffirelli), with Reed and Harvey tying for the weighted total as well.  That’s because there was no real consensus.  Reed won the Oscar, Harvey won the DGA, Newman won the NYFC and the Globe but failed to earn an Oscar nom and Zeffirelli won the NBR.  It’s the first time since 1958 that no one broke 300 points for a raw total and the first time since 1955 that no one breaks 225.  There won’t be another year where someone fails to break 300 until 1988.  The only year after this where there will be a raw total tie will be in 1987 and there won’t be a weighted total tie.

• Best Adapted Screenplay:

1. The Lion in Winter  **
2. Rosemary’s Baby  *
3. Belle de Jour
4. Closely Watched Trains
5. The Odd Couple  *
6. Hunger
7. Rachel Rachel  *
8. The Exterminating Angel
9. Pretty Poison  *
10. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Analysis:  Buñuel earns his fourth nomination.  I have only read three of the original source texts – The Lion in Winter, Hunger (when I was reading my through all the Nobel Prize winners) and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.  It’s not much of a surprise that the four films in my Top 8 that weren’t nominated for the Oscar are all Foreign films.

• Best Original Screenplay:

1. The Producers  **
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. The Two of Us
4. Faces  *
5. The Battle of Algiers
6. Hour of the Wolf
7. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
8. Kuroneko
9. Hot Millions  *

Analysis:  So, does 2001 belong in Adapted Screenplay?  The Oscars said no and Oscars.org does not list “The Sentinel” as source material, probably because it is uncredited.  Since it was an inspiration, but not a direct adaptation, I am going ahead with it in Original.  Ironically, if 2001 was in Adapted, Bergman would earn a nomination; instead this is the one year from 1967 to 1971 where Bergman is not nominated.
Mel Brooks wins his first award and Kubrick earns his fifth nomination.  All the films on my list not nominated for the Oscar are Foreign films (Ugly was written originally in Italian).

• Best Actor:

1. Peter O’Toole  (The Lion in Winter)  *
2. Zero Mostel  (The Producers)
3. Alan Bates  (The Fixer)  *
4. Max von Sydow  (Hour of the Wolf)
5. Trevor Howard  (Charge of the Light Brigade)
6. Per Oscarssen  (Hunger)  *
7. Alan Arkin  (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)  *
8. Clint Eastwood  (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
9. Ron Moody  (Oliver!)  *
10. Walter Matthau  (The Odd Couple)

Analysis:  Cliff Robertson somehow won the Oscar and NBR and earned a Globe nom and so managed to snag the Consensus win in a year without much of a consensus.  Personally, I don’t think Robertson is all that good (he’s #19 on my list), but he’s not the worst Oscar winner (that would be Denzel Washington in Training Day).  But to have him win in this year, when O’Toole is so utterly amazing is just a terrible choice (made all the worse when O’Toole would fail to ever win).
This is the second nom (and win) for O’Toole and the second for Howard, but the first for Mostel, Bates and von Sydow (surprising that it took von Sydow this long, but it would take him until 1988 for his first Oscar nom).  This is actually the weakest top 5 in this category since 1949.

• Best Actress

1. Katharine Hepburn  (The Lion in Winter)  *
2. Barbra Streisand  (Funny Girl)  *
3. Joanne Woodward  (Rachel Rachel)  **
4. Catherine Deneuve  (Belle de Jour)
5. Mia Farrow  (Rosemary’s Baby)  *
6. Liv Ullmann  (Hour of the Wolf)  *
7. Vanessa Redgrave  (Isadora)  *
8. Beryl Reid  (The Killing of Sister George)
9. Florence Delay  (Trial of Joan of Arc)
10. Faye Dunaway  (The Thomas Crown Affair)

Analysis:  Katharine Hepburn finally takes back the crown from Bette Davis after 28 years, going up to 560 points and passing Davis by 5 points.  This is Hepburn’s 12 nomination and 4th win.  She will hold the title for roughly 40 years before Meryl takes it away.  Meanwhile, Woodward earns her 3rd nomination, Deneuve her 2nd and Streisand and Farrow their first.
Hepburn and Streisand have their famous tie at the Oscars, a tie that is a little dubious, since Streisand was invited to join the Academy when this was her feature film debut, and if she voted for herself, then that’s why she tied.  Still, they are both great performances.  Ironically, in spite of the tie, Woodward (who is also great) wins the Consensus because she wins the NYFC and Globe and earns Oscar and BAFTA noms, while neither Hepburn nor Streisand win a critics award.  This is a very strong top 5 – one point less than the year before, but good enough for 3rd best to date (and won’t be passed again for another 5 years).

• Best Supporting Actor:

1. Anthony Hopkins  (The Lion in Winter)
2. Gene Wilder  (The Producers)
3. John Castle  (The Lion in Winter)
4. Michael Simon  (The Two of Us)
5. Kenneth Mars  (The Producers)
6. Daniel Massey  (Star!)  *
7. Eli Wallach  (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
8. Ian Holm  (The Fixer)  *
9. Tony Curtis  (The Boston Strangler)
10. Timothy Dalton  (The Lion in Winter)

Analysis:  There wasn’t much Consensus in this year, as the Oscar, BAFTA and NBR winners all failed to earn any other nominations and the NBR and Globe winners only earned one more nomination each.  No BAFTA nominee earned any other noms and the only Oscar nominee who did was Massey, who won the Globe.  So, no wonder that most of my list earned nothing at all (Curtis was Globe nominated in lead, but I think Henry Fonda is the lead and the Curtis is really a supporting role).
It’s the first nomination for Hopkins and Wilder, while it is the only nomination for Castle, Simon and Mars.  The best Top 5 in this category in six years and Wilder is the best performance in this category not to win since 1950.

• Best Supporting Actress:

1. Ruth Gordon  (Rosemary’s Baby)  *
2. Estelle Parsons  (Rachel Rachel)  *
3. Jane Merrow  (The Lion in Winter)
4. Paola Petagora  (Fists in the Pocket)
5. Lynn Carlin  (Faces)  *
6. Billie Whitelaw  (Charlie Bubbles)  **
7. Jitka Zelenorhorska  (Closely Watched Trains)
8. Sondra Locke  (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)  *
9. Gena Rowlands  (Faces)

Analysis:  Only Gordon and Parsons have previous nominations – one each.
Billie Whitelaw becomes the second straight Consensus winner in this category to fail to earn an Oscar nomination, winning the NSFC and the BAFTA.  Gordon comes in a very close second, winning the Oscar and the Globe.

• Best Editing:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Bullitt
3. Rosemary’s Baby
4. The Producers
5. The Battle of Algiers
6. Belle de Jour
7. Kuroneko
8. Boston Strangler
9. Closely Watched Trains
10. The Lion in Winter

Analysis:  Well, they made a damn good choice with the winner, I’ll give them that.  But they really screwed up the rest of the category.  How, how, how does the incredible editing in 2001 not get nominated?  How does Funny Girl get nominated instead?

