I am sure to avid readers of my column (if there are such people who would call themselves “avid” readers of my column) it comes as no surprise that I love movies. To be quite honest, Oscar Sunday is to me what the Superbowl is to football fans and the World Series is to baseball fans – maybe even more important.
I love the Oscars, but my relationship with the Academy is love-hate. I love the worldwide recognition of all films alike; the Academy is a group where all films are eligible for competition and get a boost from all the attention that awards can give (this year’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Amour” fall into this category). But sometimes the Academy gets it…well…wrong.
Character actors John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and the late John Cazale have never received any formal recognition via an Oscar nod. Consider Goodman’s sinister turn in “Barton Fink” or Buscemi’s darkly comedic brilliance in “Fargo” and a life time of works that Cazale gave audiences. (For those of you unfamiliar with John Cazale, he only appeared in five films, all of them nominated for Best Picture. They include: “The Godfather”, “The Godfather Part II”, “The Conversation”, “Dog Day Afternoon” and “The Deer Hunter”.) For those of you who have seen those films, but still struggle to remember who Cazale is in those movies; he plays the second oldest Corleone brother, Fredo in “The Godfather” pictures.
Donald Sutherland, Edward G. Robinson, Mia Farrow and Errol Flynn rank among some of the other famous names to have never been nominated for an Oscar.
Visionary directors like Spike Lee, FW Murnau and Sam Peckinpah never received nominations for their work as directors – though Lee was nominated as a screenwriter for his brilliant “Do the Right Thing” and Peckinpah likewise received a writer’s nomination for “The Wild Bunch”.
Consider also, that directing legends like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Sidney Lumet never won Oscars. Though, in the spirit of full disclosure, Kubrick did receive a specialty Oscar for the special effects used in “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
Then there are the years where the Academy simply picked the wrong people or films to win. One of the most egregious losses in Oscar history, to my mind, is when Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” lost Best Picture to the movie musical “Oliver!” How one of the most influential films of the twentieth century lost to a run-of-the-mill musical is beyond me. Or how about when the beautiful human drama “Brokeback Mountain” lost Best Picture to the incredibly melodramatic “Crash”? That had some eyebrows raised. Then of course there is the year that Hillary Swank beat Annette Benning for Best Actress; Swank appeared in the grossly overrated “Boys Don’t Cry” whereas Benning appeared in the other grossly overrated film “American Beauty”. Benning gives perhaps the performance of her career, despite the fact that “American Beauty” is not my favorite motion picture.
While I admit that “Ordinary People” is a great film and worthy of the Best Picture award it won, I have no idea how Martin Scorsese did not win Best Director for “Raging Bull” over the director of “Ordinary People”, Robert Redford. True, Redford’s film is intelligent and well made, but “Raging Bull” is perhaps the most artistic and compelling films of Scorsese’s long and celebrated career.
Other great films that didn’t win Best Picture that might surprise you include: “Star Wars” (lost to “Annie Hall”), “The Sixth Sense” and “The Insider” (both lost to “American Beauty”), “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (lost to “Midnight Cowboy”) and, my personal favorite, “Network” (lost to “Rocky”). I don’t necessarily mean that those films are better than the movies that beat them; I am trying, however, to illustrate a point that the Academy doesn’t necessarily decide what movies are great and which are not. That is the job of the audiences and the public.
While presenting the Best Picture award in 2011, Steven Spielberg said, “One of these ten movies will join a list that includes ‘On the Waterfront’, ‘Midnight Cowboy’, ‘The Godfather” and the ‘Deer Hunter’. The other nine will join a list that includes ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘The Graduate’ and ‘Raging Bull’.” Spielberg’s remarks were met with thunderous applause.
I think that there is truth in the phrase, “It’s an honor just to be nominated.” It puts a showbiz person in good company that includes: Gary Oldman, Annette Benning, Julianne Moore, Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Claude Raines, Glenn Close, Deborah Kerr, Peter Sellers, Kirk Douglas, Carey Grant and Greta Garbo – all great actors who have been nominated but never received Oscar gold.
If your favorite films this year didn’t win, that’s alright. They’re in great company.
Brian Laughran
Viewpoints Correspondent