Oscar, Schmoskar

[eyeresist]

I hate to spoil the fun, but they get it right, too. Look at some other films that won:

Casablanca
Olivier's Hamlet
The Best Years of Our Lives
All About Eve
On the Waterfront
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Apartment

That Hamlet is not very good. There's some nice photography, and the guy playing Polonius is good, but the rest of the acting is just so much cheese.

Off the top of my head: 1967 had a mediocre and cliched (Afro-American Philadelphia detective goes down South to investigate a murder) movie called In the Heat of the Night

This was hardly cliched in 1967!

[karlhenning]

I hate to spoil the fun, but they get it right, too.

In terms of the thread, that doesn't spoil the fun at all. The stopped clock is right twice a day, too ; )

[Cato]

(Referring to In the Heat of the Night)

This was hardly cliched in 1967!

I was there...and found it cliched at the time! e.g.  Orson Welles had already tread that territory over ten years earlier in Touch of Evil.

[eyeresist]

I was there...and found it cliched at the time! e.g.  Orson Welles had already tread that territory over ten years earlier in Touch of Evil.

Was he in blackface? 

[karlhenning]

Does a cliché become somehow refreshed when it's ethnicized?

[eyeresist]

Does a cliché become somehow refreshed when it's ethnicized?

Surely the detective story element of that film is subordinate to the racial themes? I thought THAT was what the film was about.

[karlhenning]

Surely the detective story element of that film is subordinate to the racial themes?

You may be right at that.

[Cato]

Does a cliché become somehow refreshed when it's ethnicized?

I suppose thaty ultimately a cliche' is a cliche'.  One can always try to "put a new spin" on something old and try to refresh it.

[eyeresist]

You may be right at that.

The device of an intellectual black detective visiting the deep south meant there was an obvious racial tension through the movie, which to its credit did not end with a long sentimental brotherhood speech. The big quote from In the Heat of the Night is Sidney Poitier shouting "They call me Mister Tibbs!". The quote was so popular, it was used as the title of the sequel, exclamation point and all. There's also a scene which must have been remarkable for the time, in which a white man slaps Poitier, who slaps him right back.

BTW, there was actually a second sequel I never heard of, called The Organization, and eventually a TV series (1988-95).