Confidências de Hollywood

... and a film that would never win an Oscar nor do I think its makers imagined that it would.

In the same vein as "Valley of the Dolls", it's a camp classic about Hollywood. It paints Hollywood as full of vicious amoral people, but the worst of them is Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd). The film starts at the Academy Awards where Frankie Fane is expecting to win the Best Actor Oscar, which he needs to get back on top. The film then traces his rise in Hollywood, a rise that is full of him stepping on other people. There are tons of Hollywood stereotypes and situations in the process.

But along the way he meets an actor who has aged out of leading parts and has suddenly been labeled box office poison and has to take a job as head waiter where his old Hollywood pals eat because he has also ran through all of his money. Frankie is terrified of becoming that guy, and yet he oddly does everything he can to become just that guy. He uses people and discards them, and he also spends like there is no tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes. Complications ensue.

It's too bad Boyd isn't better remembered today for roles other than that of Messala in Ben Hur, because he really was a very good actor. He takes a part that could have been quite two dimensional and breathes some life into it so that his character is a very believable and hissable villain.

I'm less interested in the alleged camp value of this film that I am in the opportunity to again see so many of the names with which I grew up working. It was business as usual in those days fifty years past, and anytime they surface again, in any form, it is to treasure. This film IS Hollywood of the mid '60s.

The Oscar isn't any worse than 75% of the films of the era. --Or today, when you get down to it. In that day, an all-star cast was employed to conceal all inadequacies; these days, CGI fulfills the very same function. I get it. A lot of people don't, simply because CGI is so big and bombastic by its very nature as to overwhelm judgment. Another fifty years from now, I think there are going to be lots of films like The Oscar, films that people laugh at because they have nothing going for them but an obvious patch meant to cover their weakness. You can bet on it.

The film is built around three male roles, with everyone else more or less stepping out of their way for the big acting moments given to them. Boyd, always the stony-jawed, steely-eyed manly male actor, is exactly as you remember him. Tony Bennett does a really nice job, which is a pity, given this films negative rep. Milton Berle was a surprisingly good dramatic actor, and proved it in many films and TV shows, just like this one. Eleanor Parker rises above the secondary status to which the actresses in this film are consigned. She makes the development from haughty to pathetic entirely credible.

Bottom line: Enjoy it as a chance to see names, names, names, even if you don't buy the drama or the story. It comes straight from the heart of the last demi golden age, just past the decline and disappearance of The Golden Age of Hollywood. It commemorates this unique time and place as well as any film.

....you come up smelling like fleas". One of the lines actually spoken (by Tony Bennett)in "The Oscar". Words can not describe this film. It is so so bad...it is GREAT! Stephen Boyd's performance is way way way over the top like nothing you have ever seen before. He is like a rabid dog hopped up on speed. The other performers are terrible too! Especially Tony Bennett who looks like he is reading his lines off cue cards. But it is the script that will have you on the floor laughing. There are so many memorably bad lines in this that I recommend you have a whole pad of paper and a pen ready to jot them all down. Rush don't walk to your nearest video store and rent this! One of the best (if not THE best) of the camp crazed melodramas of the 1960's. 10/10 as ultra grade A+ high camp. Regular still high 6/10 for its sheer audacity and 60's chic look at the bowels of Hollywood. Norma Desmond Mr. Boyd is ready for his close up.

This expose of a Hollywood heel plays like a bush-league attempt at the baroque language of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, but man, does it work. Stephen Boyd is the absurdly mannered amoral punk who'd screw over his mother and steal her shoes to make it to the top. Among those with his shoeprints on their neck are Milton Berle (horny, melancholy, used-up agent), Jill St. John (tragic "roundheels broad"), Tony Bennett (as Hymie Kelly, the tragic Jewish-Irish second banana) and Elke Sommer (Swedish zaftig-bomb with a conscience). As directed by Russell Rouse, THE OSCAR has the feel of Sam Fuller doing overbright TV. The movie is way beyond "campy" or "good-bad;" nearly every scene is a diamond-plated jaw-dropper.

It starts with some really bad chunks of dialogue - and it gets worse! However, it is weirdly watchable and by the end I was quite enjoying it. A larger collection of ott performances you probably won't find. Some review I read called it 'The Bad and the Beautiful crossed with Harold Robbins'. Approach it as a kind of weird comedy and you'll have fun. It doesn't really deserve to be out-of-print - it's an interesting cast (set of misfires), and has a kind of odd historical value ...