The Furniture: The frozen escape of "Doctor Zhivago"

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

Ten movies were nominated for Best Production Design at the 1965 Oscars, one of the last years before the Academy retired separate categories for color and black & white. There are some striking examples on the list, from the bloated (The Agony & the Ecstasy, Ship of Fools) to the bizarre (Inside Daisy Clover). But when you come down to it, there’s really no looking past Doctor Zhivago.

This was David Lean’s second consecutive film to win the category, after Lawrence of Arabia three years earlier. While their visual scope is similar, the two films actually have very different preoccupations. Lawrence of Arabia is about a man determined to shape history. Doctor Zhivago is about a man trying to escape it. Understanding the difference helps us understand the design.

We begin on the eve of the Russian Revolution, a moment of great social contrasts...

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Where to watch 1965 movies before the next Smackdown

Maggie Smith's first Oscar nominationAs we keep promising you, the Smackdowns are much more fun if you play along at home. Up next is 1965 and there are only four movies to watch (all of which received multiple Oscar nominations) to prepare for the discussion on October 9th. 

SUPPORTING ACTRESS NOMINEES OF 1965

• Ruth Gordon from Inside Daisy Clover (3 Oscar noms) - Amazon
• Maggie Smith and Joyce Redman from Othello (4 Oscar noms) - YouTube
• Shelley Winters from A Patch of Blue (5 Oscar noms)- Amazon
• Peggy Wood from The Sound of Music (10 Oscar noms) - Disney+

Once you're done watching those, send in your votes (1 to 5 hearts for each lady) by October 8th. Easy! You're then part of the Smackdown!

If you REALLY wanna dive into the cinema of 1965 before the event, here are key 1965 movies that are currently streaming for free (provided you have the corresponding services, of course).

OSCAR NOMINATED 1965 TITLES CURRENTLY STREAMING...

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Shelley Winters @ 100: A Patch of Blue (1965)

We're celebrating the centennial of Shelley Winters. Here's Nathaniel...

Int. Nathaniel's apartment. Two best friends are bored, realizing it's another "exciting" COVID summer night of what will we eat for dinner / watch on TV?. Nathaniel presents a few movie options (inevitably related to whatever TFE projects are in development). His friend's choice surprises him, "I think I'm really in a Shelley Winters mood." Nathaniel wonders for a split-second what a 'Winters mood' is before realizing he already knows... and approves! Up goes the movie and within seconds they glance at each other. "Shelley is going hard!" Nathaniel proclaims, half-stunned. He really shouldn't be. Going hard is, after all, a Winters mood and specialty.

Still and all, performances that begin at the pitch the Oscar winner risks for her introductory scene in A Patch of Blue rarely have anywhere go to thereafter...

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Shelley Winters @100: Lolita (1962)

We're celebrating the centennial of Shelley Winters each night for a few more days. Here's Eric Blume...

Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film adaptation of Lolita lands right in the middle of Shelley Winters’ two Oscar wins (The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue).  Her balls-out performance in the first hour of this movie contains some true humdinger acting. She comes to the table to play and win here. 

Obviously, especially when viewed within the context of today’s sensibilities, Lolita is a problematic picture. That's especially true since Kubrick plays each scene with his sympathies clearly in line with our leading man, Humbert Humbert (played, superbly, by James Mason), and actively against Winters, who plays mom of young Lolita, and who falls in love with HH...  

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The Furniture: Yul Brynner Blows Up a Bridge

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Yul Brynner, who were celebrating this week for his centennial, was in a lot of very expensive movies. His biggest year was 1956, with The King & I, Anastasia and The Ten Commandments - a combined budget of over $20 million. But there were plenty to follow. Studios saw Brynner as a generic racial and ethnic “other,” which got him cast in all sorts of bloated historical, international, orientalist pictures. Which also means, of course, that many of his movies are entirely worthy of consignment to the dustbin of Hollywood history.

Intriguingly, though, he did occasionally work beyond Hollywood. In the late 1960s he joined Orson Welles, Sergei Bondarchuk, Franco Nero and Curd Jürgens in Yugoslavia for The Battle of Neretva. A World War Two Partisan film directed by Veljko Bulajić, a Partisan veteran himself, it ranks as the most expensive production in the history of Yugoslavia - and potentially in Brynner’s career, as some estimates push it into Ten Commandments territory...

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