Awards presented April 10, 1968
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
In the Heat of the Night. There is a great deal to be said in favor of the Academy's choice, though the years have not been kind to it for ignoring the enormous enthusiasm for two of the other contenders,
Bonnie and Clyde and
The Graduate. It's a witty, observant, frequently funny thriller, playing off the odd-couple relationship of the characters played by Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in endearing and sometimes surprising ways. But it's not a landmark film like those other two.
... when it should have gone to ...
Truth be told, the countercultural hipness of both
Bonnie and Clyde and
The Graduate have caused both films to show their age a bit. But
The Graduate (more so than
Bonnie and Clyde, which despite its contemporary reverberations is a period piece) is a film that defined a generation: the baby boomers who a few years later would follow the advice proffered to Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin and go into plastics (or computers, or law, or investment banking) and become yuppies. It earned only an Oscar for director Mike Nichols, and that award was interpreted as a consolation prize for his failure to win the previous year for his stunning directorial debut with
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Still, only a canny director would have held the camera as long as Nichols does on the faces of Benjamin and Elaine after they have escaped from her wedding, stirring the viewer's uneasiness and doubt about the consequences of their action. The movie also launched the career of Hoffman and gave Anne Bancroft the role of a lifetime.
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