• Best Cinematography:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey  *
2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. Rosemary’s Baby
4. Belle de Jour
5. Hour of the Wolf
6. Elvira Madigan  *
7. Charge of the Light Brigade  *
8. Bullitt  **
9. Kuroneko
10. The Battle of Algiers

Analysis:  The BAFTAs finally change their Best British Cinematography to Best Cinematography, so the Consensus Award for Best Cinematography finally begins.  Bullitt wins the NSFC (the only critics group to give out the award until 1975 and earns a BAFTA nom.  2001 wins the BAFTA while Romeo and Juliet wins the Oscar.  All the BAFTA and Oscar nominees earn nominations and, with a couple of exceptions, it will pretty much stay that way until the ASC starts giving out their awards in 1986.
And so, what do the Oscars do?  Look at the incredible work in 2001?  Reward the visionary work in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?  No.  They give the Oscar to Romeo and Juliet and they nominate Funny Girl, Ice Station Zebra, Oliver and Star.  This year earns a score of 12.8, the worst score since 1963 and the second-worst since 1949.
Sven Nykvist (Hour of the Wolf) earns his sixth nomination and is up to 200 points and is now tied for 1st place.

• Best Original Score:

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2. The Lion in Winter
3. Cul-de-Sac
4. The Thomas Crown Affair
5. The Fearless Vampire Killers
6. The Shoes of the Fisherman
7. War and Peace
8. The Music Room
9. Bullitt
10. Planet of the Apes

Analysis:  With one of the greatest scores ever written for a film, Ennio Morricone wins his second of three straight Nighthawks.  He doesn’t earn an Oscar nom (he wouldn’t earn one until 1978), but the Oscars are actually much improved in this category.  With four of the nominees in my Top 10, they earn a score of 76.5, the highest in the category since 1960 and the third highest to this date.

• Best Sound:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. Bullitt
4. The Battle of Algiers
5. Charge of the Light Brigade
6. Rosemary’s Baby
7. Planet of the Apes
8. Hell in the Pacific
9. Belle de Jour
10. Oliver!

Analysis:  This year ties 1952 for the best Top 5 in this category to date (and won’t be surpassed for many years).  With only two Oscar nominees in my Top 10, the Oscars score a 50, which is actually pretty good for this category.  And with Bullitt, they didn’t go with my choice, but they did make a very good one.

• Best Art Direction:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The Lion in Winter
3. Oliver!
4. Belle de Jour
5. War and Peace
6. Rosemary’s Baby
7. Funny Girl
8. The Producers
9. Star!
10. Charge of the Light Brigade

Analysis:  Yeah, for me, this is no contest.  2001 wins this by a mile, with all the amazing work on the futuristic sets, even before they start moving around with the monolith.  I give the Oscars credit for nominating it, but it really should have won.  But this year is a little bit of false hope for this category – the 60’s had been very solid for Art Direction, but the 70’s wouldn’t be nearly as strong and the score in this category (83.8) won’t be equalled again until 1979.

• Best Visual Effects

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Planet of the Apes
3. Kuroneko
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Analysis:  2001 is the best film in this category to date and as a result, this is the best group of nominees in this category to date; it won’t be surpassed until the double whammy of Star Wars and Close Encounters in 1977.

• Best Sound Editing

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. Bullitt
4. The Battle of Algiers
5. Charge of the Light Brigade
6. Planet of the Apes

Analysis:  The Oscars do away with this category.  I don’t know what they might have done.  Probably they would have rewarded Bullitt, especially since 2001 wasn’t even nominated for Best Sound.

• Best Costume Design:

1. The Lion in Winter
2. Oliver!
3. Charge of the Light Brigade
4. War and Peace
5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
6. Star!
7. Elvira Madigan
8. Funny Girl
9. The Fearless Vampire Killers
10. Kuroneko

Analysis:  The Oscars give their award to Romeo and Juliet, my #11.  Given what was nominated with it, they messed that one up.

• Best Makeup

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Planet of the Apes
3. The Producers
4. The Fearless Vampire Killers

• Best Original Song:

1. “Springtime for Hitler”  (The Producers)
2. “Anyone for Tennis”  (The Savage Seven)
3. “Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter”  (Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter)
4. “Windmills of Your Mind”  (The Thomas Crown Affair)
5. “Love Power”  (The Producers)
6. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”  (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)
7. “Prisoners of Love”  (The Producers)
8. “Star”  (Star!)
9. “Northern Song”  (Yellow Submarine)
10. “The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band”  (The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band)

Analysis:  The Song branch of the Oscars wasn’t particularly daring, so I really have to give them credit for putting “Springtime for Hitler” in their semi-finalists, though they didn’t have the guts to actually nominate it.  It’s a brilliantly hilarious song, both lyrically and musically.  The Savage Seven is a terrible film that I saw because it was directed by Richard Rush, who would later be an Oscar nominated Director; however, it has the really good Cream song “Anyone for Tennis”, so I was glad to have seen it.
There are an astounding 245 eligible songs in this year (compare that to the roughly 60 or 70 from the last several years) and I have seen the film for 136 of them.  There are 9 different films that have at least seven eligible songs, of which I have seen six (The Young Girls of Rochefort leads with 13).  A couple of films I only saw just before doing this year because of their large number of original songs, including Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter (which I knew would earn a nomination before I saw it because I’ve known that Herman’s Hermits song for years) and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.  Now, that list of 245, does not include either “Love Power” or “Prisoners of Love”, but Oscars.org has been shown to be not perfect in other years with the eligible songs (at least once they don’t list a song that was actually nominated), so I am going ahead and including them.  Hopefully any Beatles fan will know that only three songs were written for Yellow Submarine and the title song wasn’t one of them (it was from two years before).
This year has five semi-finalists (marked in orange).

• Best Animated Film:

1. none

Analysis:  I’ve seen four Animated films in this year.  Two of them are on the Oscars.org list, Yellow Submarine (decent) and The Wacky World of Mother Goose (a ** Rankin / Bass film).  The other two are Asterix films from France, the first one (Asterix the Gaul) was released in 1966 in France and seems to have gotten a U.S. release while the second (Asterix and Cleopatra) is from 1968 and doesn’t seem to have received a U.S. release (I grew up knowing about Asterix because even though he barely gets notice in the U.S., my parents and brothers lived in France in 1969 when Asterix was huge and they got to know the character).  I think Cleopatra is the slightly better film, but they’re both mid-range ***.  None of the films come anywhere close to being nominated.

• Best Foreign Film:

1. Stolen Kisses  *
2. Shame  *
3. War and Peace  **
4. Hour of the Wolf
5. Kuroneko
6. The Fireman’s Ball  *

note:  Films in green were submitted to the Academy but not nominated.

Analysis:  France wins in consecutive years for the first time since 1945-46.  Truffaut wins for the third time in four nominations.  Bergman ends up with two nominations for the second time; this makes 12 nominations.  It is the first time since 1958 that he is nominated but doesn’t win.
War and Peace becomes the first film to ever sweep the awards, winning the Oscar, Globe, NYFC and NBR.  No film will even get 4 nominations again until 1977 while no film will earn 4 wins again until 1983.  No film will ever again sweep, though All About My Mother wins 9 awards without a loss, only failing to win at the NSFC.

