The 1965 Hollmann Awards: Triumph for Japan, Julie Andrews Rules!

In this edition, the penultimate one, we look at Score, Actress, Production Design, and Director.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

5. Morituri
Jerry Goldsmith

4. A Patch of Blue
Jerry Goldsmith

3. The Great Race
Henry Mancini

2. Thunderball
John Barry

1. Doctor Zhivago
Maurice Jarre

More, after the jump

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

5. Woman in the Dunes

Tôtetsu Hirakawa/Masao Yamazaki, production designers 
An effectively monstrous pit of sand, seemingly endless. Plus the details of the small house -- one room, rotting, dying, gaps in the slats. A perfectly hellish setting.

4. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Bernard Evein, production designer
A touch of dreamland -- it all looks real and functional and you believe people exist within this world, but it's just off enough to separate it from our reality. Beauty.

3. King Rat

Robert Emmet Smith, art director
Frank Tuttle, set decorator
From my original post: "An entire POW camp is created ... And then there are the different locales, like the pen for the hens, the supply room where the food is kept and weighed (cool and clay), the hill of doors to shit in. The basic needs to keep men alive and sane...or as much as possible."

2. Doctor Zhivago

John Box, production designer

Terence Marsh, art director

Dario Simoni, set decorator

From my original post: "...effectively communicates the difference between Czarist Russia and Communist Russia, making sure to establish the comforts of the Gromeko mansion before turning it into a home shared by The People. Strelnikov's train car, Lara's apartment, and the restaurant Komarovsky takes Lara to, are also high points.

1. Kwaidan



Shigemasa Toda, art director
Dai Arakawa, set decorator
An obvious stage set sometimes -- and other times, not so obvious -- but these are stories being presented to us! A fitting look for the fairy tale horror -- otherworldly, askew.

BEST ACTRESS

5. Anjanette Comer as Aimee Thanatogenous
The Loved One

Weird. Aimee is lovely, and blindly sincere in her beliefs – not in God, but in the Reverend. But Comer’s wide-eyed enthusiasm and trembling sing-song voice also add a bit of crazy, an element that truly takes flight when she does: swinging on the edge of a cliff at her crumbling house. And because Comer doesn’t play anything up, it’s all the more unsettling.

4. Anne Bancroft as Inga Dyson
The Slender Thread

Honestly, I would give it to her just for her voice over the telephone. She’s not just drugged, she’s exhausted, and you hear the toll her secrets have taken on her. We do get to see her, though, and she's great there, too, especially in a sequence where she tries to gauge her husband’s openness to her Forgive-and-Forget Sex.

3. Tura Satana as Varla

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Useless, talking about this year without talking about Varla. No sex kitten, this one – the punches she throws look like a bitch to take, while the lines she delivers hit like venom. There have been a lot of on-screen psychos, but Varla isn’t just the most dangerous – she’s the most grittily real. A force of nature.

2. Nobuko Otowa as Kichi's mother
Onibaba

One rough broad, and kudos to Otowa that she does nothing to soften the edges. She’s unkempt, unladylike, perpetually sullen. She imperceptibly shifts to express jealousy and desperation – but there’s something ghoulishly girlish about the way she takes to being The Demon. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the film ends on her.

1. Julie Andrews as Maria
The Sound of Music

From my original post: "...this is a perfect performance. Andrews gets knocked a lot for how wholesome Maria is, but Andrews certainly doesn't oversell that aspect. Instead, she stresses her feistiness, with a physicality that sees her bounding along Salzburg streets and standing her ground against a male authority figure. Oh, and that voice!"

BEST DIRECTOR

5. Jacques Demy

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Between the colors, the beautiful leads, and the fact that all the dialogue is sung, it would seem twee were it not for the real-world stakes, the sincerity of feeling, the bittersweet finale. Demy grounds his fantasy, without pulling it down.

4. Kaneto Shindô
Onibaba

I think it's difficult to have something just off-kilter enough, but Shindô certainly accomplishes this. What could be a domestic drama instead has all the suspense and terror of a thriller, yet his actors sometimes behave as though they were in a comedy. It's weird and effective.

3. Robert Wise
The Sound of Music

From my original post: What could have been a tonally-off, terminally-dull picture, is instead a triumphant story of hope, populated by actual human beings who just happen to break out in song. Wise makes sure you understand the characters as people -- and stages the musical numbers beautifully.

2. David Lean
Doctor Zhivago

From my original post: A master. His camera, his guiding of the ensemble, his sense of triumph and irony! The intimate moments between lovers, or among family members, are as engagingly executed as the larger-scale battles, protests, massacres, uprisings, train rides! Even in the way he's directed the extras, Lean shows his understanding of the micro's effect on the macro.

1. Masaki Kobayashi
Kwaidan

Kobayashi adjusts his style and tone slightly for each story, but the whole is a satisfyingly unified vision. Not horror, exactly, but it gets under your skin. Those brief moments of humor are a welcome relief, and executed just so.

Tomorrow -- my Top Ten, including the Best Picture of 1965!

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