The 1976 sleeper of the year, Rocky, is almost certainly the only film in history that owes its Academy Award for Best Picture primarily due to its musical soundtrack. The acting is nothing particularly exciting, the screenplay is a collection of boxing movie clichés awkwardly married to the plot of Marty and the direction is so pedestrian and uninspired that within the first five minutes the boom microphone drops into view at least twice. With the exception of long-time character actor Burgess Meredith and the cast was either unknown or untested. (A special case must be made for Talia Shire who had admittedly by then already been nominated for an Oscar, but the two Godfather films so overwhelmed the public with machismo that she hardly came out of them as a star in her own right.) Rocky was rolled out to theaters without much of an advertising budget. By the time Rocky first hit theaters, All the President’s Men and Taxi Driver had already been jockeying for position for Oscar glory and to make matters worse, Network was released just one week later. Things certainly did not look promising for Rocky Balboa either in the ring or on the Oscar stage.
And then the unbelievable happened. First, Rocky started its march toward eventually winding up as the box office champ of 1976. Even more amazing, it managed to knock off the brilliant adaptation of the book that brought down a President, the dark voyage through New York City nights that put Martin Scorsese on the map and a film that proved to be the most prescient of the year: Network. How did it do it?
As previously indicated, not by overpowering the acting of the other contenders. Not because John G. Avildsen would go on to battle Martin Scorsese as the most influential film director to come out of the 1970’s. And certainly not because Sylvester Stallone’s script told a boxing story never before told by Hollywood. No, Rocky had just one thing that none of the other nominees for Best Picture had that year or, indeed, that none of the other films released that year possessed. The most rousing, crowd-pleasing, emotionally manipulative main theme heard in theaters since perhaps The Magnificent Seven. And anyone who doesn’t think George Lucas was intensely aware of this phenomenon as he began filming a weird little science fiction film taking place not in the future by a long time ago should probably not go into the movie business.
Without the montage of Rocky running through the streets of Philadelphia, hitting sides of beef and ascending those steps with his arms raised in glory to the accompaniment of the stirring strains of “Gonna Fly Now” it is almost beyond a doubt that not only does Rocky not go on to win Best Picture, but Sylvester Stallone is maybe recognized today by a few fans of the cult flick The Lords of Flatbush. The music is just that Machiavellian, which is not to suggest that there is something tremendously impressive about that particular achievement and its place in Oscar history by any means.