By Film:

note:  They’re in points order.  You get twice as many points for a win as for a nomination.  Hopefully your math skills will let you figure out the system.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey  (510)
  • Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, Sound, Art Direction, Visual Effects, Sound Editing, Makeup
    
• The Lion in Winter  (510)
  • Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Score, Art Direction, Costume Design
• The Producers  (290)
  • Picture, Original Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actor, Editing, Makeup, Original Song, Original Song
• Rosemary’s Baby  (280)
  • Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress, Editing, Cinematography
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (255)
  • Picture, Director, Cinematography, Original Score, Sound, Visual Effects, Sound Editing, Costume Design, Makeup
• Belle de Jour  (205)
  • Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Foreign Film
• The Battle of Algiers  (125)
  • Original Screenplay, Editing, Sound, Sound Editing
• The Two of Us  (90)
  • Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor, Foreign Film (1967)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade  (90)
  • Actor, Sound, Sound Editing, Costume Design
• Hour of the Wolf  (80)
  • Actor, Cinematography, Foreign Film
• Faces  (70)
  • Original Screenplay, Supporting Actress
• Rachel Rachel  (65)
  • Actress, Supporting Actress
• Bullitt  (65)
  • Editing, Sound, Sound Editing
• Closely Watched Trains  (60)
  • Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Film (1967)
• War and Peace  (55)
  • Art Direction, Costume Design, Foreign Film
• The Odd Couple  (40)
  • Adapted Screenplay
• Kuroneko  (40)
  • Visual Effects, Foreign Film
• The Fixer  (35)
  • Actor
• Funny Girl  (35)
  • Actress
• The Fearless Vampire Killers  (35)
  • Original Score, Makeup
• The Thomas Crown Affair  (35)
  • Original Score, Original Song
• Oliver  (35)
  • Art Direction, Costume Design
• Fists in the Pocket  (30)
  • Supporting Actress
• Planet of the Apes  (30)
  • Visual Effects, Makeup
• Cul-de-Sac  (25)
  • Original Score
• Exterminating Angel  (20)
  • Foreign Film (1962)
• Elvira Madigan  (20)
  • Foreign Film (1967)
• Hunger  (20)
  • Foreign Film (1966)
• Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter  (10)
  • Original Song
• The Savage Seven  (10)
  • Original Song

Analysis:  A strange year in that two films tie for 1st place, even stranger that a film that wins Picture and Director doesn’t come in 1st place outright.  But, overall, there are so many Foreign films from earlier years earning nominations for Best Foreign Film that are 99 total nominations, tied with 1963 for the most to date.  The 5 Best Picture nominees account for 18 wins – tied for the most to date.  The Lion in Winter sets a new high in points for a film that doesn’t win Best Picture.

Best Film Not Nominated for Any Nighthawk Awards:

• The Music Room

Analysis:  A mid-range ***.5 from Satyajit Ray, my #18 of the year.  Its highest finish is 7th place, which is for Best Foreign Film in 1958.

Biggest Awards Film Not Nominated for Any Nighthawk Awards:

• Romeo and Juliet

Analysis:  I don’t think particularly highly of it, as can be seen here.  That review lists it as the #56 of the year, but now it is #88 because I have seen a lot more films.  It earned 2 Oscars (out of 4 noms, including Picture and Director), a Globe (out of three noms in categories I track), the NBR for Best Director and a BAFTA (out of 7 noms, including Director).  At these awards it finishes no higher than 11th in any category.

Nighthawk Golden Globes:

Drama:

• Best Picture

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The Lion in Winter
3. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
4. Rosemary’s Baby
5. Belle de Jour

Analysis:  The best Top 5 in this category since 1962, but it will actually be outdone the next year.  A far wider range of genres than you would ever see at the actual Globes.

• Best Director

1. Stanley Kubrick  (2001: A Space Odyssey)
2. Sergio Leone  (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
3. Roman Polanski  (Rosemary’s Baby)
4. Luis Buñuel  (Belle de Jour)
5. Anthony Harvey  (The Lion in Winter)

Analysis:  Harvey and Buñuel receive their only nominations.  Leone earns his first.  Polanski earns his second.  Kubrick earns his fourth, but it will be his only Drama win; this puts him at 225 points and a large tie for 11th place.  This is the best Top 5 in this category in six years.

• Best Adapted Screenplay:

1. The Lion in Winter
2. Rosemary’s Baby
3. Belle de Jour
4. Hunger
5. Rachel Rachel

• Best Original Screenplay:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Faces
3. The Battle of Algiers
4. Hour of the Wolf
5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Analysis:  Bergman earns his second of five straight nominations (all losses – after winning in his previous four nominations).  He’s now up to 680 points.  Kubrick goes up to 200 points and is tied for 7th place.

• Best Actor:

1. Peter O’Toole  (The Lion in Winter)
2. Alan Bates  (The Fixer)
3. Max von Sydow  (Hour of the Wolf)
4. Trevor Howard  (Charge of the Light Brigade)
5. Per Oscarssen  (Hunger)

Analysis:  It’s the third nomination for O’Toole, the second for Howard, the first for von Sydow and the only one for Bates and Oscarssen.

• Best Actress

1. Katharine Hepburn  (The Lion in Winter)
2. Joanne Woodward  (Rachel Rachel)
3. Catherine Deneuve  (Belle de Jour)
4. Mia Farrow  (Rosemary’s Baby)
5. Liv Ullmann  (Hour of the Wolf)

Analysis:  Because Davis was mostly in Dramas and because Hepburn did a lot of Comedies (just the year before she finally lost the top spot in Comedy to Audrey), she’s a very distant 2nd here, with 455 points to Davis’ 660.  This is the 10th nomination and 3rd Drama win for Hepburn.  Meanwhile, Ullmann earns her second nom of four straight (and seven in eight years), Woodward earns her fourth and Deneuve her second.
This is the third best Top 5 in this category to date, a really strong group.

• Best Supporting Actor:

1. Anthony Hopkins  (The Lion in Winter)
2. John Castle  (The Lion in Winter)
3. Eli Wallach  (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
4. Ian Holm  (The Fixer)
5. Tony Curtis  (The Boston Strangler)

Analysis:  Curtis was nominated as a lead but I see Fonda as the lead and Curtis as really more a supporting role, even though he is the title character.  It’s the third nomination for Curtis, the first the others.

• Best Supporting Actress:

1. Ruth Gordon  (Rosemary’s Baby)
2. Estelle Parsons  (Rachel Rachel)
3. Jane Merrow  (The Lion in Winter)
4. Paola Petagora  (Fists in the Pocket)
5. Lynn Carlin  (Faces)

Analysis:  This time Parsons is the only actress with a previous nomination here.  The best Top 5 in this category in six years.

• The Lion in Winter  (435)
  • Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress
• 2001: A Space Odyssey  (270)
  • Picture, Director, Original Screenplay
• Rosemary’s Baby  (230)
  • Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress
• Belle de Jour  (170)
  • Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (165)
  • Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor
• Hour of the Wolf  (110)
  • Original Screenplay, Actor, Actress
• Rachel Rachel  (105)
  • Adapted Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress
• Hunger  (75)
  • Adapted Screenplay, Actor
• Faces  (70)
  • Original Screenplay, Supporting Actress
• The Fixer  (65)
  • Actor, Supporting Actor
• The Battle of Algiers  (40)
  • Original Screenplay
• Charge of the Light Brigade  (35)
  • Actor
• Boston Strangler  (30)
  • Supporting Actor
• Fists in the Pocket  (30)
  • Supporting Actress

Analysis:  After two dominating years, the Best Picture winner gets no acting nominations (for the first time since 1949) and the points winner doesn’t win Best Picture (for the first time since 1947).

Best Drama Not Nominated for Any Nighthawk Golden Globes:

• War and Peace

Analysis:  A very good film, and my #7 Drama of the year, but can’t crack the Top 5 in any of the big three and none of the acting stood out for me enough to make the lists.

