And The Academy Award Goes To ...
Paul Gambaccini returns with the series about how some of the greatest Best Picture Oscar winning films were made, and what they tell us about the history of the time.
160/44; 129 MB total; sound quality excellent
On the Waterfront
Episode 1 of 4
First broadcast: Saturday 02 February 2013, 10:30
The 27th Academy Awards, for the films released in 1954, were dominated by ON THE WATERFRONT, a gritty, black and white masterpiece, which takes us down to the highly unionised New Jersey docks, then controlled by the mob.
A real tale of corruption and murder on the waterfront is transformed into a fiction - as a simple minded ex-boxer, played by Marlon Brando, wrestles with his conscience as he turns informer to win the girl he loves.
ON THE WATERFRONT not only gives us the most famous scene ever to take place in the back of a taxi, ("I coulda been a contender!"), it also showcases the talents of director Elia Kazan, and an astonishingly strong support cast - Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb and newcomer Eva Marie Saint- Method Acting at its height.
It also marks the end of the powerful team of director Elia Kazan and Method actor Marlon Brando - blown apart by Brando's horror at Kazan's decision to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, HUAC - then investigating the red-scare in Hollywood.
Is it a coincidence that ON THE WATERFRONT tells the story of a man who informs - snitches on his friends - but holds the moral high ground?
With a rich mix of archive and original interviews with actors, screen writers and film critics, and a revelatory interview with Thomas Hanley, a real life longshoreman who played Brando's young friend Tommy back in 1954, Paul Gambaccini presents "And The Academy Award Goes to... On The Waterfront."
Producer: Sara Jane Hall.
In the Heat of the Night
Episode 2 of 4
First broadcast: Saturday 09 February 2013, 10:30
It makes for uncomfortable viewing. A Southern policeman insolently challenges Sidney Poitier, a detective from 'up North'.
"So, boy, what do they call you in Philadelphia?"
"They call me Mister Tibbs!"
It's one of the great movie lines in history, from Sidney Poitier's favourite of all his films. But was "In The Heat of the Night" a worthy winner of the Best Picture?
Up against tough competition, including "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde", it has been suggested that this might have been an Oscar vote carried on a tidal wave of outrage during the peak years of the Civil Rights movement.
In 1967, "In The Heat of the Night" seemed to speak out against an America riven with racial tensions. The Watts Riots had just devastated Los Angeles, close to Hollywood. The film was set in Mississippi, but the crew were forced to choose Illinois in the North as a safer location. The murder of Martin Luther King, and his subsequent funeral, delayed the Oscar ceremony in 1968 by several days - enabling the cast and crew of "In The Heat of the Night" to attend his funeral.
All these stories and more are told to Paul Gambaccini, in the second in the Oscar series "And The Academy Award Goes To.", by veteran director - Norman Jewison, and he also hears from his legendary producer - Walter Mirisch - a man who at the age of 91, still makes his way to his film studios in Hollywood, and takes lunch as Spagos. He also hears from one of the world's great cinematographer's Haskell Wexler - who was the first to devise lighting especially for darker skin tones - and sets the scene for Norman Jewison's dramatic reconstruction of a country divided along racial lines that has echoes today.
Producer: Sara Jane Hall.
Amadeus
Episode 3 of 4
First broadcast: Saturday 16 February 2013
Paul Gambaccini talks to the team behind the rich, musical extravaganza "Amadeus" - which you may remember for its brilliant interpretation of the life and genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or for the shrill giggle of Tom Hulce and the cleavage of his wife.
Director Milos Forman, who had left Czechoslovakia as a political refugee, chose Prague as the best 'double' for Vienna - only to find himself followed by spies for his former homeland as a suspected anti-communist.
Forman recalls how he first met Sir Peter Shaffer backstage at the National Theatre in London where, Sir Peter confirms, Forman promised there and then, to make a film out of Shaffer's masterpiece of the stage.
Simon Callow who played Mozart in the original London stage production was the only actor to appear in the Hollywood version - but probably enjoyed himself more because of it. Gambaccini also talks to Sir Neville Mariner, choreographer Twyla Tharp, producer Ken Tuohy and the actor Elizabeth Berridge, who was told she'd got the part as Mozart's wife as she most resembled an 'landlady's daughter'.
Cold War mystery and the greatest composer on earth - how they brought to screen a musical and cinematic masterpiece.
Producer: Sara Jane Hall.
American Beauty
Episode 4 of 4
First broadcast: Saturday 23 Feb 2013
On the eve of this year's Academy Awards, Paul Gambaccini explores a Best Picture Oscar film to find out how and why it won and see what it tells us about society at the time - this week American Beauty.
The black comedy American Beauty swept the board at the 2000 Oscars ceremony, pushing aside The Sixth Sense and The Green Mile. It was an unexpected hit for the studio - Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks - and went on to become a popular, critical and commercial success around the world.
Telling a story of dysfunction in suburbia it tackled many taboo themes head on: homophobia, drugs, blackmail, infidelity and domestic abuse. Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for Best Actor after giving a landmark performance as suburban everyman who's had enough and embraces his midlife crisis. Annette Benning, who memorably plays his wife, holds onto the facades that make up her world whilst inside she's falling apart.
For the director, Sam Mendes, it was his first movie and he picked up an Oscar. He's come a long way in Hollywood since then, having just finished the new James Bond blockbuster Skyfall. Paul talks to Mendes about his vision and the evolution of American Beauty on and off set and reflects on cultural event it soon became. He recalls his Oscar night and the tribute to his hero Billy Wilder. He talks to the producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, who went on to produce Milk, about casting the movie and getting it made. Thomas Newman, of the Hollywood composing dynasty wrote the score and tells him how close to the wire the iconic opening music sequence was. And the young actors in the film Thora Birch and Wes Bentley discuss how, at the start of their careers, they immersed themselves in roles which resonated with their lives at the time.
American Beauty still stands out as a bold, classic movie but Paul hears how its legacy is felt more in the cable TV series of the past decade rather than in Hollywood, where it was created.
Producer Neil McCarthy.
Replies
Thanks, Rick...this is a great series!