AIRLINE TYCOON DELUXE SPEECH BUBBLES NOT SHOWING UP MOVIE
DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952), although I have a sentimental attachment to that circus movie - as does Steven Spielberg, who has paid tribute to it in his films, more than once. Arguably the most derided Best Picture winner of that period is Cecil B. Most of the Academy’s choices in the 1950s are considered conservative at best today, while the genre movies of that decade were mostly ignored. As the old saying goes, that’s show business. (He lost twice again, for “Nobody’s Fool” and “Road to Perdition.”)Īl Pacino followed a similar path, losing for his unforgettable performances in “The Godfather,” “Serpico,” “The Godfather: Part II,” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” among others, only to win for his over-the-top portrayal of a cantankerous blind man in the sentimental “Scent of a Woman” (1982). Yet I doubt anyone would single out his work in that film as his finest hour. When he was nominated the following year for “The Colour of Money,” he finally took home his first competitive Oscar. Having been nominated seven times without a win (from 1958’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” to 1982’s “The Verdict”), the Academy decided to present him an honorary award in 1986. No one’s experience with Oscar offered more ironies than Paul Newman. Then there is the cumulative effect of having been nominated over and over again. It’s easy to say, “How could they have ignored O’Toole’s incredible performance in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’?” until one checks the competition and sees that the Best Actor award went to Gregory Peck for his signature role as Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a film as beloved today as “Lawrence” after more than half a century. Looking back, one always has to weigh the possibilities and probabilities of any given year. This year there are nine films in contention, so it’s even more difficult to claim a consensus. Mere dozens of ballots among the then-6,000 counted could have changed the course of Oscar history. That year there were five Best Picture nominees, which means that any one of them could have won with just 21 percent of the tallies. Proulx will ever know how close “Brokeback” came to winning the brass ring because the Academy never reveals details of its voting process. “Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good.”
“We should have known conservative heffalump Academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture,” she wrote in the Guardian.
That was the year that most pundits predicted a win for “Brokeback Mountain,” and in a rare instance of candour (and questionable sportsmanship), author Annie Proulx accused the Academy of not having the guts to honour a film about gay cowboys - even though the film did earn three major awards. I was not a particular fan of “A Beautiful Mind” or “Chicago,” which earned trophies at the beginning of the last decade, and I’ve met many people who don’t care for “Crash,” the Best Picture winner of 2005. One can debate the victories and losses year by year, and often they are simply a matter of opinion. (“The Intouchables” was chosen to represent France in the Foreign Language Film category.) Yet there is already at least one anomaly: Several critics’ groups honoured “Holy Motors,” the bold, dreamlike French feature by Leos Carax, which didn’t make Oscar’s final cut. It’s less likely that this year’s crop of nominees will include such glaring oversights there were barely any award-worthy films released until the end of 2012.
That year the Best Picture award went to John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley.” The film that supplanted “Kane” in this year’s Sight & Sound survey of international critics, Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” wasn’t even nominated in 1958 “Gigi” earned the top prize that year. “Citizen Kane” may be widely regarded as the greatest film of all time, but that’s not what the Academy thought in 1941. Members play the cards they are dealt, year by year, which leads to some questionable decisions when hindsight enters the picture. REUTERS/Claire Folger/Warner Bros Entertainment/Handout Actor Ben Affleck is shown in a scene from his film "Argo" in this publicity photo released to Reuters February 21, 2013.
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