Comedy / Musical:

• Best Picture

1. The Producers
2. Closely Watched Trains
3. The Two of Us
4. The Exterminating Angel
5. The Music Room

Analysis:  A strong year after a lot of weakness – this is only the 5th time since 1942 where this category has averaged **** (the first three are ****, Angel is a high-level ***.5 and Music room is a mid-range ***).  This category will actually also be outdone by the next year.  It doesn’t say much for the state of American Comedy that four of these are Foreign films.

• Best Director

1. Luis Buñuel  (The Exterminating Angel)
2. Mel Brooks  (The Producers)
3. Claude Berri  (The Two of Us)
4. Jiri Menzel  (Closely Watched Trains)
5. Carol Reed  (Oliver!)

Analysis:  These are the only nominations for Menzel and Berri, the first of several for Brooks and the second (and last) for Reed.  Buñuel, on the other hand, in the same year he earns his first Drama nomination, finally wins in Comedy in his fourth nomination; it will be the first of three wins, including back-to-back.  Buñuel ties Cukor and Hitchcock in 7th place with 225 points.

• Best Adapted Screenplay:

1. Closely Watched Trains
2. The Odd Couple
3. The Exterminating Angel
4. The Music Room
5. Oliver!

Analysis:  This category actually earns the same score as Original, even though Adapted has a full slate.  This is a better than average showing in what is traditionally a weak category.  Buñuel earns his first Comedy nomination since 1954 and his fourth overall.

• Best Original Screenplay:

1. The Producers
2. The Two of Us
3. Hot Millions

Analysis:  Even with only three nominees, this is the best in this category since 1952 and the second best since 1944.  That’s partially because of how great a script The Producers is.  It is Brooks’ first win, though there will be more.

• Best Actor:

1. Zero Mostel  (The Producers)
2. Ron Moody  (Oliver!)
3. Walter Matthau  (The Odd Couple)
4. Jack Lemmon  (The Odd Couple)
5. Fred Astaire  (Finian’s Rainbow)

Analysis:  This might very well be the only time the Globes and I have agreed completely in this category.
This is the first nomination for Mostel, the only one for Moody and the second for Matthau.  Jack Lemmon is in 6th place in points now (245), earning his fifth nom (but three wins), while Astaire is in 7th place (210), earning his sixth nom (one win).

•   Best Actress

1. Barbra Streisand  (Funny Girl)
2. Julie Christie  (Petulia)
3. Abbey Lincoln  (For Love of Ivy)
4. Julie Andrews  (Star!)

Analysis:  Lincoln was nominated for Supporting Actress at the Globes.
Julie Andrews is the only one not earning her first nomination, earning her fourth in five years and moving up to 6th place in Comedy points with 210.

• Best Supporting Actor:

1. Gene Wilder  (The Producers)
2. Michael Simon  (The Two of Us)
3. Kenneth Mars  (The Producers)
4. Daniel Massey  (Star!)
5. Jack Wild  (Oliver!)

Analysis:  It’s the first nomination for all five, but only Wilder will earn more noms.  This is the single best Top 5 in this category to date and it won’t be surpassed until the 80’s.

• Best Supporting Actress:

1. Billie Whitelaw  (Charlie Bubbles)
2. Jitka Zelenorhorska  (Closely Watched Trains)

• The Producers  (385)
  • Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actor
• Closely Watched Trains  (205)
  • Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress
• The Exterminating Angel  (180)
  • Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay
• The Two of Us  (165)
  • Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor
• Oliver!  (150)
  • Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actor
• The Odd Couple  (110)
  • Adapted Screenplay, Actor, Actor
• The Music Room  (90)
  • Picture, Adapted Screenplay
• Funny Girl  (70)
  • Actress
• Star!  (65)
  • Actress, Supporting Actor
• Charlie Bubbles  (60)
  • Supporting Actress
• Hot Millions  (40)
  • Original Screenplay
• Finian’s Rainbow  (35)
  • Actor
• Petulia  (35)
  • Actress
• For Love of Ivy  (35)
  • Actress

Analysis:  1967 was so dominated by The Graduate and so under-whelming among Comedies aside from that that there were only 7 nominated films.  Here I have 14.  The overall Comedy score is tied for the fourth-highest to date.

Best Comedy Not Nominated for any Nighthawk Golden Globes:

• Capricious Summer

Analysis:  A solid high-level *** film, my #26 of the year and my #7 among Comedies, but a bit of a disappointment in that the director is Jiri Menzel, who made the fantastic Closely Watched Trains, also in this year.

Roundup for the Year in Film:

Eligible Films I Have Seen:  155

By Stars:

• ****:  9
• ***.5:  14
• ***:  81
• **.5:  25
• **:  21
• *.5:  2
• *:  2
• .5:  1
• 0:  0
• Average Film Score for the Year, out of 100:  64.05

Analysis:  A drop of about a half-point.  This is mainly because of having a lot more ** films.  Because of the influx of bad films which I have seen for a variety of reasons, it will be a long time, if ever, that a year has an average this high again.

Oscar-Nominated Films I Have Not Seen:

• none

note:  Portrait of Chieko is eligible in this year, but its nomination for Best Foreign Film came in 1967.

Other Award Nominated Films I Have Not Seen (in descending order of points total):

• Sailor from Gibraltar  (BAFTA – British Cinematography, British Costume Design – 1967)
• Secret Life of an American Wife  (BAFTA  –  Actor)

note:  Sailor is doubly annoying, because it is not only an award nominated film, but also directed by an Oscar nominated director (Tony Richardson).

Oscar Quality:

Best Picture:  Ranked 77th out of 86, putting in the bottom 10 of all-time and no year since had been worse.  On first glance, this seems strange.  The five films average 75.6, which is almost as good as 1967 (20 spots higher) and four points higher than 1970 (two spots higher).  It has to do with my formula.  Basically, it’s better to have a couple a great film (like, say Bonnie and Clyde or M*A*S*H) to counter-balance your terrible films (like Doctor Dolittle or Love Story).  This year doesn’t have anything even close to terrible – Funny Girl and Romeo and Juliet are still *** films.  However, because there aren’t a lot of bad nominees (Romeo is in the bottom 100 of nominees) and because there are a lot of great nominees (The Lion in Winter doesn’t even make the Top 100), this year gets dragged down.  Lion is the only **** film in the bunch.  As a result, the average rank of the films is 316.6 and that’s why it slides so far down the list.  One thing to remember is that if the five Best Director nominees had been the five nominated films (dropping Funny Girl and Rachel Rachel for 2001 and The Battle of Algiers) this year would rank 41st.

The Winners:  This year is both better and worse than the year before, which says something about the choice of nominees.  Among the nominees, the average winner ranks at 2.06, which is a small improvement over the year before, but still the fourth time in five years that the number is above 2; it will be another five years before it gets that high again.  In only one category did they choose the worst of the five nominees, and that was in Best Actor (for the first time since 1938).  But, among all films, the average winner ranks at 8.21, almost double the year before and the fourth worst since the mid-30’s.  Granted, part of that is because they chose my #35 film of the year for Best Picture, but even taking that out, the winner ranks at 6.72, the seventh worst since the mid-30’s  In six categories the Oscar winner doesn’t make my Top 10, and some of the ranks are quite bad: Actor (#19), Director (#20), Cinematography (#28) and Picture (#35); for Actor that is the worst to date and for Cinematography it’s the worst to date by far.  Although, there are six categories where I agree completely with the Academy and that’s actually a big improvement on the year before.  Their best choice was The Producers for Original Screenplay, not only because it’s an inspired choice, but also because it’s the first time I agreed with the Academy in this category since 1954.

