An icon of the dying days of the Studio Era, character actor Alan Arkin, is born again through this year's Academy Awards.
I was rooting for the both of them, the two Classic Film holdovers nominated for Academy Awards this year: the indefatigable Peter O'Toole and the still-crazy-after-all-these-years Alan Arkin.
Both have ties to the last days of the Studio Era: O'Toole perpetuated its practice of big-budget epics in an era of increased realism and urbanity, while Arkin was one of the first to modernize the verbal, character-based comedy that had seen the Studios through the Great Depression.
Arkin's contribution, it can be argued, was the greater, as he became one of the prime personalities of the first post-studio era. It's a shame that the school of comedy he helped usher in is largely forgotten today, thanks to a return of the facile and the physical that began with the release of Animal House.
Call it The Urban Neurotic School, a subgenre that enjoyed enormous popularity between 1966 and 1977. Its roots were in the Jewish, urban humor of New York-based literary practicioners such as Philip Roth, Jules Feiffer and Neil Simon, and its onscreen spokespeople were left-of-centre everymen that included Arkin, Elliott Gould, and George Segal, and female counterparts such as Elaine May, Renee Taylor, and, in non-singing mode, Barbra Streisand.
The movement climaxed with Annie Hall, Woody Allen's bittersweet look at life and love a la late seventies. So definitive was it an example of the style that the entire genre was left to Allen; unless you were a myopic, redheaded auteur, angst comedy was out.
Arkin and company were forced to move on. Unfortunately, there was scant to move on to. The times they were achangin' back; the great age of non conformity was ending, and so too was the relevance of the offbeat everyman. Characters actors were once again relegated to below-the-line status, restricted to providing comic relief or colorful excursions from exposition.
So, there Arkin languished, giving us a crazed boss here, an angry father there. Occasionally, his more sullen dramatic side was permitted exhibition, but again, with the impact dulled by the thin nature of the role.
Finally, thanks to the recent emergence of bizarro-world comedies (The Royal Tannenbaums, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite), the Arkin style finds itself again at a premium.
For someone who's had their fill of Ferell, a bellyful of Black, and a snootful of Sandler, it's a welcome return. And you can bet that with Arkin's win for his Arkinesque turn as the disgruntled grandparent in Little Miss Sunshine, it's here to stay for a good while longer.
Who would have thought that the return of this school of comic gloom would bring such Sunshine?
The copyright of the article
Alan Arkin - Oscar Winner in
Classic Films is owned by
Dan Lalande. Permission to republish
Alan Arkin - Oscar Winner must be granted by the author in writing.
