Among forgotten Oscar movies—and forgotten movies in general—The Great Santini is a curious case. A box office failure in late-1979 when it was released under four titles, The Ace in Peoria, Illinois; Reaching Out in Rockford, Illinois; Sons and Heroes in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and The Great Santini in New York City), the movie was nevertheless twice nominated at the 1981 Academy Awards: Robert Duvall for Best Actor, and Michael O’Keefe for Best Supporting Actor. Its critical success, and what would prove to be a temporary cultural stamp, came from its regular airings on HBO.
Duvall plays a Marine in 1962, “a warrior without a war.” He takes his family (Blythe Danner, and teenage kids O’Keefe and Lisa Jane Persky) to Beaufort, South Carolina, one of many military bases they’ve occupied over the years. The guy has no outlet, and he’s as emotionally retarded as it gets, so he takes it out on his family and everyone around him. O’Keefe gets the brunt of the abuse, but finally steps in when Duvall lays hands on Danner; otherwise, he’s a softie with a quivering lip and wet, wet eyes. O’Keefe’s so bad it’s insane, and I can’t believe he got nominated for an Oscar. He’s much better as the cult-brainwashed psycho in Split Image from 1982, co-starring Karen Allen and Elizabeth Ashley. Here, he’s the ham taking Duvall’s taunts, trying very hard to look like he’s trying very hard not to cry. “You gonna cry?” Duvall taunts as he hits his son repeatedly with a basketball. Danner jumps in: “Stop it! He beat you, and it was beautiful!”
The Great Santini has never been released on Blu-Ray, and it’s not available to stream anywhere; the 1999 DVD is a no-frills transfer of a VHS copy, with the movie cropped from 1:85 to 1:33 (to date, the LaserDisc is the only release with the correct aspect ratio).
So why was I under the impression that this was a sports/fathers-and-sons classic in the vein of Hoosiers? Like that film, which Gene Hackman thought was a “piece of shit” until he actually saw it, The Great Santini was distributed by Orion and made for just $4 million. The budget shows, especially when Duvall’s up in the air: “flying” a plane against a plain blue backdrop, he might as well be in a 1940s WWII movie. But Hoosiers and The Great Santini have heart that outweighs the chintz, and while it’s hard to get more clichéd than crotchety coaches and furious fathers, both movies are, for the most part, undeniably real. Hackman elevated everything he ever appeared in, so he needed no assists in Hoosiers; Duvall, on the other hand, was always more compelling as a character actor. Both are cinema father figures, but Hackman exudes as much warmth as he does rage; Duvall tends toward the latter, even if he’s always the reliable patriarch.
The only reason I thought The Great Santini was a classic was because its most famous scene was parodied in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Little Nicky (2000). In the former, Dr. Evil hits Number Two (Robert Wagner) over and over with a giant plastic globe until he breaks down in shrill tears; in the latter, a coach played by Dana Carver (but possessed by Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr.) does the same thing to Sandler’s Nicky during a raucous Harlem Globetrotters game. In all likelihood, the phrase “Gonna cry?” comes directly from The Great Santini. Not all movies coin phrases that enter the lexicon: off the top of my head are Jerry Maguire (“You complete me”), Jaws (“We’re gonna need a bigger boat”), Taxi Driver (“You talking to me?”), Midnight Cowboy (“I’m walking here!”), and The Silence of the Lambs (“Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me”).
There are many, many more, but most of them are well-known, well-regarded, and/or widely-seen, like all of the above. The Great Santini remains in a curious place, with more cultural impact than Save the Tiger, Anna, or Inside Daisy Clover, but it’s not the movie people remember, it’s the scene where the family plays basketball and Duvall loses it. There’s a subplot with a stuttering Stan Shaw and a racist David Keith that has nothing to do with the core father/son story, and having Duvall die in the end is a cop-out that leaves the film unresolved. It’s a sad ending: O’Keefe, now the man of the house, drives what’s left of his family out of town to the next military base, just hours after their father’s funeral.
As bad as O’Keefe is (second only to Robbie Benson), Persky distinguishes herself as the kind of rebellious, angsty teenage girl rarely seen in Hollywood movies. Persky’s performance presages Jane Horrocks’ performance in Life is Sweet by 11 years, defying common wisdom and allowing herself to be as “unlikable” as the men in the movie. Debra Winger would be praised on similar grounds three years later for Terms of Endearment, but her character is a sweetie compared to Persky in The Great Santini. But she’s completely justified, and tragically, she never really gets to make up or even talk to her father as O’Keefe does before his death. That’s what makes the final shot of the family driving away so sad: the eldest son isn’t up to the standard set by his father. The movie tries to suggest otherwise, but the audience knows that, of the kids, only Persky could possibly match their father, “The Great Santini,” in life, if not in basketball.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NickyOtisSmith