The Nominees:  The overall score drops to 61.2, a big drop from the previous two years, yet still much higher than most previous years, although that’s partially a function of not having black-and-white categories anymore, thus eliminating three categories that tended to score rather low.  That’s reflected in the 55.3 Tech score (highest in seven years).  The terrible 12.8 score for Cinematography is balanced out by scores above 75 in Score, Art Direction, Visual Effects and Costume Design.  But the acting is a 72.2, the lowest in four years and the second lowest in a decade.  None of the four acting categories score above an 80 for the first time since 1958 and only the second time since 1947.  The score in the major categories is 60.4 because the Picture score is a pathetic 25.0 (fourth lowest since 1933).

Golden Globe Best Picture – Comedy / Musical:  This is a vast improvement over the year before, ending up at #43, 19 spots higher than 1967.  There’s no great film like The Graduate (and indeed, only one very good film and that’s a low level ***.5 film) but there’s not utter garbage like Dolittle.  There’s one low ***.5 film (The Odd Couple), two very high *** films (Oliver! and Finian’s Rainbow) one low-level *** film (Funny Girl) and one **.5 film (Yours, Mine and Ours).  I’m a little surprised they went for that last one rather than the big-budget Star!, which was nominated for Actress and won Supporting Actor, although it wouldn’t have made much difference in my rank.  With four of my Top 5 Comedies being Foreign films, they wouldn’t have been eligible.  But they deserve to be smacked upside the head for missing out on The Producers.  They gave Mostel a Best Actor nom and nominated it for Screenplay but missed the film, which, in place of Yours, Mine and Ours, would raise this all the way to #25.
That Screenplay nomination makes this especially odd.  Only six eligible Comedies have ever been nominated for Best Screenplay at the Globe and failed to earn a Best Picture nom and this was the first.  Only two others, John and Mary and The Heartbreak Kid, also earned Best Actor nominations (the other three earned no other nominations aside from Screenplay).  The Globes really dropped the ball on this one.

Top 5 Films of the Year:

Journey into the unknown and find what you never could have expected.

1  –  2001: A Space Odyssey  (dir. Stanley Kubrick)

The questions exist, the questions remain unanswered.  Perhaps we are not meant to know the answers (though meant implies more of an intelligence behind life that I prefer to give it).  Perhaps this no way to answer them.  Is there meaning to life?  If so, what is it?  Are we alone in the universe?  What exactly are those monoliths?

I ask that final question both as a little joke (in spite of the standard viewpoints on this film, there is actually some humor within, including my favorite bit, trying to figure out the no-gravity toilet), but also to peer closely within this film, a film which offers so much and answers so little.  Or maybe it simply answers much more than we can ever hope to know.

It is a film of immense thought, craft and beauty.  I would say it is a film unlike any other, but now that Interstellar has come along, there is at least a film that is in the same ballpark, after all this time.  Both films belong together not just because some people find them impenetrable and/or boring (the first is allowable, the second, in my opinion, is because your attention span is too short or you don’t really appreciate film – neither film is even remotely boring), but in their hard science fiction roots (actually working with real science phenomena rather than just science fantasy like Star Wars), in their human stories about what there is to come ahead of us, and even in the way they were made, using real visual effects and not simply computer imagery.  These are reflected in the epic vision of both directors, two of the greatest directors ever work in the medium.

I can not pretend to know what the film is completely about (perhaps if I had read Clarke’s work I might).  I see the monolith as a step in evolution, a grand leap forward that presages both improvements (the use of tools) and great horror (murder).  The re-appearance heralds another step.  Between, what we find is the way in which we advance (the magnificent space stations) and in which we limit ourselves (our over-reliance on technology that leads the tragedy involved with HAL).  You need not fully understand this film to embrace it in all its glory and beauty.  In its incredible editing, glorious cinematography and ground-breaking use of music (just look at the use of music in its relation to the use of dialogue), it is a film that, in some ways, is still unlike any other, and we can be grateful for that.

2  –  The Lion in Winter  (already reviewed here)

A film that rises below vulgarity.

3  –  The Producers  (dir. Mel Brooks)

These movies, from here on forward, often carry the ghost of Roger Ebert, especially in these early years of his career reviewing films for the Sun-Times.  One of my favorite stories of Ebert’s is his one about this film: “I remember finding myself in an elevator with Brooks and his wife, actress Anne Bancroft, in New York City a few months after “The Producers” was released. A woman got onto the elevator, recognized him and said, “I have to tell you, Mr. Brooks, that your movie is vulgar.” Brooks smiled benevolently. “Lady,” he said, “it rose below vulgarity.””

That line is so brilliant and it so perfectly sums up this film in so many ways.  It is what Max Bialystock himself might have said.  What people like Johnny Knoxville and Tom Green never realized is that it is not just a question of pushing well beyond the boundaries of taste, but finding a tasteful way of doing it, and doing it with intelligence and talent and real humor – the film itself needs to be funny first and if it isn’t you have failed.  The basic concept of “Springtime for Hitler” wouldn’t work if it wasn’t all so over the top and still funny.  And what people like Judd Apatow haven’t realized is that you have to have the courage of your convictions and not suddenly cave and make a romantic comedy.  In an Apatow film, Max and Leo would have just ended up being a success.  Here, they are still crooked, and they’re doing it while they’re in prison.  They’ve really learned nothing.  And what most comedians working in film have never learned is that people trying to act funny isn’t the key to comedy – as Ebert has said so many times, what is funny are people trying to act seriously and failing, which is why Fawlty Towers is still so gut-wrenchingly funny and most American sitcoms are worthless.

If you have never seen The Producers, either the original or the Broadway show, or even the film version of the Broadway show, then you are massively missing out.  There is no reason for me to actually describe the plot because there is no excuse for not having seen it (or at least, not having seen it, yet caring enough about film to read this post).  Mel Brooks would slip badly in his later years.  I love Spaceballs for personal reasons, but Robin Hood: Men in Tights is relentlessly mediocre with a few really funny scenes and Dracula: Dead and Loving It is just awful.  But none of that undermines what Brooks did in his first few films, from this (one of the funniest films ever made), to Twelve Chairs (criminally under-appreciated) to Blazing Saddles (another of the funniest films ever made) to Young Frankenstein (probably his best directorial effort).  When two Jews can work together with a Nazi to make a play about Hitler that stars a flower-child hippie and employs easily the worst director to ever come near the stage you know you have a formula for something.  “Flaunt it, baby!” Max yells and Brooks is flaunting it.  Zero Mostel, allowed to act without any restraints whatsoever is flaunting it.  Gene Wilder, who we would later come to love in so many comedies, is flaunting that panic every time Max comes near him.  And aren’t we ourselves flaunting our ability to be swept away by manic laughter when we keep busting up at lines like “Don’t be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party?”

The Man with No Name Trilogy concludes. And not without a little violence.

