Title: Smile
Year: 1975
Director: Michael Ritchie
Writer: Jerry Belson

Stars: Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon (Get Smart), Annette O’Toole, Michael Kidd (It’s Always Fair Weather), Geoffrey Lewis

The Story: Teen girls from around California gather in Santa Rosa for the Young American Miss pageant, kicking the town’s boosterism into high gear. Eventually the relentless cheerfulness of it all begins to grate on some, both within the spotlight and outside of it.

Why It’s Great: Satire and sympathy sometimes seem incompatible. It’s so hard to write something that’s barbed without being uncharitable. You’re standing outside and casting a harsh light on buffoonery, but in order to write it well, you simultaneously have to generate genuine feeling and understanding for the buffoons themselves. Woody Allen is great, but when he attacks someone, the audience doesn’t get to pick a side. It’s Woody and us together against the world. The fuzzy, empathetic, heartbreaking worldview shared by ’70s directors like Altman, Mazursky and Ritchie is a lost art. Many actors shine in the ensemble case, including a flinty, nuanced performance from a beautiful young Annette O’Toole that makes you wonder why she didn’t have a bigger career. But the real stand out is Michael Kidd as a cynical big town choreographer stuck in Hicksville. He has the courage to be truly unlikable, right up until you realize with a shock that he’s become the heart of the movie. In a soulless town, the man with one spark of redemption is king.

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan…