When Hollywood Made Great Epic Films
Turner Classic Movies is really shining this month with its annual 31 Days of Oscar marathon leading up to the 98th Academy Awards show March 15th. The irony has been inescapable. TCM is playing Oscar-nominated treasures from the last century that seem to mock the offerings of the present one.
Of the past 10 Best Picture winners — Arora, Oppenheimer, Green Book, The Shape of Water, Everything Everywhere All at Once, CODA, Nomadland, Parasite, Moonlight — only one, Oppenheimer, was a major hit, the rest obscurities or marginal successes. And these were the winning films. No one can name the runners-up. While just this past weekend, TCM ran Bullitt, Grand Prix, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, The Bridge over the River Kwai, Patton, and The Deer Hunter. Clearly, Hollywood, we have a problem — a dying artform.
I watched most of these epics over the weekend. Their level of visual craftsmanship in presenting human truth seems as distant today as the Pyramids. And like the Pyramids, they constructed these wonders without modern technology, only sheer manpower. Not for the whim of pharaohs but our entertainment.
And what marvels they gave us: the car chase in Bullitt, the Monte Carlo run in Grand Prix, the chariot race in Ben Hur, the camelback attack on Aqaba in Lawrence of Arabia, the body-littered street in Gone with the Wind, the Moscow massacre in Doctor Zhivago, the collapsing Bridge on the River Kwai along with the train on it. And in all these classics other than the single dud, Cleopatra, the spectacle is a vital extension of human truth, not a juvenile comic-book filler. Which is why in Lawrence of Arabia, the striking of a match and cut to a desert sun is worth a whole movie full of falling cities and superhuman battles. It’s why the old films will endure forever and the new ones, even Oscar recognized, are already forgotten.
The amazing car chase in Bullitt fixates the point where the previously stymied detective becomes the hunter. Grand Prix viscerally showcases the dangers of the race and the skill and courage of the men who enter it. The rear attack on Aqaba was a historic military feat that cemented the legend of T.E, Lawrence, though he did not actually lead it.
The carnage in Gone with the Wind is the visual fitting punishment for the South’s great sin, slavery, and lesser sin, pride. It’s why I always cringe when the otherwise excellent TCM hosts virtue signal about the film’s supposed glorification of slavery when it does exactly the opposite. As Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler brutally points out. “Look at them. All these poor tragic people. The South’s sinking to its knees. It’ll never rise again. The Cause … The cause of living in the past is dying right in front of us.” One of my rules is always trust genuine film artists over woke scolds.
The chariot race in Ben-Hur may be the most riveting, thrilling nine minutes ever put on screen.
Like Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago is a love story set against a civil war. Unlike the older picture, where the protagonist’s selfishness quashes the romance, here it’s the geopolitical turbulence. Based on the Boris Pasternak novel banned by the Soviets, the movie celebrates individual and artistic freedom over the collective. This is why Hollywoke filmmakers could never make it today, even if they had a fraction of David Lean’s talent, which they most certainly don’t. They’re more in line with the philosophy of Zohran Mamdani than Pasternak. “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” Mamdani famously and stupidly said.
The chariot race in Ben-Hur may be the most riveting, thrilling nine minutes ever put on screen — the triumphant culmination of two years of planning and execution. Yet it’s unforgettable not as an awesome supplement to the story but an integral part of it. Director William Wyler and his team knew the race had to be memorable as the fitting climax to the central enmity of two men, Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd).
Messala had put political ambition over brotherhood and almost destroyed his friend, Judah, and his family. With the aid of Christ, Judah survived the slave ships to confront Messala in the circus. The payoff had to be more than satisfying, and is it ever. The incomparable sequence accomplishes a near impossible contrast — making Ben-Hur both a rich Christian morality tale and a rewarding revenge story. Deservedly, the film earned an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Heston and Best Picture.
Speaking of Best Picture, let’s take a look at this year’s nominees: Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners. Once again, only one was a huge hit — the latest Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun, Pirates of the Caribbean, Beverly Hills Cop) guy pleaser about a white macho racecar driver starring the white macho Brad Pitt. Bruckheimer produced the anti-woke industry-saving blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick four years ago, which no one in Hollywood tried to imitate.
So instead the competition for F1 includes a satire about an insect apocalypse (Bugonia), the latest Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) new grotesquery about love between girl and beast (Frankenstein), the feminist story of Shakespeare’s girlboss wife (Hamnet), a call for overthrowing conservative government (One Battle After Another), and an antiwhite, anti-Christian vampire film (Sinners). I know what I’ll be watching this Oscar Night — TCM’s presentation of the two best movies ever made about Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful, when art and talent meant something there.
READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:
When the Legends Die: Robert Duvall
Munich and the Fate of the West
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