4  –  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (dir. Sergio Leone)

The limits of this film are the limits of film itself.  I do not mean that statement in the same way I would mean it if I were talking about 2001.  In that film, you can see amazing things, as much as can be seen on film as it existed in 1968.  I mean that, in the individual frames, almost anything is possible, as long as it can be shown on film, but outside of the frame, nothing matters.  2001 is a film that either rewards or frustrates the notion of searching deeper into what we are seeing.  This film defies it.

First of all, let’s look at the plot.  It’s quite ridiculous in its extreme.  It requires a number of large coincidences and the finding of a small cemetery in the middle of a big war and then being able to find a specific grave within that cemetery.  Or there is the time needed to have passed since the start of the war for the gold to be gathered, for it to be stolen, buried in a war cemetery, betrayed, the news to travel and so on.  It works on the screen because it’s simply a story of greed and betrayal and all the details start to slip away as you watch the three title characters constantly betray and betray each other time and time again.

Then there is the setting.  Nominally this takes place in New Mexico during the Civil War.  But really, this takes place nowhere and everywhere.  The places they go, the things they see (western terrain, deserts, mountains, rivers) don’t exist within close enough range in the U.S. for this to be feasible as any particular place.  It exists in the movies, giving us every terrain that we need for each of the individual scenes.  It looks glorious and provides a perfect backdrop for every scene that we need it for, just as long as you try to not to think too hard about it.

But the terrain is not the only thin that we see that defies what we must know if were to stop and think.  Here’s how Roger Ebert puts it: “The rule is that the ability to see is limited by the sides of the frame. At important moments in the film, what the camera cannot see, the characters cannot see, and that gives Leone the freedom to surprise us with entrances that cannot be explained by the practical geography of his shots.”  This continues from the very opening shots of a landscape peopled with characters we do not know at first are there, all the way to the finale where a man must come in, in a surprise entrance, yet the land around them is so stark that there is no way it could have been a surprise.  We revel in what we see on the screen because Leone frames it so magnificently, sets it up so beautifully with the best ever score from Ennio Morricone, a composer who had numerous scores worthy of accolades, and cuts it together with such art.

What we see on the screen is what we get.  It defies the ability to be explained further than the edges of the frame.  But because what we see is so incredible (if you ever get a chance to see it on the big screen, do so, but see it in a comfortable theater, because Veronica has never forgiven me for making her sit through all three hours of the restored version in Cinema 21), we accept what is there on the screen.  In fact, we revel in it.

Take a descent into something creepy.

5  –  Rosemary’s Baby  (dir. Roman Polanski)

So much of what we now see in Horror films comes from the 1970’s, from films like The Exorcist (freaky effects caused by the supernatural), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (gross-out splatter films), Jaws (wild creatures that deal out death with no motivation) or Halloween (the mad slasher).  Two of those films are great and one is very good but there is another great Horror film that has not been nearly the same influence on current Horror films, and that’s unfortunate, because it not only is one of the greatest Horror films ever made, but it is a much more intelligent concept in making a Horror film.  Jaws and The Exorcist are singularly great films – other films of the same style are generally terrible.  Rosemary’s Baby is the kind of film, that done right, can be imitated in different, intelligent ways to still make great films.  Just like at the recent It Follows, a very good Horror film that is incredibly creepy – that absolutely is a film that comes down the line from Rosemary’s Baby.

Of course, Rosemary’s Baby has an advantage over most Horror films in that it was directed by Roman Polanski.  Think what you want about Polanski himself but you can not deny the incredible talent he has behind the camera.  He seems more influenced by Hitchcock, and understands the importance of suspense more than visual horror (he is the director who made Knife in the Water after all).  We do get some actual horror at the end of the film, once the baby has actually been born, but it is really the overall feel of the film that creeps you out while watching it.  As Rosemary, the young wife (played by so dramatically and well by Mia Farrow that you forget about the great comedic roles she played for Woody Allen) slowly begins to learn about the strange ways of her neighbors, the strange terrors that are at play in her apartment building and the horrible deal that her husband has made that sacrifices her safety, her child and her sanity itself, we find ourselves submerged into this horror more through fantastic cinematography and great use of editing, not to mention the creepy art direction that leads us all, Rosemary and audience, to be so wary of that apartment.

Horror films are an interesting subgenre.  So many of them are just so awful.  I’ve seen 99 films from the 1960’s that I classify as Horror and they average a 51.6.  The seventies are worse, as I have seen 160 and they average a 42.6.  Only three Horror films in the sixties make the Top 10 in a given year and two of them are Polanski films (Repulsion is the other one).  Only James Whale, who worked in the Studio system has ever really matched Polanski’s work in Horror, especially when you consider some of the more horrifying aspects of even Polanski’s non-horror work.  It requires a master of suspense, in the Hitchcock vein, combined with the knowledge that the genuine way to frighten people is not to try and scare them but to the try and create a frightening atmosphere.  I have seen hundreds of Horror films and most of them are bad.  Most of them aren’t scary – even great films like Jaws don’t really frighten me.  The films that genuinely terrify me, at least on first viewing, are those films that rely more on a psychological terror, films like The Sixth Sense, The Others, and of course, Rosemary’s Baby.

5 Worst Films  (#1 being the worst):

1. Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women
2. The Girl on a Motorcycle
3. The Legend of Lylah Clare
4. Finder Keepers, Lovers Weepers!
5. Boom!

note:  AIP and Russ Meyer both get a film in the bottom 5, which is appropriate.  A Joseph Losey adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is also in the bottom 5, which is just strange, but that’s how bad Boom! is.

Who could have predicted that three years later this director would be an Oscar nominee?

Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women (dir. Peter Bogdanovich)

It’s hard to really blame Bogdanovich for this film.  After all, in his interview in the latest issue of Empire, he mentions that he really only directed about 10 minutes of it (and he took his name off it, using Derek Thomas instead).  This is really a Russian film that Roger Corman wanted to distribute in the States, but according to Bogdanovich, AIP wouldn’t distribute it unless there were some women in it.  So Corman hired Bogdanovich to shoot some scenes, intersperse them into the original film, and call it a new film.

Let’s be fair.  It’s a terrible film, a really awful film.  Now, I used the word “really” instead of truly for a reason – because I give this a score of 3, rather than a zero like Ed Wood films.  It’s not completely 100% unwatchable.  It’s close, because the star is Mamie Van Doren, who really got jobs in Hollywood because 1 – she was blonde, 2 – she recreated the Marilyn Monroe look and Monroe was now dead and 3 – she had enormous breasts.  None of those things appeal to me, and I would rather have a good actress than the blonde with huge breasts any day.  You can have Van Doren, I’m sticking to Streisand as cute as she looks up above.

But this film is actually important.  It is an example of something that had already come up before and would come up again later – that Roger Corman was a terrible director.  But he could most assuredly spot talent.  Here we have the directorial debut of Peter Bogdanovich, who, three years later, would direct the truly magnificent The Last Picture Show.  Other directors given a start by Corman include Oscar winners Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron and Ron Howard, not to mention Jack Nicholson and Robert DeNiro.  Their Corman produced films were rarely very good, but they provide an interesting backdrop to his importance in film history.

