Chariots of Fire 1981

The Film:

For someone who's not much of a sports fan, I have a weird obsession with the Olympics. I'm also rather obsessed with the social history of Britain between the wars and I love a good drama about the Upper Class in that era (Upstairs Downstairs, or something written by Forster or Waugh). It therefore goes without saying that I love this film. Even if it wasn't particularly good in an objective sense (which it is!), I'd probably still rather like it. 

I remember the film coming out, although I didn't actually see it until a few years later. I mainly remember it at the time for the soundtrack. My Dad was already a big Vangelis fan and he had quite a lot of his LPs, so it was big news in our house that Vangelis was now incredibly famous indeed! The opening shots of the men running across the beach were everywhere (and parodied everywhere) almost as soon as the film was released. 

I also have a strong memory of hearing Colin Welland's victory speech (for Best Screenplay) with the classic line "The British are Coming!" - not just hearing it years later, but seeing it on the news the next day. In fact, this is possibly the first Best Picture winner that I personally got excited about at the time. I've seen it several times now, and I still really love it (as I say, I'm a sucker for this sort of film!)

Andy has a slightly different interest in this one, as the Paris Olympics scenes were filmed at the Bebington Oval, which was just down the road from where he grew up - and he can remember when the filming was taking place. (It's also, coincidentally, very close to where my Dad grew up, so I also have memories of "that's not Paris, that's Birkenhead" from watching the film as a child!)

The Ceremony:

March 29th 1982 - this was another Johnny Carson hosted evening, with a running time of 3 hours and 44 minutes. Carson opened the show with a classic Carson monologue, which starts at about 13 minutes in to this video and is a bit edgy, fairly political but still very funny today!

This clip also gives us a glimpse of the guests arriving, and a great orchestral Overture, conducted by Bill Conti, that includes various Oscar-winning scores from over the years. You'll have to go hunting yourself for the Liberace medley or the Debbie Allen/Gregory Hines big dance number. But the whole thing is a very 80s spectacular.....


Other Notable Winners That Night:

Warren's very happy that they called out the
right winner first time!

The British didn't conquer Hollywood entirely that night. This was one of those relatively rare occasions where Film and Director went to two different films. For the second year in a row, the Directing Oscar went to someone far more famous for their acting. (In both cases, they only won one Oscar, for Directing!) Warren Beatty has much more recently become notorious for the La La Land gaffe (my take on that can wait until we get there). But this time he was accepting, not presenting!

This was also the year that Katharine Hepburn won her fourth Oscar (something still not matched by any other actor or actress) and Henry Fonda won his first, forty one years after his previous nomination for Grapes of Wrath. The average age of the Actor nominees was considerably higher than usual - with the 77-year old John Gielgud joining fellow septuagenarians Kate and Henry by taking Best Supporting Actor for his role in Arthur.

Best Song:

The 80s is definitely the golden age of the Best Song award. Classic after classic awaits.... This one is particularly wonderful! (Although I'm still not sure how one can get caught between the moon and New York City. I've seen the moon whilst *in* New York City - does that count?)

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Gaping plot hole aside, the first Indy is a classic!

I'm very happy to have been watching Chariots of Fire. The other nominees were fairly diverse in both subject matter and tone. We had the aforementioned Reds - which, with twelve nominations overall, was favourite to win. We also had On Golden Pond - which took the two big acting prizes for Fonda and Hepburn. Then there was Louis Malle's Atlantic City, which is unfairly probably best remembered now for Susan Sarandon's interesting use of lemons... (to misquote Seinfeld again, they're real and they're spectacular!). And in the midst of these "serious" films, we get a classic Spielberg blockbuster - Indiana Jones' first big adventure, raiding the lost ark with snakes, booby traps, melting Nazis and plot holes aplenty. I think Indy takes the Silver medal in this race!


Our Verdict:

If there's a scene like this in it, you can pretty much guarantee
that I'm going to like the film!

As I said earlier, I already know that I love this film and I've seen it several times before. The story isn't an obvious one to tell, but it lends itself to some great set pieces, lovely character development, beautiful scenery (including Bebington Oval pretending to be 1920s Paris!) and the subtle but effective exploration of some important themes.

