Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1962

The Contenders:

Burt Lancaster: Birdman of Alcatraz
Jack Lemmon: Days of Wine and Roses
Marcello Mastroianni: Divorce, Italian Style
Peter O’Toole: Lawrence of Arabia
Gregory Peck: To Kill a Mockingbird (winner)

I Know Why the Caged Bird SIngs

Film: Birdman of Alcatraz
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.

When I did the 1001 Movies list, I made a concerted effort to knock out a bunch of the really long movies every month. I didn’t want to be stuck at the end of the process with a collection of epics. I’d forgotten what it was like to have a bunch of really long movies still ahead of me. Birdman of Alcatraz clocks in at close to 150 minutes, and it was barely in the top 50 in terms of length. Longer movies are difficult for the bare fact that I don’t always have 2 ½ hours in a row to watch something. That said, watching Birdman of Alcatraz is a step in the right direction; I need to get back to knocking out the long films.

Anyway, Birdman of Alcatraz is about the life of Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster), a man serving a life sentence in solitary confinement who became an expert on birds. Stroud, by all accounts, was an extremely smart man, but also a psychopath. The portrayal of him here is initially quite brutal, but an understandable brutality. When he is denied a visit from his mother, he goes on a small rampage and kills a prison guard. At his trial, he is sentenced to death. Through the intervention of his mother (Thelma Ritter), his life is saved. However, since the sentence at his trial read that he was to be held in solitary until his death, Stroud goes into long term solitary confinement.