Points:

• Most Nighthawk Nominations:  The Lion in Winter  (11)
• Most Nighthawk Awards:  2001: A Space Odyssey  (9)
• Most Nighthawk Points:  2001: A Space Odyssey / The Lion in Winter  (510)
• Worst Film Nominated for a Nighthawk Award:  The Savage Seven
  
• 2nd Place Award:  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (Director, Cinematography, Sound, Sound Editing)
• 6th Place Award:  Belle de Jour  (Picture, Editing)
• Most Nighthawk Drama Nominations:  The Lion in Winter  (8)
• Most Nighthawk Drama Awards:  The Lion in Winter  (4)
• Most Nighthawk Drama Points:  The Lion in Winter  (435)
• Worst Film Nominated for a Nighthawk Drama Award:  Fists in the Pocket
• Most Nighthawk Comedy Nominations:  The Producers  (6)
• Most Nighthawk Comedy Awards:  The Producers  (4)
• Most Nighthawk Comedy Points:  The Producers  (385)
• Worst Film Nominated for a Nighthawk Comedy Award:  Star!

Note:  * means a Nighthawk record up to this point; ** ties a Nighthawk record

Progressive Leaders:

• Most Nighthawk Nominations:  The Wizard of Oz  (18)
• Most Nighthawk Awards:  The Wizard of Oz  /  Bonnie and Clyde  (14)
• Most Nighthawk Points:  Bonnie and Clyde  (865)
• Most Nighthawk Awards without winning Best Picture:  Frankenstein  /  The Magnificent Ambersons  (6)
• Most Nighthawk Nominations without a Best Picture Nomination:  Yojimbo  (11)
• Most Nighthawk Nominations without a Nighthawk Award:  Throne of Blood (13)
• Actor:  Humphrey Bogart  (475)
• Actress:  Katharine Hepburn  (560)
• Director:   Billy Wilder  (585)
• Writer:  Billy Wilder  (960)
• Cinematographer:  Arthur Edeson  /  Gregg Toland / Sven Nykvist  (200)
• Composer:  Max Steiner  (450)
• Foreign Film:  Akira Kurosawa  (360)

Breakdown by Genre  (Foreign in parenthesis, best film in genre following, avg. score is afterwards, in parenthesis):

• Foreign:  57  –  Belle de Jour  (68.8)
• Drama:  54 (25)  –  The Lion in Winter  (63.6)
• Comedy:  26 (9)  –  The Producers  (68.3)
• Musical:  14 (2)  –  The Music Room  (62.3)
• Western:  12 (4)  –  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (64.2)
• War:  9 (6)  –  The Battle of Algiers  (72.7)
• Horror:  9 (4)  –  Rosemary’s Baby  (62.9)
• Kids:  6 (3)  –  The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha  (62.7)
• Crime:  6  –  Cul-de-Sac  (60.5)
• Suspense:  6 (1)  –  Young Torless  (58.3)
• Action:  5 (1)  –  Bullitt  (61.6)
• Sci-Fi:  5  –  2001: A Space Odyssey  (54)
• Mystery:  1 (1)  –  The Bride Wore Black  (73)
• Adventure:  1 (1)  –  The Column  (66)
• Fantasy:  1  –  Doctor Faustus  (52)

Analysis:  The 1 Adventure film marks the fewest in the category since 1944.  The 12 Westerns are the most since 1958, namely because of the advent of the Spaghetti Western.  The 68.3 average for Comedy is the highest between 1961 and 1973.  The 60.5 score for Crime is the lowest since 1957.  The 63.6 average for Drama is the lowest since 1953.  The 68.8 average for Foreign is the highest between 1963 and 1982.  The 62.9 average for Horror is the highest since 1954.  The 58.3 average for Suspense is the lowest since 1953.
2001 becomes the first Sci-Fi film to win Best Picture and is the first to even earn a Top 10 finish since 1956.  Rosemary’s Baby is only the fourth Horror film to make the Top 10 since 1935.  This is the first year in which both a Sci-Fi and a Horror film are nominated for Best Picture.  The 5 Top 10 Foreign films are the most since 1963; the 11 Top 10 Foreign Films are the second most ever, behind only 1963.  Sergio Leone directs the best Western for the second year in a row and will only be kept from doing it a third-straight year because of the amazing Westerns in 1969; this give Leone three straight years of a Top 10 film – more than all Westerns from 1959 to 1965 combined.  There are three Horror films in the Top 20 for the first time since 1933.

Studio Note:  United Artists and Warner Bros tie for the lead with 14 films each.  It’s the most films for Warners since 1958 and the first time the studio has lead since 1937.  They are followed by Paramount, whose 13 films are the most since 1942.  On the other hand, Columbia has only 8 films (fewest since 1960) and 20th Century-Fox only has 7 films (lowest since 1934) – for part of the reason for the decline at Fox, read the book The Studio.  Universal has 8 films, which are terrible – they average a 52.75, the worst for any major to this date.  The majors account for 50.32% of the total films I’ve seen.  American International Pictures has 6 films, giving it a grand total of 59, passing up Disney (which is at 57 total to this point).
After a 26 year gap, MGM wins its second Best Picture award in four years.  The majors bottom out among the top films – only 3 of the Top 10 are from the majors (tied for the fewest ever) and only 5 of the Top 20 (no previous year had fewer than 8).  It makes this the first year since 1962 and only the second year since 1949 when no major has more than one film in the Top 10.  It is also the first year when no more than one major has multiple Top 20 films – only UA, with two.

54 Films Eligible for Best Foreign Film (alphabetical, with director and country in parenthesis – red are ****, blue are ***.5 – both those colors qualify for my Best Foreign Film Award; an asterisk means it was the Official selection for the Oscar, two asterisks were nominated, three asterisks won the Oscar):

• The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha  (Ray, India)
• The Amorous Ones  (Khouri, Brazil)  *
• Asterix and Cleopatra  (Goscinny, France)
• Benjamin  (Deville, France)
• Between God, the Devil and a Winchester  (Girolami, Italy)
• Les Biches  (Chabrol, France)
• Black Lizard  (Fukasaku, Japan)
• Boot Hill  (Colizzi, Italy)
• The Boys of Paul Street  (Fabri, Hungary)  **
• The Bride Wore Black  (Truffaut, France)
• Capricious Summer  (Menzel, Czechoslovakia)
• The Chronicle of Anna Magdelena Bach  (Straub, West Germany)
• The Colour of Pomegranate  (Parajanov, USSR)
• The Column  (Dragan, Romania)
• Commandos  (Crispino, Italy)
• Danger: Diabolik  (Bava, Italy)
• Death by Hanging  (Oshima, Japan)
• Destroy All Monsters  (Honda, Japan)
• Destroy All Planets  (Yuasa, Japan)
• Elder Sister  (Mukherjee, India)  *
• Fando & Lis  (Jodorowsky, Chile)
• The Fireman’s Ball  (Forman, Czechoslovakia)  **
• Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror  (Equiluz, Spain)
• Gatling Gun  (Bianchini, Italy)
• The Girl from Rio  (Franco, Spain)
• The Girl with a Pistol  (Monicelli, Italy)  **
• Girls in the Sun  (Georgiadis, Greece)
• The Golden Swallow  (Cheuh, Hong Kong)
• Goto, Island of Love  (Borowczyk, Poland)
• The Great Silence  (Corbucci, Italy)
• Hour of the Wolf  (Bergman, Sweden)
• I Was Nineteen  (Wolf, East Germany)
• If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death  (Parolini, Italy)
• It Rains on My Village  (Petrovic, Yugoslavia)  *
• Kill  (Okamoto, Japan)
• Kuroneko  (Shindo, Japan)
• L’enfance nue  (Pialat, France)
• The Little Norse Prince  (Takahata, Japan)
• Matthew’s Days  (Leszczynski, Poland)  *
• The Money Order  (Sembene, Senegal)
• No Path Through Fire  (Panfilov, USSR)
• Partner  (Bertolucci, Italy)
• Shame  (Bergman, Sweden)  *
• Signs of Life  (Herzog, West Germany)
• Silence and Cry  (Jancso, Hungary)
• Spain Again  (Caimon, Spain)  *
• Stolen Kisses  (Truffaut, France)  **
• Succubus  (Franco, Spain)
• Teorema  (Pasolini, Italy)
• Three Sad Tigers  (Ruiz, Chile)
• The Ugly Ones  (Martin, Italy)
• The Violent Four  (Lizzani, Italy)
• War and Peace  (Bondarchuk, USSR)  ***
• We’ll Live Till Monday  (Rostotsky, USSR)