Running...lots of running....and Nigel Havers

The basic premise is a story following the Men's Athletics team at the 1924 Olympics. The majority of the men are typical upper class Oxbridge men of sound pedigree. However, the two that we follow closely don't quite fit this profile. Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) has all this background, but he also happens to be Jewish. Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) has none of the pedigree, being the child of Scottish missionaries and a devout Christian himself.

Even more running......and Nigel Havers for the second time!
(a little in-joke for Andy and other Miranda fans there....)

The film follows each of them separately, and then together as they both head to Paris. From previous viewings, it's always been the Eric Liddell story that has stuck with me - from the soul searching scenes set in Scotland through to Liddell's refusal to run on a Sunday. I think this is as much down to Charleson's performance as it is to the strength of Liddell as a character. Charleson completely lights up the screen whenever he is on it and makes the character so sympathetic without softening him at all or making him seem mawkish or too good to be true. (We will see Charleson again next year, but then that's it - he died a few years later of an AIDS-related illness and became the first actor to go public with both the illness and his sexuality. Apparently his Hamlet was amazing, but sadly it was never filmed.)

God bless you Ian Charleson you beautiful man!

This time I focussed a bit more on Abrahams' story and appreciated it much more. It's a far less showy part and the themes of anti-semitism are clear but subtle - which actually makes them far more sinister and effective. From the attitude of the college porter (Richard Griffiths, no less) at the beginning of the film through to the snide distain of the masters (John Gielgud - who was rather busy that year! - and Lindsay Anderson) later on in the story, it confronts a particular type of British attitude very effectively. (Although I'm guessing that much of this was lost on American audiences....).

It's a great film. The period setting and the universal themes mean it hasn't really dated much at all. The soundtrack - which was *everywhere* throughout the eighties - is nowhere near as obtrusive as it could have been and Greek electronica works surprisingly well in this context! I'm obviously pleased, but still quite surprised, that the Academy liked it enough to choose it over its rivals. However, when you look at the list of British-set films that have won Best Picture there's a heck of a lot of Upper Class nostalgia and not a lot of anything else going on (apart from some dodgy-sounding Welsh miners and the technically-Middle Class Minivers - even Oliver turned out to be decidedly posh in the end!). I suppose I could get a bit indignant about that if I really wanted to - but in the end I quite like that sort of film too, so I'm not going to complain....

Ordinary People 1980

The Film:

The 80s comes in with a whimper with this one. It's another "family issues" film and one I've seen before, a while ago. I remember quite liking it, but only in the way that I quite like that sort of thing to pass some time on an afternoon in half term when there's nothing else on the telly.

It's generally best remembered these days as the film that denied Scorsese his rightful award when he was at his peak (it was a long time after this before he actually got anything). The Director award instead went to Robert Redford for this, his directorial debut.

As I said, from what I remember it's quite a good film - but not really my ideal pick just one week after watching Kramer vs Kramer. I'm prepared to be proved wrong - but I fear that this is going to come across as overwrought, very dated and a little bit boring. We'll see....

The Ceremony:

Contrary to what it says on the poster, the ceremony actually took place the day after, on March 31st. This was because of the assassination attempt on then President Ronald Regan (which was motivated by an obsession with future Oscar winner Jodie Foster). It was hosted by Johnny Carson and ran to 3 hours and 13 minutes.

Interesting statistics include the fact that all four acting winners that night were under 40, including Timothy Hutton who, at 20, was the youngest Supporting Actor winner. Eva Le Gallienne was nominated for Supporting Actress and, born in 1899, was the last actor born in the 19th Century to receive a nomination. It's also, at the time of writing, the earliest awards from which all nominated Directors are still alive (although, as three are now in their 80s and the other two in their 70s, I'm guessing this bit won't be true for very much longer!)



