Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1975

The Contenders:

Amarcord
And Now My Love
Dog Day Afternoon (winner)
Lies My Father Told Me
Shampoo

Oy, Gevalt!

Film: Lies My Father Told Me
Format: Internet video on laptop.

There are times when I take one for the team with this blog. With Lies My Father Told Me, I regretted my choice of movie immediately. In fact, the only thing that kept me going was the realization that if I didn’t watch it today, I’d have to watch it some time in the future. Worse, it’s exactly the sort of film that, frankly, kills my hit count. I don’t get miles of traffic on this blog, but when I review something that has fewer than 15 ratings and no reviews on Letterboxd, I know it’s a review that most people are going to look at, perhaps read this first paragraph, and then move on. Really, I can’t say that I blame anybody for not reading further. Really, you won’t offend me.

Lies My Father Told Me takes place in a Jewish ghetto in Montreal in the 1920s. Young David (Jeff Lynas) lives with his father Harry (Len Birman), his mother Annie (Marilyn Lightstone), and Annie’s father Zaida (Yossi Yadin). Zaida is a rag and bone man, wandering the streets of the ghetto, buying junk from the people who live there and selling it for a small profit. Harry doesn’t do much of anything. He attempts to invent new things for men’s fashion—pants that don’t need pressing and adjustable cufflinks, for instance, but his plans consistently fail and end up losing what little money he has borrowed from Zaida.