Note:  I have my first two films from Chile.  Spain sets a new high with 4 films.  Italy has the lead with 12 films, followed by Japan with 7 and France with 6.  This makes the first time since 1957 that France isn’t one of the two highest.
For the first time I have seen 3 Kids films.  The advent of the Spaghetti Western leads to a new high of 7 Westerns.  There are 5 War films, the most since 1960.  For the first time since 1961 and only the second time since 1950, there are no Musicals.  All of this leaves only 19 Drama films, accounting for only 35%, the lowest since 1960.

Foreign Films Submitted for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars That I Haven’t Seen:

• Denmark:  People Meet and Sweet Music Fills the Heart  (dir. Carlsen)
• Greece:  Imperiale  (dir. Skalenakis)
• Israel:  Every Bastard a King  (dir. Zohar)
• Japan:  Tunnel to the Sun  (dir. Kumai)
• South Korea:  Descendants of Cain  (dir. Hyun-mok)

note:  At this point I am making a concerted effort to see as many submitted films as I can.  The full list can be found here.  This year I am 13 for 18.  One of the films that I have seen is not listed under my Foreign Films list because West Germany’s submission, Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed, is a documentary and I don’t count them.
Four of the countries that submitted in 1967 don’t submit here, but five of the countries that submitted in 1966 but not 1967 are back.  The only country to submit that had not submitted in either of the previous two years is the USSR, which wins the Oscar.
The countries I am missing are all problematic in this stretch – every single country I am missing here is also a country I was missing in their previous submission, two in 1967 and three in 1966.  Denmark is the most problematic (as always); I won’t see another Danish submission until 1974.

Films Eligible in This Year But Originally Released in a Different Year:

• The Music Room  (1958)
• Hamlet  (1960)
• Exterminating Angel  (1962)
• Trial of Joan of Arc  (1962)
• Mahanagar  (1963)
• Le Petit soldat  (1963)
• The Cat in the Sack  (1964)
• Diamonds of the Night  (1964)
• King Kong Escapes  (1964)
• Fists in the Pocket  (1965)
• Pierrot le Fou  (1965)
• Six in Paris  (1965)
• The Battle of Algiers  (1966)
• The Birds, the Bees and the Italians  (1966)
• Cul-de-Sac  (1966)
• Doctor Faustus  (1966)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (1966)
• Here’s Your Life  (1966)
• Hunger  (1966)
• My Sister My Love  (1966)
• Report on the Party and the Guests  (1966)
• Young Torless  (1966)
• Asterix the Gaul  (1967)
• Belle de Jour  (1967)
• Le Chinoise  (1967)
• Closely Watched Trains  (1967)
• Custer of the West  (1967)
• Dark of the Sun  (1967)
• Le Depart  (1967)
• The Double Man  (1967)
• Elvira Madigan  (1967)
• Father  (1967)
• The Fearless Vampire Killers  (1967)
• The Fox  (1967)
• Games  (1967)
• Half a Sixpence  (1967)
• How I Won the War!  (1967)
• I Even Met Happy Gypsies  (1967)
• It!  (1967)
• Japan’s Longest Day  (1967)
• Poor Cow  (1967)
• The Red and the White  (1967)
• The Shuttered Room  (1967)
• The Two of Us  (1967)
• The Young Girls of Rochefort  (1967)

Note:  There’s no question that using Oscar eligibility makes this a much more competitive year.  These 45 films average a 67.9.  More importantly, they account for 32 Nighthawk nominations, including one for Picture, two for Director and four for writing.  There are five Top 10 films and ten Top 20 films on this list.

Films Not Listed at Oscars.org:

• The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha
• The Amorous Ones
• Asterix and Cleopatra
• Between God, the Devil and a Winchester
• Carry On Up the Khyber
• The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach
• Destroy All Planets
• Diamonds of the Night
• The Girl with a Pistol
• Goto, Island of Love
• The Great Silence
• Here’s Your Life
• Hunger
• I Was Nineteen
• If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death
• Japan’s Longest Day
• The Last Roman
• No Path Through Fire
• The Red and the White
• Report on the Party and Guests
• Silence and Cry
• Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women
• We’ll Live Till Monday
• Young Torless

Note:  I use the list at Oscars.org for deciding which year films are eligible in.  Some films, however, don’t appear in that database.  For those films, I use the IMDb.  These are the films that aren’t listed in the Oscars.org database but that end up in this year.
Two of these were submitted for Best Foreign Film (The Amorous Ones, The Girl with a Pistol).  As usual, these are almost entirely either Foreign films that got a release in this year according to the IMDb or Foreign films from 1968 that never got a U.S. release.

Films Released This Year Originally But Eligible in a Different Year 

• Ace High  (1969)
• Baby Love  (1969)
• Les Biches  (1969)
• Black Lizard  (1969)
• The Blood of Fu Manchu  (1969)
• The Bofors Gun  (1969)
• The Boys of Paul Street  (1969)
• Danger: Diabolik  (1969)
• Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher  (1969)
• Destroy All Monsters  (1969)
• Dracula Has Risen from the Grave  (1969)
• The Fireman’s Ball  (1969)
• Flesh  (1969)
• Girls in the Sun  (1969)
• If…  (1969)
• The Love Bug  (1969)
• The Magus  (1969)
• Mayerling  (1969)
• The Night of the Living Dead  (1969)
• Once Upon a Time in the West  (1969)
• Shame  (1969)
• Stolen Kisses  (1969)
• Succubus  (1969)
• Teorema  (1969)
• Twisted Nerve  (1969)
• Vixen  (1969)
• Where Eagles Dare  (1969)
• The Devil’s Bride  (1970)
• Fando & Lis  (1970)
• The Little Norse Prince  (1970)
• Oedipus the King  (1970)
• The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood  (1970)
• Who’s That Knocking at My Door  (1970)
• Death by Hanging  (1971)
• Commandos  (1972)
• Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror  (1972)
• The Girl from Rio  (1972)
• Tower of Screaming Virgins  (1972)
• The Violent Four  (1972)
• L’enfance nue  (1973)
• Boot Hill  (1974)
• The Golden Swallow  (1974)
• Partner  (1974)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream  (1975)
• Kong Island  (1977)
• The Colour of Pomegranate  (1980)
• Signs of Life  (1981)
• Three Sad Tigers  (1989)
• The Money Order  (1995)
• Matthew’s Days  (2003)
• Gatling Gun  (2006)

Note:  These 51 films only average a 58.7.  The one major film that would change things is Once Upon a Time in the West.