Other Notable Winners That Night:

Bobby and Sissy

The other two heavily nominated films that year were Raging Bull and The Elephant Man with eight each. However, The Elephant Man won nothing and Raging Bull took just two, for Best Editing and the Best Actor award for Robert de Niro. The aforementioned Timothy Hutton beat his co-star Judd Hirsch to Best Supporting Actor (to be fair, they were by far the best two in the film!) and Sissy Spacek, best known to most as Carrie, won for Coal Miner's Daughter. Mary Steenburgen took the fourth acting award.

The fact that The Elephant Man went home empty handed prompted several people to argue that make up artist Christopher Tucker (also famous for creating the look of the Phantom in the original stage musical!) should have received something for his work on the film. The following year the award for "Best Make Up" was introduced. Tucker never won the award, although he was credited as "Make Up Consultant" on Quest for Fire, the film that won it two years later

Best Song:

I'm not going to argue with this one - one of my favourites of all time! I got rather obsessed with this song a couple of years later when it topped the charts in the UK, off the back of the TV series (which I was also rather obsessed with!) Oh, and you see that one with the curly hair who's music it is? I'm friends with him on Facebook and we have a dinner date planned for next May....

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Oi, Redford, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!

It really shouldn't have been Ordinary People. Particularly as an angsty family drama won the year before. The other options were Tess (I studied the book for A Level and was pretty underwhelmed by the film), The Elephant Man (very mainstream for Lynch, but maybe not enough for Oscar), Coal Miner's Daughter (possibly a bit niche?) - and the one that pretty much everyone these days reckons should have won both Best Picture and Best Director - Raging Bull. It's the one that's stood the test of time, in terms of acting, directing and overall story. It's not a personal favourite - I appreciate it rather than like it! - and I'm happy to have just the two boxing films that we've got on our list. However, it really should have won.


Our Verdict:

Classic dinner scene. A staple of many family dramas.
(Come back in 1999 for an almost identical screenshot!)

The plot is fairly thin and pretty straightforward. Older son Buck dies tragically, younger son Conrad (who survived the accident) is guilt-ridden and suicidal. His parents make a complete mess of dealing with the whole thing.

I do need to be careful here. Ordinary People is incredibly underwhelming (you could say, ordinary) but it's really not as bad as I'm in danger of suggesting. When I first watched it a few years back, I quite liked it. However, when you hold it up against other winners (and the other nominees that year) it becomes far less impressive.

Sitcom star in dramatic role - example number one.

All that aside, this is a good film. It's very much about a particular time and place and group of people - it's an upper-middle-class suburban American family in the late seventies. There's a certain coldness about the whole setting, including the characters, that I find equally fascinating and off putting at the same time. On one hand the characters seem authentic in their coldness - trying hard to present the right social image as their (completely inappropriate) way of trying to deal with tragedy. The dinner party scene is superb, expertly showing the plastic pointlessness of the lives they lead in the light of the death of their son - whilst suggesting that it's only really us, the viewers, that can see the futility of the whole thing.

Sitcom star in dramatic role - example number two!

However, on the other hand, the coldness of the characters - particularly Conrad's parents - meant that I never ever warmed to them. I'm guessing that we're not really supposed to warm very much to Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) but I would have liked to have felt some sympathy towards her as a grieving mother. However, I really couldn't care less by the end of the film. Calvin (Donald Sutherland) is a bit more sympathetic, but incredibly bland. So, again, I really didn't feel their pain or sympathise with their situation at all.

Yet again, the kids make more sense than the adults -
even the ones that are struggling with life

Timothy Hutton, playing Conrad, is superb - and fully deserved his Oscar. His character is well written and very well acted and, sadly, still incredibly relevant given the increasing suicide rate among young men today. He's the heart of the film and it's very easy to feel for him and everything he's going through. The scenes with his therapist (Judd Hirsch) are very good, as are the (too few) scenes with the other two women in his life, Jeaninne and Karen (both friendships ultimately doomed, for different reasons). I think maybe the strength of the relationships Conrad has outside his family is there to highlight quite how wrong things are going at home. However, it all just makes me like Beth and Calvin even less.

It's not a bad film - and there are some very good things about it. But it ended up leaving me nearly as cold as Conrad's parents.